Let's be Honest - There is No Real Strategy for Iran | EYES ON GEOPOLITCS

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Alright, hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Eyes on geopolitics. I'm here with McMolroy, Jonathan Hackett, Mark Polymerapolis, and myself, Dimitri Contacos. We have two Marines versus two Greeks. The KYJL is about to be... What's up, man? Don't drop this up. Of course, McMolroy. What is KYJL at McMolroy's Puritanical Values? All right. Anyway, lock going on. I know jokes. Hope everyone's having a good day. Lot happening. Week three of the, you know, the war in Iran.

Lots happening. We have a couple of Muse heading that way. Marine Expeditionary Units. It's about 5,000ish Marines.

We also had a lot of a lot of bombing on Craig Island, which is like the central hub of Iranian oil, about 90% of it goes through there, or stops there before it goes to wherever to the endpoints. No real end in sight. It seems like these, and we also have Israel planning on invading Lebanon, southern Lebanon.

“So a lot is happening right now. Guys, where are you at? What is this? What are you guys tracking exactly?”

Making accurate. Great news from Montana where we finally got snow after we got done with all of our winter training, right? That is snowed.

Yeah, so where to start? I would say, ultimately, from my perspective, I support the attacks that depreciated the nuclear program of the West Ignisal Program in the Navy. I think that is where the U.S. should have hung a tap. They should have acknowledged it wasn't war of choice.

“I think every attempt to try to claim it was an imminent threat has been proven not to be the case by the intelligence community.”

I see B.M.s kind of like a decade away. And then, of course, the issue of the Secretary rubble brought up about like, well, Israel's going to attack them, so they're going to attack us, so we had to attack them.

Not that the NSE got it wrong, that it really simply wasn't. It was just the key principles without any input from anyone else.

“You know, it's what I'm the bridge now, but I think it would be a good idea to reinstate the whole concept of the interagency policy deliberations and with significant injects by the intelligence community.”

I want to come to make it overall plans because, again, all the way support the strikes. You know, it can be the right thing done the wrong way is still the right thing, and I think that's where we're at is what I'm trying to get at it. Now, the question is going to be, so we just thought about the fact that we might need a mute to take Carg Island, because it's really no way to put to explain that any other way is that we didn't think this through.

Or that asset would have already been in the region. It wouldn't begin shifted from what we claim to be a higher priority region and the Indian Pacific to go to the Middle East.

And then we could of course should get down to why Carg Island is so important, and then I'll kick it to you guys. Carg Island was one of the reasons why Iran submitted in the Iran or what. Once it started being targeted substantially, they got scared super scared 90% of their processing of their will goes through there. It looks like the idea is we've hit the military targets so softened it. We could use the mute, BLT, telling the landing team to go in there and seize it, and then we put it at risk to the region. If we were to target the actual energy, there's nothing to bargain with, right?

“Like it's all over. So the concept, my understanding from talking to my friends who are working to issue is the only way to actually use it as a bargaining chip is to seize and hold it.”

There's a lot of concerns that come from that. The Marines will be very vulnerable. This is technically boots on the ground to use an overused phrase.

There's a lot I'm not saying that this is just a simple decision, but that is the concept behind it that we seize, hold, and then say let everything through or we won't ever give you your resources you need to fund your own regime. So I'll stop there, but I think that's going to be the biggest discussion as the mute gets closer closer to the area of operations. And if I could kind of zoom in the operational level a little bit on there, but with Harga Island, when we think about this island and seizing it, there's a key challenge that is a major planning factor that has to be considered.

Because this mute would have to physically pass through the streets of Hormuz if they want to project close by. And that's a challenge because 750 kilometers separates Harga Island from the streets. So they're going to be at risk for 750 kilometers moving around the streets up to Harga Island. If the mute wants to be close enough to the island to take it with a close in seizure, that means the alternative is launch air assets carrying troops over into the streets into the island, which in my view of it is probably that second option is more likely to happen where the amphibious readiness group, which is three vessels would probably stage off of Fujera and I'll say why Fujera and a second here.

Or Muzcat, Muzcat's a thousand kilometers away Fujera's 750 kilometers away. That gap of kilometers between Fujera and Muzcat, it's like a kilzone space, a huge amount of space. You don't want to be that far away. You don't want to be in Muzcat and have to project Ospreys and other tactical aircraft that far or from Jordan, from Moffock's salty air base or from other air bases. Turkey's not going to be amenable to this. We've already talked about why in the past you can talk about it again. But you're going to have to rely on Gulf partners or standoff forces actually fly to the island.

“That introduces additional risk into the mission profile because rather than launching an amphibious raid from the ship, you have to launch it in a more traditional troop carrier method where the troop carrier is exposed the entire time.”

We've heard hexaf this week say that the drone capabilities have been reduced 90 95% even if that's true. They started out with 30,000 drones and I bet they've been producing drones since the war started. So that means even if they've reduced it to 5% of the amount of drones, it only takes one drone to strike a US troop carrier to dramatically change a trajectory of this conflict because US policy is very sensitive to American casualties as it should be. That's how we are designed and we care about our troops.

If one troop transport gets down, if one 24 Marines go down in Persian Gulf because of a shy head drone, that's just one drone that cost a $2,000.

The island of Fujer itself can only hold about two and a half billion dollars worth of oil.

That's the way the capacity works there. So we basically be sacrificing two dozen Marines lives for about two billion dollars of oil, which is about the tenth of the amount of oil that normally passes through that straight. Was it worth it? And that's going to be the question that's going to be asked as we look at the planning of this. There's something I think overall on this that I wanted to raise with everyone here is as we watched these painful press conferences. I mean, Secretary Heggsett with his kind of JV football right around speeches, which are kind of getting to be interminable and I can't even watch them.

“But then you have General Kane come up who seems a little more sober and realistic and I think that's what you should focus on.”

I always think work we're all not we but you know the administration is kind of drunk in military math.

And if you know if you go through this and you know you can make a case that the U.S. is doing very well right now in terms of military objectives. It's not finished. I don't think we've action the nuclear program, least I haven't seen any of that, but you know when we're talking about treating the Iranian Navy, the military. The military, I mean clearly they're killing you know thousands of Iranian troops and I urge you see in others. And so you can make that argument, but I mean it's it's almost remarkable because we saw this in Afghanistan with really kind of rosy projections.

And what we're missing instead of Heggsett there is you know, words mark a Rubio who is not just the Secretary of State. He's the National Security Advisor and you know we're joking before the show all the memes of him with all of his various outfits or kind of historical. But he has too many jobs and ultimately I would be much more comfortable if we had someone actually talking not just on military matters but on strategy because on the on the political dynamics on diplomacy on strategy I don't know if we're winning.

Especially when the Iranian seem to be in it for the long haul it's an existential you know fight for them and ultimately they're going to try to outlast us and they'll do so.

You know two ways one is you know economically whether it's it's squeezing the straight straight from our moves and and gas prices going up or attacks on civilian targets in the Gulf or God forbid a pretty significant you know strike in which US forces are killed which would have a huge political effect in the United States and so.

“You know I think you know I'd make I had lunch with Dan Shapiro a couple of days ago form a US ambassador to Israel and I think you have the same job you had at the Pentagon in the last administration.”

He was very much like John and and maybe not like Dave as he's hanging out with AOC in Brooklyn but it's very much like us in terms of hey you know you can make a case for this. But the administration hasn't they didn't go to the American people they didn't go to Congress and they certainly didn't seem like they planned and so my question on this entire you know affair it's not an excursion by the way. Which I thought was preposterous which I'm said but it's you know perhaps it's the right thing to do but we have completely and I'm sorry to say this incompetent people not at the Pentagon. But in kind of the overall civilian leadership. You know executing this and that's what gives me a lot of pause and on that note you know it's okay if we criticize this I mean.

You know you have you know hexeth went out and so did others and Jake Tappard from CNN just did a brutal take down of Ari Flasher the former Bush press spokesman's press secretaries kind of comments saying like you know it's it's unpatriotic to criticize this well.

“That's what we're supposed to do that's what the democracy does and those of us who are actually I think correctly criticizing this like we have on this show today.”

Do so from from you know a position of knowing what we're talking about having been in war and seeing the the consequences but also from the right place and like hey. Maybe we should have done this but you know the execution of this is all screwed up for so many different reasons and so just that idea of kind of the reliance on kind of you know and I say military math it sounds really good but there's so much more to it. What do you guys think of it my is that is that a fair criticism of just the focus on you know and how many strikes how much ordinance we dropped like where's the grand strategy here I don't see it.

We are relying on these numbers if we rely on these numbers the way we are and say that this is the measurement of success. We actually dig a hole for ourselves because the question then becomes well how many weapons do we still have how much supply do we have how much can Israel still shoot down and this has become a big controversy in the Israeli press talking about the amount of. I think the researchers they have it's kind of a no no thing to talk about because the reality is they don't have many and if we continue measuring and and making that the headline that that we've conducted X amount of strikes will be our own numbers will begin to look like failure soon if we can't actually continue striking at the the rate that we want it's almost like the enron collapse when enron was baking its books and they couldn't admit that they actually didn't make that much revenue this month.

It's a very similar thing where well now that's the number you've said is your success and you can't meet that number anymore now what. Yeah it's kind of like that famous dialogue between the former U.S. Army Colonel and former Vietnamese Army Colonel where the U.S. guy says you know we beat you in every battle that we fought and then the Vietnamese Colonel said that is true and entirely irrelevant.

But we can say we brought it down as much as we can we think it's you know any continuation is is not worth it and then we can do a pause right we don't we have to wait to see what Iran does but we can offer a.

“We can offer a you know a ceasefire essentially and see if they're willing to do so and if they're not and you know they keep attacking us and we have you know have to make the decision.”

But we've defined it very amorphously to include regime change which was.

I would have guessed that the if there was a normal and as he processed the intelligence community said would have said do not use that as an objective it's not going to happen. We have no, no even prospect of putting a large ground force in. And if we don't not that I would ever advocate for that but there's a 0% chance of the regime falling because there's no other arm delimit that can actually facilitate that even you know the talk of the Kurds et cetera is not even close so I would have thought I would have.

Taking that off even a discussion obviously the way to finish up is the one who actually raised that and is in a true social posts in the middle of the night and everyone's like oh my god he just advocated for a few. That was that was two weeks of three months before the war start and so the stock at the beginning I would agree that would not be something in a regular NSC process in which anyone would have advocated that but you almost reactive to that now and so now we're kind of.

“And by the way, there's also the blood of Iranians who stay on the streets on our hands and I really do believe that and and so that's where we kind of are now.”

Yes, I've got to finish the last part is you know the idea this unconditional surrender like it's going to be Japan and you know like 1945. I mean they're not going to do that they have no reason to what are they going to surrender to an aircraft. I mean I just would hope. To your point mark it's it's American to criticize policy we on this show criticize the policy that. Let to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and we're going to critique this to and that's America and you know well those that don't like it maybe they should rethink of what they think of freedom of speech.

But I want us to be successful because you know I'm all about the US being successful in this I hope they can redefine or at least. They can count if they want to find something that we can actually meet militarily and then start looking for an offer amp.

“And then if if we get it we get it and I think they can claim you know they did something that many administrations said they would do but we're willing to do so.”

And they did it and it essentially reduced the capacity of this regime militarily at least. Essentially but we're going to have to redefine it and have to potentially even acknowledge that things like regime change whenever really in the cards. So it'll it'll have to be a blue but a humble pie but I still think there's a way that the United States can define this that this will be successful.

Ultimately. John John on an ask a quick question about which and this this seems to everyone seems to have forgotten the NSS strategy the National Security Strategy.

So literally there was a document that was put out several months ago and go back would encourage yours to read this. Maybe you can actually post it because it literally says and it's like it's a withering critique from the Trump administration on all the previous administrations it essentially says get the fuck out of the Middle East. And it's like the forces with all the things that we're doing now it was a blistering criticism and yet we are there in a capacity far beyond what any other president has done.

So we're going specifically against his national security strategy to strategy the Pentagon every the wing of the pivot to Asia I mean John would just pull them you out of out of the city. And so I just I want both of you guys maybe John first just talk about that just first because there is this incredible dichotomy I mean and again it's American public has no appetite or as no kind of attention span but I think those of us in the national security space are like holy shit. We went on a we're on full nuclear Middle East mode now when we've just been told for the last year at house you know all the shit we did in the past both you guys you know we're not doing anymore and here we are on steroids.

Yeah actually when I was working with counter threat finance people at agency they would always say fall the money.

See where the dollars are being spent and that will help you figure out where the kind of center gravity of of someone's thought processes and if we look at our own dollars being spent our own centers of gravity right when like a red hat perspective.

So whether the president wants to do something somewhere else that spending forces them to do something where the dollars are supposed to be spent and I think that's a very important kind of baseline to start with to understand why does the Middle East keep pulling us back. It's because policy is designed for that dollars are spent there true we spent a lot of money in Ukraine we spent a lot of money in Japan in South Korea for example and even in Africa especially during 2017 through 2021 relative there's a lot of special operations working Africa.

The Congressional decision is that the US will spend money on Israel number one Egypt and Jordan and that has to happen and will happen by law so until that changes.

“And I think that's very important for people to understand why is there this magnetic pull it's because our laws say so.”

And if we don't like that we need to vote people into office that will do something different and until we do that Congress is going to continue making these resolutions that are 100 to zero in support of Israeli policies and the Middle East and that means our dollars are going to be spent that way too. But even AOC voted for that too so I mean this is a major thing in Congress that where where the dollars going well they're going there and that means we're going there our troops are going to go there and if it's very interesting to look at the Pacific angle right now.

The U.S. just asked for President Trump just asked for China and Japan to send ships to the Middle East to help secure the streets of Formos which is very fascinating because we just pulled a mu out of Japan the 31st mu which is designed to protect Japan and the first island chain from a Chinese excursion toward Taiwan and now we're asking that potential adversary to also send troops with us to the Middle East I mean it's just kind of interesting to look at that.

“For the reason that U.S. is the first one.”

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Start your show today at Sprieker.com Sprieker because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour you might as well publish it. Because the U.S. can only secure 10% of the daily transit through the straight of more moves with our naval assets that we have. And we are not designed for that because we just decommissioned for all four of four of our demining vessels no longer exists. So we lost that capability we have zero percent of that capability we have two literal combat ships that can help with that they're not designed for that they're not task organized for that.

And those ships have had their own problems coming into production and to use the size of the mind lying issues those ships are kind of looked at within the Marine Corps Navy as a little bit of a disaster zone. So those are the things we have to demine now we're asking your potential adversary to come help us and we're asking Japan to basically make itself naked for its Navy against potential Chinese incursion to come help us with our operation in the straight that Japan probably didn't agree with on the first place.

Yeah and that point Jonathan's point. So the adventure class mind sweepers were decommissioned. I think it's like last year right the last one that's literally terrible timing they were designed specifically they didn't have metal holes.

But they do it with drones right it's really not the ship itself at least my understanding and again we're Marines not the labor officers but they they basically gave it to a multi purpose platform.

“And so the question and people and I've talked to people that really think I think know this.”

They're concerned that they haven't nearly been as tested obviously as the ones we could decommissioned and this might not go as smoothly as we at hope but it wasn't made the decision was made before this conflict so it's not really. Cast in dispersions anybody it's just we got to deal with with that but to your other question mark. Yes, I mean as I've mentioned before I'm more of a Reagan era Republican as far as national security.

So this idea that we were going to withdraw from the world stopping the leader of the free world.

“Focus on homeland security which is to be frank. I mean every country focuses on homeland security if you want to be that exceptional nation you got to go beyond that right literally every country focuses on its own security.”

And now it's proven already in a matter of months.

To have not been the right decision and the people who wrote it including the national defense strategy so specific to the military are now on capital hill defending the war and Iran.

It's a great call. I mean like like like three weeks later. Yeah, it's a great. Right, so the and maybe I'm not to put it down all on process but the process of the NSE is what creates the national security strategy and then of course the component of the NSE that's specific to the defense civilian and uniformed creates the defense strategy it just doesn't seem like there was obviously not a consistency. And it's almost like we tossed the whole thing already. You know within a month of passing it. So we'll have to see I'm sure the counter argument being like no we got to take care of Iran so that we can then do our strategy but I think it's pretty clear and other Jonathan's other point on them fall a money.

The Middle East is always going to be important us. Let's just accept it. Let's just accept that with the U.S. tax payer pays enough to our national security that we should be able to do all the above. Right, all the above we can do it. We can do it diplomatically intelligence militarily we can be the you know exceptional country the indispensable nation around the world and we should view it that way. Yes, we have priorities like we always have.

“But this idea that we can only focus on ourselves and dominating the Western hemisphere is just not what does not live up to the what the United States. I think true mission is which is to essentially be that leader of the free world.”

And also that the notion on the mute just one quick thing for both of you guys and John Jonathan maybe jump in here because I think that there's a couple things here one is they make you mentioned that it certainly appears that it's amazing because the problem set of the streets for moves should have been first and I mean look the Pentagon you know this you've stared at this for can problem set for several decades. So the idea that we're unprepared for this is is quite extraordinary or perhaps there was a recommendation to the civilian leadership that wasn't taken.

But I find that remarkable and that we're a place now where and I don't understand why it's not more of an issue. Where it's is it getting baked in that there actually might be us ground forces the mu is going is that a faint is that is that a threat to the Iranians or is it actually if you look at the streets of our moves. And I think that's going to be a very difficult. But here we are not not only has there been you know we've expanded a huge amount of money on this the regions a bit of a mess. We're actually talking about putting US forces on the ground I mean again just if you if you kind of sit back and think well wait a second you know during the Trump campaign or the initial stages of the Trump administration this is actually unfathomable what's occurring right now.

You're the question on that is is also a political question, too, is that the American people are going to are they going to be okay with this and because likely there will be American servicemen and women who die. If we go down this world I cannot imagine and just you take a look at the you know the the air to air, Casey 1 35 crash I mean bad shit happens or drones hitting our people in Kuwait probably there will be casualties if we do this I mean your thoughts. Yeah, I mean on the political question the people have spoken through the representatives and senators whether or not they want to stop this war and they the Congress decided not to make a resolution to stop it.

You can all it's approval it's approval is that's why we should look yeah, but I mean like the latest polling is like it's like hovering around 30% approval for this like the American people do not want this to go on and definitely I'm an American citizen I don't want fucking boots on the ground. I let's go covert full force baby you don't I mean let's do that not interested in Marines again fucking killed on car island or more Casey 1 35 people crash again not interested at all. It's no benefit to us whatsoever as a country zero.

“I think it's two indicators you can analyze from this with the with the Marines so first of all the fact that the Marines were not positioned there or chopped there like change of operational control from the Pacific to.”

Pacific to the fifth fleet in Bahrain before the conflict started kind of indicates that that was not part of the initial planning first of all and second of all.

Moving the the Marines from the seventh fleet to the fifth fleet is a is a strategic decision not an operational decision. Which signals to me that they they will be probably used this isn't likely a faint because the amount of things behind the scenes that have to occur for the Marines to move from one to the other and position somewhere else. It's not simply a military objective that's being achieved here. It's also political and strategic objective that requires a lot of thought and planning to do the level that needs to move in there.

So that that kind of signals to me that yes they will be used and looking at car island. I mentioned earlier the distance between the straits in car island there's another distance that's really important and that's the distance between car island and Abadon.

Abadon is the primary like main land part of the entire oil production for Iran and it's not very far away from car island.

And if the government right now the US government is looking at an incremental approach to kind of solving this problem that they've created in the straits. They'll put the Marines maybe on car island and then say well it's only 100 kilometers to Abadon. That's not too far. Maybe we take Abadon. Maybe we also take Boucher because Boucher if you'll remember from the nuclear strikes is a primary location of Iran's nuclear program whether it's currently uranium underground. Well that's even closer than Abadon.

Well that's another great point to project forces onto the mainland.

And the reason I'm mentioning this is because of something we all remember from Afghanistan and Iraq which is mission creep. Yeah, the forces there. Absolutely. Once you've got the forces there it's only one more step. Well it's just a little bit. It's almost like a gambling problem or an addiction. You know it will just have one more cigarette before I quit. You know and if they're right there in front of you it's very tempting to use especially if it gets short term domestic winds.

And we can say well we took hard easily. But we took Maduro easily. We can do Cuba. You know like these things suddenly become easy in your mind psychologically because of successes you just had in somewhere in other realm.

“I think sometimes and this is like instinctive. We always want to give and I say this with respect.”

You want to give the US military a pass on this because I think there's a criticism of this civilian leadership. But you can't give the military a pass for the Pentagon if it does look like as both of you have suggested that you know the you was never activated that the straits were removed was not considered. There's big fights on social media. You have people like John Spencer who can't ever see anything go wrong that any administration is real ever does. And he's been handling the last couple of days saying that all of us who are saying that there was no planning for the stretch of our moves don't know what we're talking about except we have our own eyes.

And you can see so how did the Pentagon let's I mean we can focus on a little bit on the military too. I know these are your old brothers and sisters. But you know how did this happen again or or was advice not taken but you know you do have to kind of look at the Pentagon planning on this and say okay you know this is a problem say we stay at our forever. What do your thoughts? So I think I mean I don't know to be to be frank to be clear but it looks like it was decided by very small hand full people and again referencing this Wall Street Journal article.

Without a lot of input beyond the chairman when it came from the military side because the military would have taken the guidance in the be prepared for missions and started.

“Doing that's what the chairman's office does right the global integrator they would have started doing things to facilitate not only what they expected the campaign.”

I mean I mean it's just it's impossible to say that that was that that indicates anything other than they didn't plan for this right. It's kind of wild that like like it's like they decided to open up a sandwich shop but instead of a sandwich shop they're going to fucking war.

It's that's what I've been seen deep in it with a form of your commander friend of mine on how this would go and I'm not going to go through it because I don't want to give any information away.

“You know the top lines are this it's difficult to get there and Jonathan already hit it.”

You know basically have to traverse 700 kilometers of Iranian coastline to get there unless you fly but fly I've got its issues.

It's also staying there right you know being able to protect your force when you're there which is going to just be you know bombarded and then like what if it doesn't work. That was the biggest he was a more of a strategic question from my friend and I was talking to. It's like okay so we're going in with the idea that it's going to put so much pressure that Iran's going to capitulate nope in the straights how to move and super peace. What if we get there the Marines are getting bombarded they've they've successfully taken the island they've done everything militarily successful as we would expect rings to do and Iran just blows them off.

You know what I mean like they just nope we're still going to block the straights and we're still going to keep attacking our partners and allies and. And about the question.

Yeah let me just jump in right here I got I got a bullet guy by.

Thank you mark you this open or now. Not you're good okay sorry guys bye. Take care bro. I have a question about Craig Island about like let's say the Marines do take it and. Are they assuming that is they're like a thought process that like you know we're going to have 2500 Marines there.

It's Iran's like central hub of like distributing oil they're less likely to attack it and because they're going to fucking destroy their entire economy. Is that like a thought process that's going on.

“Well the important thing is that these ballistic missiles have different range capabilities so they can't use their long range ballistic missiles to fire on.”

Car island unless they reposition their transporter or actor launchers further away so this is already a problem that the regime will be thinking through. But that number of Marines you mentioned 2,200 2500 that's not the amount of Marines that will take the island because the way that the. And the green expedition unit is designed to be an air ground task force so there's an air combat element a ground combat element and logistics combat element plus some other sustainment elements around that. What you probably see instead is a battalion landing team which is 550 roughly people actually physically seizing holding and sustaining on that island while you'd have other people kind of in these rings of distance around it to protect sustain.

Resupply deploy redeploy do reception staging armor movement integration all these things that go into what's called the rapid planning process. A rapid response planning process that the mu uses to plan for exactly this type of contingency. So the mu can do it operationally it's part of their doctrine to do that's what that's why the marine is the marine units being sent there because it's literally the only entity in our entire department of defense that can do exactly this operation as the primary mission objective.

Right question as you asked is what are they safe after that what does that mean after that well the regime has like 4,000 mines right now. The transit before the war started around 140 plus transit per day around the streets if you do the math on that they can still put the straights at risk regardless of what we do in car island for a very long time in terms of combat time.

Right so even if we did it takes us two weeks to get there first of all so there's a lot of things happening in those two weeks then they actually season hold the island which takes a few days to do.

Now we're talking about next month. The regime could then deploy more mines they're not sophisticated devices they can deploy more mines they're magnetic they don't really require very much to be used especially with small boats that they have.

“The other very important thing we haven't mentioned yet is the Houthis have not been active. And so if countries try to move oil somewhere else while this while the US is trying to do this chess piece movement in the Straits.”

For example, Fujera which I mentioned at the beginning of the show it's important because there's actually a land based pipeline across the Saudi the peninsula that can move a small amount of oil to Fujera and then send it out there's another one across Saudi Arabia as well but that's not right in the discussion right now. But the Houthis can target that Fujera or from the south to north right so even if we put troops outside Fujera to protect the mu that's been deployed inside the Gulf that that back element that rear element could now be at risk by the Houthis on the other side.

So these are like very important things to think about as we're thinking what happens when those Marines actually land the island it's not just the island that's now a thing to consider for forced protection. It's also of the things in the rear area that we consider to be the rear area that the enemy can then open up and harass us in the rear area hate to use the Vietnam comparison. But this did happen in Vietnam when we were doing operations in to north Vietnam and then the North Vietnamese activated forces in south Vietnam to bring the fight to us in our rear areas which threw us off balance numerous times in many of their north Vietnamese successful operations against us.

Yeah I think they struck a Fujera yesterday right I mean I certainly social media posts that. And then of course the Houthis can also put other. You know the Red Sea, Bob Elm and all other places this this hasn't gotten as bad as he could get exactly. And we could end up with although I agree with Jonathan and my friend we can take the Marines will take the island to.

The question is how do we get them out of it. Now if everything works fine and they and it's basically a tick for attack.

“Then I guess that's how we get them out of it, but if they don't concede and they don't really seem to be willing to concede anything.”

The other point and I think we've talked about this before is this whole mosaic defensive. Right they they are designed that if they take a significant threat to the regime which this obviously was. They operate very independently like 31 different provinces different commanders different intelligence collection capability. Delicious special type operations. I mean this is what they are designed to withstand. So I don't necessarily know how we could ever get to a point where they would unconditionally surrender.

I think they'll always be somebody that's in the regime even if we keep decapitation strikes.

So we're in a position where again why I'm advocating for the U.S. to set our own objectives to determine when we met it. And then you know how to really do a positive necessary and see if it can decompress the whole situation we're around will follow. But if they if the whole idea is to put military pressure enough to get the regime to have some kind of signing of surrender. It's just it's putting a task on the military that's ill defined and really unachievable.

“Right I mean if you're going to fight an asymmetric war you have to be willing to take more pain than the other.”

And that's what they've clearly decided to do and they've clearly decided to take as much pain as we can give them. There's another Vietnam era quote that the Americans win or they what is it they lose if they don't win and the other side wins if they don't lose. Yeah because it's about a tradition Americans are not designed to support a tradition because we have a democratic process that puts pressure every four two to four years on what our war policy is. And if that war lasts longer than two to four years you're almost guaranteed to shift in how the war is going to be executed in a way that missile lines with the original objectives of that war.

I want to ask you guys about the there was a Bloomberg report about the US Army sending 10,000 interceptor drones. Developed like in Ukraine to the Middle East to combat Iran's like missile and drones they call it they're from AI enabled company marops is called. It cost about 15 grand each and you know I love this idea why the fuck didn't we have that like three months ago there.

“Before we just are I think that is a bird that actually catches bees in the air something I think.”

I thought I was like an acronym but it's not it's actually name. Yeah it's time for the United States to wake up to the realities that are we're seeing in Ukraine right low cost but efficient lethal options instead of thinking that everything has to be. I'm probably dating myself here a Cadillac that we spent a considerable amount of money on and somehow that gives us the superior advantage and every conflict we fight it's just simply not the case. And this this you know the Assassin's Mace concept I think I've got to use that term because it sounds cool that the Chinese have is basically you know fight something that's a hundred percent cheaper to kill something that's a hundred percent more expensive.

The United States needs to realize that's that is a that is a concept of war fighting that we need to embrace. I know that there's like a desire to have every you know district in the country participate in the building of some massive new weapon system. And I'm not saying that all those weapon systems are not a good idea but we have to have a balance and this is really permanent this war of attrition is we're going to run out of interceptor missiles here shortly. And a great comparison is the one shot head cost thirty thousand dollars to make which is one of these during one way of tax drones thirty thousand dollars one.

Tomahawk is three point six million dollars per Tomahawk.

I just I mean orders of magnitude different. And the outcomes can almost be the same depending on what the target is that you strike with this either device. Yeah, so my question is like why didn't we plan to have like five thousand of these drones down there dispersed across all of our bases. Ready to intercept and set of using patriots and you know that cost probably what I don't know what a patriot miss is one point three mil I think I read. You know that isn't.

Yeah, I think I've got the facts to the fact that I like insane insanely more expensive so like why not have five eight seven thousand drones.

We decapitated of regime that now is.

“Completely out of control right like you mentioned the mosaic doctrine like we don't even know who to negotiate with like how long will it take if we did reach a deal.”

I mean, I mean, I don't think it's a conspiracy series is a hey how come he didn't do a video or speak. Right, and then I've talked to an Iranian who's like, and by the way, the grammar was horrible and this person's pretty educated and it didn't. I mean, I didn't read or know this to be true, but I'm pretty sure based on what this person said is like. The the person a use terrible grammar b use a lot of more heroic words than they would have expected and obviously didn't appear on camera or video or audio like there's something going on there.

Well, he was injured in the initial attack right. Yeah, but maybe more far more injured than we might know and then the question that I've also heard from people who followed most of us career is he pretty much does what the IRG see tells him to do is what is what I would sum up like half an hour conversation. So it's the IRG see that's in charge. And it's in a morphist group like so who are we going to negotiate with. Essentially is it is the point of your question. D and I don't know that we have my answer to that.

I mean, it was pretty interesting before these bombings started the attack started and then we basically left is dealing with guys a lot.

Yeah, who do you think will learn Johnny and. Collie Boff. Collie Boff. That's the speaker right of the process. You've got the speaker a parliament and the Supreme National Security Council leader. But these these guys are old IRG see guys from the Iran Iraq war and there the kind of lever pullers that have been the lever pullers for decades and everybody else that was killed was someone beholden to these two guys. These two guys are still alive. It's like we almost got the opposite outcome that we were looking for with the strike deck that we use which could have been just because we didn't have enough human on the ground to actually validate the targets at the very opening when we were doing the triggered strikes to actually hit those those large scale.

First three strikes on day one because as far as the strikes that I've worked on we you know if we want to have that one individual in there we're going to make sure we know who else is in the room with them. Because if we you know there's strategic effects if you feel the wrong people at the wrong time and it seems that we just drop bombs on large gatherings of folks during Ramadan, which is actually you know strategy that I have used as well. Because you get the most bang for your buck when they're all having so hard dinner together.

But if you don't know who's in there you might end up eliminating the ones that you actually wanted to survive for specific amount of time to get a specific end state out of after that strike.

So you're saying John that don't plan a war on the back of a napkin with five guys.

Is that what you say? Six guys, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry.

“Yeah, I mean there are critical people but the whole thing is they should be informed, right?”

I mean, but who's the only one that's like actually like general came. Right. And I think, you know, it's doing the best you can. But the other guys, save, save the, the Secretary of State. They go from talking about domestic policy to, I mean, they, they don't have time to be an expert on all of the stuff.

I totally agree. I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree.

I agree. I agree. I agree. I agree.

“Yeah, like that's why you need that role boss and I see you're an executive.”

You're not in the weeds, but like, yeah, you shouldn't just be like, like, again, this isn't starting a business. This is actually going to war that's going to, that's killed thousands of Iranians, you know, we have 150 plus injured Americans, plus like now I think it's over 12 dead. And if there's no end in sight, it's like, these are huge decisions that you're in charge of. Like, this episode is brought to you by Spreeker, the platform responsible for a rapidly spreading

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Talk about your show today at Spreeker.com, Spreeker, because if you're going to talk to yourself for an hour, you might as well publish it. Anybody with wrinkles in their brains would understand that like, I need to get as much

will lead to people dying, and potentially hundreds of billions of dollars, forget even

in their oil, like in our economy, like just the actual money that it costs to sustain operations. And I know that, like, you would think that people in charge would be like, yeah, let's get as much information as humanly possible, get the smart guys in the room like, make and John and Andy, and like, you know, and tell us the truth so we can make an actual decision, not get dog-blocked by Israel.

The challenge is when military planners are presenting these options, they're in the or advisor capacity, and they're saying, here is the most likely outcome, here's the most dangerous outcome. Here are some Black Swan events to look out for. We recommend against the most dangerous option.

We recommend against this particular avenue, and then the decision maker will look at that and say, I'm ignoring your advice on taking the most dangerous option, plus I'm talking on these other political outcomes, because I want to do that.

And that's not against the current administration.

That's how every administration works.

“That's how it works at the embassies when we're at the country team meeting with the”

ambassador, and the senior defense official says, sir, I don't think that this is a good idea to do X, and the ambassador says, thank you for that. I'm doing X, and there isn't much you can do about it, because then they'll come back to you and say, now plan for X, even though you just told him that that was a bad idea, and here's all the reasons why you have to put all those reasons why it's side and use

them as contingencies, and then plan for how you're actually going to execute this thing that you just told him was a bad idea. And in these meetings in the past, I've been recorded, I mean, not necessarily recorded like for Baton, but there's notes, minutes, and what we agreed to, and what the defense department agreed to.

And part of it is to hold those accountable for later, and part of it is just so everybody goes on record. Yeah. Right? Where did you stand?

Did you think it was a good idea? Did you think it was not a good idea? And with the idea, we hope that we get better as we go back and look at the decisions made

“and say, you know, the Bay of Pigs, or what have you?”

Uh, don't see that happening now. I don't know what the current status at the NSE is, but to have the Secretary of State be both the National Security Adviser and Secretary of State, means there's not a national security adviser or a Secretary of State.

It's got to be, it has always been robust.

It was robust the first Trump administration, especially when General, McMaster was there. Yeah, he was, I thought, he was very present, had a strategy for everything, army officer, of course. Right? I thought he was very good.

But he was a good example of, like, a robust, engaged national security apparatus that the president could, to Jonathan's point, they can rely on or not, but it's there. And chances are they would at least take it into consideration decisions. I think that there's anything that has anything to do with, like, how well the Venezuelal operation went, even though it's like totally night and day, you know, a two-hour J-suck operation

in the that a night compared to sustained air operations, like, do you guys think that because that went so well and, like, you know, as well as a positive could be, there was one guy who was injured, that added into the calculus of, like, President Trump and whoever else would be like, yeah, we could totally fucking do this, like, this is me fucking easy, whether you know, it's states like, well, President Trump referenced it several times.

I think the whole idea that he can find somebody in the regime that he can work with and then put pressure on them to capitulate is what he did in Venezuela, it's just entirely different country again. I think that would have been something that would have been identified in the discussions about this, you know, it would have been like, yep, you could very well end up with somebody

who's more extreme than the actual person that you took out, in that case the former spring leader.

“And it looks like that's what happened and that's what, you know, from what I've seen from”

open reporting, that's what the I.C. said was going to happen, not to, you know, tell something it's not in our own interest, but it seems like that's what they said was going to happen and that's what is happening and it's unlikely to change. We have to deal with the current situation, not the one we want or the one we try to present.

The one that's actually is. And if you guys were listening, we did say that two before this popped off as well. John then. So if you want, you guys should be making some money on Pauli, Marker with all my, the guys for real.

I know, with all, he called the who the new boss was going to be called everything. John's secretly very wealthy from all those predictions. You can bet on all this stuff. Pauli. Oh, yeah.

We had a CFTC just put out new guidance on how and or how not to bet on events, like assassinations, wars, things like this that are, you know, morally questionable. There are some prohibitions, but they're very hard to regulate these, what they're called event contracts.

The problem is someone from unit 8200 before the war started, it made like 500 grand

off of what happened, and then some people at the Pentagon, like three to four people, the Pentagon also made a bunch of money on the war before it happened. So now this is being considered insider trading, just a huge problem now because it's not actually regulated as a securities market. So now we need to reinterpret how we understand what securities market means as far as

event contracting. Wow, it's so shocking. It's even legal. Yeah, anything else, guys sticking in your crawl in terms of like having touched on missed anything.

“Yeah, I'll mention one thing that I think should always be mentioned during this war and”

that's the Iranian people because these are ultimately the ones that have to bear the cost of whatever happens, whether the U.S. succeeds or fails, that's kind of not as important in my mind as what happens to the Iranian people because they're the ones that they got this war. You know, the outcome is important because I remember in 2003 when we invaded Iraq,

Iraqis were on the street cheering the fact that Saddam Hussein was gone. We all remember these videos. But because of decisions that outsiders made about the inside, that cheering turned into gunfire very quickly. And it's very important that we don't lose sight of the fact that the people that we

need to win over are the Iranian people. And that can quickly go sour.

That's almost 90 million people that right now support us.

That can be almost 90 million people that don't support us if we don't smartly execute the especially the exit from this conflict, if there is such an exit. And the important thing to note there is in the last couple of days the regime has been putting out a lot of propaganda out in the media about if you protest and we're going to kill you.

And the IRGC intelligence organization, which is actually the premier, it's almost like the CIA inside of Iran because they don't have domestic and foreign separation and their intelligence operations. That's who's actually putting these messages out. They've been arresting dozens of people over the last few days and charging them with crimes

against the regime about propagating anti-Slamic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I have you want to describe it. What basically they're charging them with is trying to go out in the streets and protest. Because we've kept saying that we want to enable these people to go out and do a regime change.

But 95% of the internet is cut off. And the regime itself has said the 5% of the internet that's on is only for people who support the regime. So they are themselves saying that 95% of the country doesn't support them. That's that's crazy, but they're saying that.

And that's really important from an outsider perspective. How do you want to win this conflict? How put you put up a mesh network, low Earth, orbit satellites, direct to sell, communications that people can get on their phone and say, hey, meet me at 5pm at the square so we can go protest.

Right? Or, hey, that barracks was blown up. There are weapons there. We can go take those weapons and start going out on the streets and fighting back. That component is missing and that component in my opinion is necessary if we actually want

to keep those people on our side. As we exit from this, however, we do exit. Can Kerr ready of free Europe, later on? Absolutely. World.

But we still should be funded. We still should be funded. Yeah. Exactly. The concept, is what I'm hitting at is that he still need to be that chatting is city on

it all. I know it sounds a little polyanish, but that's the way of you. You know, it states so.

“And I think he was directly to Jonathan's point that we need to be that beacon for them.”

And not just treat them like they're just upon this thing. We support them until we decide that it's easier deal with and better than under the boss. It seems like that's where the versions between U.S. and Israeli strategies happen because Israel is striking police checkpoints, they're striking very low level tactical, you know, vehicle checkpoint areas where cars have to pass through and they're doing that because

what they're trying to do is remove the place where the actual enforcement actions are happening against the people so that the people can come out and do things. They're using very interesting AI enabled drones warms right now with facial recognition to actually identify some of the guys that were killing people in January that actual person and then go kill them with a drone.

So that's a huge divergence between what we are doing with these standoff munitions from a distance. Israel is actually in there on the ground, removing the real problem, which is regime people with guns from the States, so that will clearly be able to change. Yeah, exactly, dismantle the Islamic Republic, yeah.

Yeah, interesting times guys, all right, this was great as usual, I want everyone to check out the links down in the description, the white fish security summit is happening in a couple weeks or check that out, that link is down in the description, y'all and

hack it, of course, is incredible books and ran shot of weapons and a theory of regular

warf, what's your other book called, you're either regular warms, yeah, those links are

“in the description as well, mark P, of course, down there and if you want to help support”

the show, go to patreon.com/theteamhouse, you get both eyes on and teamhouse episodes

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You record your show, uploaded once, and Spreeker distributes it everywhere people listen,

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