# 39 Days of War: Did the US and Israel Actually Fail to Break Iran? | In Our Defence | S3 | Ep 46

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 10 Apr 2026, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/71230617/10_apr_26_defence_10_april_128.mp3

After 39 days of war, Iran has agreed to a temporary ceasefire and the Strait of Hormuz is back in focus. But the big question remains: what exactly did this war achieve? In this episode of In Our Defence, host Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan unpack how the conflict escalated, why the war's goals seemed to keep shifting, and why, despite taking enormous punishment, Iran still ended up at the negotiating table without complete submission. We get into: How the US and Israel framed the war, and how those aims evolved Whether Iran was defeated militarily but survived strategically What this conflict revealed about air defence and modern missile warfare Why this war may go down as a lesson in the limits of overwhelming force Whether the ceasefire can actually hold And the biggest long-term question of all: does this make Iran more likely to want the bomb? This is not just a story about Iran, Israel, or the US. It is also a story about miscalculation, resilience, and what modern war looks like when even massive military superiority cannot produce a neat political outcome. Tune In! Produced by Areeb Raza Sound mixed by Suraj Singh Link To NY Times Article- https://www.nytimes.com/2026/0...

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
[0:09] Speaker 2: takes you inside the world of conflict. I'm your host,
[0:12] Speaker 2: Deve Goswami, and every week I sit down with experts
[0:16] Speaker 2: and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
[0:20] Speaker 2: to decode all things to do with India security and
[0:23] Speaker 2: explore what it truly means to serve. Get ready for
[0:27] Speaker 2: stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength.
[0:32] Speaker 1: This is in our Defense.
[0:35] Speaker 2: I apologize for coming back after a break of a week.
[0:38] Speaker 2: You know, there were certain work commitments that both me
[0:41] Speaker 2: and and Deep had last week because of which our
[0:43] Speaker 2: sort of dates and timings didn't really match, and we
[0:46] Speaker 2: couldn't really find a time to record an episode because
[0:49] Speaker 2: I mean, this month has been third time to do
[0:52] Speaker 2: in a defense considering all that's been going on. Though honestly,
[0:55] Speaker 2: this is this week is something I actually want to
[0:57] Speaker 2: talk about, not the run war at all, because there
[1:01] Speaker 2: was a significant development within India uh India achieving criticality
[1:06] Speaker 2: of a particular type of nuclear power plant, which, as
[1:11] Speaker 2: you may have read in news reports, is stage two
[1:14] Speaker 2: of Homibaba's grand three stage plan to make India fully
[1:17] Speaker 2: self reliant on nuclear power. Uh, it's it's uh of
[1:22] Speaker 2: what I've read, it's super super important. It makes the
[1:25] Speaker 2: India only one of two countries in the world to
[1:27] Speaker 2: have done that. But then of course I happened and
[1:32] Speaker 2: Tramp happened. Hey, they've got to be back. A week
[1:35] Speaker 2: is a long time in politics, as we've discovered. Yeah,
[1:38] Speaker 2: so we'll we'll we'll keep that nuclear episode for sometime
[1:41] Speaker 2: in the future. Even then, it's not really much about defense.
[1:43] Speaker 2: It's more about you know, civil energy. But I think
[1:48] Speaker 2: it ties really well into the kind of discussions that
[1:50] Speaker 2: we usually have, especially with terms of self reliance.
[1:53] Speaker 3: I don't forget. So third, third April is and something
[1:57] Speaker 3: we've discussed in our defense extensively twice setting and then
[2:01] Speaker 3: three days later you have the PBFR. So that's two
[2:04] Speaker 3: big milestones, one national security and one energy security milestone.
[2:10] Speaker 2: But we'll move to and we'll talk about something else
[2:12] Speaker 2: to do with the word nuclear. The war in Middle
[2:15] Speaker 2: East that's come to a pause. So what do we
[2:18] Speaker 2: have now we've had thirty nine days of the war.
[2:21] Speaker 2: Iran has finally agreed to open the state of Hormus,
[2:26] Speaker 2: which Trump said President Donald Trump in the US that
[2:30] Speaker 2: if Iran did not do so, he would end a civilization.
[2:33] Speaker 2: I'm actually quoting the President of the US verbit and whatever.
[2:36] Speaker 2: That's not a paraphrase. Unfortunately. The strange bit, by the way,
[2:41] Speaker 2: is that thirty nine days ago the strait of Hormus
[2:44] Speaker 2: was very much open. It was the reason this will
[2:47] Speaker 2: need to reopen. The Hormus came into being was because
[2:50] Speaker 2: US and its pal Israel decided to bomb Iran and
[2:55] Speaker 2: they took out the top leadership. Iran has suffered some
[2:58] Speaker 2: serious damages to its missile development capabilities. It suffered damage
[3:04] Speaker 2: to stop leadership like I, like I talked about, Supremeia
[3:07] Speaker 2: comedy was standarded on day one of the strikes, but
[3:12] Speaker 2: it's not been completely cowed down. I think it would
[3:18] Speaker 2: be fair to say that US and Israel have not
[3:21] Speaker 2: been able to achieve their political aims, even if they've
[3:24] Speaker 2: been able to achieve most of their military aims. As
[3:26] Speaker 2: Donald Trump keeps saying, so what has happened in the
[3:31] Speaker 2: last thirty nine days, where are we right now? What
[3:34] Speaker 2: may happen in the future, and why did we even
[3:36] Speaker 2: get to this place in the futures in the first place?
[3:39] Speaker 2: Is something will decode on this episode s some deep
[3:42] Speaker 2: but you know, like I was talking about, it's been
[3:44] Speaker 2: a very contrasting week. Like we've had this excellence leave
[3:48] Speaker 2: of sorry science in India. Similarly you've had this is
[3:51] Speaker 2: also the week you have humanity reaching the farthest point
[3:55] Speaker 2: in space.
[3:56] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, absolutely what a time to be alive.
[3:58] Speaker 2: And you have the president of that very country who
[4:01] Speaker 2: sent those humans to space, threatening to wipe out an
[4:04] Speaker 2: entire civilization.
[4:05] Speaker 3: Plumbing the depths of you know, politics as in like
[4:09] Speaker 3: the absolute natives, and you have the absolute achievement, the
[4:13] Speaker 3: heights of human achievement. But you know, be that as
[4:16] Speaker 3: it may. I think the point about him ending civilization,
[4:20] Speaker 3: those kind of rants were. I think it's that mad
[4:22] Speaker 3: man theory that we've seen in the seventies with Richard Nixon.
[4:25] Speaker 3: I mean, he was all famously known as that mad
[4:28] Speaker 3: Man president because he could then be you know, Kissinger
[4:32] Speaker 3: could go around and saying, hey, listen, this guy's unhitched.
[4:34] Speaker 3: You got to cut a deal with him, because otherwise
[4:36] Speaker 3: he's got a new Q. You know. So I think
[4:38] Speaker 3: Trump has used a bit of that Madman hypothesis here
[4:41] Speaker 3: in this Iran thing to try and get a deal
[4:44] Speaker 3: out of the Iranians a pause. Actually it's not a
[4:46] Speaker 3: deal yet. They're going to negotiate the deal. But I mean,
[4:49] Speaker 3: you look at the optics of it. Which country in
[4:52] Speaker 3: the twenty first century has been under relentless bombing by
[4:57] Speaker 3: two of the most powerful air forces in the world,
[5:00] Speaker 3: world and the soul superpower, the United States. Nearly forty
[5:05] Speaker 3: days of relentless bombing, thirteen thousand sorties flown, tens of
[5:09] Speaker 3: thousands of targets hit, They've lost their force. There are
[5:13] Speaker 3: navies at the bottom of the Arabian Sea, the Gulf
[5:15] Speaker 3: of Oman, wherever they've been hit. And this country is
[5:20] Speaker 3: dictating terms to the United States. You look not so
[5:23] Speaker 3: far ago, you know, not so long ago, twenty five
[5:26] Speaker 3: years back. Taliban in two thousand and one fled Cobul
[5:30] Speaker 3: the minute the American bombs started dropping. They fled. Two
[5:33] Speaker 3: thousand and three, Saddam Hussein packed up. That was also
[5:37] Speaker 3: because there was a ground invasion. Right, Let's not forget
[5:39] Speaker 3: one hundred and seventy thousand troops there. Iran is still
[5:42] Speaker 3: standing after forty days of bombing, and they're dictating terms
[5:46] Speaker 3: to the United States. It's unprecedented. I mean, a lot
[5:49] Speaker 3: of people are saying, this is the you know, the
[5:52] Speaker 3: Americans have realized the limits of their power, as in,
[5:57] Speaker 3: you cannot bomb your way into regime change achieve your
[6:00] Speaker 3: objectives from the air. You need to, you know, do
[6:03] Speaker 3: a ground invasion. They thought they had a shortcut going,
[6:05] Speaker 3: but clearly the Iranians have proved them wrong. So I
[6:09] Speaker 3: think it's a it is an enormous miscalculation that Donald
[6:14] Speaker 3: Trump took and that his legacy is going to be
[6:17] Speaker 3: this very controversial decision. What is it that made him
[6:21] Speaker 3: invade Iran on the twenty eighth of February, And how
[6:24] Speaker 3: did you get into this war? With four objectives which
[6:27] Speaker 3: you are outlined at the beginning, which was to curtain
[6:30] Speaker 3: Iran's nuclear weapons program, to basically curtail their enrichment program.
[6:37] Speaker 3: They wanted to halt their enrichment at sixty percent, sees
[6:40] Speaker 3: the remaining fuel the four and forty kg's h gu
[6:44] Speaker 3: stop them from getting ballistic missiles, you know, dismantled that
[6:48] Speaker 3: program and disrupt their network of proxies who these Hezbollahs
[6:53] Speaker 3: and all that. Iran has swopped the game. They've moved
[6:57] Speaker 3: this whole game away to the strait of hormones. Talking
[7:00] Speaker 3: about the four objectives, and when you talking about straight
[7:02] Speaker 3: and homost everybody in the world is affected by that,
[7:05] Speaker 3: by the choking of the straight of foremost. So I mean,
[7:08] Speaker 3: this is a game that I would say, it's a
[7:12] Speaker 3: David and Goliath kind of struggle, except guess who's David
[7:15] Speaker 3: and gets who's Goliath in this?
[7:17] Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, So why did us do this is something
[7:20] Speaker 2: we'll get to later in the episode. And on that point,
[7:23] Speaker 2: it is a fantastic report in The New York Times
[7:25] Speaker 2: just published this morning, written by Jonathan Swan and Maggie
[7:29] Speaker 2: Haberman to veteran White House reporters who are coming out
[7:33] Speaker 2: of the book, and they've detailed the one month prior
[7:36] Speaker 2: to the US invasion of Iran, And I'll get to
[7:38] Speaker 2: that in a bit, but you know, staying on the
[7:41] Speaker 2: point of Iran and what's been able to do, like
[7:44] Speaker 2: you were talking about how this war has seen, you know,
[7:47] Speaker 2: changing of goal posts. First it was a regime change.
[7:49] Speaker 2: Then it always has been that you can never get
[7:52] Speaker 2: a nuclear weapon. On that point, thankfully, there's been no
[7:54] Speaker 2: changing of goal posts. But first it was regime change,
[7:57] Speaker 2: and then then there was talk about capping it's missile development,
[7:59] Speaker 2: and and then, like you said, it suddenly became all
[8:01] Speaker 2: about the state of hornets, which would not even have
[8:03] Speaker 2: been a point if what had not taken Rice in
[8:05] Speaker 2: the first place, which is something many people have pointed
[8:08] Speaker 2: out ad nauseum. But I just want to, like, you know,
[8:13] Speaker 2: not talk about the US and Israel for a second, because,
[8:16] Speaker 2: as we will explore in the later part of this episode,
[8:19] Speaker 2: that they may have been blinded by certain things and
[8:21] Speaker 2: by their own biasedness and maybe you know, not being
[8:25] Speaker 2: able to see the really the fuller picture. I want
[8:27] Speaker 2: to talk about the larger world, people like you in
[8:30] Speaker 2: the strategic community, people like you who watched stuff like
[8:33] Speaker 2: this very closely. People are like other countries. Let's say India,
[8:36] Speaker 2: Let's say China, Let's Russia, let's say in France, UK, Europe.
[8:40] Speaker 2: Do you think the entire world has been taken by
[8:43] Speaker 2: surprise by the sheer resilience that Irana.
[8:46] Speaker 3: Absolutely, without a doubt. I mean, I can guarantee this.
[8:49] Speaker 3: Nobody except possibly the Iranians figured out that they were
[8:54] Speaker 3: resilient enough to see this through for forty days. Everyone
[8:57] Speaker 3: thought the regime would collapse in a couple of days, right,
[9:00] Speaker 3: And this is the point that we've met in our
[9:02] Speaker 3: defense in the past as well. When you underestimate the
[9:06] Speaker 3: resilience of a people to fight, that is when you
[9:09] Speaker 3: start making assessments. Cy warfare is not about bean counts.
[9:14] Speaker 3: It's not about the number of missiles that a country has,
[9:16] Speaker 3: or a number of weapons of mass destruction or bombs,
[9:20] Speaker 3: or fighter jets or warships. Those are bean counts. Right
[9:24] Speaker 3: at the end of the day, it's a human behind
[9:26] Speaker 3: all of those machines that has the ability to launch
[9:28] Speaker 3: them deploy them in combat. And when you miss that
[9:33] Speaker 3: resilience factor, that is when you start making catastrophic mistakes.
[9:38] Speaker 3: That's what leads you into Ukraine. For instance, what put
[9:41] Speaker 3: In did with in twenty twenty two in Ukraine when
[9:43] Speaker 3: he entered Ukraine thinking that the Ukrainian military would collapse.
[9:47] Speaker 3: They didn't, right, That was a big mistake. Then the
[9:50] Speaker 3: United States and the West they thought that now that
[9:53] Speaker 3: Russias in Russia will collapse. It neither happened. Right. You've
[9:57] Speaker 3: underestimated the resilience of the Russians missed underestimated the resilience
[10:01] Speaker 3: of the Ukrainians. You did not Israel did not think
[10:05] Speaker 3: Hamas had it in it to carry out the seventh
[10:09] Speaker 3: of October massacre, right, which they did. Now, that's the
[10:13] Speaker 3: horrific catastrophe. And that was not a failure of intelligence.
[10:17] Speaker 3: It was a failure to read your adversary. We've done
[10:21] Speaker 3: ours in small, smaller ways, whether it was the IPKF
[10:25] Speaker 3: in Sri Lanka. We did not read the LTT for
[10:29] Speaker 3: what it really was. We did not read the militants
[10:34] Speaker 3: inside the Golden Temple in nineteen eighty four. That was
[10:37] Speaker 3: another big mistake. So when you make these mistakes, then
[10:39] Speaker 3: you get led into these kind of situations, these traps.
[10:42] Speaker 3: And I think that is the trap that Trump entered
[10:46] Speaker 3: without realizing that the Iranians had it in them to
[10:49] Speaker 3: last for so long. He thought that, you know, this
[10:52] Speaker 3: wave of bombing, you destroy their infrastructure, you shread their military,
[10:57] Speaker 3: and sooner or later they will kind of collapse. But
[11:00] Speaker 3: that didn't happen. And when that didn't happen, then you
[11:03] Speaker 3: have to start looking for off ramps. Whatever is available.
[11:07] Speaker 3: You celebrate, you know, the rescue of a pilot, just
[11:11] Speaker 3: one pilot. I mean, it's a remarkable operation. I must
[11:13] Speaker 3: say that you have to give it to the Americans,
[11:16] Speaker 3: the kind of resources they deployed to just get that
[11:19] Speaker 3: one pilot back. It has never happened in human history
[11:22] Speaker 3: that one hundred plus machines were deployed to bring by
[11:27] Speaker 3: the way, yeah, we've spoken about that. Yeah, but at
[11:30] Speaker 3: the end of the day, they literally wiped out of
[11:33] Speaker 3: mini air force to try and get that one pilot back.
[11:36] Speaker 3: But here we are, after forty days. Trump has nothing
[11:40] Speaker 3: to show for it, yes, and Iran has everything to
[11:42] Speaker 3: show for So. You know, as we've discussed in the past,
[11:45] Speaker 3: when a big superpower gets into a fight with a
[11:49] Speaker 3: small country like Iran, which is I mean it's the
[11:53] Speaker 3: seventeenth largest country in the world, but it's been under
[11:55] Speaker 3: NonStop sanctions. I mean, Iran has been under global sanctions
[12:00] Speaker 3: since Trump was thirty two. Yeah. Yes, that the fact
[12:04] Speaker 3: that they could last so long against the United States,
[12:07] Speaker 3: that's their victory. The little guy just has to survive.
[12:11] Speaker 3: The big guy has to comprehensively defeat the little guy.
[12:16] Speaker 3: He has to be sprawled and as Trump has put
[12:19] Speaker 3: it in his own words, he has to cry uncle. Yes,
[12:21] Speaker 3: Iranians didn't cry uncle, and they've actually if you look
[12:24] Speaker 3: at the way they've fought this thing, they've been remarkably
[12:28] Speaker 3: mature about the whole thing. Yeah, you know, the their messaging,
[12:32] Speaker 3: the tone, the tenor. They never once resorted to abuse.
[12:37] Speaker 3: They actually use a lot of satire if you look
[12:39] Speaker 3: at it. Yes, that has been that's the term I.
[12:42] Speaker 2: W all their embassies across the world.
[12:46] Speaker 3: There's a lot for us to learn from this. You
[12:49] Speaker 3: know that your embassies in foreign countries are actually your
[12:52] Speaker 3: force multiplier. Actually you know, yeah, right, Which.
[12:56] Speaker 2: Is the question, Which is the point I've been trying
[12:59] Speaker 2: to understand since this morning. You know, actually was put
[13:01] Speaker 2: on stand by alert by my editor was that you know,
[13:04] Speaker 2: you may have to rush to the newsroom because the
[13:06] Speaker 2: deadline was ending around five thirty at that time. Yeah,
[13:09] Speaker 2: and like you know, be in early. So I woke
[13:12] Speaker 2: up around like five five fifteen, had my alarm set.
[13:15] Speaker 2: I was supposed to be office a frown seven in case,
[13:17] Speaker 2: you know, sh hit the fan. I saw a lot
[13:21] Speaker 2: from overnight catch. I was like, okay, sleep ten more minutes.
[13:25] Speaker 2: But but no, So what have we been waning to
[13:26] Speaker 2: unders for the last six seven hours? Is then why
[13:30] Speaker 2: the decision to cease fire? Because like you said, if
[13:35] Speaker 2: you read the two statements, Trump, like you said, really
[13:38] Speaker 2: has might not much to show for it, right, Like
[13:41] Speaker 2: you know, it's the United statement by the way, almost
[13:44] Speaker 2: is like you know, they're saying, we won, we we've
[13:47] Speaker 2: made the U s sort of you know, sort of
[13:49] Speaker 2: agree to our terms. And you know, Trump very interestingly,
[13:51] Speaker 2: Trump has said that the ten proposals that Iran has
[13:55] Speaker 2: submitted are workable. Now, lots of controversy about whether or
[14:00] Speaker 2: not those ten proposals contain this one sentence or this
[14:03] Speaker 2: one term that's its acceptance of uranium enrichment. Iran, for
[14:07] Speaker 2: some for very good reasons, I think, has put up
[14:10] Speaker 2: multiple versions of the statement all over the place, so
[14:12] Speaker 2: no one really knows which are the others ten that
[14:14] Speaker 2: the US or the Trump may have seen. But the
[14:16] Speaker 2: point I'm getting trying to get to Sandpi is that
[14:20] Speaker 2: the way we understand Donald Trump, the way you've been
[14:22] Speaker 2: describing him, he always wants that victory, that grand victory,
[14:26] Speaker 2: so that that's already that photographic. Yeah, like that's what happened.
[14:31] Speaker 2: So are we just like maybe not really seeing that.
[14:33] Speaker 2: Maybe the US domestic audience is not seeing in that way,
[14:36] Speaker 2: So perhaps Trump does not care or what's going on? Like,
[14:39] Speaker 2: why do you think Trump has agreed to agree to US?
[14:41] Speaker 2: He square right now.
[14:42] Speaker 3: Okay, let's dive into Trump's appointment book for twenty twenty six.
[14:46] Speaker 3: What's happening in next month? Get in China fourteenth to
[14:50] Speaker 3: fifteenth of May. He's going to be with Chijin in Beijing, right,
[14:54] Speaker 3: Can he afford to be caught in this unwinnable war
[14:57] Speaker 3: where he's bombing Iran d night and the Iranians are
[15:01] Speaker 3: standing up and they're not like flustered. Here here are
[15:05] Speaker 3: our demands, you know, they're actually throwing it a set
[15:08] Speaker 3: of demands to them. It's almost like that thing of
[15:11] Speaker 3: that movie, that nineteen fifty satire, Peter Seller's movie The
[15:15] Speaker 3: Mouse That Roared, which is about that small little country
[15:17] Speaker 3: that threatens to invade the United States. So it's a
[15:19] Speaker 3: bit like that. Okay, that's his first appointment, first significant appointment.
[15:24] Speaker 3: May fourteen, fifteenth, Chi Jinping, Beijing, Great Hall of the
[15:28] Speaker 3: People and all that it will be. It will be
[15:30] Speaker 3: a kind of a display of the kind that we've
[15:32] Speaker 3: possibly not seen in recent times. Chi Jinping is going
[15:35] Speaker 3: to roll out the red carpet to say that I'm
[15:37] Speaker 3: the Emperor, and the Emperor has agreed, has deigned to
[15:41] Speaker 3: meet the President of the United States. Right, he's got
[15:45] Speaker 3: to look strong for that one. True, the second appointment.
[15:49] Speaker 3: Fourth of July, two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the
[15:52] Speaker 3: US independence US Independence Day, it's going to be one
[15:55] Speaker 3: of the grandest celebrations. Right.
[15:57] Speaker 2: That's another reason for Trump not to be involved in
[16:00] Speaker 2: this unending, unwinnable fight.
[16:02] Speaker 3: Right. And then as we go deeper into the year,
[16:06] Speaker 3: towards the end of it, actually October midterms, third of November,
[16:12] Speaker 3: you're going to have a uh rejig, they say in
[16:17] Speaker 3: in the House. That is going to be the election
[16:22] Speaker 3: that is going to decide Trump's future, right, Yeah, if
[16:27] Speaker 3: he loses there, if he loses the House, he's going
[16:30] Speaker 3: to be a lame duck present for the next two years.
[16:33] Speaker 3: He'll have not you know nothing, he won't have much
[16:36] Speaker 3: time then after that. So here he is looking at
[16:39] Speaker 3: these three big things and he's now figuring it out.
[16:42] Speaker 3: He's a he's a smart businessman, and he's now picked
[16:45] Speaker 3: his exit strategy. Moment that okay, here's the time. Let
[16:51] Speaker 3: me escalate, to de escalate, take this thing, get into
[16:55] Speaker 3: this ceasefire thing with the Iranians, talk to them, and
[16:59] Speaker 3: then pronounce a mission accomplish exit. So he's got that
[17:03] Speaker 3: exit or that offram that he wanted. However, there is
[17:08] Speaker 3: every reason to believe this could also be a ploy,
[17:12] Speaker 3: possibly buying time for more forces to come in, because
[17:17] Speaker 3: again we hear that there are forces streaming into the
[17:21] Speaker 3: West Asia theater. There is a second marine expeditionary unit
[17:27] Speaker 3: that should be reaching there in another couple of days,
[17:29] Speaker 3: which started I think on the twenty sixth of May,
[17:32] Speaker 3: towards April. Towards the end of April that should be
[17:36] Speaker 3: in position. There are artllery units being moved in, ten
[17:39] Speaker 3: thousand plus troops, so there is a steady build up
[17:43] Speaker 3: of US forces. So there is also, therefore the reason
[17:46] Speaker 3: to suspect that this is just a pause in the fighting.
[17:51] Speaker 3: It's just a pause to give the market some time
[17:53] Speaker 3: to breathe, oil prices to recover, and then you can
[17:57] Speaker 3: go back again at that. But I would, you know,
[18:00] Speaker 3: I would think that it would be the first thing,
[18:02] Speaker 3: which is that, look, Trump has had enough and he says, okay,
[18:06] Speaker 3: let me get the best out of this deal. The
[18:09] Speaker 3: Iranians aren't, you know, buckling down. And as I said,
[18:13] Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the state of Hormoves was never
[18:15] Speaker 3: on the table. You were looking at something else, and
[18:18] Speaker 3: it's now they've moved the gold post. The Iranians have
[18:21] Speaker 3: moved the gold post. The goal was always these four
[18:23] Speaker 3: things that I outlined, and literally overnight it's now become
[18:27] Speaker 3: up the Strait of Hormones, which, as you said, was
[18:30] Speaker 3: open in the first place on the twentieth of February.
[18:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty percent of world's oil, most of Gulf soil, Yeah,
[18:36] Speaker 2: flows through close to the state of Hormones. And while
[18:40] Speaker 2: the US can proud, Trump actually has gone out and
[18:43] Speaker 2: said that, well, the US can be safe in the
[18:46] Speaker 2: feeling that you know, we don't really take much oil
[18:48] Speaker 2: from at least, But it's a cascading effect, right, I mean,
[18:50] Speaker 2: once you disrupt the global economy to that level, it's
[18:53] Speaker 2: going to impact everybody at the show. I mean, fuel
[18:57] Speaker 2: prices have been going up in the US as well. Yeah,
[18:59] Speaker 2: I think it went up by a couple of dollars
[19:01] Speaker 2: last week.
[19:02] Speaker 3: In fact, it's sixty percent hike since in fuel prices
[19:06] Speaker 3: since the twenty eighth of February. And look at the statement,
[19:09] Speaker 3: look at the Iranian statement where Iran has said that
[19:12] Speaker 3: they are going to open the Strait of home moves.
[19:14] Speaker 3: But the Iranians are going to be involved. They're going to.
[19:16] Speaker 2: Decide who passes through in coordination with us. In coordination
[19:20] Speaker 2: with iranis my god, that was never ever had that,
[19:23] Speaker 2: they never had that. You have allowed them to enter
[19:25] Speaker 2: the Strait of Home Moves. You've allowed them to create
[19:28] Speaker 2: the toll barrier over there, and now you have all
[19:32] Speaker 2: of those us you know, analysts who have figured out
[19:36] Speaker 2: what Iran could earn from the Strait of hor Moves.
[19:39] Speaker 2: They could possibly end up earning more money from the
[19:42] Speaker 2: Strait of Home Moves than they could from their oil.
[19:45] Speaker 2: You know, that's a lot of money. Two million dollars
[19:47] Speaker 2: a ship. Do the math, two million dollars per ship.
[19:49] Speaker 2: If they charge that money, people will happily pay. Thank God,
[19:52] Speaker 2: thank you for letting our ships pass. Two million dollars,
[19:56] Speaker 2: one hundred ships, one hundred and fifty ships a day.
[19:59] Speaker 3: You're looking at a revenue in excess of sixty to
[20:02] Speaker 3: seventy billion dollars a year, which you earn.
[20:05] Speaker 2: For doing nothing. You're just there. You're not for being there, Yeah,
[20:10] Speaker 2: for being there exactly so. You have turned the Strait
[20:12] Speaker 2: of Hormoes into a Suez Canal. When no one's first
[20:16] Speaker 2: anility canal. Yeah, with none of the facilities of the
[20:19] Speaker 2: Suez Canal.
[20:20] Speaker 3: And here's the thing, I mean, my I just put
[20:23] Speaker 3: on my alarmist scenario cap on a thing with Gorvin Ghita,
[20:31] Speaker 3: and I said, look, they've already got the second choke point.
[20:33] Speaker 3: The Arabian Peninsula has three choke points. It's got straight
[20:36] Speaker 3: up hormoes, it's got Babelmanda on the red seat, and
[20:39] Speaker 3: it has the Suez Canal. Now, the Barbel Mandab is
[20:43] Speaker 3: under the control of the Huti Iranian proxies. They can
[20:46] Speaker 3: turn it off whenever they want to. What protects the
[20:49] Speaker 3: Suez Canal thing from Iranian missiles? Look, the Suez Canal
[20:54] Speaker 3: is a ninety six kilometer long canal, a man made
[20:58] Speaker 3: canal where ships are supposed to go at nine knots,
[21:02] Speaker 3: which means that even a US super carrier whose strength
[21:06] Speaker 3: is high speed maneuvers it's moving at twenty knots. Plus
[21:10] Speaker 3: it's got escorts. Even that US super carrier has to
[21:13] Speaker 3: move at eight knots quite upward passage or downward passage,
[21:19] Speaker 3: depending on which side they're going. And that's a it's
[21:22] Speaker 3: a priming plant target, you know, So would the Iranians
[21:27] Speaker 3: not as if they were to escalate, would they not
[21:29] Speaker 3: start targeting you know, ships on the Swez Canal. They
[21:32] Speaker 3: have missiles, They've targeted Diego, Garcia. They could do that
[21:35] Speaker 3: on the Swis Connal. So effectively Iran has and this
[21:38] Speaker 3: is something I've said over a month back, Iran has
[21:41] Speaker 3: the Arabian Peninsula in a bag.
[21:44] Speaker 2: And you made it realize that by this war, by
[21:46] Speaker 2: the way, which was never for up for negotiation, Suez Kanna,
[21:50] Speaker 2: the Strait of Hormos was never up for Iranian control.
[21:54] Speaker 2: You've literally legitimized it. That is, you know, Trump's biggest contribution.
[22:00] Speaker 2: That's may become his legacy. Which is why you know,
[22:02] Speaker 2: I was discussing this with my father last night that
[22:05] Speaker 2: this war, what if you want to call it, will
[22:08] Speaker 2: actually go in the history books to be studied. For
[22:11] Speaker 2: you perhaps what not to do. It's a stupid war,
[22:15] Speaker 2: like you have been saying, yes.
[22:16] Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's a stupid war. It doesn't make sense.
[22:18] Speaker 3: I mean, you went into this war with one set
[22:20] Speaker 3: of assumptions, and warfare isn't fought by you know, assumptions
[22:25] Speaker 3: or oh, I have this great idea, let's go to
[22:27] Speaker 3: war immediately we carry out a series of strikes, what
[22:30] Speaker 3: will happen?
[22:32] Speaker 2: They'll collapse? You know who did that last right, We've
[22:35] Speaker 2: discussed this.
[22:37] Speaker 3: He went in this, He went to this political leadership says, Okay,
[22:40] Speaker 3: you know, we've got this great plan, cargil, We'll capture
[22:44] Speaker 3: the heights.
[22:44] Speaker 2: Then what then we'll starve the Indians.
[22:48] Speaker 3: Uh, you know they won't be able to resupply the thing,
[22:50] Speaker 3: and then what Uh, the Indians will collapse? Control outlandish assumptions,
[22:59] Speaker 3: purely tactic assumptions. And from those tactical assumptions, you're drawing
[23:03] Speaker 3: strategic conclusions. Yes, and you're making these catastrophic mistakes. I mean,
[23:07] Speaker 3: who comes up with these kind of things. Everybody in
[23:10] Speaker 3: the world saw it, you know, even the Democrats, And
[23:13] Speaker 3: some of the most seen advices come from some of
[23:17] Speaker 3: the former members of the Biden administration. They kept telling
[23:20] Speaker 3: Trump they knew where there was going. Right in the beginning.
[23:23] Speaker 3: Who was at the former NSCA Jake Sullivan, who said,
[23:26] Speaker 3: take the win, Trump, take the win, exiting You've changed
[23:29] Speaker 3: the regime. Because they knew exactly the kind of quicksand
[23:33] Speaker 3: that Trump was heading into. And he just kept driving
[23:37] Speaker 3: and driving and driving I'm going to drive deeper into
[23:40] Speaker 3: this quick side. And what I mean there are a
[23:43] Speaker 3: lot of people who are saying that, you know, this
[23:46] Speaker 3: is the end of American power. America has collapsed, and
[23:49] Speaker 3: America hasn't collapsed. I mean, I was there at a
[23:53] Speaker 3: book festival in Mumbai a week ago where a scholar
[23:58] Speaker 3: made this point that, oh, you know, it's great. Britain
[24:00] Speaker 3: lost its colonies and then it's a shadow of its
[24:03] Speaker 3: former self. The US is going to be the same thing. No, No,
[24:05] Speaker 3: the US is a very big, powerful country. It's one
[24:08] Speaker 3: of only possibly two countries in the world with that
[24:13] Speaker 3: size which are largely self sufficient in everything. Russia is
[24:18] Speaker 3: the other one. They're just two big countries like this.
[24:20] Speaker 3: There's the United States and there's Russia Russian Federation, and
[24:24] Speaker 3: these are i mean, truly self contained countries. They don't
[24:27] Speaker 3: need to depend on the rest of the world for anything.
[24:30] Speaker 3: In the United States, they're doing this as a hobby,
[24:33] Speaker 3: you know, for their controlling the world as a hobby.
[24:37] Speaker 3: They don't really need to do that. So because they're
[24:40] Speaker 3: you know, generating their own thing, they export more oil
[24:43] Speaker 3: than they consume, so there you go. They don't need
[24:46] Speaker 3: that thing. But they're doing it because they are the
[24:49] Speaker 3: world's soul superpower and they believe that, you know, spacks
[24:52] Speaker 3: Americana and all of that.
[24:56] Speaker 2: US is doing this as a hobby. Reminds you of
[24:58] Speaker 2: this piece by Josh carl And I can't remember, but
[25:01] Speaker 2: it's basically I think it's a five minutes six minute
[25:04] Speaker 2: segment where he talks about basically how the one thing
[25:07] Speaker 2: that the US does best is bombing people. I think
[25:11] Speaker 2: if you just google that on YouTube, just like Josh Sallen,
[25:14] Speaker 2: US bombing people, you'll find that, you'll find the cure.
[25:17] Speaker 3: I think funny. And you know the reason why they
[25:19] Speaker 3: call it the Iraq War, the Planistan War, the Cambodia War,
[25:22] Speaker 3: the Vietnam War, because then the war would would be
[25:24] Speaker 3: the US.
[25:25] Speaker 2: That's very damping.
[25:27] Speaker 3: Every war would be a US war. Right, So this is.
[25:30] Speaker 2: True, right right. We'll talk more about this, especially about
[25:34] Speaker 2: why US may have ended up going with this war
[25:37] Speaker 2: with the reference to that New York Times peace I
[25:39] Speaker 2: was talking about. But after a quick break.
[25:47] Speaker 1: In a world of contested potters and silent battles, one
[25:56] Speaker 1: voice cut through the noise. It was Israel able to
[26:01] Speaker 1: achieve its aim. When Israel bombed Iran.
[26:05] Speaker 2: Do you think that Chinese army is at war with itself?
[26:10] Speaker 1: Joined veteran war correspondent God of savon one of India's
[26:15] Speaker 1: most trusted voices in defense journalism.
[26:19] Speaker 2: Navaskar and jahand I'm God a seventh.
[26:22] Speaker 1: Listen to Chuck review with God of Savar on India
[26:26] Speaker 1: Today Podcasts, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube music and your favorite
[26:31] Speaker 1: audio utity platform Stay alert. The war for truck start here.
[26:45] Speaker 2: Welcome back. So something we've talked about so far, how
[26:49] Speaker 2: the stupid war as you call it rightfully, So I
[26:52] Speaker 2: think that should be the official name of it, by
[26:53] Speaker 2: the Iran.
[26:56] Speaker 3: Stupid War.
[26:57] Speaker 2: Perfect that's unforded. Over the last three nine days, we
[27:00] Speaker 2: are seeing a pause in fighting thanks to on paper
[27:05] Speaker 2: intervention by Pakistan. But what it now seems like six
[27:09] Speaker 2: hours benefit of hindsight, even trumpas set so China is
[27:12] Speaker 2: the lever that.
[27:13] Speaker 3: Seems to have pull really or the China was choked
[27:16] Speaker 3: for oil and they had a problem there and they're saying, listen, guys,
[27:19] Speaker 3: our refineries are you know, running dry? We need that oil,
[27:22] Speaker 3: you know.
[27:22] Speaker 2: So Pakistan was more like that is always has been.
[27:25] Speaker 2: It was like the place about to rent basically, can
[27:28] Speaker 2: you take some money, let us come meet their.
[27:32] Speaker 3: And we'll You know, Pakistan, you know, it thrives in chaos.
[27:36] Speaker 3: The one thing that terrified that we've discussed this before,
[27:39] Speaker 3: The one thing that terrifies generals in ravel Pindi is peace, peace,
[27:47] Speaker 3: peace and quiet civility.
[27:49] Speaker 2: How else will they have their mansions in London and Dubai.
[27:53] Speaker 3: So they charge rent, and they charge rent out of
[27:57] Speaker 3: conflict where somebody is like, you know, this guy sitting mercenaries.
[28:00] Speaker 3: Mercenaries will be out of business if there's no warfare,
[28:04] Speaker 3: you know. So they are like the mercenaries of the world,
[28:06] Speaker 3: and they need chaos. They need someone to come with them. Hey, listen,
[28:10] Speaker 3: I need this problem. I have a problem with Iran.
[28:12] Speaker 3: I need you to solve it. Well, yes, sir, that'll
[28:13] Speaker 3: be like four billion dollars. Yeah, right off, Saudis and Us.
[28:19] Speaker 3: They are running after me, you know. So that kind
[28:22] Speaker 3: of thing. That's where the Pakistanis are, right.
[28:24] Speaker 2: Right, So why did this war happen in the first place. Now,
[28:28] Speaker 2: there's a nice New York Times piece. We'll have a
[28:30] Speaker 2: link in the in the description because it's a fantastic reader.
[28:33] Speaker 2: It's a sort of a longish piece. It's I think
[28:35] Speaker 2: a chapter from an upcoming book written by Nadan Swan
[28:38] Speaker 2: and Maggie Haberman, both of them are veteran White House
[28:40] Speaker 2: reporters for the New York Times. I think I hadn't
[28:44] Speaker 2: advantage over you this Times and deep I've read the piece.
[28:46] Speaker 2: You just get some glimps of it, so you'll probably
[28:49] Speaker 2: get to read it a bit after the episode, but
[28:52] Speaker 2: you know, I'll just give highlights for our listeners of viewers.
[28:54] Speaker 2: It's nothing that it's not only something that people don't
[28:56] Speaker 2: already know about. It's just that the way they've recounted
[28:59] Speaker 2: it much.
[29:00] Speaker 3: More granual details, details.
[29:02] Speaker 2: With quotes and statements of what was spoken, by whom
[29:04] Speaker 2: and when right. But what the piece recounts is basically
[29:08] Speaker 2: a feb leven a meeting between Donald Trump and Natanya
[29:12] Speaker 2: who in Washington, d C.
[29:13] Speaker 3: In the White.
[29:14] Speaker 2: House and usually in the Situation Room, which the piece
[29:17] Speaker 2: says is something is a place in the White House
[29:19] Speaker 2: where foreign leaders are not usually taken. It's usually used
[29:22] Speaker 2: by the US National Security Establishment monitor national security threats.
[29:28] Speaker 2: It's the it's the room that the famous photo when
[29:31] Speaker 2: Osama was killed and Obama was seen.
[29:34] Speaker 3: A smaller so apparently.
[29:37] Speaker 2: What happened on feb leven was there was a one hour,
[29:39] Speaker 2: one and a half hour presentation done by nata Ya
[29:41] Speaker 2: who and the chief of Mozart, the Israeli spy agency.
[29:44] Speaker 2: He joined virtually to most of Trump's close aids, except
[29:49] Speaker 2: interestingly JD. Vans, who was elsewhere. So you had the
[29:54] Speaker 2: White House Chief of Staff, You had the State of
[29:56] Speaker 2: st Sorry Secretary of State Mark Rubio, You had the
[29:59] Speaker 2: Defense Secretary, the War Secretary PRP Texsath TV host, War Secretary,
[30:04] Speaker 2: War Secretary TV host. Imagine you had General Dan Kane,
[30:09] Speaker 2: the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top
[30:11] Speaker 2: post general in the US, the CIA Chief chart questioner, presidents,
[30:16] Speaker 2: even the pays presidents and in law present, no other
[30:20] Speaker 2: designation Presidents in law, Yeah, Steve Whitkoff, Trump's envoy to
[30:25] Speaker 2: the Middle East, where Natanya who presented them h and
[30:30] Speaker 2: his Mosart chief presented them with intelligence that seemed to
[30:34] Speaker 2: say that if we acted now, Iran's molistic missile program
[30:39] Speaker 2: could be destroyed in a few weeks. The regime would
[30:41] Speaker 2: be so weakened it would not be able to choke
[30:44] Speaker 2: the state of homos Uh. There would be street protests,
[30:49] Speaker 2: the Mozart would play some role and there would be
[30:51] Speaker 2: a GM collapse and no Kurdish fighters would invade from
[30:55] Speaker 2: across the border in from Iraq, open a ground and
[30:58] Speaker 2: basically it would be completely deestimated in a few days.
[31:02] Speaker 2: Very interestingly, the US guy said, you know what, let's
[31:06] Speaker 2: analyze what these have. So they spent a night analyzing
[31:10] Speaker 2: what the Israel intel was the day late a day later, uh,
[31:14] Speaker 2: the US assessment was there were four objectives like you
[31:18] Speaker 2: outlined one. The first objective was the killing of the
[31:22] Speaker 2: Ayatola regime change change in that form. The second was
[31:28] Speaker 2: crippling Iran's capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors Gulf.
[31:32] Speaker 2: The third was an uprising within Iran, and the fourth
[31:35] Speaker 2: was regime change, but the regime changed to an extent
[31:38] Speaker 2: of a secular leader who would be like you know,
[31:41] Speaker 2: in with the best.
[31:42] Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, I mean like the guy that came after
[31:46] Speaker 3: the Shah.
[31:47] Speaker 2: Actually, of these four aims, apparently the CIA chief called
[31:54] Speaker 2: the last two aims farcicle. Marco Rubia called it, in
[31:57] Speaker 2: other words, it's bullshit. Until Kane said that israelis always
[32:03] Speaker 2: over sell Their plans are never really well developed. They
[32:08] Speaker 2: know they need us, and that's why they're hard selling. Anyway,
[32:12] Speaker 2: that's the meeting that's described, a very interesting meeting. I thought,
[32:15] Speaker 2: and there's one more quotes, Sandip, I want to tell
[32:17] Speaker 2: you from this piece before I sort of ask you
[32:20] Speaker 2: to weane what you think is, which comes must later
[32:24] Speaker 2: puts Jdvans in a very nice light, which makes me think,
[32:27] Speaker 2: where does this information come from? By the way, But anyway,
[32:30] Speaker 2: the vice President is once apparently to h reported to
[32:34] Speaker 2: have told his associates that no amount of military insight
[32:37] Speaker 2: could truly gauge what Iran would do in retaliation when
[32:41] Speaker 2: survival of the regime was at stakes, something that you've
[32:44] Speaker 2: been you know, saying quietly often on this on this podcast.
[32:47] Speaker 2: Now my question and after reading this, no matter how
[32:51] Speaker 2: which way you look at it, whether it was us,
[32:53] Speaker 2: it's most definitely really Intell. That's something that you know,
[32:55] Speaker 2: have been discussing when you've said that it was is
[32:57] Speaker 2: really Intel that led us into this, foxhol How did
[33:02] Speaker 2: they Intel get it so wrong?
[33:04] Speaker 3: Simple question? But you know, see again going back to
[33:07] Speaker 3: my earlier thing of when you underestimated regimes thing what
[33:11] Speaker 3: a regime will do when it is pushed to the
[33:13] Speaker 3: with its back to the wall. You have to give
[33:16] Speaker 3: the regime agency as well. Right, you're planning, You've got
[33:19] Speaker 3: all these wonderful situation rooms, and you've got the best
[33:22] Speaker 3: guys in the world planning. The Iranians are doing the
[33:25] Speaker 3: same thing. What do you think they've been doing for
[33:28] Speaker 3: last year? Since you bought them for twelve they would
[33:31] Speaker 3: definitely have been working out plans, right, And you have
[33:33] Speaker 3: to give it. And you know, I just three years
[33:37] Speaker 3: back somebody asked me at a at an event I
[33:40] Speaker 3: was where they said, look, you know, our procurement cyclists
[33:42] Speaker 3: so busted and it's so slow. What would you do?
[33:46] Speaker 3: I said, I would fill it with the Iranians and
[33:48] Speaker 3: North Koreans, you know, because these guys are under sanctions
[33:51] Speaker 3: and they've managed to create technologies which the United States
[33:54] Speaker 3: is picking up in reverse engineering, like the Lucas drone
[33:57] Speaker 3: for instance. Shai but that was originally a human thing. Yes,
[34:00] Speaker 3: don't tell that Americans. They think it's Iranian. But the
[34:04] Speaker 3: thing is that the assessment of this piece actually what
[34:09] Speaker 3: it says, it gives in granular detail what we already knew.
[34:13] Speaker 3: The fact that the Americans were okay with the negotiations
[34:18] Speaker 3: that they were talking. They thought they would get a
[34:20] Speaker 3: victory at the negotiation table. But the Israelis came with
[34:23] Speaker 3: the intel and say, hey, listen, there's something here we
[34:26] Speaker 3: can They're so weak. You bomb them. The regime will
[34:29] Speaker 3: collapse and there will be yeah, everything will It will
[34:32] Speaker 3: be nineteen seventy nine. It will be that nineteen seventy
[34:35] Speaker 3: nine moment again. For See. The thing is that when
[34:40] Speaker 3: you start conflating your objectives with Israel's, Israel has a
[34:48] Speaker 3: completely different set of war aims, war objectives for I mean,
[34:53] Speaker 3: I've been in Israel and again, you know, whoever I've asked,
[34:57] Speaker 3: is that, what's your number one problem? It's Iran? How
[35:01] Speaker 3: will you solve it? Regime change? Everybody has said that
[35:04] Speaker 3: right in one voice. Can you do it? No, we can't.
[35:08] Speaker 3: How will you do it? We need the United States.
[35:10] Speaker 3: So if it's as clear as the sun in the
[35:13] Speaker 3: sky that it was Israel that wanted a regime change
[35:18] Speaker 3: even more desperately than the United States, somewhere down the line,
[35:21] Speaker 3: the US and Israeli national security objectives started merging, which
[35:27] Speaker 3: is dangerous. If you ask Americans, you should think in
[35:32] Speaker 3: terms of self interest. Now, look Israel can get away
[35:35] Speaker 3: with this? Can the US get away with this? The
[35:38] Speaker 3: US has far greater things at stake here by getting
[35:42] Speaker 3: into this war with Israel and Israel Israel has been
[35:44] Speaker 3: fighting NonStop. You have to give it to them, a
[35:47] Speaker 3: tenacious country. They've been fighting since twenty twenty three. They've
[35:50] Speaker 3: managed to pull the United States into this war. I mean,
[35:54] Speaker 3: of course, the benefit of the fact that they have
[35:57] Speaker 3: possibly the most pro Israel US president since nineteen forty eight.
[36:03] Speaker 3: What Trump has done for Israel is remarkable. Now now
[36:09] Speaker 3: to conflate your war aims with Israel, that's gotten you
[36:13] Speaker 3: into this soup. So the detailing of this is fabulous,
[36:17] Speaker 3: and it only adds up to what we already knew,
[36:20] Speaker 3: the fact that this was premised on faulty intelligence, faulty assessments.
[36:25] Speaker 3: This is exactly like two thousand and three. And again,
[36:29] Speaker 3: I mean, I'm going back to what I said more
[36:31] Speaker 3: than a month ago. George Bush went into Iraq for
[36:34] Speaker 3: that mission accomplished thing. He thought that, you know, WMDs
[36:37] Speaker 3: cooked up this entire WMDs thing. He went into Iraq.
[36:42] Speaker 3: Trump did the same twenty three years later, except that
[36:46] Speaker 3: he didn't get as badly scorched as Bush did. Bush
[36:50] Speaker 3: got the United States into a seventeen year deployment in Iraq,
[36:55] Speaker 3: cost them two three thousand American soldiers, thousands more main
[37:00] Speaker 3: four trillion dollars gone. Trump, in that sense, has gotten
[37:04] Speaker 3: away lightly. He's just trashed what two hundred three hundred
[37:08] Speaker 3: billion dollars worth of equipment and ordnance. But the implications
[37:15] Speaker 3: of just happening in twenty twenty six are far greater
[37:19] Speaker 3: than what happened for Bush in two thousand and three.
[37:23] Speaker 3: Bush was presiding over the United States at its absolute peak.
[37:28] Speaker 3: There was no country even within sight of the US right.
[37:32] Speaker 3: It was so powerful back then. And I've seen the
[37:35] Speaker 3: US military a thing. I mean, like you have to
[37:37] Speaker 3: see the way these guys move. My eyes popped out.
[37:40] Speaker 3: I mean, I couldn't take any pictures. I was in
[37:42] Speaker 3: Bagram two thousand and one, and you see the might
[37:45] Speaker 3: of the United States, that mechanized firepower and that mechanized military,
[37:51] Speaker 3: which is like Chinook's taking off with guys like literally
[37:54] Speaker 3: sitting with their you know, dangling their feet off the thing,
[37:57] Speaker 3: the utter confidence which they're flying around Afghanistan. Guys on
[38:01] Speaker 3: you know, Special Forces guys on these quad bikes at
[38:04] Speaker 3: Demosian Special Forces guys on quad bikes, you know, so
[38:07] Speaker 3: these were I think there were Special Activities Center guys,
[38:10] Speaker 3: CIA chaps. We chatted with a couple of them. They're
[38:12] Speaker 3: all in ceries, you know, zipperd jerseys and stuff like that.
[38:16] Speaker 3: The US was to speak then in twenty twenty six,
[38:20] Speaker 3: they're looking at China, which is you know, close on
[38:23] Speaker 3: their heels. This is the first time in the US
[38:26] Speaker 3: history that they have a near peer adversary who's an
[38:32] Speaker 3: economic superpower and a military superpower, which is China. You
[38:37] Speaker 3: can argue that possibly the Chinese miracle is a Potemkin
[38:42] Speaker 3: village and you know it's going to collapse, and but
[38:46] Speaker 3: for the moment, China is here to stay. It's there
[38:48] Speaker 3: for a couple of decades. It's giving the US serious worry.
[38:52] Speaker 3: And what does this mean for US par Where the
[38:54] Speaker 3: US hasn't lost its power, other countries now started catching
[38:58] Speaker 3: US and now they realize this. So what will happen
[39:02] Speaker 3: when the US starts turning on its allies? I mean,
[39:05] Speaker 3: look at it. In jan he was threatening Denmark with invasion, right,
[39:11] Speaker 3: he threatened to invade Greenland. I was just talking with
[39:14] Speaker 3: GOREV on a show and he says that, look, you
[39:17] Speaker 3: know he got after us with tariffs. I said, well,
[39:20] Speaker 3: you know, it was far worse if I was as
[39:24] Speaker 3: the Danish prime minister. It's like, my god, I got
[39:27] Speaker 3: away without being invaded, you know. And you had the
[39:31] Speaker 3: Danish sitting over there and trying to figure out how
[39:34] Speaker 3: they would stop a potential US invasion of Greenland. Can
[39:38] Speaker 3: you imagine one NATO member fighting with another METO member,
[39:42] Speaker 3: in fact, the main NATO guy trying to you know,
[39:45] Speaker 3: intercept his troops and shooting down his fighters. And you know,
[39:49] Speaker 3: this is where the world has been in the last
[39:51] Speaker 3: four months.
[39:52] Speaker 2: A very interesting point you made about how it's not
[39:54] Speaker 2: as much as US losing its power or relevance, but
[39:58] Speaker 2: more about other people catching up, because I think now
[40:00] Speaker 2: you have a stage which perhaps you did not have
[40:02] Speaker 2: in h during the Bush era, is where other countries
[40:07] Speaker 2: can basically say no to the US. You've also seen Iran,
[40:09] Speaker 2: by the way, they said get lost from our neighborhoods,
[40:12] Speaker 2: like from imagine who would do that? And I think
[40:16] Speaker 2: that's why I'm going to reserve an episode perhaps next week,
[40:18] Speaker 2: hopefully if nothing major happens otherwise on actually how the
[40:22] Speaker 2: US is coming out of this because I think, like
[40:24] Speaker 2: you've said, there are many implications for US to consider,
[40:27] Speaker 2: especially for India, which has been developing very close ties
[40:32] Speaker 2: strategically as well with the US. So we will reserve
[40:35] Speaker 2: that perhaps for the next week. Like I said, nothing
[40:37] Speaker 2: major happens. But you know, on the point of intelligence,
[40:42] Speaker 2: just one big tangent, I'm going to talk about it
[40:44] Speaker 2: before we talked a bit before we go to our
[40:45] Speaker 2: next point is then, do you think there is a
[40:50] Speaker 2: difference between military intelligence and political intelligence. This is something
[40:54] Speaker 2: we briefly talked about previously when I asked you a
[40:56] Speaker 2: question that do you think the Indian apparatist sort of
[41:01] Speaker 2: failed to assess uh then General Amir now Field, Marshal
[41:07] Speaker 2: of the Pakistani Army properly because you may have intelligence
[41:11] Speaker 2: on where their air bases are, you may have intelligence
[41:14] Speaker 2: on exactly where you need your bromos to land. You
[41:16] Speaker 2: be able to, you know, put a airways out of
[41:19] Speaker 2: commission for the next several months. But to have that
[41:23] Speaker 2: insight into the thinking of your enemy, to be able
[41:27] Speaker 2: to foresee that this guy is so crazy he or
[41:30] Speaker 2: she will send across, you know, three completely indoctrinated men
[41:35] Speaker 2: with American made rifles from across the board. They'll come in,
[41:39] Speaker 2: they'll kill civilians. Uh, tourists in jamoin Kashmid doesn't really
[41:45] Speaker 2: happen in the valley. Uh that this is also something
[41:48] Speaker 2: that happened over a year that you may have had
[41:50] Speaker 2: intel on. Okay, KAMENI is going to be holding above
[41:54] Speaker 2: ground meeting this council. You will be able to hit them,
[41:56] Speaker 2: take them out. But you fail to assess the political
[41:59] Speaker 2: will of.
[42:00] Speaker 3: An absolutely, you know, that is the that is the
[42:03] Speaker 3: literally the intelligence goal mine if they could get a
[42:07] Speaker 3: way of reading people's minds, assessing the state of their
[42:12] Speaker 3: you know, their preparedness, their will to fight, and of
[42:15] Speaker 3: course their plans. The mosaic strategy that Iran's put into place,
[42:20] Speaker 3: which is thirty one IRGC commanders, each one is running
[42:24] Speaker 3: their own strategy and that's going to be a nightmare
[42:26] Speaker 3: for Iran to the great.
[42:28] Speaker 2: It's actually happening right now because the strict is still
[42:30] Speaker 2: going on, because they probably had not gotten.
[42:32] Speaker 3: So it's like, you know, in a science if you
[42:34] Speaker 3: can look at my favorite topic again, ballistic missile submarines,
[42:38] Speaker 3: It's like you've sent out thirty one submarines and now
[42:41] Speaker 3: you have problems with command and control controlling each one
[42:44] Speaker 3: of them, and each one is firing their own missiles,
[42:46] Speaker 3: you know, that kind of thing that that situation develops.
[42:48] Speaker 3: So now they have to kind of roll back the
[42:50] Speaker 3: mosaic strategy for a while and tell guys, Okay, we've
[42:53] Speaker 3: got a cees fyle. Let's you know, give them a
[42:56] Speaker 3: two week window. Let's talk to them. Let's see what
[42:59] Speaker 3: we can get out of the these peace talks. So
[43:02] Speaker 3: the fact is that that kind of intelligence would be
[43:06] Speaker 3: worth its weight in gold if he could tell what
[43:08] Speaker 3: your adversary was thinking, and this would come from you know,
[43:12] Speaker 3: human A lot of it would come from you. That is,
[43:16] Speaker 3: what is he thinking? Next, what's on his mind? What
[43:19] Speaker 3: kind of a person is he? And this, I think
[43:21] Speaker 3: is to a large extent, when cognitive warfare enters the dominate,
[43:25] Speaker 3: which it already is, when you create a digital twin
[43:28] Speaker 3: of a person, and then that digital twin will then
[43:32] Speaker 3: tell you I will do the following. You know. So
[43:35] Speaker 3: this is a thing of warfare where we are very
[43:40] Speaker 3: uncomfortable with that. And I've asked this my friends in
[43:44] Speaker 3: the military. When they do red teams, you know, the
[43:46] Speaker 3: blue team versus the red team. The red team is
[43:50] Speaker 3: always hobbled, right, he's not given the resources or he's
[43:55] Speaker 3: if he does something which upsets Blue team, then they
[43:59] Speaker 3: will reboot the game and they then show that Blue
[44:01] Speaker 3: always wins, so Blue always wins. How can this happen?
[44:04] Speaker 3: How can you allow? Well, again, you know, back to
[44:09] Speaker 3: this carrier nuclear sub thing, there have been instances where
[44:13] Speaker 3: nuclear subs have some carriers in war games that we
[44:16] Speaker 3: have played, but you know, the whole thing has been redone.
[44:20] Speaker 3: You know, the exercises I know of at least one
[44:23] Speaker 3: such instance where it happened. Now you know, if you
[44:26] Speaker 3: extrapolate that to the national thing that oh, you know,
[44:29] Speaker 3: this guy is incapable of that. His economy is bust.
[44:32] Speaker 3: He's you know, rule him out completely, and I must
[44:35] Speaker 3: you know, Command one of my friends, he is general,
[44:39] Speaker 3: a two star officer who's always told me about Pakistan.
[44:42] Speaker 3: He says they are the unpredictable ones. The Han is predictable,
[44:46] Speaker 3: not so our western adversary. And how right he was
[44:51] Speaker 3: literally this was he said this about two years before
[44:56] Speaker 3: the strike that moone he carried out last year in
[44:59] Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. So he's been saying this since twenty
[45:01] Speaker 3: twenty three that watch out for Pakistan. They're an unpredictable adversary.
[45:06] Speaker 3: They will do something. And we were like, oh, you know,
[45:09] Speaker 3: economy is bast is that politically unstable, But that is
[45:13] Speaker 3: the time when they struck precisely at that moment. And
[45:16] Speaker 3: it's a very interesting thing in Pakistan. And this was
[45:20] Speaker 3: told to me by my friend General Rabishankar. We do
[45:23] Speaker 3: this weekly podcast where he said, look at all the
[45:26] Speaker 3: crisis in Pakistan's history. They have used every opportunity where
[45:31] Speaker 3: the military is defeated, they turn it into domestic victory.
[45:35] Speaker 3: It's bizarre, Like you know, in seventy one they lose
[45:38] Speaker 3: half the country. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto becomes the first the
[45:43] Speaker 3: Chief Marshal Law Administrator and then he opens a path
[45:46] Speaker 3: to Zia Kargil. Happens in ninety nine and before you
[45:51] Speaker 3: know it, Pervez Musharaf is the martial law administrator, he's
[45:55] Speaker 3: the dictator. Twenty twenty five, you have this crime, you know, chaos, crisis,
[46:01] Speaker 3: money emerges, Imran is in jail. So it's like this
[46:05] Speaker 3: is a military that thrives on chaos and crisis, and
[46:08] Speaker 3: so this is something that we should kind of be
[46:11] Speaker 3: very off when we are planning against Pakistan. But yeah,
[46:14] Speaker 3: I mean long answer to your short question on military
[46:18] Speaker 3: intelligence versus political intelligence fascinating. One.
[46:20] Speaker 2: Actually a couple of last points as we end this episode.
[46:24] Speaker 2: One is something closer home to the broad theme of
[46:28] Speaker 2: it a defense, moving away from geopolitics and talking about
[46:31] Speaker 2: tactics and tactical level stuff. Is this war sort of
[46:35] Speaker 2: the rise of air defense? Because I'll tell you what
[46:40] Speaker 2: this war has been like, very unusual in terms of
[46:43] Speaker 2: the visual of it, right, Yeah, because when you say war,
[46:46] Speaker 2: you imagine a city in ruins. You imagine large, skilled devastation.
[46:52] Speaker 2: Yet here you've had like, you know, thousands of missiles filed.
[46:56] Speaker 2: You you you you heard about Iran finding a ballistic
[46:59] Speaker 2: missile every other day. When I thought ballisting missiles is
[47:02] Speaker 2: something you deserve only for launching your nuclear bombs. I mean,
[47:05] Speaker 2: of course you can launch them with conventional warheads, nothing
[47:08] Speaker 2: stopping you from doing that. But they've been I mean,
[47:10] Speaker 2: they only have a good bulesting mis cell PHCE, so
[47:14] Speaker 2: they would use that. But the point being, they've been
[47:16] Speaker 2: launching bullisting missiles, you know, left, right and center. Every day.
[47:18] Speaker 2: They've been launching thousands of drones US and as we
[47:21] Speaker 2: also have bombed several places in Iran, we actually don't
[47:24] Speaker 2: have many visuals or satellite imagery from Iran. And also
[47:27] Speaker 2: I think modern warfare has become very precise, so if
[47:30] Speaker 2: you hit a building, only the building will collapse, you't
[47:32] Speaker 2: really have the charge scale devastation that I'm talking about. However,
[47:35] Speaker 2: still with Iran going on the offensive hitting all the Gulf,
[47:39] Speaker 2: you haven't really seen a lot of large scale damage
[47:42] Speaker 2: given to the oil refinance whatever it run tried to
[47:45] Speaker 2: hit with the airport and hotel in Dubai and stuff
[47:48] Speaker 2: like that. Maybe it was intentional, maybe around did not
[47:51] Speaker 2: want to escalate too much. But there was just one
[47:54] Speaker 2: instance where the US claims there were around one hundred
[47:56] Speaker 2: and one missiles fired towards US's Lincoln, one of their
[48:00] Speaker 2: aircraft car and all of them apparently were taken down here.
[48:02] Speaker 2: So my question to you is this war, the war
[48:05] Speaker 2: where air defense has turned out to be the new king,
[48:08] Speaker 2: that this is what will help you?
[48:10] Speaker 3: Well, yeah, well, air defenses and we've actually seen that
[48:14] Speaker 3: they've been during those Right. Where are I C c
[48:17] Speaker 3: s that held out in that eighty eight hour conflict
[48:20] Speaker 3: that we saw and I was at at a book
[48:24] Speaker 3: launch recently and vishnuss book where was talking about it,
[48:29] Speaker 3: and they were this was a triumph of you know,
[48:31] Speaker 3: ground based air defense because you saw the S four
[48:35] Speaker 3: hundred being used in an offensive role, right, And that
[48:39] Speaker 3: is because the range that he took a shot at
[48:42] Speaker 3: a Pakistani aircraft high value aerial target at about three
[48:47] Speaker 3: hundred kilometers plus. It's the longest uh, you know, sam
[48:51] Speaker 3: At you know strikedowns of shootdowns of an enemy aircraft
[48:55] Speaker 3: in history. So when you have missiles with this capability,
[48:59] Speaker 3: when you have this god's eye view with satellites and
[49:02] Speaker 3: you know, drones, then you're able to do a lot
[49:04] Speaker 3: of things that you are not able to do in
[49:06] Speaker 3: the past. Like and see how warfare has changed in
[49:09] Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one, just a portion if everyone says it
[49:12] Speaker 3: was a you know, era of smart warfare, and less
[49:16] Speaker 3: than one fourth of the weapons that were used they
[49:17] Speaker 3: were smart. Really a lot of dumb bombs were used.
[49:21] Speaker 3: Cut twenty five years thirty five years later you're looking
[49:24] Speaker 3: at the US Israel. Every one of those bombs was smart.
[49:29] Speaker 3: They were very precise hits. So thirteen thousand you know
[49:33] Speaker 3: targets hit all of them were hit by you know,
[49:36] Speaker 3: smart weapons. That's increasingly going to be the case. Technology
[49:40] Speaker 3: has now come to an extent where as you mentioned
[49:43] Speaker 3: that you have the ability to you know, take out
[49:46] Speaker 3: individual targets. The Israelis have the ability, for instance, to
[49:50] Speaker 3: knock out a room in a house, in a apartment block.
[49:55] Speaker 3: That is how precise their targeting is. And I saw
[49:58] Speaker 3: this firsthand in again and back to twenty five years
[50:01] Speaker 3: back in Kabul where I was driving through there and
[50:05] Speaker 3: I saw this one building that was knocked out and
[50:08] Speaker 3: I said, what building is that? That's a Taliban police station.
[50:12] Speaker 3: So there was an entire row of houses and the Americans,
[50:18] Speaker 3: which I think that it was a Jaydiam attack, and
[50:20] Speaker 3: it was. It was a bomber that had flown from Diego, Garcia.
[50:24] Speaker 3: They had the ability to in an entire clump of buildings,
[50:28] Speaker 3: they could knock out just that one precise building, you know,
[50:31] Speaker 3: one Jadam attack, that whole building had.
[50:33] Speaker 2: Caved in one dot from the sky.
[50:35] Speaker 3: Yeah exactly, but it's so precisely stirred, you know. And
[50:39] Speaker 3: that was modern technology, and now that has become ubiquitous.
[50:42] Speaker 3: If it was the Americans doing it, Now we have
[50:44] Speaker 3: the ability to do that as well. So every country
[50:46] Speaker 3: is now going to go down this smart weapons thing.
[50:49] Speaker 3: The future of warfare is going to be this non
[50:52] Speaker 3: contact kinetic where in the old days you had to
[50:56] Speaker 3: physically invade a country and do that kind of damage,
[50:59] Speaker 3: and you blow buildings and do that and send in
[51:02] Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Today it's an era of
[51:06] Speaker 3: I hate to say this, push button warfare. You press
[51:09] Speaker 3: a button, a hatch opens, and missile flies out. It
[51:12] Speaker 3: just goes on thousand, five hundred kilometers away and it
[51:14] Speaker 3: knocks out a building, or it knocks out a city block,
[51:17] Speaker 3: or it knocks out an air base, or it hits
[51:19] Speaker 3: a radar, and it causes the same kind of damage
[51:24] Speaker 3: at a fraction of the cost and time than it
[51:26] Speaker 3: would take for an entire army to move out. So
[51:29] Speaker 3: we are actually looking at a revolution in warfare, and
[51:32] Speaker 3: that revolution was it was a process that we've been
[51:37] Speaker 3: looking at, like I said, for thirty five years, but
[51:39] Speaker 3: now it's accelerated. Now you're looking at AI targeting. So
[51:43] Speaker 3: in the past, where you had you know, humans would
[51:46] Speaker 3: do would collate targets over a few hundred targets over
[51:51] Speaker 3: several days. Today AI is doing it for you in
[51:54] Speaker 3: literally minutes. It's throwing up a massive you know, massive targets,
[52:00] Speaker 3: seeing these these these targets, and then it's prioritizing targets. Yeah. So,
[52:04] Speaker 3: and these are based on algorithms that you have on
[52:08] Speaker 3: your phone that social media also uses. Right, you might
[52:12] Speaker 3: know the following people. You have these connections in common,
[52:15] Speaker 3: you know, simple things like that. Imagine those being weaponized
[52:18] Speaker 3: and you have this whole target rich environment, which then
[52:22] Speaker 3: AI is throwing up for the commander and they say, oh,
[52:25] Speaker 3: maybe I'll take this out. You know, there are two
[52:28] Speaker 3: missile batteries here. This battery's got this commander. But I
[52:32] Speaker 3: feel that this commander here is far more agile, and
[52:36] Speaker 3: therefore he's a bigger threat. So you can take that
[52:38] Speaker 3: guy out first. I would recommend that you had time.
[52:41] Speaker 3: This is the kind of you know, man machine interface
[52:43] Speaker 3: that we're talking of. It's frightening this kind of warfare,
[52:47] Speaker 3: and what is scary about it is that it then
[52:50] Speaker 3: leads you to draw the wrong kind of inferences. There. Oh, man,
[52:55] Speaker 3: I have all this power at my fingertips. I can
[52:58] Speaker 3: you know, hit fifteen thousands it simultaneously, I can you know,
[53:03] Speaker 3: kill every single leader there is of this country, and
[53:07] Speaker 3: what's going to happen after that? I guess the country
[53:10] Speaker 3: will collapse, right because I mean, you can't lose thirty contes,
[53:14] Speaker 3: you know, leaders and still be a functioning country. You can. Yeah,
[53:19] Speaker 3: that's where the human thing comes in. Human ingenuity comes
[53:22] Speaker 3: in when you kind of out maneuver smart warfare with this.
[53:26] Speaker 3: And I think that's the reason why humans will always
[53:29] Speaker 3: prevail over machines. But I must say that my assessments
[53:34] Speaker 3: are only for the next decade or so. I do
[53:36] Speaker 3: not know when true machine intelligence, when thinking machines come
[53:41] Speaker 3: in a decade or so, when they say that, you
[53:43] Speaker 3: know that that event horizon of smart machines taking over
[53:49] Speaker 3: the sky net moment, how that kind of warfare is
[53:52] Speaker 3: going to be never know. But as of now, you're
[53:54] Speaker 3: looking at another revolution in military affairs. The first one
[53:58] Speaker 3: is of course Gulfer ninety one. This is the second
[54:01] Speaker 3: big revolution that you're looking.
[54:03] Speaker 2: At right last, questions and deep and it won't be
[54:07] Speaker 2: the cliche question of what happens next, because what tim
[54:10] Speaker 2: is next is open to a lot of islama bas
[54:12] Speaker 2: It's going to be the focus is going to be
[54:14] Speaker 2: They'll have a meeting.
[54:16] Speaker 3: They're going to take their moment in the sun.
[54:18] Speaker 2: Of course, you have the joker in the pack, not Trump,
[54:21] Speaker 2: by the way, is right, yes, because I know what
[54:25] Speaker 2: they'll do. Yeah, because again you never know what happened.
[54:29] Speaker 2: So we'll skip that and we'll wait and watch. Do
[54:32] Speaker 2: I think I share your assessment that I think Trump
[54:34] Speaker 2: is done with this for now? You think Cuba is
[54:37] Speaker 2: where I think you look at Cuban cigars and stuff.
[54:39] Speaker 3: Like, oh man, yeah, that guy is ready to Yeah.
[54:45] Speaker 2: It's time to fight the comis again. Yes, right, but anyway, sorry,
[54:49] Speaker 2: So the last question. We began this episode by saying
[54:54] Speaker 2: that the one goalpost that has not changed is that
[54:57] Speaker 2: US has consistently said that Iran can never ever have
[55:00] Speaker 2: a nuclear Don't you think this war is exactly what's
[55:05] Speaker 2: going to make Iran determined to have a neuclear weaponon?
[55:08] Speaker 3: You know? A good question, Dave, And I think that
[55:10] Speaker 3: entirely depends on the kind of leadership a phil Iran
[55:13] Speaker 3: survived this. Let's you know, be honest in this assessment.
[55:17] Speaker 3: The fact that Iran has taken a heavy punishment bating right,
[55:20] Speaker 3: So while it might have you know, whichstood this for
[55:23] Speaker 3: forty days or something, who knows how weak the regime
[55:26] Speaker 3: really is has not been seeing it. He's not been
[55:28] Speaker 3: seen exactly. No one knows his whereabouts. And the US
[55:32] Speaker 3: you know, effect on this, one of the analysts was
[55:35] Speaker 3: telling us on gov show, was that they have the
[55:40] Speaker 3: it might have had the effect of hallowing out this
[55:42] Speaker 3: regime to an extent that it might actually collapse exactly
[55:45] Speaker 3: like a yes, they wanted to actually, yeah, they want
[55:49] Speaker 3: to make Iran into some kind of a Syria where
[55:52] Speaker 3: you you know, you come in big, you hit them
[55:55] Speaker 3: with you know, street protests, this, that, and then finally
[55:57] Speaker 3: you have you know, boots on the ground, may not
[55:59] Speaker 3: be your boots, maybe Kodish boots, somebody you will find
[56:03] Speaker 3: useful idiots to send in who knows, and the regime
[56:07] Speaker 3: doesn't survive, right So this all depends on the kind
[56:11] Speaker 3: of leadership that will take over in Tehran right now,
[56:15] Speaker 3: is who's running the Ran really? We're looking at you know, Galibav,
[56:18] Speaker 3: We're looking at you know Arachi, We're looking at Pazeshkian.
[56:22] Speaker 3: Is the IRGC still in control? And if they are
[56:24] Speaker 3: in control, will they then give up power? If they
[56:29] Speaker 3: don't give up power, what kind of Iran are you
[56:31] Speaker 3: looking at Are you looking at a very deeply inward
[56:35] Speaker 3: looking suspicious, even more hardline Iran than you saw before
[56:40] Speaker 3: the twenty eighth of February, And what are the choices
[56:43] Speaker 3: that that Iran will make? Will they then say that, look,
[56:47] Speaker 3: as you said, we possibly if we had nuclear weapons,
[56:50] Speaker 3: the Americans would never have attacked us in the first place.
[56:53] Speaker 3: So will they do a North Korea which is what
[56:56] Speaker 3: they said, you know, North Korea did this sayle hostage
[56:59] Speaker 3: crist experiment, which is for the longest time, they ensured
[57:05] Speaker 3: that Americans would never touch North Korea because they had
[57:09] Speaker 3: the ability to because Soul is just about forty fifty
[57:12] Speaker 3: kilometers away from the border with the demilitarized Zone with
[57:17] Speaker 3: North Korea, and North Korea built up the rocket and
[57:21] Speaker 3: artillery capability to literally lay sold waste, you know, within
[57:26] Speaker 3: a few hours, they would brain in so many projectiles
[57:30] Speaker 3: that Soul would be devastated. And they used this to
[57:34] Speaker 3: keep the United States and South Korea away from military operations,
[57:38] Speaker 3: and they developed the bomb. So the flip side to
[57:41] Speaker 3: this argument is that could Iran now use this thing
[57:46] Speaker 3: of keeping the Gulf States at base with its missile
[57:51] Speaker 3: capabilities using their leverage of the strait of hormones to
[57:55] Speaker 3: then develop a nuclear weapon.
[57:56] Speaker 2: With help course Russian and or ah Pakistan.
[58:02] Speaker 3: The neighbor to the east. Right, where did they get
[58:05] Speaker 3: this rend refugees from the Aqucan network? Right? Could they
[58:09] Speaker 3: once again turn to Pakistan? But if Pakistan did that
[58:12] Speaker 3: then there would be hell to pay, one imagines, because
[58:15] Speaker 3: you have Israel in the United States, two very powerful
[58:18] Speaker 3: countries that could then you know, rain some punishment on Pakistan.
[58:25] Speaker 3: So there are many ifs and butts. And when you
[58:29] Speaker 3: drop this volume of ordnance on a country, it looks
[58:33] Speaker 3: okay in the first couple of days, but you don't
[58:35] Speaker 3: know how deep that damage has been. Again back into
[58:40] Speaker 3: the you know, the mindsets of the leadership that's been
[58:43] Speaker 3: under this intense thing as happy to so I will
[58:46] Speaker 3: it actually take those guarantees that they've been offered in
[58:52] Speaker 3: these upcoming peace talks, or will they then go help
[58:56] Speaker 3: for leather to get the nuclear weapons that they had
[58:58] Speaker 3: been So you know that only a segment of Iranians
[59:03] Speaker 3: wanted the nuclear weapons. By the way, there was a large,
[59:06] Speaker 3: you know, a majority which said, look, now is not
[59:09] Speaker 3: the time. We are under too much of pressure. We
[59:12] Speaker 3: need to trade with the outside world. We need to
[59:14] Speaker 3: sell our oil, do all of that things, so that
[59:17] Speaker 3: thing maybe who knows where it's headed. It is. We're
[59:21] Speaker 3: in a minefield. We've always been in twenty twenty six.
[59:23] Speaker 3: But I think this new crisis with a kind of
[59:26] Speaker 3: bombing and this constant threat of violence, now that's opened
[59:30] Speaker 3: up you know many more you know, avenues of instability.
[59:35] Speaker 3: And I don't think the US is going to stop
[59:37] Speaker 3: here exactly like we've seen with Syria. Once you've fought
[59:43] Speaker 3: them to a stand still, you fought the US to
[59:45] Speaker 3: a stand still. They may not go for the immediate
[59:47] Speaker 3: kinetic operations, but they will go for every other option,
[59:52] Speaker 3: which is you know, covert. They will try and you know,
[59:54] Speaker 3: weaponize adversaries. They will try and you know to a
[1:00:00] Speaker 3: extent that was far greater than what you've been doing
[1:00:02] Speaker 3: over the last four decades plus. They will try and
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: accelerate Iran's you know collapse or weakening or something from
[1:00:11] Speaker 3: within the Syria model, the Libya.
[1:00:13] Speaker 2: Model, or just keep it so preoccupied with local level
[1:00:15] Speaker 2: batches that is not done. It should not be able
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: to project power again to the because there are lots
[1:00:19] Speaker 2: of things that play. Because they look at it your
[1:00:24] Speaker 2: The GCC is frightened them. How they've been looking at
[1:00:28] Speaker 2: in horror. The first time that US basis personnel have
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: been targeted in this way, at least in the twenty
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: first century. I think the last people who did that
[1:00:37] Speaker 2: was Sadda Mussin in ninety one, brought on a lot
[1:00:40] Speaker 2: of aircraft he fought the first Gulf for and maybe
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: before that Vietnam. Right, no other country has inflicted this
[1:00:47] Speaker 2: kind of damage on US hardware as Iran has done
[1:00:51] Speaker 2: in these forty days. So that's something that the US
[1:00:54] Speaker 2: will not forget. But look at the implications on the GCC,
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: what happens to the network basis, the syent com basis
[1:01:01] Speaker 2: that the US has built the eight or nine bases
[1:01:05] Speaker 2: that have taken heavy fire, and many of them they
[1:01:08] Speaker 2: we don't know what condition they're in, but their radars
[1:01:10] Speaker 2: have been hit, their defenses have been breached.
[1:01:12] Speaker 3: So what's going to happen there as well? So there
[1:01:14] Speaker 3: are many second, third, fourth order consequences of these this
[1:01:18] Speaker 3: forty day war that we really can't fathom right now.
[1:01:22] Speaker 2: Very true because you know, I think I'm not somebody
[1:01:26] Speaker 2: who advocates or who's for violence or war, but I'm
[1:01:30] Speaker 2: sure as hell happy that India has nuclear weapons.
[1:01:33] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a conscious choice that we have to right now.
[1:01:37] Speaker 2: Yeah, South Africa as a country that's probably thinking, but
[1:01:41] Speaker 2: perhaps we should not have given up on But.
[1:01:43] Speaker 3: They didn't have a saying this regime. If the present
[1:01:47] Speaker 3: South African regime was asked whether you'd want nuclear they said,
[1:01:50] Speaker 3: of course. But that was another regime that and that
[1:01:53] Speaker 3: was a see that was the regime survival thing, the
[1:01:56] Speaker 3: South African apartheid regime. It was, it was, it lived
[1:02:00] Speaker 3: in this fear of combined South you know, African armies
[1:02:05] Speaker 3: marching on to South Africa and you know, literally overthrowing
[1:02:08] Speaker 3: the white minority rules. So for it was a regime
[1:02:11] Speaker 3: survival device for them, those devices which were meant to
[1:02:15] Speaker 3: be I think it was artillery shells and air air
[1:02:17] Speaker 3: dropped nuclear weapons, which only country in the world to
[1:02:21] Speaker 3: have surrendered its nuclear weapons.
[1:02:25] Speaker 2: I think we'll end it there. And by the way,
[1:02:27] Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, I think Kim Jong was cerebrating this morning
[1:02:29] Speaker 2: by they were launching too ballistic misselves again reminding the world, bro,
[1:02:33] Speaker 2: I also have nuclear weapons. Come fight with me. Why
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: is no one playing with me? Why is I also
[1:02:39] Speaker 2: have toys, toys. We keep joking about this, but I mean,
[1:02:43] Speaker 2: again the fourth time I'm saying this on this podcast.
[1:02:47] Speaker 2: The only reason the US has not bombed North Korea
[1:02:49] Speaker 2: is because it has nuclear weapons.
[1:02:51] Speaker 3: Yeah, and it doesn't have oil.
[1:02:53] Speaker 2: That's right. I think we edit this on the Like
[1:02:57] Speaker 2: I said, there are more of fragments of this to dissect,
[1:03:01] Speaker 2: especially what happens to not really the world water as such,
[1:03:04] Speaker 2: but how the US comes out of this. What does
[1:03:08] Speaker 2: Europe think of the US? Now? What do what does
[1:03:11] Speaker 2: need to think of the US? Not very important, NATO
[1:03:13] Speaker 2: has not joined the US. Trump has been abusing them
[1:03:15] Speaker 2: in public. Macrons are very happy with Trump's been abusing
[1:03:19] Speaker 2: Macro on a personal level. Yeah, that's very, very, very dirty.
[1:03:25] Speaker 2: So that's a concern. So I think that's what you're
[1:03:27] Speaker 2: sort of talking about. Even the dizy countries by they
[1:03:29] Speaker 2: will be like, you know, they will not obviously come
[1:03:31] Speaker 2: and say it outright, but there will be a thought
[1:03:33] Speaker 2: at the back of their heads that perhaps we should
[1:03:35] Speaker 2: not have, you know, hosted the US so much.
[1:03:37] Speaker 3: They don't have for it. And look at ue.
[1:03:42] Speaker 2: You run said that. We know we have no ill
[1:03:43] Speaker 2: will against you, but you are hosting us basically five
[1:03:46] Speaker 2: missiles that asks what are we to do? I mean
[1:03:48] Speaker 2: actually said that on a record. I mean, what do
[1:03:50] Speaker 2: you expect us to do if you're hosting bases that
[1:03:52] Speaker 2: fire missiles to our schools where one sixty school girls died? Uh?
[1:03:58] Speaker 2: And of course what India can take away from this
[1:04:02] Speaker 2: situation and learn for the future. So I think we'll
[1:04:05] Speaker 2: reserve that for us on upcoming episodes because I don't
[1:04:07] Speaker 2: think any other thing. Hopefully no more wars will astract
[1:04:11] Speaker 2: us from from this from this topic in the near future.
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: See.
[1:04:15] Speaker 2: So thanks so much, great chat as always, and thanks
[1:04:18] Speaker 2: thanks for having me. Yeah, and thanks as always to
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: our listeners and viewers.
[1:04:21] Speaker 3: That's it for this.
[1:04:22] Speaker 2: Week's Defense Stores for more, tune next week. Till then,
[1:04:24] Speaker 2: Stay safe and not cross any boundaries with out a passport.

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