URGENT UPDATE - Iran War Expert: 70% Chance US Sends Troops To Iran THIS WEEK! | Robert Pape

Iran is stronger today than it was before the war started. And this is literally the nightmare scenario that we've been worrying about. And the reason you're having me here is because in the next few months, the world economic crisis is going to grow. And it does appear that you've been largely correct about what you said would happen. It's because I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. And I've advised every White House from 2001 to 2024 on different issues related to conflict. And right now, we're coming into the Sage 3 prediction. We're like on the Titanic and we're about to hit the iceberg. And when the iceberg hits, there's not enough lifeboats for everybody. So we are knocking on the door of the world, literally running out of oil. And then on top of that, even, we have another set of problems. For example, in Iran, it's attacking our base in Jordan. And we're in our next day of bombing in a row. And the scale of eliminating the drone and missile threat is much bigger than people realize because they hide those drones every week. So how real is the risk that the US will do some kind of limited ground operation with each of the ground in Iran? It's bordering on 70% now, probably by the end of this week. But I'm concerned about terrorist attack because controlling pieces of homeland territory is the biggest risk factor for suicide terrorism. So the choices do we have a global economic crisis, possibly recession, possibly worse? Or do we let Iran control the straighter foremost? This is not a good place to be. So what is the most probable next thing that you think happens? I think that question, Steven, is the most important question in the world. And I think the answer is. Guys, I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins. The algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also, it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this one right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Robert Paine. With everything that's going on with Iran at the moment, the US-arong war, and everything that I've learned from you in the two previous conversations we've had on the diover CO, I'm guessing that you're not really surprised by what we're seeing now. No, I'm not. I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. The, the fact is, the modeling has held up and literally month by month by month. When we were first here, the big surprise for most people was that we bombed the regime in Iran and it still stood. It survived, even though we killed the supreme leader and something like 137 of their top leaders. Think about that. So that would be like if somebody killed our president, his wife, the first lady, members of the first family, half of the cabinet, all of the leaders in the Pentagon, all of the leaders in the CIA, and about a third of the Congress. That is what we did to Iran in those opening weeks in March, and nonetheless, that regime survived. And that was something that modeling showed for that 20 years. That was based on substantial patterns in history, where air power alone had never toppled a regime going all the way back to World War I. Most people had not really heard that before. Many people, even in the military, did not fully know how much president Trump won up against the weight of history. Then we shifted. We shifted to six weeks of a bombing campaign. And then what did we do? We shifted over two or two months blockade. Well, that was another version of punishment. So the US said that they were going to block the strait of who mused basically trying to take control of it themselves. That's right. And that will kind of punish the rest of the world. Well, they didn't want to punish the world what that did happen, but what they wanted to do was punish Iran. So they were trying to coerce Iran to get the government to surrender control of Hormuz. So keep in mind what happened is on February 28th, that regime change bombing happened. And it went on for a few days. But by March 2nd, March 3rd, Iran controlled Hormuz. Literally within a few days, the ships stopped cold. And they basically have not reopened except for teeny tiny periods of time in a modest way. And then you're stuck. How do you get Iran to give up control of Hormuz? Or do you let Iran continue to control Hormuz? First, far as the eye can see. That's been the dilemma we've been in, Steven, since really the first week in March. And now it's become clear to the world that is the core dilemma we're in a fork in the road. Either we physically take Hormuz back. All those other tactics, even the MOU didn't work. Didn't get the MOU, the memorandum of understanding. Which was the, I said, who are JD Vance? And he told me that they were about to sign an agreement with Iran to ultimately end the wall. And they had that agreement. Yeah. JD told me that it was about to be signed. A couple of weeks later, here we are. They're back to booming each other. Yeah, there's really two big issues with this, Steven. The MOU, the memorandum of understanding. I do believe that Vice President Vance sincerely thought it was going to a head of good chance of ending the war. But there's a big problem here, Steven, which is when you listen to Vice President Vance, he approached this as a business deal. So he kept talking about all the benefits that we're going to come to Iran if they performed. Fe for service. We want the straight open. And we're going to offer you money in different ways if you will open the straight. Well, this is just a fundamental misunderstanding of international politics. This may work great in real estate. I'm not saying it does, but in a major war like this, what's at stake is the balance of power. The balance of power. Now, I want to explain that before the war, before the war started, there was a balance of power where America was ascended. Israel was the rising power. And Iran was actually the declining power in the region. What happened almost within, again, two weeks of the war starting is the balance of power was shifting dramatically. When Iran became in control of her moves, this represents tremendous power in the future. That wealth, all of the potential, that even though it hadn't been realized yet, it equates to not just money to put in coffers, but it equates to military power. It equates to the ability to influence other states in the region to build a sphere of influence. This is power in terms of major power politics that was shifting here. And so with the MOU, as you look at the MOU, JD Man, appears we could just look at it. He appears to have thought this was a business deal. So he appears to have thought we're going to hold up the promise of, say, 300 billion dollars. It will eventually fall on you if you will just agree to do what we want and behave. Those aren't the causes that matter to Iran. The causes that matter to Iran were the causes which directly relate to the balance of power and solidifying Iran, its control of more moves. And essentially, this MOU is fundamentally a roadmap to Iran becoming the regional hegemon. Hegemon, what does that mean? The most dominant state in the Persian Gulf, in the Middle East. Wait, so you're saying that this agreement would make them the most dominant state in the Middle East? Absolutely. So why wouldn't they sign it within a heartbeat? They did. They did. Iran, in fact, most of these points were exactly the points that President Trump said he would never sign in April when Iran presented the initial 14-point plan in April. And the key point. And the key point. We pick it. Well, let me just explain. The key things that happened here is that number one, notice an article five. It says that Iran will make the arrangements with hormones. That is the ships with hormones. And it will not charge for 60 days. It doesn't say it will never charge. It says only 60 days. So think about that. That this is already written into the agreement that President Trump is signing. And then if you say, well, what's going to happen down the road, it's going to be Iran and Oman who are going to determine the future fees. There's no mention here of the United States. There's no clause to even let the United States wiggle itself in. This is a perfectly clearly written clause. And this basically gives Iran control of the straight-up hormones and also of the discretion to set the fees for as far as the I can see with no constraint whatsoever. How do we know that this is the actual document? Because both the Iranian government and the White House put out exactly the same document word for word so that we can actually compare them literally word for word. So this is exactly the document that President Trump signed. There's no question that we have like an earlier draft. Now there were. some earlier drafts leaked by Bloomberg, that's not what this is. This is the final one. But let me go a little bit further here, Steve. So here we're talking about the strategic base of Iran. And keep in mind, controlling hormones means controlling 20% of the world's oil. That's a fantastic amount of wealth and strategic power to build on in the future. No limit says that nothing about you can't spend it on missiles, anything else. But up here with Lebanon, the first article. So here, so when you say article, this document contains 10 is it 10.14, 14 different points. And when you say 10 different points, and there are three points that are really the critical action points that matter here. This promise of 300 billion dollars down the road. This is so far, you know, this is like holding out funny money to the Iranians. These are the things are actually short term because this is happening now. So point one, you'll say point one, I want to come back to Stephen because I want to explain. This is Iran's strategic base point number five point number five. But what happens to become the dominant power in the region need more than a strategic base? You want a sphere of influence. You want a sphere of influence here. And can I just can we all hold this up here? Is that yeah, that's good. That's good. Point number five is controlling the state of hormones. But many of the different countries, including Saudi Arabia, you have already started to have pipelines to bypass the straight of hormones. There were plans to do this for years. There were two expensive, but almost immediately they started to do that. So the Saudi Arabia started to put out four to five million barrels of oil a day starting in mid March into the Red Sea on a pipeline that had already been built and hadn't been used. There's a little area here called Fuzhira, which is where the UAE had a pipeline. That's almost two million barrels a day. So 20 million barrels a day were going through hormones, almost immediately, seven million were being bypassed. Then there's all this discussion that Iraq might build some pipelines. There might be other pipelines here going through Syria. So what if you're Iran? You now control this, but notice it's a declining asset that way. If you only control hormones within five years, good chance your power is going to be whittled away. What you want to do is you want a sphere of influence. So what Iran started to talk about is their security resistance belt, where they wanted to control. They said from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea to the Gulf, this was the leaders of the Revolutionary Guard. Why would you do that? Because you want to prevent all of those bypasses to hormones. They're already happening. Where's the key one? You already have the Houthis down here. You have Hezbollah here, but you want to make sure the Houthis are pretty secure right here. Just again, for the people that can't see. So you're saying the Houthis are pretty secure? The Houthis are pretty secure down here in Yemen. They've been fighting with the Saudis for quite some time. They've held their own. We fought a war with the Houthis in May 2025 to try to get them to pull back from a temporary shutdown of the Red Sea. And we lost, essentially. So we couldn't beat them. But the big one that was that issue was a Lebanon. And it's in my point is, it's not so much that they love Hezbollah. They do, of course. They've had long-time decades of relationships with Hezbollah ideologically. There's good reasons for that. But there's something else that's a power reason that's being ignored here. Which is, you want Hezbollah to have drones right here in Lebanon. So if there's a pipeline that comes out here through Syria, if you've got some other pipelines that are coming out here, you've got Hezbollah here that can act as your Houthis. They can actually attack the shipping. So now you're a Iran. You're a major power. You're the dominant power in the region. You don't just control this area here. - And straight up for mus. - Straight up for mus and Iran itself. You have an arc, a security arc here that is a sphere of influence, but it's an operational sphere of influence. This is not just a piece of paper or something to talk about. This is what's guaranteeing you. You control all of that oil. Whether the oil from the Persian Gulf comes out through Hormuz. Whether it comes out through Syria. Or whether it comes out through the Red Sea. And that's what article one is about. So how come. That's what I'm saying is not. When I listen to Vice President Vance, which I listen to your interview, and other interviews, a super smart guy. Okay, this is not a matter of that. Okay, but he's thinking of it as a business deal. We want Hormuz open. What's it going to take to pay? They're not looking at that. They're looking at they want to be a regional hedgemon. This is their roadmap. And that's why they stuck to those goals. But they sign this document. But then the war has kicked off anyway again. Because what happened is President Trump signed the document. He owned the document for it for a day. He explained that he signed the document. Because this was literally four weeks ago. Because the world was going to run out of oil in four weeks. And he wanted to open Hormuz. So President Trump saw this as a way to try to open Hormuz. But what happened immediately after President Trump signed the document, literally starting in the next 48 hours is President Trump started to and his administration started to undermine the document, violate the clauses in that document. So issue number one was Secretary Rubio establishing a framework accord agreement in Lebanon, which essentially would lock in Israel's military presence in Lebanon as far as the I could see. Whereas article one in the document says that the United States would guarantee the territorial integrity of Lebanon, which everybody would realize would mean Israel is violating the territorial integrity of Lebanon. It's not ensuring it. So that would mean Israel can't be locked in there and still be faithful to article one. So the framework agreement immediately violates article one. The second thing that happened, and this happened shortly after the framework accord, as President Trump started to encourage passage through the straight-of-formos, through the southern, there's three routes through the straight-of-formos. The central route, which used to be in existence the main route before the war, now that's where the 80 mines are. So nobody's using the center. They're either passing through the southern avenue, which is the one close to Oman, or they're passing through the Iranian passage, which is of course near the coast of Iran. And what President Trump did is he started to encourage this passageway, ships to bypass or pass through Hormuz on the southern passageway, but with no coordination with Iran. With no, even often what their transponders turned off, in fact, President Trump was bragging about this, as his secret way to sort of bypass Iran's control of the straight-of-formos. He literally bragged about this on multiple posts on true social. Well, that directly contravenes Article V. And then the third thing that happened is, we haven't looked at Article 11, but if we look at Article 11, you would see that Iran was, dude, have some of its frozen assets, some of its assets that were seized by the United States, and have been held for decades, unfrozen. And there's a specific sentence which gives Iran the exclusive right to determine what's going to happen with that money. And what President Trump said is they can have their money, but only if they give it to the farmers, the U.S. farmers and buy American grain. That's the third violation of the MOU. So what happened here, Stephen, is President Trump owned the MOU, he was faithful to it for at least today, maybe two, and this represented a strategic defeat for the United States. And he even explained why he accepted that strategic defeat, very clearly and forthrightly. I call that owning the loss. He owned the loss for about a day or two, but then he tried to reverse the loss almost immediately, Stephen. And that's how we're back at war. Because the big miscalculation that happened in this period was assuming that if President Trump didn't restart the war, the war would be over. What who started the war, who started to shoot the ships in the straight-of-formos? It was the Iranians. Why did they do that? Because we were violating the MOU bypassing their control of the straight-of-formos, and that means preventing Iran from becoming the regional power, the rising regional power, ultimately the regional hegema. So this is why they violated. It wasn't so much a legal understanding. This is great power politics, Stephen. Iran wants to be the dominant state in the region. The United States does not want to run to be the dominant state in the region. This war has been about since the first weekend march, and now it's 5. later and we're still at that point. There should be a button just down below here and if it says subscribe you're already subscribed. If it says subscribe, that means you're not yet and if you're not subscribed please could you do us a favor and hit that button. It helps to show more than you know and according to the algorithm you're someone that watches our show but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. Did Iran charge people to go through the straight-of-harmies before this? No, never did. Did they control the straight-of-harmies at all? Well before the war started not at all. Before February 28th Iran did not control the straight-of-harmies. What Iran did is it moved from survival to ambition. So Iran saw there was an opportunity with the bombing because the United States had no. We didn't have our navy here. There was no means whatsoever to sort of offset this Iran's control of the straight-of-harmies. Nothing at all. Iran took this as an opportunity and the opportunity was to seize power. So is it fair to hypothesize that actually this war might have strengthened Iran because now it has this control over energy on a global basis that it didn't have before. Without a doubt, Stephen, I don't say this with any happiness. There's really no question at this point that Iran is stronger today than it was before the war started on February 28th and that's because it controls the straight-of-harmies meaning that it can threaten at will virtually any ship that goes through the straight-of-harmies. It's demonstrated this over and over and over again. Even when the ships turn off their transponders, they are still able to threaten ships as they go through and every time a ship tries to run the gauntlet, they run into a drone, a mine, they run into basically Iran's barrier and that is Iran's power. There is a tweet that went viral this week about this. I'm going to read the tweet. Yeah, but it says, "I'm confused. The US has the most powerful military on earth. We've bombed the hell out of Iran for four months. Trump says they're Air Force Navy and nearly all of their missile capabilities are destroyed. So how is Iran still capable of hitting US bases right now?" Because only a small fraction of its drone arsenal is necessary and missile arsenal in order to inflict that damage. Iran entered this war with thousands. We think tens of thousands of drones, ballistic missiles, anti-shipping missiles which are lower sea-skimming cruise missiles. Even though we have destroyed large fractions of their missiles, they have plenty left over to hit these targets because they're doing saturation attacks. They're essentially doing swarms. They're saturating our defensive capability and the drones and missiles that get through, plenty enough to damage it to the point we can barely use it if at all. So is it mainly drones that they're using at the moment to conduct these attacks on the straight of the moves and on US bases? It's been a combination in March. It was mostly intermediate-range ballistic missiles and then drones since about the middle of March until just quite recently. It's mostly been drones except for Israel when Israel's been attacked. It's been very heavily with ballistic missiles. But what you're seeing now that's just in the last week is you're starting to see the use of ballistic missiles. You're seeing the use of cruise missiles. These are the sea-skimming missiles here and they're being used in against multiple targets. So the full arsenal that Iran has, the full range of the arsenal, it appears to be fully there, a stocked very well and they're showing no signs of running out of ammo. If anybody's running out of ammo, it might be America running out of interceptors to shoot things down. But we don't know that as a fact. And I think that what you're seeing as Iran has been highly intelligent about how it has deployed its missiles. Trump said they have no navy. It's been knocked out. They have no air force. That's been knocked out. They have no air detection. Their radar has been knocked out. And just about everything's been knocked out. Virtually everything they have has been knocked out. He said that on truth social in May 2026. If everything has been knocked out, then how come there's no safe passage to the straighter for news? How come this weekend we saw more Americans tragically die because of Iranian attacks? Because what they have left, we can't knock out and is plenty to do the damage. That's the fundamental problem. We took out the easy stuff to hit. They didn't need it in order to seize control of hormones and keep hormones and start to defend themselves against more aggressive pressure. And the bottom line is that it's it's very difficult if not impossible to eliminate that capability. We would do it in a heartbeat if we could right away. Explain to me in just simple times why it's so difficult to remove that capability. I was looking at this picture here which shows the size of a drone relative to another object. So I guess there was two questions which is like where do they hide these and how easy it is is it to make one of these drones? So they hide those drones even everywhere. Okay. They can they're in drone caverns, they're in warehouses, they're everywhere. They could be so that drone just to kind of give you a sense here would easily fit in this room. But the reason this is so difficult is notice how small that is here that that drone compared to the scale of where it could be. And this is what I really want to show you because this is I think the hardest part to explain to people is I'm talking in whatever format I'm talking is it's the scale of eliminating the drone and missile threat is much bigger than people realize because they're hearing measurements. Well, we've destroyed X percent and Y percent and that's why you're getting the question. But if you look at this map, this is what they wear at these drones. These Shaheeds 136 can literally be anywhere in this radius 500 mile area and notice how huge this area is this area this area like this is bigger than California. It's one and a half times the size of California. So I guess it's like trying to find a truck in California. It's like trying to find a truck in California. These little things here are the Shaheed drones. Yeah. Okay. And what we're doing in this area, which is mountainous. So this is why we have a three dimension or it's not just a two dimensional problem. So three dimensional problem. We'll show some of these visuals on screen now just to show what the train weather hiding these drones might be like. They could be anywhere in these mountains. There's all kinds of and if we kind of imagine this as a visual. So this is the general problem here we have, which is just this stuff could be anywhere. And now these are the drones and this is the terrain that the drones are going to hide it. And notice I've just sprinkled some here but now I'm going to cover these up with more terrain and notice you can't see those drones anymore. And now I'm going to put in some more drones somewhere else and now we're going to put another layer in and this is this is again it's the three dimensional part of the problem meaning hard to find from the air. Now if I get my people out and I start going in now I could start to dig them out but let's just keep doing this for a while. So now I'm putting in another say 20 drones and I'm going to cover it yet again and then I'm going to put in another set of drones and I'm covering it yet again. I guess you could pull all the drones in there and you see you would still be able to cover them. You would yes but you wouldn't do it in you do it in layer. So they're going to make it so that if you find one you're going to have to work really hard you have to get them drone by drone by drone or at least in clusters of them. I guess also an important point of context is there also making new ones this whole time. Exactly. So our estimates that we have leaked from the Pentagon are in April. That's months ago. These drones they were making 55,000 a year and giving them to Russia. So just think about that. That's thousands every single month. Why haven't they made another five or 10,000 drones in April? If you want this to open. So let me just say for me the straight-of-formos. So now let me just explain. So this is our problem. If you want the straight-of-formos to open it's not good enough to say oh look I've found like dozens or hundreds of these drones you've got to persuade the shipping companies that their ships are safe. They don't obey orders from the Pentagon. You can't order the shippers to go through. Because the ships are expensive. The ships are expensive. How expensive? The crews don't want to, oh, in the many millions, millions and millions of dollars. I don't know the exact amount of these tankers, but each tanker will carry between 700,000 and over a million barrels of oil. And so they have quite a, just, and you can do the math right there to see how much each ship is worth carrying that much oil. I was looking at the cost here. It says, "When you combine a brand new vessel with a full tank of oil, a ship single tank crossing the straight up for mues is a floating asset worth 300 million." Oh, wow. See, I didn't, that's what I learned. I learned something from you every time. And that's what even the lives on board, which again, are going to cause an insurance problem, but also no one wants people to die. Well, and they don't want to die. So you're going to have mutants. They're not going to, so this is why you're seeing more ships leaving than you're seeing ships come in and the ships that are coming in are very heavily coming to Iran's ports. That's one of the reasons President Trump put the bokeh back on. It's because what happened here is the MOU, this whole idea, is not opening up the straight of form moves. It's not preventing what's going to come in the next few weeks, maybe month, which is the world economic crisis. We are knocking on the door of what President Trump told us he was trying to avoid, which is the world literally running out of oil. And just today, before we started the Houthis, which big ally of Iran, so just to come back here and re-show the map, remember, I said that once the straight of form moves became shut down, there was two million of barrels coming out every day through, for the UAE, coming out through Fragira, and then 4 to 5 million coming out from Saudi Arabian oil, going out to the Red Sea. And this is the port there at the Red Sea. Well, the Houthis have just shut this down literally today. Oh, really? Literally before we came on, it happened about six hours ago. This has been escalating for several weeks. Iran's been asking for this. This is part of the general escalation that we're seeing. Okay, so we've got the straight of a muse closed. We've got the Houthis closing the Red Sea. So there's no oil flowing through there. So are we on the verge of an economic crisis if things don't change quickly? Yes. Yes. This is literally the nightmare scenario that we've been worrying about. And the reason is this, go back and let's think about this from the 20 million barrels of oil that was going through the straight of hormones. So when Iran gained control of the straight of hormones, what happened immediately is the Saudi Arabia and the U.S. started to bypass hormones with 7 million barrels a day. So that means only 13 million at issue, right? That's a little, that's helpful. The next is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the United States. And we started to release about five or six million barrels a week through the strategic oil. When we started to do this, it's right around the middle of March. I can't remember the exact date, but notice that you put a big dent in that. And so that's one of the reasons the oil markets did not go crazy right away. So I've got some data here then. It says, "President Trump authorized the emergency release of 172 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Reserve, designed to be pumped out over roughly 120 days. This wasn't just a U.S. issue or the U.S. acting alone. The U.S. drawdown was part of a massive coordinated effort by 32 member nations of the International Energy Agency who collectively agreed to release 400 million barrels from their emergency stockpiles. Because these massive releases were done to offset the Hormuz blockade, the U.S. Strategic Reserve has been heavily depleted. And as of July 2026, the reserve has dropped down to roughly 300 million barrels, which marks the lowest level the reserve has since 1983. A more than 40 year low." "They're being depleted. Once you spend your reserve, you don't get it refilled. And that's what I think President Trump was talking about when he said we're about to run out of oil in four weeks. That was exactly the date because we've just run to the date of that quote. What you just read is we're coming to about the 120th day. So what that means is all of that cushion that we had in the system to protect the price of gas already went up. Now you have even more risk. And then on top of that, Stephen, we have another set of problems besides the oil itself, which is refining capacity in the world. So we don't put crude oil in our cars. We put gasoline in our cars. Diesel as well. How do you get the gas in the diesel? You refine the crude. So that means the refineries need to work. Well, where are much of the world's refineries in the Persian Gulf? Not just oil comes through the Persian Gulf. Refined product. They're called distorts. They come through the Persian Gulf as well. Now, so that means you've shut down something like 25% or a third of the world's refining capacity. Now let's marry this to what's happening with Russia and Ukraine's blasting Russia refineries in Russia. So what's happening, Stephen, is you're getting not just the decline of crude itself is about to run out, but the refining capacity now has been heavily strained and limited. It might be down 40%, I don't know the exact number, but it's something on that order. What you're seeing then is what I think President Trump was seeing a month ago, which is he wanted the straight-of-war moves to open, but he also didn't want to own the oil. What President Trump has decided is he'd rather take the risk with the world's economy than own the oil, own the loss. And maybe he'll change his mind. But he'd rather take the risk with the world's economy than just own the oil. So what would owning the oil look like in this? So owning the oil would allow Iran to follow through with Article 5. So if we go back to Article 5 to control the straight. To control the straight on its terms. But that would be set of presidents for all of these straights. Yes. Around the world. That's exactly right. And that's kind of that. Well, these are the choices we have, Stephen. So the choices do we have a global economic crisis, possibly recession, possibly worse, or do we let Iran control the straight-of-war moves? Well, that's the fork in the road that I was telling you was the Stage 3 dilemma. So that's exactly where we were in March. So Stephen, just to explain to your audience, because they're trying to figure out how are we getting here. This is what the 20 years of modeling was really showing. We would very quickly get to this fork in the road. It wouldn't take months and months. It would happen right away. And President Trump has been trying to avoid the escalation trap. This is called an escalation trap. And he's been trying to avoid that trap. He tried to avoid it with bombing for six weeks. He tried to avoid it with the blockade. He tried signing the MOU. He let JD Vance offer money. And that none of those were actually working. And where he is now is still at this fork in the road, the dilemma of the escalation trap. Either he owns the loss, which it means everything you just said and becomes known as the President who allowed not just the straight-of-war moves to be controlled, but set a precedent for other countries and other non-state actors to control their choke points. Or we take it back physically. Are we going to physically take it back? So we'll go through the stages and the escalation trap straight away after we move on from this point around the wheel. Because I think some of my audience might not know that this escalation trap is historically predictable and that you've been talking about this for a long time. And it also allows us to understand exactly what happens next. I was quite shocked when you just said that Trump said recently that the US would run out of oil within four weeks. So I just looked down at some research here and it says that during a recent press conference at the G7 summit in June 2026, President Trump made a blunt admission about how dangerously low global energy oil stoppiles have become due to the ongoing crisis in the straight-of-war moves. His direct quote was, "We run out of reserves at about four weeks. You know there are reserves all over the world and we would run really, really low. We would run out and there'll be a time when you wouldn't be able to get it, it would be Bedlam." Yes. Why is he saying that? Isn't that because-- Not making it look bad? It makes him, he's being, I think, forthright in why he signed the MOU, which is to avoid that Bedlam, the world economic crisis. However, the problem for President Trump is in order to avoid the Bedlam, he has to let Iran control the straight-of-war moves, establish that sphere of influence I was explaining. And he almost immediately after he said that statement within 48 hours undermined that MOU that would have avoided that. Had the MOU just been implemented as written? We may not be sitting here today talking about the impending world crisis. And I believe one of the reasons we're knocking on the door of more escalation right now is because President Trump is desperate to open the straight of foremost. I think he's taking high risk military options. I think he's pursuing military options. He likely knows our unlikely to work, but there is best chance to open war moves before the crisis literally hits. But there's also another before, which is the mid-term elections. Yes. Am I right in thinking that this mid-term election takes place in three months' time? And if his approval rating is low at that point because of what's going on with the war, because when Americans go to the pump to fill up their cars, they notice the prices are way higher than usual, that means those Americans in the mid-term elections will vote for the Democrats, which means he will lose the Congress. So he basically needs to make sure Americans are happy in three months' time. He needs to take the best chance he can to make that happen. And I think that what happened here, Steven, is his quote, you just quoted him. I think it was June 17th. He's saying that within a month those reserves are going to run out, and we're heading to that bed one, that economic crisis, and that is already happening. His four weeks later, we're right on that trajectory. That trajectory has not changed. Maybe we bought an extra week or two of time, because some oil did get out from the Persian Gulf, not that much, but enough for a few weeks here. So maybe it's going to now not fall on August 1st. Maybe it'll be August, say, 15th or 17th. But it will hit. And that's what he was-- And now I think he sees when it hits, he's going to lose-- there's a good chance that the Republicans will lose more seats in the House and in the Senate. That will make him the lamest of lame ducks for his last two years. It may not be that he would be removed from office. That's probably not going to happen. But it could be that he will be impeached again. He'll be tied and nots by the Democratic-controlled House or a Democratic-controlled House in Senate. And this is what he's trying to offset. And but he knows something that most of us, I think, are not really taking seriously, which is that the world is like, we're like on the Titanic, and we're about to hit the iceberg. And maybe that iceberg moved a little bit further away, but we're still right on the trajectory to hit that iceberg. And it's coming. And when the iceberg hits, there's not enough lifeboats for everybody and who's going to be short of lifeboats, the Republicans. And that's what I think why I think people made the mistake when they said, well, President Trump couldn't possibly escalate before the midterms. Couldn't possibly for weeks, even. I've been on shows talking about why President Trump will escalate maybe after the midterms, maybe next year. But he certainly-- and I kept trying to explain, this is not-- that's probably not right. And that's what you're seeing now. You're seeing that President Trump is desperate to try to open the straight of hormones. He's, I think, is being told probably directly from his military. These options are very low risk. They're very high risk. They're very unlikely to succeed. But now that the Titanic is going to hit the iceberg, his only other choice is to completely walk back and say, you're right, Iran. You control hormones, you set the fees, you don't have to make any limits on your nuclear program. You are the fourth center of world power. And I, Donald Trump, it happened under my watch. That's a big L to wear on your chest, Stephen. And that would be true, I think, for any president. This is what Lyndon Johnson faced in Vietnam. We now have the tapes that Johnson was making in the White House in conversations. It wasn't just Nixon making tapes here. Johnson was making tapes. And we now have tapes of Johnson as he's making decisions to escalate the Vietnam War, explaining that he knows this is very unlikely to end the war. It's likely to make it worse. And why is he doing it? He's doing it because he's trying to hold on to his great society program just for another four or five months. And what he's hoping is that even though the escalation is likely not to work, there's some tiny chance it will. And in four or five months, he'll be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat. He became-- it failed domestically. Lyndon Johnson had to pull back from running for real action because of the escalations in the Vietnam War. And President Trump is running the same risk that even though I believe that he's doing this because he's trying to give himself and the Republicans the best chance to win in November, it may not work. That's why I think President Trump already planted the seed of China meddling in the elections. He's already started the conversation that there's another possible stone election in our future, this time possibly by foreign country possibly China. 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And it shows you what needs to happen for that deal to move forward all in real time. It's what keeps our commercial operation consistent when we're a team of five, or when our commercial team was a team of 50. Over 100,000 companies are already running their sales on it. So if you'd like to join them, sign up at pipedrive.com/seo, where you'll get an exclusive 30 day free trial instead of the usual 14 days. And there's no credit card needed at all. Head to pipedrive.com/seo. I don't speak Vietnamese, but this show can, because of AI video technology from our sponsor, Hey Jen. I get messages every single week from those of you listening to the Dirovisio all around the world, and you express how much impact it's had on you and your life. And if that's true, then those conversations should only reach people in English. Hey Jen can take one recording of me and deliver it in any language while keeping my voice, timing, and expressions intact. But you don't need a studio like this to make it work for you. Record 15 seconds of yourself and get an AI avatar that delivers studio quality video in over 175 languages. We're up to 20 languages now, and we're not the only ones using it. Hey Jen is already used by 30 million people, including 85% of the Fortune 100, whether you're building an audience on social media, launching an online course or rolling out training across your team, check out Hey Jen now. Your first three videos are totally free. Hey Jen.com/doac. That's h-e-y-g-e-n.com/doac. See you there. - On this point of the escalation trap, it has several stages to it. The escalation trap, as far as I'm interested. - Yes, I think you have the picture. Do we have the picture? - I have a, I have the escalation ladder. - Yeah, what's, yes. So I made this, I think it was something like March 2nd or March 3rd. - Okay, so for people that can't see the visual, we'll also explain what we're showing here, but we will put it on the screen for those that can see. - Yeah, so what I did is I was trying to find a way to graphically show the escalation trap and what this looks like for those who can't see is an upside down pyramid. So basically it starts small at the bottom and gets worse and worse and more and more red and more and more red as you get through more and more stages as you go to the top. In the beginning, you start with a limited strike. That's the bombing of leadership, you kill the leader, you kill, you try to topple the regime with leadership top and that leads to retaliation stage two. Stage two, retaliation is Iran takes hormones and that then leads to us doing some retaliation. I would still call it in stage two, by the way. That's why I kind of kept it the same color. Where we're doing the six weeks bombing, that's also where the blockade is. And notice then you get to this red stage here. Notice it's where economic crisis is. This is where stage three really starts. Now we were able to offset that economic crisis. So when we talked in March and April, it wasn't clear, especially China, they were still buying. So that economic crisis was a lot closer in March and April than it became after the summit was she because she stopped buying five million barrels of oil a day. I want to underscore that. And what did she get for that? President Trump last week just blamed him for meddling in our election. So I'm not going to say that. She has thought that was a good deal. But still we're at this point now and this is where stage three is or the choices If you want to get off of the escalation trap You then have to let Iran become other gain power become the rising power in the region the regional hedgeum on and Essentially the fourth center of world power because once it Gains power with hormones has a sphere of influence a year or two from now Stephen They're very likely to have nuclear weapons. So this is this is what it means to let Iran win That's not Iran will win and be nice Iran is gonna become a very powerful state in the region If we go further and this we actually do Escalate and with the other map. I'll explain what I think the real issues are gonna be between now and the midterms Then we're gonna head into 2027 into the deep red which is the actual forever war So many people this week and next week they're gonna I'm gonna be on a lot of shows Stephen talking about are we gonna forever war? Well, that's coming okay possibly but right now We're coming into the stage three question, which is are we going to physically use force? For the first time for real to seize back control of at least part of hormones And so forth and that is the big question because if we do that and that's why I think the real issue on the table right now is Candy United States Physically open hormones between now and the midterms I think that question Stephen is the most important question in the world for the world for the world's economy For international terrorism against Americans For whether or not will truly will be in a forever war This is going to be decided between now in the midterms and the and the and the key issue is Can we physically open the straight-of-form moves between now in the midterms and I think sadly the answer is almost surely not It's funny because you mentioned LBJ so I was looking at some of his quotes around the time to see how they link because everybody knows the Vietnam war is being a war that just lasted forever and really achieved nothing I mean that's really the consensus that you read about Yeah And LBJ said at the time I know we ought not be there, but I can't get out I just can't be the architect of surrender and by this he knew that the current strategy was a mistake But he felt politically paralyzed because backing down would be like a Humiliating defeat which again links to Trump situation he also said let's get somebody that wants to do something besides drop a bomb But that can go in and take in after these damn fellows and run them back where they belong and by that he meant relying entirely on overwhelming American air power wasn't actually solving the unconventional ground level problem which again links to Trump situation as you've described That's the transition from air power rolling thunder to the heavier use of ground forces and both of those of course ultimately fell He also said I don't and this is again LBJ's comments as president during the Vietnam war I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home and get Anywhere in that area. It's just the biggest damn mess that I ever saw by this he meant Trying to project military power halfway across the globe against an enemy fighting in their own backyard is incredibly difficult and likely futile Which again links to the iron situation and lastly LBJ said a man can fight if he can see daylight down the road somewhere But there ain't no daylight in Vietnam. There's not a single bit and by this he meant that there was no realistic achievable Endpoint or path to victory for its military strategy and that also links to how like when political pressures Train change and you know Trump's recent admission at the g7 that the world is about to run out of them their energy reserves There's a stark realization that the current strategy is hard it has a deadline and there's no clear solution in sight Yeah, it's so tragic. It's so tragic that we're essentially replaying the Vietnam war Trump is replaying the decisions that women Johnson made and Coming to very similar decisions, which is he believes as Lyndon Johnson did that even though the military escalation Would be a likely loser on the on the battlefield that loss would take months and months to play out So there was some chance he could pull a rabbit out of a hat But if he accepted immediate abrupt defeats that would totally undermine and destroy His domestic political agenda. So I've got I basically before you came I looked at the top 20 questions that the internet currently wants to know about the Iran wall Oh great, and I've knocked off a few of them already. Okay. We've got a couple of them left. Yeah, I love it One of them is can the United States actually force the straight of them? He'll means fully open with our current strategy or does Iran now hold lasting leverage over this critical choke point? The answer is It the United States cannot do it and this would be an opportunity Stephen Could I have that map back? Let me explain yeah, let me let me show you what I think is really in the offing here So a lot of people are wondering what are we going to do with 8,000 ground troops? So we have somewhere around 4,500 5,000 Marines somewhere around 4,000 or so troops from the 82nd airborne what are these troops actually going to do and I think that what President Trump is doing here, and I think you can really we can really see this if I kind of explain this is What we are doing is we are concentrating our forces our naval forces here Into the Gulf of Oman We are not moving them through the straight-of-form moves where constant our carriers are in the Gulf of Oman and Also our marine expeditionary unit is in the Gulf of Oman now previously These had been further away way off the board in the Indian ocean We move them here closer and this is important because these guns are Our guns that have ranged to be able to hit the shore within about 12 miles So what are you doing with these ships and what are you doing here is you are building a force that might be able to take a piece of territory at Charba Har or there's a Right in between Bondra boss and Charba Har. There is a little port town called Jask and This would be exactly the kind of armada You would build in order to take one of those objectives either Charba Har or Jask and The reason that you would do it politically for President Trump is because this could possibly be a symbolic victory You could possibly take the territory and Hold it for weeks now. Why would you be able to take the territory and hold it for weeks? It's because this is Pakistan We haven't even shown the rest of Iran here Tehran is is over here. So maybe we want to yeah, why don't we bring the other map here as well? So what we have done Stephen is we have concentrated our forces here in the Gulf of Oman This is our carriers our destroyers our battleships and they can provide some air cover here for ships It might pass through the southern part here. So they I'm not saying this is the only possible mission But those Marines and the 82nd airborne they're not helping they're not really There to help ships pass through the straight of more moves, but they're here Okay, at least the Marines are here. What? We don't there somewhere in the straight of in the Gulf of Oman. We don't know exactly where they are That would not be good. I just think that because the people can't hear. Yeah, that's right. So they're in the Gulf of Oman Here, which is to the east of hormones the Gulf the Persian Gulf is to the west of hormones So hormones is the true choke point between these two golfs and the Gulf of Oman here is then what's north of it is the South Eastern coast of Iran which is the least populated part of Iran Iran's population is mostly up here around the word Iran So you're saying that the US might take a small part of Iran for a small part of Iran with ground troops with ground troops That's right and literally hold it here in order to get a symbolic victory and in order for Iran To knock us out they have to redirect all of their attention to this and This would be this why I don't think it's gonna work is ultimately they will do this But in the short term in a period of say a few weeks or so this There's a there's a chance and I say it's a low chance I'm not trying to tell you I would advocate for this. I would not advocate for this I'm trying to explain what these true these forces are doing here because Otherwise, there's no point in having these forces. Okay, so some questions on this then if they if the US do I guess invade Iran from capture capture Iran part portal one of these port towns from the sort of South East here that's right this would mean that Iran have a target to kill American soldiers That's right and the cost of losing American soldiers especially back home in America would be be tremendous. That's right. You're talking about hundreds dead over a period of at least weeks. And this would be just terrible politically. That's right. It's to be on the ground and be dying in Iran. Well, it will be divisive politically. So for people that are opposed to the war, this will make them even more opposed to the war. But for people that are supporting the war, and this is the part of the politics that I study, Stephen, it's important to understand that there's a large part of MAGA that is incredibly supportive of this war. In fact, the opinion polls tend to show that more MAGA supports regime change for Iran than oppose it. So this is not like MAGA has become Tucker Carlson country or something. This is still Trump country here, and they want Trump to win. Well, what you are seeing here is that if there are troops that are killed, you are likely going to see. And seeing this on Fox News this morning, after three more died over the weekend, you're seeing a tremendous amount of support for our troops and therefore the war. Okay, so I've got some numbers here about public support based on recent polling from mid-2026. The ongoing military conflict with Iran remains highly unpopular with the general American public, but support is sharply divided along political lines. It's a rural roughly 27 to 34% of American support the war, while a solid majority of 53 to 57% oppose it. But then when you look at MAGA, it says that 77% to 85% of MAGA support the war, there's a MAGA Republicans, and only 5% to 14% of MAGA Republicans oppose the war. That's right. What you are seeing is the divisions in our country, which have been building for years, are still in existence with this war and they're becoming hardened in this war. And as deaths occur, this is likely to harden the division, not shift, at least not shift much of MAGA to the anti-war position. And the reason is because just as Trump complained when President Biden pulled out from Afghanistan, this is going to be not just a loss for Trump if he pulls out. This will be viewed as an insult to the people who died. And so people will say, "So if we leave, did those people die as a mistake? Was it a mistake? Is there death? Were there deaths worthless?" That's a hard thing. That's one of the reasons why when troops die in war for months, this can harden support for a war. It's possible even grow it. Over time, yes, it tends to whittle down, but in the near term, deaths can actually harden support for the war. And that's a thing that most people aren't really fully grasping at. How real is the risk that the U.S. will do some kind of limited ground operation with boots on the ground in Iran? Well, over 50 percent. I think it's bordering on 70 percent now. And the reasons are that number one, the economic crisis that President Trump was trying to prevent, and therefore the economic costs that we'll hurt him later, is already starting to become baked in. Which you're hearing this morning with the Houthis closing the pipeline area around Yanbu, it's called this port city in the Red Sea, where the 45 million barrels of Saudi oil is coming out. What that is going to do is make the economic crisis even more baked in, even more likely, unless it's immediately reversed. And even if it was immediately reversed tomorrow, that could be reversed again the next day after that. This is starting to spiral out of control because it's not just up to President Trump now, just to put this genie back in the bottle. And Trump can actually still can withdraw. But right now Iran has to stop the escalation. It has to let the Red Sea oil flow. It has to allow ships to flow from Hormuz. And Iran is not, is in a mood for revenge. Iran is, there is emotions coursing through Iran, but it's not causing Iran to pull back. It's causing Iran to want revenge. And the leader statement, the Supreme Leader statement just a couple days ago, this was Saturday to US soldiers were tragically killed in Jordan. He called it what the Supreme Leader did was use the phrase that he's going to deliver unforgettable lessons to America. Unforgettable lessons is the exact phrase by the Supreme Leader over the weekend. What you are seeing here, Stephen, is as we have essentially, as Iran started to shoot at ships here to try to reinforce the MOU, President Trump up the ante. Now we're in our ninth week, a ninth day of bombing in a row. Now Iran is upping the ante. And Iran is upping the ante in multiple ways. It's attacking our base in Jordan, which it only rarely done since March actually. Now with the Houthis closing the Red Sea. And we haven't yet talked about Kuwait. And we should talk about what happened here over the weekend here in Kuwait, because this is a harbinger of what's to come, because it shows how ferocious the anger is by Iran and how hard it's going to be to stop this spiral of escalation. And that is what is one of the, that's what's going to lead to. And Trump's thinking long and hard about putting those ground forces in, because we're not making an independent decision now. So you said there's a 70% chance that troops could be put on the ground in Iran. Yes, I think within, I think probably within the next month, maybe even shorter than that, it could even be by the end of this week. This is something that I've made for you. I've realized that the Diurusio audience are strivers, whether it's in business or health, we all have big goals that we want to accomplish. And one of the things I've learned is that when you aim at the big, big, big goal, it can feel incredibly psychologically uncomfortable, because it's kind of like being stood at the foot of Mount Everest and looking upwards. The way to accomplish your goals is by breaking them down into tiny, small steps. And we call this an R-Team, the 1%. And actually, this philosophy is highly responsible for much of our success here. So what we've done is that you at home can accomplish any big goal that you have. Is we've made these 1% diaries, and we've released these last year, and they all sold out. So I asked my team over and over again to bring the diaries back, but also to introduce some new colours and to make some minor tweaks to the diaries. And now we have a better range for you. So if you have a big goal in mind, and you need a framework and a process and some motivation, then I highly recommend you get one of these diaries before they will sell out once again. And you can get yours at the diary.com. And if you want the link, the link is in the description below. You've shown me on the graph that you've just shown the escalation ladder, you can call it, and where we are now. What is the most probable next thing that you think happens with this war? The biggest thing I'm worried about is a mass casualty attack against American troops or American civilians. Against American troops in the Middle East, but I'm specifically worrying about barrage, ballistic missiles against our naval ships in the Gulf of El Monde. So the Iran is showing through its detour, I think it's already been doing in the last week and a half an exquisite ability to precisely target. And we don't know for sure they're able to track the movement of our naval ships in the Gulf of El Monde, or they're getting help from the Chinese or the Russians in doing that. But I'm specifically worried that as this escalation, they've just closed the straight, they've just closed the red sea. If we keep going forward and we'll find out if we're going to, if Trump will pull back or not, but if we keep going forward, one of the big things I'm concerned about this week next week would be an attack on a ship. And I think it would be a barrage attack. The second thing I'm concerned about is because we are now literally threatening ground occupation. That's the biggest risk factor for suicide terrorism in my 25 years of studying suicide attacks. We haven't talked about that, Stephen. And the reason we haven't talked about is because we were pretty far away from the big risk factor of how you start a big suicide terrorist campaign. That is now changing. I've talked to my sub-stack about this. Glad to talk to you about it now. But I'm concerned about a mass casualty attack against Americans. This could be against an American airliner. It could be against, I mean Americans on a commercial airliner. This could be against Americans say businessmen in aquaba. So you might know there have been attacks recently in aquaba, which is this really lovely resort town. I've never been there. And the fact is there are business, American businessmen moving all around the Middle East now to build these pipelines. And so I can imagine there being terrorist attacks against the hotel. else that are staying at the German and British embassies have just sorted their evacuation. America, State Department has issued an advisory over the weekend for Americans to start weaving the region. But I'm concerned about terrorist attack because threatening or actually doing ground control, controlling pieces of homeland territory is the biggest risk factor for suicide terrorism. That's what causes people more than anything else to strap on bombs to kill others while they're killing themselves. So before we explain in detail, so when you say, Stephen, what I'm looking for in the next few weeks, I'm seeing the spiral of escalation now occurring. It's a two-sided spiral. It's not just President Trump. Iran is escalating here as much as Trump, if not more. And in this spiral of escalation, there could be a mass casualty attack either against our troops or against American civilians. An American civilian attack could be anywhere in the world. It could be an Indonesia. It could be London. It could be anywhere. And if that mass casualty event happens, I think what you're going to see is that this is likely going to cause that division. We just discussed here in America, it's a part of the work, to harden even more. And you're going to get, though, intense support for continuing the war now to stop mass casualty attacks by Iran in the future. So you have spent some of your career studying terrorist attacks and I guess suicide terrorist attacks specifically, yes. Give me a view into the research, the work you've done there. You've written a book on it, two, two books on it. And then let me up to how that's relevant to the moment we're in now. So shortly after 9/11, this was remembered America was hit with a terrorist attack here in New York, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, nearly 3,000 Americans died that day. I wanted to understand why. And I want to understand more, the more I studied it, I noticed that 9/11 was a suicide attack. It wasn't just a terrorist attack. So I started to collect what became the first complete data set of all suicide attacks around the world. I did this at the University of Chicago. I did this with a few research assistants, basically work study students. The suicide terrorism, the reason I studied it, Stephen, was because it's the lung cancer of terrorism. Suicide attacks kill more people in the category of terrorism than all the other different kinds of terrorism combined. The suicide attacks are the biggest killer. It's like one cancer. We have other kinds of cancers, but lung cancer is the biggest killer. And what is the key risk factor for the lung cancer of suicide terrorism? It's military combat presence on territory, the terrorist prize. So a suicide terrorism, is it hard to stop? Because we can intercept missiles that are coming over pretty well, it seems. The suicide terrorism seems to be a completely different type of challenge. Suicide terrorism is like a precision guided, is like turning a person into a precision guided weapon. Because literally nothing can better identify the most vulnerable point in a crowd, the most vulnerable point in a building. The exact split second to set off the explosive better than a human. And how does the US, for example, you're saying two things, you're saying that that attack could happen in the United States, but also it doesn't have to. It could happen anywhere in those regions where there's a high density of Americans or Westerners, theoretically. That's right. Because the Americans could say, well, we're not going to let anybody from those regions we're going to get more diligent with passport checks, whatever. That will happen after the first, let's God forbid. I hope I'm wrong, Stephen. But if and when that first attack happens, you're going to see all that come out. You're going to see what come out. You're going to see all the idea of what can we do? Can we do passport checks? Can we do X or Y? What this is right after 9/11, similar thing happened. Let's hope nothing in that large would happen. But let me just further explain that when I compiled that database and it made a specific prediction, it predicted that if we invaded and occupied a rock, we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. What is it about invading their country in particular versus bombing their country in particular that causes suicide terrorist attacks from your research? What is it? Because bombing them from the sky is killing people. It's not the killing people part of this that matters. It's the political control part that comes with the ground forces. The reason to use the ground forces is to impose political control. That's not just killing people, Stephen. So the reason why America put in ground forces is to get political control. That political control means the group control doesn't control its way of life. It's this sort of scene as a deeper violation. It's ultimately what it is. It's a deeper violation that is not in control of the local population. So when we put in ground forces in Afghanistan after we toppled the Taliban, we toppled the Taliban with their power, by the way. But we don't get much suicide attacks in Afghanistan till we start pouring in ground forces in Afghanistan. That comes after we toppled the Taliban. So we toppled the Taliban in fall 2021. And then we get the suicide terrorism starting several years later in Afghanistan. It's because that's when we're putting in the ground forces. So Donald Trump has just posted on truth, social a few hours ago saying every time around kills an American soldier, they will pay for that killing many times over. This directive has been passed on to the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, and his other military leader. And obviously this is in response to losing an American life. He's very actively tweeting as we speak about the war, tweet after tweet after tweet after tweet on true social. It begs the quote. I mean, I just don't know what is there an achievable end game or off ramp here that restores the free shipping through the straight up for news, but also allows the United States to retract without appearing to have suffered a strategic defeat. No, Stephen. There's not an achievable off ramp. That ship sailed first when President Trump decided in the first week in March not to declare it. He could have declared my advice at that point. First week in March was to declare victory and walk away to say all you wanted to do was teach a Ronald lesson. You'd killed the Supreme Leader, a bunch of other leaders. Now let's go back to negotiate with about Iran's nuclear power. He did not do that when I was with you in April. I was giving a different advice. That advice then was to militarily contain Israel. That advice was to keep a win. Israel was moving into Lebanon doing other things, keep a win on Israel militarily. President Trump has taken these ideas. And I'm not saying because I said them, but he's taken those ideas months too late. If you look at what I think President Trump might think he is trying to militarily contain Israel right now. If the MOU, I do think he tried to declare victory and walk out. But the problem here, Stephen, is that these are now a day late in a dollar short. They're just not good enough. If you wanted to get back to the negotiating track, what exactly are you going to offer Iran to come back to the table at this point? The same MOU say, "Oh sure, we're going to just, we're going to honor the MOU that we are ready signed and then we violated over and over and over." So you're not, that's not credible. So is this the forever will? No. We're not yet in the forever war stage. But you said there's no way out. There's, the way out would be if the midterms come and the Democrats win either the House or the House and the Senate and they shut down the money for the war. That is a way out. Oh, they can do that? So this is, yes. That's what happened in Vietnam. They can shut down the money for the war. They can shut down that, that's what Congress did. Yes, Congress has the power. It doesn't use it very often. The last time I did this was in 1974. The reason I, as I showed you on that escalation later, I said there is a stage five of forever war. We're not out of forever war yet. What would be a forever war would be where that will come. And the reason I'm defining the escalation period between now and the midterms is the most crucial period right now. This is going to determine everything and what's going to determine the outcome of the next few months is can America open the straight-of-formos physically? What could easily happen between now and the midterms is President Trump tries to open the straight-of-formos or he allows Iran, by the way, to, he pulls back. He could actually pull back either way at this point, Stephen. There's a good chance he will lose in the midterms, meaning that the Republicans will lose one or both houses in Congress. And if that happens, that's going to be a great deal. then, whoever takes over control will be a Democrat. They'll be hotly anti-war, and there will be great efforts here to shut down the war, meaning shut down the money for the war. So it's always about the money. I need to get an understanding of the role. So this sort of link between the midterms, the money, and then the war. So the midterms are going to change using Congress. Yes. And then the people in-- Who controls it? The people in Congress, they decide how much money the military get. They decide whether or not they can pass laws. And this is what happened in 1974 to prevent money from being spent on the war. And Trump can't overdo that. He can try to work around it. There can be then supreme court cases and so forth and so on. So even if Democrats win the midterms and try to halt the war, Trump could bypass them because he holds massive constitutional advantages as commander-in-chief. He can simply veto any war powers resolution or funding restriction passed by Congress, which would then require an incredibly difficult two-thirds supermajority in both chambers to override. Furthermore, mirroring the arguments of almost every president since Richard Nixon, Trump could evoke his article to constitutional authority, claiming he has the inherent power to defend America's interests and troops without needing legislative approval. Finally, even if Congress refuses to authorize new funding, the president can use emergency transfer authorities and creative accounting to shuffle existing Pentagon budget funds to keep the military operations running in the short time. You've just defined a constitutional crisis. Congress will think it has the power. President Trump will think he has the power. That is what is a constitutional crisis. That's why these midterms, as my don't mean to say to quote in this context, but as you know, I have a book coming out, our own worst enemies, the preface is called the most dangerous elections in our lifetimes. That is why this election coming up will be the most dangerous election in our lifetime because the tensions now are growing on top of all that. They're not calming down those waters. The Iran War is making all these worse. What you just read is the tension here that could welcome because the Democrats are not going to want it to be a forever war. They likely fight really hard once they control the. Once they control one or both houses of Congress, President Trump will want to fight really hard for his legacy and his domestic agenda, including deportations, including ICE. This will all come together. These will not be compartmentalized, separate issues as we get into the midterms. That's why I'm saying that we're coming the midterms, the midterms, the midterms. We're not heading to a future where it's just about what happens to military bases overseas. It's just about what happens to ships overseas and what's happening in war mues. These lines, the domestic political violence in the United States, I call this the Euro-violent populism and the growing tensions in the country over the Iran War. These two lines, the domestic crisis and the international crisis, are about to come together. As I told my research team in the summer of 2024 and talks I gave in Chicago, my nightmare, they asked me what my nightmare scenario was. This was in the fall of 2024. I said, "My nightmare scenario is we have an international crisis at the same time as we have an election." In the fall of 2024, we really didn't have that. Now we do. And this is, we're heading into the fall of 2026 and this was always my nightmare scenario. Why? What does that mean? Those two things colliding, start to look like the 1960s. What happened in the 1960s? The 1960s. We had mass demonstrations. We had anti-war violence. We had anti-war terrorism with the weather underground. We had multiple assassinations that occurred, Martin Luther King. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. The convention in Chicago, there was just mass demonstration, Mayor Daly and Chicago gave a shoot to kill order. I already mentioned to you the weather underground string of bombs that they set off. What we faced in the 1960s was the collision of domestic political tension with an unpopular war. That's how you got the chaos of the 1966. I have a whole chapter in the book about the 1960s and why it was so particularly intense. So do you think that Trump is likely to lose the midterms as things stand? Do you think the Republicans are likely to lose? Here's the thing. If we have a mass casualty attack, this will increase the odds of Trump and the Republicans winning in the midterms. And I think if we have a world economic crisis without the mass casualty attack, then I think it's likely that the Republicans will lose in the midterms. So I think we have the reason I can't give you a clean answer to this, which I know people want. Because we have multiple specific issues here that are now as part of the spiraling violence. And three months is an awful long. It's a long time because that mass casualty attack could happen in October. And it doesn't have to be command directed by Iran. It can occur the mass casualty attack against Americans can occur because it's an inspired attack. The supreme leader is issuing statements that sound almost like Baghdadi. That was the leader of ISIS issuing statements to encourage inspired attacks. That was the suicide attacks in Paris in November 2015. They killed over 100 people. That was a San Bernardino. So we saw leaders inspire attacks before and the supreme leader statements are just are eerily close to the same words. Is the current US air campaign sustainable? You hinted at this early on that actually the US might be running out of some of their weapons. It's estimated that the daily cost of this this wolf for America is around $2 billion a day. And Iran's ability to continue these asymmetric attacks with drones and other things doesn't come as such a high cost and seems from the example you gave with the bowl early on to be more sustainable. So is there actually a risk here that the US will run out of weapons? I think that there's a risk will run out of interceptors to shoot down missiles. But even that's pretty low because what's really happening in our arsenal of weapons, Stephen is we are using a lot of intercepts or especially say patriot missile interceptors to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles. But we're drawing from stocks in Asia and in Europe. This is one of the reasons the linsky can't get patriot missiles. Not very many of them. It's because we're now moving most of the stocks here for the Persian Gulf. So I think that there's some chance we'll run out of the those interceptors, but even there I think it's well, but literally in terms of the bombs, it's it's an gross exaggeration to expect that we are going to run out of bombs to drop from aircraft. And there's two reasons for that. In order to make a precision bomb, most people don't know what it takes these days. And it's true, we can spend a lot of money making a precision bomb, but we can literally take dumb bombs, 500 pound dumb bombs and strap a backpack on them that will connect with GPS and have little cords to the fins of the bombs in order to turn a dumb bomb into a precision bomb. That's fanny packs are about 20,000 bucks, maybe 25. So we can make them much more easily than people think. So what do you think the United States slash Trump's objective is at this particular point? What is the goal? The real goal because there's lots of press conferences. I see where they say it's nuclear weapons. It's this that near that. I think President Trump's goal between now in the midterms is very simple, a symbolic victory. And what would that look like? That would look like a victory that would hold for a week, maybe two weeks. And that would be an opportunity to show that President Trump fought back. I think that's how this would be framed by President Trump supporters and those who support the war. And it would be, I think President Trump would say, and this shows what we can do if you let us win. I think his words would be a little different. Do you think he's stuck? Yes. I think he knows he's stuck. I've never met President Trump. My research here, Stephen, has always looked at the actual words by decision makers, but I can tell you is what his incentives look like. And the incentives that I've laid out have been quite predictive of his behavior. Do you want him to call you? Yes. And if he calls you, what is the advice you would give him and what to do next? I would like to thank you for your time. do is try to design a several year strategy to build a better balance of power in the region that we could over a period of time stabilize the world and stabilize the region. And I think that is the big issue that's being missed right now. But if he says, listen, Robert, what do I do in the next three months? Because we've got these mid-times coming up. Then the answer is don't call me. I want to help President Trump. But I want to help America for real. These are not necessarily at odds. But the bottom line here is that everything I have to say to President Trump about the next three months, we've just done on this podcast, Stephen. But I am absolutely delighted to talk about how to actually build a more secure future for America and for the Gulf. And I just don't think that's happening. And I don't think the pressure that this must lead to an electoral victory for President Trump is likely to make the true security for America and the Gulf more likely. In fact, it's going to go the other way around. It will encourage the escalation trap. So that's why I'm stuck by my own logic of the escalation trap here. It's literally we have to move past the idea that the only acceptable option is an option that guarantees political success for an individual, even if it means the president of the United States. What do you think Russia and China who are often positioned as adversaries of the United States? What do you think they're thinking right now? And what do they want to happen? I guess China is being hurt by the oil situation, Russia's got the same situation going on with Ukraine. What are they thinking? I think China does not want there to be global instability. But at the same time, they don't want this to be a situation where Iran comes out smashed. I think that's simply not in the cart. I also don't think China is going to insert itself in a very forceful way. I think the idea that Iran might come out and militarily support the United States here or militarily support with its own forces. Iran is not likely to happen. So I think that what you are why didn't they want Iran smashed to China for President Xi? He explained quite a bit of this at the summit. He said to President Trump, you're a declining power. Are you going to fall into what he called the through-sit-ed east trap? Meaning are you going to want your preventive war against China in Asia? And that's what President Xi said. What about Russia? What Russia is seeing is an opportunity to squeeze Europe economically. So I believe that what has been happening in the last few weeks here the last month is that Ukraine has actually been gaining not just strength with drones, but in a specific area called Crimea, which Russia took and Putin took in 2014. There's been a mass exodus out of Crimea in the last weeks. Ukraine is putting more and more pressure on the supply lines coming into Crimea and also coming into Ukraine from Russia. And what Putin I think is wants to have happen is that he will likely escalate more, put more pressure on Europe at exactly the time in the fall when the world economic crisis is growing because of Iran. And that is going to squeeze Europe. Make it hard for Europe to fulfill the commitment they just made to Zelensky of $80 billion more dollars. I guess my last question then, before I go to the diary, if you were to predict how the next couple of months play out, what would your prediction be? And this is on a on probability, 51% probability of outcomes. What happens next? I think we're going to in the next few months cross the threshold with ground operations into either one of the islands or part of the coast of Iran because the world economic crisis is going to grow. The price of gasoline in the United States is likely to grow. And President Trump is going to be even more desperate to try to find a way to look make it at least appear as if he has a plan to open hormones. It may not be real, it may only be symbolic, but I think Stephen that the where we are heading is the more the crisis, the world economic crisis increases. And if there's a mass casualty attack, the more that crisis increases, the more President Trump is under pressure to demonstrate, he has a way to open hormones, even if it's far off and he needs a down payment on that, he needs something to show tangibly. And I think that's where the pressure will come from for crossing into stage three. I think it's worth saying in these conversations as well that there are 90 plus million Iranians who currently live in Iran and who are caught in the midst of this craziness in chaos. And sometimes in these conversations, we kind of don't really think about the fact that there's a nation that's just bigger than the nation I come from, the United Kingdom, who are right in the heart of this. And so every time Trump says he's bombed more people over the weekends or he's firing bombs, I always think about the real families that are caught right in the midst of all of this that didn't choose this wall, that are living in an environment where bombs are dropping on their heads. And I think for everybody all around the world that listen to this show, whether you're in the UK or the United States or Australia or Canada or wherever you are, South America, Asia or wherever Africa, it's worth taking a second just to imagine what it would be like to know that the United States are dropping lots of bombs on the nation in which you live and how that would feel psychologically, how that would feel for your children, how that would feel for you yourself, how that would impact your day-to-day life. And also, I guess the uncertainty of not knowing when it's going to end, if it's going to end, and also hearing this term escalation trap and thinking that, you know, this is actually going to escalate and troops are going to come into my country. And so there's a real human cost to this, which sometimes we leave out of these conversations. And I have students and at the University of Chicago who are Iranian, they have families in Iran and they ask me questions about this all the time. And sadly, what I have to tell them is that real hope for the Iranian people is five or ten years away. And as this war escalates, it pushes closer to ten than five. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where they'll ask us a little question for the next. The question left for you is if you could go back to a certain time and see something occur or ask someone something you've always wondered about, what/who would that person/place be and why? I think the key person I would ask would be Franklin Donor Roosevelt. He died before we dropped the atomic bombs. I would want to know from him when he was developing and supporting the atomic bombs, did he imagine the world that would be created by the atomic bombs? Because in my lifetime, war has been a defining feature of my work. But the prospects of nuclear war have always overhung quite a bit of our work. We never want to get to anything like that. But I'd like to know from the person who had the most authority power in order to make that future happen, who never even saw it. Didn't even see it happen. But knew it was coming. I'd like to know from him what did he think was truly going to come? Because I think that this would be extremely useful to know whether or not our leaders truly, truly how far out they can really see and understand how much their decisions today shape the world for decades to come. Robert, thank you. We're very excited to hear your book. September 22nd. So do we have a pre-order link yet? It's just up. I have to say, when we first sat down, you said a bunch of things in terms of what would happen next. And I'm not sure I believe them all because I don't know anything about war. And you never really think about the psychology changes both at home, but also where the bombs are dropping. This escalation that happens across all wars that has happened also in Ukraine and Russia at the same time. But now we're seeing cloud and Iran. So I have to give you a credit because you have been unfortunately you've been right, I should say. I would agree with the word unfortunately. So this is part of me would like to be happy about this, but the truth is, and this is what I just was talking to my 97 year old mother in law about is I told her that you had invited me again. She's 97 years old. Can't even get out of bed, Stephen. And I told her that it was one of the saddest things I had to agree to. And it's because of what it really means. The reason you're having me here is because things are bad for our country. And I want nothing more than for things to be better for our country. Well, Robert, thank you so much for coming back. And you know, if we do come back again and convene, and I hope next time it's on better terms because we're analysing how it all resulted in peace for everybody, especially the people that are living in a round right now. Robert, thank you. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]