Washington Is Watching. Iran Is Moving. | Robert Pape

[00:00:00] Good morning and welcome to the At the Water's Edge Podcast, where we look for insights beyond the headlines and take a practitioner's view on national security and geopolitics. It's the 10th of August, 2026. Let's get started. Now we are back with Professor Pape again this morning, which is always a great time. And we have a lot to talk about today. We've got this Mecca defense pack going on with Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey of all nations. Egypt might be joining, we heard. We'll see if anything comes to that. There's another deal going on in the Red Sea. Iran and Oman have reached some sort of technical arrangement.

[00:00:30] to run traffic through the strait. And America is not involved in any of it, which is slightly concerning, to say the least. Oh, and we are still out of munitions. Yikes. Now, if you've enjoyed this content series with Professor, please be sure to like, subscribe, share an episode with a friend. It really helps get the show out to more people. Admin note for folks, next week we'll be sitting down on Wednesday, not Monday. So the next time we get feedback from the Professor will be Wednesday the 19th. Please be sure to subscribe to a sub stack.

[00:01:00] And also you can follow the show sub stack. Thank you for everyone who has been sending in questions to askroberpape at gmail.com. If you want to submit a question for the professor, please go ahead and find the link for that in the show notes and the first pinned comment on YouTube. With that, let's find out what's going on with the war. All right, good morning and welcome back to the podcast. How you doing today?

[00:01:24] I'm doing great. It's a good day here in Chicago. We're still having rain. It's been rain off and on for three weeks. And remember last time I lost power? Actually lost it again here over the weekend in the middle of a sub stack.

[00:01:43] But it came right back and a lot of people stayed on. And so it was, I'm telling you, my wife couldn't believe it. She was in the outer room and she knew that this was just crazy. But this is Chicago now. So you're in the middle of a live recording for sub stack. In the middle of a live recording, you know, we have the battery and also I had fortunately the backup with my phone, the hotspot. So it picked up when the Wi-Fi went off.

[00:02:12] And so now had it gone off for 10 or 20 minutes, this might have been a different story. But we were able to rescue it after. And it did this two or three times, actually. So this is just, you know, the world's changing in a lot of different ways. And so it is. Anyway, so you asked me how I'm doing. That's how I'm really doing. Well, glad you're at your power and you're in and are working for us this morning. Appreciate your time.

[00:02:39] We're good right now. And it's not storming. So no tornadoes. No, no tornadoes this time. All right. Fingers crossed for you. I'm not quite in the season. We have to worry about like effects. No, yeah, but it's only a couple months away. Anyway, so a much hotter part of the world, Iran. So really interesting week this past week. So Iran and Oman have reached some sort of tentative technical agreement about how to manage traffic through the strait.

[00:03:05] And Iran's being very deliberate about messaging how the U.S. has absolutely nothing to do with this agreement. And now they've got a new list of demands for the U.S. to actually reopen the strait. And they're basically just asking for everything up front, which you can kind of understand at this point why they would take that position. The munition shortage is all over the news. That's blown up everywhere. No pun intended. And then two really interesting things from my point of view this past week. We had the Mecca joint defense agreement with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan, a mutual defense pact.

[00:03:33] Language isn't quite as strong as NATO Article 5 defense guarantee, but there is language there. And I actually saw this morning Egypt might be joining, which would be actually a game changer for the region. And then there's also another multinational defense coalition that Saudi Arabia has been putting together for the Red Sea, which Egypt is a part of. So we have two overlapping multinational coalitions forming in the region just in the past two weeks. A lot of noise there. Where do you think the best signal to start is?

[00:04:01] Well, so first place start is actually Washington. So what you're seeing out of the White House and Washington is strategic paralysis. Another way to put it is they're in the bleachers watching the game. They're not on the field. So there's still a game going on. The field is players are teams are moving on the field.

[00:04:26] But Washington is in the bleachers watching what's happening. And it's important to understand that strategic paralysis by the United States or Washington does not mean paralysis by all the other players. So everything you just ticked off, notice, was a movement by one player or another last week.

[00:04:52] So it's important to get the absolute biggest picture here, Scott, of what's occurring. Now, this is very predictable. This paralysis is predictable because President Trump is in an escalation trap. He now knows massive limits on the use of force. But he also knows consequences of accepting Iran as a rising power, as a rising regional hegemon.

[00:05:19] So he's basically trying to sit on the sidelines right now. He's saying go take it slowly or something. But what this really is, is what he's been doing since July 30th when he stopped the bombing campaign. So this bombing stopped on July 30th. This has been a period of strategic paralysis. But during that window of time, while Trump is caught on the horns of a dilemma with no good options and therefore not really doing anything,

[00:05:49] the other players are moving. And they're moving in important ways. So let me first talk about Iran. So with Iran, what Iran is doing is, remember I mentioned that Iran had moved from survival to ambition? Well, now Iran is moving, you could say, from survival to ambition to hard power.

[00:06:14] So now it is on its own deciding how to shape the future balance of power in the region. So Iran's just not sitting back and doing nothing. Iran is shaping things.

[00:06:32] Now, one of the ways it's shaping is it is continuing to shut down oil and other minerals and other energy from the Gulf through Hormuz, unless it's headed to China. So if you got a ticket to China, you're pretty good here. But that's why there's this tiny trickle is continuing.

[00:06:59] But wait, I thought we were trying to take over the strait to keep oil from going to China. Wasn't that the big 3D chess move? At the Water's Edge is supported by Gray Zone Advisory. Quick note for the small business owners out there. Tariffs, trade policy shifts, an overseas supplier that suddenly can't ship and goes dark on you. That's not background noise anymore. It's the top threat business owners have identified nationally in 2026.

[00:07:24] Grayzone Advisory was founded to help small and medium-sized businesses see that risk before it hits the bottom line. Head to grayzoneadvisory.com to grab your free geopolitical risk checklist. Five questions to know your exposure. That's grayzoneadvisory.com. Well, this is what happened. We're paralyzed. The rest of the world is not. So we just got to see where we're heading here. So issue number one, and they're using force to do that.

[00:07:49] Now, issue number two is, and this started on July 20th. So to be very precise here, this is July 20th is when the Houthis started their war against Saudi oil. Now, this, of course, this was Houthis in Saudi Arabia. They have a history going back many years.

[00:08:14] They also, Saudi Arabia played its part in, you could even say, triggering this. So, but the bottom line is that since July 20th, there has been a Houthi war against Saudi oil that has been against Saudi tankers out of Yanbu. Also against Aramco facilities, one of the most important ones for Saudi Arabia, near Yanbu. And so this is not fully shut down the Red Sea, but this is another, this actually, what, you know, military calls kinetic action, hard power.

[00:08:43] Now, this is with Iranian, we call them proxies, Iranian calls them their allies. And so this is, this is what I mean by moving to hard power. Now, what you also see coming out of the leadership decisions of Iran last week, both the parliament and its National Security Council, are a list of demands to open the strait, not a list of demands to talk to the United States about.

[00:09:11] But if the United States wants Hormuz open, then it's got to pay all these things up front. And it's really quite an amazing list. Even getting one of these six items between now and the midterms would be, you know, really quite amazing, but also quite politically disastrous for Trump, let alone all six.

[00:09:39] I mean, it's just, it's quite a, quite a list. So it's not like, oh, they have six, they'll take one. No, I think if you're going to give one, you might as well give them all. So, because your presidency is dead anyway. Yeah. Well, yes, I can ask you there. Like, do you think, I mean, at this point, it almost seems like the damage from this war is baked in. Can it possibly get any worse for the president before the midterms? And do you think it's also possible that Iran might be overplaying their hand by asking for everything up front?

[00:10:08] Well, everybody wants Iran to overplay its hand. The main way they would overplay their hand is if they took 50,000 troops and they marshaled them into a moving worm and tried to actually conquer Kuwait. Now we're talking about overplaying a hand. They're not overplaying a hand. They're playing a hand really, really well. They've got all the cards. They're playing the hand really well. And they're calling out bluffs. They're just not, there's no sign of overplaying.

[00:10:36] And so what you are seeing is you're seeing Iran is using hard power. And between now and the midterms, the answer is yes. It can get worse for President Trump and worse for America and worse for our troops. So one of the important things to see, and we've been talking about this for quite some time, is Iran has a clear idea or vision of its sphere of influence.

[00:11:06] And the use of force that it is engaging in, besides in Hormuz, is in line with that well-articulated resistance security belt that the IRGC began to put out publicly on Telegram and elsewhere at the end of May.

[00:11:25] And it's a clear map here, and it's basically from the Mediterranean around Suez and Lebanon to the Red Sea to the Gulf. And the reason that sphere of influence makes sense is because if you could control that sphere of influence, even control it halfway, you would prevent the West from diverting and bypassing Hormuz

[00:11:52] with all these pipeline ideas Scott Besson is talking about. So Scott Besson is saying, hey, no problem with us walking away two years from now. We're going to have all these pipelines here, and so we're just going to have smart-em. Wink, wink. Okay, well, I've got news for you. They've been there, done that in May. They're already playing the game, and they're not just talk here. This is not just paper. This is hard power that's coming into play. So that's what I mean, hard power.

[00:12:21] So as the next few weeks go forward, and that's always how I like to have our conversation, Scott, is in the very near term because quite a few people watching are close to or on the front line, so I really want to respect that. I think we need to accept here that we don't really know what will happen this week with Washington.

[00:12:45] Washington, I'm hearing mixed reports about leaves being canceled by our Bonner forces, but who knows? I don't know. So we don't really know what President Trump is actually going to do by the end of the week. What we can follow here pretty cleanly is if President Trump does nothing, as is a clear possibility here, does that mean Iran's not going to do anything? And I think the answer is no.

[00:13:11] They've moved from survival to ambition to hard power to shape the balance of power in the region. And what does that next shaping look like? That next shaping looks like moving the Gulf states less in America's orbit, and those that have moved to more swing status or neutrality not there but toward Iran.

[00:13:40] So think of it as a spectrum where before the February 28, all the Gulf states, you could just line them right up. They were either completely in the camp of bomb Iran, kill the leader, or a little bit of hedging maybe with a couple of states here. But this is like Oman. But the fact of the matter is that has already moved in these five and a half months quite considerably because America can't protect them.

[00:14:09] And so they're really stuck, and everybody knows they can't protect them. And so – but this isn't enough for Iran. Iran's not just wanting to send a message, hey, you know, don't do this again because we might get tough next time. No, they've already been through this several times. So what you see them doing is you call it playing hardball or hard powerball. So this is a very different world here.

[00:14:38] And I think that we need to continue to expect that the conflict between the Houthis and the Saudis is likely going to continue unless somehow Saudi Arabia completely calls it off and joins closer to Iran because that's ongoing. And you see Saudi Arabia is actually going the other direction.

[00:15:01] Well, as that – if that conflict escalates, this is going to put even more pressure on Saudi oil, more pressure on world oil. And there will be pressure here for the United States to probably come in on the side of Saudi Arabia. I think the odds of Pakistan sending troops here are pretty remote.

[00:15:24] I think the odds of Turkey sending troops or Egypt sending troops – who's really going to fight the war against the Houthis around Sanaa and Aden? Who's actually doing that war? You see what I mean? I'm pretty sure if you're looking for air power, you're probably not thinking of Turkish air power here. I mean, if American air power can't do it, it probably can't be done with air power. That's – I think we can all probably put a pin in that.

[00:15:48] Well, I mean, it's a pretty tough mission because we went up against the Houthis a year ago with a couple aircraft carriers and didn't work out all that well. So this is not a – the fact we might have to get the call for this, we just need to be prepared. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to say that where would the issues come? You can see this, I think, already in the next few weeks.

[00:16:10] And then the other side of things, again, thinking about this as Iran using this window of – you know, we'll think of it maybe as breathing space. Iran's thinking of it as growing space to expand its control of the balance of power and the regional balance in the near term. What else might you look for? Well, you might start to look at Iranian proxies.

[00:16:37] And I'm not sure where the lines are here exactly, but your intel folks who are listening will know. So because this may well not be – this may be closer to a CIA issue than a CENTCOM issue, but these lines may be blurred anyway.

[00:16:52] But the bottom – what I'm really trying to say is I would not be at all surprised if you start to see some Iranian proxy operations threatening to kill leaders in the Gulf. So actual operations. And people say, oh, my God, they would never kill a leader in the Gulf. Really? Seriously?

[00:17:16] I mean, it's okay for Israel and America to just slaughter their leaders one by one by one. And then, oh, no, they're not going to take a risk of actually doing anything like that. No, this is, of course – I'm saying this tongue-in-cheek because we need to be prepared that this is one of the reasons I think MBS is probably – just based on incentives – is looking for more bodyguards. He's looking for as many as he can possibly get.

[00:17:46] And I'm not sure how reliable they are because, remember, before this Mecca agreement that just happened last week, remember there was a Saudi-Pakistani mutual defense pact before. So, remember, that was signed a couple years ago and was supposedly kind of renewed or brushed up here in the spring. Well, wait a second. So we have the Houthi attacks that everybody recognizes are attacks on Saudi Arabia.

[00:18:15] Where did that defense play? Yeah. What happened to that thing? Oh, we've got to bring in Turkey now. Uh-huh. Well, so I was talking to some folks about this path between these three nations and Pakistan. It actually has a pretty robust military capability. It's all pointed at India, not Iran. And Turkey's got – I think it's like the fourth largest army in the world or second largest army in NATO. But again, they don't have an expeditionary capability.

[00:18:40] Like outside their own borders, most of the Turkish military is a labor program for young men and for chief labor for the state. Very common in that part of the world. So you put these three countries together. It looks really interesting on paper, but it doesn't seem like it actually forms a credible military deterrent to Iran. How do you think Iran's looking at this arrangement? Do they think it's a threat to their great power aspirations? I think they would see it as symbolic.

[00:19:07] And if anything – if it means anything at this point, Scott, because you also could just elaborate a little more on what you just said. Let me just carry your point another two steps. With the case of Pakistan, remember Pakistan just a year ago, April 2025, had a nuclear crisis with India where we thought the balloon was about to go up.

[00:19:28] So does that mean Turkey and Saudi Arabia are about to send troops to Islamabad to help protect Pakistan in the next crisis with India? You see, so this idea, these concepts of, you know, all for one and one for all. Okay. The same with the Kurds in Turkey. So does this mean that Pakistan's going to send troops to help Erdogan suppress the Kurds the next time the Kurds decide they're going to do an uprising?

[00:19:56] You see, so these are – so I think that right now it's even with the extra language you described here about some operations center, the fact is that it's mostly symbolic. And as American power weakens in the Persian Gulf, it creates a power vacuum.

[00:20:20] Well, power vacuums don't stay vacuums for long in international politics, but you get power rivalries to fill the vacuum. So if you look out and you see this picture I'm describing, America weaker and Israel getting weaker, Iran stronger, but there's still power vacuum here to fill.

[00:20:40] One of the things that the next ring of countries might worry about is will there be incentives to suck them into the war? Yeah. And so this might be an agreement to kind of keep them out, not get them in. And so people – I noticed, you know, in the social media people are saying, well, is it directed against Iran? Is it directed against, well, Israel? Well, that all presumes it would actually do some fighting with this, you see.

[00:21:10] And that's quite a stretch, you see. The other thing people just may not fully be aware is NATO is not a political agreement alone. In Article 5 of NATO, there's an integrated command structure. And what that means is when you invoke Article 5, an American general commands the troops of Britain, commands the troops of Germany, commands the troops of the other NATO countries that are involved in the NATO operation. And that's who SACUR is.

[00:21:40] And then that – unless they hand it off here. And at one point during Kosovo, we did hand it off to a British general. So it is possible to hand it off. But a NATO mission means America runs the war like a command staff. And so are we really imagining that the Turkish – there's going to be an Article 5 evoked here with the Mecca agreement. And who's going to be that top general?

[00:22:07] Is it going to be the Saudi general commanding Pakistani troops and nuclear forces? Is it – you know, who exactly is commanding what here? So those are the major decisions that have to be made. And the reason NATO was sort of the gold standard is that was all done in advance. So you didn't have to have two months of arguing who was going to be what area of operation, all that stuff.

[00:22:36] This was – there would still be more detailed discussions, of course. But this – the basic lines of who's in charge were already set. That's just not there in this Mecca. So this is a far, far away from what I would call a warfighting agreement. Now, where this could come into being could be, I think, I see if you're Saudi Arabia, you want some help if you're going to go to war in Yemen. So if you're actually going to go to war in Yemen, you want to get as much help.

[00:23:04] So maybe the next week or two we'll see is there going to be some movement of Pakistan, Turkey, and possibly Egypt to help Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Because Saudi Arabia doesn't really have enough of an army force. It keeps its army force weak so it doesn't topple the Riyadh government. So this is on purpose. So these are the issues.

[00:23:31] See, Iran's an actual real country. It's been around for its civilization for 2,000 years. The Persian Gulf, the Arabian Peninsula, is what we cut up after World War I. The West just cut up and drew lines. And then we installed some dictatorships to run over the people. And there's a lot of tension here. Those lines are not real. The populations don't really like their leaders.

[00:23:59] The leaders are taking all the money. So anyway, there's a lot of – you start opening this can of worms here. And that's why I find it a little hard to believe Saudi Arabia really wants to get back into this issue of a war with the Houthis. Because I think this would be – I'll have to do another – I'll have to create another escalation trap for the Saudi escalation trap. Yeah.

[00:24:28] I mean, think about all the traps. Everybody – you know, Saudi's watching America get into an escalation trap. And we watch Putin get into an escalation trap. And these countries just keep going right into another trap. Hey, I'm left out of the trap. You have to laugh because it's so ridiculous to watch it happen over and over again. Well, some people don't like it when I'm – well, my wife says try to be a little more humorous because it's such a gloomy subject. And then other people will send comments.

[00:24:58] Oh, you're – well, we all know that, folks. We know. Okay. And it's a tense situation. So some of this is just to let off a little steam. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think one thing, too, that we're talking about – you know, you mentioned a great there, a great comment. You know, Saudi Arabia keeps the army small so they don't overthrow the government. The relationship between the military and the government in these states is very different than the relationship between, like, the American military and the U.S. government.

[00:25:26] The American military is actually a power projection capability designed to optimize the ethical use of lethal power to pursue political aims. It's not employed very effectively a lot of the time, but it actually is designed for that. That's very rare in the international system. Like, Russia doesn't have that. China barely has that. In Washington, we've had this real history and reality of civilian control of the military. It's the real thing. And we've had some times.

[00:25:54] MacArthur in the Korean War got a little bit out of step, but it didn't go very far. So there's – it's not like we've never had this tested in a little way at all. But nonetheless, this is very, very different. The British also have strong traditions here. But if you look at much of the rest of the world, that tradition and history is often the opposite of this. So you start getting into these protracted wars.

[00:26:22] This is a – you're upsetting apple carts in ways. And that's why I think that from Iran's perspective, how would you think about spreading your wings of power with hard power? Well, you probably – if I'm sitting in Tehran right now and I'm thinking, well, am I better off or worse off with a war between the Houthis and Saudis that really gets big?

[00:26:49] I'm probably thinking, well, gee, I get to – we have to – we shut down Saudi oil, more pain on America, more punishment of Trump. And maybe we get lucky and the Saudi military topples their own government. And maybe there'll be more for us to talk about with the – you know, we'll certainly have a lot more relations here with Saudi Arabia than we do right now. So if I'm sitting there thinking about this, I'm not seeing exactly the downside of this. You see?

[00:27:19] I'm not thinking, you know, the downside. And so I think this is going to be true in possibly some other countries as well. So I don't know the full landscape of the exact degrees to which the proxies could operate in ways to facilitate this.

[00:27:38] But these are the kinds of things I would be concerned about in the coming – in the next few weeks because there's room to maneuver now with hard power for Iran, for Iran and its allies, its proxies. And there's multiple ways that could bubble up. And then beyond that, you asked, is there ways for this to get worse for Trump?

[00:28:02] Well, I just gave a big briefing yesterday on my substacks about the actual plausible scenario for $6 gas. And $6 gas between now and the midterms as a national average – it's $4.06 right now nationally. It's higher in Chicago, but that's what it is nationally right now. So I mean nationally for $6 gas. It really is hinges on not so much whether Hormuz opens.

[00:28:32] That will create a problem. But the actual next level beyond that is going to be can you zero soddy oil out here. That turns out – I've done this big analysis, a sensitivity analysis. That's the actual scenario that would be the punishing scenario. And it's – we're not seeing that yet with the Houthis.

[00:29:01] They've done some damage to Saudi exports, but they haven't – it's still about three and a half or four million barrels a day, even with what's happened so far. But if you see that escalation in the coming weeks here and you can get close to zeroing out Saudi oil, well, all the other things are happening. That is, the oil inventories are drying down, China's buys, all those other things we talk about. You put all that into the blender. That's what I did with this simulation, modeling essentially.

[00:29:30] That's what I do. So – and that turns out to be the Red Sea front turns out to be the crucial front. And there's no real Suez bypass to that, so that's a longer conversation. But that's what I covered over the weekend. And that is really important to understand. But that's more coming – that would have more of this impact on Americans after Labor Day.

[00:29:54] So for the region, for CENTCOM, it's more of the first part of the conversation we've had that matters right now. Nice. I know we're at time. Do you have time for a couple questions from the audience? Absolutely. I love these questions. All right. Well, we'll knock out a couple of these real quick. All right. Dear Mr. Pape, as a European, I have a deep-seated interest in that oil from the Middle East will flow again as soon as possible. What can European countries do to enable a quick resolution of the conflict and what should they refrain from doing?

[00:30:23] With regards, Klaus. Yeah, well, the big issue now is trying to get out of – this morning's escalation trap post is called the exit trap. It's to stop focusing on coming up with an exit to this between now and the midterms. Because all that's doing is making everything worse. When you truncate your time horizon so dramatically – and this is why Trump can't get out of the trap –

[00:30:51] when you truncate it so dramatically, it greatly narrows any options. And every day that goes by, you lose another day. Because if your deadline is the November midterms, every day you don't take the last exit option, it gets worse and worse and worse. So what Europe has to do is – they've been sitting mostly on the sidelines saying things that are easy to say. Like, oh yeah, once the war is over, then we're going to bail you out. No, this is completely worthless, right?

[00:31:21] Nobody buys that. It's not really – it's not really mattering. What would be helpful would be to help establish this broader time horizon of how could you bring stability to the Persian Gulf and the Middle East by the end of 2028. Now, notice gulp. Okay? So, Scott, when I was on with you before and I – A couple of winners between those two dates.

[00:31:51] Well, I'm just saying, when I was on with you before, maybe back in April or May, and I would say this is going to go on through the midterms, there would be a gulp. Then a little bit later, I would say, well, you know, it's actually going to go on through January, then there would be a gulp. Well, I'm sorry, but we really need to understand we're actually in a long war. And long wars don't end just because we get tired of them and we want to go do something else. So – But I thought Trump had to get to Cuba. I thought that was next on the list.

[00:32:21] I'm telling you. So when you say what can the Europeans do, time horizons in a serious way – so, for example, European governments could have a conference. And they could create a conference here where they invite people to come for a day or two and talk about not how to bail Trump out between now and the midterm so everybody's gulp, but how do you bring stability here by the end of 2028.

[00:32:50] Now you're talking. So the British government, the French government, the German government, they can host a conference. They can actually – and then that's how you actually change this. This is how it would be done. You get the world talking about this. You get over – oh, my God, gulp. You mean 2028? We have to get through two winners here? I mean, yeah. You're going to have a lot of – unless a meteor from space comes and magically knocks out the IRGC here, this issue is going to be around.

[00:33:20] Nice. Do you think there might be any issues with the same group of nation states that cut up the Middle East into what it is today and created like the Kurds, largest stateless nations, and the problem with Balochistan and all that? Them doing a conference? It's a huge issue. It's a huge issue. And by the way, this is what a conference does because it allows these politically sensitive issues to be brought up in ways that the governments can have plausible deniability space.

[00:33:47] You know, that's what – when I advise those – the White Houses from 2001 to 24, I used to always say, well, the reason I'm easy to bring is because I come in, I make arguments, and then I go home. You see? So nobody has to actually own anything right away. You see? So it creates a possibility for better. But let's do one more question because I really think these are great questions. Yeah, well, this one – OK, one more.

[00:34:16] We'll do this one. Would we have seen these events unfold if the Obama deal was kept intact? Well, almost certainly not. Oh, no, this is a – that's a very easy one to – because you can look – I – when I teach and I do the modeling of the bombing of Iran for 20 years, one of the things I show is the curve of the Iran enrichment curve. And I start from 2002.

[00:34:42] Like, let's go right to the beginning, go year by year by year, and we have the IAEA inspection data. So it's really high-quality data. We're not guessing. This isn't just hand-wavy numbers and so forth. And what you can see is that before the Obama deal – and this was true in the Bush administration and even the first Obama administration – is there's really no stopping the enrichment.

[00:35:09] It's a lower level, but it's still drip by drip by drip moving up. Then you have the Obama deal, and the Obama deal wasn't just stopping enrichment. Over 90 percent of all that material exited the country. So it goes, poom, all the way down. And it stays down. And we have all the inspections on this. So this isn't – there's no secret – it's very high confidence. I mean, not perfect, but high confidence.

[00:35:34] Then in May 2018, President Trump rips it up unilaterally, that deal. And the deal was set up, Scott, so that it would take about a year for Iran to restart the enrichment. It was so discombobulated. Literally a year after President Trump rips up the deal. So it goes right back up. So the deal looks like it did everything it was advertised to do.

[00:36:02] And it gave President Trump a year grace period after he ripped it up to come in and figure out something better to do. He didn't. He did this maximum pressure, which the maximum pressures have never worked. So – and then you can see that it rises. And it keeps rising through the Biden administration. And it rises through the first months of the Trump administration. So what we are teaching Iran is you better get a bomb. That's what we're teaching Iran.

[00:36:32] And so as time goes on – and you're starting to see – I've been talking about Iran getting a nuclear weapon since my April 4th New York Times piece on Iran becoming a world power. You're now starting to see the official blob in Washington now. In the New York Times. Now – so it's one thing for the – you know, it's not true until the blob says it's true. Uh-huh. And even then, that's when you have to wonder whether it's true.

[00:37:00] But now they're starting to say, oh, yeah, it's only a year away. Well, it might even be a few – it might even be faster than that. But this is them catching up to the reality of the situation. You see what I mean? And being willing to say it. Because that's where we're really heading with this. We're heading to Iran getting a nuclear weapon. And is – this will be – there's a good chance we'll have intel about this in advance.

[00:37:29] Are we going to send the 82nd Airborne in or not? These all – or maybe the Israel – we're going to – all these issues are not going away as we go forward. So this idea that we're really going to stand by and do nothing as Iran becomes the fourth center of world power, the fourth great power, okay? United States, China, Russia, and then Iran. This will even eclipse Pakistan, okay? Iran and India.

[00:37:58] So Iran is going to become the fourth center of world power, and we're not going to do anything about it, even as Iran develops nuclear weapons? Look, these are the most dangerous times. I'm not advocating we do it. I'm just pointing out that this is the assessment part of paper. I'm assessing the risks here are extreme. And they don't get less extreme because this week President Trump decided to sleep in. Yeah.

[00:38:25] And for folks listening, Rob Malley, who actually helped negotiate the original Obama deal with Iran, has agreed to come on the show. We're working on scheduling, so hopefully we'll bring that conversation to everyone soon. Perfect. You've got great people here. Malley is great. Yeah. Now, using your name has helped a guest a lot, so thank you for coming on. Yeah, yeah. And Malley, I've met Malley. So this, I mean, he can explain it if he wants to or not, but the bottom line is he knows what he's talking about,

[00:38:53] and he is well aware of these enrichment curves I'm describing, the details. He will know even more about it because that's what he lived 24-7. You see what I mean? And so this is going to be extremely great for your audience because you're really bringing some of the best in the world to come and talk about these serious issues.

[00:39:16] And I think we're going to discover that the idea that this will all be made good because we're now just going to turn our heads away, and Iran's going to forget that we've assassinated their leaders, we've assassinated their diplomats a few times, we've killed many thousands of their civilians, and they're just going to understand that that was America's right. We're entitled to do those sort of things.

[00:39:45] No, they're not going to accept this, folks. And so this is why you heard me so much say, before the war, we don't do the war. Don't do the war. Get out quick. And this is the reality. We're creating, in some ways, we are creating a Frankenstein's monster. Think about Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. We go in, you know, think about that in the 1980s. Oh, yeah, no problem, no problem.

[00:40:15] We're going to just take all these radicals from all these Middle Eastern countries, and we're going to throw them in, and we're going to organize them. And then there'll be no blowback because we're going to get them all killed. Okay? All these ideas the CIA had at the time, and I know because I talked to the leaders, the people who actually run those programs. And they thought, oh, yes, we see, at the time, Bob, we thought we would get them in there, 86, 87. We'd get them all killed, and then, therefore, we kind of solve all the problems.

[00:40:44] And I'm just listening to this going, this just is not the real – these are the so-called practitioners. And I'm the so-called theorist. That's what gets me on this. So, yeah, 9-11 happens. I'm in sixth grade. I'm in a commuter town outside of Manhattan over the border in Connecticut. So really hit the community hard. My aunt was in a tower. She got out okay. Well, kind of, but she got out. Oh, thank God.

[00:41:10] But then, you know, fast forward, and it's 2021, and I'm a captain in special forces in Afghanistan finishing up my master's at American University and also all the training going through the SF pipeline and all that stuff. And we're watching the state start to fall apart in real time. I'm like, huh, this doesn't seem like anyone thought this shit through. And nothing I've learned in, like, my former military education or even undergraduate and master's education is really explaining and preparing for us from what we're watching happening right now.

[00:41:40] Yeah. The fundamental issue, Scott, is we – and it's because we're so powerful, because we're so rich, we are privileged. We underestimate the size and scale of these problems. Now, sometimes the problems are smaller, okay? I don't want to say it's always that. But we often underestimate the size and scale, and we don't see the difference between, say, a country that has 6 million and a country that has 25 or 30 million or et cetera, et cetera.

[00:42:10] And so these are the issues that are the biggest challenges I see. We underestimate the scale of what we're up against. And then we bite off too much. Then we have books written called Strategic Overstretch. So it's all fully predictable, the next set of books on Strategic Overstretch. We do book tours better than any country on the planet. Our book tours are excellent. I wish we didn't have so much to write about sometimes, but they are excellent.

[00:42:39] That's right. And it's scale. And if we would just – this is what restraint is about. It's not don't be involved and be isolated. I think that part of the restraint goes too far. I think that it's about let's just realize if we're going to take on problem A, like we're going to take on Venezuela, that's the issue for four years or eight years. It's not, oh, yeah, this week was Venezuela, next week Iran, the week after that is Cuba.

[00:43:08] We're just going to keep knocking these things off. This is just ripe for disaster. And it's because of the underestimation problem. You see what I mean? And I think that's really the thing that's hard for Americans to truly grasp. And it's a smart person's mistake. This is not a dumb person's mistake. So I see this with Bill Clinton. I see it with George Bush. I see it with President Trump.

[00:43:36] I see it with just about every – there's so much of underestimation of scale, you see. And the idea that we're going to articulate for the president, here are the 27 things you're going to do in the next – and this is how you're going to get yourself in the history books. No, if you could do one or two of those things, now you can get in the history books. Okay. We better – Thank you so much. Talk to you Wednesday the 19th. Thank you, sir. Talk to you then. Bye-bye.