Why an IRANIAN INVASION Would BACKFIRE | Robert Pape

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[00:00:30] Ships in the Strait of Hormuz from Hormuz continue to get hit left and right, and it looks like Egypt is getting ready to join the war while Iran threatens to invade neighboring countries. Trump promises not to use a nuclear weapon, and despite all this, we're still supposedly talking things over. Oh, and the midterms are coming up. 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 22nd of October, 2026, and we are back with Robert Pape. Please be sure to like, subscribe, share an episode with a friend, all that good stuff. With that, let's get to Pape.

[00:01:00] Hey, good afternoon. Welcome back. How are you doing? I'm doing terrific. Always great to talk to you, Scott. Pleasure as always. We were just starting to get ahead of ourselves off camera, and I realized I hadn't turned it on yet. So we're actually recording now. We really can't stop, folks. So quick update on some big events this week. So we've had, you know, multiple ships can continue to get struck in the straight-up removes. U.S. and Iran are still ostensibly talking.

[00:01:29] Trump and Netanyahu are both ostensibly saying that they're not going to attack before the elections. We'll see. Egypt's saying that they might get into the fight. And then a really interesting thing this morning, you know, as Iran's trying to anticipate whether or not U.S. and Israel will attack them soon before or after the elections, is that they put out a statement.

[00:01:47] I read it on Al Jazeera saying that the IRGC says renewed attacks by the United States could prompt Tehran to invade neighboring countries and hit bases used in U.S. military operations as part of its new offensive strategy, which is something that you and I talked about several months ago as a possibility. What do you think would happen if they actually invaded a neighboring country? Well, it does turn a bit on the context, and I'll say more about that in a second.

[00:02:14] But my immediate thought is this is the first real sign that the IRGC might be starting to overreach. And the reason for that is that any invasion of a neighboring country, let's say it's Kuwait, that would be an obvious one, will involve clustering, concentrating ground forces. It's hard to attack and invade without doing that.

[00:02:44] And importantly, also on road networks. Well, this is the exact circumstance that's the perfect circumstance for our American military. This is what the American military can, the kind of circumstance that it is optimized to be, to deal with. So as much as it looks like right now, we couldn't possibly do anything.

[00:03:11] We seem to be weaker and weaker with each passing day. The fact of the matter is that clustering ground forces creates an ideal target for our sensors to identify and track. And for precision weapons of all kinds to strike.

[00:03:38] And in fact, a lot of my arguments about how to win in the precision age are to use a hammer and anvil approach. This would be the friendly sides. Friendly air force is the hammer. Precision air force. Friendly air force is the anvil in order to put the enemy army in a catch-22.

[00:04:05] Either they concentrate in order to prevent being rolled over by the ground power anvil, in which case the air power hammer, the precision hammer, can smash them to bits. Or they disperse because they're trying to avoid being smashed by the precision air hammer.

[00:04:29] And then the friendly ground forces can roll over the dispersed pieces. So in order, though, to use this strategy of hammer and anvil, the enemy army needs to be clustered or come together. And usually that happens to take territory.

[00:04:51] Well, America showed just how powerful this approach of hammer and anvil could be in multiple wars from 2001 in the Gulf War, through the Bosnian Civil War, where we used American air power precision hammer with friendly Muslim Croatian ground forces against the Serbian army.

[00:05:18] Then also we saw this in toppling the Taliban with, again, American air forces, special forces. We're on the ground, but only 50 of them guiding our precision air power with the Northern Alliance, which was moving against the Taliban on the ground and put the Taliban in a catch-22.

[00:05:41] Just like what I'm saying, the Taliban army had to decide, were they going to cluster and stop the approach of the army by the Northern Alliance, in which case our air powers would smash them, and we did. Or would they disperse to avoid the air power smashing them, in which case we take Kabul? And that's how we took it. So those are the—and then there's more cases that I'm just leaving out.

[00:06:08] So what Iran would be doing here would be playing exactly into our strengths. Now, it is the case that we are a bruised military. So it is the case that our bases in the region are bruised. Some of them are really quite severely damaged.

[00:06:27] It's also the case that our aircraft carriers and our naval air power has been pushed back from the region, you know, sort of a close position to the region to further back. It's also the case that we would need to rely on continental—on bombers launched from the continental United States.

[00:06:52] However, I just want to point out, we faced all those constraints in these other circumstances I just laid out for you. For example, let me just pick one of the cases, which is when we toppled the Taliban in November 2001, October, November 2001. We had the Northern Alliance.

[00:07:13] The Northern Alliance had some tens of thousands of troops up against the Taliban, which had roughly that same number of troops. And we put the Taliban ground forces in this Catch-22 with American air power, with, again, about 50 special forces guys on the ground serving as forward air controllers for our air power. But where did the air power come from? Where did it come from? Mostly B-52s.

[00:07:41] So people will go back and look. Those were launched mostly from the continental United States. And they were essentially what I have called giant bomb trucks. They were giant, like, semi-trucks full of 500-pound precision-guided bombs. And you didn't want to dump them all at exactly one moment because they might get in each other's way.

[00:08:07] So you had to have a little bit of care in how you dealt with it. But almost as crudely as what I'm about to say, we just dumped them out. So it's not literally true we dumped them out like you would a semi-truck dumping out stuff. But they're bomb trucks. You see what I mean, Scott? And they were coming from a far distance.

[00:08:27] But you didn't need, because the B-52s can carry 8,500-pound bombs, you actually have an enormous amount of capability here with one B-52. So you don't need all of the B-52s coming at exactly the same time from the continental United States.

[00:08:48] You don't need, like, 20 all arriving at exactly the same moment to get quite a bit of punch if the other side has been forced into these concentrated masses. You can space it out. And I think that this combination, so even though we're a bruised military, and we are bruised, there's no doubt about it.

[00:09:13] If Iran were to decide to do this, this would create a real opportunity for us to tilt the battlefield. Now, it does depend on Kuwait having some semblance of an army. It doesn't mean that if Kuwait does nothing, you see. So what I would expect is that this kind of strategy from Iran would only come out if, this is what I meant by it depends on the circumstance.

[00:09:44] What I would expect is if it's going to happen, it would happen later in the war phase, in the intense battle phase. It would be unlikely to lead off the phase in the early stages. It would be more likely if Kuwait was already being pounded in different ways.

[00:10:07] It's already in a discombobulated government situation, which means its military may be discombobulated. Well, then, even a more dispersed ground force might be able to come in and take Kuwait City. So it would probably be Kuwait City is what you would go for. So that is the circumstance where this might work in Iran's favor.

[00:10:38] But the truth is, it's in general, the just sort of just general point is that if you concentrate ground forces, this is like shooting fish in a barrel for a lot of our troops. The big thing is, can you make them concentrate? You see? So that's why I called it hammer and anvil. So you have to, in fact, I have challenge coins for my center with hammer and anvil.

[00:11:07] This is such a common concept here. And this is, by the way, the strategy I said we had to use to defeat ISIS. So ISIS had territorial control. But what we needed was we needed local ground partners to force ISIS into this Catch-22 of American air power, local ground forces like, say, the Kurds.

[00:11:31] And then that is what created the hammer and anvil that allowed us to roll up ISIS fighters. In this case, Iran would be solving a lot of that problem for us because they will necessarily have to do at least medium concentration of their forces. Yeah. Two thoughts there. One is I wonder what the odds are if they're saying, you know, seize territory or invade neighbors. One is an invasion, a short-term thing or a long-term thing.

[00:11:58] But there's a lot of militias in Iraq or along the border who are loyal to Iran. Do Iraqi militias just say we're now part of Iran now and the cities and towns and villages that they already defend just become Iranian territory overnight? Oh, well, what I would say is, is that really going to be Iranian territory or is that just the fragmentation of the Middle East or the fragmentation of the country?

[00:12:24] So the thing that we saw with local militias over and over again, and you probably saw this personally in Afghanistan, is that they truly are local. They're really very focused on their specific tribe, the specific locality of the tribe. And so we ran into this problem with the Northern Alliance where we were able to mobilize the Northern Alliance as far as taking Kabul.

[00:12:53] And that's because if you look at a lot of the tribal areas here with the Uzbeks and Tajiks, you can see in Afghanistan why they called it the Northern Alliance. It was to the north and east of Kabul, but it did not extend into the south and it didn't extend where then Ben Laden was near Jawabend and Tora Bora.

[00:13:18] And so when we then wanted to go forward with operations, they were just much less willing to fight for us. And so that's when we had to have Operation Anaconda.

[00:13:32] That was an effort by our U.S. military to try to make up for the fact that the tribes were not willing to that alliance that seemed to work so well to topple the Taliban wasn't working so well to go get Ben Laden. This, by the way, was a problem I warned the CIA about. I remember distinctly talking to folks in the CIA. I was there nothing classified here, but this plan came up.

[00:13:59] Ken Pollack was putting this in the New York Times or one of the newspapers, maybe it was the Wall Street Journal. And you might think, well, hey, you know, hammer and anvil, it's going to get all behind us. And what I was explaining to the folks in the CIA, and this was in, say, end of September, early October before we had toppled the Taliban, is that this will topple the Taliban, will never get Ben Laden this way. And that's what exactly happened. And I was very interested in getting Ben Laden.

[00:14:28] A few of us were at the time. A few of us. Well, apparently not enough of us because we allowed ourselves to keep constantly being distracted by, you know, from that, what I thought was like mission one here. And so it's not that I was anti-wars or anything. It was like, let's focus on the guy and the group that did 9-11.

[00:14:52] But what happened was we developed a plan that was going to have a spectacular toppling of the Taliban. And at the time, Scott, and, you know, I'm not sure if you were really, you know, there at the time, the public went gaga in November 2001 when we toppled the Taliban. And they really did seem to kind of forget about Ben Laden here. I mean, it was like really amazing to me. I was not there. I was in sixth grade.

[00:15:21] I'm not quite that old. But, yes, I remember the sentiment at the time. Rumsfeld was called the perfect secretary not of defense but of war. And he was really good at this whole thing. There seems to be a real strong correlation with secretaries of war and bad things happening next. I'm just drawing that correlation now. Well, this was a – and it wasn't that we didn't topple the Taliban. That was never my issue. The issue was, was that going to translate over into this?

[00:15:51] So I think that if what Iran thinks is that you can fragment areas of the Gulf states, that's a different plan. And I think that's a much more worrisome, realistic, practical plan.

[00:16:07] So you may be able to fragment the – there's a lot of – if you folks listening will just call up the map of Shia and Sunni in the Middle East and especially on the Arabian Peninsula and around the Gulf states. And if you have one, Scott, we can start to talk more concretely about – now, this won't get into the tribal levels. But once we just do Sunni-Shia, people will start to get the idea.

[00:16:37] And then you could go to the next level of the tribal, which would be within the Sunni-Shia boundary. So we don't have this large number of tribes that are both Sunni-Shia. So that's why this first map is really helpful. Yeah, let me see if I can pull this up. Found this from Red Lines and Deadlines. That's right. Okay, so what we need is a little more discreet than that. So we need – that's too – that's a too high level.

[00:17:04] Yeah, we need something a little more – so – and we could – we can – I've used them. So I know they're there. They're just on Google. We just have to find the right level. And just Shia would be enough. So just show the Shia. That would be enough. Let me see if this bad boy is going to work. Yeah, so we can just get Shia. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Now you're starting to see a lot better example here.

[00:17:34] So if we go to – let's see. A really good version of this. Sorry. Yeah. I think I found – Yeah, there you go. So now you're starting to get at this. And so you see right away that you can see in the light green the Shia. And obviously there's a lot of Shia in Iran.

[00:18:04] But then you start to see the Shia in Iraq. And that's a really big area. So when we talk about the Iran-backed militias that are attacking the pipeline, we think they're in the green in Iraq. But if you can magnify that more, you'll see that there are these small pockets of Shia here. And this is an incomplete map.

[00:18:31] There are more pockets of this in Saudi Arabia. There are some green there. And then you can see at Oman, there are green here. So if you want to know why is it the case that Oman seems to sometimes be siding with Iran a little more, these maps are very useful. And if we had a still more fidelity map here, you would see that in – there's a Shia half moon in the UAE.

[00:18:59] You would see the Bahrain, which you see a little bit here. Bahrain is probably 65% Shia. And so you would see that what you would do if you were looking to sort of create trouble here is you would start by fragmenting as best you could the Shia areas.

[00:19:21] And then you let things start to unwind from there like how a dike, if it cracks a little, you start to then have things – oh, there we go. This is The Economist, not a random Facebook page. Yeah, but this is a very – yeah, this is a much more – and you can see the sizes of the Shia. You can see where you can start to see the mixed areas.

[00:19:47] So first you start to work with the purely Shia areas, but then you see there's good-sized mixed areas. And those are – and now you're starting to see what I think a strategy to really start to break things apart would look like if you were Iran.

[00:20:05] So from Iran's perspective, if now – again, they may not be thinking this coherently and strategically, but it might be, which is what you – you don't really want to govern these Gulf states. You're not really looking to govern Iraq. You're not looking to govern Kuwait. You're not looking to govern Bahrain or Qatar, UAE or Omic.

[00:20:31] What you would like to do is cause the governments that are there to fail, and that will produce enormous benefits to you. One of the first set of benefits it will produce is their central banks will no longer be able to buy treasury bonds from the United States.

[00:20:52] And so right away, the financial consequences of simply the failed state nature of the government is in their advantage. You see, so now you're really – if you want to drive up interest rates in the United States, we're now – for the five-year, what, about 5.2, 5.1 to 2? I think today something like that. You want to drive it up to 7% to 8% the 10-year?

[00:21:22] This is what you would do. You want to wreck the governments to wreck the central banks. That then blows over into America's financial problem, and it's because our financial house is not in order. It's not a good, solid house. We already have holes in the basement of that house, and so they're going to start pouring water in those holes. And that's what I'm describing. You see what I mean?

[00:21:52] Well, speaking of financial houses in order, you know, much has been made about the state of the Iranian economy, how they record high inflation, cut off from financial markets, yada, yada, yada. According to some people, there will collapse any minute if we just keep going. Could someone, you know, wishcast here and look at Iran proposing potential offensive operations, the potential oversteps that would be as a result of internal pressure they feel because this economic pressure is actually working? It could be. It could be.

[00:22:21] We see what's called the diversionary theory of war all the time. I'm worried that Trump is going to do a version of the diversionary theory of war as his political problems start to become real, not just hypothetical, after November 3rd. So November 3rd is when the vote stops, but the counting begins. Then you have from November 3rd to January 3rd, that first week in January, where the actual transition of power happens in these stages.

[00:22:50] Well, that's the period that I'm warning about is the period for essentially the diversionary theory of war. Trump does things with the Iran war to escalate in order to create trouble, kind of maybe bond the MAGA base a little bit, paint the Democrats as traitors to American national interests. Well, Iran can do exactly the same thing.

[00:23:18] So if Iran is having troubles of internal cohesion, it could try to essentially export those troubles by focusing on foreign attacks. At the moment, Iran doesn't really need another boogeyman in order to do that. But Israel has been right there doing a pretty good job on its own.

[00:23:45] I mean, it's hard to believe that you would be able to if you're in Iran and you're saying, where could I find the country that's attacked us over and over and over again? And this is a really tough marketing problem. I don't know. Yeah. Where would I go? Bahari. No, I think I would just keep doubling down on Israel. I would link America, Israel at the hip. These are the things that make more sense.

[00:24:13] But it is, I would say this idea is not impossible and it is logical. It is coherent. I just think it's overtaken by the fact there are more obvious targets for this, Israel and the United States. And increasingly, by the way, Saudi Arabia. Well, I was going to ask about that next. You know, last week we were talking about how France had announced it was going to send troops to Saudi Arabia.

[00:24:40] I've seen the announcement that French troops are in Saudi Arabia. They haven't shared what exactly they are, but apparently they are at the port there along with a Greek THAAD battery or Patriot battery. I'm sure Turkey loves that as they talk about potentially going there. But we now have Egypt. They're voting in, I think, four days about going to Saudi Arabia with their military to protect the holy sites, they say. Very interesting wording there from them. But we now have Europe in the Middle East.

[00:25:08] We have an African country talking about going to the Middle East. We have Trump impacting the war with Ukraine in order to reduce diesel prices because of the war in the Middle East. You know, at what point does this truly become a global conflict and not just a global inconvenience? Well, it doesn't become World War III until American, Russian, and Chinese troops are killing each other.

[00:25:30] So we have a ways to go to get to, we had World War I where the great powers didn't just support a war. They were literally on the battlefields killing each other's armies and militaries. That happened in World War II. That's why those are world wars. They're not world war because they're geographically spread around the world. That is also true.

[00:25:57] So here we have war increasingly geographically spreading around the world. That is true. It's not a World War III because you don't have American troops killing Russian troops or Chinese troops killing American troops.

[00:26:20] Now, if it were the case that China were to deploy 20,000 ground forces to Tehran or Russia were to deploy 20,000 ground forces to Tehran. Now, if we bomb Tehran, we would be killing those troops, at least good chance of it, because they're probably going to be at the key sites. So that would then be World War III.

[00:26:49] Now you're talking World War III. But so far, we have not seen the Chinese and the Russians be willing to stick their noses in that far. And so that's why that's been a very good social media topic of conversation. But the truth is, we're pretty far away from that. And if that happens, this will turn out – this will end up being worse than the Cuban Missile Crisis.

[00:27:16] So this would – because those countries all have nuclear weapons. So when you're killing each other's ground forces, you're not just simply fighting a conventional war. So the Pentagon has had ideas in their military strategy, we're going to fight these long conventional war in Asia. And we're going to do – no, no, no.

[00:27:36] So it's not impossible, but the idea we're just going to bracket nuclear and nobody's going to notice that the two sides have nuclear weapons is just – this is just Pentagon hocus pocus. I mean, it's just not real. And I don't care how much money they throw at people. And here, they can throw all the money they want to get all the papers they want. That is not changing a reality that these countries have nuclear weapons.

[00:28:03] So you've got to take this into account on the get-go. And so I don't think we're really at a point where it's World War III. I love all the segues here. But speaking of nuclear weapons, you know, we've talked before about whether or not the U.S. would use – quote-unquote – tackling nuclear weapons to try to go after Pickaxe Mountain in particular. Trump has come out and said that he is not going to use nuclear weapons, that we don't need to use nuclear weapons.

[00:28:30] We're going to use the MOAB, which is a massive area effect bomb. We have that instead. And either this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what these munitions do, which is possible, or he views it purely through a shock and odd lens. Or third option, he's generally worried about nuclear weapons and what it might do if he uses them. Do you think that we should put any faith or read anything into his comments saying that we're not going to use nukes because we have the MOAB bomb instead?

[00:28:58] No, and it's not because I think we're on the verge of using nuclear weapons. I think that – so I've advised every White House since 9-11. I've advised chief staff of the Air Force during the Bosnian Civil War. So I've watched many speakers of the House. I've advised other countries' top leaders.

[00:29:22] And what I can say is that they don't make a decision until they make a decision. And I think that's lost a lot in these conversations where people are thinking that they can read these trajectories more than they can. President Obama, by all the tea leaves, was going to launch 100 cruise missiles into Syria in 2013. And then he did not.

[00:29:53] And I think it was a good thing he didn't. Other people disagree. I think that kept us out of that civil war. But bottom line is he said he was going to – had the red line he was going to, dot, dot, dot. And I publicly, before he changed his mind, said he should change his mind. I didn't care about all that stuff. I said he's the strongest person on the planet. He should do what's right for the country. Forget everything else you said. Do what's the right thing strategically.

[00:30:22] And I think he did. But that – now, with President Trump, I think it's true. He's famous for changing decisions and so forth and so on. But LBJ ran the bombing from the White House. That's Lyndon Johnson. So we – I think we're having the immediacy problem here. There's an immediacy bias that's occurring. And I – but now what does that mean? That cuts both ways.

[00:30:49] Number one, I don't think we should think that because he said he's going to use the Moab or he's going to attack Pickaxe Mountain, he's definitely going to do it. Nope, he hasn't decided to do it yet. So it's not – it's not locked in. Number two, I think there's good reason to lay out the consequences of using a nuclear weapon. So I've done this on my substack here.

[00:31:14] I've laid out in detail what would be the consequences of a 5 or 10 kiloton nuclear weapon on Pickaxe Mountain. And I've not done the polite cocktail party idea, which is, oh, it's a bad idea. Let's not say any more about it. It's an entire analysis of this so that you can see where would you likely beat what's called downwind. So we don't know exactly where the winds are going to blow, but we can make some general understanding.

[00:31:44] Who lives downwind? How many people are roughly there? That's important because of the radiation. We can talk about the consequences of this and put some teeth on the bones, such as what might – if America does this and we're now suddenly having radiation that's going over tens of thousands of people, and we don't know exactly how many, but that's a lot of people, and we're doing it because we're afraid to put our boots on the ground.

[00:32:13] So we're going to end up becoming a giant pariah, maybe worse than Israel as a pariah. What are the consequences of others? How will other states respond? So I lay out, most likely they'll stop buying our treasury bonds. Why? Because a lot of their publics are going to demand something. They're not going to want – the countries are not going to attack America. They're going to do the version of economic sanctions. And what is sanctions? Don't buy the bonds.

[00:32:43] Now, is that a permanent thing? I said, let's look at what happens if they don't for three months. So I laid out those consequences. And I believe this is more important, folks, than we give credit to. I don't believe – I'd like to know, has Scott Besson and his people done a paper on this and put it in front of President Trump?

[00:33:06] Here are the economic consequences of, if it were to happen, no one buying our treasuries – I mean, foreigners not buying our treasuries – for three months. For three months. We still have domestic hedge funds by the – But what does that look like for real? And I believe that is a very important paper. Now, I did my version of it. Professor Pape got the analysis wrong because Scott Besson says,

[00:33:36] oh, Pape doesn't know what he's talking about. Okay, well, fine. Show me where I'm wrong. It's perfectly fine. I just explained – or at least say, can't tell you, but paper's in front of Trump. Okay? You see, that's what I think we need to have leaked out here, that we actually have some real worst-case analysis that's going forward as opposed to the wink and the nod that we all know – no.

[00:34:03] This is what I think is we need more confidence that we're actually engaging with worst-case analysis. Yeah, fingers crossed that's going on, but I'll keep my hopes to myself. Not especially because we can see right away that President Trump went into this war thinking the worst case is you just get another leader like the one that was there. No, the worst case was a lot worse than that. So where is the analysis? I keep calling for this.

[00:34:30] Declassify – General Cain – declassify the actual analysis you told President Trump about what would happen to the straight and foremost. Just what did you tell him? Okay? And if you've got to, you know, redact the exact signals and methods and, you know, SITK and all that stuff. Okay, but I want to see the sentences. What were the sentences you said? And why exactly don't we get to know that? I mean, are we afraid Iran's going to figure out they could take it?

[00:34:59] Seems like it's past the point of relevance at this point, but yeah, we should be able to take a look. You see what I mean, Scott? And the relevance is that it matters to the future because I really believe that's a very important part of government. And that's what you're seeing on the substacks, is I'm trying to put out papers that I think are just important and people can say, oh, no, we're never going to use a tactical nuclear weapon. I'm not going to read 10 pages on the consequences. That's their right.

[00:35:29] They certainly feel that way. But I think that we need to understand that we're just assuming a lot that the worst case is already being laid out and clearly in front of our leaders. Well, speaking of challenging assumptions, we've got a few questions here. Do you have a moment? I do. I do. All right. So assumption here to talk about them.

[00:35:53] Media and analysis are assuming that the U.S. and Israel will strike after the midterms. Do you see any indicators that Iran is going to preemptively attack before then? Thanks for watching. To get full access to the Q&A with Professor Pape and support the show, please go ahead and sign up for The Briefing Room, our paid members community on YouTube. You get the full Q&A with Pape the same day that we record. Lots of members-only content from me and my undying love and appreciation because, as we all know, diapers are expensive.

[00:36:24] See you all next time. Thank you.