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do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone
back to the Pekenena Show. John Fieldhouse has returned. How
are you doing, John.
Speaker 2: Jovin?
Speaker 1: Well, sir, all right, man, let's talk about this. This
is a controversial subject. I don't think anyone that we
know wants to go to war with Iran. God I
hope not not at least people that we truly respect.
But something that I've been saying for over a year,
and you know, having lee Enfield on it was over
a year ago, right after October seventh when they started
talking about war with Iran. You know, we basically came
to the conclusion then and I haven't changed my mind
at all, is that you can't the United States can't
win a war with Iran, even if they're fighting alongside Israel,
which Israel never does. I think that war with Iran
is pretty much impossible and would just be an endless quagmire.
So I asked you to come on to talk about it.
And people have heard yan here before. Your suggestion on
the coupdetas the look back book went over very well
and helping me and give adding context to that. People
have come to know you. But can you give as
much of your background as you can on you know,
as far as military goes, and why you're opinion, why
you might have an opinion on this that people can
listen to.
Speaker 2: Sure start off, John Hitfieldhouse, and before anybody asks, I
am not. I have never participated any d D pentagon
level planning on a hypothetical invasion of Iran, and had
I done so, it would be a crime for me
to discuss classified information because frequently comes up anytime we
discuss these things that will bring up, well, you're not
a strategic planner who's focused on this, and my buddy is,
and he says it's great. Is understand that a strategic planner,
unless something is specifically declassified, something like this is going
to be classified, which makes it a crime to share it.
So the only people who are going to share it
are people directly affiliated with the game, and therefore are
going to show things that support whatever the regime talking
point of the moment is. So yet to be very clear,
I have never in any way participated in strategic level
planning for a hypothetical invasion of Iran. That said, I
am a former military officer, primarily logistics, but I've also
done some combat arms and some other things. I'm not
going to get into too much detail about those. We
talked about some of my academic background before, which doesn't
directly relate to this. Because most of my stuff's in
organizational theory. But again, I was a military officer. I
have done mid level professional military education. I've been an
instructor at professional mild level excuse me, mid level professional
military education where for much of the two thousands we
used a hypothetical invasion of Iran as the war game scenario.
And consequently, I am not away claiming to be an
expert on this. This is something that me, as well
as you know, maybe a quarter of the active duty
Army officer cohort of the time frame I was in
have also done. Is We've done a lot of time
looking at what an invasion of Iran wood involved, which
makes us, I think, very aware of the costs and
consequences of trying to play around with something like this.
Speaker 1: So I guess one of the things that I'll bring
up is I talked about when Lee Enfield was on
the show over a year ago, and he was We
talked about an Army War College paper that had just
come out that basically said that the fight that Ukraine
had been undergoing at that time for a year and
a half, the United States wasn't even equipped manpower wise
to undertake. I think Lee said that the I think
the paper said that in order to do it properly
using the men who are active right now, you probably
have to institute a draft within three to four months,
because that's the kind of attrition that you would suffer. So,
looking back on that, and knowing there hasn't really been
a run on a military enlistment in the last year,
what kind of manpower do you think you would need
for an Iranian ground invasion at this point?
Speaker 2: That's a good question. What was it Shinseki said, an
invasion of Iraq done properly, we probably would have required
or was it several hundred thousand men, significantly more than
what we actually used, and the airport didn't have enough
manpower to pacify the population afterwards. I think Iran would
require significantly more, not just manpower, but also the weapons
and equipment, and unfortunately, some of those things take even
longer to produce than man power, though obviously the man
inside is much more important than the weapon. That's a
good question. Maybe three quarters of a million. It's hard
to say. I don't even necessarily know an answer to that,
or would be able to give an answer to that,
because I don't think it's feasible to in any way
think that America today or anytime the near future would
be able to get that amount of man power, largely
because I can't imagine anything being possible in which conscription
could be successfully implemented for essentially a war of choice
in the Middle East. And even in the best case
scenario where you turn on hypothetically the civil or the
selective service system tomorrow, essentially do what happened, you know,
the day after Pearl Harbor in the United States, It
takes I would say, a minimum of six months to
actually take those people, properly train them, integrate them into
units where they would be able to do their jobs.
And that's a best case scenario. And we don't have
a best case scenario. For instance, we have a selective
service system that nobody since the Carter administration has really
thought needed to work. Therefore they haven't really maintained it.
Not to mention, we have training facilities that it would
be very difficult to expand those every night things like that,
to the point it would probably take more like two
years to even have an army capable of doing this.
And in a world with global information technology which can
be used as a targeting tool. You know, that's two
years where the enemy has a chance to disrupt you
every or every day along the way. So it's my
long winded answer is how big. I don't think it's
even possible, given the amount of time it would take
to pull that off, to think that that could happen
in this world.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's uh. We talked about American forces. What
do you know about Iranian forces? The Yeah, it's they
have a standing army. Obviously they have yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so in fact, if I had thought about that,
I would have gotten numbers beforehand. So they do have
a standing army. They also have the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps,
which involved has their own separate army, their own separate navy,
their own separate air force. They even have a Marine
Corps for their separate navy. They also have some law
enforcement capacity. They had the Besiege, which is a militia
force somewhat like a national guard that's separate from whatever
reserve forces may exist in the regular army. And they
also have the Kods Force Goods is Arabic for Jerusalem,
which you know, which is their special forces force, which
are the guys who had worked with Iraqi forces during
the fight against ISIS in Iraq. They're also the guys
who are working with as Law, who've worked with the
Syrian military, who have heavily worked as trainers for insurgents,
as well as regular air forces. So yeah, you have
the regular force, then you have the IERGC, which is
more than just you know, a one, you know, piece
of the pie. It's like several things belong to the
larger IERGC as well as internally, they have security forces
law enforcement Jonder Maris that could be used as you know,
a security force against invasion as well.
Speaker 1: So here are just some numbers that AI is scraping
from Wikipedia and Air and Space and Space Forces Magazine,
Ground Force dur ndred and fifty thousand active Air Force
thirty seven as an active Navy, eighteen thousand Air Defense,
fifteen thousand, Revolutionary Guard Corps, one hundred and twenty thousand
Elite with three hundred and fifty thousand in reserve, and
the reserve are fully trained. So we're looking at about it.
This would tell me nine hundred and sixty thousand military
personnel ready to go.
Speaker 2: And that's what they have today. Hypothetically, if you're taking
two years to build up combat power. Yeah, you know
every day along the way they get to do the
same thing.
Speaker 1: So good. And part of why I go ahead, no, no, please.
Speaker 2: Why I mentioned the amount of the amount of time
that we're prepare to actually train and organize forces for
an invasion is understand that American heavy armor, so mechanized forces,
the kind of heavy brigade combat team equipment Abrams. You know,
they're supporting artillery, Bradley's and what not, that kind of equipment.
It takes a long time to actually get them into
a theater that isn't fully developed. So interesting, complete toll,
you know. Random fact to it is the ABRAMS is
there one of the largest main battle tanks in the world.
It's not the largest probably anymore, but it was something
that was built to be bigger, heavier than most previous
tanks of any army in any size. And that's partly
because for those who don't know, a lot of the
vehicle dimensions, the width, especially the axle with on most
vehicles comes from the fact that historic roads in Europe
had that with, which actually goes back to the Roman Empire,
right that literally the design on wheeled vehicles today, you know,
the dimensions are heavily influenced because that's what the Roman
Army built. Anyways, Abrams were bigger, so that it was
done without those constraints which made them order to move around.
Back in the Cold War war plan was, hypothetically, if
we were fighting in the Folder Gap, we were fighting,
you know, across the inner German border. Forces were going
to be located there, and there was no issue with
strategic lift. You had your weapons systems in place. It
was moving those into a combat zone and getting the
fight there. It's a very different thing when you have
to move them into a theater where you don't have
those weapons. We know that ninety one the first goal
for it took a significant amount of time. A lot
of it was just a matter of selifting that heavy
equipment to get into the area. That's also why it
took almost two years to invade Iraq in two thousand
and three, is it takes a significant amount of time
to get those equipment sets into a theater that has
not developed. And for those who don't know, if we
deploy combat team, a heavy brigade combat team today or
in the recent past, we don't you know, have them
load up all their equipment and send them to combat.
We actually preposition weapons systems in that area. A lot
of this is off shore in you know, prepossession vessels,
or they're in long term storage facilities. We fly the
people in, they fall in on that equipment, they organize,
and they go out and prepare to fight. Now, the
problem with that approach is if the equipment sets aren't
there already, as I keep repeating, is it takes a
long time to get them into that theater, which is
a big part of the problem with a hypothetical war
with Iran. Where are we going to put them? Because
again that you know, heavily influences which direction we were
going to invade the country from. Not to mention, it
really gives away to the enemy which way you're coming.
I know, I'm rambling.
Speaker 1: No, No, that's fine. So obviously, so let's say ground
invasion is off off the table. I think most people got.
Speaker 2: No, it's more than it's off the table. It's the
fact that it's it would be so long to set up,
so expensive to set up. And again, you make yourself
a target the longer you take right it's like cocking
a fist in a fist fight. The other guy knows
you're going to hit him now, right, which is part
the way train fighters train things like the jab. So
when the guy's cocking his fist for his big billy
bad ass punch, you jab him and then you cross
him and he goes down, you know. And it's in
some ways it's the same concept. Is it takes a
long time to get those forces there. Every step along
the way is an opportunity for a competent enemy to
get them there. And again, which direction are you going
to come in from? An you know, where you preposition
your equipment decides that and you take away a lot
of your flexibility that way, the enemy is going to
have a real good idea of which direction you're coming from,
just by where you're prepositioning your equipment.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think you make a really good point there,
and it's a point where we were trying to make
last year as far as where staging areas you're not
going to do in Afghanistan. Turkey is not going to
allow you to do it. Iraq, what you would have
to reinvade Iraq, Saudi Arabia is not going to allow
you to do it, especially not especially not at this
point with everything that's been going on since October seventh.
I mean, there was none of the stands are going
to allow you to do it above you can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Saudi Arabia involves the whole issue of an amphibious landing,
which we can talk about, but I would say save
that for later because that's a whole bunch of other
issues along with it. But yeah, those areas you're not
going to come from Iraq if if for no other reason,
we effectively put the shai government in charge there, and
every day that we're prepositioning stuff in Iraq has a
chance for them to keep shooting at us. And if
it has to become a situation which we have to
forcibly attack and subdue Iraq in order to go into Iran,
that's why, Well, congratulations, now you were at war with
Iraq and you haven't even gotten to Iran yet.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things that a lot
of people who've never actually looked at a map of
Iran don't realize how perfectly situated Tehran Tehran is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tehran's in the northern part of the country, which
is weird for something that's you know, a major maritime
power to have their capital nowhere near the ocean. It's
on the opposite end of the country, so it's it's
to say it's perfect, well, it's it's in a place
that nearly makes it impossible to it seize that capital
from the sea. For those who don't know, for most
of the two thousands, the wargame scenario of invading Iran,
and to be clear, this is a declassified scenario so
I can talk about it involved taking again the mechanized
forces heavy forces, using two ports in Georgia in order
to get them into the continent, moving those forces over
into northern Azerbaijan, which in this scenario we saw was
at least passively supportive of US forces, then inviting south
into the southern part of Azerbaijan, which we thought would
be where fighting was, and then invading into the northern
part of Iran. And the biggest issue with that scenario
the reason well, first off, the fact that they used
this in a non classified, unclassified training scenario, which again
the Azerbaijanis were enemies in the scenario, and we had
Zerbaijani's students real world sitting in there, which again that
tells you everything about the level of just competence we
have in strategic planning in the US military. But the
fact that this was a declassified scenario tells me that
nobody thought they were going to use this, or at
least it was implausible to think they were going to
use this. But that scenario involved, again, those two ports
that you needed in Georgia in order to get stuff
in there. Those are the same two ports that Russia
took away. And was it two thousand and nine when
they had that hasty attack or hasty operation by Russia
on Georgia. So again, if you don't have the ports,
you're not getting anything in there.
Speaker 1: Is was that part of the fomenting revolutions in Georgia
during the two thousands to try to possibly do something
up for the future, I'd have.
Speaker 2: Well, I think more than likely. I mean that was
never officially said. During the period, there was a lot
of military cooperation between the United States and Georgia, mostly
for training. We had actual assets at those two ports.
I know that because I had students who were actually
at those ports doing terminal operations. When the Russians rolled
into town, which is one of the weirdest things, they
actually said they were really nice and polite the Russian
commander and said, you guys got to stay on post
tell us when your supply convoys come in, so we
can make sure they come through. But you got to
stay there and we're okay, is what they told the Americans.
Speaker 1: Is there any possibility of staging in Pakistan?
Speaker 2: That's another thing, right, so could we I can't see
Pakistan cooperating. Part of the problem is, since September eleventh,
the US has played a diplomatic game of Pakistan against India.
And for those who don't know, the British Empire, when
they partitioned the former India, the Muslim parts became India
or became Pakistan, the rest became India, and then Pakistan
eventually had to split up, where Bangladesh became in its
independent country. So since September eleventh, we've had a diplomatic
game balancing act of playing India against Pakistan. Because those
countries engage in armed conflict against each other, have fought
each other, despite the fact they're essentially cousins. They fought
themselves each other several times, and anytime the US cooperates
more closely with one country, it alienates the other. Now
all the time that we spent working in Afghanistan forced
us to cooperate with Pakistan because heavy equipment had to
come in through ports in Pakistan and then be shipped
north into Afghanistan. The last few years, the Biden has
been stration has tried to heal the relationship with India,
which arguably is a good thing. You know, the world's
first or second most populoust country. There's no reason for
us to have a pissing contest with them, But unfortunately
that goes back it damages that relationship with Pakistan again.
Could we stage there Maybe I don't see us doing that.
It's also an interesting bit of geography with the coastal
parts of Iran are fairly coastal, but within you know,
dozens of miles, you start having the mountains, you know,
rough mountains pop up and you have to cross those
mountains and you may not have any major targets or
population centers until one hundred miles inland. So it's sort
of like the problems with the amphibious landing. If you
invade through Pakistan, you end up in a part of
the country where you still have to get through the
other side of the mountains, and it doesn't necess really
help you a great deal to come from that direction.
So number one, I can't imagine that. Number two, even then,
it puts you in a situation you wouldn't want to
be well.
Speaker 1: And then you have the whole eastern side of the country,
all the way down to the uh to the mid
central of the country with just a gigantic mountain range.
So you'd have to deal with the same issue from
Iraq from Turkey. Even if even if Israel's friend Ourzarbaijean
was willing to help, you're still dealing with mountains. The
only way you're going to avoid mountains is to go
in from Afghanistan. And then you're I mean, what was
that three thousand miles.
Speaker 2: Which is mountains? Which is I'm sorry now, I'm sorry,
I kind of go which number one pack or Afghanistan
is mountains? You know. So it's like you're saying you're
avoiding the mountains. Yeah, that's relative, and it's still really bad.
And even then, the Taliban is probably not going to
give us, you know, support for invading Iran.
Speaker 1: All right, So I mean, taking into consideration two years
prep time and everything, let's just rule everyone out. Obviously,
Iserbaijean is friends with Israel, what would there be I
mean that would be probably outside of Turkmenistan, the closest UH,
the closest route to Tehran, and that doesn't seem likely either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again that's part of the problem is hypothetically
you could use Azerbaijean, and again the wargame scenario uses Azerbaijean,
so strategic planners were convinced that you could do that.
So I think that's possibly completely plausible, and it puts
you near Tehran, you know, decapitating the administration. Again, in
order to get stuff into Azerbaijean heavy equipment, you'd still
have to go through using the ports of Georgia, which
I don't think Russia is going to allow us to
do because again they demonstrate their ability to seize those
in the course of an afternoon. So if you don't
have those ports, it doesn't necessarily matter that you go
through Azerbaijean because you still don't have a whipment.
Speaker 1: All right, well, I think the next uh, I guess
the next thing that you would go towards is very
long range air campaign. So what was the war gaming
on that?
Speaker 2: Looking like, Yeah, that I've had to do a lot
of research outside as an Army officer. We don't necessarily
care about air war as long as our side winds beforehand,
and if we don't win, we're not going there.
Speaker 1: From the decoupled the Army Air Corps, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a reason the Marine Corps ensured that they
retained their own aviation. They originally created the US Air Force.
The plan was also to give all the naval aviation
assets to them as well, and the Navy fought back
on that, and even before the Navy won their fight,
the Marine Corps made it very clear they were going
to keep their own aviation and they did so. Yeah,
at a lot of countries that have successful, large countries
that have successful independent air forces, like the former Soviet
Union actually had multiple services where you'd have, you know,
a strategic bombing air Force, you'd have a strategic airlift
air force, you had a separate airlift air force just
for the paratroopers, and then you had, you know, an
air force that did close support for the army that
we work with them directly. And the problem is by
turning the air Force into the headquarters for everything, we've
created the problem where they don't necessarily do closer air
support with a whole lot of effectiveness. As a ground soldier,
I have my hatred of the Air Force for a reason.
But they're not like Marine Corps Aviation that does cast
very effectively. And they're still mad that we have helicopters,
and you know, they're really angry that we made them
keep the AT and war Dog, which they didn't like. Like, so.
Speaker 1: I thought that that's one of the most badass looking
machines I've ever seen been up close to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, John Boyd was one of the guys who his
office was responsible for developing what became that, and it
was a purpose built close air support aircraft and it's
a great thing piece of equipment. And part of the
problem is nobody in Air Force Acquisitions really supported a
second generation version of that, so they've basically tried to
make it obsolete and retire it. And I don't even
know what the status of it is today. I think
it's been retired, but you know, it's sort of like
they you know, they put their ball home and didn't
want to play with anybody else, and they're really angry
that we made them continue to operate those those planes.
Speaker 1: All right, So how what would what would aerial etide,
what what would aerial warfare on Iran looked like?
Speaker 2: That's a good question and this is probably the biggest
X factor that we don't know about. And part of
the thing is anytime you have big revolutions in military
equipment and military affairs is you go through a period
of uncertainty about what you think your equipment can do,
what your new weapons and taxes can do, and then
you actually see them in combat, and then you know,
everything changes in light of reality. Late nineteenth century, you know,
machine guns, early machine guns like the Maxim gun and
the Gatling gun were developed. The British actually had huge,
made heavy use of machine guns throughout the late nineteenth
early and twentieth century, but they mostly used it against
tribesmen in Africa, so Arabs and black tribesmen, and a
lot of times they were using them against people who
are largely using fairly convention mounted or you know, close
order tactics, and machine guns against people march in close
order is just a slaughter and it worked probably as
much as anything just to discourage uprisings. But at the
same time, nobody really had an idea of what those
were going to do on the Western Front when two
armies using those weapons met each other. And again early
nineteen fourteen the Western Front, we had engagements with incredibly
high number of casualties, then troops dug in. Then there
was a race to the sea in which you had
the huge trench lines going from it was the English
Channel all the way down to Switzerland, and you know,
long periods of trying to break the stalemate of the trenches.
And I think it's very plausibly with changes in aviation
and drones in particular, that we're seeing something like that
in Ukraine. We've had a lot of incidences where we
know that American armor and you know, mechanized tanks and
infantry fighting vehicles are no near as good as we
thought they were. As soon as you take away air supremacy,
if you take away air cover, you know, tanks and
Bradley's and things like that suddenly become very easy to
destroy or at least disable. And you know, it's also
become very hard to maintain air supremacy because of you know,
man portable shoulder fire anti aircraft systems, things like the
American Stinger. So we're in a situation where it's really
hard to maintain air supremacy. You can create a situation
where basically everything that flies dies and suddenly that forces
how the ground war changes. So that's part of the
the you know again, this is all X factor, and
I'm saying that there are changes here that we don't
entirely know yet, and I encourage caution because of that.
So the Iranian Air Force, you know, they started off,
or at least the Rerepublics started off with you know
stuff the Shawst Air Force had. They had F fourteen's,
they had some other American fighters. They didn't have the
first generation of avionics, targeting stuff. A lot of cases,
they never updated their stuff, and they're using third party repairs,
so they don't necessarily have very good you know, targeting
and communications and radar stuff for those weapons systems, which
a lot of their planes are fairly out of date
by now, so it may not matter. But we do
know that they have some amount of anti aircraft stuff,
and the fact that the American pissing contests with both
Russia and China has forced the Bricks to share a
great amount of military technology. We don't know how much,
but there is a level of military cooperation there, which
again is unknown, which leaves a lot of room for
potential threat. So what anti aircraft systems have the Russians
provided with them? More importantly, what anti aircraft systems would
the Russians provide for them? And the answer is we
don't know, and all of them could be bad, which
means that there's a very high possibility that they could
kill aircraft that we have that we've never really forecasted losing.
Because again, one of the common themes of the US
military is, yes, we're incredibly powerful, we don't necessarily have
the ability to absorb casualties. The ability to have min
weapons and equipment destroyed, are captured or disabled, and to
continue to fight as reorganize around your casualties is a
fairly hard thing to do. And you know the fact
that we don't really have to practice doing that, we
may have difficulties working around that. So hypothetically, it's not
just what we lose in aircraft, it's our ability to
continue to function as cohesive units. After that, the other
thing is drones. How effective are there drones? How effective
with the drones that Rush or China would provide them
with be And again, drones hypothetically used drones to fight
fighter aircraft. It's important to understand you don't need them
to be great dog fighters. You don't even necessarily need
them to be great with missile technology. If you can
with some degree of accuracy fly those things into your planes,
using drones is then just you know, run them into aircraft.
You could probably knock down a fair amount of fighters,
and especially the reality is if you're a drone controller
and drone pilot, you're not going to die when you
ram that other enemy aircraft, so you don't necessarily care.
So there's a high degree of possibility that Iran could
inflict casualties on a long range aviation attack and that
those things could really mess up in attacking force.
Speaker 1: So the things that I had heard recently at camera
I think might have been from Larry Johnson that they
definitely had Russian S three hundred systems. The I think,
what is their version of the C one thirty is
at the A N twelve cub Is that what he said,
I don't know, it's something like that. A couple of
them landed full fully loaded three or four months ago
in Tehran, which probably he thinks had the S four hundred,
and then there's actually talk that there's actually an S
five hundred and S five fifty now and properly when
you take into consideration the mountainous terrain and everything properly placed.
I mean it really it goes to show why when
Israel launched their assault recently, they really didn't do much damage.
I think there was one civilian died for for military personnel,
and the damage that's being reported has really been minimal.
And I've actually seen footage of a lot of their
a lot of what they launched. They're just being taken
down and taken right out of the sky.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Number one again back to the military cooperation with
the Bricks country. I'm one hundred percent certain it's happening,
But what do we know about those Like you said,
there's a couple of landings where as far as we
can tell, anti aircraft systems we're landing. I'm largely skeptical
of anything that comes out in American media about what
the Russian military is doing, just because everything the American
media has been so inaccurate. I'm sure, I'm one hundred
percent certain that Iran wants Russia to provide those assets.
I think it's more likely than not that Russia has
provided those assets, but which assets, I don't know. It
could be a lot, especially if they have next generation
shoulder fire weapon systems. So yeah, my big caution there
would be they probably have a lot more than we
think they have, especially if they're small enough and they
can be dismantled. You could potentially put them on you know,
civilian airliners. You can even put them on regular passenger
planes and break down the components to ship them in cargo.
So things like that are completely possible where they would
have a lot more stuff than we think, not to
mention the potential to move stuff in there directly from Russia.
And again, like you said, the mountains are good for
covering concealment, especially if you don't control anything around those mountains.
This isn't like Afghanistan where for twenty years, Yeah, we
didn't necessarily control the key mountains, but we had some points,
and we had some forces in the area, and we
had some idea of the geography. Iran would be completely
different that circumstance where we wouldn't know. So yeah, it's
everything you said, but to a degree much higher than
we would anticipate, meaning you're right, and it's probably a
lot worse than you think.
Speaker 1: And then not to mention the fact that their missile technology,
which we don't really know a lot about, but we've
seen the Huthis launch missiles at Israel that have been
reported to turn ninety degrees in mid air. So we
what exactly do we know about Iranian technology and what
they can do to fight back.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I haven't seen anything declassified on that.
Excuse me, So I've seen very little or nothing declassified
on that. So what do we know? We definitely know
they can do long range target thing with some degree
of precision. The fact that you know they drop stuff.
That was it the Iraqi airfield that we had an
American personnel that.
Speaker 1: I think that was in twenty twenty, right after so money.
Speaker 2: I was on that base. So I feel bad that
I don't remember on the top of my head because
I was stationed at that base at one point. So
all indications are if they did they missed on purpose
where they were demonstrating their ability to target and they
didn't miss, and they intentionally shot a warning shot demonstrating
that they could shoot things, just like the most.
Speaker 1: Recent Saving Face for the for the attack.
Speaker 2: I think it's exactly what they did. They were demonstrating
to all sides that they could do this and that
they would do this if they had to, but that
they didn't want to escalate further. That's my understanding, my interpretation.
So it's more than just saving face. They're demonstrating to
America that they could do this, but they're choosing not to,
which is a you know, a very different level of
restraint that Americans are used to. The thought is that
those those massive attacks by Iran against Israel, those large
missile attacks, that they were probably used as a reconnaissance
and force number one. There seems to be a fairly
high dud rate on the Iranian missiles, which suggests that
they were using old stocks a munitions stuff that they
had to get rid of anyway that they were firing,
and they were targeting them in such a way that
they could observe Israeli missile defense in order to get
their tactics down, in order to find their launch points
in order to build data for future attacks, which I
think is highly likely. It's also the kind of complexity
that Iranians are known for, so they have that kind
of targeting capacity, and they probably have it to a
much greater degree of precision than anything in the US military.
Long range precision missile artillery is not something the US
military is very good at.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about that. So a lot
of people look at Iran as like this backwards country,
these backwards people, their women still have to wear head
coverings and things like that, and they just basically assume
that they don't have they don't have any scientists there.
Anything that they would be using, they would be it
were being supplied from somewhere else, like Russia and everything
like that. So what do you know about their their
capabilities as far as their.
Speaker 2: The culture and technology was. Yeah, well, the country historically
was called Persia. Then the last Shaw's father, so the
second last Shaw, when he took charge, renamed it as Iran.
Haran literally means the land of the Arians. And like
a lot of well it wasn't a colonial site, but
a lot of sites going through decolonization, there's the whole
fight about whether or not the culture should represent the
dominant ethnic group or multiple ethnic groups. By naming Iran,
it was essentially saying it's not just for Persians, it's
for all the other minority people who who are there
as well, just as in aside, ethnic Persians only make
up about sixty percent of the Iranian population. You've got
some Arabs, We've got Kurds, You've got a Luki's, You've
got lots of people of very different, various relations apparently,
you know, it's it's a diverse country. There was a
great deal of a great amount of modernization that occurred
under the Pulavi dynasty. Education was brought in, you know, famously,
We've all seen, you know, the photos from the fifties
and sixties of women in many skirts in Iran. Iran
or Persians especially, but also Kurds and some of the
other ethnic groups are a little unusual in the fact
that they're simultaneously. They have a reputation for being both
very religious in the practice of shiaid Islam, will you know,
being very worldly in how they lived their life, which
it is really hard to compare them to something maybe
like old school Italian Americans, who are you know, very Catholic,
but that's never stopped and stood in the way of
them being able to deal with reality in places the
priests may not like you know, I don't mean that
as an assault. The Catholics are Italians, so they had
a fairly modern education system that was trying to modernize
the culture. They had modern universities that which were established
with Western support, mostly British, some American. A lot of
them do a lot of English language education because again,
stim training is only done in so many languages in
the world, and English is one of them. So lots
of you know, what we'd call third world countries, the
actually educated people speak fluent English because that's what they
need to do in order to to do a stem
education to go become an engineer or whatnot. There was
after the Iranian Revolution, there was a you know, there
was a big purging in the beginning where many of
the Shaws loyalists, loyalists were removed, but that didn't necessarily
damage the educated or yeah, it didn't necessarily remove the
educated factor in society because the revolution, the Iranian Revolution
wasn't even really an Islamist revolution in the beginning so
much as there was an anti Shaw revolution amongst people
who were Shiites, and you know, became a site revolution
because Comania was the only guy who could unite the factions.
So a lot of they're educated. People weren't taken out.
Like I said, students were a huge part of the revolution,
so you had lots of you know, lots of people
with higher education, some guys with PhDs and whatnot, but
a lot of people stem education. So my point here
is these are not monkeys living in caves. These are
people that a large strateg or society is very educated.
A large part of contemporary Iran is urban, either urban
or they live in you know, a greater metropolis metropolitan area,
meaning they live in essentially what would be suburbs or
even rural areas there, you know, within a half day
drive of a major city. So these are not you know,
bumpkins in the middle of nowhere. Even in the places
where they may be in the middle of nowhere, they
have a fair amount of ability to travel. The fact
that the country has oil means they have a fair amount
of electricity and power of different sources, which means you
can have computers. Anecdotally, I could know when I was
purchasing things as a purchasing agent for the Iraqi Army,
we imported a lot of our goods from Iran, So
I can tell you for a fact, computers are easy
to come by in Iran, even though we had embargoes
against Iran and we bought stuff from Iran. The fact
that they're working closer with Russia means that there's lots
of things they can get down they couldn't get in
the past. So it's this idea that they're living in
the caves like the Taliban were in two thousand and
one is not in any way accurate about Iran.
Speaker 1: What about their manufacturing of weapons specifically? You know what
lot Wock talks about, where if you're if you have
to import your own weapons, if you have to if
you have to rely upon someone else, you're basically you
become a slave to them. Do you know what their
manufacturing level is?
Speaker 2: That's a good question that I only know a little bit,
and I should have prepared better for that. I know
they can manufacture small arms. I know that ak's have
been made there before. I know munitions have been manufactured
in various degrees there. I assume that's a fairly easy
part of their their industry. Since if you don't necessarily
have currency, don't have hard currency that you know, manufacturing
munitions is a really quick way to make money. Towards
a more expensive country or more economically developed countries around you.
I don't know about their ability to produce like aviation
assets or hire an armor equipment or missile systems and whatnot,
so but I musto not necessarily I wouldn't necessarily be
worried about that if I were them, just because an
alliance with Russia means you can get those things. You
also potentially have the ability to trade things for them
that they are going to find valuable. So that answers
your question well.
Speaker 1: Also taking into consideration consideration the spirit of my question,
if they are relying on Russia for so much, how
how much of a suede does Russia hold on them?
In your opinion, that's.
Speaker 2: A good question. I think Russia could exercise a great
deal of sway over them if they wanted to, I know, well,
especially if they're providing anti aircraft system So the short
answer is probably a lot. Russia has not directly forced
a whole lot of things other than trying to see
greater alliances with those countries against the United States and
setting up you know, mutual trade systems, you know, such
as you know, getting outside the American banking credit system,
My guess is they probably have a lot of sway
over them, since you know, Russia was completely locked out
of Western markets and they've worked with other countries to
create alternative systems, and Iran has been locked out for
it was a decade plus now, so they have every
reason to cooperate. So I imagine there's probably a lot
more influence than we've seen so far. It's also a
situation where Putin, for all of his talk of him
as being an overbearing dictator, and I don't necessarily have
any love loss for him, but he's he has demonstrated
the ability to be to exercise sort of a soft
touch with people that he's influencing, meaning that he'll more
request and cooperate for things than trying to force compliance
on things, which ironically is sort of the American way
of doing diplomacy, despite the fact we say otherwise. So
I think Russia could probably exercise a great deal of
influence and probably has more influence than we've seen so far.
Speaker 1: When you say that, it's pretty easy to understand that
if Ukraine wasn't so captured and under NATO and other influences,
how he would have a soft touch with them. How
he would, he'd have no problem with diplomacy, and it
looks like, you know, in two thousand and nine diploma
diplomacy has gone really well with them until obviously the coup.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and my position on the Ukraine War is I
don't take either side there. I know lots of guys
on our or in our sphere like to take Russia
aside by default. I don't do that. And I actually
have an immense amount of admiration for Ukrainians. I do
think that by cooperating with the West, they're doing things
that are detrimental to them in the long run. I
think the war in Ukraine is an unfortunate consequence of
American overbearing behavior which has forced the dichotomy between Russian
and Ukraine and which people which killed a lot of
people we claim to care about. So, Yeah, the Slavic
parts of the former Soviet Union and before that the
Russian Empire have an enter seeing history. It's like history. Historically,
the the ethnic Russian people, the Rowski people, as opposed
to just the people who were citizens of Russia. Traditionally,
they referred to themselves as greater Russians, with the idea
that Ukrainians and bel Russians were you know, you know,
other varieties of Russian cousins. So yeah, there's a huge
amount of connection there, which you know, the fall of
the Soviet Union in post World War two or yeah,
post Cold War geopolitics is you know, created a cleavage
between those related peoples that the probably wouldn't have existed otherwise.
And again, I do not deny the existence of the
Ukrainian people like some do, but I also think the
fact that America has claimed to support Ukrainians has killed
a lot of Ukrainians.
Speaker 1: All right, well, it seems that Israel, you know what,
Iran has been there. They're one month away from having
a nuke for what thirty thirty five years now, and.
Speaker 2: Scott Worton has said they've been like six months away
for twelve years now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all of this belicosity towards them, it relies
upon the United States getting involved. And then you're saying
that this would be it would take two years to
even get this prepared for an invasion and then the invasion.
So it's conservative conservatively, So what is does Israel really
in your opinion, does Israel really think that this is
going to happen, that they can they can do this
or is there something else going on here?
Speaker 2: In tided to think there's something. I think a lot
of this has to do with men Yahoo essentially flailing
in order to stay in power. I think he's behaving
like a cornered animal. Because when this war ends, even
in the besket the excuse me, the fighting and Israel ends,
more than likely Netnah who's going to be indicted and
they're probably going to put him in prison this time,
and because of his age, he'll probably die in prison.
And I think even if it ends on very good terms,
that's extremely likely to happen. So again, I think Netnah
who's behaving like a cornered animal, and a lot of
it's driven by his behavior. I doubt that anybody in
the IDF thinks that a land war, a land invasion,
conquest of Iran is possible at all. You know, maybe
in two thousand and two, before we invaded Iraq, we
thought that that could happen, and we were in just
move u US forces into Iran, but reality proved otherwise.
Obviously Israel wouldn't go send its own forces. They have
a hard time getting their the reservists to go and
fight in the West Bank and the guys a strip.
They're definitely not going to go fight in Iran. I
don't think the United States will ever have the ability
to wage that kind of offensive war ever. Again, I
don't see people sending their sons away, especially in a
world where people only have one child. So it's not
just the the population growth issue. It's the fact that
you know, most parents today only have one or two children,
and you're not trying to you know, kill your child,
your only son, and your neighbor's only son in order
to you know, piss shit away. For people who aren't
willing to fight for themselves and have to create conflict
with everybody in their world, what do they really want?
I think a lot of this is about buying time,
and I think that I think that people under existential threat,
which you know nan Yahoo and the potential of going
to prison, I don't think they behave rationally, and I
think that explains a lot.
Speaker 1: So with Trump now picking his cabinet, and he's definitely
the few picks that you know, we were even talking
about before we started recording aren't good because just just
because it seems like they're they're all friendly to Israel
the three or four so far right now as of recording.
But this still doesn't really what people When you hear
people complaining about this, you hear them complaining about it
because we don't want to go to war with their Ran.
So what I'm trying, what I'm trying to do, but
I have this conversation with you, is showing people that
that's not that's not the issue. That's completely off the table.
Everyone knows it, and you know, other than somebody starting
to launch nukes, we we need to shift our still
pay attention to what's going on with this insane alliance
we have with this little shitty state in the Middle East.
But this isn't going to be about it Ran.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I would say a bit more than anything,
it's important that the politicians who represent us. And again
democracy is bullshit and we know it doesn't really work.
But the fact that Trump just got in power on
the you know, because of populist support, he's at least
open to understanding what his base cares about. And we
have to make it understand that Trump understand that you
can't do this. The war with Iran can't happen. And
a lot again, I prepped with Bill Buebert from Chasing
Ghosts podcasts for a lot of this. Among the conversations
we had this morning was the American military right now
is essentially divided between two world views. A lot of
what the Obama and Biden era did was essentially put
woke officers, you know, everybody's favorite pet, subjugated groups into
the military and higher levels as a sort of purge
of the officer cord, the general officer cord of the
army to make it less right wing. And unfortunately, so
much of the counter reaction against that in the military
and America's supporters just think, no, we're America and we
can go fight the world. So the response to woke,
unfortunately a lot of times, is saying, let's go and invade,
you know, let's start World War three. And part of
what I'm trying to fight is, you know, people released
culturally on our side, trying to get them to understand
that war with Iran will be existentially devastating to America.
You know, from Appalachia, Greater Appalachian, from the South. You know,
people like me die in these wars. I don't want
people like me to die, so especially so certain classes
and cultures of people who hate us can go in
a rural world rule the ashes of the world after
we've you know, bled and died for them. I also
want to make sure that people on our side, everybody
on our side, understands that war isn't free, right. People die,
And everybody said, yeah, of course not. It's like, no,
America hasn't fought a real world against a real enemy
in a very long time. And I remind people, even
during World War Two, you know, something like eighty percent
of the wehrmachs cow'shuildings were inflicted by the Soviet army.
You know, the reality is the United States provided a
lot of logistics and then opened up the Second Front
to play Kate Stalin in the course of a world war.
That we made the world safe for Stalinism. So world
War two we were kind of like we were sort
of like the kick return team of World War two, right,
I mean, of the Allies, we thought, but we were
not quite the front line starting lineup.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like the Pacific Theater.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like the Pacific Theater. And I'm not degrading
anybody's contribution and their sacrifice and the dead are equally dead,
no matter where they fought and against who they fought.
But understand that World War two, the Western Front, European Front,
we did not fight the war that we seem to
think we fought. And unfortunately, war with Iran could mean
that it could be against an army that is entrenched,
which has a fair amount of support. And despite the
fact that people say that they hate the Islamist regime
in Iran, invading their country will change that immediately. You know,
when gang banners come into your neighborhood, suddenly your next
door neighbor, you may not like you're willing to cooperate
within the fight the intruders, and we could create that situation.
And my biggest fear is Iran is some dipshit trying
to do things invading because they don't know any better,
which is a real fear I had with Kamala getting
in there. And as soon as our forces get bogged down,
we're bogged down in sort of like an Eastern Front
scenario in World War Two where we're slugging it out
for an extended period, except now we're doing that in
the war in the world where there are nuclear weapons
on the table. So again, when I'm rambling here to
everybody saying, look war with Iran without any better wor
sorry for my profanity, but it's fucking stupid and people
like me and you are going to die, and they're
going to die for the people we hate. So let's
not do that. And that's what I'm trying to say
to everybody. And I apologize for my profanity.
Speaker 1: No, not a problem at all. No, let's end it
right there, man, I really appreciate it. Thank you, Thank
you for any time I have some expertise to this,
and let's do it again real soon.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: Thanks man,