Transcription
You saw what just happened? Yeah. Uh, I was on with somebody else literally before this. But what happened?
Well, I'm always to update us. I love it. I'm excited to break this news for you because that's um, fits perfectly into the escalation trap. So, I'll read out, I'll read out a post that Trump put, um, you know, just a few minutes ago.
Oh my goodness. The the Homus Strait is open and will remain open with or without Iran. That's fine. We are reinstating the Iranian blockade. So named because it is only stopping Iran's ships or customers from entering or leaving. All other countries will have fair and open use of the straits. The USA will be from this point forward known as the guardian of the home strait. But as such and as a matter of fairness, we will be reimbursed at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the world. The process and formation will begin immediately. Thank you for your attention to the matter.
So he's closed the straight of Homus for Iranian ships and wants to charge all other ships 20%. Uh, this is the opening of the battle of Hormuz. That is what you are seeing. The battle of Hormuz has started. Uh, now, of course, when you date battles, there is always a date of when you start it. But that post will likely go down in history as the opening uh post, the day when the battle of Hormuz truly started. That is uh not just an aggressive post. Um, uh, that post is establishing uh that America's goal is extremely clear. It is to permanently control for as far as the eye can see the strait of hormones and to benefit directly economically from that. Um, with essentially this is an American imperialist goal. So this isn't just to help others. Um, President Trump is saying that we're going to benefit rather substantially from controlling the straight of hormones. Uh, 20% um, uh, we don't know exactly what those numbers would equate to, but just off the cuff, that seems quite, uh, something larger than what Iran was was looking for out of its fees. Uh, and so this will um, uh, this will work um, uh, to Iran's favor in terms of mobilizing uh the anger against America and not just in Iran, uh, but around the world and around the region and uh, this will this will unleash. We are opening up the the battle of hormones and this will be uh, probably go on for months.
Well, Iran also just a few minutes ago, as we were going live, uh, Iran will announce its withdrawal from the MOU. Not that it matters really because the MOU is pretty much dead, but the Iranians haven't withdrawn.
Yeah, that's that's right. So, they're they're they don't want to. It's sort of uh, uh, it's it's sort of um, their way of of kind of distancing themselves from the demon that they're they're about. They they've been demonizing uh, President Trump, uh, the administration, Americans in general. Uh, this is just part of that demonization. They don't want to be anywhere near uh, anything like talking to people who they will view as demons. And so that's what you're seeing here. Now, of course, the MOU had not been working. We uh, have been explaining this is and this is all completely tragic, Mario, but it's also very predictable. And I and I feel for you because you and I have been on for months here and uh, and I think you've been doing quite a lot and you've been uh, so optimistic and hoping that the war would be over and that we wouldn't be going down these roads. And you also reflect uh, the feelings of not just I think you and your your your team, but I think of the lion share of Americans and the lion share of people in the region and the lion share of people around the world. So, so I really do think your your approach to this has been extremely helpful because uh, you've been pushing on the things that I think the world wants.
Now, my job here is not to simply blow with the wind and as you know, I've pushed back on you pretty hard a number of times here. Uh, and I and I have uh, respect you tremendously though. I just want to just be clear about that. Uh, so there are uh, issues uh, that people who are are are even as smart as you can sometimes get not quite right and that is what you are seeing here. Um, and it's um, uh, it's because a lot of his difference of uh, experience and difference of background and knowledge. I come at this from 20 years of uh, modeling the bombing of Iran. I I've taught for the US Air Force, 35 years studying air campaigns, economic blockades, economic sanctions. Um, I have advised uh, every West Wing from 2001 to 2024. Advised chiefs of staff of the Air Force, helping to end the Bosnian civil war. So these are the experiences I bring to bear. And um, what I've done is I've put this now on the these these frameworks on the substack, the escalation trap, and we have gone through stage one, stage two. We've been knocking on the we're now knocking on the door of stage three. We've tried everything possible to avoid getting to stage three. I'm glad to unpack this for your audience again because I think they might really value hearing this framework again and especially filling in the but every month here, the framework of the escalation trap has been dead on uh, here and I published a post this morning uh, about this and I lay it out so people can really track uh, this. There's just nothing that's been more accurate than the escalation trap and it's the framework here, it's the framework that is uh, really at issue and we are stuck in a wicked escalation trap and it is it is escalating and it's likely to get much worse. We're not just heading back to uh, March. This this is likely to be much worse.
Well, a senior Gulf source told Axio that the US hasn't discussed the issue of tolls of possible tolls for securing the trade of homes with its allies in the region. So this seems to have caught, like the war did, allies in the region by surprise if you want to believe the Axious report.
Um, I would I would I'd be surprised if President Trump cared what the he hasn't thought what the allies thought mattered up until now. Why exactly? I mean, what President Trump thinks is the allies are essentially children and he tells them what to do and they should obey and then he gets upset when they don't obey. Um, and I think that this has just been his general demeanor toward allies. And I don't think he's exactly picking on uh, the anybody in the Gulf. I think this is just how he he treats him. Uh, but he doesn't treat people with power the same way. He treats she with respect, uh, Putin with respect, more and more Zelensky with respect because Zelensky's gotten more powerful uh, here over time. And so I think that he he really is your your your individual that is respecting power uh, more than anything else.
So let's unpack on what how this could evolve. Um, let's look at the the the u, you know, the positive path, the more optimistic path. Is it possible that this is a pressure campaign for Iran to withdraw their efforts to charge a fee? And is it possible that Iran walk back their plans to charge a fee to avoid war or avoid conflict again? And there's some other deal that happens.
Yeah, the problem. Yeah, that that's those scenarios like a chess game, Mario, are going to become uh, overwhelmed now by the politics of nationalism that is going to get that's already unleashed in Iran and that will possibly become unleashed in the United States. So we have uh, we really need to see that the um, uh, when I study strategy and this has been true for 35 years. This isn't even though there's a lot of chess involved and I did play chess. Uh, there's a lot of that involved. It's not simply military pieces moving like on a chess board. There's politics and a lot of what my frameworks are about is how military action impacts politics on both the target country side and on the attacker side. And that gives a fuller appreciation of the trajectories that are coming. That's what makes my brand of realism different than some other realists. Now, I respect all the real. I'm basically a realist, but I include more um, uh, power of domestic politics in my analysis and have since my book bombing to win in the 1990s. So this is not a Johnny come lately to the power of uh, domestic politics, but I include it as part of how does that affect the trajectories of wars? What does that mean for the trajectories of wars? And so what you're seeing here is yes, we can talk about some chess kind of scenarios. But the real thing that I put out this morning on this morning's post of the escalation trap is I'm explaining how um, there are now multiple pathways of escalation. The two pathways and they're unfolding because of issues of nationalism being engaged. If you recall, just um, a week ago, we were talking deeply about what to expect with uh, Iranian nationalism as a result of all the leaders that America and Israel have killed and the nearly 4,000 Iranians that have been killed. And what's and I was we've laid we laid this out for 20 minutes. Um, and we went into detail comparing it to Iran will start to react like America did after 9/11. There'll be this ground swell of um, uh, calling for revenge. And what have we seen in the last week since you and I spoke? Exactly that in droves in Iran. And then also the Supreme Leader statement uh, here, which is just um, uh, as aggressive a call for revenge as any statement by a terrorist leader like Baghdadi made when he called for the death of Americans all around the world. And that led to inspired attacks. Remember, I've studied suicide terrorism for 25 years. We haven't talked much about that until this point. Not because I don't want to talk about these issues I've studied for a long time, Mario, but because the timing hasn't been right. Well, now the timing is going to get right. And you're going to hear me talk a lot more about that issue in the coming weeks and months, not just days. And so, what you were what you were seeing is nationalism is coming to the four. The Supreme Leader is validating that nationalism and stimulating it at the same time. That is going to encourage inspired attacks against Americans anywhere in the world. Think if you're uh, business execs here meeting in some uh, buildings somewhere in the world here. Um, uh, this this is going to be uh, business execs, it could be commercial airliners, it could be um, it could be uh, ships, it could be just about anywhere as we saw with ISIS. So it's not just command directed attacks we have to worry about from uh, from Iran. There may be some of that too. That's why the White House I think is hardening the the door of the White House itself literally last week. Um, but I think there's the inspired attacks which are often the lion share of attacks that have been coming in the last 20 years. These are the attacks that are much more difficult to prevent to see coming. I've worked with the FBI for years on these. I I know a lot about how we try to do this. This is but this is in we we're we have touched off a stream of events here Mario that as u as that uh, Iranian nationalism grows and it's only going to take one or a handful of attacks against Americans or people they thought they were connected with America or supporters to stimulate US nationalism. And that is then the wicked cycle that we're about to go through. In addition to the power issues we've talked about, in addition to the problems of uh, the zero sum game of controlling Hormuz um, and as American troops are killed in the battle for Hormuz that's likely in front of us this week and next week uh, here that's not going to push Americans back. You're going to get a lot of Americans here um, who are going to support the war even more. And it's going to be because if not, then they're basically dishonoring the deaths of those uh, folks in uniform, the Americans who died. And so what you're going to see is nationalism is going to start to produce spirals. This is uh, this is how wars get even worse. You you want to know how do you get long wars of attrition? How do you get a four and a half year war in Ukraine? Uh, Putin didn't start out going for a four and a half year war. Okay, this is nationalist spirals that are occurring and this is going to become more and more difficult for the the leaders to stop. So up until now we've talked about could Trump stop this, could he stop that? I've been saying um, that Trump started to lose control of this war on February 28th when the first bomb killed the supreme leader. That's when he started to lose control. And I've posted that those analyses on the escalation trap Substack way back when. This is not just, you know, post hoc analysis. And so what you are seeing is President Trump has tried to regain control. He hasn't been able to regain control. He's still heading to becoming Herbert Hoover uh, here. And we can talk about the reasons why he's not able to um, get out of the trap. Uh, that's what I posted on this morning. But if you look at this where this is heading, this is heading into something much, much more wicked. And I think we need to start thinking of this going through the at least the early part of 2027, not just the end of the summer.
Well, let let me ask you that question then. Um, actually before that question, the nationalism point is interesting because um, I'm sure you've seen the statement from Mushtabak three days ago calling for revenge, calling people of the quote in detail from it because it's been hard to get the full statement out. So in my morning escalation trap Substack post, I have big quotes from what's been uh, available and confirmed in the media. So yes, I I'm very familiar with that statement and I compare it directly to the Salman Rushdie statement that the previous uh, leader issued, you know, issued uh, in the n early 90s. So you can really see the comparison and and so but ask your question Mario and then we'll go from there.
No, that kind of it's less of a question. It highlights your point that there is that sense of avenging the death of the of Ali Khamenei and all the other officials in Iran and that worries me and it's a call to it's not only a call for Iranians as you're talking is it could inspire people whether Shiite Muslims or people that are against American imperialism to act on this uh, on this statement to act on these uh, on these emotions that those people have. So that is a concern that even Trump has Trump talked again today about him um, let me get it here that he made a statement again today actually no so he made a statement yesterday about him being a on the list on the top 10 list of people being targeted by the Iranian.
This morning on Fox News talk about 5% he said yes I watched it this morning.
Oh, yeah, 5% of presidents are killed and 8.5% are shot. Being the president is dangerous. I knew there was something this morning and on top of it um, the deputy chair of the Iran Supreme National Council, Ali Bagheri, the deputy of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council said, "We must deal with the commanders and perpetrators and accomplices who had h who had a hand in the assassination of our dear leader and in targeting our compatriots." So he's calling for revenge as well, similar to what the supreme leader said, and that is pretty concerning. The most the most recent the the parallel we have that's the closest for Iran is the Salman Rushdie and what happened there is um, then the supreme leader had more religious authority than the current supreme leader does and issued an actual fatwa, which is a religious edict. This supreme leader apparently doesn't have enough religious authority, at least not yet, to issue uh, something like that. So he has not issued any fatwas in the seven statements that he has made um, since the war uh, since he took over. So the u, but the Salman Rushdie point is not just with the wording of the Salman Rushdie fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie and then everybody involved in the publication of his book, but the fact that that did inspire attacks over decades, over decades, Mario. So this is not a situation where people think, oh, with terror and I know I've been studying terrorism for 25 years. Um, I compiled the first complete database of all suicide attacks in terms of predictions. It was my work that predicted if we invaded Iraq, we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. I presented that to Paul Wolfowitz before we attacked. They are the ones they still attacked in Iraq, but it was actually um, the um, the Bush administration, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz Defense Department that started my center, which was originally called the Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism because my prediction was better than anybody else's and that's how they started it. That's how that's why that center actually started. So, but what you're seeing with the Salman Rushdie is that this this is a this these inspired attacks are not necessarily over in just a week or two and then we're good. When we uh, bombed Gaddafi in April 1986, um, it wasn't it took two and a half years before Gaddafi got his revenge with the downing of Pan Am Flight 103, killing 200 Americans and about 80 other civilians uh, in that revenge attack for trying to kill him uh, here. So this the the the what we're touching off here, Mario, is not a tempest in a teapot. It'll just go over. The Iranians and all their supporters and their I don't just mean in Iran. I mean around the world, the diasporas anywhere. This is not just going to calm down. We're touching off a hornet's nest here. And this hornet's nest is not going to calm down because of a President Trump tweet that, oh, we're now having some negotiations here. This says no, this might this might bamboozle the oil markets as you've done a great job of covering. This is not stopping the war. Not real. It's bamboozling oil markets here. Um, and the problem is the oil markets don't they're lagging indicators. They're not leading anything.
Yeah. Yeah. So, Salman Rushdie is the journalist where the former Supreme Leader gave a fatwa for revenge after he wrote a book, I think, criticizing Islam or talking about Islam in a very negative light.
Versus Yeah. And he got he got stabbed, I think, didn't he? And he's got an injury in the eye.
He he did. But his publicist, if you'll go through the records, people will Google, they'll see there's death here. There's other wounds. There's multiple attacks. And it goes on over decades. Definitely.
So you're saying the same the same could happen with Trump. So this is not the threat against his life would continue for many years after his presence.
And his family and his grandkids uh, here um, everybody uh, and it is not just um, it's JD Vance. It's his it's not again, this is this is going to be much worse than Salman Rushdie and it is because of the um, the wound that Iran feels here as a result of and it's not just killing the supreme leader, it is the supreme leader, it is his life. It is multiple of the family members. That's like killing the president of the United States, the first lady, multiple members of the first family. But then there's a large number of other leaders who were killed by the United States and Israel. The uh, top of this would be like the tops of the Pentagon, the tops of the CIA, many members of the cabinet, members of Congress. This has been this and then we have nearly 4,000 who have been of Iranians who have been killed in the six uh, uh, week bombing campaign and then we have all the damage, remember all the punishment with the US blockade and and this is going to uh, cause all of Iranian society to feel the pain. Well, that was true. This was not not true. Okay, the pain was real. The problem is none of that punishment here uh, either of the regime or of the population was likely to produce anything other than massive nationalist revenge. I've been studying that for 35 years, Mario. It's important for people to know this is not something generals know much about. This is not something um, Congress people know much about. I know I have them in my classes, Mario. And you're not and and they're they're stunned when they go through the cases and the history and to really see the details of what happened in past wars. It's because they know um, you know, they're they're very busy. It's not that they're not smart, Mario. There's dumb people mistakes and there's smart people mistakes. The problem here is many many smart people just don't know enough about the real um, patterns of what happens when you punish societies and governments. And what happens is unless you follow up with ground operations, other aspects, I don't say you can't topple a government, you can't crush a society, but unless you follow up with ground, you have very little chance of it working your way. Even when you kill and hurt large numbers of people, what it does is it produces the backlash. That's where we are today. And now we have to live with that for quite some time and it's likely to get worse.
Why can't Trump just walk away as many of us have been advocating for so long and why can't Iran just concede on a toll for the straight of Hormuz which seems to be Trump's main sticking point.
Yeah. So let me talk about Trump first. So that's what my post is called. So why is Trump escalating when everybody said he couldn't because of the midterms. So that's what almost everybody has said except, you know, this lone professor here. Um, and um, what you're seeing is it's working out this way and and why is that? Issue number one, Mario, is uh, the Herbert Hoover problem. So people keep saying uh, as recently as last week, well, Trump can't escalate. He'll become Herbert Hoover. They're not following what's happening in the oil markets. What's happen and you've been following this so you know what's happened. And Herbert, just for the audience, Herbert Hoover was the former president that was was the president of the United States when the US went into depression. And Trump made a statement he does not and the world. Exactly. And Trump made a statement a few days ago that he does not want to be.
Go ahead.
Herbert Hoover, the president remembered is causing the great depression. And he s he said that on the day he signed the MOU, just to be clear. Uh, and then JD Vance and and what he said was we have four weeks of oil left and then the world is about to go into a catastrophe, a big crisis economically and he didn't want to be Herbert Hoover. And then JD Vance also amplified that in in big interviews where he said Trump told us go for the NO to fill in the oil inventory coffers that were running down and your shows for gosh, I don't know how many times you have you know covered this over the last few weeks in detail. You're trying to get to the bottom of all the details here. Well, the fundamentals as you know are that since the MOU, those oil inventories are still going down. Uh, they're going down at a dramatic rate. Yep. We've gotten a few more week, maybe two weeks of cushion here because we got a spurt of oil out into the market, but it's going to be gone in just a few weeks. So maybe it's not August 1st now, maybe it's August 15th or 7th, something like that. So we know these problems are coming. So what President Trump sees, this is just issue number one. What President Trump sees, issue number one, is economically he is on the Titanic heading to the Herbert Hoover iceberg. It is not diverted. He's still hitting that Herbert Hoover iceberg. Um, and so in terms of then the uh, uh, the the the uh, the second big issue is the midterms. So if you look at the polls for MAGA, I don't mean the polls of the United States and Americans, I mean MAGA, uh, you will see that large numbers of MAGA, 50% want there to be uh, support the war. And um, when given choices here um, they would support Trump escalating the war um, rather than go against Trump. Now, there's about 20% or 25% of MAGA that's kind of in the uh, let's call it the uh, Tucker Carlson wing of MAGA that would go against Trump. Okay. Uh, now why does that matter? Because Trump has MAGA because he's a winner. He doesn't have MAGA because he's a billionaire. Remember, he's he's there's a lot of reasons why MAGA shouldn't like Trump. And Trump has said, "Don't support. Don't if you don't like me, vote anyway for me because I'm the winner. I'm a winner." Well, when he owns the L on his chest as a loser, you know, he's not Superman with an S. He is now, and this is what uh, is being tattooed on him by the Iranians. And and they're not letting him off the hook. No face-saving way out of this. What this is doing is making him the loser for his own base. And he needs that base not just to say they support him in an opinion survey. He needs that base to turn out in droves in the midterms. So his real problem here is that as he signed that um, he can't really own the loss. That's why he's trying to wiggle out of the MOU every way possible. And the MOU itself didn't end the oil problem that he faces. So these are the two political reasons why what his goal now seems to me uh, to be Mario, is to reverse the defeat. What he's doing is not trying to do offramps. What he, what you are seeing in the behavior of our military, I'm glad to go through this in in some detail here about our repositioning in the last couple weeks here. But what you're seeing with the repositioning of the military in the region itself, the pattern of the bombing, this is not just trivial p, this is not just random bombing. It's not just theater. This is actually very coherent from a bombing strategist perspective here. This is uh, uh, and what you are what you are seeing is that um, President Trump has been lining up the military uh, pretty much ever since he got that briefing. You recall Mario a few weeks ago he got a briefing on a Thursday where he uh, uh, got the plans to retake Hormuz and then he put out, well, no, he's going to still do the MOU through August. I never believed for a second that he was going to ride the MOU at all. What does he ride for any, you know? So he uh, but what I think he's done is he's been implementing those plans since he got that briefing. Not as he's sure to want to escalate, but preparing for that escalation to what I call stage three of the ground operations to take more moves if you need to go that far. And that's what the pattern of the behavior has been in the last two weeks. So since um, uh, for the last two weeks, I think that it's really not the case that we have been fuddling all around and nobody knows what's going on. I think it's been fairly straightforward. We have been moving ever closer to stage three of the escalation trap that is uh, with uh, Trump's own preferences as I just explained the behavior of our military, the organization of the of the repositioning in the Gulf and also the pattern of the bombing which is focused very heavily on the coastal suppression targets you would want to uh, uh, suppress and also by the way, you would want to then attack into Iran itself to basically hit any warehouse, any building you think has any chance of having a missile or a drone anywhere in the country. And so this is because what you're going to do is try to suppress as much as you can Iran's military capability in general um, as you try to rest control physically of Hormuz. And this is going to lead to a six-month war. This or a very long war. And I don't think we're necessarily coming out of this smelling looking good. I think this could be setting us up for an even bigger defeat. But nonetheless, this is these are the reasons why we're doing it. I'm not an not advocating we do this, but my job is to be is to assess and the escalation trap. We are in a trap and these are the reasons for the trap. And it's because Trump is bouncing between does he want to become Herbert Hoover or does he want to take a a risk that he'll he'll be able to come out of this even if it's a tiny risk. He's facing certain Herbert Hoover versus a tiny risk of not. He's going for the tiny risk of not in terms of the military targets being struck. So all of it has been on the southern coast of Iran. There's two ways to interpret this. I want to see how you interpret it. One of them is the way I've been interpreting it is that this is degrading Iran's capabilities of controlling the straight of Hormuz and this all back and forth, you know, the US attacking, Iran attacking ships is all about clause five from the MOU for the straight of Hormuz. The other way of interpreting it, and some of my guests have mentioned that possibility, is that what the US is doing is there's a planned ground operation, something you've talked about in our early days of of having these conversations and this is degrading Iran's capabilities of preventing us capturing the island.
Call up call up um a map here so we can put it on. You've been able to do this on some of your other shows where we at least have the Gulf of Oman here marked and you could even have the blockade line here because remember the US blockade is now back in place. So it's going to be at that line here uh, which is uh, of the Gulf of Oman. And then that will also show Jas, if you could get the map that has the city Jask on on the southern coast of of Iran and also Qeshm. Uh, here so we could actually talk about some of these ground objectives here. Um, I think this would be helpful, Mario, because that's what I'm going to do this tonight on my live briefing of the uh, escalation trap Substack. I'm going to actually walk through maps. So I use maps all the time, Mario. Uh, yeah, this is this is great and it doesn't have um, Jask here, but I think we'll be able to do uh, this will work fine. So what we have been doing, Mario, is we are about to reinstitute the blockade line which is from the end of Oman directly connected to the southern coast of Iran near Pakistan. Uh, here, not quite Pakistan, probably a little bit over. And what we have been bombing very, very heavily are all of the um, IRGC um, installations, command and control uh, uh, control centers, um, uh, anti-shipping from essentially Qeshm Island, the territory just north of Qeshm Island all the way to almost the Pakistani um, um, uh, border. And um, if you uh, if you see um, where there's um, that where it says the Gulf of Oman and if you just draw your eye from the Gulf of Oman to that little itty bitty peninsula that jets out there, you're getting close to a town that is called Jask. And uh, so what you are the reason those matter is these are going to become the territorial objectives if we decide to use ground forces here to control Hormuz. Now, this will not be the first stage, uh, Mario, or the first substage. We're moving to what I call stage three, knocking on the door of these ground operations, but we still don't want to really do them if we can avoid it. So, what you're going to see is you're going to see that President Trump, and this is what they've been doing for weeks. It's kind of like this idea of Project Freedom they had with the uh, Oh, yeah, there you go. Oh, that's even better. Oh, that's even better. So, now your audience can really see what's going to be coming here. So for the for the uh, for the initial period of time um, here, what you'll probably see, what we've done is we've moved our aircraft carriers into the Gulf of Oman. We've moved our naval forces into the Gulf of Oman so that as we uh, spin up these operations, we can do more and more and more bombing and other operations here with our forces. And this is not risk-free. So you might say, well, who cares? We already had our naval forces there. This repositioning is especially if Russia starts to provide satellite uh, information here to uh, to Iran. Um, so you can start to see this is going to become an issue uh, here. Those aircraft carriers are going to start to become very, very vulnerable to all kinds of different missile attacks, even ballistic missile attack. So, so this issue here of moving the forces in the naval forces in, we've done that over the last few weeks. Apparently, we also moved our Marine Expeditionary Unit from the Indian Ocean into the Gulf of Oman to get ready for this. So, we're getting closer and closer. Now, as we've repositioned our forces uh, here, what we're trying to do is carve out the southern corridor you've been covering so well on your show, which is near um, the UAE and Omani coast as the southern corridor. But Iran is reacting to that and they're trying to fight back and that's where a lot of the battles have been in the last few weeks. It's been over that southern corridor. Well, we're going to try to uh, see if we can just uh, win these the battle of the southern corridor, but it's going to be hard because as this jennies up, Iran's going to jenny up too. And as we all know, it doesn't take a lot to string uh, to attack these uh, tankers, and they're floating bombs with all this flammable material on them. Okay? So, you're going to get it's going to be hard unless these uh, tankers are really safe to get too many of them to want to get out through the Gulf. And then how many are going to want to go back if you even get them out? So, this is going to be issue number one. They will try, I think, for uh, maybe even a couple weeks to see can they pull this off without getting deeper control of the territory. Now, if they need deeper territorial control, that's when they're likely to start at Jask. And um, they may uh, look at Qara as well, but much, much more likely here uh, is going to be this area of control. This is what the center, it would be called the center of gravity in military speak. This is what we're talking about here is the center of gravity. And so uh, CENTCOM is likely um, uh, saying that what they will do is they'll start to take um, these ground objectives they will be called uh, and Jask will be a place that will be an obvious place to begin and then you would just um, uh, start to uh, control them um, uh, control more and and you're probably going to want to control Jask, you're probably going to want to eventually control Qeshm Island. But the reason you would start at Jask is because you want to uh, get a symbolic ground victory right away that Iran would have a very difficult time countering, at least in the first week or so. Um, and so you want to pick an objective here where you can have a mission accomplished day, where you can have a a victory day. And it won't, you might you might say, "Well, but Jask is not really solving all the problems here." Well, that's exactly right. You don't solve all the problems at once in this. What you would do is you would start with Jask uh, very likely uh, because you want a victory that your your folks you can you know advertise on Fox News and so forth. Um, and then um, you want to force the Iranians to have to expose themselves to knock you out of Jask and that then allows you to attack them when they come to move to try to knock you out. Um, and then um, and that battle will will likely go on for some time because it won't be a setpiece battle here, Mario. This will go on for a long period of time with different kinds of light infantry resistance. That's what guerrilla fighters are, or we call them insurgents. They're light infantry in various ways uh, here. And so what you will what you will see is this will unfold uh, here um, and likely the Iranians will have enough wherewithal um, to be able to block that third uh, route through Hormuz and they will eventually have enough wherewithal if we start to take these territorial objectives to inflict casualties on us. And so that will force us to start from limited ground or limited campaign uh, to take back parts of the straits of Hormuz or these narrow territorial objectives and water objectives to expansion to expansion to expansion. And this is what I said on February 25th in detail more detail on the escalation trap Substack when I said we would go for we would have a ground power dilemma. We would start to move toward a limited ground offensive and this wouldn't stay limited. They would expand over time and unfortunately that's what you're really where we're really heading. We haven't done it yet. I would still advise President Trump not to do this for all the reasons everybody's going to say, but the bottom line is how are they, how are the Democrats, Mario, are they are the Democrats going to give President Trump power? What are they gonna give President Trump to not do this? Because he wants domestic political power. And I don't think the Democrats are going to give Trump power. They're going to want power from Trump, not the other way around. So Trump is really here caught in the escalation trap for domestic political reasons. And he's willing to take the risk of assassination. Think about that. The risk of assassination to go forward. So what exactly is going to be the thing that is going to stop this at this point? This is really very, very difficult.
I think the he's not taking the risk of assassination. He's he's taken that already. If anything, he may perceive a war as a way to weaken Iran and diminish the risk of assassination.
That's I don't think that's what I heard this morning here. He knows going forward um, that the he he he he undoubtedly saw this the leaders, the Iranian leader statement that anywhere in the world he could be uh, and and this could be coming from any direction as well.
Yeah.
Uh, so I I don't think that this is somebody who thinks this is how he's maximizing his chance of personal survival. Now look, we don't really know, okay? So I don't want to try to put C on the couch here. I'm not one of the people that's typically done that. But what I what I see when I hear President Trump um, and keep in mind I've also spent five years studying American political violence. I've been to Trump rallies. I went to his return to Butler. I was there all weekend. I spent 12 hours in the crowd. So I I'm I'm somebody who I get I got I when I do research uh, here it's it's feel.
Go deep, professor. You go deep.
And I have a new book coming out called Our Own Worst Enemies uh, here which is on Amazon. Go give me some pre-orders. But the uh, but you but I know uh, so I I've watched hundreds of Trump's uh, speeches here. I DVR them um, here. And I don't think that I'm seeing somebody um, uh, who thinks he's maximizing his odds of survival here. I think the other way around. And I think that what you're seeing here is that he is fighting for his legacy. He wants his legacy. And this is true. Joe Biden wanted his legacy. People don't like it when I draw parallels to the leaders they like. Um, but you know, other leaders uh, um, uh, Bush, the Bushes wanted their legacy. That leaders want legacy, not just to extend their life or make money. Um, and that's um, um, uh, and that's a big thing and in fact, uh, I think presidents once they win their second term, it becomes almost all about legacy. Um.
So you've answered in depth on why Trump cannot walk away or he's unlikely to walk away from this. What about Iran? Why don't they concede the fear the straight of Hormuz if they get enough concessions from the US?
Yeah. So the the time to do this was was April 8 to 13. Um, because there was a possibility at that point before the blockade. Uh, you might have and and the points of the MOU were almost the same points, by the way, uh, and the 10-point plan that that Trump momentarily there. Oh, thank you very much, Mario. Um, and and we're about to get into a wicked election over this. This will make our election even more dangerous, not less dangerous. We're not unifying as a country over this. So, but back to your question. So, but now what you've seen is nationalism, Mario, takes time to percolate. This is something I've learned by studying how the nationalist fires in response to bombing campaigns, military occupations, they take months. It's not that, oh, you have a bombing campaign, the wound happens and it's the next day the bombing starts and the wound heals. The wounds don't heal, Mario. They get deeper. You see this with October 7th with the Israeli population. Still, what, 75% of the Israeli population want to go in and cleanse uh, you know, they don't mind if you kill almost every Palestinian in Gaza. I mean, think about this. And this is what, two and a half, three, almost three years later. What you're uh, what you're seeing is the more time goes on, these wounds for years get worse and they fester and they get worse. Now, maybe over 10 years or 20 now down, but they don't calm down in the near in the next term. And I don't just mean the next day, I mean over months. That's what you saw with the Supreme Leader's um, funeral. It was basically my expectation come into real being and that is um, with um, you know, how many people were there, Mario? You know better than me, what, 10, 15 million marched here.
Depending on the source, but it was a lot. It was.
Yeah, you covered this with all your great experts here and you've done a great job of this. And so and all the red flags which are red for blood revenge that are there. And then there's people around the world that are supporting this. And you had a hundred leader leaders from countries apparently come uh, here um, and so what you are what you are seeing is this nationalism I'm talking about percolate and this is why the Supreme Leader, what's he going to say? Is he going to shut down his own people here? This is a pretty difficult thing and I think this is why the uh, so-called doves here are not very, they never were very dovish and I think they're becoming less dovish because they're going to get killed by their own people. And I don't mean by the IRGC, I just mean walking outside their house or their apartment. Th this is not a situation where the public has calmed down and they're being manipulated uh, here. It's the other way around. And so I just don't think you're going to get Iran uh, to back down. Um, and this is what happened in the Iran-Iraq war with the, you know, Saddam Hussein attacked Iran and went for a quick and decisive victory in um, uh, 1980 and then failed and Iran didn't let him off the hook. Iran went forward and it was eight years later that they finally stopped. How bad could Mario nationalism is what we've unleashed. That's why that's what the root of suicide terrorism is, Mario. That's what my book shows in great detail with lots of robust evidence uh, here um, in all kinds of ways. That's why the US government took it so seriously.
uh for many many years and still does. Nationalism is what we're unleashing here. That's the Hornets's nest and it is not going to calm down because we decide we're tired of the war and we want to watch our NFL football games.
>> What a stupid freaking war.
>> Absolutely, Mario. And this started when we bombed Fordo. So, just want to keep in mind, so I publish until the uh February 25th on the escalation trap. I've been um uh modeling this for 20 years where every single year we start with the bombing of Fordo. This is where we end up. It is not like and and notice it was eight months. People think oh well escalation you haven't had a straight line here and therefore nobody no these are this this is much more there's more power going on here than that. And so I said once we bomb in my modeling to my strategy class for decades I would say once we bomb Ford we would do in a year or two before we would do regime change bombing. It would be the bombing of Bordeaux and the fear that caused about the dispersal of nuclear material that would lead us to do regime change bombing. Yes, Netanyahu and the Israelis would keep telling us to do it, but it would be the bombing of Foraux that would create the fear that would lead us to actually pick them take them up on it. And that's what appears to have happened last January and February as that material started to disperse out.
>> How bad could this get? And I've always used the example, two examples I always mention to my guests. One of them is no one expected the Ukraine war to last whatever number of years with hundreds of thousands of dead >> and ongoing. And number two is and the other example I use is World War I was never meant to be a world war. It was meant to be the third Balkan war or something like that. Third Balkan conflict and yet it became the war it was. So how bad could this get if it gets out of control?
So, so there are the way to think about this, Mario, is there's stages of the escalation trap. And what I've been doing is I've been giving you the next stage to look out over next three or four months. And the reason this has been uh so accurate is because I haven't just said, well, what happens five years from now or 20 years from now, you know, throwing mud at the wall and so forth. I've been following what you can expect. What I think between now and uh say January or uh early 2027 is you're going to see I think um a rather substantial uh 70% likely you will get not just uh some of these limited ground operations but a substantial um uh escalations that are happening in the Persian Gulf. But there may be good periods of time with when we invaded Iraq in 2003 after 6 weeks President Bush declared mission accomplished. we're all done here. And then 6 months later is when the suicide terrorism really took in and that's when you got the major major violence. So here very similar. So as you move forward, people are going to say, "Oh, see it wasn't so bad. Uh all those people saying that we couldn't do X or Y." No, it's it's going to get worse over time is what to expect with uh with this with this conflict here. And I think you could end up with a situation by uh by January where uh certainly hundreds but possibly thousands of dead Americans uh here coming out of this and that would be catch.
Oh, what do you mean it could possibly be that bad? We'd never let it get that bad. Well, we're not trying to kill Americans. But this is going to be very difficult to stop. Now um the world economic problems then are going to start to seem you know we'll see once there's actual dead u you know soldiers troops this is going to start to become the story the economic problems then are going to also mount as well. So I'm expecting here and uh we'll be studying this of course and you'll be covering it like you know every hour um about what's happening but this could actually become quite quite bad. So, I've been really worried a lot about the August shock. I published a paper on the escalation trap um a couple weeks ago about the August shock. Well, that I think is also coming >> when the strategic petroleum reserves run out >> and the war heats up. You see, so again, people keep thinking it's only compartmentalized uh here. Um strategy, you've got to look at the different pieces together.
Uh, now terms of World War II, I'm getting lots and lots of people emailing me, are we about to head to World War II? I don't >> I get asked that a lot as well. >> Yeah. What World War II would look like, Mario, is um when China or Russia sent troops into Iran either to defeat Iran or defeat America. That's what World War II would be. So that's what happened in World War I, World War II. Let's just be clear. It wasn't just these actors were somehow involved somehow. What makes World War I and World War II, World War I and World War II is the great powers clash directly, kill each other's armies, troops directly. And I think that we're not likely to have that happen between now and January. And hope to God it will never happen. But the way you would know it is because there would be uh hundreds of Chinese troops and hundreds of Russia or or andor hundreds of Russian troops um in Bandraas in Jas uh not just in Basher and I don't think that's in that's on the horizon. I just spent a whole hour with Kurt Campbell on my professor pap substack live. I do global briefings. I've been inspired by you to, you know, do some of these and I just spent a whole hour with Kurt Campbell, who's one of the top, probably the top person to talk to on this issue, by the way, knows more about China, sat across from she more than anybody else here in the US government, uh, who's alive. Um, and, um, I think that he he thinks there's no chance that the, uh, the Chinese are going to get militarily involved either side here. That's what we're talking about with World War II. So, World War II, people can kind of throw these terms around. That's not my job. My job is to explain what does that actually mean? What does it mean to have World War III? It means the countries are d the militaries of the great powers, that would be the United States, that would be China, and that would be Russia, um are going to be directly involved in this conflict. And um I think that this is um uh not we're we're nowhere near that yet. Although I I wouldn't say you could rule this out uh beyond once we get beyond the next four to four to six months.
So for me, I'm looking out now four to six months. I think we can say some things with more confidence, but I don't think we can then say, well, what is spring 2027 going to look like? I think it's enough to say look keep now we have to start talking about January. So keep in mind Mario when you and I have been talking it's been hard to talk about things beyond August you know because everybody kept saying oh no it's never going to escalate uh here and even if somehow magically everything stopped at this point do we really think this war is anywhere near being over? I don't think so. We're slowly learning this is becoming a long war. And it's a horrible war and it never should have started and we never should have bombed Fordo. It never never didn't help Israel. Didn't help America. Didn't help certainly anybody in Iran or the world. That was the ma fantastically bad mistake. And it doesn't matter how many posts President Trump puts on truth social about what a great victory it was.
And one last question, professor, is the Gulf. Do you think Iran would continue to retaliate horizontally and drag the Gulf into this? We've seen that happen yesterday and the day before and every day since the ceasefire.
>> I think there's um a very good chance this will happen, Mario, through spirals. I think what you could easily see, and this would be like a chess game. Remember I said don't do it, but let me do it here. where what happens as we um get ready for any limited ground seizure, we start to attack the infrastructure of Iran, the energy infrastructure. And we would do that, Mario, uh not exactly for punishment purposes. We try to weaken the Iranian army and the IRC, the IRGC. And your listeners are going to start to learn, there's actually two armies in Iran. There's the IRGC and then there's the Iranian army and then you can also throw in the third army which is the Baji. So we're about to learn a lot more details about the million troops Iran has uh in Iran and the different parts of them. Well, how do you weaken all of them here? You would go after the bridges. You'd go after the electric power uh here. You would go after the oil infrastructure. And what you're trying to do is prevent that uh those supplies from getting to the military. You're going to of course hurt lots and lots of civilians in this process without a doubt here. Millions will be hurt by this. And what you'll then have is there will be um enormous pressure by Iran to retaliate. And who are they going to retaliate against? Any of those with with the with the infrastructure. The easy targets to retaliate against are going to be number one the infrastructure of the Gulf countries that have uh US bases. Whether those bases are used or not, there's probably intel coming through those bases. Uh and number two, the Red Sea. The Red Sea. The Red Sea. So, for you know, we we have so many pieces of this, Mario. We we haven't even talked about um uh what could happen here if the Red Sea oil gets cut off. So again, I' I've been explaining that o Iran's oil leverage is going to grow by middle of August. I've been saying this for a long time. And that means even more uh they get more leverage by threatening Red Sea as the bypass to Hormuz. and you start to have this thing expand and what exactly are the reasons why they're not taking what they don't want to hurt Saudis? I mean, what's going on here? No, the as this expands and escalates, it gets worse and worse uh here, which is why I've been arguing forever Trump needs to stop, but he can't stop because of the escalation trap. So, my preference, personal preference would be for Trump to stop, but I can't but I can't let that preference get in the way of my analysis of what's going on.
>> Professor, always a pleasure and uh we'll speak again in a few days and I appreciate the analysis. It's uh
>> well, I can't wait that few days. Let's hope it'll turn the other way and you'll be able to say, "Ah, Professor Faith here."
>> It's a roller coaster. It's a roller coaster. It's insane. It is.
>> And you've been doing amaz You're just amazing. I can't keep up with everything you're doing. It's amazing.
>> Thank you, professor. Pleasure to see you again. Thank you, professor.
>> Okay. Bye-bye.
>> All right, guys. We'll be going live in a few seconds with Pepe Escobar. We'll stop this live and go live again to continue the conversation with Pepe Escobar. Bye.