Command Post: The Next Phase of the Iran War Could Be Far Worse

- Hi, I'm Ben Parker from The Bullwork. Welcome back to another episode of Command Post on The Bullwork Takes Feed. And as always, I am joined by our very own Lieutenant General, Mark Hurtling. General, how are you? - Good morning, Matt. It's good to be with you again. It's been a busy week and we have lots to talk about today. So we'll see if we can get to it. - Yeah, we're doing almost a world tour today. It is wild. We got to start with Iran. We got a bunch of stories to talk about with Iran. - Well, wait a minute. Can I interrupt, Ben? - Yeah. - Are we talking any election stuff today? Or is this devoid of election guesses and emotions and all that? - American elections, you mean? - Yeah. - We can get to that at the end. We'll make people sit around for that. - Yeah, that'll be our fun thing to argue with. Okay, we'll start with this. Wall Street Journal report. The US warns the Gulf of possible short intense renewal of Iran war after the midterms. You've heard the president among others warn that right after the midterms, we could do something big on Iran. Of course, we're waiting for the midterms. I wanna talk about this in relation to this other story from NBC that the American ambassador to Turkey, who's also the special envoy for Syria, his name is Tom Barich, said just yesterday, I believe. America is the guarantor of the world for the last 80 years and is no longer there. He said, he said this at a defense meeting in international security forum in Doha, Qatar. What's happening in this administration is not an abandonment. It's a message of realignment. So he's saying, we're gonna restart the Iran war, which has caused a lot of damage to our Gulf partners right after the midterms, but also, don't rely on us for your security. We're just doing our own thing and whatever happens to you, tough. Am I reading that right? - You're reading it as I read it and it's pretty troubling to be honest with you, having been involved when President Obama back a few years ago made a pronouncement of pivoting from Europe when I was a commander in Europe to Asia, I will tell you across the continent, it caused just an uproar. There were partnerships involved, the alliances signed, and yet I think our countries in Europe were really upset about this. We're also gonna see the Middle Eastern partners and allies getting very upset about it because we started a war in which Iran is striking and targeting Arab countries where US facilities are and where we have basing rights and it's causing us a significant challenge, but it's also put yourself in the place of that of any given government in the Middle East that has been an ally of the United States or a partner. And when they say, or when they hear the US is pulling out, you would think that many of those nations would say, well, wait a minute, you started this thing, you threw us into this morass and now you're just deserting us and doing your own thing, it's, I would think it would be very troubling to all of our allies in the Middle East and the rest of the world as well because they're seeing us really just pull ourselves out of situations where we used to have very strong relationships and having folks go at it on their own, go at it on their own without any warning whatsoever. - Yeah, I think that's a great point. It's not only our Gulf allies that hear this, but it's also the Japanese who buy a lot of oil, the Indians who buy a lot of oil. - South Korea. - South Korea, South Korea buys a lot of oil. They're all hearing, oh, the United States isn't going to consider itself responsible for maintaining the free flow of international trade in the Middle East anymore. They're going to go ahead and start a war as it goes into disrupt global energy markets and raise, in a lot of places, raise the price of, oil and the price of energy a lot more than it has in the United States and then say, I don't know if it doesn't have the car problem, I mean, it is our problem, but we're saying it's not our problem. And it's not like in the absence of American leadership here, the other countries will just figure it out. They're either going to make their own alliances, which won't necessarily reflect our interests, or they're going to look to places like China to solve this for them. - Yeah, well, yeah, I was gonna say, you brought up the seaward of China, and I gotta tell you, there's a lot of reporting right now that suggesting a lot of our allies are already turning to China. Because they are friendly, they do things in a very diplomatic way, and they are entering the spaces that we are basically abandoning. There's proof of that across the board in many countries. And that's troublesome because we could talk about China increasing their intimidation against the Philippines over the last couple of weeks, even though they've been doing it for years now, as an indicator that they are feeling a little bit more, what's the term, froggy, in terms of how they're expanding and broadening their horizons in the region. - Yeah, I think you can see, it's almost reminiscent of the pattern of what happened in the Middle East, sort of after the end of the British and French empires, where once Britain and France were no longer the dominant powers, the Soviet Union became a very significant power in the Middle East, supported a lot of the Arab states there. And eventually, a lot of those Arab states came to regret it. I can't remember if it was an Egyptian military officer who said at one point, when the British came to Egypt, they wanted to milk to the cow, when the Soviets came, they came for meat. And so, they might have a-- - That's a great quote. - I wish I could remember who said it, but it's a good line. And I think they might eventually find a similar pattern with the Chinese who are not known for being, not known for playing well with others, shall I say. But they're in a storm, our gold partners are, and they will find any port. And if the Chinese are offering security and stability, no one else really is right now. - Well, we can talk about this as an example of a game of strategic or risk, in terms of the different manipulation of which country is connected to which. But I'd put it, perhaps we ought to think about it in a different perspective. It sort of goes against our ideological values of what democratic nations are supposed to do in terms of helping one another. In terms of understanding the territorial integrity is sacrosanct, in terms of the freedom of the people to choose their own governments. And we have been attempting to do that. That's our aspiration. And when we pull out, you're going to get a lot of nations that don't believe in that, that are going to consume the connections with these countries. So it's more than just the manipulation of nation states. It's also democratic ideals and freedom of thought around the world. - So we also wanted to talk about what the future of the war and around holds. We talked about how there might be this big, intimidating one-time escalation against Iran after the midterms, you'll see what that holds. And you were telling me off camera about how the Iranians may already have their response prepared. And how one of the things we've seen them do already in the war is decentralized their response. So you don't have to wait for headquarters to tell you to respond. It's spread out, it's decentralized. And it's, you know, okay, when you think it's time, that the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps will say to their lower level commanders, when you think it's time, go ahead and blow something up. Tell us more about that. - Well, there's been a couple of fascinating articles in foreign policy and you and I exchanged those articles before the show, where basically it gets to the point that we've been trying to discuss on command posts over the last couple of months. And that is you not only look at campaigns and conflict and objectives from your own personal perspective, but you try and look at it from the standpoint of what the enemy is thinking. What are they doing in terms of this? And from the very beginning of this war with Iran, you have to consider when you, as the United States, put down your objectives and say, "This is what we're going to do." There is that requirement for red teaming, as we call it in the military, "Okay, if we do this, then what do they do?" And these two articles that we were discussing before the show had to do, and October article, and I think the earlier one was in June, about two individuals who know the culture of Iran, who were basically saying that Iran right now is in a position where they realize that they are suffering from a potential existential threat, the ability of their nation to survive. So they're pulling out all stops, which is something we would do if we were facing an existential threat. For the last several decades, our country has been able to deploy forces to another location and fight on other people's soil. But if someone was attacking us inside of the United States, it would be a different ballgame. I mean, the president, any normal president, would be saying, "Hey, pull your rifles from underneath the bed. It's kind of a red scare sort of situation. Be prepared to fight. Make sure all your cybersecurity is up and running." And in fact, we're doing some of that right now, believe it or not, there's messages going out saying, "Be prepared to have X number of days of supply, even though that's an extreme approach." But that's what Iran is facing. If you get bombed for a couple of months at a time and all your government buildings are destroyed and there seems to be no communication between the commanders and their forces, what would I do as a commander if I found myself in that kind of situation? I would say don't wait from wait, don't wait. for orders from me, fellas. You know, if the attack comes and it's devastating, you're on your own and fight your asses off to defend the mother country. That's what appears to be going on and around right now. They know they have been harmed significantly. There is no coordination right now between the government, the military, and the spiritual powers of the country. And more strikes will only cause more, in my view, a collection of both citizens and people in control to merge and fight harder. So that's the concept, Ben. I don't know if that's what will happen. But we've seen, on our side, I'll just bring up two more points and then you can kind of dive into it. We've seen reports that the BB Netanyahu before the election last weekend, or last week, we're going to talk about this. Was suggesting that they do another strike to defend Israel, because it could be the last time he would be able to affect that. And even posted a tweet, or whatever they call it in Israel, of a nuclear explosion over Tel Aviv as kind of a scare tactic. And the allegedly he tried to get the United States involved in that from a political perspective. This isn't security operations. This is defense of a political party. And I think we may see the same thing with President Trump. And again, as we talked about last time on Command Post, if this is so important, why are we waiting till after the midterms are over? Is it because it would be devastating, even more devastating than we anticipate to the midterms? Or is it because it's truly a national security issue? Yeah, I think those are all excellent points. The one that I really, and we're going to talk more about that, St. Alfred Israel, later in the show, because that raises some interesting issues that I think some relevance in the United States. The one that I wanted to talk about is this. So in writing a foreign policy, you mentioned this, Ali Hashem writes that Iran really sees this as an existential war, understandable why they would. They see the very idea of the Islamic Republic of Iran as being totally contrary to what the United States is and stands for. I don't think they're wrong about that. They hear that, you know, the initial messaging out of this administration when the war started, which is they wanted regime change. And I think that that probably scared the crap out of them in terror, and I think that's seriously more seriously than I think many Americans do now. We look at this and we think Trump is never going to, and we've said this on the show, Trump is never going to do what would actually be necessary to accomplish regime change in Iran, which is somehow get a ground force of millions of Americans into the country. That is just not going to happen. But the Iranians are freaked out rightfully so. And they are planning this strategy, which is, and we sort of part of the strategy we've seen the use of the entire war, which is if we get hit, all of our neighbors get hit. If we get hit all, you can wait on the UAE and Saudi Arabia, everyone else is going to pay a price. And this comes right after we just said a little while ago that the US is out of there. You guys are on your own. So it's not only the craziness of not having allies to fight, but when we're talking about regime change, as you just said, with the requirement for a whole bunch of things that I don't think President Trump is willing to provide. What I mean by that is ground forces. Where is the logistics coming from? Where's the supply chain coming from? If there's no allies to support these kind of operations. So it's just troubling on so many levels. Yeah, look, this is, if we had, if we had an administration that wasn't so hostile to the very notion of alliances, I think this might be an excellent opportunity to say to the Gulf States, hey, look, I know you guys don't always work super well together, but you got to figure out how to because you've got a terrorist neighbor over there who's saying that they're going to take that on you if anything bad happens to them. And we're a reliable partner. Instead, we've put these Gulf states in a terrible position of not being able to get along with Iran and not being able to get along with us, because we're not interested. So we're going to have to figure something else out and that probably won't be to American interests. And in many cases, not being able to get along with each other either. I mean, it is called, it is a cauldron of dysfunction right now. You know, the Middle East has always been complex, Ben. As you know, I've been there a little bit. But it is in the state that it is in right now. There's massive confusion of who's in control, who is performing diplomacy, what kind of military actions are required? What are the economic situation and how is the information flowing? So all the elements of national power diplomacy, military, economics and information are right now staggeringly chaotic. You mentioned logistics earlier, and I want to get back to the logistics story. But first, since you just mentioned the complexities of the Middle East, you have an article that's up at the bulwark today, America's other Middle East war. If you're a fan of command posts and you're not reading the general's articles of the bulwark, you're not reading everything of the bulwark. Well, not everything. It's too much to read. It's a lot. But if you're not a member of Bulwark Plus, you should go to the bulwark.com and sign up because you're missing out. If you're not a part of this and part of the conversation in the comments, which are always fantastic. General, I think this article was a really helpful corrective to sort of a lazy shorthand we all use for the Houthis. Oh, they're Ron Bacteris and Yemen, blah, blah, blah. That's it. You say, basically, the entire article is saying, well, wait a minute. Who really are these guys? They're not just to run Bacteris. They have their own goals, their own mission. Oftentimes, they don't exactly align with what a Ron wants. So they're overall goals are, let's say, simpatico. What caused you to write this article and what's the main takeaway you think? Yeah. Well, I've never been in Yemen, first of all. But I have watched it for the last couple of years. What caused me to write it, Ben? I'm glad you asked that question because we didn't talk about that before. What caused me to write it was the Kurds. And you're going to say, what? When my last combat tour in 2007 and 2008 in Iraq, I was commander of multinational division north. So we had the area of seven different provinces, three of which were Kurds. And I just kind of going into this. I knew the Kurds were different and they were unique and all that. But I didn't understand what they were trying to do as opposed from an autonomous region to a collective within the Arab government of Iraq, the Arab-led government of Iraq. And it wasn't until I figured out that they had a completely different approach to politics, to the economy, to their autonomous region, than what was going on. And what was happening in Erbil and Dahook in Soleimania was very different than what was going on in Baghdad. And it was sometimes coordinated when it contributed to their well-being. And sometimes it was contrary in a significant way. In fact, in some cases, even potentially another civil war beyond the Shia Sunni War, there was a potential for an Arab Kurdish war during 2007 and 2008. So it just made me realize that you can't assume simplistic approaches when nations and peoples are involved. And in watching what's been happening with the Houthis and within Yemen and the relationship with Saudi Arabia and the bitter, bigger picture of the entire Middle East, you realize you can't assume that these Houthis, the so-called Iranian proxies, are doing everything that Iran is wanting to do because they're not. They're on their own. They have their own political objectives that certainly sometimes seem to be coordinated or synchronized with Iran, but there's not a whole lot of talk going on between them right now because it is a different movement altogether. And that's why the title of the article has the potential to be another Middle East war. And we've talked about this in a couple of command posts we've had in the past. Yeah, we talked about Operation Rough Rider, which was the six or seven-week campaign that we fought against the Houthis in 2025. People remember Signal Gate, which came out of that. They don't remember that it kind of was a military campaign that we fought in Yemen just only for the most part from aircraft. You also do a really good job in the article of pointing out that even if the Iran war were to end, there was, let's say, the Trump administration and Iran signed some sort of deal. The straight-of-formist situation has worked out. Everyone's very happy all that. The Houthis aren't going away. The Houthis have their own, their own goals, their own means of achieving them, and their own means of really damaging American interests. Once again, international trade, that Bob Al-Mondab that we've talked about, one of the strengths that connects the Mediterranean Sea Indian Ocean, very important for global trade. If they can threaten that, that could hurt the American economy. So we have interests in the Middle East beyond just preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and figuring out the state of Hormuz. And when people say, people like Tom Barak say, "Hey, this isn't really our problem." Well, I think as many American presidents in a row now figured out, it's going to end up being our problem. It could not only be our problem. It could be a global problem, again, just like the straight-of-war mooses. But one of the things I'd point out in a very simplistic way is the president said a few months ago, that this war with Iran would end in just a couple of weeks that they would be devastated. It's now been nine months, and you kind of say, well, it's still not close to being over, although the talk is of another kinetic strike. The war between the Houthis and the Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia, two powerful nations that these Houthis are going against, has been going on since 2014. And Saudi Arabia has desperately tried to sign peace agreements and get out of it because it has been devastating to their economy and to their military. And it's, it's truthfully a danger to them. And I'd also kind of point out that the last time a couple of Middle Eastern countries were in a major war like Iran and Iraq, that went on in a conventional fight with a whole lot of kinetics for eight years, and there was truly no winner to that war either. So you know, it's, we've said this before, been on this show multiple times. It's really easy to get into a war. It's very hard to get out of one. And that's, I think, where we find ourselves right now because we're not giving some forward thinking to the kinds of things we're doing in terms of global interactions. This is the logistics story I wanted us to get back to real quick. This is an article from Defense One. We've talked a lot about how the damage to American bases in the Middle East has caused some logistics problems for the American warships operating in that part of the world and how, you know, the resupply and the maintenance and all of that has become a big problem. This Defense One article points out that the island of Diego Garcia is the only, is the closest safe place for Navy ships to dock when they're fighting around Iran. It is 2,500 miles away. That's basically like going from the East Coast to the U.S. to the West Coast, give or take a little bit. It's like saying, well, we're fighting in Charleston and so we'll go back to LA to resupply. It is, that's a problem. That is a problem. That's a long way away. When you're talking about a ship, right, you're not just talking about aircraft flying, okay, it takes five hours or whatever. You're talking about a ship sailing, I imagine, for days to get back and forth to resupply. Yeah. Well, you know, this, it's not just the resupply piece either. The thing that fascinated me about this article and I will probably proclaim I'm not a Navy guy, but the similarities between taking care of ships and taking care of tanks and Bradley's and artillery pieces are similar, but the Navy has it much more, it's much more difficult. Let's put it this way. So, consider the Armada of various carrier strike groups, with not just the carrier, but they're associated submarines and cruisers and destroyer, well, battleships, destroyers, the kinds of ships that go and all the supply ships. And being out in the middle of the saltwater ocean and what that does to metal, there's a reason that Navy ships normally go on seven month deployments because that's the extent of their capability to not be maintained in a port somewhere where you can get alongside as the Navy says. It isn't just, you know, reaching over the railings and painting the rust, it's literally taking care of maintenance issues, and, you know, I hate to get really geeky on this, but I was fascinated by this article when you think about Diego Garcia, which is a small island with a small town. And suddenly, you not only have multiple ships from this Armada coming in there, but not a lot of alongside port facilities. And certainly when the sailors get off the ships and hopefully go to stores to buy things like shaving cream or toilet paper or whatever they happen to buy, it ain't there. And much less the bigger thing, there was one quote from a sailor that came off and said he was able to purchase ice cream, but he wasn't able to purchase something that he desperately needed for hygiene. And then think about the numbers. An aircraft carrier has 5,000 sailors on board, a destroyer or cruiser has, I don't know how many, but it's probably about 500 or so are more than that. So suddenly you pull in this port, these people dump out and they're looking to not only get resupplied by things that they need, but maintenance on the ships. But also dare I say, have a beer or relax or kind of get their head out of the ship for a while and it's just not there. And this is the only facility right now that is providing support for these various carrier strike groups which are huge armadas of 10,000 to 20,000 sailors and a whole bunch of ships associated with it. I can't imagine as an army guy how tough this is from a logistics perspective. This article sums it up pretty well, but I'll say one more thing Ben, if you'll allow me to. But if you think about the short term of just going into a port call, anyone in the Pentagon who's been involved with the defense budget process knows that what happens when you ignore scheduled maintenance, which is what we did to a degree during the 10 years of the Iraq war and the Afghan war, it will creep up on you and it will cause significant problems when that war is over in terms of backlogs that mean you can't do anything else from your military or your national security perspective. I have never really been involved in the defense budget process, but I do. And you don't ever want to be. Yeah, right. But I do have a car. So I'm familiar with what happens when you defer your regular maintenance. Okay. We have some interesting topics to talk about. We hinted at some of them coming out of Israel. We also are going to talk more about Ukraine, but first we're going to take a short break here. This episode is sponsored by Kometeer. So I love great coffee, but what I don't love is the process of making it. You got to grind the beans sometimes sometimes you got to just measure everything precisely. You got to clean up after it's all made. And sometimes you still do all that and you end up with a cup that just doesn't taste all that great. Well, Kometeer completely changes that. Another source is coffee from the best roasters in the world that brews it to perfection and then get this. It flash freezes it to lock in peak flavor and freshness. It comes on dry ice right to your door and recyclable aluminum capsules. And all you have to do is melt it to make hot coffee or you can do ice coffee or you can do espresso style drinks like lattes. It just takes seconds. There's no machine or plastic brew path required. These capsules are loved by coffee fanatics everywhere. And the former president of Nespresso invested in Kometeer after just one sip. We have Kometeer right here in the office and there's nothing easier than popping open a capsule pouring over hot water. And for the young folks on our team who are always craving ice coffee, psychopaths, those same capsules are perfect and have become a hit in the office. Get $20 off Kometeer.com/Borchtakes or use code Borchtakes. That's Kometeer c-o-m-e-t-e-r.com/Borchtakes for $20 off. So we said before that we were going to talk about the story of a standoff in Israel between the military and the government about it a pre-election strike on Iran. These Israelis had their elections yesterday. The results are not exactly clear yet. They have a parliamentary system. So there's going to be some haggling and deal-making whatever to see who can actually form a government. But this was an interesting story for us to talk about which was, apparently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, before the elections, wanted to carry out one last air strike against Iran. You could say it's because he thought maybe he was going to lose that on his opportunity. So he wanted to do it while he saw the chance. It could also be that he thought doing so would help his reelection and it would remind people that he, I guess, is tough on Iran and tough on the opposition. I guess. I don't know. Interestingly, the head of the IDF, the Chief of Staff, General Ayyel Zameer, said, no. He said, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do a politically motivated strike for you. If we thought it was in the best interest of the state of Israel, we would do it. But we're not going to do it just on behalf of the Prime Minister personally. This is a really uncomfortable situation. If this happened in the United States, this would be a crisis, right? Because it would be the military disobeying a lawful order, even if that order has political revifications behind it. Israel doesn't have a constitution the way we do. Israel doesn't have an executive branch the way we do because it's a parliamentary system. And the military, because they have almost universal conscription, has a very different place in society. I don't know. General, I'm curious. I felt very uncomfortable about reading this story and it seems like, if I overdo this way. It would happen if this were in an American context. And the right outcome and the legal outcome, I think, are two different things. It is a fascinating idea. case study and it been. The thing is that the Israeli military is a democratic, well, Israel is a democratic nation. They take votes even though they may not have the same kinds of procedures and processes that the United States have. They are similar in nature. And the military knows that when the commander-in-chief or in this case, the prime minister gives an order, they should obey it. But they also have the responsibility just like our military does to push back and basically offer the consequences of doing something as demanding and as potentially devastating with huge risk as the Israeli military did in this case. But if the President of the United States says continue to do it and it's illegal, our military salutes and does the best they can under the circumstances. Wow. And we talk about this situation where the chief of the staff of the Israeli military basically says no, we're not doing that. You're doing this for political, not security reasons and it could cause extreme danger to what we're experiencing here in Israel with our engagements with Iran. That's gutsy. That's pretty balsy and God bless them for it. And I hope that we have the same military that will push the envelope and push back against some of the decisions in terms of connecting strike. They don't have to disobey, but man, they should be vehemently pushing back on some of these things. We've had some of these experiences in the past in our history. During the Vietnam War, there was suggestions that the chiefs on the joint staff were getting ready to say no to several presidents and they were determining what they would do next if they said no, would they resign, would they quit and protest. And even that brings on a little bit of a damage to our constitution. But at the same time, I think this is a gutsy move. But you can see it's political purposes. That headline from I think it's the New York Times has a picture of both Trump and Netanyahu. Basically, hey, we're in this together. And this is Netanyahu saying this is a chance because the Americans are with us. And they're finally, you know, a bomb in the hell out of Iran. Yeah, it's not to keep either Netanyahu out of trouble or Trump out of trouble to continue these kind of war. Yeah, we're facing, I mean, we talked about this earlier in the show. We're facing almost sort of the inverse problem, which is that our president has said that he is delaying strikes on Iran until after the midterms, basically announcing it's a political reason. I wouldn't go so far as to say that that means that our senior officers need to go and say, well, no, we're going to do it now. It's, it's, it is legitimate. I mean, we talked to that co-owner earlier. It is legitimate for this leader at the very top, the prime minister of the president, to take political considerations into mind when making these kind of decisions. But oh, boy, does it get hairy? Well, you take political considerations in mind, but you don't do them because of the political situation or the election more, more appropriately. And both cases seem to be at play given yesterday's election in Israel and next week's election in the United States. So speaking of elections, the other thing I wanted to ask you is, what is it like to be a senior mayor, senior representative of the American government in abroad when potentially an ally of ours has a major political swing like this? I mean, if these, if the opposition is able to form a government in Israel, it will be, I mean, I've heard some, some of Israeli, members of the Israeli opposition saying they're going to treat it like the Hungarians are. And they're going to say, like, we're going to look into all the corruption. We're going to make sure it can't happen again. They're going to treat BB Netanyahu like he was a wannabe dictator. Right. How does it work when you're trying to maintain the official American relationship with the country, and they're having these wild swings of policy and their direction of their politics? Yeah, it's interesting you asked that, man, because I've had some discussions with current and former colleagues of European armies about this very thing. And what they are telling me is we're in a place where they are certainly watching, I'm going to put it on our elections, not the Israeli elections, but they are watching with great interest, our elections, to see what will happen. But even with that great interest in what they see might be a controlling of the impulses of our current administration, they still know that it's going to be tough to trust the United States, even if there was a presidential election today and the president changed, because they have seen the damage that has been done in terms of trust and sharing of intelligence. Yeah, I would say that there's always a relationship between the militaries, between officers, senior officers that are engaging with each other, and they know they can trust each other. But the question is, do you trust the government? Do you know what's going to happen next? And, truthfully, we're still trying to figure out what happened in the Israeli elections yesterday. I mean, it's still kind of up in the air. Are they going to be able to form a government or not, who's going to be in charge of it? What's going to be the relationships like? How are they going to support the US or not support the US in future actions? So yeah, that's all up in the air right now. And I would suggest that the military folks in both the Israeli army and the US armies, the SENTCOM commander specifically, are still maintaining contact and talking and sharing a good relationship, but they're all looking to see what's going to happen next, too, because they obey the orders of this civilian leadership. So everyone's just waiting to find out, I guess. Yep. Okay, we will come back to the American elections right at the very end. But first, some good news out of Ukraine. This long-range strike campaign that the Ukrainians are carrying out with British storm shadow missiles against the infrastructure that makes Russian missiles really impressive. I mean, they're doing it in broad daylight. That's awesome. I thought they were doing it in daylight, because it was easier targeting, right? You have to give the missiles can sort of gather more information, because it's bright outside, whatever. Someone else pointed out that actually, there might be a different reason, which is that if you just do the factories during the day, there are more people there. And so you're not really destroying. Yeah. Now, I thought the Russian factories were all on like 24 hour shifts. I could be wrong about that. So, no, if that speculation is exactly right. But either way, Ukraine is totally justified in destroying these factories that are making parts for Russian missiles. And it's really impressive that they're able to accomplish it. Yeah, it's considered a military target, to be sure. I was shocked when I read that in the piece that we were looking at that they were specifically targeting it when the majority of workers were there. For two reasons. Number one, they killed, they destroyed the factory and they killed the workers who were trained in making these different pantheer missiles. But it's also the fact that once you knock a couple of them out, the other factories going to continue, or the Russian workers going to stay home, for fear of having more and more factories hit. And it's just, it's simply fascinating how the Ukrainians have advanced again and again and again. And there are reports today that Ukraine has launched its first signal satellite into space, which would be a fascinating development, especially given some of the things that have happened at Starsheald and Starlink over the last month or two. So we'll see what happens on that account. And truthfully, Ben, I probably should put the caveat. A lot of the things we're looking at aren't classified pieces of information. They are open source intelligence with photos and films. And we're kind of connecting the dots between them. But there are reports of Ukrainian gaining ground significant amount of territory on the front lines. Yeah. I think the big story of the last couple of years of the war in Ukraine is that the Ukrainians were preparing all through 2024 for the possibility that they would have to fight the war without American help. And now they're doing it. Right. They're still getting some American help, but they were clearly prepared. Okay. Now we're going to do this. If the Americans stop giving us weapons, stop selling us weapons. If they interfere with the intelligence relationship, which has happened a couple times, what are we going to do? And they have answers. And frankly, I couldn't be happier that they're showing that kind of resilience. And frankly, not surprise at this point. Well, I'm going to go out on the limb and say something that it are headquarters at the US Army headquarters and the U.K. headquarters in Germany. There is still coordination going on. It may be below the radar level of a lot of people, but I think there is still massive coordination between the militaries of the various NATO countries to include representation from Ukraine on some of these actions. And now it may not be formal intelligence sharing, but I've got to tell you having been involved in these kind of coordination. So let's just put it, there's a lot of information being passed and it's all good. So it's in the positive category of all this reporting. Excellent. We also should talk about this as a report from the Financial Times that I think this might be trolling. Zelensky is sometimes very good trolling, you know, he was a comedian and he was a satirist, a political So he knows kind of how to poke people. For the first time, he has said that a possible negotiated end to the war could include security guarantees for Russia. Now, I can't actually quite tell this over the stories written and how we phrased it. He might be saying, yes, of course, Russia has security interests that are legitimate and, you know, just as Ukraine doesn't want a massive Russian army and its border, Russia doesn't want a massive Ukrainian or Western army and its border. But I think also the way he phrased it was, we know Russia needs to be reassured because they're losing so badly, which is excellent. Yeah. And when I saw that, Miami, he thought, went to Kaliningrad and what Putin has been saying about this little enclave on the Baltic Sea that's between Lithuania and Poland. And he's saying, if anybody touches Kaliningrad, we're going to send Newt. And I think this is kind of the trolling in a very cynical and humorous way that Zelensky has a couple of audiences, not just the Ukrainian people, but the United States, Russia and the countries of Europe. And I think the countries of Europe are eating this up for him to kind of turn the tables and say, yeah, we'll talk and probably provide some security. So don't worry about Kaliningrad, it'll be okay, you know, that's great. I just think it's phenomenal. I think he said just to quote him, first, we need to resolve the issue of this war. And only then look for answers to the questions Russia is raising based on its own views and expectations about security. So once we stop the war, then we can worry about Russia's security. All right. You want to talk about American elections right here at the very end. You want to place a wager or anything is going to happen? No, I don't want to get involved in politics at all, Ben. Yeah, you know, that's the strategy of doing the political will. What's your wagers? What are you saying? I am a, my sage for political commentaries, always Yogi Barra, who said predictions are hard, especially about the future. And so I'm not going to, I'm not going to predict anything. I will be interested to see for the purposes of command post. If the Democrats retake the House and the Senate, if we see the armed services committees taking a much more active role and the foreign affairs and foreign relations committees, a much more active role and not only overseeing American foreign policy, but really trying to direct it. And they have Congress, if it wants to, taught me if you've heard this before, has a significant amount of power they can use. I'm interested to see if the mood among Democrats is sort of, we'll do the same things we did before. We'll send letters. We'll ask questions. We'll call people in for hearings. Or if they're, you know, we talk to a list of slotkin, it's sort of signaled. It's time to throw out the old rulebook and do something different. I'm really curious to see if there is an appetite for Congress to really flex its muscles. But if we end up with a divided Congress, then that'll be harder. So we'll see. Well, here's the thing that I'd ask our listeners to consider. And it's based on a conversation I had with an old friend in Hungary. And after Orban was pushed out of government and they received a new governmental approach after, what, 16 or 18 years of, 14 years of Orban being the president, the question then became, and I guess Hungarians are a lot like Americans because they wanted something to happen right now. They not only wanted the corruption punished and people to go to jail, but they wanted to see action on things that had been happening for the last 14 years. I think Americans are a little bit impatient with that regard too. And if there is a blue wave as many of us expect there to be, will Americans be so dependent on not only fixing the problems that have created a near or, I heard Mark Elias last night say we are in an existential crisis, a constitutional crisis right now, and I tend to agree with that and have for a couple of years. Are they going to fix the dynamics of government or are they going to look at things that will help the American people right away? And I think whoever comes into power better be considering a little bit of both as they enter into office if it is a blue wave. Yeah, I think that is right, and I am glad it is not my job to figure out what you do quietly and what you do loudly because that is going to be a lot of the delicacy of those decisions and I am not qualified to make those judgments. But I am qualified to co-host Command Post, which we will do, which I will do again next week. Okay, that is why I do the funding there. Super. All right. Well, I didn't tell you this. I may be in DC next week or I am in DC next week. You may be able to do Command Post from the same location and share a conference room or something. How is that? That would be great. Okay. All right. Looking forward to it. Ben, thank you very much. It is good to have you with you again.