The Daily Signal - Winning the Narrative War? Clarify America’s Goals on Iran, Air Power, and No Ground War | Victor Davis Hanson

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Within the first 30 days of the conflict in Iran, the United States and Israel have achieved military successes not previously seen in modern warfare: a country, with the population of Texas, has had its entire navy and air force decimated within a month. Battlefield wins mean nothing if you can’t sell the war back home. Here’s how President Donald Trump can make the political reality equal to the military reality, which is a near success. 00:00 30-Day Air Supremacy 02:32 Iran Under Pressure 03:47 Cutting Off Resupply 04:31 Counting the True Cost 06:04 Messaging the War 08:23 Regime Change and No Ground War 👉 The Daily Signal cannot continue to tell stories, like this one, without the support of our viewers: http://dailysignal.com/donate 👉Don’t miss out on Victor’s latest short videos by subscribing to The Daily Signal today. You’ll be notified every time a new piece of content drops: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠  Also on Spotify: https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9753340027  👉Want more VDH? Watch Victor’s weekly, hour-long podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” now! Subscribe to his YouTube channel, and enable notifications:  https://www.youtube.com/@victordavishanson7273?sub_confirmation=1👉More exclusive content is available on Victor’s website: https://victorhanson.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. We've talked about the opposition to the war.

We've talked about the divergence between the political reality and the military reality. and we've talked about why this hysteria is so sharp, so excessive. I'd like just to go back, though, and talk a little bit about the military reality. I've never seen, and I don't think any of us have ever seen, a 30-day campaign like that. They have no Air Force. They have no Navy. Can they resupply? Can they bring in missiles?

Can they bring in drones? Well, they can't do it through the Strait of our moves. We've destroyed all their transport aircraft. They can't go to a third-party country, pick up Russian drones and fly them back. We've controlled the airspace. We have done amazing work to attract their drones and their ballistic missiles and their nuclear facility. But in 30 days, it's almost impossible to guarantee that we can find and destroy all of the dispersed assets that are being used to attack our allies in the Gulf in Israel. However, we are making enormous progress.

I think at some point, the military's needs to get a better narrative about regime change. Hello, this is Victor Davis-Hans. for the Daily Signal. This week we are discussing various elements of the current American and Israel joint effort to denuclearize or make the Iranian military inert. We've talked about the opposition to the war. We've talked about the divergence between the political reality and the military reality, and we've talked about why this hysteria is so sharp, so excessive, so, I don't know, beyond imagination. I'd like just to go back, though, and talk a little bit about the military reality. I've never seen, and I don't think we, any of us have ever seen a 30-day campaign

against a country the size, almost double the size of Texas with 93 million people, where they have destroyed all of their air defense system. The United States and Israel enjoy complete air supremacy. What does that mean? That means that tactical aircraft like Apache helicopters and warthogs that are vulnerable to air defenses are not vulnerable because there is no air defenses. So they're roaming the skies and the coastline of a random will. That's very unusual. We've never quite seen that in a war. More importantly, the population we are starting to hear is starting to make sounds that they may want to go out in the street again. And why do I say that? Because when you have tactical aircraft, you can spot and target individual government efforts at checkpoints, intersections to hurt the people, and you can attack them. And now there's stories that the Speaker of the House and the Prime Minister is at odds with each other and the theocratic control.

We're starting to hear that 12-year-olds, that's reminiscent of the Iraq-Aran, that started 1980 or being used on the premise that the United States and Israel, unlike the Iranians themselves, would not kill children. And by the way, we're looking at almost exclusively military targets, while they're using cluster bombs aimed at civilian targets. But they assume that we wouldn't go to their level. And they're probably right about that. We're not. But it shows you that they're very worried about the control of the population. They have no Air Force. They have no Navy, and I'll get to that in a minute. They have a dissident population, as I said.

Can they resupply? Can they bring in missiles? Can they bring in drones? Well, they can't buy a traditional sea. They can't do it through the Strait of Hormuz. We've destroyed all their transport aircraft. They can't go to a third-party country, pick up Russian drones, and fly them back. We've controlled the airspace.

The Russians or Chinese don't dare to try to go in and land at the Tehran Airport. the only thing that we're hearing is that across the Russian border that borders the Caspian Sea they're sending by Caspian Sea transport probably nocturnally weapons to northern Iran. That may be true, but we can stop that as we did the narco supplies to the United States if we want to, and I think we will do that. Then there's a question of how much did all this cost the Chinese and the Russians don't come cheap. So how much did all these aircraft cost? How much did all of these hundreds of missile

launchers, 3,000, 4,000 missiles, maybe 5,000 or 10,000 drones, all that tunnel complexity, all of these nuclear proliferation sites, all of these ballistic missile factories, all of this naval aircraft and naval assets? Maybe, I don't know, a trillion dollars. over 20 years. It's all up in smoke. That's going to be hard to explain, as is, how do you explain to the people that you spent precious dollars when they're starving, not just on terrorists, but Arab-speaking terrorists? There's not Persians in Hezbollah. There's not Persians in Hamas. There's not Persians in the Houthis. You've made this argument that you're at war with Sunni Arabs, and yet you're giving Arabs money out of your pocket, and the civilian population will not like

that when it's added to the vast cost of resupplying this arsenal, which if this regime survives, as sure as the sun gups comes up every morning, it will start using what foreign reserves is left to buy not food or not oil or gasoline or consumer goods that will be buying weapons to replace the things that we've destroyed. So there are, the military side, as I said, is going very well. The political is not so well for the reasons I have listed in other videos. But I'd like to end then with other suggestions. And there are public relations suggestions that I think would aid our cause.

We are a data-consumed society. We like to specify things with exact numbers and percentages. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't think it's wise to say that an X percentage of missiles have been destroyed or are not being launched in comparison to prior days, only because we don't know the original figure. 93% of the missiles or 81% of the drones are falling off, but we don't know how many are left. We don't know if the fall off is in part because of a strategy of a continued war.

We don't know how deadly they are. We didn't think when the war started they would have missiles with cluster bombs. We knew they existed, but we didn't know. know the damage they would do. They obviously have decentralized enclaves in tunnels that are protected that we don't know fully about. Why not just say Iran is a huge country. It is much more militarily formidable than Afghanistan, Iraq, or other countries in the Middle East. We have done amazing work to attract their drones and their ballistic missiles and their nuclear facilities. But in 30 days, it's almost impossible to guarantee that we can find and destroy all of the dispersed assets that are being used to attack our allies on the Gulf and Israel.

However, we are making enormous progress, and we will do that, but there's going to be occasional episodic, sporadic launches against civilian targets that we have to be prepared for. We should say as well that we have destroyed as we have, all of their major naval assets. However, like the cartels, they have high-speed, what we would call P.T. boats in World War II, and they can be very dangerous. They can drop mines or they can launch rockets, and these are a worry. And they're very hard to find. They're very small. They're very fast. They work at night. But we're working on that. rather than just to say we destroyed 90% of their Navy when there might be 100 of these boats still there. I think at some point the militaries needs to get a better narrative about regime change. Again, we emphasize, as we've said earlier, that was not the original aim of this operation, was to go in and try to destroy a regime or replace it. We learned that from Afghanistan and Iraq.

It requires a long occupation or a... it requires so-called boots on the ground. But there's certain things about this particular situation that may allow for regime change as a collateral dividend. One of them is Israel may want to continue with its own operations because it's more vulnerable and it's nearer to Iran than we are. Number two, in Afghanistan and Iraq, there was not a sizable dissident pro-American population as there is a in Iran. And so the damage that we're doing to that government may ripple out for weeks at an end, and we may see regime change. And a month after we're through, we could see it in two weeks, we could see it in a year. And all of that would be because of the decision we made to attack

this odious regime. We need to explain Israel, as I said earlier. Israel does not control the United States. Nobody controls Donald Trump. The left has said that again and again. He's reckless. I think the Europeans have called him a bull in a nuclear China shop. You can't talk to them. You can't convince him. The idea that Benjamin Netanyahu would be pulling the strings, that's not happening. In fact, if you would read Israeli publications, read the Jerusalem Post, read the Israeli Times, almost daily the narrative is that Donald Trump has an agenda different than Israel. And we have to be very careful as Israelis to follow exclusively and complains. And completely the American lead because they want to be independent and autonomous as we should

expect. But the people in Israel do not believe that they're running the Donald Trump show. So we need to explain that very carefully. And finally, we don't want a ground war. Ground war, as I said, an earlier video is synonymous with a misadventure in the Middle East, as we remember from Afghanistan, Iraq, the first Gulf War, perhaps. But we can say that if we decide that Karg Island or the corridor north of the strater of our moons are doable

with an incursion or maybe you could have a sanitary corridor. We would not invade Iran. We would not occupy it, but we might want a one-off strike. We don't even have to get that explicit. We can just say we have the options for a ground war.

We don't expect it. But that alternative is there should it expedite our original objectives. And I think if we were just a little bit more careful about the messaging, it would better reflect the military reality, which is unusually good and almost amazingly successful. Thank you very much.

This is Victor Davis-Hanson for the Daily Signal. Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhansson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.