# Vietnam to Iran: What Current Gulf Conflict Reveals About American War Strategy | S3 | 45

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 26 Mar 2026, 1 h 07 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/70893617/26_mar_26_defence_26_march_128.mp3

A month into the Iran war, the battlefield story is changing rapidly. What began as high-impact US–Israel strikes has now entered an uncertain phase: drone warfare, energy and economic pressure through Hormuz, and now a sudden “pause” announced by Donald Trump. Is this the beginning of the end? Or just a tactical pause before the next round? On the latest episode of In Our Defence, host Dev Goswami and national security expert Sandeep Unnithan break down: - What the Iran war looks like right now - Whether the U.S. pause is real diplomacy or strategic signalling - Iran’s response and the risk of escalation - Pakistan’s surprise role as a potential mediator - Why does the United States, with the most powerful military in the world, keep getting pulled into long, inconclusive wars? From Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, and now Iran the episode explores recurring pattern: Fast military success, followed by messy, unresolved endings. Tune in! Produced by Taniya Dutta Sound mixed by Aman Pal

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Welcome to season three of Another Defense, the podcast that
[0:08] 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
[0:15] Speaker 2: and retired officers from the Army, Navy and Air Force
[0:19] 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. Hello, and welcome to a
[0:36] Speaker 1: Our Defense. It's a month since you has in.
[0:39] Speaker 2: Israel launched a war in the Gulf, attacking Iran as
[0:43] Speaker 2: part of their operations to affect a regime change in
[0:46] Speaker 2: the country and ensure that the country never ever possesses
[0:50] Speaker 2: the capability to develop nuclear weapons. And it's just so
[0:54] Speaker 2: difficult to put a finger on what to discuss this episode.
[0:58] Speaker 2: On Monday, when we spen I had a chat of
[1:00] Speaker 2: what to talk about, we thought maybe we'll do sort
[1:02] Speaker 2: of a takeaways for India, sort of a picture on
[1:05] Speaker 2: this episode.
[1:06] Speaker 1: Then came Tuesday, when we set the recording.
[1:08] Speaker 2: Date, when the announcement by US person Donald Trump that
[1:10] Speaker 2: there was going to be a pause in some sort
[1:13] Speaker 2: of fighting came in that Okay, okay, let's you know,
[1:15] Speaker 2: sort of decode what he said and what he meant,
[1:18] Speaker 2: and let's look at the wars that US has been
[1:20] Speaker 2: involved in the twenty first century. Uh And now as
[1:23] Speaker 2: we record this, there's so many, so many more things
[1:25] Speaker 2: that have happened.
[1:26] Speaker 1: There's a Pakistan angle to this.
[1:27] Speaker 2: This pmod who spoken in Parliament, both the houses of Parliament,
[1:31] Speaker 2: very somber and interesting somber speeches. Uh So it's just
[1:36] Speaker 2: so difficult figure out what to talk about. Hey, this gosh,
[1:39] Speaker 2: hey something, Hey.
[1:40] Speaker 1: They've got to be back.
[1:42] Speaker 2: A week is a long time, yeah, which is why
[1:44] Speaker 2: this episode likely released sooner than it normally does. We
[1:47] Speaker 2: record this every Wednesday, and usually our product has a
[1:50] Speaker 2: luxury of a day and a half to nicely produce
[1:53] Speaker 2: and package this and have this out by Friday evening.
[1:56] Speaker 1: War footing exactly.
[1:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, So we'll try to have this out as soon
[2:00] Speaker 2: as possible, probably by Thursday, because the thing is, by
[2:04] Speaker 2: the time we finished recording, god knows what will have happened. Actually,
[2:08] Speaker 2: things are that, that's how fast things are moving.
[2:11] Speaker 1: Things are moving. So what we'll do is we'll actually
[2:14] Speaker 1: sort of.
[2:15] Speaker 2: Talk about the broad things that have happened in the
[2:17] Speaker 2: last few days, some questions I have with respect to Pakistan,
[2:20] Speaker 2: some questions I have with respect to India, especially BMS.
[2:23] Speaker 2: More these speeches not more of a speech as such
[2:26] Speaker 2: as demeanor.
[2:27] Speaker 1: In parliament when he a little did about tho speeches,
[2:29] Speaker 1: and if time permits.
[2:31] Speaker 2: We will also look at the conflicts that US has
[2:33] Speaker 2: been involved in in the twenty first century and also
[2:35] Speaker 2: the grand role tady of them via them war, because
[2:38] Speaker 2: I think that sort of gives us a template that
[2:41] Speaker 2: you've seen happen with the US almost every time it
[2:44] Speaker 2: decides to, you know, go and give freedoms.
[2:48] Speaker 1: To some country. But that, like I said, safe time permits.
[2:51] Speaker 2: First obviously will focus on what's happened in the last
[2:53] Speaker 2: few days. Let's recap the last one month. On t eight,
[2:57] Speaker 2: US and IS launched missile strikes on Iran.
[3:00] Speaker 1: UH. They took out.
[3:02] Speaker 2: Iran stop leadership, including the Supreme leater Kmeni community sorry.
[3:05] Speaker 1: UH and UH.
[3:07] Speaker 2: Since then, it's been basically a battle of cheap drones
[3:12] Speaker 2: versus expensive missiles sand systems of the US and its
[3:15] Speaker 2: allies UH.
[3:16] Speaker 1: In the Gulf.
[3:17] Speaker 2: There have been some you know, major attacks here and there,
[3:19] Speaker 2: some submarine took down run in warship, for example. But
[3:24] Speaker 2: largely what you've seen is UH the entire golf region
[3:28] Speaker 2: being on the boil, UH, tourism being heavily impacted, UH
[3:32] Speaker 2: energy being very.
[3:34] Speaker 1: Very heavily impacted.
[3:34] Speaker 2: Iran has held the Strait of Hormones, very thin narrow
[3:38] Speaker 2: passes of sea through which most of the Middle Eastern
[3:41] Speaker 2: oil goes out to the rest of the world.
[3:43] Speaker 1: It's held hostage.
[3:44] Speaker 2: It's not letting oil pass from it, apart from two
[3:47] Speaker 2: countries which it considers friendly.
[3:48] Speaker 1: Like India, China is another one. UH. And because of that,
[3:53] Speaker 1: you've had oil prices going up. The markets are very choppy.
[3:57] Speaker 2: Everybody is feeling the peat. Everybody accept people in the US,
[4:01] Speaker 2: by the way, because the US, interestingly is not dependent
[4:05] Speaker 2: on Middle East for its oil. The US models is
[4:07] Speaker 2: pretty self sufficient when it comes to oil, and even
[4:10] Speaker 2: if it does need to gets from South America, which
[4:13] Speaker 2: recently you know when yeah, and Trump, by.
[4:15] Speaker 1: The way, has the has had the has gone on.
[4:18] Speaker 2: Record to say that he bye, we don't even need
[4:20] Speaker 2: the need that oil. So you know, you take care
[4:22] Speaker 2: of it yourself if you care about that oil.
[4:24] Speaker 1: That's how we're laughing.
[4:25] Speaker 2: About But that's how unfortunate and sad situation is right now. Actually,
[4:30] Speaker 2: so that's that's what's happened over the last one month.
[4:33] Speaker 2: What happened earlier this on Monday was we were expecting
[4:37] Speaker 2: another escalation and conflict. You already had. Something happened last
[4:41] Speaker 2: week towards the end of last week. Last week when
[4:43] Speaker 2: we recorded the episode when Israel launch strikes on energy
[4:46] Speaker 2: interest in Iran in around respondent kind that was an
[4:49] Speaker 2: escalation like we had discussed. Uh, and then US Trump
[4:52] Speaker 2: said that if Iran does not let oil pass to
[4:55] Speaker 2: state of hormones, he would be attacking Iran's power plants,
[4:58] Speaker 2: to which Iran said that if that happens, it would
[5:01] Speaker 2: be attacking all power plants in the region of Gulf,
[5:04] Speaker 2: especially power plants linked to US basis in the region,
[5:06] Speaker 2: as well as powerplants off Israel. However, interestingly, on Monday,
[5:10] Speaker 2: Trump on his social media platform Truth Social, said that
[5:14] Speaker 2: some talk has been happening with Iran, and he's pretty
[5:17] Speaker 2: happy with the way things are progressing. And so he
[5:21] Speaker 2: told his Department of War that he recently renamed that
[5:25] Speaker 2: no strikes on power plants for the next five days.
[5:27] Speaker 1: Yeah, no power plants and no energy infrastructure. Yeah, for
[5:30] Speaker 1: the next five days as talks progress.
[5:32] Speaker 2: Since then, there's been a lot of reporting in US
[5:34] Speaker 2: media in Iran in media that there's has been some
[5:37] Speaker 2: sort of back channel that's been arranged in part due
[5:40] Speaker 2: to Egyptian help. However, it Ran on record has said
[5:43] Speaker 2: that there's no talk happening, that US is dreaming this up.
[5:47] Speaker 2: They are negotiating itself, talking to itself. Just this morning
[5:50] Speaker 2: they've said that. They've also been a lot of jokes, jibes,
[5:56] Speaker 2: memes posted by Iranian handles, official handles by the Ways handles,
[6:01] Speaker 2: including the one India taking a dig at Donald Trump and.
[6:05] Speaker 1: The US and the situation at hand first of Sunday.
[6:08] Speaker 2: But I want to try and understand where we are.
[6:11] Speaker 2: We are according to evangel like I said, Trump's deadline
[6:14] Speaker 2: for those five days gets old on Frida Division.
[6:16] Speaker 1: Interestingly, is, according to.
[6:18] Speaker 2: The Wall Street Journal, is a time around the time
[6:20] Speaker 2: a group of Marines who were in and around Japan
[6:24] Speaker 2: are supposed to enter the usc COM area. Cent Com
[6:27] Speaker 2: is a central comm out of the US military that's
[6:28] Speaker 2: handling all the operations in Iran, so they'll be entering
[6:31] Speaker 2: there just before recording you you spoke about how there
[6:35] Speaker 2: is a.
[6:35] Speaker 1: Chatter of the U.
[6:36] Speaker 2: S dispatching its twenty six eighty second Airborne Division, the
[6:40] Speaker 2: army's paratrooper unit.
[6:42] Speaker 1: Uh.
[6:43] Speaker 2: It's it's famed from the D Day of World War Two.
[6:46] Speaker 2: That's the unit did take part in that in that
[6:49] Speaker 2: invasion of Europe. So the big question obviously, is this, honestly, uh,
[6:59] Speaker 2: a pivot in Trump's strategy. Has he realized that something
[7:03] Speaker 2: that he had promised never to do get US engaged
[7:06] Speaker 2: a forever war that's happening on his watch? Or is
[7:09] Speaker 2: this just a tactical pause, which is what Iran is fearing.
[7:11] Speaker 2: There's a reporting by Axius this morning that Iran thinks
[7:14] Speaker 2: this is just a trap to lure them into a
[7:17] Speaker 2: sense of complacency and come Friday and US is going
[7:21] Speaker 2: to be coming in Hameron.
[7:22] Speaker 1: Dongs No exactly. So you know what has happened in
[7:25] Speaker 1: the last nearly a month now is so what's happened
[7:29] Speaker 1: over the last month is this And this is something
[7:32] Speaker 1: that we've not seen with the United States and a
[7:36] Speaker 1: smaller power in the twenty first century, that the US
[7:39] Speaker 1: has bombed a country for almost a month, like literally
[7:44] Speaker 1: round the clock. The US and Israel, two of the
[7:47] Speaker 1: most powerful air forces, and not even counting the US Navy,
[7:52] Speaker 1: which is an equally powerful air force. Just US and
[7:55] Speaker 1: Israel have been bombing Iran for almost a month. The
[7:59] Speaker 1: Iranian command and control of its missiles, drones, the numbers
[8:03] Speaker 1: may have come down, but they're intact. This is unprecedented,
[8:07] Speaker 1: and as you mentioned, they've cocking a snook at the
[8:10] Speaker 1: United States. So I think the big question to ask is,
[8:15] Speaker 1: has the America have Trump? Has the US Have these
[8:21] Speaker 1: two countries literally fallen into a trap out of which
[8:25] Speaker 1: there seems to be no way for them but to exit.
[8:28] Speaker 1: And if you see the rhetoric that's coming out of Iran,
[8:30] Speaker 1: they seem to be holding all the cards right now.
[8:33] Speaker 1: And this is bizarre. I mean, I call this war
[8:36] Speaker 1: a stupid war, right because look, Iran has been on
[8:40] Speaker 1: the strategic horizon of the United States ever since nineteen
[8:44] Speaker 1: seventy five nine, right ever since the revolution. Because they're
[8:47] Speaker 1: looking at it from a different perspective, different from our thing.
[8:50] Speaker 1: They're looking at the way empires look at you know,
[8:53] Speaker 1: geographies like Iran must be under their control, the Saudi
[8:57] Speaker 1: Arabian Peninsula must be under their control. Iran broke away,
[9:01] Speaker 1: it began this anti US, anti Israel rhetoric, it began
[9:05] Speaker 1: exporting the revolution. And very interestingly, this is Mama bin
[9:09] Speaker 1: Salman who said this a few years back, where he
[9:11] Speaker 1: said that why did Saudi Arabia export Wahabism? It was
[9:15] Speaker 1: basically at the behest of the United States. That's one
[9:18] Speaker 1: question that always puzzled me. Why did the Saudi suddenly
[9:21] Speaker 1: start exporting after nineteen seventy nine, so that it was
[9:24] Speaker 1: a US which asked them to do it to counter
[9:27] Speaker 1: not just communism but also radical Islam coming out of
[9:30] Speaker 1: Iran Shia this thing the revolution there. Now what has
[9:35] Speaker 1: happened is that ever since Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran was always
[9:41] Speaker 1: on the radar. So in fact, the new cons of
[9:43] Speaker 1: George Bush's vintage they wanted to invade Iran right in
[9:47] Speaker 1: the beginning of the twenty first century. There was a
[9:49] Speaker 1: whole lot of people like Cheney, for instance, Dick Cheney
[9:52] Speaker 1: was the leader of that movement, who was after George
[9:54] Speaker 1: Bush Junior, that we must invade Iran. Now now is
[9:58] Speaker 1: the opportunity. And Iran was actually under a lot of
[10:00] Speaker 1: pressure at that time, but for various reasons, they ended
[10:04] Speaker 1: up invading Iraq right two thousand and three, that another
[10:07] Speaker 1: stupid war, two three trillion dollars gone, thousands of US
[10:12] Speaker 1: servicemen gone, they pulled out two thousand and three to
[10:15] Speaker 1: about twenty eleven. Now Iran post twenty eleven, a lot
[10:21] Speaker 1: of US presidents have looked at it, including Barack Obama
[10:25] Speaker 1: for two terms. They understood that Iran is a country
[10:29] Speaker 1: you cannot take on militarily because it is not Iraq,
[10:32] Speaker 1: and it's certainly not Afghanistan. I mean, Iran is the
[10:35] Speaker 1: size of Iraq and Afghanistan put together. It's half the
[10:40] Speaker 1: size of India. It's almost two million square kilometers. And
[10:43] Speaker 1: if you look at the map, I never tired of
[10:45] Speaker 1: saying this, Iran is like a natural fortress surrounded by
[10:49] Speaker 1: mountains on all sized deserts in the middle and a
[10:51] Speaker 1: very large capable ground force element. So till the time
[10:55] Speaker 1: you don't mobilize ground forces, you will not be able
[10:59] Speaker 1: to defeat Iran military. And the conditions that the United
[11:02] Speaker 1: States is asking of Iran at the start of this,
[11:06] Speaker 1: you know, give up your nuclear weapons program, your nuclear
[11:10] Speaker 1: program cap it, hand over all your enriched uranium to us,
[11:15] Speaker 1: stop your ballistic missile program. We've discussed this in the past.
[11:20] Speaker 1: And the fourth one, of course, stop your so called
[11:22] Speaker 1: access of recunstance. All your proxies should stop. Now. These
[11:26] Speaker 1: are conditions that Iran was close to accepting when the
[11:29] Speaker 1: talks began around the twenty sixth, when they concluded where
[11:33] Speaker 1: the Oman mediated talks and they broke down of course
[11:37] Speaker 1: when the US began bombing on the twenty eighth. So
[11:41] Speaker 1: Iran is in a position now where it does not
[11:44] Speaker 1: trust the United States. It never takes it at face
[11:46] Speaker 1: value because they realized that, Look, we were talking last year,
[11:49] Speaker 1: we got bombed. As late as this year in February,
[11:52] Speaker 1: we were talking again, we got bombed. This could well
[11:55] Speaker 1: be a tactical pause. As you said, it is a
[11:58] Speaker 1: tactical pause because what I'm not looking at what Trump
[12:03] Speaker 1: says over the United States says, I am looking at
[12:07] Speaker 1: the movement of cards. There are two marine expeditionary units
[12:10] Speaker 1: that are moving in and we discuss this on your
[12:12] Speaker 1: show on the eleventh of March. I remember when I
[12:15] Speaker 1: said cargo is going to be an objective. It's going
[12:18] Speaker 1: to be an objective because the US does not hold
[12:22] Speaker 1: any cards. They've realized that there is a limit to bombing.
[12:28] Speaker 1: I mean, you can't keep bombing and bombing and you
[12:30] Speaker 1: hope to achieve an objective. It hasn't served those objectives yet.
[12:34] Speaker 1: The Iranians are still fighting, They're still launching missiles, maybe
[12:37] Speaker 1: not in those numbers, they're able to launch missiles in
[12:42] Speaker 1: retaliation to certain things. If their energy infrastructure is bombed,
[12:47] Speaker 1: able to retaliate, so their command and control is intact.
[12:50] Speaker 1: So the United States is now in a very embarrassing
[12:53] Speaker 1: position now that it literally holds no cards. Blocking the
[12:58] Speaker 1: Straits of hor Moves is an option that we discussed
[13:01] Speaker 1: in the newsroom a year ago when the Twelve Day
[13:04] Speaker 1: War was on. We were looking at what Iran's options
[13:06] Speaker 1: were and this was the thing, and this is you
[13:09] Speaker 1: don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.
[13:12] Speaker 1: This has been done in the past. When Iran has
[13:13] Speaker 1: been pushed to the wall, it's begun attacking ships in
[13:16] Speaker 1: the Straits and foremost because you know, let's face it, it
[13:19] Speaker 1: is a dictatorship in Iran, right. It is a religious dictatorship.
[13:22] Speaker 1: It's a Shia theocracy. For them, the primary goal is
[13:26] Speaker 1: to protect the regime, protect the revolution. Diergy c exists
[13:31] Speaker 1: to protect the revolution and the regime. It doesn't exist
[13:33] Speaker 1: only to protect the Iranian people. Right, so if the
[13:36] Speaker 1: regime felt threatened and it sees foreign pass meddlaying or
[13:40] Speaker 1: you know, encouraging insurgencies, then it will retaliate. And what
[13:45] Speaker 1: happened in December after the protest is horrible. Six thousand
[13:48] Speaker 1: people they believe, you know, have been murdered. But the
[13:51] Speaker 1: thing is that the US has no plan, it has
[13:55] Speaker 1: no strategy. It went into this thinking that it was
[13:57] Speaker 1: going to be a Venezuela kind of operation, and it's
[14:00] Speaker 1: proved to be anything but. And I think the reason
[14:04] Speaker 1: for this is hubris. Again. Trump went into Venezuela, he
[14:09] Speaker 1: got a quick mission accomplished over there. It was unprecedented.
[14:12] Speaker 1: What happened we've discussed in the past. In January, when
[14:16] Speaker 1: he went there, he got Maduro and that went to well, yeah,
[14:20] Speaker 1: it was a couple of hours and it's a lightning operation.
[14:22] Speaker 1: And we spoke about how this is the first time
[14:25] Speaker 1: that one head of state has literally been abducted from
[14:29] Speaker 1: his palace, fort fortified palace, a location which was called
[14:33] Speaker 1: the Rock, which was so impregnably was guarded by Cuban
[14:36] Speaker 1: bodyguards they managed to use all kinds of you know,
[14:38] Speaker 1: l rads and stuff and pull him out of there. Unprecedented.
[14:42] Speaker 1: Now that might have gone to Trump's head head, and
[14:46] Speaker 1: he would have said, let's do the same thing. Will
[14:47] Speaker 1: go quick decapitation strike here the entire Italian leadership will
[14:53] Speaker 1: you know, collapse And the question then to ask is
[14:56] Speaker 1: then what then what? Oh? Then Iran will surrender? Didn't happen,
[15:01] Speaker 1: so very clearly they didn't have a contingency. And this
[15:04] Speaker 1: is why you go into military operations with all manners
[15:08] Speaker 1: of contingencies. You know, you you will have a ground
[15:10] Speaker 1: forces element, you will have this thing, you will have
[15:12] Speaker 1: your allies in place. You know, there is a reason
[15:15] Speaker 1: that the US always goes into crises like this with allies. Right,
[15:21] Speaker 1: Trump went into the sea, He's insulted all his allies.
[15:24] Speaker 1: He's you know, I've been talking to Europeans and this thing.
[15:27] Speaker 1: This is the guy wanted to invade US and you know,
[15:29] Speaker 1: take away Greenland, and now he wants us to come
[15:32] Speaker 1: and help him for something that he's broken. Right, So
[15:35] Speaker 1: Trump is he has stumbled into this war and now
[15:39] Speaker 1: he is literally clutching at straws all of these things,
[15:44] Speaker 1: you know, any elementary, any student of geopolitics, who have
[15:48] Speaker 1: told him, look, this is what is going to happen.
[15:49] Speaker 1: Iran will fight. They'll fight to the finish because they
[15:52] Speaker 1: believe in this cult of martyrdom, right, and he's converted,
[15:58] Speaker 1: coming into a martyr, and he will be an eternal
[16:00] Speaker 1: the martyr who died, you know, facing the enemy. The
[16:04] Speaker 1: other way of looking at it, he would have died
[16:06] Speaker 1: of old age, you know which he was anyway, he
[16:08] Speaker 1: was a eighty six in the late eighties. You would
[16:09] Speaker 1: have died quietly, peacefully. He would have not been worshiped
[16:14] Speaker 1: the way he is now. Now he's become a martyr.
[16:18] Speaker 1: And as Iran had a stockpile of weapons, it seems
[16:23] Speaker 1: to have a stockpile of leaders as well. You know,
[16:26] Speaker 1: every leader that you killed, there's another replacement for him.
[16:29] Speaker 1: So then where is your strategy? Is this all that
[16:32] Speaker 1: you had in mind? And now you are approaching with
[16:36] Speaker 1: your US, with your eighty second Airborne, You're approaching the
[16:41] Speaker 1: beginnings of the US involvement in Vietnam. I see a
[16:45] Speaker 1: yerie parallel to Vietnam here nineteen sixty five Gulf of
[16:49] Speaker 1: Tonkin incident. US warships are targeted by the North Vietnamese Army,
[16:54] Speaker 1: and the US then starts sending in troops and then
[16:58] Speaker 1: battalions become brigade. Brigades become divisions, Divisions become cores, scores
[17:03] Speaker 1: become armies, and before you know it, you're fighting this unending,
[17:07] Speaker 1: never ending war. You know. So this is the thing
[17:10] Speaker 1: that Robert Pape. There are things that I disagree with
[17:13] Speaker 1: him on. The things I agree with him on, and
[17:15] Speaker 1: one thing is that the smart munitions trap. Yes, it's
[17:19] Speaker 1: you know, the whole U. S Security establishment, including the
[17:23] Speaker 1: Department of War, is they drank their own kool aid.
[17:28] Speaker 1: There's no other way we're explaining it. The kool aid
[17:30] Speaker 1: is that we have the ability today the US is
[17:34] Speaker 1: the most the strongest military power that the world has
[17:37] Speaker 1: ever known. We can one target one smart weapon. We
[17:42] Speaker 1: have AI targeting and that's literally happening. Yeah, AI is
[17:46] Speaker 1: giving you solutions. There's no other way you could hit
[17:48] Speaker 1: two thousand and five, ten thousand targets. These are all
[17:51] Speaker 1: AI driven. Palanteer and all of the others guys are
[17:54] Speaker 1: behind this war machine. And that leads you to believe, oh,
[17:57] Speaker 1: you know, if I do this, I can keep doing this.
[18:00] Speaker 1: And Iran will collapse. But again, you know, this is
[18:04] Speaker 1: something that we've discussed in the past, is that you
[18:06] Speaker 1: have to give your enemy agency as well. That he
[18:10] Speaker 1: has a plan, he will also do certain things. Everything
[18:13] Speaker 1: might not work out to the way you've planned. And
[18:15] Speaker 1: now look, Trump has painted himself into a corner. He's stuck.
[18:19] Speaker 1: He's stuck in a way that many people saw coming.
[18:24] Speaker 1: And that's why key figures from the Biden administration, Blincoln
[18:27] Speaker 1: and all that were literally imploring him, President Trump, please
[18:31] Speaker 1: take the win. Exit. It's been four days. Exit. There
[18:35] Speaker 1: is no end to this. This will keep continuing. You
[18:37] Speaker 1: get into the spiral that see you know you sit
[18:40] Speaker 1: over there, because they think tactically, they'll come up with plans, right.
[18:44] Speaker 1: I mean, the plan that we discussed for car G
[18:46] Speaker 1: Island is something that just came out on the top
[18:47] Speaker 1: of my mind because I knew if if you don't
[18:50] Speaker 1: have any cards to negotiate with the Iranians, you will
[18:53] Speaker 1: have to get those cards. How do you get those cards?
[18:56] Speaker 1: The military comes in, they say, okay, we'll capture the Silent,
[18:59] Speaker 1: We'll capture that island, and then we will use those
[19:02] Speaker 1: to negotiate, you know, a way out of this there's
[19:05] Speaker 1: no other way. You have to negotiate. But if you
[19:07] Speaker 1: don't have any cards, the Iranians only even negotiate with you.
[19:10] Speaker 1: The spokesperson is laughing at you right, literally is telling
[19:13] Speaker 1: you that they're talking to themselves. They have no cards,
[19:15] Speaker 1: and they've in fact given a list of demands. The
[19:18] Speaker 1: Iranians have said, now we're going to start taxing shit.
[19:21] Speaker 1: You said, no US bases in the Gulf. Yeah, exactly.
[19:24] Speaker 1: When is the last time a country in the twenty
[19:26] Speaker 1: first century has told the US get out? Yeah? Imagine,
[19:29] Speaker 1: it's never happened. And this, you know, and like we've
[19:34] Speaker 1: discussed again in the past, that there are serious countries
[19:38] Speaker 1: that are watching this. The Chinese are watching, Chijin Ping
[19:41] Speaker 1: is watching it. Vladimir Putin is watching this. The US
[19:44] Speaker 1: is making a joke of itself. Right, it has gone
[19:47] Speaker 1: into this, stumbled into this conflict, and now Trump is
[19:50] Speaker 1: flailing about. He's you know, even looking for Patsy's. Oh,
[19:54] Speaker 1: it wasn't my idea except except this guy. Except might
[19:58] Speaker 1: even take the rap. He might be a forced out.
[20:01] Speaker 1: Who never know, You never know. And the very interesting
[20:05] Speaker 1: thing that Iranians want the Vice president Vans to Negoi
[20:11] Speaker 1: because they don't want to question because he's in the
[20:13] Speaker 1: early agent. Yeah. So this is the kind of bizarre situation.
[20:17] Speaker 1: You know, the US has exposed it so very badly
[20:20] Speaker 1: in this. They should have in the first couple of
[20:24] Speaker 1: hours said okay, fine, we've done this, regime, changed companies out.
[20:28] Speaker 1: Now the new regime, we will negotiate with them on
[20:30] Speaker 1: the oil gas. Now you force the regime into a corner.
[20:33] Speaker 1: Now it is dictating in terms Iran is dictating in
[20:35] Speaker 1: terms of the United States. That's how bad things are,
[20:37] Speaker 1: and this is what is going to push them into
[20:39] Speaker 1: irrational actions like grabbing islands, an island, several islands, grabbing
[20:45] Speaker 1: the Straits of Hormones, positioning warships over there, attacking car
[20:49] Speaker 1: Island or Keshim, that big island at the mouth of
[20:53] Speaker 1: the Straits of Hormones. They will do all of this
[20:56] Speaker 1: to try and get some kind of bargaining chip to
[20:59] Speaker 1: force Iran out. So, I mean, it is a what
[21:04] Speaker 1: do you call it, a bugger's muddle. That's what this
[21:06] Speaker 1: seems like.
[21:07] Speaker 2: But you know something that is what makes it so
[21:09] Speaker 2: scary and sort of as I lead into the next question,
[21:12] Speaker 2: is how Iran has responded over the last couple of
[21:15] Speaker 2: couple of days verbally obviously and on social media through
[21:18] Speaker 2: those memes, et cetera. So far, you know, in the
[21:21] Speaker 2: last one month, I think Iran has been pretty on
[21:23] Speaker 2: point with its communication strategy. In fact, I think Iran's
[21:27] Speaker 2: forum is Minister Rachi has been very he's been very clear,
[21:31] Speaker 2: and he's perhaps been very good at getting the communication
[21:35] Speaker 2: and the message of Iran across to all all, to
[21:39] Speaker 2: the entire world. And in fact, even the ambassador who
[21:42] Speaker 2: had come to who had come to the conclave that
[21:46] Speaker 2: that session, that half an hour he spoke to us,
[21:48] Speaker 2: it was quite it's quite a decent on was because
[21:50] Speaker 2: I think in their heads the Irans were very clear
[21:52] Speaker 2: in terms of the message and they want to.
[21:54] Speaker 1: Give to the world.
[21:55] Speaker 2: But what you're talking about right now, uh, and what
[21:58] Speaker 2: Iran has been doing over the last couple of days
[22:00] Speaker 2: making personal jokes about Trump, uh, you know, like you said,
[22:04] Speaker 2: snookut him, you know, putting on memes that make him
[22:07] Speaker 2: look you know, like, you know, like stupid, like almost
[22:10] Speaker 2: joker ish.
[22:11] Speaker 1: Uh. These are not things.
[22:12] Speaker 2: Someone like that all Trump take away nicely. We all
[22:15] Speaker 2: know that this guy is very mercural. Uh, he is egoistical,
[22:19] Speaker 2: even in fact some of the in fact there was
[22:24] Speaker 2: there was white talk that some of the one of
[22:26] Speaker 2: the reasons he was pushing India so hard, uh in
[22:29] Speaker 2: the last few months was because India did not agree
[22:32] Speaker 2: to his version of how Opsondur ended last year where.
[22:36] Speaker 1: The US wanted he wanted to take some credit credit
[22:38] Speaker 1: about it. Uh. You also know that.
[22:41] Speaker 2: What's happened between him and the French president Macron. So
[22:44] Speaker 2: you you have his personality who does not take very
[22:46] Speaker 2: kindly to not being you know, to being made fun of. Uh,
[22:50] Speaker 2: Iran is doing that for the last couple of for
[22:52] Speaker 2: the last two days. We've discussed previously that all Trump needs, yes,
[22:57] Speaker 2: that ability and that capability and that that that that
[23:00] Speaker 2: that one factor that lets him say, hey, we won,
[23:03] Speaker 2: I won Great America.
[23:05] Speaker 1: Great, yeah, go away, right, Why won't did I just
[23:08] Speaker 1: give it to him? It was so easy?
[23:09] Speaker 2: Right, just like I'm not saying fooled, yeah and stay quiet,
[23:13] Speaker 2: say oh yeah, we have negotiating, you know, do your negotiations.
[23:16] Speaker 2: But why do you think Iran by doing what is
[23:19] Speaker 2: doing in the last couple of days and situation being
[23:21] Speaker 2: as such like like the one you've described it's actually
[23:23] Speaker 2: going to make things worse.
[23:25] Speaker 1: Well, I think, if you know, I have no idea
[23:27] Speaker 1: why they're doing it, but my reading of the situation
[23:30] Speaker 1: is that the Iranians are doing it because they believe
[23:34] Speaker 1: that they control the escalation ladder now and they they
[23:39] Speaker 1: think that if they start negotiating now from a position
[23:42] Speaker 1: of weakness they given to Trump, it's going to lead
[23:45] Speaker 1: to more attacks. The regime has survived, right, there's no
[23:47] Speaker 1: doubt about that. It doesn't seem likely that the regime
[23:50] Speaker 1: will collapse, or at least not in the next couple
[23:53] Speaker 1: of weeks or days. What they don't want is for
[23:57] Speaker 1: a tactical pause to become a strategic pause and then
[24:00] Speaker 1: there's another round of conflict where they come back again
[24:04] Speaker 1: Israel and the US or just Israel by itself to
[24:07] Speaker 1: bomb Iran. Like I mentioned, there's been a pattern to it.
[24:11] Speaker 1: Last year they were bombed twelve Day War, Midnight Timmer happened.
[24:15] Speaker 1: Then they came back again while they were talking. So
[24:17] Speaker 1: they say that every time we talk, we get bombed.
[24:19] Speaker 1: So you know, now we want to ensure that there
[24:23] Speaker 1: are some cast iron guarantees that we get that there
[24:26] Speaker 1: is going to be a lasting solution for this, and
[24:28] Speaker 1: that is so they're taking the maximalist position Americans get
[24:33] Speaker 1: out of the Gulf, right, that is one thing that
[24:35] Speaker 1: they've said. The other is that they're going to start
[24:37] Speaker 1: taxing ships passing through the straits of Homos. All of
[24:41] Speaker 1: these things are meant to get leverage in negotiations with
[24:45] Speaker 1: the Americans so that the US side does not think
[24:48] Speaker 1: that the Iranians are going to be you know, pushed
[24:50] Speaker 1: over and stuff. But there will be a negotiated settlement,
[24:52] Speaker 1: There's no doubt about it. My only fear is that
[24:55] Speaker 1: it doesn't appear that it's happening in the next couple
[24:57] Speaker 1: of days because, like I said, this move movement of forces,
[25:01] Speaker 1: there is huge movement of boots coming into theater, which
[25:06] Speaker 1: suggests that they are going to capture something and use
[25:09] Speaker 1: that for leverage in the talks. It's all about talks, right,
[25:14] Speaker 1: Either you have cards or you don't have exactly, So, yeah,
[25:17] Speaker 1: they need cards. So what are those cards going to be?
[25:21] Speaker 1: Is it to stop bombing? Well, no, Iranswyers, continue bombing.
[25:26] Speaker 1: We do bay to you what you've been doing to us, right,
[25:29] Speaker 1: so they have that capacity to retaliate. Their missile capacity
[25:32] Speaker 1: is not been touched. Those missile cities haven't been knocked
[25:35] Speaker 1: out yet. They have that tradigial thing. And the most
[25:37] Speaker 1: important thing is the straits of Hormoves. I mean, look
[25:40] Speaker 1: how easy it was to mine it. If you look
[25:42] Speaker 1: at it, it just took twelve a dozen minds, is
[25:45] Speaker 1: what they say, is what they've laid across the streets
[25:48] Speaker 1: of foremost. Iran has in fact threatened that if you
[25:51] Speaker 1: attack our infrastructure, nuclear facilities, we will permanently block the thing.
[25:56] Speaker 1: In fact, that's their response to the boots on ground thing. Yes,
[25:59] Speaker 1: if you land, you take our islands, we will permanently
[26:02] Speaker 1: block hormos, which means that they've threatened to use floating
[26:06] Speaker 1: mines as well. Now floating mines are banned in international
[26:09] Speaker 1: convention simply because they are so dangerous. It is a
[26:15] Speaker 1: mine that's not more to anything. It's just floating on
[26:18] Speaker 1: the surface of the water. It can just go anywhere,
[26:20] Speaker 1: hit anything, basically, hit anything, hit anyway, move into the
[26:23] Speaker 1: Indian Ocean. So it becomes a global crisis. It already
[26:27] Speaker 1: is a global crisis. It's going to start hitting ships
[26:29] Speaker 1: because mines are they only have one purpose, sink ships.
[26:33] Speaker 1: So these are the threats that Iran has made, and
[26:36] Speaker 1: it is a very low tech investment. We focused a
[26:39] Speaker 1: lot on the Shahit, We focus a lot on the
[26:41] Speaker 1: ballistic missile capabilities, not enough on the mines. Look at
[26:46] Speaker 1: this low cost solution, costing a few thousand dollars the
[26:49] Speaker 1: entire mining operation. If you look at it, if it's
[26:52] Speaker 1: twelve mins, this whole operation wouldn't have cost even one
[26:55] Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars mining the straits of Hormos. That's how
[26:58] Speaker 1: easy it was. And you've blowed ucated almost one fourth
[27:02] Speaker 1: of the world's oil and gas passages. That's how easy
[27:06] Speaker 1: it was for Iran. This is something they'd been planning
[27:07] Speaker 1: for many years. Trump knew that this was on the animal.
[27:12] Speaker 1: They did not do anything. They did not anticipate this problem.
[27:16] Speaker 1: The US decommissioned its last few minesweepers. That's how funny.
[27:19] Speaker 1: It's just even in the UK and yeah, February, right,
[27:22] Speaker 1: they just send them, sent them back. There's that photograph
[27:25] Speaker 1: of them all put on one big flatbed and being
[27:28] Speaker 1: taken back to the United States. So these are very
[27:32] Speaker 1: you know, rudimentary capabilities, capacities that I've been reading since
[27:37] Speaker 1: I was in college. That long back. Right now. I
[27:39] Speaker 1: remember in the nineties there was a big trend of
[27:43] Speaker 1: talking about literal warfare, and literal warfare is post Cold War.
[27:48] Speaker 1: You're looking at small nations, weaker countries like Iran, North
[27:52] Speaker 1: Korea investing in brown water capabilities like mine warfare, coastal submarines,
[27:58] Speaker 1: bridget submarines, those kind of things, and the US realizing
[28:01] Speaker 1: that it didn't have the ability to project par into
[28:03] Speaker 1: the brown waters, so therefore they needed mind sweepers. They
[28:07] Speaker 1: needed your, uh, conventional submarines even to tackle these threats.
[28:13] Speaker 1: And now you realize that you've you've gone in from
[28:16] Speaker 1: strategic to you know, a position where you can't enter
[28:21] Speaker 1: a place like the Straits of Hormones without taking casualties,
[28:25] Speaker 1: right uh, you know our tangent over there.
[28:28] Speaker 2: And sort of a geek question about marines, because I
[28:33] Speaker 2: think this is something many people, uh, those who follow
[28:36] Speaker 2: the world of defense are obviously familiar with.
[28:38] Speaker 1: The people who know.
[28:39] Speaker 2: Military in the sense of the Indian military, they would
[28:41] Speaker 2: be a little surprised to and a little bit difficult,
[28:44] Speaker 2: a little bit that it'll be a bit difficult for
[28:46] Speaker 2: them to sort of grabs the idea of marines because
[28:50] Speaker 2: marines is almost like a military of its own right.
[28:52] Speaker 2: They have their own ships, they have their own air
[28:55] Speaker 2: air vehicles jets.
[28:58] Speaker 1: Even if I'm not they have their own jets F
[29:00] Speaker 1: thirty five US abas.
[29:02] Speaker 2: So since the Marines are coming all the way from Japan,
[29:04] Speaker 2: by the way, I think that also is a proof
[29:06] Speaker 2: of what you were talking about, that the US so
[29:08] Speaker 2: undestimated how the response was going to be that they
[29:11] Speaker 2: did not even have marines placed nearby. They called them
[29:14] Speaker 2: all the way from Japan and take up.
[29:15] Speaker 1: Javan and San Francisco, San Diego. They're coming from that.
[29:19] Speaker 2: Fam So just like a let's see a tangent there,
[29:22] Speaker 2: and let's talk about the concept of marines, what they
[29:24] Speaker 2: are and how do they differ from your standard Navy
[29:27] Speaker 2: army and the air force.
[29:28] Speaker 1: Well, you said the marine warfare concept. That's that's something
[29:31] Speaker 1: that the US is really good at because they did
[29:33] Speaker 1: that during the Second World War when they were fighting
[29:36] Speaker 1: this island hopping campaign right where they went across the
[29:38] Speaker 1: Pacific multiple islands that were used as outposts by the
[29:43] Speaker 1: Japanese like fortresses, island fortresses. The Americans went in with
[29:47] Speaker 1: their marines and captured them. Iwo Jima is one thing
[29:51] Speaker 1: that was in the Pacific bloody battles of Fort There
[29:54] Speaker 1: uh Okinawa was another one, another very important Japanese island
[29:59] Speaker 1: close to the Japanese homeland. Again a brutal battle, and
[30:03] Speaker 1: so the Marines that the legend of the Marines. It's
[30:05] Speaker 1: about nineteenth century concept but honed in the Second World War.
[30:09] Speaker 1: During the Cold War they refined it further and somewhere
[30:13] Speaker 1: around the eighties, towards the closing stages of the Second
[30:15] Speaker 1: World War, they came up with this ARGMEU concept, which
[30:19] Speaker 1: is amphibious group and Marine Expeditionary unit concept, which is
[30:26] Speaker 1: that you have a heavy landing platform amphibious assault ship
[30:32] Speaker 1: which is like a mini aircraft carrier. Meaning as for
[30:36] Speaker 1: the United States, because their super carriers or almost one
[30:39] Speaker 1: hundred thousand tons, their light carriers up are the size
[30:44] Speaker 1: of our carriers VIM and GRAT, so you have so
[30:49] Speaker 1: that force is built around that. It's about forty thousand
[30:53] Speaker 1: tons an amphibious assault ship. It's got landing platform DOC
[30:56] Speaker 1: ships usually two of them. So in this case, for instance,
[30:58] Speaker 1: a MEU that's flying in that's sailing in from Tokyo,
[31:03] Speaker 1: not Tokyo, Japan, which is somewhere in the Indian Ocean
[31:06] Speaker 1: region has got is a three ship as one amphibious
[31:11] Speaker 1: assault ship, two lpds, landing platform docks. These landing platform
[31:15] Speaker 1: docks would have would carry supplies, would carry you know,
[31:20] Speaker 1: the ships that will transport supplies from offshore to the shore. Now,
[31:27] Speaker 1: how it works is that this flotilla, this amphibious group
[31:33] Speaker 1: will stand off the coast of any target area twenty
[31:37] Speaker 1: five to one hundred nautical miles depending on the kind
[31:39] Speaker 1: of threats that they anticipate. They stand v over the
[31:42] Speaker 1: horizon and from there they will first conduct rerecays of
[31:47] Speaker 1: the coast that they have to target. They will, of
[31:50] Speaker 1: course they have all kinds of you know, drone satellites
[31:53] Speaker 1: and all that, but they will you know, possibly send
[31:55] Speaker 1: in special forces. First, they'll send in recay scouts to
[31:59] Speaker 1: look for idle places to land and you know all
[32:02] Speaker 1: of that. Typically islands, they will look at small islands.
[32:05] Speaker 1: And when we were talking of car the only force
[32:08] Speaker 1: that was we were thinking of was the Marines. Then
[32:11] Speaker 1: the Marines would then come in large numbers. Now a
[32:15] Speaker 1: marine expeditionary unit is about twenty two hundred, but the
[32:19] Speaker 1: actual component of it, the fighting component, would be about
[32:21] Speaker 1: eight hundred. So to understand that would be a battalion
[32:24] Speaker 1: size's headed by a kernel and the whole MEU would
[32:28] Speaker 1: be about twenty two hundred, which is all you know,
[32:30] Speaker 1: your sappers, your intelligence, your base, this thing, everything, but
[32:35] Speaker 1: the fighting comportent is just eight hundred. But they're backed
[32:38] Speaker 1: with organic air power. They have helicopters, they have gunships.
[32:41] Speaker 1: They have F thirty five Bees, which are very capable
[32:46] Speaker 1: fifth generation fighter aircraft which are carried by the amphibious
[32:50] Speaker 1: assault ship. They can land vertically, not vertically, but yeah
[32:54] Speaker 1: they can. They have the C version right, which is
[32:58] Speaker 1: the short and vertical landing as so they have about
[33:02] Speaker 1: six to eight of them each ship carries that. So
[33:04] Speaker 1: the whole the idea is that for this to be
[33:06] Speaker 1: a composite package where they don't have to rely on
[33:09] Speaker 1: any other external you know, sources or resupply or anything
[33:14] Speaker 1: like that. So it is a battalion with all these
[33:18] Speaker 1: you know, integrated firepower. So it's one way of looking
[33:23] Speaker 1: at it as just a battalion in army, battalion no,
[33:25] Speaker 1: but it's actually a battalion with possibly the striking power
[33:29] Speaker 1: of a division plus in Indian terms, because they carry
[33:33] Speaker 1: so much of firepower. It's not just the artillery, it's
[33:36] Speaker 1: not just the fighter aircraft. They have helicopter gunships, they
[33:39] Speaker 1: have heavy lift helicopters, they have medical things. So it's
[33:42] Speaker 1: like the literally the tip of the spear the US
[33:45] Speaker 1: peer when it comes to see lift capability. So they
[33:48] Speaker 1: have about ten or eleven of these, corresponding to the
[33:52] Speaker 1: number of carriers strike groups. Each carrier strike group usually
[33:56] Speaker 1: carries one of these argmeus and they also have a
[34:02] Speaker 1: three of them are on ready stand by, you know,
[34:05] Speaker 1: just as the eighty second Airborne has about eighteen hours.
[34:11] Speaker 1: I think they're on an eighteen hours stand toe. So
[34:14] Speaker 1: these guys are also I think about trying to remember
[34:18] Speaker 1: how many hours that they are because it takes them
[34:20] Speaker 1: time to sail into the theater. But they're also on
[34:22] Speaker 1: a very high level of alertness, these three ARGs meus.
[34:27] Speaker 1: So possibly if they're going to strike at the islands,
[34:31] Speaker 1: they are going to be using this kind of tactics
[34:35] Speaker 1: and looking at the geography of Iran now they will
[34:40] Speaker 1: possibly combine it with airborne forces, so it'll be a
[34:44] Speaker 1: c air envelopment of the island or islands. Right.
[34:49] Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see if that happens, like you said, because
[34:52] Speaker 2: this could all just be part of a build up
[34:54] Speaker 2: to just build that leverage. Because when you're sitting at
[34:57] Speaker 2: that table and when Iran says key Nick, then you
[35:01] Speaker 2: need to have cure by those marines.
[35:04] Speaker 1: So it could you also well be a thing. See,
[35:06] Speaker 1: it could also be a decoy. I mean, I have
[35:09] Speaker 1: no access to US planning or anything like. We're just
[35:11] Speaker 1: looking at the movements and say how they could use it.
[35:13] Speaker 1: One is, of course, the threat of US marines and
[35:17] Speaker 1: airborne forces moving into theater. That itself could be a leverage, right,
[35:21] Speaker 1: That is one level of leverage. The other is when
[35:24] Speaker 1: they actually land there and you can see their ships.
[35:27] Speaker 1: That's another level. The third is when they actually move
[35:30] Speaker 1: into operations and start grabbing territory. Of course it will
[35:32] Speaker 1: be contested. All of this thing Iran is not going
[35:35] Speaker 1: is no walkover, right. Their ground forces are looking haven't
[35:38] Speaker 1: been used. They haven't been used exactly. So they've been
[35:40] Speaker 1: posting all a lot on social media. They've been posting
[35:43] Speaker 1: fpv drone footage saying the guys in cars are waiting.
[35:46] Speaker 1: We've you know, supplied them with drones, so they're still there.
[35:50] Speaker 1: They're in caves. They're hiding in caves. In fact, today
[35:54] Speaker 1: Indian to day Ostin group, they just shared some interesting
[35:57] Speaker 1: footage of kit did this thing of Keshim where he's
[36:05] Speaker 1: located pins concrete pins in which boats and possibly even
[36:10] Speaker 1: submarines can be hidden on Keshim Man, I don't know
[36:13] Speaker 1: that these existed, so they're possibly all hidden in these
[36:17] Speaker 1: little you know, little caves, underground, under water caves. So
[36:22] Speaker 1: you know, ready to pull off surprises, because, like I said,
[36:24] Speaker 1: this is something that Iran seems to have planned for
[36:26] Speaker 1: a very long time, twenty thirty years. They've been building
[36:29] Speaker 1: up all their capabilities for precisely a time like this. Yeah.
[36:34] Speaker 2: True, we'll zoom out a bit now and take a
[36:38] Speaker 2: look at things a bit closer to home.
[36:40] Speaker 1: But after a quick break, German Chancellor, you know Merged.
[36:43] Speaker 3: For example, he said, this is not a matter for NATO.
[36:47] Speaker 3: NATO allies have stepped up to provide additional security in
[36:50] Speaker 3: the Mediterranean region. How do you look at NATO's response
[36:54] Speaker 3: to this entire conflict.
[36:55] Speaker 1: Especially to the issue of the Strait of hormoes.
[36:59] Speaker 4: Right, say, on timing, I do think Trump said at
[37:01] Speaker 4: the beginning four to six weeks so We're only in
[37:04] Speaker 4: week three now, we're not even halfway there. I think
[37:07] Speaker 4: it will be longer than that, and I think we
[37:10] Speaker 4: have to be committed. Once you start on regime change,
[37:12] Speaker 4: you have to succeed because a wounded regime left behind
[37:16] Speaker 4: could turn out to be worse than what we faced,
[37:20] Speaker 4: and that's a real risk here. Look, I think this
[37:23] Speaker 4: is NATO's war. I think the threat of Iran's nuclear
[37:26] Speaker 4: weapons capability, if they acquired nuclear weapons from Koreer developed
[37:31] Speaker 4: their own easily could reach Europe. They have intermediate range
[37:35] Speaker 4: ballistic missiles that can do that. They can't hit the
[37:37] Speaker 4: US yet, but it is Europe that's threatened. Europe knows
[37:40] Speaker 4: full well also that it's threatened by Iran's terrorism. So
[37:44] Speaker 4: I think the European reaction has been unfortunate.
[37:52] Speaker 1: Welcome back, some.
[37:53] Speaker 2: Think, I want to know, move a bit towards the home,
[37:56] Speaker 2: talk a bit about India and Pakistan. So you've had
[38:02] Speaker 2: suddenly General Field Marshal sorry, Field Marshal Simony is rearing
[38:07] Speaker 2: his head and grabbing.
[38:09] Speaker 1: Like this is my time, it seems, is just propped
[38:13] Speaker 1: up out of his under his bed. Yeah, because the
[38:15] Speaker 1: Saudi king has been calling him and he hasn't been
[38:17] Speaker 1: taking his exactly yes.
[38:20] Speaker 2: Pack, yeah, the pack, yeah all his I'm busy Afghanistan war. Creditors,
[38:27] Speaker 2: creditors come knocking. You know, we discussed this before, actually
[38:31] Speaker 2: that how the offensive against Taliban might just be just
[38:35] Speaker 2: a way to tell the US and Soudist as well, boss,
[38:38] Speaker 2: we are busy with their own ship. Peace call us
[38:40] Speaker 2: and you know, help to help you fight you.
[38:44] Speaker 1: But no.
[38:44] Speaker 2: On a serious note, what's happened in the last twenty
[38:48] Speaker 2: four hours is that Pakistan has a sort of offer
[38:51] Speaker 2: to mediate between us, because, like you said, the one
[38:55] Speaker 2: big thing right now is the trust factor.
[38:58] Speaker 1: While the US will be willing to talk to Iran
[39:00] Speaker 1: wherever and through whomever, Iran is.
[39:03] Speaker 2: Not because of like you said, previous experiences twice bitten
[39:06] Speaker 2: now thrice shy. So like you said, it's said, we
[39:10] Speaker 2: will not negotiate with Steve whet Koff, the residence points
[39:14] Speaker 2: person for the region, or his son and l Jared Kushner.
[39:17] Speaker 2: I don't know what designation helds. I'm sorry, he's just
[39:20] Speaker 2: love who knows why? Because Iran things both of them
[39:24] Speaker 2: are basicly is really agents, not like on the payrolls
[39:27] Speaker 2: of Israel, but basically people who support the cause of
[39:29] Speaker 2: Phyidels so much that they will be blinded by their
[39:32] Speaker 2: by wanting the negotiations to go in Israel's favor. They
[39:35] Speaker 2: instead prefer someone like a JD. Vans, whom they think
[39:38] Speaker 2: perhaps could be would be a bit more let's say, open,
[39:42] Speaker 2: to be more fairness.
[39:44] Speaker 1: But where does this take place? You only have two
[39:46] Speaker 1: three places.
[39:47] Speaker 2: You have either Oman, you have Pakistan, Turkey Kata not
[39:52] Speaker 2: so much because you've hit Kata during the course of
[39:54] Speaker 2: the last few days, even though Kata is known historically
[39:57] Speaker 2: to be usually very neutral and be the one trying
[40:00] Speaker 2: to broke her peace.
[40:00] Speaker 1: In the reason Oman no Oman has been there.
[40:03] Speaker 2: Yeah, Omar, as you hit in the first day, Kata,
[40:07] Speaker 2: you've hit over the course of the last few days.
[40:09] Speaker 2: So I don't think they're very happy to host it
[40:11] Speaker 2: and in leaders on the soil. But Turkey is an option,
[40:13] Speaker 2: and Pakistan has formally said so. In fact, this just
[40:16] Speaker 2: this morning, Shabashari had brought it post on x saying that,
[40:19] Speaker 2: which was reposted by Donald Trump's handle.
[40:23] Speaker 1: Very interesting. So is this the dream moment for Arsimoni? There? Oh, absolutely,
[40:30] Speaker 1: this is Asimoni's moment in the sun where things are
[40:34] Speaker 1: you know, he's like going to fly in like Superman Shota,
[40:37] Speaker 1: Superman in a costume, flying into the rescue and all
[40:41] Speaker 1: has failed, Donald Trump has to dial his favorite field Marshal.
[40:45] Speaker 1: So we had this discussion on TV on got Off
[40:47] Speaker 1: Show last night. We're talking about this and I said,
[40:50] Speaker 1: thank god they haven't dialed us, because look, this is
[40:53] Speaker 1: this is We're on in a minefield right now. Right,
[40:56] Speaker 1: Trump is in a minefield and he's trying to get
[40:59] Speaker 1: has been people that he can get, drag into the
[41:01] Speaker 1: mindfield and possibly walk on their bodies out of it, right,
[41:05] Speaker 1: and one of those bodies is Pakistan. Now, is there
[41:10] Speaker 1: any guarantee that these talks are not a ployed to
[41:13] Speaker 1: just buy time and strike your und with something even bigger,
[41:17] Speaker 1: like we were talking about earlier before the break with
[41:19] Speaker 1: a land attack or you know, in which the islands
[41:23] Speaker 1: capture those islands, in which case then the peace talks
[41:28] Speaker 1: thing just falls through and the side that hosts those
[41:32] Speaker 1: peace talks is severely compromised. Right, it will be severe
[41:36] Speaker 1: loss of face. That's something that money you can do with, right,
[41:40] Speaker 1: he can survives For India to survive this kind of thing,
[41:44] Speaker 1: I mean, there'll be difficult for us to, you know,
[41:47] Speaker 1: enter these kind of negotiations. We've talked about it in
[41:49] Speaker 1: the past, but I think we were we would be
[41:53] Speaker 1: wise to stay away from this kind of situation, exactly
[41:56] Speaker 1: as we've stayed away from this. What is that board
[42:00] Speaker 1: of what pieces? Yeah, what's happening. By the way, it's
[42:03] Speaker 1: gone off the radar. It'll be back soon as soon
[42:05] Speaker 1: as this conflict gets over this.
[42:08] Speaker 2: Wait, the person who can mean the board of pieces
[42:10] Speaker 2: are currently busy bombing some other countries, so the piece
[42:13] Speaker 2: is not happening in that part of the world.
[42:14] Speaker 1: That's what it's the board of pieces right now? Like, yeah, yeah,
[42:19] Speaker 1: that was the peace guy. That was the peace president
[42:22] Speaker 1: you were talking to. I'm not a peace president anymore.
[42:24] Speaker 1: I'm going after Alfred Noble's other big invention, which is gun.
[42:28] Speaker 2: I'm trying to buy in my country and stop it
[42:31] Speaker 2: from getting what I tried to stop it from getting
[42:33] Speaker 2: last year. By the way, I said, I bombed, it
[42:35] Speaker 2: would never happen. What happened to that, by the way, Yeah,
[42:38] Speaker 2: one year it came back.
[42:39] Speaker 1: Exactly what happened with Pete. He sat talking about the
[42:42] Speaker 1: straits of hormones being open. But we can't do it
[42:45] Speaker 1: because Iran is there shooting. It's like I have a
[42:50] Speaker 1: my swimming pool is safe to use, but there's a
[42:52] Speaker 1: snake in the swimming pool, so we can't use the
[42:55] Speaker 1: swimming pool, you know.
[42:57] Speaker 2: So people can blame us for laughing at what possibly
[43:02] Speaker 2: is a world tragedy.
[43:03] Speaker 1: But possibly it's a world tragedy, but it's the world tragedy. People.
[43:07] Speaker 2: The people at the helm of it are, like you said,
[43:09] Speaker 2: it's comical. What is happening right now? Trump literally has
[43:12] Speaker 2: said kids, hext idea in the first place, he was
[43:15] Speaker 2: the one was pushing for it, and I think just
[43:17] Speaker 2: this morning he also said double down, and he said
[43:19] Speaker 2: that even when things were sort of sort of calming down,
[43:21] Speaker 2: people around emerging in k Okay, President, let's you know,
[43:25] Speaker 2: pull back.
[43:26] Speaker 1: It was Hexit. He was pushing for, you know, more
[43:28] Speaker 1: violence and more. Do we discuss faire Stucker at any point, No,
[43:31] Speaker 1: we haven't. Ye Okay. So there's this Hindi film for
[43:34] Speaker 1: yours out there. My reference. Fayre Stucker is a character
[43:38] Speaker 1: in a Hindi film go in the movie called Uh
[43:43] Speaker 1: and he's played by a fantastic comic actor, the late
[43:47] Speaker 1: Razak Khan. And his name is Tucker Plan So faya Stucker,
[43:52] Speaker 1: who's the Stucker pl One is always looking for opportunities
[43:55] Speaker 1: and his takya kalam is the you know, head butt,
[43:59] Speaker 1: so he head butts in two wall. He had butts
[44:01] Speaker 1: into people. So he's called Tucker Pelvan. The US is
[44:04] Speaker 1: that Tucker Pelvan under Trump, and he saith they're always
[44:08] Speaker 1: looking for opportunities. So venezuela worked out. Now we'll go,
[44:12] Speaker 1: and you know, Tucker Pelvan goes into Iran. So it's
[44:15] Speaker 1: a it's a comical situation and it's sad. We're laughing
[44:19] Speaker 1: at it. But people are dying. Innocent people are dying
[44:21] Speaker 1: for no fault of their It's because some stupid people
[44:24] Speaker 1: decided to start a war which they thought they would
[44:28] Speaker 1: end in a few hours and pronounced mission accomplished. Uh
[44:32] Speaker 1: and loan bold. It's a month and they're going to
[44:35] Speaker 1: dig deeper and deeper into this and they will start
[44:37] Speaker 1: reaching for wonder weapons that will promise them quick victory,
[44:41] Speaker 1: or they will push marines into capturing territory they believe
[44:46] Speaker 1: that can be used as leveraged. That there are no
[44:48] Speaker 1: easy ways out of this. So I mean, this is
[44:51] Speaker 1: it's really sad the way things have come to. And
[44:55] Speaker 1: this possibly happens when you get reality show hosts, h
[45:00] Speaker 1: you get you know, podcast hosts. I don't mean you
[45:05] Speaker 1: dave the talk show hosts to run military strategy. This
[45:11] Speaker 1: is what seems to have happened over there, right. Uh.
[45:15] Speaker 2: One more point about about this about to do with
[45:19] Speaker 2: India is you had PMOD talking to Parliament on Monday
[45:23] Speaker 2: and Tuesday.
[45:25] Speaker 1: Looks about Monday on Tuesday.
[45:28] Speaker 2: Familiar speeches, familiar addresses, but the message in both of
[45:32] Speaker 2: them was his demeanor, his his body language pretty serious.
[45:36] Speaker 1: The message was one of the brace yourself.
[45:40] Speaker 2: Do you think it's because of what we've discussed so far,
[45:43] Speaker 2: of the sheer unpredictability of where we are right now?
[45:46] Speaker 2: Not just the person Donald Trump? Because he himself, yes,
[45:50] Speaker 2: is you can never He himself famously says I don't
[45:53] Speaker 2: know what I'm going to do tomorrow, but right now,
[45:56] Speaker 2: like most world plas like do you think all world
[45:58] Speaker 2: pass including India right now just do not know exactly
[46:02] Speaker 2: where things will.
[46:03] Speaker 1: Go from now. Even Trump's allies don't know where things
[46:05] Speaker 1: will go. I mean so called allies, right, NATO and
[46:08] Speaker 1: France and the UK and you know all that it's
[46:11] Speaker 1: a crazy situation. I mean, if somebody had projected this
[46:14] Speaker 1: way back in two thousand and three, the two thousand
[46:16] Speaker 1: and three guys, George Bush and Colin Power, the WMD guys, Yeah, thanks,
[46:23] Speaker 1: they look like very sensible military strategists, you know, in comparison.
[46:27] Speaker 1: So here's the thing that they've gone into. The stupid war.
[46:31] Speaker 1: I can't call it anything else. I was just thinking
[46:33] Speaker 1: about it yesday. What do you call this war? It's
[46:35] Speaker 1: a stupid war. You just stumbled into this. You made
[46:38] Speaker 1: all the worst assumptions about this. And you know, I
[46:44] Speaker 1: was remembering what Donald Rumsfeldt said about this unknown unknowns
[46:48] Speaker 1: when they asked him about Yes, I remember two thousand
[46:50] Speaker 1: and three wherever the quarter iraky WMDs. So there there
[46:53] Speaker 1: are no knowns. There are known unknowns, and there are
[46:56] Speaker 1: unknown unknowns. Things we don't even know, we don't know,
[46:59] Speaker 1: we don't know exactly. So this this kind of you know,
[47:02] Speaker 1: and Rumswell had a certain style of doing it. And
[47:06] Speaker 1: you have replaced Rumswell with Pete Hegseth, you know, and
[47:10] Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth is a stand up comic of his own. Like,
[47:13] Speaker 1: you know, you look at the way he's being conducting himself.
[47:16] Speaker 1: The talk show hosts are having a field day, by
[47:18] Speaker 1: the way, in the US, if you look at the
[47:20] Speaker 1: nine p those guys have come back to life, right.
[47:22] Speaker 1: They were knocked out senseless last last year, and now
[47:25] Speaker 1: today everyone's come back swinging at the Trump you know, administration.
[47:30] Speaker 1: So I mean, there is no way out of this.
[47:32] Speaker 1: The only way I see out of it is for
[47:34] Speaker 1: the US pronounced mission accomplished, save an exit exit.
[47:39] Speaker 2: Yeah, the drum sell code, by the way, So there
[47:41] Speaker 2: are certain natural substances that exist on I think, which
[47:45] Speaker 2: which if you partake those cotes start making a lot
[47:48] Speaker 2: more sense and deep. So maybe that's where yeah, right, cool,
[47:54] Speaker 2: So I think we do have some time left, so yes,
[47:57] Speaker 2: we will do. What I wanted to do this week
[47:59] Speaker 2: is talk about out the US's previous wars, because and
[48:03] Speaker 2: not in detail obviously, but sort of to give us
[48:05] Speaker 2: a template of what happens and how things sort of
[48:10] Speaker 2: like you, you you begin with this one objective and
[48:12] Speaker 2: then you end up something with something else else altogether.
[48:16] Speaker 2: Uh So, what I had in mind was that was
[48:22] Speaker 2: to talk about Vietnam War and then talk about the
[48:25] Speaker 2: several wars that have happened in the twenty first century
[48:27] Speaker 2: wars or conflicts in one in the US. But I
[48:29] Speaker 2: think that'll be too long, So I think we should
[48:31] Speaker 2: just combine all of them into one and do a
[48:34] Speaker 2: special episode on the Vietnam War. Personally, I think it's
[48:37] Speaker 2: a very topic I'm very fascinated by. I've watched the
[48:40] Speaker 2: document the previous documentary on it, very very interesting, the ten.
[48:45] Speaker 1: Part series series. If forgot the name, what's it called
[48:48] Speaker 1: the Vietnam War? It's called the Vietnam it is it's
[48:52] Speaker 1: Who's it by the very famous documentary filmmaker.
[48:55] Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll just google it value answer it and then
[48:58] Speaker 2: to our listeners as well.
[49:00] Speaker 1: So we'll do a special episode or just on that.
[49:02] Speaker 2: But even then, if we were to talk about because
[49:05] Speaker 2: the Vietnam War gives you that full temperiod, it was
[49:07] Speaker 2: at full war of almost like more than nearly nearly,
[49:12] Speaker 2: while the ones that have happened in the twenty first
[49:15] Speaker 2: century sort of smaller compared to that, apart from Afghanistan obviously,
[49:19] Speaker 2: So if you look at Vietnam, if you look at Afghanistan,
[49:23] Speaker 2: if you look at Iraq, if you look at Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Siria,
[49:27] Speaker 2: the ones that I have hapened the ready first war
[49:29] Speaker 2: Afghanisan very interesting by the way, twenty years billions of
[49:32] Speaker 2: dollars only to replace Taliban with Taliban Taliban, I think,
[49:37] Speaker 2: with Taliban two point oho, but in effect your.
[49:40] Speaker 1: Comedy one point zero with how many two point zero? Yeah,
[49:43] Speaker 1: so take us to this.
[49:45] Speaker 2: Do you think what we're seeing in Iran is the
[49:48] Speaker 2: beginning of what we've always seen happen.
[49:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a familiar pattern. And I'll talk about the
[49:53] Speaker 1: Vietnam War since that's a twentieth century war, but it's
[49:56] Speaker 1: a defining moment for US military power. Is that Vietnam
[50:00] Speaker 1: is a colony of France. France after the Second World
[50:04] Speaker 1: War comes back. It was occupied by Imperial Japan during
[50:07] Speaker 1: the Second World War. France comes back and tries to
[50:10] Speaker 1: reassert its colony, French Indoshin as it was called. So
[50:15] Speaker 1: you had an insurgency which begins in north around North Vietnam.
[50:19] Speaker 1: The French come in. There's a huge brutal battle that
[50:25] Speaker 1: they fight with the Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese, the NBA
[50:29] Speaker 1: and the viet Cong, and you have a dnbn FU
[50:33] Speaker 1: where the French are decisively defeated, and then you have
[50:37] Speaker 1: peace talks. There is a seventh parallel that's created dividing
[50:41] Speaker 1: Vietnam into two zones North and South. North is communist,
[50:45] Speaker 1: South is Western seeing allied. Right, then the United States
[50:50] Speaker 1: enters this conflict because they feel that communism would spread
[50:56] Speaker 1: throughout the world and Vietnam is ground zero for that
[50:59] Speaker 1: because there is this war against communism which the US
[51:01] Speaker 1: is duty bound to fight. And you have Lyndon B.
[51:06] Speaker 1: Johnson coming in and saying that we need to go
[51:10] Speaker 1: in there. Send advisors first, so you have CIA Special
[51:14] Speaker 1: Forces advisors and then sixty five on full fledged. After
[51:19] Speaker 1: the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the US starts deploying numbers
[51:22] Speaker 1: of troops and then the battalions become divisions. Divisions become cores,
[51:27] Speaker 1: and cores become armies. And that's exactly what happened. And
[51:30] Speaker 1: then through this war the US is fighting. Lbja's advisors
[51:36] Speaker 1: are telling him that we're winning. How do you know
[51:38] Speaker 1: that we're killing more Vietnamese so more body counts led
[51:42] Speaker 1: them to believe that they were winning the war. Yeah,
[51:46] Speaker 1: reference to present context. You're bombing so many targets at
[51:50] Speaker 1: Iran is you're bombing so many targets, Iran's capacity to
[51:54] Speaker 1: fire missiles shrinking. Therefore, Iran is going to be defeated.
[51:58] Speaker 1: Similar scenario, but by nineteen seventy three, the US is
[52:03] Speaker 1: practically defeated. And those iconic pictures from the roof of
[52:08] Speaker 1: the embassy in Saigon, the helicopters taking off, that is
[52:13] Speaker 1: repeated in the twenty first century. I'll come to that.
[52:16] Speaker 1: So Vietnam ends in a disaster for the US. Nineteen
[52:19] Speaker 1: seventy three, NBA rolls down north and south of United
[52:23] Speaker 1: US's lost seventy eighty thousand servicemen, hundreds of thousands of
[52:31] Speaker 1: people injured. US servicemen injured, up to a million Vietnamese killed,
[52:36] Speaker 1: Agent Orange being used there. My friend and colleague, Colonel Avasti,
[52:40] Speaker 1: just returned from Vietnam. He spent a week there, and
[52:43] Speaker 1: he is shaken. He's a military man, professional military, a soldier,
[52:48] Speaker 1: more than twenty years in the army. He's commanded regiments.
[52:52] Speaker 1: He saw that and he was shocked. Never been to Vietnam,
[52:55] Speaker 1: and he was showing me the pictures and all that
[52:57] Speaker 1: I got to go there. He was talking about agent Orange.
[52:59] Speaker 1: At today, even half a century later, people are still
[53:02] Speaker 1: affected by that. They dropped almost a million tons of
[53:06] Speaker 1: ordnance on Vietnam. And I've not been to Vietnam, but
[53:10] Speaker 1: I've been to Cambodia, and I know that the bombing,
[53:13] Speaker 1: the US strategic bombing of Vietnam, extended into Cambodia as well,
[53:17] Speaker 1: because the Vietnamese were going into Cambodia, and so they
[53:20] Speaker 1: started bombing Cambodia, and there you destabilize that country as well.
[53:24] Speaker 1: Cut to present day, twenty first century. Nine eleven happens
[53:27] Speaker 1: two thousand and one. The US goes after the Taliban
[53:30] Speaker 1: because Taliban are sheltering al Qaeda. Now you have a
[53:34] Speaker 1: light footprint operation that Rumsfeld comes up with, Northern Alliance
[53:38] Speaker 1: with US Special Forces Operator No, it was a CIA
[53:43] Speaker 1: Special Activities Division to the Center that came in. And
[53:46] Speaker 1: then of course some element of airborne guys came in,
[53:50] Speaker 1: Deltas rangers, all of them came in two thousand and one.
[53:53] Speaker 1: Now they should have been drawn and left, but they
[53:56] Speaker 1: said now someone so that can continues, and it ends
[54:01] Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, twenty years. It's the longest US
[54:04] Speaker 1: military deployment in its history. A very similar Sygon type
[54:08] Speaker 1: of evacuation in August twenty twenty one, where the US
[54:12] Speaker 1: literally pulls out their people falling off planes are literally
[54:16] Speaker 1: hanging on to the wheels of these aircraft. There it's
[54:19] Speaker 1: hardred weapons behind. They left five billion dollars worth of
[54:23] Speaker 1: hardware behind which will outlast outlive not just US, two
[54:28] Speaker 1: three generations after US. That's the kind of weapons have
[54:33] Speaker 1: extraordinarily long lives. Right, I've been doing this for a
[54:37] Speaker 1: long time, and I've seen weapons dating back from the
[54:40] Speaker 1: early twentieth century still in use with insurgents and gillas
[54:44] Speaker 1: and you know all of that. So that is Afghanistan.
[54:47] Speaker 1: Two years after Afghanistan, Bush gets the idea that this
[54:50] Speaker 1: is the time to go after Saddam. So two thousand
[54:53] Speaker 1: and three WDS WMDs they make the case for an
[54:57] Speaker 1: invasion of Iraq. The UNS absolutely not, they said, they
[55:03] Speaker 1: go ahead irrespective. They invade Iraq with one hundred and
[55:06] Speaker 1: fifty sixty thousand soldiers. The Iraqi military has defeated, Saddam
[55:10] Speaker 1: is dethroned, he's captured, he's executed. The US ends up
[55:14] Speaker 1: fighting an insurgency, loses to three thousand soldiers. That continues
[55:19] Speaker 1: for till about two thousand and thirteen. Right, yeah, not
[55:25] Speaker 1: thirty eleven eleven. That's Obama is the one who starts
[55:28] Speaker 1: authorizing the withdrawal. The draw down begins under him. So
[55:31] Speaker 1: that's almost a decade. So in the span of twenty years,
[55:36] Speaker 1: the US has fort two wars, unwinnable wars. It's expended
[55:41] Speaker 1: something like four to five trillion dollars. They say that
[55:45] Speaker 1: it's much more than that. It's lost thousands of servicemen
[55:50] Speaker 1: four thousand and five thousand servicemen wounded, tens of thousands
[55:53] Speaker 1: of them. It's not got very much in return. Right,
[55:57] Speaker 1: Taliban one point two replaced by Taliban two point two.
[56:00] Speaker 1: In Iraq, you've unwittingly created a Shia super state because
[56:07] Speaker 1: they didn't realize that Saddam was Sunni ruling over a
[56:11] Speaker 1: majority Shia country. When Saddam goes, Iran becomes the most
[56:15] Speaker 1: powerful right from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea, Syria,
[56:19] Speaker 1: Iraq and Iran. Right. And there are smaller operations Libya. Libya,
[56:26] Speaker 1: you didn't have boots on ground, but you had the
[56:28] Speaker 1: US Navy and US Air Force conducting bombing missions. NATO.
[56:32] Speaker 1: It was NATO let Dadafi was unseated twenty eleven. He
[56:39] Speaker 1: was overthrown. He was murdered, lynched literally by his own people.
[56:44] Speaker 1: There were rebel forces at play, and in twenty fourteen,
[56:47] Speaker 1: just three years later, the country breaks up into two.
[56:50] Speaker 1: And that's the thing. That country is in the state
[56:52] Speaker 1: of eternal civil war for more than a decade now, right,
[56:56] Speaker 1: cease to function as a country. Syria. You can argue
[57:00] Speaker 1: that there were no boots on ground, it was so
[57:02] Speaker 1: in that sense, it wasn't a US military operation. But
[57:05] Speaker 1: post Arab Spring twenty eleven, that country has been occupied
[57:11] Speaker 1: by ISIS, by Turkish forces, by now Israeli forces, and
[57:16] Speaker 1: the Syrian Arab Republic has ceased to exist. Right, It
[57:20] Speaker 1: is just torn up into different things. And now former
[57:22] Speaker 1: terrorists al Kayla chaps, former al Kayla Isis guys have
[57:26] Speaker 1: now come back into power. The US has played a
[57:29] Speaker 1: role over there. So take your pick there. There's a
[57:32] Speaker 1: recipe out here, there's a buffet over here. You can
[57:35] Speaker 1: pick the operation that you think this is going to
[57:37] Speaker 1: play out as Iran. You know, there is a template
[57:42] Speaker 1: that the US has been there, done that in all
[57:45] Speaker 1: of these things. And you know the argument a lot
[57:47] Speaker 1: of people make about this, why does the US make
[57:49] Speaker 1: the same mistakes every few years. It's because the costs
[57:53] Speaker 1: of those mistakes are Okay, we're looking at it, trillion
[57:57] Speaker 1: dollar wars. You know, US lives lost, personal loss, but
[58:02] Speaker 1: the US homeland itself isn't affected. They're so far away,
[58:06] Speaker 1: they are protected by two oceans. They have everything they want,
[58:10] Speaker 1: all the resources, including oil, gas, whatever you name it.
[58:14] Speaker 1: US is self sustained. They don't need anything from any
[58:17] Speaker 1: other country, and they exert control over other countries and
[58:21] Speaker 1: other parts of the world because they are the dominant
[58:23] Speaker 1: superpower and for them, these wars possibly make some sense.
[58:30] Speaker 2: Right, Yes, so it's gonna be uh, it's gonna be
[58:34] Speaker 2: something to watch how this unfolds.
[58:36] Speaker 1: And we'll do that.
[58:37] Speaker 2: And by the way, that documentary PBS documented that we
[58:39] Speaker 2: were talking about ken Burns ten part documentary. It's a
[58:43] Speaker 2: it's a fantastic watch. Yeah, I think people should really, really.
[58:47] Speaker 1: For all of you o there, please watch the Vietnam
[58:49] Speaker 1: War because after I watched the Vietnam War, I started
[58:53] Speaker 1: watching Apocalypse. Now I haven't watched that movie even once.
[58:56] Speaker 1: I used to think it was a Hollywood classic and
[58:58] Speaker 1: all of that. It's a great movie, but you realize
[59:01] Speaker 1: that reality is far more horrific than what was depicted
[59:04] Speaker 1: in a Hollywood film. Yeah, and that that reality of
[59:08] Speaker 1: that war hits you in ken Burns's documentary, Yeah, yeah, true.
[59:14] Speaker 2: One last points on the on the events of this
[59:17] Speaker 2: week and what may happen after this episode is released
[59:22] Speaker 2: or even before that. Israel we talked about how Iselle
[59:26] Speaker 2: is the one who really had the most to fear
[59:29] Speaker 2: from Iran, has the most to fear from Iranzell is
[59:32] Speaker 2: the one who's hoping to achieve the most out of
[59:34] Speaker 2: this current conflict, hoping to end once and for all
[59:38] Speaker 2: its nemesis, and it's you know, you know, threat for
[59:41] Speaker 2: like Kingdom come. But unlike the US, Israel does not
[59:48] Speaker 2: have the kind of pressures that the US is facing
[59:51] Speaker 2: the US president has to face regardless of who the
[59:53] Speaker 2: president is with Donald trumb or somebody else.
[59:55] Speaker 1: You're the world's biggest economy, by the way, so you're
[59:58] Speaker 1: going to have that pressure.
[1:00:00] Speaker 2: At some point, the US or Donald Trump may consider
[1:00:04] Speaker 2: doing something that is in that is much more in
[1:00:07] Speaker 2: the US's interest or the world's interest rather than let's
[1:00:10] Speaker 2: says interest. Right now, as things are unfolding as whatever
[1:00:14] Speaker 2: you call it, tactical pause or posse for negotiation for talks.
[1:00:17] Speaker 2: What is happening as this happening, what do you think
[1:00:21] Speaker 2: is going through Benjamin Latnia Who's mind? And how do
[1:00:24] Speaker 2: you think Israel will be a player in all this?
[1:00:27] Speaker 2: Because remember is really the kind of a country which
[1:00:29] Speaker 2: has done this in the past, and you won't be
[1:00:32] Speaker 2: surprised that they will end up doing something escalatory just
[1:00:36] Speaker 2: for and to ensure that their ends are an objective.
[1:00:39] Speaker 1: Absolutely. So, you know, the thing is that Benjamin Athanao
[1:00:43] Speaker 1: has been at war for two and a half years now.
[1:00:46] Speaker 1: It's began on the twenty seventh of October twenty twenty three.
[1:00:49] Speaker 1: He's facing tremendous domestic pressures as well. There are corruption
[1:00:54] Speaker 1: cases against him, and of course this acquisition of letting
[1:00:58] Speaker 1: his guard down on the seventh of over those things
[1:01:01] Speaker 1: will return to haunt him at some point, but some
[1:01:02] Speaker 1: point begun this war. He's fighting this war and for
[1:01:06] Speaker 1: the Israeli state, especially the hardliners, the end state for
[1:01:10] Speaker 1: them is the destruction of the Iranian regime. And you
[1:01:15] Speaker 1: know the times that I visited. I was there in
[1:01:18] Speaker 1: Israel in twenty four and I remember talking to a
[1:01:21] Speaker 1: cross section of military strategic community and asking them that
[1:01:26] Speaker 1: what is your end state. So they said, it's Iran.
[1:01:29] Speaker 1: And you know, all our troubles can be traced back
[1:01:31] Speaker 1: to Iran and this implacable hostility that they have for
[1:01:35] Speaker 1: us right from nineteen seventy nine. So then I asked
[1:01:39] Speaker 1: them that what's the solution for this is that it's
[1:01:42] Speaker 1: regime change in Iran. I said, do you have the
[1:01:45] Speaker 1: capability to do it? They said, no, we cannot do
[1:01:47] Speaker 1: it on our own. We are a small country. They
[1:01:50] Speaker 1: understood their limitations. The only way we can do it
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: is if we get the United States. In all this,
[1:01:55] Speaker 1: only the US in the world today, they said, has
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: the capacity, has the capability to effect regime change. So
[1:02:02] Speaker 1: what you're seeing now is the US and Israel making
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: common cause on the Iranian regime. The US may waver
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: a bit because they're not very clear what the issue
[1:02:13] Speaker 1: is with the nuclear weapons, where the Iran is actually
[1:02:16] Speaker 1: making ballistic missiles with the capability to reach the United
[1:02:20] Speaker 1: States continental United States, or whereas Israel sees an existential
[1:02:26] Speaker 1: threat to itself and is prepared to fight the long
[1:02:30] Speaker 1: war and they will given a chance. He would fight
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: all through twenty twenty six as well, regardless of what
[1:02:37] Speaker 1: happens to the countries around the infrastructure, energy infrastructure being hit.
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: He doesn't care. He's going for the kill because they
[1:02:46] Speaker 1: believe they have after or more than four decades, they
[1:02:50] Speaker 1: finally have a chance to target the Iranian regime, bring
[1:02:54] Speaker 1: down the regime. It's already weakened. Let's not forget that.
[1:02:57] Speaker 1: It may be holding certain cards right now, but the
[1:03:01] Speaker 1: regime is weakened. The military capabilities are degraded to such
[1:03:05] Speaker 1: an extent now that their survival is in doubt. Beyond
[1:03:10] Speaker 1: a certain point. They can survive now, but in the
[1:03:13] Speaker 1: long run, this is going to be untenable. You know,
[1:03:16] Speaker 1: the sanctions, the fallout of the war, the fact that
[1:03:22] Speaker 1: you could possibly have civil war as well, and these
[1:03:25] Speaker 1: would be engineered by external forces. Yeah right, cool. I
[1:03:30] Speaker 1: think we'll end it on that note.
[1:03:32] Speaker 2: One final quick question is the redlines when we talk
[1:03:36] Speaker 2: about when it comes to negotiations. You have this morning
[1:03:40] Speaker 2: reporting by WSJ and if I'm not from Bloomberg or
[1:03:45] Speaker 2: somebody else, detailing the respective sides pointers for end of
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: war so far fifteen points from the US, not much
[1:03:54] Speaker 2: different from what was there before, actually had more or
[1:03:56] Speaker 2: l as a carbon copy of that Iranians also not
[1:03:59] Speaker 2: much different. But the one that struck me was no
[1:04:01] Speaker 2: US basis in the in a region. Which is the
[1:04:04] Speaker 2: question I want.
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: To ask you.
[1:04:05] Speaker 2: Of those demands that you've seen out in public, we
[1:04:07] Speaker 2: don't know what's actually going to be discussed on the table.
[1:04:10] Speaker 2: Which ones do you think are the ones that I
[1:04:11] Speaker 2: decid will never ever agree?
[1:04:13] Speaker 1: Well, to my mind, the non negotiables as far as
[1:04:17] Speaker 1: Iran is concerned, is the ballistic missile program, right, that's
[1:04:22] Speaker 1: its only defense. Yeah, they have nothing else. They don't
[1:04:25] Speaker 1: have a navy, they don't have an air force. The
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: only thing they have is the missile force and their drones.
[1:04:31] Speaker 1: That is non negotiable for them. They could even talk
[1:04:34] Speaker 1: about handing over nuclear weapons, the nuclear HGU and cap
[1:04:39] Speaker 1: their thing, which they were planning to do in any case,
[1:04:41] Speaker 1: if you go by what the Omani ambassador was saying
[1:04:44] Speaker 1: on the twenty sixth. But for the United States, the
[1:04:48] Speaker 1: non negotiables are the moving out of the basis there.
[1:04:56] Speaker 1: There's no way they're going to that's not happening exactly.
[1:04:58] Speaker 1: They're not going to move out of the the basis
[1:05:01] Speaker 1: in the GCC countries. And this whole thing of accepting
[1:05:05] Speaker 1: Iran's thing in the straits of Formulas. You know that
[1:05:08] Speaker 1: that's that they allowed, but that could well be a
[1:05:11] Speaker 1: ploy to, you know, create a bargaining chip for themselves
[1:05:16] Speaker 1: because they hold the cards. Now as it stands, Iran
[1:05:19] Speaker 1: has the chips. It it has the ability to widen
[1:05:22] Speaker 1: the it has demonstrated its ability to widen the conflict
[1:05:25] Speaker 1: across West Asia and it's blocked the straits of Foremost
[1:05:28] Speaker 1: it's just UH, Chinese, UH, Indian and Pakistani boundships that
[1:05:33] Speaker 1: are applying. Who would have thought.
[1:05:36] Speaker 2: That b a day, like you said earlier in this episode,
[1:05:38] Speaker 2: at the country in the world would tell the US
[1:05:40] Speaker 2: get out of our neighborhood.
[1:05:43] Speaker 1: Well, it's come to that.
[1:05:45] Speaker 2: One month of like sun Deep says, a stupid war
[1:05:48] Speaker 2: and I couldn't disagree with that at all. Complete agree
[1:05:51] Speaker 2: with you Sleep That's what we're at and Uh, I
[1:05:55] Speaker 2: think we'll just have to keep a watch on what happens.
[1:05:59] Speaker 2: Hopeful nothing us has changed from now as in when
[1:06:02] Speaker 2: we are finishing this recording to when our producer Dana
[1:06:04] Speaker 2: is able to get this episode out. Otherwise, for all
[1:06:07] Speaker 2: we know, this entire discussion was moved. Because we walk out,
[1:06:10] Speaker 2: we'll know oh, something else has happened. Let's go back
[1:06:13] Speaker 2: and record again, right.
[1:06:15] Speaker 1: Great Sunday. Thanks.
[1:06:17] Speaker 2: Obviously next week is also going to be this or
[1:06:20] Speaker 2: something to do with this, so we'll see how things
[1:06:21] Speaker 2: span out over the next few days, a few hours,
[1:06:24] Speaker 2: and we'll.
[1:06:24] Speaker 1: Come back ATTY soon. Thanksually, Thanks, and thanks is always
[1:06:28] Speaker 1: twelves of the viewers. That's it for this week's defense.
[1:06:30] Speaker 2: Does for more tune in next week tail then, stay
[1:06:32] Speaker 2: safe and not toss any boundaries with our passport.

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