The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Robert Pape: There’s No Military Solution on Iran – Only Diplomacy and “Containing” Israel

Episode Date: April 1, 2026

In a heated debate, Robert Pape argues that the current Iran crisis is not just about bombs, deterrence, or regime change. It is about an escalation trap. In this interview, Pape says there is no military solution to stopping Iran from eventually getting a nuclear weapon. He rejects the idea that bombing alone can topple the regime, dismisses hopes that outside pressure will trigger collapse from within, and argues that the only remaining path is diplomatic. His most controversial claim comes late in the conversation: if the United States wants diplomacy to have any chance, Washington may need to “contain” Israel by preventing further escalation. The debate turns on several hard questions: Can bombing actually work? Is the Iranian regime more fragile than Pape thinks? Is Trump driven mainly by MAGA domestic politics rather than an Israel lobby framework? And if military pressure cannot solve the problem, what leverage does America really have left? Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Robert Pape’s background 09:58 The Vietnam–Iran “escalation trap” analogy begins 16:10 Did Mossad “stir” Iranian protests? Source dispute and first big clash 19:35 When did the escalation really start? Israel, the U.S., and June 2025 24:15 Trump, MAGA politics, Mearsheimer, and the “someone else’s interests” tweet 28:25 What kind of Iran deal could still exist, and where Israel fits into it 30:57 Fordow, enriched uranium, and Pape’s long-running bombing model 33:35 Why Pape says bombing Fordow leads to pressure for later regime-change war 42:05 The deal Pape thinks Trump should have taken before the bombing 44:54 Direct question: stop Iran militarily or accept the diplomatic cost? 46:42 Pape: there is no military solution, only a diplomatic one 49:07 Are the Iranian people ready to turn on the regime? Protest debate 51:51 Pape’s core airpower claim: bombing alone has never toppled a regime 56:11 “Negotiation without leverage is begging” vs Pape’s leverage argument 56:55 What does “militarily contain Israel” actually mean? 59:05 Pape’s concrete proposal: a U.S. law cutting aid if Israel bombs Iran 01:00:11 Stage three of the escalation trap and warning about ground war 01:03:04 Noam’s challenge: how can you weigh costs without projecting future nuclear risk? 01:10:56 Final clash: what real strategy stops Iran from getting the bomb? 01:13:08 Pape’s closing position: the best remaining chance is “hemming in” Israel

Good evening and welcome to Live from the Table. My name is Norm Dorman. I'm all alone today. Nobody, I don't know, what's going on with my team. Today we have, for the third time, third time, Robert Pape, Professor Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago specializing in international security affairs. He is known for his influential research on political violence and national security is the author of the widely cited book Dying to Win. And right now, his substack, subsdacks are on fire. But he has a substack now, which is called the escalation trap, which I subscribe to.

So, Bob, you're getting my money. And we're... And we're very happy to have him here on the show. Welcome, Professor Robert Pape. No, thanks so much for having me on. We don't talk about the happiest here, but I think listeners should know. know that occasionally we have gotten together and had a few more enjoyable moments. And it is always a pleasure to be on with you and your audience, one of the most absolutely critical audiences in

America. And I just really appreciate this. Thanks, No. So I've come loaded for bear today, Bob, because I have some problems with you. But I hope we, I want that. I know. I would expect nothing less. That's the best thing about you. But just before we get into that, because just before we started, I noticed that you have a junior, Robert Pape Jr. And you told a very profound story about your grandfather. I don't know if you can't share it. Oh, no, I'm glad to tell it. I'm glad to tell it.

But before you say, but the reason I think it's so important is because it gives a context into why this has become your life's work. And this is very interesting. Yeah, so go ahead. Yeah. So my father, the senior, left when I was three years old. I'm an only child. I grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania.

I only saw my actual father a few times. last time when I was about 23 years old, very briefly. So the real male figure in my life was my grandfather. And he served in World War II. He was a quartermaster, which also meant he was in the Pacific and doubled as one of the people driving the boats with the men that would get off in those beaches at Liette. He was actually at the taking of Liette.

And for me, I never fully put two and two together till I was in my 30s. But his basic point, or what he really left me with, was that taking all those men to his beaches, to beaches where they would be killed and then have to bring more to be killed, but eventually take the beach, he lost his faith in God,

but never lost his faith in America. And I, in my 30s, I suddenly put two and two together, and I thought, well, maybe that's why I have the life I did. Now, did he tell you stories about the horrors of war? No, no, no. And in fact, even that only came through my grandmother. So in all the time he came back, he refused to, and I asked him over and over in high school, he refused to talk to me. And my grandmother told me the only time he ever talked about the war was once, a few years before I was born in sort of 1957, 58.

he had some of the war buddies come over. This was about 10, 12 years after the war. And that one night is when they told the stories and my grandmother heard them. And that's when she learned this as well. Never can't. He protected us all the way through. He didn't want us to know what really happened.

This is a common story of people who have these traumas in war. You've heard this. I've heard it many times that they, but after they die, people say he wouldn't talk about it. He wouldn't talk about it. The only thing I have known that's left is after he died and my grandmother died, I got some of his records. And one of the things that he was asked to do, again,

a quartermaster did different things in the war was his ship was under kamikaze attack. And he was ordered to stay at his post and write down every single thing that would happen that he could observe. And he stayed at his post and he wrote these pages for over an hour he was under kamikaze attack. They're illegible. They're illegible. But these are the records and this was the amount of pressure

that we were really under in the Pacific. And again, these are things that came to me more in my 30s than at the time when I was a teenager or even, younger than that. But it really, I think, helped to explain to me why I have this great faith in America. People keep asking me, you study these things, and you're often telling our leaders that are doing the wrong thing, but you never seem to get down. And I think it goes back to my grandfather. He never lost his faith in the American people. I, too, are not particularly religious. Have you ever considered, and this is the last thing I'll ask about this, because I ask myself,

whether you have the bravery to, you know, go down to the recruitment office and volunteer for a war and go fight the Japanese, which we know people did in hundreds of thousands, right? I'm guessing at that number, but it has to be something like that. Yeah, I don't know if I feel will actually happen, but no, it really is the case that in my career, as a career, Right after 9-11, I compiled the first complete database of all suicide attacks around the world. That said, if we invaded Iraq, we would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign, increasing the odds of the next 9-11. I at that time was a liberal Republican. I was friends with many people.

I won't say who they were on the Bush National Security Council. I was probably heading to the Bush National Security Council. Does it rhyme with Flongolanda Lice of ICE? Pardon me? Did it rhyme with Flondaliza Bice? I'm not going to say anything about the names. They are names you would know, but I'm not going to say about the names. And they're still around today.

But the bottom line here is I did give things to Paul Wolfowitz. Here I've told this story publicly before warning and so forth. But also I went public with my concern. And I was the only terrorism expert to warn up to make this prediction. Well, that was a moment I had to decide because that told me I would probably never be hired as a national on the national security council here because by going public against the war, it's so early 2002. And only Barack Obama was the only other one who did.

I remember so many others kept their political viability. And then it turned out to be the case that we did touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign of modern times. And believe it or not, it was the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Defense Department who started my center, the University of Chicago project on originally suicide terrorism. Bob, let's get to it. So the very people, I was telling we're doing exactly the wrong thing. And that's why I ended up doing so much advice there, trying to help us dig out of that

hole for years and years. And we never did send that army to Somalia. Well, listen, but like a quick thing, when I get to it, we touched off the biggest suicide terrorist thing, but not in the homeland, which I presume was part of what you were warning about at the time. Yes, we had enough dust up in the homeland here, but we remember, we had, we didn't have suicide attacks in America. Just, man, I was, I was explaining, I was working not just with the NSC, but with the FBI, because I was a big believer that all of their surveillance operations were pennies on the dollar and weren't really going to matter. We had to shift into sting operations.

So one of the reasons we didn't have those terrorism attacks at home, no, is not because bad guys were. weren't trying to get at us. It's because I was spending 24-7 of my time. I would often fly to Washington from Midway in time for all the afternoon meetings and then come back and then do it again the next day, and the next day, and the next day. We want you on that wall. Because I'm working with both sides to try to minimize those deaths to Americans. Yeah. All right. So anyway, that's, I didn't mean anyway. I mean, I just want to get to the No, I understand. This was something you didn't know, and I hope our audience finds it sort of a bit. But let's go ahead and talk about it, and let's talk about the issues you have.

Let's talk about what I'm saying, what the issues are. Your audience wants to know. So I'll big up you. I think I emailed you this, but I'll big up you here that, you know, I had a dinner with Constantine Kissen and Francis Foster, the trigonometry guys. And I don't, I think I can say that. And they were very, very, they were singing your praises, Bob. I think he said it public, too, that you, they found you. you. And then you set them straight. I tried, but I tried, but it didn't work. So anyway, but, you know, before we get to the escalation trap, and of course, I'm not going to dispute that escalation can be a trap. I tell people who work for me that all the time. You're blowing a lot of smoke now at Israel, and, you know, that's my thing sometimes. So I just want to go through a few of the

ground rule facts here to understand them, and then we'll get to the thing. So I think this is today, you have a graphic here, parallels of escalation between Vietnam and Iran. On the Vietnam side, you say covert, 16,000 advisors, and in Iran, you say, 2025, Mossad slash CIA, Mossad stirs protests. Now, I spent two hours this morning trying to find a single source. that says that the Mossad and the CIA were storing protests prior to this war. Can you have a computer? Hold on, hold on, hold on. You have a computer.

This is not, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You have a computer in front of you. Please, can you just right now, just send me the source for what, because I mean, I read that New York Times article, which does it, I cannot find this source. And it's quite an accusation to say that, I think you're saying that. Well, the New York Times, well, first of all, hold it. Hold to hold. Yeah, we go through this all the time on your show now. Okay, so you're always trying to bite here at the ankles. You're trying to say, oh, my God, the source here and so forth. And look, we go through this all the time on your show.

Any source. This is now a much big, just so that we understand, okay? I hardly talk about Israel in my post here. So of all the pages of thousand, I don't know if it's a thousand at this point, but of all the pages on my substack, of all the many, posts I have made. If Israel's referred to even 5% of the time or even 3% of the time, okay, that is probably, that's probably an exaggeration. I just want your audience to know because you're making it out like, oh God, he's out to get Israel. This is what you did the last time I was on the show. And I went you do it for an hour. We spent an hour going through this. Bob, it's your tweet. And I'm just hard to explain it. It's your tweet today. I understand. So does your audience understand. They're emailing me too. No, no, we all got it. Okay. You're defending every little, tiny little thing that you can possibly find here. And the bottom line here,

does that mean you don't have a source? What happened here? The bottom line here is that what happened is that we don't have the definitive Pentagon Papers level proof. We don't have a report. I can't find a report. I just want to be clear to your audience. Yeah. Okay, we do not have the definitive Pentagon Papers level prove that the United States intelligence, and maybe it's not the CIA or Israeli in time, maybe it's not Musa. We have lots of intelligence agencies I have dealt with here over time. Okay, we have many, many ways to do this. But the bottom line is here that, number one, this is exactly what you would expect, that we would be in, and trying to encourage, just as we did in 1953 and 15 years later,

we have all the documents for 1953 here that came out of the intelligence agencies trying to foment the regime change that happened in 1953. Second, there are sources here. Can you give me one? Can you give me one? By the way, and I thought the New York Times was one of those sources. No. I also got to tell you that I have not been spending, like, staying up 18 hours.

hours a day and I'm not careless so this idea that you're trying to paint to oh professor Pape is so careful you did this to me last time this is just not what you do are you gonna filibuster me we're talking noam to the guy who has done more to be fair to Israel than anybody else and here you are demanding and what you did last time is you said oh it's not good enough to be simply fair you've got to support Israel I said that I we have to roll the videotape I know that's a That doesn't sound like me, Bob. The paper to disagree with Mearsheimer that it was a genocide.

You literally, and it's on tape, you can, your folks can go back and listen to. Can we get to the question? This is not about, let's be fair. You look, I understand. You're supporting Israel. That's fine. I want to talk about the actual issues here. Okay.

Which is, is Israel security going. If it's not an issue, if it's not an issue, and it is, I'm just trying to tell you, look, Are you going to let me talk? You're out there? I'm not going down and spending another hour going through this again. I did it once. And your listeners, they all saw it. I bent over backwards.

And what did you do? You demanded more. There's no yes here on this issue for you, Noam. You want a certain outcome, and you're just going to keep working it until you get it, even if you've got to distort everything I'm doing. And I'm sorry you're doing that, but I'm not. going to, this is too much. Israel's security is at risk, just as it was last August. And what happened? President Trump stopped the plan that Israel had to cleanse the Palestine. You spent all this

time trying to undermine my case, and I am explaining what is best, in my view, and true, I'm not an Israeli, I'm not Jewish, and I'm not Netanyahu. But I have spent 30 years studying national security affairs, I support the state of Israel, I get to have my view about what would be in Israel's security interest. And that's what happened in August. All that talk was meaningless in terms of how to actually help Israel. And what really happened here is, I don't know if President Trump heard or his people heard any of these conversations we had, but he did the right thing. Trump was not sitting around saying, what did Professor Pape say on, you know, on this quote or this footnote, he was focusing on the security of Israel. Okay, Bob, you've been very unfair to me.

And I'm going to tell you, I hope you'll let me speak, you know, for one-tenth of the time you just spoke. I go to your Twitter page. You have a substack now, the escalation. It's what's called escalation trap? Escalation, escalation, whatever. And they have a very fancy graphic here. And it only has one, two, three, four, five steps to it. And the first step is 2025, the Mossad stirs protests.

So no different than, I mean, you're a professor. If that's what your student hands in, you were, hey, wait, what's it? Where'd you get that from? And you ask him, where'd you get that from? And like I have the New York Times article here. The New York Times article suggested that in this current conflict, the Mossad, suspected or indicated, represented that after we kill the leadership, that they would be able to bring about the opposition forces in Iran maybe to rise up. But that's after they killed the force.

I mean, within days of the wars beginning, the Mossad chief of service would likely be able to galvanized the Iranian opposition, igniting rise, another acts of rebellion that could even lead the collapse of the government. This was supposed to happen in this current conflict after the leadership was killed. And actually Israelis and Americans were skeptical about that, but it wasn't, there's no indication there in this article that the huge riots we saw were millions of people turned out, millions, were in any way, anything but an actual organic protest. There's all sorts of articles that talked about inflation and, you know, any number of things. I'm sure you know them of what caused those protests. But you're saying that those protests were

not organic. I think that's what you're saying. And and and and and and but the thing is, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, it's very, I think it's just very unfair. To resent someone who says, oh, you, you said this. What's your source? But okay. I'm going to go move past that. Well, no. No. No. I'm telling you, I will spend some time over the next few days. So I am wall to wall here, okay, trying to actually help the country and Israel's security. But what I will do is I will take time here and I will see if I can get, and then you can put it up on your. Yeah, I'll do it. So the next step.

So the next step. So that we will, we will do this. Okay. The next step. But what we're not going to do is we're not going to waste all that time here in, in this when we have just much big. fish to fry. And it's not that I'm going to admit that I'm wrong. Like I, last time I, I, I tried to solve this and get rid of it. I just simply giving you a yes and you wouldn't take yes. So I'm not going to do it. Bob, when I asked you the question, I'll get the next way. When I asked you

the question, you might, you could have also said, no, that was a newsweek or so like, you know, I, I didn't know that you're going to tell you. I'm not going to flip something off the top of my, no, you're going to hold me to the account. It's quite a, no, no, no, no, we're not going to do that. Okay, next. Let's get past it. We're going to actually. So let's move on. to give tape time the way it actually works in the real time as opposed to gotcha world okay and you're going to give you an actual answer not a got your question i've done all this research you give me something in 10 seconds or so far that is not a got you're not doing okay next because this is not so you want a certain outcome everybody knows it yeah your audience you don't want a certain outcome i want a certain outcome

okay next next one so next thing is august ninety sixty four golf of tonk and then you have a no side 2025 bombing. This is when Israel bombed, right? No, this is the bombing of Fordo. You're not reading the substack carefully. No, no, no. The real beginning of this is not Israel's bombing here, and there's

nothing on Israel on that chart, on that line. That's what I'm saying, you're overreed, you're looking for issues with Israel. I'm not doing the American bomb. I'm not going after Israel. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine that it's foredo. It's fine that it's

Fordo. A foredo, that was, um... B-2s. Are you saying, I'm only B-2s could have done this, only America. Are you saying that if America, well, first of all, I just want to say that the first, the first missile, what I would think the escalation would start, it's just as a matter of, you know, clerical matter, was in April, 24, the first missiles lobbed were from Iran to Israel.

That's what started the back and forth, right? No, you're, no, that is your view. I've been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. Is that the first missile? I've talked for the U.S. Air Force. I've published articles on the subject. You're casually consuming this. Is that the first?

Look, there's a difference between you reading a medical journal as a non-MD and then you talking to the jury. Well, no, I'll tell you who said it. I'll tell you who said it. Wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, don't cast aspersion. We had Scott Sagan on, Stanford professor of nuclear experiments. I know Scott very well. And he's the one who said that. Okay, so that's where I got that from.

So you can take it up. He still is not, again, Scott Sagan did not model the bombing of her arm for 20 years. But you can, but you can, but you can, but you can't, but you can't. Okay. Because he's the one of the saying. I'm just trying to point out. You're, you're, again, you're not really seeing my area of expertise here and the depth of it in a certain area. Should I just bow down to you and not ask you questions?

Is that what you're saying? Let me explain it to your audience. But is the first missile. Did the first missile exchange come from Iran to Israel? Is that the first one? Iran, in what you're describing, that particular episode, that was Iran's first time. It launched a missile that hit the home line. A barrage.

But this is not how we got to this point. This is just not how we got here. Okay. So, again, you're focusing on a detail. It's real. Many people will think it's a detail that matters. It is not in the Pape escalation trap. I have a different understanding of this.

It is not just what you get on Google. This is a very different understanding. And it's based on modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years, which so far we've been at this 25 minutes. And we're still not even getting a chance to explain that issue. So then... I would think some of your folks would care about. So you're saying it's the bombing of Fordo, which was the U.S. bombing of four-doll. So you're saying that if...

That was the beginning of the escalation trap. So if... Not the beginning of an escalation ladder, not the beginning of something back and forth. I am explaining... Okay, so let me ask the question, Bob. Please. Let me ask the question about the trap. Then explain to me, I understand what you're saying.

So explain to me, this would be interesting. That how the... bombing of that Israel did all that bombing in June of 2025, that if if if if it just stopped there prior to the final push by the when the U.S. joined in, that would not have started escalation between the country? No, no, it wouldn't have started the trap. Okay, explain that. And this is why I barely talk about Israel in my discussion. You're again, your audience things, all I do, no, this is hardly, Israel's hardly coming up

in my explanation. Bob, come on now. You tweeted out, you tweeted out, come on, I have to stop you that. Let's ask you. You tweeted out,

a deeper question is emerging. Is this war in America's interest or someone else's? That's, this is where it gets dangerous. Obviously, you're talking about Israel.

Don't say you don't talk about Israel. You're right? No, it's MAGA. No, again, you're not listening. You have every right to talk about Israel. Sorry,

sorry, No. Look, sorry, no, the, what I'm about to give a big, I've given big talks on this here. You don't know them. My view is that President Trump's foreign policies,

not driven by the Israel lobby. I do not share John Mearsheimer's view. I didn't say the lobby. My view is it's driven by MAGA mass politics, not by the Israel lobby. So John's view, and I know very well because I've known John for 40 years, John's view is that it's the Israel a lobby, an elite understanding of domestic politics, a lobby that is... Oh, no, that's not John's view. That's not John's view now. John's view now is that Netanyahu is being blackmailed. I'm sorry, that Trump is being blackmailed by Netanyahu because of revelations in the Epstein

files. So what are your thoughts on the role of Epstein and the Epstein files and Epstein's history in, potentially in the U.S.'s treatment of Israel? When you look at Trump and his behavior, towards Israel. And you look at his behavior before he became president. There's good reason to think that the Israelis have the goods on him and that they've made it clear to him that if he gets tough on Israel, they'll reveal certain things. One also can hypothesize that given his very close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the fact that Jeffrey Epstein recorded so much

of his interactions with other people and those other people's interactions with young girls and with young women that maybe there's something there. The problem is that we don't have the evidence. So you can't say for sure that Trump is being blackmailed. But there is enough circumstantial evidence that one has the sense, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, one has the sense that that may be the case. That's Mayor Scheimer.

Hold on, but that's what Mirshyheimer. You acknowledge it. You acknowledge it? Do you acknowledge? The Israel lobby, blaming Israel, cannot explain why Trump in the first Trump administration did not bow to Netanyahu's pressure. And I've said this on numerous podcasts. You just don't know it. Okay. But my view is that Israel as a factor is relatively minor here. I don't think it's zero. But I do think it's relatively minor in how we got here. Now, this, I'm not surprised that you're talking about and focusing on this, because many people are trying to blame Israel for this catastrophic failure, which is only going to get worse. I'm not doing that. I think there is domestic, what I meant in

that post was it's mega domestic politics, which is at issue. And I have a whole story explain that, explain it, explain it, that's at issue here that has nothing to do with Dana a bash and the Israel lobby in the media or what's happening with rich Jews or rich Christians here that are part of that. Bob, I got to ask you a question. I just don't believe that's the problem. I got to ask you a question because you're a very sophisticated guy. When you tweet out in the current climate, and you're very aware of the current climate,

you're very aware that everybody from the New York Times to Tucker Carlson is snobes. sniffing out the Israeli influence here. When you tweet out and underneath it, a deeper question is emerging, is this war in America's interest or someone, and you boldface, someone else's, that's where this gets dangerous.

You didn't realize 99 out of 1,000 people would assume you meant Israel? So no, no. Before I got on with you, I was on for an hour with men of help. I think you did mean Israel. Listen to me.

I think you did mean isn't. You just said they're looking to understand it this way. I was just on for a whole hour, I think it was 52 minutes with Megan Kelly wall to wall all that time. Okay. And we talked about the escalation trap, how we got into this situation and so forth. And the issue of Israel came up at the very end, not about how we got here, but about what a deal might look like. because Israel is part of the conflict now, of course. It's not involved.

So you can't ignore Israel altogether. Never once did she go to that tweet and say, ah, you're part of us. You agree with us, Professor, Paid. That's what, no, never. It was she let me explain what you're not letting me explain, which is why you're going down the wrong road. So explain to someone else.

Not Israel is the cause of the disaster. Whose interest is this in? Whose interest is this in? I can't help that you want to pin me on something. I don't believe. Then who is interest? Who is the dangerous, shadowed interest that this is in? The issue here is that Trump has a domestic political interest.

That domestic political interest was put at risk if you would let me explain the stages of the escalation trap. You will see what the interest is. You're assuming it. It's not true. We're spending all this time talking around an issue. Can you just tell me who? Confusing your audience. I hope they go to the Megan Kelly show and hear the actual explanation.

Can you just tell me? It's not that Israel was the. It's fine. I asked you who the someone. Who is the someone in boldface? Who is the someone? The mega, mass mega politics. It's not a someone.

It's the political interest that President Trump has. It's MAGA. You wrote someone. That's not my words. So why is it in MAGA's interest? Will you let me explain? Can you just tell me why it's in MAGA's interest? No, you've got to let me explain.

Okay, you know, I'm going to let you explain. I want to say why it bothers me. Because as a consumer of your tweets, I'm not privy to the 20-minute explanation. So I have every, it's perfectly normal. for me to say he's tweeting something it's bite size he's not choosing to there's no thread here you don't explain

it you goddamn well know people are going to think it means Israel you let it hang like Oh come on. No I don't because I have a different explanation yeah but you don't you don't set you could have said you could have said America's or Maga's political interest I'm just why did you cloak it in mystery? You're reading it through your Wednesday you chose to cloak it in mystery you could have just

said is this war in America's interest or in Maga's political interest Okay, that's clear. Will you let me explain? Yes, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. So in all the 20 years of modeling the bombing of Iran, which I do for my class in a 90-minute session every spring, and I did last spring before the bombing of Fordo, I explain the central issue with the U.S. and the military issue between the U.S. and Iran is the enrichment of uranium. And that's why in 2002, the dynamics between the U.S. and Iran changed. Before that, we were at odds politically, starting in, and so, and there was also, of course,

still Israel. But in 2002, when the enriched uranium issue came up with the discovery of Natanz, suddenly we started to think militarily about destroying the enrichment capacity of Iran. I started modeling the bombing of then how. would you bomb Iran to do that with all my background and air power makes perfect sense. And that was just with Natanz. Well, at that point, I explained that we would do double tap attacks. It's buried underground.

I explained that with our precision guided, one bomb would create a crater, the next. And I think, and again, your listeners can go in the New Yorker with Sy Hirsch, I think it was 2003 or four. He called me up and said, Bob, because I'm not. I knew, Si, he said, I think we're going to have to use tack nukes to take out in its tons. And I said, respectfully, do you have to go all the way back to... Just listen to me.

No, because I'm asking you a question about your tweet. Why is it in Magist's interest? You're not going to be able to understand it without getting the story. Okay, have to go away back to 2003 to explain why it's in magazine? Yes. Okay, go ahead. Because you need that. Okay, this is the only question we're going to ask today.

The enriched uranium, go ahead. It's not about Israel. So that's what you're not allowing. Asking why it's in magazine interest. Everything must apparently be. about Israel, it's not always You know how we are, but I'm asking about why it's in MAG's political interest, why that's the dangerous question.

I'm trying to explain that to you. Okay, go ahead. So anyway, now we bomb Fordow. So now we model this. Stage one is always America bombs Fordow because only our B2s and our big bombs can destroy Fordow. Israel's Air Force can't do that. And what happens in the modeling is

we take apart the industrial capacity of enrichment, but we don't get the fizzle, I'm sorry, the nuclear material, the enriched uranium. And then I always said, what that would do is over a year, a year later, we would come back and this would be the cause of regime change bombing. That what happened is when you bomb Fordo, you don't get the material, you fear it will disperse

actually inside of Iran and allow for either nuclear weapons to be fashioned, serptitiously or radiological bombs. And over time, that pressure would build. And Pate always said, and I've said this for 20 years, a year or two later, we'll come back for regime change bombing, the very bombing we refused to do before. And that's exactly what happened here. You didn't need Israel whispering in President Trump's ear because I've got on my substack, and if you've been following this, the actual satellite photography of what appears to be Iran dispersing its material from Fordot and Esophon. So this, and I'm sure if I've got this, there's even more in the classified world.

This is politically embarrassing to Trump. If Trump is president, say this summer, and a nuclear weapon goes off. And you know there's been a lot of prediction that maybe Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon even after the bombing, President Trump's presidency will probably, if not completely collapse, take, be wounded dramatically before the mid-term. Okay, let me stop you there. I follow it. So the big reason, you can't just fill a bust.

It's not fair to ask 10-minute answers in an interview. Come on. It's not fair. You got it, it has to be a conversation. Well, I just gave you the reason. Okay, so let me in. The actual logic. So he's got a domestic political interest in avoiding that.

What you said is very huge. So you think, from what you're saying, I know I'm going to be wrong, but that there was a real possibility that there could have been a nuclear explosion in Iran. They would set off a bomb in the next two or three years. Now, Trump's not running from the election. I didn't quite know. It's almost right. You're about 90% of my view, but you're saying that it's a reality, no.

I'm saying what I say about. You said that it would be humiliating to him if a bomb went off. No, my modeling is... Should I play it back? My modeling is that the government that bombs foredow, whether it was Trump, whether it was Biden, whether it was Obama, it does not matter. The government that bombs foredow will obsess and fear that this will happen,

and they will get inclination, I'm sorry, They will get intelligence that will appear to fit the picture because once you see what intelligence really looks like, it can fit a whole lot of pictures. I swear to God, my ears are bad. So I didn't say it was true. I said they would obsess and fear about it. And for the president who did this, their political future would be on the line. No. And that is how we get sucked into the trap.

It's not because of Israel. How would that, first of all, the president doesn't have political future. He's a lame duck. But leaving that aside, and it's an important point. He's not running for reelection. He is only concerned about his legacy. But my question is, I swear I thought you said, I'll have to go back and listen to my ears are bad, that you said that, you know, we hear that they're very close to a bomb and there could be an explosion. We heard that out of the administration, not out of Professor.

But if it's not true. And that is evidence of Professor Pete's prediction coming true. But if it's not true that anything bad was going to happen, how is his political interest tied to it? Because he's going to over-worry about his political interest known, just like the owner of a business will over-worry about whether or not they're going to make money in the next six months if there's higher oil prices or higher interest rate. Okay, let's drill down on this. So he's the president, and he gets all the intelligence reports we wish we could get. And from that, he now, if I understand what you're saying, from that, he infers that there's a significant chance that Iran will get a bomb right away. The way the assessment actually goes in my class known, which matters here, is that the bombing of Fordo also means the IAEA never comes back, and that is our best intelligence.

So if you imagine intelligence here like a piece of cheese, that's not our best intelligence. We have a lot of the IAEA, we have solid information about the Iranian nuclear program. Once you bomb Fordot, suddenly you have Swiss cheese, giant holes in the intelligence. And I'm saying that of decision makers, and there's reason to think this, they worry about worst case scenarios. They worry about what, and it's not because it's the worst case is surely true. It's because they can't show it surely wrong. And that's what I said would lead us to do the regime change bombing a year later. And we did that with President Trump, who swore he would never do this, who turned it down in the first Trump administration.

For me, if Trump did this, Trump did this, it shows the power of the modeling. It shows the modeling was correct. Ronan Bergman says a report, I heard it today, that he also turned it down a few months ago. It was only after the protests that he changed his mind. That's what that's what. Well, there's also, by the way, on my substack, we have the satellite photography in February. of Estefan, the Iranians, digging stuff out of Estefan. And if I have that, I don't have a clearance.

If I'm getting that satellite photography in the New York Times, if we're going to get to footnotes, where is this coming from? The New York Times, you can bet we have even better information about Estefan. My point is not from the IA. This idea that we're not putting in and having agents on the ground, I just think is. So our best intelligence doesn't come from the IAEA. It comes from our own surveillance, and obviously the Mossad's got that freaking place

wired for sounded video. No, you're misunderstanding. Back to my analogy of a block of cheese. We went from having a solid block of cheese where Mossad is one source, the satellites are another source, the IAEA is a third source, and you get a cold block of cheese.

You take the IAEA out, and now that cheese I'm saying is 50% plus full of whole. So let's get to the harder matter, Bob. Yes, you can fill, You try to fill it in with the others, but that's not how it, that's not the reality of human. That's not the reality of what you're dealing with. You're dealing with Swiss cheese. In the Iraq war, I think you were on record as saying that even if Iraq went nuclear,

we could live with that, that deterrence would, I think you signed that petition, which said that, that said that if they go nuclear, deterrence will hold them. Do you believe that we can allow Iran to get Adam Baum in Europe? I think it's a matter of a cost-benefit analysis, no. So I have said since when Obama was elected president, you can go and search and you'll find that I published a piece. I think it was in the weekly standard. I'm not quite sure where I published it now that said the number one problem for Obama was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. I said that was his number one thing.

I said this right after Obama was elected, I published a piece on this. So I've been worrying about this ever since this enrichment thing. I've been worrying about this, and that's why it's the capstone to my class and strategy. It's always been one of the top things I have worried about is Iran getting a nuclear weapon. And the reason is because of all the dynamics around this that we are going through right now. Okay. Bob, let me in there for a second. Of getting of Iran not getting a nuclear weapon, I believe right now is growing.

Okay. Before we did the bombing, I think we should have done the deal that was on the table that Kushner and Whitkoff brought back to Trump. We started down that road. Maybe that wasn't good enough, but I believe President Trump, that's where his art of the deal skills, I think, should have been used. I think that the Feb-27 deal should have, he should have gone forward on that front. Let me, can I get in there for a second? You had to. Yes.

So this is why I would dispute you, and then I also still want to pin you down on the question I had. The reason I dispute you, and I'll talk about my old things. When Israel first bombed Iran, whenever that was, the first time they bombed, like I said, was in... Well, it's 2024 is what you're probably thinking here. The first missile attack. Before that, they're using, they're using, uh, South, sabotage, and human agents. And that's where the Mossad is really.

So you say, well, there's no history of Musa... Are you going to let me speak? We've got so much history of Mossad. Anyway, keep going. Jesus. I felt at that point, once Israel had humiliated Iran and exposed how vulnerable they were to themselves, they spent 30 years trying to make themselves

into a formidable power. and overnight, Israel just basically humiliated them. It was clear to me then, and then it became crystal clear to me in June, that there is no scenario where Iran has not decided now, if we get up off this mat, we are going to get a nuclear bomb. This would have never happened to us if we get a nuclear bomb. So everything that you're saying about the past, I agree with you. It really doesn't matter.

It's all in the past. At this point now, and obviously what went on in that, deal that was offered is highly disputed, but I would say that a savvy Churchillian leader would say, it doesn't matter what they agree to in that deal. We know goddamn well, there is no way they are going to forego the opportunity to get a nuclear bomb now. And obviously, if we're going to try to stop them, whatever the costs are, these are the cheapest costs we're ever going to have because they're going to have drones and missiles, and right now they're pretty much vulnerable. All they can do is, you know, do these canny attempts to bring other nations in and the straits of Hormuz,

but they can't inflict huge damage right now, as they will be able to. So my question is, given reality, that they are going to get a bomb if we don't stop them, everything that came before is meaningless. should we let them get a bomb or should we pay the cost to stop them? That's a direct question. I think we should pay a diplomatic cost to stop them. I think the cost to stopping them getting a bomb would be a military containment regime on Israel. So that's where the Israel issue comes in.

So it does come back to Israel. It is all about Israel. No, no, no. I'm explaining that if you want to use military force, Yeah. If you want to use military force to stop Iran from getting a bomb, I don't think you have a solution. So the key to this whole conflict is Israel. I don't think there is a solution with military force.

I'm just, this is PAPE's position. It's, I think there is no military solution to stopping Iran from getting a bomb. I don't think nuclear weapons will do it. That is, I think you can turn all 92 million. or try to turn them into glass and kill them all, I think that that's not going to happen. Nobody's suggesting that, Bob, but go ahead. Well, just about everybody on every podcast that I talk to,

I don't bring it up, they bring it up. And that's why I'm bringing us up. It's because just a minute. Just listen to me. It's because any nuclear option, and there's only a handful of countries that could even do that, would then blow back and have nuclear radiation all over the Middle East. Who is suggested that?

not a possibility. Okay. So number one, there's no nuclear option. Yes. Number two, we don't have the ground forces to occupy 92 million people. We didn't have enough ground forces to occupy 25 million with Iraq, and we have roughly the same number of ground forces now. So we would have to have conscription to actually occupy, and I don't think that's in the cards either. So what I would say is that I just don't think there is a military solution here. I think the solution to stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon remains, even now, as hard as it is, diplomatic. And what would that mean? That would mean a situation where Israel is compelled to join the NPT.

If there's on-site inspections in Fordo, Estafon, there's on-site inspections in Damona. I think that you have to go down a road of actually putting on the table something Iran would find valuable here. Why in the world would Iran give up its nuclear ambitions if only Israel would admit what everybody knows, there's no new information. Everybody knows Israel has X number of bombs.

If there's an inspection, okay, well, now we'll know what we already know. and that will satisfy Iran spent hundreds of billions of dollars simply to get that we are on the horns of a deal. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars

lives. Our people are starving we finally got what we always wanted. They finally admitted they have a bomb. This doesn't make any sense to me. There's no, I'm telling you, there's the military approach, there's a diplomatic approach. I've just shown you,

there is no military solution. No, you haven't shown that. Stopping Iran. So that means, even though this is, I to absolutely admit that this is not an Al-Sher fire absolutely going to, it's better than any of the military approaches. None of the military approaches, including Netanyahu's idea that we're going to produce a failed state, a giant version of Libya. No, Libya didn't have a thousand pounds of 60% of rich uranium.

10,000, 5% and 20%. So you've got a situation where there's no military solution. I think you're forced to go diplomatic. As bad as that is, it's the best. I think that my, I think my, I answer, I think that if, if, if we, I can't believe you actually think that this is what would make Iran give up their nuclear ambitions to know that Israel admit. I never said that it would. You keep putting words in my mouth.

Okay, I'm sorry. But I'm asking question. What do you make of the fact that something like, and I don't want to use the number 30,000 died. The only reason I, and I was criticizing people for using it, until I saw that it was reported in the Guardian, which is a left-wing outlet. And I said, okay, if the Guardian's reporting that 30,000 people died in the process in Iran,

maybe it's somewhat more reliable. So whatever that number is, it's a significant number of people died. millions came out at the risk of dying, and from the millions that came out at the risk of dying, we can infer some multiple of support, which has to be quite significant, because, I don't know, one out of 20, one out of 100 people have the bravery to go out

and put their ass on the line and get shot at, just because they're, you know, oppose a regime, you know, basically getting shot like fish in a barrel. So why are you so sure that the regime is not teetering such that in the way that Thomas Friedman over and over was saying, after this war is over, the people of Gaza will come out of their tunnels or out of their rubble, and they'll say to Hamas, what have you done to us? How did you get us into this? You remember these articles.

And liberal people were very moved by it. Yes. So why? So I'm almost finished. So how is this not part of a strategy, which may not work, which is, you know, it's, you, you have a strong military presence. You have tremendous surveillance. You bomb every time you see it flowering up again. You keep the pressure on.

And maybe it will fall over because obviously it is teetering. And what do we got to lose? money, we don't, we don't have to go and give it a shot. And again, you, you, you, you, um, esteem Scott Sagan, he believes it would be a disaster for the world if Iran goes nuclear, because then Saudi Arabia will go nuclear, then other Arab countries go nuclear. You talked about, I forget the phrase you use, of this dynamic of people all on a hair trigger with each other. What's the phrase you used? It's so, so, so, no, can I? That'll be, that'll be for the whole, So my, what you're not really, what I think you're not fully seeing.

Just give me the phrase. So I put, yeah, it's fine, but just give me the phrase so I can put it into where everybody suspects everybody, everybody's paranoid and they're all ready to to launch it at a moment's notice. I'm not sure. You're going down to 2,000 feet when we got to give the big picture to the audience. Okay, go ahead. I'll find it. Go ahead. Okay. Which is, so I'm the book, not just one of a bunch of people that is the book that shows air power alone has never toppled. a regime. It's called bombing to win. The book is called bombing to win. It was published in 1996. I've written articles on every air campaign since it's been about regime change. It's never worked. This is the book. And when I wrote the book in the 90s, I was working for the Air Force where the leaders of the leadership decapitation school were my bosses. John Warden was my boss for

years. So I knew, and I was in debates with them, both in the classified world and the unclassified world, on issues like should we end the Bosnian Civil War by killing leaders. We ended the Bosnian Civil War. It does not without, we didn't kill any leaders. No, Milosevic wasn't killed, but we ended it. And so this whole issue, no, I'm not just like one of like, you know, a few hundred people that study this and we read about it and we talk about. This has been my life. And, work here in a major, major way. Pape has worked on air power, suicide terrorism, economic sanctions, and now domestic political violence in the United States.

That's been 24-7 for 35 years, no. So you're just not seeing that as the core cake here of what I do. So there's lots of reasons why that never was likely to work in the first place. the Iran regime was not more brittle than any other one in the last hundred years. We can go through all of the details. The bottom line is it has zero up times worked, zero. Why do regimes fall? There's nothing special about the Iran regime that was going to lead to it being the first in history.

Why do the regime fall? And if you even believe that, what PAPE's argument always was is you have to prepare for the lash back. The lash back here. so confident that regime change was going to do it, they let Iran take the straight of Hormuz. Think about that. Pape's argument always was, okay, you're right, John Warden. I can't absolutely be sure that this campaign against country X, and he always wanted to do it with every country.

This won't be the first one that will prove Pape will be the first one in history. But what you should do is you should protect against the, obvious lashback that this enemy could do. And that's the problem here, Noam. They did not protect against the strait of Hormuz being seized, and it was seized relatively easily. And they did nothing to stop that. So it's not just they tried something that didn't work. They're creating the Frankenstein monster that you're worried about. And that's the problem here. They're not strategists. They're maybe politicians. I'm not telling you that they're idiots. It's not they don't have a triple-digit IQ. What I'm telling you is that there is a difference between being just the smart guy or whatever

and somebody who has modeled a problem for 20 years, studied a subject for 35 years, really is focused on this. And look, maybe PAP's going to be wrong. My point is at least have the backup to not let them make it worse. And that's what we failed to do. All right. So it sounds like you do agree we're going to have a nuclear Iran. You don't, you don't have much faith in his diplomacy from what I hear. I want to do everything to stop it. I'm not willing to go beyond everything. Everything, everything that requires, everything that requires, everything that goes out the next few weeks. Everything that involves talking, but the thing is talking without the credible threat of military force is obviously, you know, nonsense. It's just, well, we don't have that problem right now. We got a lot of

credible military force. But you wouldn't, but you wouldn't, but you wouldn't, but you wouldn't, but you wouldn't want the diplomacy backed up with actual use of force. Well, because I think they're going to get, it would make it possible for them. It would take away the last chance you could stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. And it will send the, it will be an economic disaster. It may be worse than the 1970s. Maybe we'll even be talking. We don't know how far the economy is going to clash as a result of this.

My adage in business has always been, negotiation without leverage is begging. There is no negotiating with Iran without the leverage of bombs. And I'm saying the leverage is military containment of Israel. We have leverage. Okay. The leverage is we militarily contain Israel, and that is worth something. Is it going to be enough to stop Iran nuclear bomb? I can't say for sure, but it is not nothing, no.

And we've tried all the other ways that have only made it work. So this is new. I mean, you said it, but you didn't, you didn't. illuminated, but then you talked about the inspections. What do you mean by militarily contain Israel? I mean that Iran, you have to look at this. Iran is now got something it didn't have before. It has global power with 20% of the world's energy, oil. Well, energy, because of also oil and gas. So what they have, what we just did is we handed them global power. And Pape was saying, don't do this because you were going to make that happen.

Now we've done that. And they're not just going to give up. It's not just about the news. They're not going to give up global power. So if you want them to give up global power, then you've got to put something on the table. What? I know that you start talking. I'm saying what you mean.

Getting Israel to stop attacking their country in a real way. Of course. That's not hard. That would be worth something to Iran. That's what I'm saying. But, dude, that's the, but yeah, but that would mean them saying, but that's on the table now. We will end the war if you agree to give up your nuclear ambitions. No, no, no, that's not on the table.

That's nowhere in any of these points you're hearing. And what, of course it is. About what's being put secretly. Trump would have to give a speech where he would have, this has to be enforced. Are you saying to me, hold on, are you saying, are you saying to me that you believe that if Iran actually said to the American government, we will give up our nuclear ambitions and we'll do it in a way which is verifiable. Israel would say that's not good enough. We still want to go to war? No, no, no. I'm not going to be a mind reader of Netanyahu. That's not what my work is.

But you say, Nat, you want to stop Israel? You keep going and trying to turn me into something I'm not. I'm trying to understand what you mean by contain Israel. I'm saying if you mean... This is about risk assessment. I'm trying to understand what I'm trying. I'm trying to understand what you mean by contain Israel. If you mean by contain Israel, get Israel to agree to stop bombing their country in return for them for them giving up their nuclear program, I think that's an easy deal to make. That's not containing Israel. That's Iran surrendering it away.

No, no, no, this would be, if, no, I think what you would need is you need a law passed in Congress that if Israel bombs Iran, all aid, military and economic will be cut off through the end of Trump's presidency. And that has to pass through the House and the Senate. Otherwise, Iran's not going to pay any. And this is your practical solution to this problem? That's never going to happen. I'm not. Look, you can, then you're, then we're going to head to an Iranian nuclear weapon. And then we're going to end to economic collapse of the world.

And then what you're worried about is people are going to blame it. What you're worried about, Noam, is under those circumstances, this will put the most pressure on Israel that I think they've ever made any sense to me. And I don't want. Israel to have that pressure. Obviously, to help Israel security. It doesn't make any sense to me because obviously any law like that would have to have a clause which says unless Israel has caused to attack them.

And then, you know, you can debate endlessly about what about if Iran orders Hezbollah to lob missiles into Israel. What you're explaining, no, is why we're going to the ground war. What I've explained here in my escalation trap, and I'm... I've said this, we're 70% likely to go to the ground war. That's going to create a war of attrition. That's going to be what wrecks us. So you, but everything you're saying.

It causes the economic disaster. And all the things you say you want to avoid are going to more likely. They won't be certain to happen, but they will be more likely to happen if we go down the road you want to go. So let's talk. The road I want to go at least gets a chance to have something of an off ramp. Yeah, I would like it off. work, but I maintain that is the best policy for President Trump. So let's talk about, in the remainder of this interview, and by the way, I also want to talk

about this Vietnam analogy because there's so many differences to me, Vietnam, I was hoping you could go through, we may not have time. So let's, but just, you know, I don't think we're going to have 54,000 dead Americans and I don't, I'm not saying we're going to have 58,000 dead Americans. I say this all the time in the, I've been talking about, we didn't, I didn't say, I put it, I put badly. I didn't mean you said there's going to be that. I'm saying that's why I don't see it as a good comparison to Vietnam, but this is my question. So then this is what I think we both agree on based on the odds that you presented is that we're much more likely than not five years from now,

10 years from now, to wake up in a world where Iran and all the Gulf states have nuclear bombs. What do you think about that? How bad is that? I think your term was action reaction dynamics. I think that may be what it was. So here's the thing, Noam. I'm now in the business of focusing on the near-term escalation. I've explained stage one, stage two, and now we're at the cusp of stage three.

And what I'm talking about is what's happening in April and in May. Everybody wants to know, project out a year, professor, pay five years. I refuse to, there are stages four, there are stages five. I'm trying to keep us making the best decision at every stage. But you have to project out. And this is not, no, it's not. How can you not? Look, you have your view.

I have my view. Let me tell you. I've been involved with actually how to help the White House's stop wars before. Let me tell you. Maybe I'm just one voice of many. I'm not saying I have that much influence. but the bottom line is I have a real view about how to try to help America and how to help Israel. And just you saying, well, no, Bob, you have to do it my way.

I'm sorry, no. You can have your view. You have a perfect right to have it. I get to have my view. And I refuse to make these wild predictions. What's going to happen five years from now? What's going to happen a year from now? I'm not playing polymarket.

I'm actually trying to give the practical advice about how to think about things. in the decision will... Bob, let me tell you why I think you have to project out, and you tell me why I'm wrong. The only reason Churchill, to use an example, I know maybe it's an overwrought example, the reason Churchill urged the things that he urged was because he projected out.

In an ultimate cost-benefit analysis, one has to take their best guess of the other side of the ledger. This will cost us $10 billion or $100 billion and 4,000 lives. We don't want to do that. Why don't we want to do that? Because I'm not going to even think about what it might prevent. That's just, you know, that's just predicting.

But I know it'll stop this. That doesn't make sense to me. You have to make that way, that choice against your best estimate of what it will bring you. And if you actually believe, and I think you do, every time it's come up, you've said nothing to disabuse me, that the most likely outcome here is that Iran is going to get a bomb. And that from that, I think we agree, other nations will want to get a bomb. That is, if you believe that's the most likely outcome, then it has to be weighed against what you think the cost is now, as opposed to if you said to me, listen, Norm, I actually don't think there's any risk Iran is going to go nuclear. So then, of course, that would have been the easy case. And what do we spend?

So let me explain, how do you? Let me explain why I have a different view. Yeah, but just in a macro level, how do you, in a macro level, how do you say what the cost is now and not also consider what you think the future is? I make decisions in my business based on what I think is going to happen in the future. Otherwise, why would. From a business perspective, or let me use the NFL, which a lot of your listeners will understand. We can discuss right now who's likely to win the Super Bowl after the next season. We can have all these conversations.

We can talk about whether we should invest in linemen or this. That's not where Bob is right now. That may have been where we were before we bombed Fordow, by the way. We could have had that conversation before we bombed Fordo. When we bombed Fordow, that was the first quarter of the NFL game where it's U.S. versus Iran. Yeah, we've got somebody else in there, Israel, but this is U.S. versus Iran. Okay, and now we're in first quarter. Then we've just gone to the second quarter.

Now we're in halftime. And we're in half time and we're in the, and we're talking about, are we going to go and cross a red line? Are we going to go to this next thing? And we still have a half, maybe longer to play because maybe we'll have overtime. But my, right now, we're playing an NFL game. And we have just discovered we thought we were playing a high school team. No, this is an actual paid NFL team.

So we've got to focus on the enemy in front of us over the next few weeks. All of this distraction, all of this stuff that you want to do, Noam. I'm sorry. We have a real problem right now in the next four weeks. We've got to make some actual decisions as a country. Without any consideration. Your audience needs to be part of this decision. And all of this stuff that you want to do, we should have been here last May talking about it that way.

Yeah, but that ship has sailed. We started the game. We're in an NFL game. It's halftime. The other side, we thought we were playing a high school team. We're now 28 points behind, and we're losing fast, and we've got to decide what are we doing in the second half. That's where we are. How do we do that?

This isn't about playing these hypothetical games. We can come back after the game is over. We can then play this game out. And I'm telling you, the game is. The game is probably going at least to the midterms. You can't. We're probably in this, at least until the midterms as a game in the season before we start to move to others.

And the game may expand. We're not done. This is, I'm telling you, we're at stage three of the escalation trap. There is a stage four. There is also a stage five. We are not done with this, the way you want to describe it. So this whole idea that you're going to be able to map out the next five years, like Winston Churchill.

This is not real. No. We are now facing a crucial issue. You're mapping everything out. You're mapping everything out. You're mapping. You mapped this out years ago. You put you,

you, you just, I mapped it out years ago in stages. Right. But you won't map out. And I refuse to let these folks try to distort what I'm saying. Distract me from what I'm saying.

I'm just not going to do it. Right. Fine. But you map out one side of it. And I'm, saying as a voter as a positive, I said, you know what? I don't really know what to think you're what Bob is saying about that it could escalate. This is stage four. Okay. So let me walk through. No, no. Let me just let me finish the bombing. That's US side. Then they do state, let's call it stage

two, which is they take hormones, still have their nuclear enrichment. We're now looking at stage three ground operations, just the beginning. And now my work on suicide terrorism kicks in stage four. we get indiscriminate attacks maybe in the homeland, maybe at Americans all around the world. That is what is stage four, which we didn't even get to here in this interview. That's what we need to worry about. And if that happens here, this is going to escalate this in a phase here. This is why this could be worse than Vietnam. It's not because of the body count of 58,000 dead Americans.

It's because the potential crashing of the world economy. and because of the mega-terrorism here that could be coming, and it's not just from Iran command directed. We're potentially opening the Hornets Nest here in a much bigger way, even bigger than we had in the Iraq War. And this is really the thing that is the why we need to focus on, do we want to cross the red line and actually start the ground operations? Okay, Bob.

That will be the irreversible point. I got to tell you, and, you know, as people, you said to me, we've hung out, we're friends in a way, and I respect you very much. But to map all this out and, you know, actually refuse to map out the other side of it, which is, okay, once they get a bomb, what happens and what happens then, I, as a guy who makes decisions in my life, I can't understand that because, of course, nothing can be known. Everything is taking your best guess. But as I said, with the Churchill example, everything about whether you think a policy is worth it, even with the risk of escalation. And my goodness, they had escalation in the late 30s and 40s,

is weighed against what you believe is the alternative timeline. And the alternative, if you refuse. If you refuse to have a conversation about the alternative timeline, it's not an analysis. No, the correct analogy here is you're saying that the halftime coach should be telling the team, we can't let the other side win. We can't let the other side win. And I'm telling you that is how coaches lose. Because what that team wants to hear is not, we can't let the other side win is what's the plan?

How are we actually going to do something? What are we really going to do as a team? So, but I'm just asking you what you think. The cheerleaders and the people on TV are saying, don't let the bills win. I'm going to end this interview with you. Our job is to focus on what we can do. And that's what I'm focusing. I'm going to exit this interview with you.

And this is on you. And I have no idea how you see a world with multiple nuclear, bombs in the Middle East. I have no idea what you think, how martyrdom plays into that, how jihad plays into that. I have zero idea.

If you've even given it, you actually claim, I think, you claim, you even claim, and you wear it, let me finish, let me finish, my goodness, you spoke a lot, you seem to wear it as a badge of honor that you will not consider what that will mean, even though you lay out the case that it's probably

what we're going to get, I don't understand that. What can I tell you? If I had, if it was totally, if it was like I was a magician or like a genie, and I could blink and I could prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, I would do it in a heartbeat. They're a horrible regime. They've murdered, you know, whatever it was, we're not quite sure, either somewhere between 10 and 30,000 of their own people. We know it's a large number here. There's no doubt, there's no defense of this here. I'm not, trying to ignore that outcome, Noam. I'm focused on what can really be done to avoid it. It's like if somebody... Insist that Israel... Your business is going bankrupt. Insist that Israel allows inspections.

And you don't have any solution. You just keep obsessing the people around. You're going to know, we're going to wrap it up on. It's a basket case. He's not solving the problem. Let the record show, despite all your protestations at the top, Israel is the key. key to your entire scenario here. So you kind of owe me a little acknowledgement that it wasn't some peripheral issue to your case. It all in the end step by step led to Israel. Israel has to be, we need a law in Congress. Hemming in Israel, that is the key to this escalation trap. That is our best chance at this stage. Yes. So I wasn't all. Not because Israel caused the problem. I get it. Not because of the Israel lobby, but because all of the,

of the mistakes have taken away the much better options. And the problem is we keep getting limited more and more options. It's not about this was a preference. And if there is a better option, Noam, if you've got a better option for how to stop Iran from getting a bomb, one that's actually real, what is it? Let's end with you tell me your war plan. I will tell you. No, I'm going to push you out of this question about how.

No, because, you know, for instance, John Spencer wrote a tweet, a long tweet thread with like 15 different options of the various things that we can do. He was, he's a, you know, teaches, urban warfare. We debated on your, on your show.

I'm telling the listeners, well, let me finish. Trump who came in and Trump Spencer. Let me finish. And he's just so the listener, you know, he's a professor or the head professor or of urban warfare at West Point. So he's not just a guy. He's a military guy. I teach plenty of generals and military guys. Okay, just let me answer your question. So I read what he says and I say, well, you know, to my untrained ear, an untrained mind, many of these things, many of these things seem compelling.

The reason I'm not going to tell you what I think we should do is because I don't friggin know about military strategy. I don't know which of those 15 options are the best. And I'd be stupid to tell you this is what we should do. So I can't tell you that. But my first, that's why my first question is, what's at stake? And once I know what's at stake, then I would like to hear the debates between you and Spencer to get my best feeling of, okay, that's what's at stake. And these are the things that can go wrong. There's no guarantee.

What are we going to risk to try to stop it? And is it worth that risk? And by the way, this is, I think, interesting. And this is interesting. this brings out them between American interest and Israeli interest. Because Israel right now, I'm pretty sure their fallback position is, well, whatever happens, the worst case scenario is we kicked the shit out of all their resources for a while. We bought ourselves a couple years of, of, you know, tranquility of some sort, and we'll take that over the status quo ante no matter what.

America has a different point of view here. America, if, if, if, if you're a, if you're If all America gets out of this is kicking the can down the road for a few years of Israeli tranquility, America, the American people are not going to be satisfied with that. I might be satisfied with that because I see this is such a threat to the world. But I'm a hardliner on Ukraine. I'm a hardliner on Taiwan. I am a really reflexive believer that we – it's very dangerous to hang freedom-loving countries out to dry and let that number in the world diminish.

I think that's a very bad idea. I could be wrong about that. So it's not just Israel. I am concerned in the next two months, not five years, the next two to six months, that some of that enriched uranium will end up in a radiological bomb in Tel Aviv. And I think there are now seven million Jews in Israel

surrounded by 500 million Muslims. I don't believe that's really a worry, Bob. I don't believe that's really a worry. And if that scenario happens, no. or a radiological amount of material on one of the missiles that's coming into Tel Aviv. It doesn't have to be a bomb that's come in through Saboteur. It could be through the, they could put that material on the nose cone of their precision guided drones. They could put it in radiologic.

I don't mean a nuclear bomb. That's fancy. A dirty bomb. That's not fancy. You can put that material on a lot of the nose cones. And I think if you start raining nuclear material on top of Tel Aviv, you're going to see some portion of Tel Aviv wanting to leave. I don't know if they'll leave,

but some portion is not going to want to be radiated by when they know there's 11,000 pounds of this that could be coming at them over the next few years. My goal is to focus on what we can do in the near term to head off some of these actual things in front of us. And this idea that we're going to get into, again, I'm in the middle of the NFL game, we're at halftime. I'm trying to schematic, what can we do,

Where are we at? What are the bad guys really doing? And this is just my, this is my actual real life. This is what I do for the, when I'm really in the middle of it. It's not this grand discussion like we're just sitting at the bar. What's the world's reaction going to be if Iran were to break that taboo and actually use a radiological bomb against anybody? I think there's a good chance they will double down and want to go get Iran, which is how you might be hearing things like more, which is how you might get. things like a return to, I'm not saying it will happen, but a return to conscription in the United States, because we don't have the troops to occupy 92 million. And if we start to really think about

what this is, what the actual real policy is. We don't need to occupy. We just need to go in there and take all that stuff out. That's what everybody thinks until you get in, and then you get mission creep, and that's what we saw in Iraq. Everybody says, you can get mission creep, but we don't, And I'm just pointing out, but we don't need to occupy. This is not the reality of the real world. But you agree. All these promises, just one more blow. We'll knock them out.

The Pentagon right now just went for $200 billion. What's going on there? We're spending a billion a day on the war. A billion a day. What does that tell me? Is Iran... That tells me they're thinking about a 200-day war. Okay, but I'm saying, for instance, you in this petition about Iraq that was signed,

with Mir Shimer, it says, even if Saddam Hussein was saying, acquired nuclear weapons, he could not use them without suffering massive U.S. or Israeli retaliation. This applies— Yeah, and I agree with that. Yeah, but you don't agree with it for Iran. No, no, no, no, no. They couldn't use them. No, Iran wouldn't use them without suffering massive retaliation.

So why would they do it? Iran. No, no, no, no, come on, but when you say that, you are—what you're meaning here was, so they won't. You don't just mean— What I'm saying is, the word is, is there is some degree of deterrence. that's meaningful, no. This is not, there's no world of 100% perfect security.

The search for 100% perfect security is usually what leads strong states into disasters. And that's what you're seeing here. So it's what I'm saying is I'm not giving you 100% flat statements. These are probability statements. I'm doing risk assessment, not simply, again, shoot from the hip ideas. and that is the difference between a true, what I do in this is what you would expect. I'm giving you risk assessment, not point predictions, shooting from the hip on polymarket five months, five years from now.

All right, Bob. You're a good guy. You knew that you were walking into a bus saw and you could have. And I wanted to because your audience, you reflect so many, I think hundreds of thousands of people, no, not even just, you know, a few. and it's really important. I come into discussing with you, not at all thinking you're going to agree with me.

And this is what I do. It's not just because I'm a professor at the University of Chicago. You think when I'm debating in those classified worlds, those generals on Easter, about they want to do X, Y, and Z, and I'm saying no.

You think they're nice guys and gals? I'll tell you, you're a softie compared to the real world of what happens in Washington. And there's no ad hominem either. They don't do the ad hominem. I'm just telling you, that's the difference. Because the ad hominem is a loser

when you're actually in these rooms. The real, I'm just telling you, this is the really serious decisions we have in front of us, and your audience deserves this kind of discussion. And I'm just honored. It's actually an honor, no. All right, Bob.

I appreciate it very much. When you come to town, hopefully we'll have dinner again. Yeah, and we'll actually have a drink and maybe we'll even smile a bit. And by the way, that used to be in Washington in the old days, where you could actually have knock down, drag out substance and not actually have to think you couldn't possibly stand the other person. Because the truth is, we don't really know who we need to work with down the road,

and we need to keep our options open. We need to understand. We are all in this world together. and we're not going to be helping. My book coming, I've got a book coming out, our own worst enemies. We've got to stop being our own worst enemies. My goodness gracious.

That is one of the things that's undermining America. And I really, back to my grandfather. I have faith in America as long as we talk to each other. Well, they have a very good dinner buffet at Flash Dancers. Okay. You sell me. You know New York. I'm a professor still.

I will follow your name. It's a strip club, Bobb. As long as my wife will not shoot me. Oh, she'll shoot you. Well, then we better think about it again. But on the credit card, it won't say flashdances. All right, anyway, Bob. Well, but I'm honest.

I'll tell her. I'll cry. Okay, Professor Robert Pape, the escalation trap is very... Yeah, that's it. And thanks for all this, Noam. And really, I wish everybody the best. And I just really enjoyed this discussion here. And so,

we better go. We've all got, we're all doing things. I'm going to go run off and teach class. You must have papers to grade or something. Wonderful talking to you. Go ahead, bye, bye, take it easy. Bye-bye.