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00:00We clearly don't have a coherent strategy, Danny, and what we're doing is we're in a very important
00:05way moving up the escalation ladder to see if we can find that coherent strategy. Just let's go
00:11back to the start. You remember when we first moved that giant armada into the region, President
00:18Trump thought, according to Steve Whitcoff, that that massive armada would coerce the Iranians
00:28into surrendering. Remember, Whitcoff said that-
00:31Repitulation is the word he used, yeah.
00:33Yeah. President Trump was actually surprised that the coercive strategy, the threat of military force
00:39didn't do the trick. Okay. So that fails. Then we attack and we decapitate. And it's clearly a
00:47successful decapitation, but that doesn't work. Now we're continuing to pound Iran and we're
00:55looking for regime change still. Even though decapitation didn't work, we think we can push
01:01hard and get regime change. But as President Trump's comments yesterday made clear, we really
01:08don't think that that's going to work, at least given present circumstances. So then we start
01:14to search for other options. And then you begin to think about fostering insurrection with the Kurds
01:21or the Azerbaijanis and putting some boots on the ground and so forth and so on. And the question
01:27you always want to ask yourself in these situations is when you fail, do you double down or do you
01:35back
01:35off? Right. Just think about the Houthis. Remember the Houthis? Oh yeah. When President Trump went to
01:43war against the Houthis, this was last March and the campaign lasted until May. And when President
01:50Trump first started blasting the Houthis, he said, Joe Biden was a pussycat. He didn't really
01:58attack the Houthis in a vigorous way. He, Donald Trump, was going to do that. We were going to beat
02:03the Houthis under President Trump, where we didn't beat them under President Biden. Well, by May,
02:10you know, two months later, he realized he couldn't beat the Houthis. So he backed off. He went down
02:17the escalation ladder. It's very rare that you see that. I was quite amazed at the time that he
02:24backed off. But Trump understood wisely he couldn't beat the Houthis. So he cut a deal or a semi-deal
02:31with them. And that was the end of it. But in most cases, what happens, and I believe this will
02:36happen
02:37in the Iran case, is when you take a major step forward and it doesn't work, you double down and
02:44you escalate up the ladder. And I think this is what you see happening here. And the question you
02:50have to ask yourself, is there a magic solution somewhere up on the ladder? As you go up the
03:00different rungs of the escalation ladder, are you going to reach a point where you finally find
03:05the magic solution? This is what we went through in Vietnam. I remember when the first combat forces
03:10landed March 8th, 1965. And then we slowly but steadily went up the escalation ladder, both in
03:18terms of the use of air power and the deployment of ground forces. And we thought that we would reach
03:24a certain point on the ladder where we would finally have finished off the Viet Cong and the North
03:31Vietnamese. Well, that didn't work. And we suffered a catastrophic defeat. And as I said at the start
03:38of the show, and as I say all the time, people who are in favor of this war and think
03:44it was a good
03:44idea cannot tell a story about how we end up winning. I've yet to hear anybody lay out in any
03:54detail
03:56what the strategy is for solving all these problems that we face with Iran.
04:02And in fact, let me just say, you talk about the escalation ladder. There's a couple of things I'm
04:07already concerned about. Not only the talk about ground forces in, but also we have many of the
04:14Gulf Arab regimes are now, we're trying to get them to go more in actively militarily instead of staying
04:19on the sidelines after they've been hit. And then last night we had Manuel Macron from France saying
04:24they're sending an aircraft carrier along with a lot of their aircraft to defend their regional
04:31allies. He said, I've ordered the aircraft carriers, Charles de Gaulle, to head to the Middle East.
04:35We have deployed Raphael aircraft, air defense systems, and radars in the past few areas. We will
04:40defend our agreements with Qatar, Kuwait, and the UAE. We must stand with them. Now, he didn't say they're
04:46going to get involved in combat actions, but I mean, he's sending air power. What does this tell
04:50you? It tells you that President Macron is not very smart. I mean, what else? Well, I mean,
04:58something besides the obvious. I mean, I assume he's going to put that aircraft carrier in the Persian
05:05Gulf, and he's going to take that massive amount of air power on that aircraft carrier, and he's going
05:13to finish off Iran. He's going to do what we couldn't do. I mean, this is, you know, who cares
05:19about a French aircraft carrier, right? He's going to have to park that aircraft carrier far away from
05:27Iran. Otherwise, the Iranians will sink it to the bottom of the Jolly Roger. And furthermore, that
05:34aircraft carrier can't generate more, many more sorties, uh, than, uh, or enough sorties to make
05:43a difference. I mean, it just, who cares? And, and, uh, by the way, you, you talk about, uh, some
05:50of
05:51the, the, the sorties they, they said during that briefing this morning, we've had, we averaging around
05:552000 sorties per day. So that's a whole lot. They're not, another squadron's not going to add a
06:00whole lot to that, uh, concern in terms of the bombing, but I guess, I don't know. He wants to
06:04get involved. He was so eager to send his troops into, to Ukraine, to be part of a coalition of
06:09the willing, and that never happened. So I guess he's like saying, oh, here we go. We'll send some
06:12out here and we'll see how that's going to work out. Uh, but here's one of the other things that
06:18was said during that briefing, uh, is that, uh, we have a potential problem with math, with
06:24interceptor math. I'm going to get to that in a second, because here's what Secretary Hegseth said
06:28that prompted the question. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.
06:36Iran cannot outlast us. Uh, we're going to ensure through violence of action and our offensive
06:42capabilities and our defensive capabilities. As I said, that we set the tone and the tempo
06:46of this fight, uh, as we are going into ammunitions that we have tens of thousands of and can drop
06:53unlimited supplies on with even more effects than the standoff emissions we have now, which is why
06:57when we say the throttle's going up, the throttle's going up and it's going to stay on high.
07:02Now, I think he's talking about JDAMs and some other categories, which if they indeed have air
07:07supremacy, they can now get closer in and fire a lot of those. Uh, but the offensive missiles and
07:12the defensive missiles, especially the interceptors, we just don't have as many of those. We had the UAE
07:17according to Bloomberg said, Hey, we can go about another week with the current level of offensive
07:22missiles coming in and drones, and then we're going to run out of the run out. So what do you
07:27think to that? Do you, do you buy this claim that president Trump himself made from the white house
07:31to the previous day that we can go on, we can do a forever war. I don't know why he
07:36would choose
07:36that language, but that's what he said yesterday. Well, the key question to me is how many missiles,
07:46ballistic missiles and cruise missiles, but mainly ballistic missiles and drones do the Iranians have
07:53and how good are we at destroying those ballistic missiles and those drones? And it is very hard to
08:03get clear answers, uh, to those questions from reading the mainstream media. And I don't know whether
08:09people on the inside have the data or not, but that is the key issue here. Uh, there's all sorts
08:16of
08:16reasons to think that the Iranians have massive numbers of drones and ballistic missiles, uh, that
08:23they haven't come close to using them up, uh, that they're either hidden, uh, in tunnels or they're
08:30mobile and therefore very difficult for us to destroy so that the Iranians can go on and on just as
08:38we can
08:39go on and on, uh, fighting this war. In other words, I think what Hexeth is basically saying is that
08:47some
08:47point the Iranians are going to run out of drones and they're going to run out of missiles. Uh, I
08:54don't
08:55think that's going to happen. I think they have too many missiles, too many drones, and I think they're
09:00going to be very strategic in terms of employing those missiles and drones. And by the way, John,
09:05one other thing I want to point out, uh, because I think it's really important to this part of the
09:09discussion. One of the other things that was assessed in there, both by, uh, uh, chairman
09:13of the joint chiefs of staff, general Kane, as well as Hexeth is they said, listen, uh, we have our
09:18offensive capacity has so slowed down that they have dropped, uh, like 80 something percent from
09:24the opening day rounds of fire they've had because we're hitting all their missile sites. Well, this
09:29video that Gary showed a second ago, we'll pull it back up here. This is something that was just
09:33released today that shows a new capability that we didn't know that Iran had before. Whereas
09:38a lot of these fixed sites, something out of silos, we actually don't know where they are
09:43because you can't even see them loaded. It'll roll up here a reload in a second, but you'll see just
09:48out of the sand, there's no mobile launcher here. There's no, uh, visible ground. This is the best
09:53one here. You see, literally it just comes out of the stand and there's another one here. So you
09:57don't know where those are. You can't knock those out. And how many do they have? That's the big
10:01question. Yeah, there's no question about that. And, uh, but you know, let me just ask you another
10:08question, Danny, let's assume that, uh, we destroy all the missiles and we destroy all the
10:15Iranian ballistic and cruise missiles, and we destroy all of their drones completely. Where are
10:23we then? How do we win at that point? Is that victory? We don't have regime change, uh, and regime
10:32change is the goal here. So I think even if you knock out all of their Navy, all of their
10:39missiles,
10:40all of their air force, where does that leave you? Uh, aren't they just going to rebuild? Aren't
10:46they going to rebuild their missile force? And you see on the screen here, I mean, you're not going
10:51to get rid of, I mean, it would take months to get rid of all of these, especially if they
10:55can fire
10:55out of nowhere. So, uh, if, if, when Secretary Hicks just boasted, you can't outlast just, I, I don't
11:01know. Is that accurate? Maybe they can. Well, a lot depends on how the war continues. Uh, what happens
11:12if the oil refineries in the various countries in the Gulf become targets and virtually all of the oil
11:21installations in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the other Gulf states are destroyed. Uh, and of course,
11:29Iran's equivalent installations are destroyed as well. Let's just assume that happens. That would
11:36be disastrous, uh, for the world economy. Uh, and, uh, the long-term consequences for the Gulf, uh,
11:44of that scenario are just hard to fathom. Uh, so this war can play itself out in all sorts of
11:52different ways. You know, we are going up the escalation ladder as we were talking about a few
11:57minutes ago, but, uh, there are some very potent steps further up that escalation. And in fact,
12:04let me show you another one here. Now there has been a couple of unconfirmed reports that a couple of
12:09our ships have been hit with cruise missiles. I haven't seen anything confirmed, so it could just be
12:13misinformation. But apparently Trump is so concerned about the issue that you just raised about,
12:18forget about if they knock out the actual refinement capabilities, but just the fact that
12:23the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed right now, and it has been for like several days now.
12:27Yesterday, Trump said effective immediately, I've ordered the United States, uh, development
12:32finance corporation to provide, uh, political risk insurance and guarantees for financial security.
12:38But then the bigger one is this will be available all shipping. The United States Navy will begin
12:42escorting tankers through the Strait of Hormuz as soon as possible. That seems to me, to my eyes,
12:50to be a very high risk, uh, low reward kind of situation because I don't think you'll succeed
12:56and keep it all of a sudden open it up and get the traffic back flowing again. And you will
13:00take
13:00the risk of that. Yeah. Just look at this kind of situation here. Uh, you see a lot of them
13:05kind
13:05of stacked up. You don't see much going through. In fact, I think right now you see none going through
13:09the Strait, uh, just a couple of bleeders here and there, but you see a lot of traffic parked
13:14up in, on either side here. Apparently that's the normal. Uh, but what do you take of the fact
13:19that we may send our ships into that tiny Strait, which is at like 30 miles at its most narrow
13:25point?
13:26Uh, that, that seems like it's putting us at a big risk. What do you think?
13:29Oh, I think it is a big risk because the Iranians have lots of missiles that are designed to take
13:36out ships. Uh, we moved, uh, uh, the Abraham Lincoln away from the Gulf. It wasn't in the Gulf,
13:44but it was reasonably close to the Gulf. We moved it away for fear that an Iranian cruise missile would
13:50take it out. Uh, and once you start using naval ships in the Persian Gulf, uh, you're providing a
13:58target rich environment for the Iranians. Now, I think the Americans are betting that they can
14:03protect those ships and they can so thoroughly deplete Iran's, uh, cruise missile capability
14:10that, uh, it won't be a great danger to the ships that do the escorting, but, uh, it remains to
14:17be
14:17seen whether that's the case. Again, it's very hard to determine what exactly the Iranians have.
14:24If you think about it, Danny, if you're playing Iran's hand and you have a fixed number of
14:29ballistic missiles and cruise missiles and drones, and you know that you're in a long war, the question
14:36is how do you allocate the use of those missiles? And it would seem to me what you don't want
14:43to do
14:43is use all of your missiles and all of your drones up front. You want to preserve a large chunk
14:50of the
14:50inventory for this protracted war. So, you know, if somebody says there's been a decrease in the use
14:57of ballistic missiles by Iran, that doesn't mean they're running out of ballistic missiles.
15:04They may be, but who knows for sure. And the other thing is, I think if you're the Iranians,
15:11you want to preserve a large chunk of your, uh, missile and drone capability for what I call the
15:19Ghatta Damarang moment, uh, if you think you're going down, if you think the country is going to
15:24be destroyed, you want to take everybody down with you and you want to have missiles that can do that.
15:31Uh, so you want to maintain a robust, uh, missile force in reserve, uh, just in case, uh, that moment
15:40comes where you think, uh, your survival is truly at risk. Uh, so I'm just saying, I don't know what
15:49the capability is on the Iranian side. Uh, but, uh, I see no evidence that they have run out of
15:58missiles
15:58that we have been so successful at targeting their mobile missiles and their missiles that are hidden in
16:05tunnels that they have basically been left naked. I don't think that's the case.
16:11I couldn't agree with you more here. And, you know, and that's why I was, you said at the outset,
16:15you know, say you're like, it's look, this is the beginning, I think of day five of this war.
16:19It's a little early to be talking to any kind of conclusions at all. And yet that was the strong
16:24implication from the opening moments of this press conference, which basically sound like this
16:28basically over. We're just waiting for, you know, them to final, you know, they're, they're almost
16:33going to fall apart already. And we're just waiting for that final. That's the implication
16:36that he gave. Uh, not sure that's going to work out that way for many of the reasons you said,
16:40listen, before I let you go here, the last bit of time, I want to kind of pull the window
16:45back a
16:45little bit and not look so much at the tactical, but look at the implications strategically. And
16:49especially, um, where do you think China and Russia are right now on this? Do you think that they
16:55would literally stand by and do nothing if it looked like that we were starting to, to get with, uh,
17:01Iran was, was starting to wobble and they were maybe going to fall. Would they do nothing? Or
17:05do you think they're doing anything behind the scenes to keep them propped up?
17:08Well, I think there's nothing they can do militarily. Uh, I'm talking about direct
17:15intervention here to rectify the situation. I find it hard to imagine either the Russians or the
17:21Chinese. I'm sorry. Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply that, but I meant like what we're doing
17:25for Ukraine to keep them in the war with Russia. Would they do the same thing for the Iranian side?
17:29Well, I think they were doing it before the war started. They will continue to do it. Uh,
17:35and at some point the shooting will stop. And then I think the Iranians and the Chinese,
17:39the Russians and the Chinese will go to even greater lengths, uh, to keep Iran, uh, intact.
17:45They have no interest in having the United States, uh, and Israel win this war. They have a deep seated
17:52interest in seeing Iran win the war and they'll do everything feasible, uh, to make sure that that happens.
17:59And what would be the consequences? Let's look first at China. Uh, if, if they were effectively,
18:05and this is one of the things that Rubio specifically said, we went into and basically
18:08took control of, uh, Venezuela, uh, that we wanted to get China out of our hemisphere.
18:14And what would be the implication for China if they had suffered a setback there? And then
18:18in the event that, uh, Iran eventually falls here, uh, what will be the impact to China,
18:23especially with the issue of oil? Well, my view on China is that it's now in the process of
18:30beginning to build the blue water Navy. Uh, and that blue water Navy is mainly concerned,
18:37uh, with securing the sea lanes into the Persian Gulf. Uh, and I think that not only will the
18:43Chinese be able to project more military power into the Gulf over time, but their presence and their
18:51interest in the Persian Gulf will only increase with time. And I think once the Russians, uh,
18:58shut down the Ukraine war, they will be more involved in the Persian Gulf as well. So I think
19:04from an American and Israeli point of view now, uh, represents a window of opportunity to deal with
19:11the Iran problem. And when I say a window of opportunity, I mean, a window of opportunity
19:15vis-a-vis the Chinese and the Russians, because with the passage of time, China will be more
19:20involved with Ukraine. And I believe that with the passage of time, the Ukraine, the Iranians will
19:26build a more robust, uh, ballistic missile force and may even go down the nuclear road. Uh, but anyway,
19:34all of this is to say, I think over time, the China problem will be much greater from our point
19:42of view
19:42in the Israeli's point of view when it comes to dealing with Iran. And I'm sorry, one last question,
19:48uh, in terms of China and how they view things, uh, or even China and Russia for that very militarily.
19:56I have some concerns that if, if we just muddle through this and, and we're not able to bring
20:02anything to, to conclusion, we're not able to knock them out. And we do spend enormous amounts of
20:08precision guided munitions, especially, uh, these, uh, long range cruise missiles and the
20:13interceptor missiles. And we, we don't have any results on the ground. It's going to make both
20:17China and Russia think you guys are not that great. Actually, you're not the greatest military
20:22power in the history of the world, like you say, and you might not even be as good as we
20:25thought
20:26before. Do you see any concerns with that? Well, I think there's no question that from the Russian
20:31point of view and from the Chinese point of view, that seeing us pinned down in Iran,
20:37especially if it turns into a protracted war and we expend all of the ammunition, uh, that, uh, is
20:45anticipated in that sort of conflict. This is mana from heaven, uh, for the Chinese. Uh, if you're the
20:51Chinese and you're thinking about capturing Taiwan with military force, uh, really all you have to do
20:58is wait a year or so, uh, if that war, if this war lasts that long and you'll be in
21:04much better shape
21:06vis-a-vis the Taiwan scenario, uh, than you are today. Uh, so this is, you know, not good news
21:14for the
21:14United States when it comes to thinking about how to deal with China. With regard to Ukraine, if you
21:19listen to Trump talk these days about Ukraine, he's fully aware that given weaponry to Ukraine, uh, and
21:28giving weaponry, uh, to this war, uh, in Iran at the same time is drawing down our stocks in dangerous
21:36ways. And, uh, he's, uh, very angry at the Ukrainians for the fact that they demand so much ammunition
21:44and so much weaponry from us. So you can see the problems that we face here. Uh, you know, the
21:50United
21:50States ran down its manufacturing base during the unipolar moment. Everybody recognizes that.
21:58And we're now in a situation where we have to prepare, uh, for conflict in East Asia. We're
22:06deeply involved in the Ukraine war. And even though we're not selling weapons directly to the Ukrainians,
22:12the Europeans are buying those weapons from us and giving them, giving them to the Ukrainians.
22:18So the weapons are still going to Ukraine. Now we're fighting a major war in the Middle East.
22:26And furthermore, President Trump is interested in, uh, instituting old fashioned colonialism in the,
22:33uh, Western hemisphere. You want to remember before this big armada was, uh, in the Middle East,
22:39it was in the Caribbean. We were threatening the Venezuelans. So, you know, we really have four
22:46theaters going here, the Western hemisphere, the Middle East, uh, Europe and East Asia. And there
22:52are real limits to what we can do. And again, you want to remember that this is all taking place
22:56in
22:56the context of a situation where we ran down the industrial base and we don't have the capability,
23:02you know, to pump out artillery tubes and artillery shells at a rapid pace, like we did in World War
23:08II.
23:09Uh, so, you know, when Pete Hexeth is talking about how we can fight this war forever,
23:14and we're never going to run out of ammunition or armaments of this sort or that sort, you really
23:20have to scratch your head and say, it doesn't sound plausible when you think about the overall
23:25strategic situation we're in. Yeah. Yeah. That, that may work in a briefing room and may work on a
23:30domestic audience. It's sure ain't having any effect in Beijing or in Moscow or anywhere else where
23:34we may have an adversary. Listen, I really appreciate you coming on today, especially,
23:39you know, I'm sure you've been so, uh, in such high demand and we're very grateful to have you
23:43come on the show today here. Uh, we also send everybody to John Substack. Uh, he's, uh, he's got
23:48information there, big trouble ahead in Iran. He said, you can go and get more details on John. You
23:52don't have to wait for him to come back here. Thank you very much for coming on today. We really
23:55appreciate it. My pleasure, Danny. It was wonderful talking through these problems with you.
24:01It just sounds wrong to say it that way, but I get what you mean. Thank you very much. And
24:05also,
24:05to let you know, we've got, we're packed up today. We've got another show, uh, in, in just, uh, just
24:10a few minutes with Dan McKnight talking about us strikes deeper into Iran. And what does that mean
24:14for our troops? He is, uh, very much, uh, keen on that. We're going to talk to him shortly. And
24:19then
24:19we got Larry Johnson at 2 PM today, some great shows back to back. Don't want to miss any of
24:24these.
24:24We'll see you shortly on the Daniel Davis deep dive.
24:39We'll see you shortly.