The Duran Podcast - Iran, Hormuz & the War America Wasn't Ready to Fight w/ Jim Webb

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Iran, Hormuz & the War America Wasn't Ready to Fight w/ Jim Webb

All right, Alexander, we are here with the excellent Jim Webb. Mr. Webb, Jim, thank you for joining us on the Duran again. And before we get started, talking about the situation in Iran, how can people follow your work? Where can people follow your work? Best place to find me is on Twitter. Actually, well, X formerly known as Twitter. It's James Webb underscore 16. And that's where I post most of what I do.

So give me a follow and kind of go from there. Appreciate it. Definitely worth following Jim Webb and his excellent analysis, which can be found on X, formerly known as Twitter. I will have that link in the description box down below and I will also add it as a pinned comment as well. Alexander, Jim, let's discuss the situation in Iran. Absolutely.

And can I just say not just excellent analysis, outstanding analysis. and it's one I go to continuously, and it helps me to form my own ideas about the war and about where it's going and what the future developments might be. And that is why I feel we're particularly privileged to have Jim with us to discuss these things with. So, Jim, you've been in the military, you've worked with a lot of the people who, well, the kind of units, the military that is involved, in this conflict up to now. For me, as a civilian, it all looks very chaotic, and as if nothing is making a great deal of sense. The president comes up with all sorts of ideas and things.

He says things are going really well. Victory's already been achieved. Our objectives are being achieved faster than our timetable. Of course, he gives varying ideas of what his timetable exactly is. It doesn't look like that at all to me. What are your thoughts about this? I mean, is this being conducted in the way that the president says, everything going entirely according to plan and ahead of schedule?

Or is the view that I generally have, that it's all very chaotic, that it wasn't thought through properly, that there wasn't any clear idea of what the enemy was. about or of how the enemy would respond? Is that more accurate? And where, in fact, are we at this point in this world? So I think that the first thing to go back to, Alex, is that your point that this does not appear to be very well thought out, I think is right on the money. This is appears that we've gone off half-cocked. And a great way to contrast this is take a look at different kinds of operations that we've run in the past.

I'll go back to Desert Storm and to Operation Iraqi Freedom as examples. And we had a massive buildup in the region before we went to war in both cases. And the important thing to accent with those two operations is they're pretty consistent with the way America goes to war. You cover all contingencies that could possibly bubble up as you're conducting these operations. So you have the flexibility to react to different things that go on. And what it looks like with this operation, I know what it looks like, really, is what has gone on is that we have just now plused up the number of troops in theater to 50,000. Before this, it was 40,000. And that did not have a ground combat element.

The number of aircraft that were put in theater to conduct these operations from day one or way less than any other operation we've done in the past. And that's not to say that I agree with anything that's going on. I'm firmly against this was a terrible idea. It's an unnecessary war that is a war of choice once again. But if you're going to pull the trigger, you can't just assume that you're going to walk in and win because you have the most well-equipped or best trained military in the world. You have to put all the assets in place to cover things like, say, the Straits of Hormuz being closed. To me, this is indicative of an operation that we're not prepared for because it was one that we probably, didn't want to do. And if you take a look at the statements from the Secretary of State,

from the Speaker of the House, very early on saying that justification for us going to war was because the Israelis were going to go to war and the Iranians would then respond and drag us in. And that is indicative of something that's very much not in the American strategic interest. And if you if we want to boil this down to one specific contingency, which is plaguing the entire world right now, that's the closure of these Straits of Hormuz. This was the most obvious thing that the Iranian regime would do if they were threatened with some kind of existential crisis. You know, not just obvious in the sense that any analyst or the media could take a look at it. From inside government, it was very obvious. I participated in track two negotiations six, seven years ago with Iran around the assassination

of Soleimani. And we talked about different contingencies to this spiral out of control because there was a lot of thought about this back then. And the most dangerous course of action, which was relayed to us at the time was, yeah, we'll close the Strait of Hormuz if this goes too far. So, you know, that's not a secret. So where we are today is not in a good situation. I look at this in terms of the initiative on the battlefield.

It's one thing you always want to keep, right? And by initiative, it means you're causing the enemy to react to your actions. You're dictating the tempo of operations. You're picking and choosing how you go about things. And we clearly don't have it. And we've created this problem with Hormuz. And any kind of operation that would go in there would be one that is incredibly predictable. It's probably been war-game.

I wouldn't say probably war-game. out by the Iranians. It's definitely been war-gamed out by the Iranians. And, you know, it's reactive in nature to fix a small problem that we caused rather than addressing a larger strategic question. You bring up the operation against Saddam Hussein and Iraq in 1991. And I remember, I remember that very well. I remember the months of preparation time. I think you mentioned 50,000 troops that the United States has in the area now, the operation against Saddam Hussein from memory has something like 800,000 troops brought into the area, the enormous care to build up the logistics in advance, the careful intelligence, the very careful and consistent diplomacy that took place. It seems

It's extraordinary, given that I would have thought that on any estimate, Iran would be a much more dangerous, a far more powerful adversary than Saddam Hussein. I mean, it's a much bigger country. It's got a much bigger territory. It's got a much bigger industrial base. It has bought by the standards of the region are extensive and, well, fairly well-trained, armed forces. And as compared to Saddam Hussein, Iran is not isolated. It has allies. And Saddam Hussein was isolated. He had no friends at all. The Russians turned their back in him.

The Chinese weren't able to help him. they didn't particularly want through anyway. Whereas Iran has many friends. It's got powerful friends. I would have thought that an operation to attack Iran would require far more preparation than an attack on Saddam Hussein's Iraq would do. And yet nobody seems to have talked about this. That doesn't seem to have been any red flags raised.

and as you say, the Strait of Hormuz, the closure of it, was something that the Iranians had publicly talked about. I mean, they talked about that to people like yourself who they were negotiating with, but they were saying it publicly as well. So again, I find this very difficult to understand how something like this could have happened. Ultimately, Alex, I'm in the same. vote with that. It's really disheartening to see my peers and the U.S. military in general committed to something, which they were clearly not fully prepared to do. And that pivots back to, you know,

this was the behest of another nation. Another nation, I mean, and that's Israel. And I should be shy about that. I've said it a number of times. But it's in their interest to cause chaos in Iran by whatever means necessary. And if you look at the way they've conducted warfare in the region, they don't care if they blow apart of society and it crumbles around, you know, it crumbles around whatever regime is there. As long as they remove what they consider to be their adversaries as coherent states, from a U.S. military standpoint, you're absolutely correct about the way we built up in the Gulf War. And when we did the second iteration of that in 2003, we had the benefit of about more than a decade of a no-fly zone, where if anything moved within that box, it was killed.

then we had a massive buildup of almost 300,000 troops and conducted a pretty well-targeted air campaign within Iraq to take apart the regime and to take apart their military at the same time. One thing that's, I think, very important to keep in context here is the way that the Iranians fight. They took notes both in person and from being next door on the Iraq war itself. and they understand the folly, if you will, in confronting the U.S. military head on in a conventional fight. And even their missile campaign has been asymmetrical in nature, if you think about it. I couldn't help but think back to my own experience in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 as an infantryman where the primary motive of the insurgent forces or the asymmetrical forces we were up against

was to split us away from the population. Therefore, anybody who was associated with us at that ground level, and myself as a junior enlisted guy at the time, they were punished for it. And if you look at the way the Iranians are conducting themselves now, it's the same kind of thing, right? Where any country that hosts U.S. bases has, shall we say, dual purpose, industrial facilities, dual purpose, airports, ports, they're being targeted and split away in a way that we can't really defend.

And the biggest red flag to me about this, you know, in terms of being pushed the war, is I am 100% confident that our own internal intelligence agencies, Joe Kent, has spoken to this, understood how the Iranians were going to fight and what would be their most dangerous course of action at the tactical or operational level. and that is drones and missiles. If you compare that to American forces, we no longer have a very strong air defense component. There is a lot of Ballyhoo about the capabilities of Patriot missiles and dads.

And those are good and limited numbers, but they're not designed necessarily for immediate air defense. And during the global war on terrorism, we did not have to face that kind of threat, along with any kind of real air force. The Afghans didn't have an air force. The Iraqis had a minimal one, which was eliminated on the ground in day one, if not during that bombing period. So we stripped out, excuse me, so sorry, so we stripped out a lot of our components, even whole units of air defense artillery. And it's not until the last couple of years where we've taken a look at how to recompose

all of that. And they're not deployed yet. We do not have layered air defenses. Therefore, a commander on the ground or commander in the Pentagon, and I believe some of them has spoken out kind of through back channels in the media prior to us kicking off, would understand that the most capable part of the Iranian military or the IRGC would be their missile attack program, their drones. And our weakest link would be defending against that. Therefore, that's not a good match because we would end up fighting and we are, have ended up fighting their kind of conflict. Now, if this had been truly, truly thought out and we truly, truly wanted to go do this, I think a couple of things would have happened.

We would have slowed this down. We would have put an extra 20, 30, 100, 200,000 guys on the ground who I'm not sure we have, you know, with the ability to deploy there in the first place. But then a case would have been made to the American public about this war. You know, it's, you go back to the Iraq War. once again, a war of choice, one that was not popular, but at least the administration use a time period to convince large segments of the American population to get an authorization from Congress for a war.

And they use that time period of making the case to put the necessary troops in place to take care of the job that needed to be done. None of this was done here. When this kicked off, I think President Trump described as an excursion, it would be a couple of days. Then it was a couple of hours. It was a couple of weeks. Now it's a couple of months.

And we have JD Vance out there saying, well, we don't want to be there more than a couple of years. And I'm not sure that we can sustain this kind of conflict for that period of time. I just wanted to quickly say that I mean, I've been reading what you've been writing. You obviously are not. in support of this kind of war of choice, neither a way, just to make that absolutely clear, but the points that we are debating now and discussing are nonetheless important, because they are going to have to shape how going forward we are going to respond to this thing.

Is there anything the United States can do quickly, I don't mean a year's time, but quickly that can turn the situation around? I've seen many people debate attacks on the islands. Again, I don't understand why there is this assumption that capturing these islands is going to make any difference ultimately to the strategic picture. I would point out, this is my own knowledge, that what I do know, Iran fought a long war with Iraq in the 1980s. Iraq did capture Iranian territory, substantial Iranian-Iranian. territory, but that didn't cause Iran to give up. They didn't capitulate because Iraq captured some territories. So why it's assumed that the capture of a few islands is going to make a difference

will force them to change their approach. I just don't see that. But is there something I am missing here? And what about this idea of special forces operations across this enormous country? twice the size of Ukraine, mountainous in many places, with large armed forces. Again, that seems to me fraught with risk. Is there anything the United States can do that you can see, obviously because we only know what we know, but is there anything they could do that you could see as somebody with a military, an experience within the US military, that can change this situation round fast within the next few weeks, not months, not years, but weeks.

Militarily, Alex, no, no, flat out. I'd love to talk about the military part of it here in a second, but go back to my experience in the U.S. Senate on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the only answer to what's going on right now is diplomacy. We have to go to the bargaining table. We have to conduct real diplomacy, which is in contrast the way the United States is, it's conducted itself over the last couple of decades and actually negotiate and give some concessions because there is no military solution to this by taking out the Ayatollah right out of the gate,

which is in stark contrast to norms going back to the Treaty of Westphalia, we have emboldened their entire society to want to fight us, regardless of where they were on the front end of this. There's all kinds of propaganda about how many people they killed. all that's irrelevant because no matter how much a country dislikes its leadership, when somebody comes in and vaporizes the head of state, it's seen as a direct attack on their society and it galvanizes support behind the regime, whether they're good or not, whether they like them or not. And that was a horrible, horrible mistake that we made on day one. And once again, very much out of context as to how the United States fights wars. If I had my druthers about how this could be fixed, you know, in a very short period of time,

I would take a look at U.S. basing across the region because the number one thing that I believe the Iranians want is to prevent this from happening again. And the linchpin in that is the location of our capabilities close to them. The bases in Kuwait, Iraq, you know, kind of across the board. And by all accounts, they have been hit very, very, very hard. consistently by Iran. And I believe it was the New York Times who published a piece that said they're in effect uninhabitable. You tie that into President Trump's campaign promise in 2016 in why so many people in my peer group voted for him. And it was to end stupid wars. And he was

not going to take us into World War III. He was not going to start another war. And this was his last campaign. You know, this is what separated him from Kamala Harris. And he still has an opportunity to salvage, I would say, what remains of his base by doing exactly that. Give the Iranians the chief piece what they want right now. And I would say that was there's probably a little bit more they want right now, considering the number of officials were killing and the schools were bombing and how this is spiraling very much out of control. But the offer to remove us from the region would allow Iran to tell its own people that

they drove us out. And their sacrifice was worth it. But at the same time, he could go back to his base and say, hey, I promised you 10 years ago, I was going to do this. And I did it. And he could sell it the way he sells everything, you know, with epic bombast and just say, they're no longer a threat. Now we're bringing these guys home. You're welcome. It's done.

Unfortunately, on the on the, on the, I guess on the negotiation side, that's probably a little, not quite enough, I would say right now. But it's a great starting point. To drill down into the seizure of these islands, this will not end the war. A grandiose special operations raid that goes in and seizes the powder at some point, should it succeed. I think they've been talking about this. There's about one ton of, calling it nuclear dust, whatever that means. The optics of that could allow Trump, once again, to declare victory, should it succeed, by the way. and pull away out of the region.

But the seizures of the islands, there is nothing that's going to do other than put a bunch of U.S. troops out in the open in static positions and make them a giant sponge for indirect fire, no matter where they are. I'll start with Kark, for example. I think the plan to seize Kark or the idea that we're going to seize Kark is of the utmost folly out of any of the positions in that region. because you have the assumption that the Iranians are not going to destroy their own infrastructure on the island in order to drive us off. Now, people can sell that kind of as a logical conclusion. However, at the same time, this is an existential fight. We've made this an existential fight for Iran. And infrastructure can be rebuilt.

It takes time, but it can be rebuilt. But if they lose their country, they can't get that back. So I have no doubt that they would do whatever it takes to inflict casualties on our troops should they land there. The other island in question, which I think is of probably more importance for the whole strategic picture in the region is catch them. But that is 600 square miles. And we have two battalions of Marines off the coast. That's for your listeners out there. That amounts to about 1,600 infantrymen to cover 600 square miles.

and it's not a, it is not a very, very lethal force for that kind of area. I, I operated in a city that was our area of A-O and Iraq, which was Ramadi, was, I believe it was about two to five square miles. And we had a battalion on the ground. We had a reinforced battalion of more than a thousand individuals, but also brought in any number of army units just to help us keep the balance with an insurgent force in the city, as opposed to, you know, what would be the IRGC and a much, much more capable, you know, opponent.

Why does the United States not do diplomacy anymore? I used to remember the United States do diplomacy really very well, actually. People forget this, but I remember not just Kissinger, but others, Cyrus Vance, others as well. They used to know how to do this. And by the way, I think that there is a possible route through out of this war, through diplomacy. And this is something we can discuss because, of course, you've been in the Senate, you've worked with other US politicians. You've looked at diplomacy as well.

Diplomacy is absolutely, I think, possible in this conflict. The Chinese government, through its media, has this. morning said that the priority should be to establish a cessation of hostilities as soon as possible. China has an interest in ending the war. They said, for example, that they're worried that the situation is spiraling out of control and that this would be incredibly dangerous if it spiraled further out of control. China has leverage over Iran. It is Iran's strategic partner. Russia also has an interest in containing the war. They do not want it to get completely out of control either. Once upon a time, I can remember that the United States would have seen

all of this, watched all of this, read what all of these people in Beijing, in Moscow, in other capitals in Islamabad now, were saying, and it would seize the opportunity, and there would have been the chief American diplomat appointed somebody very senior and he'd have gone to all of these capitals and he'd have spoken to all of these people and a international consensus would have developed and it would have been one that the Iranians would have been obliged to listen to. Why does that not happen? That's a million-dollar question, Alex. It's very, very unfortunate.

You know, I go back to thinking back in the 80s when I was a very small child. In contrast, the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union exported a revolution at the barrel of a gun. It was Trotskyism. And, you know, we did our fair amount of counterbalancing. We have our own warts from that period. But generally speaking, the approach was, you know, you could have revolution foisted upon you in a top-down system. Or, you know, you can work with us and we'll make you rich. Unfortunately, I take a look at the global stage today and we have in effect become the new Soviet Union as opposed to we export revolution.

And unfortunately, China has stepped into the void saying, work with us and we will make you rich. It would behoove us to get back to that model. And I think what really poisoned this was the global war on terrorism and the rise of neocons within the conservative and liberal neoliberal ranks of, of, of, both parties. It's a bunch of people who did not cut their teeth on any kind of battlefield. If you look at the people who populated different administrations from the 60s, the 70s and the 80s, these were, these are people who, if they did not serve in World War II, they at least understood the toll of what a large conflict was and were motivated to have diplomatic solutions to problems before they got to a point where you had to commit large amounts, large amounts of your

youth into that. You flash forward to the people who brought us the Iraq War in 2003, followed by Yemen, Somalia, I mean, the whole round around North Africa, Ukraine, and they have become fixated on this notion that we can force change one way or the other. Even our diplomacy is coercive. It is now sanctions-based. We will cut you off economically. We have weaponized the dollar, which is very much, as you all know, making the rest of the world consider dropping it. That would be an unbelievable catastrophe for the United States economy. But we've had a very capable military for a very long time.

Going back to the 90s, we were the superpower. So it was an easy button to push. And if you never really see the ramifications of what happens on the back end of that, or by comparison to other conflicts such as Vietnam, Korea, World War II, your casually counts are pretty low, you are inclined to do that over and over and over again. And it's become, I can say from my experience in D.C., it is a very popular notion to discuss in the salons and the brunch tables, you know, that it's not a big deal if we dump our guys in there to take out a regime, you know, what is a few dozen casualties, you know, but those people no

longer have a connection to the military. they don't have any friends who serve. They really don't have family who serve. They don't understand the cost. And it becomes a very cold and kind of, I mean, borderline evil type of way to go about business. I'm with you on this. I really wish that we would get back to, you know, being a prime negotiator in which we resolve situations rather than trying to dictate an endpoint in somebody else's country. Well, can I say on the last point, I am a complete civilian.

I've never been in the military at all. But I think that there is a fundamental breach of trust between civilians and the military if these civilians are using the military in such a completely frivolous way. The point about the military is that these are people who have enlisted to serve there are massive implications involved in that service. And the civilians, the civilian leadership, quite apart from all of the other considerations, the humanitarian considerations about the damage done to the other society, the concern about your own geopolitical position, all of those things.

They need to remember always that there is this, this, this, this bond of trust between the civilians and the military, which must never be betrayed or broken. Once I felt we all knew that, where has that gone? It's totally gone, Alex. And I'm going to walk around the horn on this a little bit because it is both societal, and then it's governmental at the same time. So our military here is 100% volunteer. And what you have in effect is a generational type of military.

I am a third generation Marine, but I can trace my military roots back all the way to the French and Indian War here in America. It goes back to the militia system. It actually comes out of the Kirk of Scotland in my family, where you step up and you serve when it's your time. And then you go back to doing, you know, go back to your life, in effect. But what makes that work and what I think is breaking down is that the decision to go to war lies with Congress. It's very clear in the Constitution. And so there is a trust that if you're going to be used in a conflict, that you're going to be killed, maimed, have your life altered forever.

It will be done in the best interests of the United States because your representatives will have a say in how you do this. And there are little caravouts here and there. There's the War Powers Act. There's Article 2, you know, which which allows the president to respond to an imminent attack. But under war powers, you know, you have to respond to, you know, it's to respond to imminent hostilities. You can commit troops if you're about to be attacked. But there has to be a justification. And the president is required by law to be in quote unquote, close.

contact with the Congress. So he has to go back and forth as not only is this is building up, but as this is going on and there has to be a justification and the case has to be made to the people, we did not see this here. We did not see this in Venezuela. There was a tiny bit of it with Operation Midnight Hammer, but it's my perception that both Midnight Hammer and the Operation and snatch Maduro were conditioning exercises on the American public. It's like, oh, okay, we did this. And it went okay. Therefore, the next time it's also going to be okay.

But when you have a group of people who continuously serve, right, you run the risk of making a caste system out of that group of folks who continuously do the dirty work for you, if you will. And as you've seen the bifurcation of society with the ultra wealthy at the top and and everybody else in the middle to the bottom. You have a group of hyper-elite who increasingly control politics and dictate policy, followed by the rest of us who go out and do their work for them. And in many cases are involved in massive mistakes.

And people are starting to see that. And it is very, very unhealthy for society. I would implore Congress to step up and do their constitutional duty and have some sort of way. I mean, they have a sort of way. They have a recourse here for this particular issue to execute that recourse. And not only to restore trust between the military and society itself, but to rebalance the three branches of government because the executive right now holds all the cards, and that was never intended when this country was founded. Absolutely. Let's talk about Israel. I mean, what you said was that the Israelis,

from their point of view, if there's a complete breakdown of the situation in Iran and chaos, in the Middle East, well, that's not, that's a plus for them. I mean, from their security perspective, it is a plus for them. So they have a different perspective and a different approach to the war than the United States does. But this is the key part. It cannot be in Israel's interest for a war to end in a debacle for the United States. That's not going to put them in a stronger position. That's going to put them in a weaker position. And, I was reading just this morning in a magazine, which I see coming up from time to time called Military Watch magazine, you probably know better than me, that because Israeli air defense

systems have become depleted, currently 80% of Iranian missiles are able to reach their targets. And this is based on a report in an Israeli newspaper. Well, that doesn't look to me like this is turning out into any kind of success for Israel either. So why is this problem, this difficulty in telling the Israelis, no, we are not going to do this thing. This doesn't make any sense for us. The amount of resources that would be required are completely disproportionate and the risks are too high. The risks are too high for us and they are too high for you. It's a great question. It's a very great question, Alex. I wonder it pretty much every single day when I wake up. How come there is nobody up there saying exactly what you just said? No, you are the junior partner. You work for us. You are our client state. If we decide to stop funding you and providing you weaponry, you're pretty much as well. You're on your own.

and they rely completely on us for their protection and for their existence. So that would be a, so telling them as such would be prudent and the first step in gaining control back of the situation. Outside of that, I think you're totally correct about the notion that they don't want this to end in strategic failure for the United States.

However, they need us to stay in as long as they possibly can. And it's very apparent that every single time we make some sort of offering or have some sort of communication with the Iranians about an off ramp. That off ramp is eliminated. Started on day one with the elimination of the Ayatollah. We already talked about that a little bit. But more recently, J.D. Vance was supposed to negotiate with Iranians and the individual he was supposed to negotiate with ended up dead. And it's on and on and on to include the targeting of civilian infrastructure, schools, things that would prevent a regime

from being able to negotiate, I'm talking about the Iranians, from being able to negotiate with an aggressor because of the fury of the people about the target sets that are being hit. That's, outside of that, I really don't know how you crack that nut other than facing it head on and why that hasn't been done so far is, is anybody's guess other than the fact that, you know, it's kind of crazy to talk about this at this point in time. but there must be something out there that is preventing our heads of state from taking a stand, something compromising. And it's very curious that this all kicked off right as the Epstein files were becoming more and more prominent in implicating more and more people. And I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but there's probably a lot to do that. Anyway, the coincidences are interesting. Let's return to the diplomacy, because you outlined a situation in which you pointed out that there is a certain commonality of interest between what the Iranians want and what ultimately the MAGA movement, people like that. Many, many, more people going well beyond that movement might also want that the United States has been talking for it.

Well, at least as far back as Obama's time about the importance of pivoting away from the Middle East, pivoting away from Europe. So we have all of these bases that the United States has established close to Iran, which Iran is afraid of. As it's turned out, those bases, to me at least today, look like a military liability from the United States. it's the point of you not an asset. It's the United States that can't defend them, or so it seems to me, as opposed to being able to use them to threaten Iran. But the Iranians want them gone. Many people in the United States want to withdraw them as well. I think there is the other thing, which is that the United States does not want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. The Iranians have said, we don't want to acquire nuclear weapons. At least the Ayatollah published a fatwa saying this,

this does not look to me like an intractable conflict, one where negotiations are impossible. Each side wants things from the other, which the other wants to do. The United States want a nuclear-free Iran. Iran doesn't want American bases close to its territory. There is still a deal to be done, or so it seems to me. I know that I accept people in Iran are very angry. And of course, the Ayatollah was also a religious leader. And as my friend Alex has pointed out many times, he was killed during Ramadan, which makes the situation even worse.

But still, if you put all that aside and look at the strategy, the actual interests, there were ways to find a solution to this. Why is this not talked about and discussed more in the United States? Because I think negotiations actually could succeed. Perhaps I'm the only person to think that, but that's my own thought. Right. I'm right there with you, Alex. So once again, to start off, like war fever has taken over here in the United States.

And to suggest that there is a way to negotiate with the Iranians these days is akin to having, you know, shall we say defeatism in your blood from another conflict. You're a defeatist, you're a traitor. Just look at the way they treated Joe Kent when he came out and said what he said. And this is guy on the inside, very, very, very much on the inside. There's also confusion about who the Iranians actually are. It's one of those things that stood out to me. The tragedy of bombing the girl's school on day one was something that I think should have been spoken about a lot louder for any number of reasons.

one because it was a horrific event, but two, how many girls schools were in Afghanistan when we invaded in 2001? None. These are not the same people. They're not. There is such a cultural fog about who Iran is, who the Persians are, and people have been manipulated by the media here into believing something that is not true about them, that they are, I don't particularly care for the Ayatollah's regime.

but, you know, they are not the Taliban. They are not al-Qaeda. They are Persians. And they've been an empire for millennia. And they have produced a lot to society throughout the arc of world history here. Now, to get back to, I think, a different point you made about, you know, the need for off-ramps, the joint nature of such things. I think that there is a considerable amount of, I think, internal and upward pressure from within the administration to find one. The question is, how do you break through the chokehold of the operations and of the tempo being set by the Israelis?

This has to be done externally. It has to be the executive from the inside. The president has to make that decision or Congress has to force it. outside of that, I really don't know how we get there. It's looking pretty bleak and it looks, it's looking like we're doubling down in the opposite direction. And I don't really know what to do about that, quite frankly. Sorry, I was a, probably did you cut that out, but can I can I can, can we, can we pivot

briefly again back to the military things, the military situation? Absolutely. Because again, a point that was made, and you've touched. on it to some example. I was wondering if you could enlarge on it a little and perhaps correct it if this is wrong. A friend of mine who I want to stress is not a military person actually made a point to me. And as far as I know, historically, it's fairly well-founded. The United States has not fought a ground war in which it has not had air superiority since 1943, since the operations in Tunisia in 1943.

I read an article in of all places the Daily Telegraph by a Royal Navy captain in which he said, well, if the Iranians mine the Persian Gulf, our navies nowadays are not best configured to deal with mines either. First of all, do you think that this is correct? Because if so, it seems we have problems, because the Iranians have shown that they can launch hundreds of drones. and that argues against total air superiority anymore. That world has passed. If we are not able to deal with mines, well, that's a serious issue as well.

Isn't it important for the United States to have people who understand about these things coming out and debating them more than perhaps is happening? Is it perhaps a reluctance to do that because there's concern that one shouldn't make things, military capabilities of the United States, look less great that they are? And might that not be one of the causes of this debacle that nobody in the United States, ever wants to admit that there are limits to what even the U.S. military can do?

So yes and no, Alex. First, people, I don't think people truly understand the limits of our capabilities, particularly the people who are making these statements. The second piece about displaying our capabilities or talking publicly about them, flat out irrelevant. The amount of munitions that we and systems that we have given to Ukraine in a piecemeal fashion totally negates that altogether. We have put some of our best systems on the ground in Ukraine and had them go up against Russian systems and Iranian systems like the Shahed over and over and over again. So what we can do and what we can't do is widely known outside of this country.

And that's the problem when we get into proxy wars and we start doing these different, you know, little bits and pieces of conflict around the world is a capability is only effective when somebody doesn't know how to counter it. And that was not the case well before coming into this conflict. If I flip it around and take a look at how the Iranians have been conducting things, we've been up against the Shahed sort of tangentially in Ukraine. But for all intents and purposes, that's a joint project with the Russians. And it has been refined and, I mean, arguably perfected on the battlefield over there. And we're seeing the results around the Persian Gulf. I think we've lost, what, 10 high-end radar systems at least, basically all of our eyes and ears in the region as this has gone on. And it's one thing to say, hey, okay, it's a radar system.

But when you think about how important that is to global force posture and how important it is within the region, you can make a very safe assumption, not even an assumption. You can bet that these were some of the most hardened sites in the region, the most well defended. And they cut right through them like a hot knife through butter. So that tells you two things. One, we don't particularly know what they have and what they're using and what those capabilities actually are. and two, they know exactly what they're going up against and how to overtake them. And that presents a very, very, very dangerous long-term scenario. And once again, your statistic about 80% hits in Israel with ballistic missiles.

They understand what they're shooting at and how to counter them and they've developed around it. Another layer to this is I don't think we've really seen the full capabilities of Iranian air defenses or their military. period. They have, going back to, I mean, probably a year or two with some of the strikes on Tel Aviv and in Israel and regional, regional strikes, they have been firing progressively more and more complex systems. And it's almost like every other day you take a look on the news. And it's, oh, man, here's another Iranian system that we haven't seen yet.

And I don't think they're done yet, quite frankly, because this is like a war is like a game of poker sometimes where you don't want to show your hand and you just, you build up as you go along. And all of that is back backs into the need to maintain the initiative. And as long as you can keep your enemy on your back foot, you have the initiative. And we have had our, we have been on our back foot probably since about hour six of day one. In terms of air superiority, I agree with you. This was, man, this was something that really confused me right out of the gate, right? Is that I'm used to fighting conflicts where we not only have air superiority very early on, but air dominance. Like there is nothing that's going to challenge anything we have in the air.

And we clearly don't have that. And there is a propagandistic notion here in America that because we destroyed their air force on the ground that somehow we control the skies. And that is not the nature of modern air defenses. It's anti-access area denial, A2AD, and they're cheaper systems that you can deploy. And all you have to do is prevent an aircraft from being able to comfortably fly around and pick a target. and you have negated air superiority altogether. On the issue of mines in the Gulf, you're absolutely correct. We removed our last couple of mine sweepers to be retired and mothballed right as we kicked

off this operation. And they're being replaced by the LCS or the we'll call the littoral combat ship, which is also called the little crappy ship. and it is a lightly armored ship that has, it's being tasked with this, but it's not developed to be a minesweeper. They're very fragile. They're fast, but it's not a good match for this. So I think you're absolutely right. If this comes to mines in the Gulf, it's a whole new layer of problems outside of the ones I just talked about.

Last question for me. Do you think the Russians are? helping Iran. And if so, is that a problem or is it perhaps an opportunity? Does it, is it perhaps a way towards a solution in the sense that it gives the Russians leverage over the Iranians, which we might not have, and that the Russians might be persuaded to use in order to bring this conflict to an end? What are your thoughts on this? I think they absolutely are. wouldn't they? Like, seriously, why, why wouldn't they? We have been open about using the Ukrainians as a proxy force and we've enabled the deaths of probably tens of thousands of Russian troops on the battlefield there. So yeah, they're absolutely doing it. I have no doubt. And I can't fault them. But to your second point where it gives them leverage, yes, I think it does because it enables them to be effective. There's a tertiary point. to that where since we are enabling the Ukrainians and they're enabling the Iranians and both

parties, meaning the U.S. and Russia, want these conflicts to wrap up somehow without question. It adds additional bargaining chips on the table, I believe, in order to have some sort of negotiation to bring this to an end. We could hopefully end two conflicts at the negotiating table at the same time. Will this happen? I don't know. The temperature here in the U.S. is kind of, I mean, it's, I would say it's more of a temperature of a hot sauce than, say, like a frying pan. It's very spicy, particularly at the top of government. And their rhetoric is, you know, wild for one. I mean, you get three different statements from the president at a time. But the question becomes, can our leadership put their egos aside in order to accomplish. what the population who put them in power wants. And if that can happen, I think this can get done, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

Jim Webb, this has been an outstanding program. Thank you for your excellent answers to all my questions. Hey, thank you for having me. Fantastic program. Before you go, before we sign off, where can people follow your work? You can follow me on X. Right now, I do write for responsible statecraft in some other places, but the best place to find me is on X. It's James Webb. That's 2B's Webbba underscore 16. And yeah, you'll see me. It's

a Hawaiian shirt. So appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Fantastic X account. And I will have that as a link in the description box down below. It has a pinned comment. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you, Chip. Take care.