00:00You've modeled the bombing of Iran for the better part of two decades.
00:05You've covered, if I'm not mistaken, every single air raid in the history going back about 100 years.
00:13Help us understand what you think the U.S. president will tell us this time tomorrow.
00:20So I think it's very nice to be on. Thank you very much.
00:24There's no place it's more important to speak to than Asia.
00:27Asia is ground zero for the economic consequences of the Iran war.
00:34The reason is simply that 80-90% of the oil coming out of the Persian Gulf, though straight and
00:39foremost, heads to Asia.
00:41And this is not just a shock, an oil shock.
00:45This is a structural shock to many Asian economies.
00:49It is a supply shock because as the price of oil goes up, richer areas will be able to purchase
00:56this.
00:57And that will leave the Philippines.
00:59That will leave Myanmar.
01:01That will leave parts of India really in quite desperate shape.
01:04But I'm leaving out Vietnam and many others.
01:07So thank you for having me on.
01:09So I don't know what President Trump is going to say.
01:12But we have to remember that when the bombing started 33 days ago, he said this was only a few
01:18days.
01:19And we need to understand that he has got a very big interest in talking down the price of oil
01:26and et cetera, et cetera.
01:27But on your show, just before you had me on, you just announced the UAE is getting militarily involved in
01:35military operations to take the Straits back.
01:39They aren't starting tomorrow, but they're certainly moving in that direction.
01:43And we have a third aircraft carrier moving into the region.
01:48We have 5,000 Marines, 2,500 already there.
01:53Another 2,500 will be there in about a week.
01:56We have the 82nd Airborne.
01:59What we need to understand is we need to follow not so much President Trump's rhetoric as the deployment of
02:05forces.
02:06This is the number one indicator about what will happen in the future.
02:12Does it predict 100% certainty?
02:15Well, of course not.
02:16But it's a far better predictor than the back and forth statements of political leaders
02:22who have their own domestic and international political reasons for making those statements.
02:29Yeah, and tell us a little more.
02:30I mean, the Pentagon obviously has moved additional troops into the region.
02:34I think our sources have told us a third U.S. aircraft carrier strike group is heading to the Middle
02:39East as well.
02:41Professor, you see that there are signs that this could evolve into some sort of ground war.
02:48What are you seeing?
02:48That's right.
02:49So let's just look at the history in the last year.
02:52When President Trump moved forces near Venezuela, he used forces in Venezuela.
02:58When he moved the Air Armada in February near Iran, he used that military force in Iran.
03:06When he talked about going after Greenland, he never moved forces near Greenland.
03:12Nothing happened in Greenland.
03:14My point is that the real indicator is the movement of troops because that costs money.
03:23That's expensive.
03:24That's a billion dollars a day plus.
03:28And so this is why the Pentagon just went to the Congress for $200 billion.
03:35To me, that means they're planning for a 200-day war.
03:40Now, I also want to be clear.
03:41Let's say that war doesn't come.
03:43These economic problems in Asia, these aren't going to be over anytime soon because the UAE and Saudi Arabia, other
03:53Gulf states, unless they kowtow to Iran, pay Iran, and kick the U.S. troops out of their countries, that
04:06oil's not coming to Asia.
04:08So we need to understand that there's a military battlefield, and then there's the economic battlefield.
04:15And what matters to Asia more than anything else is the economic battlefield, and that's showing no signs of improving,
04:24even if President Trump were to militarily pull back from the Persian Gulf.
04:32And I can imagine what the oil price reaction might look like once a headline crosses that even vaguely indicates
04:38the presence of ground troops, Professor Pate.
04:41Now, in terms of the concept of a ground invasion can vary substantially.
04:47It can be limited control.
04:49Taking Tehran is a completely different proposition, not to mention the topography of that entire place, which is, you know,
04:55we almost assume that once ground forces are involved, it's mission accomplished, which is not certainly the case.
05:01Lay out the scenarios you think we should be paying attention to.
05:03So right now we're talking about a half dozen small bits of land that small numbers of troops think 1
05:12,000, 2,000 troops can take.
05:15And it's important to know that the issue is not which of those six or so bits of land the
05:222,000 or 3,000 troops might take, or several of them.
05:26The issue is the 2,000 or 3,000 troops cannot, they can start, and after two, three, four days,
05:33they're out of ammo.
05:35They're out of water.
05:36They're out of food.
05:37So they can land, they can take an airport, they can take beaches of about a mile, mile and a
05:44half long, but they cannot hold with any sustainment whatsoever.
05:50And that means once they're there, there's not only the cost of getting them there, but once they're there, then
05:56the question is, will we just abandon them to die and be killed over the next few weeks with no
06:02ammo, no food or water, or are we going to reinforce them?
06:07So I believe that it's not certain we'll start the ground war.
06:12I think it's more likely than not, but more decisively, if we start, even in a small way, this will
06:19go on for weeks and weeks and weeks, not just we'll try this for a few days, then we'll back
06:26off.
06:27Because to try it for a few days means you're leaving 1,000 of our troops to die.
06:31That's just a very, very unlikely scenario of all the scenarios we're describing.
06:39So, I mean, obviously the president has weighed certain options.
06:43He's talked about just taking the oil at Karg Island.
06:47There's other sources telling us that there's an idea of special operations to seize Iran's enriched uranium.
06:54Do you think he'll go that far, Professor?
06:56Well, we need to understand the president has been all over the map in the last 24 hours on his
07:03true social posts.
07:05He has said within the last 24, 30 hours that he's going to walk away.
07:10He said he's going to take all of Iran's oil.
07:13He has said he will bomb the daylights out of the different oil facilities.
07:19He's even said he'll blow up all the desalinization plants, which would leave tens of millions here without drinkable water.
07:28And this is really all within a tiny span of time.
07:33So, I think the idea that he's sending us signals and we're going to bet the farm on what he
07:40said in the last post, this is just not realistic.
07:44What we need to do is come up with actual indicators.
07:46That's what I do on the substack, the escalation trap.
07:50I am laying out and mapping the stages of escalation.
07:54Before the war, I laid out that there was several stages of escalation before the first bomb fell.
07:59Well, we went through stage one, just as the modeling said.
08:03Stage two, just as the modeling said.
08:05Now, we're coming up to the verge of stage three, which is that ground beginning of ground operations.
08:12And I always said, and this was back before the bombing started, these would always be presented as limited territorial
08:20control options.
08:22And it's because this was always going to be an incremental escalation.
08:27That is what the modeling always showed.
08:30And that is what you are seeing unfold.
08:34It's just the likely future.
08:37It is not the certain future.
08:39I do risk assessment, not crystal ball gazing.
08:45Right.
08:46I guess you allude to we do live in a real world where you could have a factor here to
08:51come in and maybe just affect the course of events.
08:54Professor, final question for you.
08:56Has there ever been a bombing campaign that's resulted in a strategic objective being achieved?
09:02In other words, is some version of ground invasion necessary to achieve that?
09:13What is the closure we're looking for here?
09:15Just so everybody knows, I've studied every air campaign for over 30 years.
09:20I've taught strategic targeting for the U.S. Air Force, written books.
09:24You showed some of that.
09:26Since World War I, when modern air power began, air power alone has never toppled a regime.
09:34It's never compelled a country to give up something as big as, say, 20 percent of the world's oil.
09:41We need to understand that Iran now has massive geopolitical leverage.
09:48It's arm twisting all the way through.
09:51That is what will happen if it keeps the control of the straits.
09:55I'm not actually advocating for a ground war whatsoever.
09:59But this is the pressure that's the trap in the escalation trap.
10:04It's the sucking us down.
10:06The reason is we started an air war.
10:09It hit targets but failed strategically and catastrophically because now the enemy controls more oil than any other country on
10:20the planet.
10:21It is willing to use that in vicious ways.
10:24And Asia is ground zero for the consequences of this.
10:31This is really going to hit Asia as a region harder than any other part of the world.
10:38And it's because this is an economic battlefield, not just a military battlefield.
10:45And Iran is in charge of the economic battlefield.
10:49voranies in irgendwer井 infare.
10:50on the 그러side.
10:50need this. Yeah.
10:50Amen.
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