Daniel Davis: U.S. Miscalculation - War Not Going as Planned

Welcome back. We are joined by Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, a four-times combat veteran and host of the very popular Daniel Davis deep dive YouTube show. And I will leave a link in the description. So, uh, thank you for coming back on. We only spoke a few days ago. You were warning that this war was coming and, uh, well, sadly, you were right as usual.

Um, but as this war now gone on for two days, it's uh, it doesn't seem to go as planned. I mean, all sides have to put on a brave face, I guess, uh, and claim success in any war. But, uh, over the past two days, we have seen a lot of chaos, and it's very hard to suggest that this was, uh, intended. Do you see any strategic miscalculation on the side of the United States, or, or was this such a cost that they were prepared to absorb?

>> It is, it's a major miscalculation, but unfortunately, it was one that was self-evident before it ever started. That all the signs were in place. You mentioned that I, I saw this coming and called it, and it, it frankly wasn't that hard for me because the signs that we were giving were made it really clear that absent an 11th-hour change of mind by Trump, which was always possible. So I always left some, some room for that. But based on the movement of the types of military, uh, equipment and gear, uh, and the statements that were made and where forces were, I, it's, it looked to me like because I've been through this, I've lived it once, well, twice really, uh, as a member of an armed force watching this exact same kind of buildup in the United States. And then, uh, one of the reasons I was so effective in calling the Russian war when it broke out in 2022, because remember, most people thought, "Oh, it's just going to be another buildup. Uh, the Russians aren't really going to do that. They're going to posture." But I said, "No, this one is fundamentally different for the same reason as the other two that I saw."

And then now that this was played out, when you see the types of force that Russia had amassed, it wasn't just demonstration forces. They had everything they need with all the enablers. They had the logistics, they had the medical support, uh, they had lots of things to sustain combat operations, and they were all being parked forward, just like what I went through when I myself was part of that deploying force. And so I said, "No, this is something that is being prepositioned to use." And I wrote that extensively before the case. So, you know, you couldn't come back and just say, "Well, you called it later." But that's why I was so confident in this one for the same reasons. Just when the air, it was the air logistics, it was the refueling capabilities, it was the C17s, the C5 transport, the massive number of them, like 50% of our entire inventory. And then, of course, the large number of of fighter jets, uh, and and the aircraft carrier strike groups and all that. When you look at all that, it's like, no, this is being designed for use. This is not pressure. This is not trying to convince anybody to reach an outcome because they already were. That was kind of the the lynchpin to me that that convinced me Iran already was willing to have a negotiation. And in fact, I think history is going to look back and say, uh, if there was a central moment where the our failure was, uh, crystallized, it's on the night before when the, uh, foreign minister from Oman, I believe it was on a Friday night, came in, said on a US CBS news and said he had gotten, or he had agreed to the, uh, Iranian negotiator to make some profound submissions and and changes and concessions that they wanted in the nuclear agreement. They would, they would not do any reprocessing, zero, which they had said wasn't even on the table before. And then they said the stockpiles they had, they would get rid of that, too. And then they said, at least on the table were the long-range missiles and the proxy forces, which here before had not even been on the table. They said, "We'll do that later, but let's get the nuclear part first." It was a golden opportunity for the Trump administration if that's what they wanted. They had it in their hand. And when he attacked the next morning, then that that, uh, that made it clear, very clear, that none of this was ever about negotiations. It was always about war.

Well, now then we're on a situation to where we have, uh, started something that we can't finish. And I, and I don't remember, maybe it's what you and I talked about last time. My big frustration was this is a war you can't win. You're setting about unattainable military objectives. And when President Trump came out, uh, you know, early in the morning that this, that Saturday on Marlo, he put out all the objectives for this, and I just was cringing because I'm like, unless the, the Iranian side does what the unexpected and just collapses and crumbles, uh, just out of fear and whatever, there's no way you're going to be able to accomplish those if they have a, if their backbone stays stiff. And they, and they already understood ahead of time that this was going to be a very costly for them, but that they had calculated. This was in the New York Times just days before that they have calculated that fighting a war with the US was less risky than submitting to the US. That again was another signal that they had made this decision to go. And now, so far, that's exactly what they had done, and they are paying a price. And there's no doubt that there's been profound destruction of their armed forces, of their senior leaders, of course, their political and military, and definitely their military infrastructure is taking a beating. But is this, I'm pretty sure you and I did talk about this, they have these underground facilities throughout the country, and they have the ability to withstand a lot of this for an extended period of time. But we don't. That's the key issue here. I said that we had to, we had maybe four or five days of high-intensity flight. Maybe we could stretch that out to a couple of weeks, uh, if you're judicious in the use. But then what if the other side doesn't capitulate? You're in real trouble. And now then, that's where it looks like we are. There's reports out just in the last few hours that President Trump is saying, "Hey, maybe we can have a ceasefire." They're they're asking me for it, which is got to be complete BS. There's no way they would ask for it. Not now. Not after their Ayatollah has been assassinated. That's the last thing they're going to do is ceasefire under those conditions. Otherwise, he would have been taken to a secure location. Evidence suggests that he knew he was going to be assassinated. And I think willingly sacrificed his life to be used as a martyr because he didn't go to a protected place. He stayed where everybody knew where his compound was so that when the strike came in, he was killed. That's what it looks like happened intentionally. And now that result looks like it's having a, a situation to where it's not causing the backbone to to quiver, but it's actually consolidating, uh, support behind the regime. And throughout the Shia world, there's lots of protests going on around the world in support of the Iranian side because of the sacrifice of the Ayatollah. So I think it has been a profound, and I mean to say, a miscalculation is bad because that almost implies that you thought maybe it was going to be good, but you know, you, what you based it off of, you thought it was going to work, but it didn't. This was well known ahead of time that unless the other side just quit, and everything in the world said they wouldn't, and you went ahead anyway, that was a profound error. So, yeah, I think it's a major miscalculation.

Well, they didn't seem to predict that, yeah, Iran would attack bases across the region. So, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, obviously Israel, but also, as you said, killing Kam. This is a very strange thing that they thought the government would collapse. Then, you know, this is, in the Shia culture, the martyrdom is so deep. This is, you know, something that would, you know, as you said, get them riled up, but or consolidate. But as you, but also in the Shia region, Shia, uh, communities across the region, you see from Iraq, Pakistan, Bahrain, they were all, you know, taking to the streets in support of of Iran, given this attack and killing of their religious leader. Um, and I saw Trump giving a speech now in which he, you know, argued that the, all Iranian army should put their weapons down and, you know, uh, their civilians should take to the streets. And like, this is, does he really think this is what's going to happen now?

>> It, it's, you know, I, I, I really do. I think that I think that he does think that. I, I think that in his mind, you know how a lot of people often do, projecting. They, whatever your values are and whatever you would do in a circumstances, you just project onto another actor. And I think that's what he did because he's thinking, yeah, if I came in and somebody from the stronger position came in and just started bombing the crap out of me and killing some people, I'd give up. I'd just say, "Yeah, let's roll in." So that's what's going to happen. And then he's like, "That's that's kind of what happened with all those speedboats. I killed all these people and blew it up. Nobody did anything. I stole the the leader from another country in Venezuela. Nothing happened. Uh, and they just rolled over the whole, the whole leadership in Venezuela. All you got to do is just show how tough you are, and then they'll just roll over." And I think that's what he thought was going to happen here, not recognizing the radical and profound differences between Venezuela and and the Shia country of Iran, as you pointed out. So, I think it was a big miscalculation. I, I, I will say that one area where I wasn't, I did not foresee properly, uh, Iran had said that they would attack the bases of all, everywhere America was in the region. We took that seriously and bolstered up a lot of the air defenses. But I did not think that they would from the beginning also attack the civilian sectors of those countries. It appears to me that their message was, "Hey, you guys are, we, we're suffering from us. We have since 2010 from the from Israel, and then starting with the assassination of Solomon by the US in 2019. We just been hit mercilessly, and you guys are protecting them. You guys are putting these bases in there, and they're using that against us. So, it's time for you to feel some pain, too." It, it looks like that's kind of what they said. Kind of like a big FU in a big way. And there's been some really big strikes. I thought that they would not do that in an effort to say, "Hey, don't, don't take action against us. This is just against the US." But it looks like they're saying, "I'm just tired of getting pushed around." Which is another indication. The reason I bring that up is because that shows that they're all in on this. And they're going to say, "Listen, we're even going to hit other regimes in the areas to see if we can put pain on the United States, on Israel, and on their backers in the region. And they're going to start suffering until everybody backs off. And then maybe we will, too. Maybe they'll do some negotiation later. I don't think they're going to do it right now, though."

No, that's what I'm thinking as well. I probably, yeah, they would want an end to this, but I think they want to, uh, inflict some more pain. Otherwise, you know, you were going to have a similar war again in, uh, six months as well during negotiations, probably. But what do you see though, the the wider war strategy of Iran here? Uh, because I, I was also a bit surprised by the civilian targets that is airports, hotels. Uh, the foreign minister said we attacked hotels because they housed American troops. But still, I've seen a lot of other civilian targets which didn't, you know, it, yeah, it fits more within your analysis here that it's more about causing pain. But they jumped straight into the, uh, closing off the Strait of Hormuz. They attack ships. I think four oil, four oil tankers so far, if I'm counting correctly. So, what is the strategy now of Iran? I mean, if, yeah, if you would, >> you know, sit down with the war planners, what do you think they would say?

>> I think that they have calculated we're going to run this for a number of months. That, that's my, that's my guess based on what they're doing. These things aren't short-lived. These things aren't, uh, like, "Well, we're trying to do this and we'll, we'll ratchet up bit by bit to increase the pain, but if you back off at any time, so can we." This sounds like they have said, "No, we're all in, and so we're going to shut down all the stuff. We've been, we've been signaling we were going to do this stuff. You didn't believe us, and I'm sick of it. After 47 years of taking this kind of punishment, from their perspective, I'm done." And so now then new rules are in effect, and you're going to go by what we said. You're going to finally taste some of the pain that we've been taking because I think that they view this as a genuine existential crisis. And I think that they said, "We're going to have to, it looks to me like in their councils, they must have calculated that we're going to suffer real bad for this. There's no doubt about it. But we are going to have a shot at having a positive outcome at the end, which is to drain the United States dry." The whole issue with the Russia-Ukraine war is that it's a war of attrition, and both sides have a lot of inputs, and so it's taken years, and they're still not there. As bad as Ukraine's been hit, they can still keep going. The United States, on the other hand, is not analogous to the Russian side in that one. We don't have that much capacity to just go for years like this. As a matter of fact, uh, you heard General Jack Keane on the morning of the attack say boasting that we could do this for two or three weeks. And he said, "But maybe it'll be done faster because they assassinated, uh, the Ayatollah." And they said, "Well, now then, maybe it won't even take that long." Well, if that's your planning range, what that was, that was to me another major blunder of the United States to admit that we have a narrow window here. So, what you're telling Iran, make sure you spread this out further than three weeks because we're going to have a really hard time of maintaining enough, uh, you know, gasoline for our jets, bullets and bombs for our jets, the missiles, the air defense missiles, the air offense missiles, the attack missiles, all of those kinds of things. We don't have that many to just get into an indefinite expenditure here. We just don't have it. And however many Ukraine or Iran has, they also have limited. It's not like they can go on also for years, but they can go for more than three weeks. I think they have calculated. And when you see these now increasing videos from from Israel, and now then you see what I had feared about and was angry and I'm angry about now about the casualties, the United States, when those start to pile up, and believe me, they're going to do everything they can to accelerate those number of casualties in both places. People at home are going to start saying, "Wait a minute, why did you do this? Where's this quick victory?" And especially if it drains out past three weeks, they're going, "Hang on, you guys said this would be an easy win, or that that it would be something that we could get done." Now then we have it because Trump is now saying, "Hey, maybe within three days we can have a ceasefire and negotiation." But what if now it's the fourth day and the fifth day, and there's still no sign? The bombs and missiles keep falling from Iran's side. Now they start getting into more stuff. When we start running low on air defense missiles as well, now if they start pulling out, you know, wave upon wave of, you know, three, 400 at a wave of these Shahid drones. So that reportedly they have like tens of thousands of them, and they could do that for a long time. We haven't even seen any of those yet. Not at, not at scale. And we have seen some of the smaller number of drones get through American defenses as it is at Bahrain, in particular. There's one famous video that's out there. If you keep going down that path, and now all of a sudden we can't even stop drones because we're running low on air defense capabilities, and we start suffering even more casualties as the time goes on, then there's going to be incredible political pressure on both, uh, Jerusalem and Washington to start looking to something. And now then, now then I think you ask me what their objective was overall. I think from the Iranian side, is it to cause so much pain that now then we come back with, you know, hat in hand and looking for a negotiated settlement that is much worse for us than the one that was on the table the night before all this from the Oman foreign minister. Now then, those deals are gone. They're never going to come back with those kind of generous terms again. Now then they're going to be demanding a lot in return. They're going to be demanding drop in sanctions, uh, you know, change of designations, get rid of this terrorist designation, etc. Uh, I don't know that they'll trust us on anything, but if they, if they get something like that, at least, you know, a change of the of the negotiations and the, the sanctions, that could be a win for them, something that they might consider. Um, but, uh, you know, there's, it's going to take a lot of pain on our side to get to that point because the, the anger and the hatred is so high for them. And now then you have our arrogance has been called into, has been challenged here because for us to admit that we're not strong enough to compel compliance from little Iran, that's going to be a major, major problem for our side and something that they won't do easily and will be fought fiercely among all these warlusters and these warmongers who loved all this and had been pleading with Trump to do it, and he finally gave in. You can imagine they'll continue on. And then, of course, then they'll blame Trump if he agrees to anything like this and say, "Oh, he just didn't have the stamina. He didn't have the the stomach and the courage to keep going. We should have stayed." You know, they'll blame everybody in the world except for themselves and see the disaster that what they got, what they wanted, how much it cost us. But, uh, that's a lot of stuff on the table here, but that's that's kind of where I see this going, which means a lot more people are going to die and a lot more things are going to get blown up.

Were you surprised though that there was no gradual escalation ladder here that, uh, they went out, uh, well, all out so, so quickly? Again, this is has been the end of day two, and, uh, you know, all these countries hit the Strait of Hormuz, the civilian targets. I mean, uh, like you said, they're going all out. Did this take you by surprise?

>> Uh, it, it was 50/50. I, it wasn't, I wasn't shocked. I wasn't fully on board. I didn't think they would, like I said, they, they did go a little bit further than I thought. But it's logical. I, I, it's what I would have done, but based on their 47-year history, I didn't think they would. I thought that they would, uh, go bigger than they did of the 12-day war. I thought they would attack the US bases. Um, and I thought it was a coin flip on the Strait of Hormuz. I thought that might be a negotiating tactic that, all right, we'll ramp this up. But it looks like, like I said, now then it looks to me like based on evidence that in their, our councils of of discussion before this started, that they said, "No, we're all in. If, if the United States and Israel start this war, we're just all in." And so now then I think that they, their calculation is just, "Yeah, there's no more ramping up anything." Now that you've assassinated our, our, and in that same council meeting, it's now my assessment based on evidence that they said, "Hey, 86 years old, he didn't have that much longer to live anyway. And I think he said, "I'm not going into the tunnels. I'm not going to hide. I'm going to put myself right there where I'm always at every day. And when the bombs come, they're going to take me out at that time, use me as a martyr, and then use that to rally people in our country and around other parts of Shia Islam." And it looks like that's succeeding, at least so far. Um, and, and I've, I've seen, I've talked to one, and I've read, uh, that a friend of mine interviewed another Iranian who were just passionately against the Ayatollah and have protested against him in the past and said, "Listen, y'all are putting us in a terrible situation because we, we hated the Ayatollah and and wanted to get rid of that regime. We've been protesting for years in this case, and I've known this guy for well over a decade in my case." Um, and then others have said the same thing that, look, while we don't like him, but you think that we're going to embrace, you know, Israel, our in our biggest enemy in the region, who's been doing all this stuff to us since like the 2010 Stuxnet and on forward, and you know, assassinated people and our people in in in Tehran, uh, blown up our embassies and stuff, and then now attacked us twice. You think that we're going to like embrace what they're doing, and we're going to succeed? No. And they're not going to come tell us that Reza Pahlavi is gonna be become the new leader of Iran. I mean, that, are you serious? That's who we rose up against in 1979. That that family. There's no way they're going to take him back, that he's going to be able to govern any kind of coalition, uh, in Iran. At least that's my opinion. So they, they are angry at at Israel. So they're not going to embrace that. So if our thought was that we'll cause enough mayhem that the and wound the leadership of Iran, then they'll rise up because we've killed a bunch of their people and done stuff, and then that's going to be, yay, good for us. Like Lindsey Graham, he's the biggest proponent of that. Uh, I, I think that they're angry at him too because they're, your assumptions were badly flawed because now then they're in a bad position. They're not going to turn against their own country and embrace, you know, what they've been calling the the little Satan for 47 years, or the great Satan in our case. So, um, I think that no matter what weird words comes out of Trump's mouth like, "Oh, these great and wonderful people of of Iran, you know, we, we look forward to having that," because they said, "Listen, we know that's the same kind of language you guys have been using to everybody. You said that about the people in Libya. You said it about the people in Somalia. You said it about the people in Afghanistan, in Iraq, etc. You always say that kind of stuff, and then you walk away the minute it's unhappy. This is what they're saying. And so, we know how that works out. We've seen this play before. So, we know this is not about us, and you're going to not do anything for us once you get what you want, which is the loss of that regime. So, that's another reason why they're not exactly falling all over themselves to to do what we're asking them to do and to basically become our boots on the ground so that we don't have to send in an army. I think that they're saying, "Yeah, you want an army, bring an army. If you want to roll in and do this stuff, do it. Don't ask us to die in large numbers on the ground because you don't want to send in an army. And by the way, we don't even like you." So that's complicating our strategy too.

>> Yeah, it's, uh, you know, in the United States, there's many people who really hate Trump, who, some even moved away from the country because they don't like him. But even those people would not back, you know, Chinese forces bombing Washington or New York. I mean, it is quite kind of crazy that this assumption that you can just sell this idea that, yeah, well, we're fighting with you guys, the the people. Um, this is a good way of, yeah, weakening the opposition, if anything. Uh, I, I did want to ask you though about the vulnerability of, uh, the aircraft carriers and overall the US Navy, because the Iranians seems to have their missiles seems to go through everywhere in, in, you know, hitting these bases almost in the, all the countries of the region. However, the, the US Navy though, it seems to be, well, I'm not sure if it's been untouched. I haven't seen anything. Have the Iranians attempted or is it simply, you know, beyond the reach?

>> Yeah, I don't know. I saw, I've seen one video that claims to, uh, be from some Chinese tourists or something like that, and, and I don't remember if it was Hifa, Tel Aviv, somewhere where they claimed to show this grainy video of a US ship getting hit. Uh, I don't know if the, you know, there's so many deep fakes out there, you, you can't take anything at face value anymore, even really good-looking videos. So I don't know. I certainly haven't heard any reports on that. I had heard that there were some reports of US casualties killed in action earlier on in the process, like in the early hours, and the Pentagon, I'm sorry, the Central Command, CENTCOM, uh, you know, said no, there hasn't been any. Well, from some direct sources that some of my friends know that they knew there were, but that's what they were saying. And then, of course, today they have confirmed that there were three killed, five seriously wounded, and a number of others less wounded, and, and my sources are saying even that number is not true. It's low. It's higher than that. So we can expect to see that coming out. So, it's possible that there have been some, but then we haven't been reporting it so far. We're afraid of the of the news because unlike, unlike all these where there's, you know, 10,000 cell phone cameras every time there's anything happening in the city, that's not the case out to sea. No one would know unless it's reported. So maybe there has, maybe there hasn't. I don't know. That, that has been one thing that surprised me. I expected to see that. Um, but whether it hasn't happened or whether we just don't know about it yet, I can't really say at this point.

>> Well, how would you assess though the developments going forward in the next days and weeks? Uh, again, this is a war of attrition, then that is, um, it should it be assessed by the ability of each side to, I mean, cause pain to the other, and also the ability to absorb the pain, or is, is this how you should understand actions on both sides, or, or is the United States more looking just for?

>> Yes, some, ultimately, ultimately, it's a, it's a battle of wills. I mean, you can generally say that about every war, but this one even more so because we chose to try this on the cheap. We said, "Let's bring all this naval and air power in, but no boots on the ground because it's like a bugaboo in the United States." And those many people, uh, to include Senator, uh, I think Senator Cotton, but Senator Cruz and Senator Lindsey Graham, they all repeatedly bragged about how there were no boots on the ground. Nobody was talking about that. President Trump said that because they know that that's something that American voters hate. So they thought, well, maybe we can win this on the cheap. And instead of like in 2003, when we had a lot of air and naval power and a credible ground force of hundreds of thousands of troops that when it was necessary rolled in on the ground. And so, you know, if you're talking about President Trump telling the IRGC, the police forces and the besiege and everybody else to put down your arms, well, that doesn't carry any weight if there's nobody there to make you do it. Uh, just bombs falling and, and unless you have an army that can come and compel it, like the Iraqis did when we said the same thing to them. And now here comes the First Armored Division rolling up the street. That's going to have some teeth. But this one here, there is no armored division. There's nobody on the ground whatsoever. So there's no reason for them to capitulate. They just like, "All we have to do is survive the onslaught." And, you know, and they know how many weapons we have, or they have a pretty good idea. They know that we have been bled, you know, deeply. Maybe not dry, but we've bled, been bled deeply by all the support we've given to Israel since October 2023. They know that we've been bled because of the four years of non-stop sending stuff to Ukraine. And it doesn't matter that Trump hasn't given it away. He's sold it. And we've still given, you know, our inventory has gone down and our production has gone out there. So nothing was replaced that was lost during the Biden administration. It's continued to dwindle. And now all of a sudden you need it. And they, they know that look, they piled up all this stuff for years, for decades, because they've always foreseen this being a possibility. We have no idea how many missiles, uh, that they actually have, how many drones that they actually have, because they're underground, and, you know, we can't count those. We can't go in with with satellites, but we can imagine that they have a lot. Senator Ted Cruz today said that his understanding is that this is today that Iran can produce right now, with all of these sanctions and everything else, and all these fires, all these attacks we've made, still 100 missiles per month, per month. So, whatever was lost in the, in the 12-day war has been replaced, and we don't even know how many they had before that. I've heard wildly different assessments, but whatever it is, it's a decent amount, and that's on top of the tens of thousands of drones that they have. So, I think that they have just said it's going to be a test of political will. Our will is going to say we're going to keep this going beyond your two-week window, and, and we're going to start spreading it out for like two or three months after that, when you're going to be hurting. Because if we now don't have very many air defense missiles, and we start getting like the Ukraine side is, where they have an inadequate number of of Patriots and, uh, IRIS-T and all the other kinds of air defense they have, and all of a sudden Russia can come and flood the zone with more missiles than they have interceptors, the stuff is going to get through. Iran could be in that same, weirdly enough, position of Russia, to where we use all of our, you know, the bulk of our interceptors like this rake we have right now anyway. And all of a sudden now then we can't knock that many down. And by the way, there was some pretty dramatic footage. I think we're going to show one of the scenes on our show this afternoon, uh, of an American, reportedly an American, uh, videographer on on one of, I think it was on Bahrain, where they had the camera up there, and they could see an incoming missile, and then you saw a Patriot interceptor fire up to intercept it, and you can see, cuz the angles were just flawless, it missed. The Patriot missed, and the other missile came in and just hit very close to where the guy was on the ground. I mean, that's, that's, that's day one. That was the first day that you're seeing we're already missing. Now imagine if you don't even have enough of those. And so now then instead of the missile comes in, and there is no defender. There's not even one missile going up, and, and you can see that now then you can start putting more and more of these lower-cost drones in the air because you can't knock those down in in quantity either. So I think that the Iranian side is calculating, we're just going to increase the pain on you until you can't survive anymore. Our strategy on the other hand is like, "Oh snap. I thought this was going to be done in a few days, and in a week, maybe two weeks, and then they would capitulate." So, it's, and, and that's still the hope. They're still saying, "We still have, we do have a couple of weeks of really high-intensity strikes that we can have, and there's a lot of pain that we can bring on the Iranian side." So I'm sure that we're going to continue on along with Israel to try and bring as much pain as possible, hoping that they can get them to that point. But if we get beyond that, and the Iranian side is still viable, and our side is now that we're down to our inventories of missiles, offensive and defensive, are now in a smaller condition. It doesn't matter how powerful our navy is, how many fighter jets we have, how many air Patriot missile batteries we have. None of that matters if you don't have the missiles. That's the key issue that too few people recognize. It's about the inventory of your offensive and defensive missiles. That it could be, it could be that Iran has more of them. It's certainly more to use here without us making the rest of, I mean, unless we rape everything out of INDO-PACOM or everything else out of everywhere else in the world and bring them in here, and now then we're literally, you know, empty-handed everywhere else, and that could be a real problem. But there'll be a temptation to do that. This could be a major, major problem for our side if it doesn't end within a couple of weeks.

>> So much for the pivot to Asia. This is, this is opposite of what Trump was going to do. Either raping Asia to to get what we need to fight here.

>> Sorry, just a last very quick question. You, you, you mentioned that the US can well exhaust itself. The, Iranians can, uh, put a lot of pain on the United States. But what do you think is the most vulnerable area though? Because, you know, if I was advising the Iranians, I would, you know, point out, you know, you have many pressure points you can, uh, you push against the United States. You can hit the American assets of the region, that is all the military bases. You can, um, you can hit the Gulf states, even the, you know, the civilian targets to make sure that, yeah, these countries go through a lot of pain. Even oil refineries, whatever you want to go for. You can also go after the global economy, for example, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, or, yeah, shutting down some of the air traffic. You can also focus a lot on Israel, and, you know, as we speak, you have all these missiles raining over Jerusalem. So there's, um, which, which area do you think is, uh, is most likely to break first because, uh?

>> Yeah, this will, this will tell us really where the, the Iranian mindset is right now. My guess is based on what we've seen so far is that they made a statement with with firing in Dubai and and Bahrain and some of these other cities. I think that they're like, "Okay, message sent and received. I think that we've told you that." But now that I think because quantity is, is, is an important thing, I think now they'll turn it to the more higher value targets that they have. And I think that for the United States, I think that pressure point is casualties. I think that they cause it because there's already been a lot of anger in the US, uh, social media space, even at some high levels about the casualties that have started here. So I think that they'll prioritize anything that's going to be high casualty producing on the United States, uh, throughout the region at all of our bases, whether, and maybe they'll start going after the ships. I don't know. Um, and then the same thing in Israel. I think that they'll, they'll go after casualty-producing capabilities. I think they're going after the military first, especially, uh, anything with the intelligence. They'd love to go after those. And I had seen some reports that they did go after some intel, uh, facilities inside of Jerusalem to try and cause some, uh, degradation of their ability to track anything that's going on inside of there. And of course, uh, if they can go after missile launchers on the Israeli side or their aircraft, that would be a high, high-value target. Same with the with the United States air, air force. If they could knock those out, if they could knock out the tankers, that's a big thing, too, because that will limit our ability to even use the fighter jets that we have. Um, but I think that, uh, depending on what we do would be what they do next. If we don't go after the Iranian oil infrastructure and their energy supplies and, and their refineries, etc., and I haven't seen any reports that we've get that yet. Maybe we have, I just didn't see it. But if we start going after that, especially at scale, and we can, it's a fixed target, it wouldn't be that hard, then I think you're going to see Iran also start to pivot. Because there, I think that part of the signal also, I would imagine so. What I would do when I see hit all of these civilian targets, I can say that's bad for you. And like, I think it was Qatar, there was, uh, I think it was Qatar, anyway, or may have been, uh, Dubai, where they hit a, a high, high-profile, uh, hotel in the middle of the city for, for which tourists and other things. They hit an airport. But they're like, you know, "We could also hit something else that's important to you, and that is your oil infrastructure. We can hit your refineries. We can hit your, their transfer stations at the, at the ports, etc. We could cause profound damage that would take a long time to fix, uh, and come at much, much higher costs for the kingdoms themselves." But I don't think they'll do that unless we go after theirs. And so if we try to ramp this up to bring more pain on the Iranian side, then I think you can see an expansion. So you talk about the, the up, the escalation ladder. I think the escalation ladder started on rung four or five, but there are still rungs above it that it can go to. Uh, so there is some room left to escalate, and, and I hope we don't get there. Uh, but those are the things I'm worrying about.