The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1132: Why War With Iran Cannot be Won w/ John Fieldhouse

Episode Date: November 12, 2024

61 MinutesPG-13 Pete is joined again by John Fieldhouse, who shares his knowledge of why going to war with Iran is not just foolish but also impossible.Pete's SubstackAntelope Hill - Promo code "peteq" for 5% off - https://antelopehillpublishing.com/FoxnSons Coffee - Promo code "peter" for 18% off - https://www.foxnsons.com/Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's Patreon Pete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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John Fieldhouse has returned. How are you doing, John? Doing well, sir. All right, man. Let's talk about this. This is a controversial subject. I don't think anyone that we know wants to go to war with Iran. God, I hope not.

Not at least people that we truly respect. But something that I've been saying for over a year and having Lee Enfield on, I was over a year ago right after October 7th, when they started talking about war with Iran, we basically came to the conclusion then. and I haven't changed my mind at all, is that you can't, the United States can't win a war with Iran, even if they're fighting alongside Israel, which Israel never does. I think that war with Iran is pretty much impossible and would just be an endless quagmire.

So I asked you to come on to talk about it, and people have heard Jan here before, your suggestion on the coup d'etat. The Lutvac book went over very well and helping me and adding context to that. People have come to know you, but can you give as much of your background as you can as far as military goes and why you might have an opinion on this that people can listen to? Sure. start off John Fieldhouse and before anybody asks I am not, have never participated in any DOD Pentagon level planning on a hypothetical invasion of Iran.

And had I done so, it would be a crime for me to discuss classified information. Because frequently comes up any time we discuss these things that we'll bring up, well, you're not a strategic planner who's focused on this and my buddy is and he says it's great. is understand that strategic planner, unless something is specifically declassified, something like this is going to be classified, which makes it a crime to share it. So the only people are going to share it are people directly affiliated with the regime and therefore are going to show things that support whatever the regime talking point of the moment is. So yet, to be very clear, I have never in any way participated in strategic level planning

for a hypothetical invasion of Iran. That said, I am a former military officer. primarily logistics, but I've also done some combat arms and some other things. I'm not going to get in too much detail about those. We talked about some of my academic background before, which doesn't directly relate to this because most of my stuff's in organizational theory. But again, I was a military officer. I have done mid-level professional military education.

I've been an instructor at professional mid-level, excuse me, mid-level professional military education, where for much of the 2000s, we used a hypothetical invasion of Iran as the war game scenario. And consequently, I am now a way claiming to be an expert on this, but this is something that me as well as,

you know, maybe a quarter of the active duty army officer cohort of the time frame I was in have also done, is we've done a lot of time looking at what an invasion of Iran would involve, which makes us, I think, very aware of the cost and consequences of trying to play around with something like this. So I guess one of the things that I'll bring up is I talked about when Lee Anfield was on the show over a year ago, and he was, we talked about an Army War College paper that had just come out that basically said that the fight that Ukraine,

was had been undergoing at that time for a year and a half the United States wasn't even equipped manpower wise to undertake I think Lee said that the no I think the paper said that in orders to do it properly using the men who are active right now you probably have to institute a draft within three to four months because that's the kind of attrition that you would you would suffer So looking back on that and knowing there hasn't really been a run on a military enlistment in the last year, what kind of manpower do you think you would need for an Iranian ground invasion at this point? That's a good question. What was it?

Shenseki said an invasion of Iraq done properly. We probably would have required, or was it, several hundred thousand men, significantly more than what we actually used and therefore didn't have enough manpower to pacify the population afterwards. I think Iran would require significantly more not just manpower but also the weapons and equipment and unfortunately some of those things take even longer

to produce than manpower, though obviously the man inside is much more important than the weapon. That's a good question. maybe three quarters of a million. It's hard to say. I don't even necessarily know an answer to that or would be able to give an answer to that because I don't think it's feasible to in any way think

that America today or any time in near future would be able to get that amount of manpower largely because I can't imagine anything being possible in which conscription could be successfully implemented for essentially a war of charge. choice in the Middle East. And even in the best case scenario where you turn on hypothetically the

civil or the selective service system tomorrow, essentially do what happened, you know, the day after Pearl Harbor in the United States, it takes, I would say, a minimum of six months to actually take those people, properly train them, integrate them into units where they would be able to do their jobs. And that's a best case scenario. And we don't have a best case scenario, for instance. since we have a selective service system that nobody, since the Carter administration, has really thought needed to work, therefore they haven't really maintained it.

Not to mention, we have training facilities that it would be very difficult to expand those overnight. Things like that. To the point, it would probably take more like two years to even have an army capable of doing this. and in a world with global information technology, which can be used as a targeting tool, you know, that's two years where the enemy has a chance to disrupt you every day along the way. So it's my long-winded answer is how big. I don't think it's even possible given the amount of time it would take to pull that off to think that that could happen in this world.

Okay. Well, we talked about American forces. What do you know about Iranian forces? The, you know, it's, they have a standing army, obviously. They have, I'll let you go. Yeah, so, in fact, if I had thought about that, I would have gotten numbers beforehand. So they do have a standing army. They also have the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which involves, has their own

separate army, their own separate Navy, their own separate Air Force. They even have a Marine Corps for their separate Navy. They also have some law enforcement capacity. They have the besiege, which is a militia force, somewhat like a National Guard that's separate from whatever reserve forces may exist in the regular army. And they also have the Kuds Force. Kuds is Arabic for Jerusalem, which is their special forces force, which are the guys who had worked with Iraqi forces. during the fight against ISIS in Iraq. They're also the guys who are working with Hezbollah, who have worked with the Syrian military, who have heavily worked as trainers for insurgents as well as regular Arab forces. So, yeah, you have the regular force, then you have the IRGC, which is more than just, you know,

a one piece of the pie. It's like several things belong to the larger IRGC. as well as internally they have security forces, law enforcement, John Der Marys that could be used as, you know, a security force against an invasion as well. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs.

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Isleur GUE and not great gree in ondoon and leander Gala Giaa Gaelfaitha Deirin. In Ergrid, we're taking tour in Woonahe with funnive in Woonahe. It's a lot of doing on the Angach Lectrachers on as

as to refer to all the town, Gnaw, and people, tariff in Waintee. There are a cooctewaghan. Follam nis more in Ergrid Pongahy. So here are just some numbers that AI is scraping from Wikipedia and Air and Space Forces magazine.

Ground Force 350,000. active, Air Force 37,000 active, Navy 18,000 air defense, 15,000, Revolutionary Guard Corps, 120,000 elite, with 350,000 in reserve, and the reserve are fully trained. So we're looking at about, this would tell me 960,000 military personnel ready to go. And that's what they have today. If you're taking two years to build up combat power. You know, every day along the way they get to do the same thing. So, you'll go ahead.

And part of why I admit, go ahead. No, no, please. Part of why I mentioned the amount of time that we'd prepare to actually train and organize forces for an invasion is understand that American heavy heavy heavy army armor. So mechanized forces, the kind of heavy brigade combat team equipment, Abrams, you know, they're supporting artillery, Bradley's and whatnot, that kind of equipment. It takes a long time to actually get them into a theater

that isn't fully developed. So interesting, complete, total, you know, random factoid is the Abrams is one of the largest main battle tanks in the world. It's not the largest probably anymore, but it was something that was built to be bigger, heavier than most previous tanks

of any army in any size. And that's partly because, for those who don't know, a lot of the vehicle dimensions, the width, especially the axle width on most vehicles, comes from the fact that historic roads in Europe had that width, which actually goes back to the Roman Empire, right? Literally, the design on wheeled vehicles today, you know, the dimensions are heavily influenced

because that's what the Roman army built. Anyways, Abrams were bigger. so it was done without those constraints, which made them harder to move around. Back in, though, the Cold War war plan was hypothetically, if we were fighting in the folder gap, we were fighting across the inner German border.

Forces were going to be located there, and there was no issue with strategic lift. You had your weapon systems in place. It was moving those into a combat zone and getting the fight there. It's a very different thing when you have to move them into a, theater where you don't have those weapons. We know that 91, the first Gulf War, it took a

significant amount of time. A lot of it was just the matter of sea lifting that heavy equipment to get it into the area. That's also why it took almost two years to invade Iraq in 2003, is it takes a significant amount of time to get those equipment sets into a theater that that is not developed. And for those who don't know, if we deploy a heavy brigade combat team today, or in the recent past, we don't have them load up all their equipment

and send them to combat. We actually pre-position weapon systems in that area. A lot of this is offshore in, you know, prepossession vessels or they're in long-term storage facilities. We fly the people in. They fall in on that equipment. They organize and they go out. out and prepare to fight.

Now, the problem with that approach is if the equipment sets aren't there already, as I keep repeating, is it takes a long time to get them into that theater, which is a big part of the problem with a hypothetical war with Iran. Where are we going to put them? Because, again, that heavily influences which direction we were going to invade the country from. Not to mention, it really gives away to the enemy, which, you know, it really gives away to the enemy, way you're coming. I know I'm rambling. No, no, that's fine. So, obviously, so let's say

ground invasion is off of the, off the table. I think most people, go ahead. No, it's more than it's off the table. It's the fact that it's, it would be so long to set up, so expensive to set up. And again, you make yourself a target the longer you take. right, it's like cocking a fist and a fist fight. The other guy knows you're going to hit him now, right? Which is part of why trained fighters, train things like the jab. So when the guy's cocking his fist for his big Billy badass punch,

you jab him and then you cross him and he goes down. You know, and it's in some ways it's the same concept, is it takes a long time to get those forces there. Every step along the way is an opportunity for a competent enemy to get them there. And again, which direction are you going to come in from and, you know, where you preposition your equipment decides that, and you take away a lot of your flexibility that way.

The enemy's going to have a real good idea of which direction you're coming from just by where you're prepositioning your equipment. Well, and I think you make a really good point there, and it's a point we were trying to make last year as far as, you know, where staging areas. You're not going to do in Afghanistan. Turkey is not going to allow you to do it. Iraq, you would have to reinvade Iraq.

Saudi Arabia is not going to allow you to do it, especially not at this point with everything that's been going on since October 7. I mean, none of the stands are going to allow you to do it above. You can't come, yeah. Saudi Arabia involves the whole issue of an amphibious landing, which we can talk about, but I would say save that for later, because that's a whole bunch of other issues along with it. But yeah, those areas, you're not going to come from Iraq.

If for no other reason, we effectively put the Shiite government in charge there, and every day that we're prepositioning stuff in Iraq is a chance for them to keep shooting at us. And if it has to become a situation in which we have to forcibly attack and subdue Iraq in order to go into Iran, that's right, well, congratulations. is that you were at war with Iraq and you haven't even gotten to Iran yet. And, you know, one of the things that a lot of people who've never actually looked at a map of Iran

don't realize how perfectly situated Tehran is. Yeah, Tehran's in the northern part of the country, which is weird for something that's a, you know, a major maritime power to have their capital nowhere near the ocean. It's on the opposite end of the country. So it's, to say it's perfect. Well, it's in a place that nearly makes it impossible to it, seize that capital from the sea. For those who don't know, for most of the 2000s,

the war game scenario of invading Iran, and to be clear, this is a declassified scenario, so I can't talk about it, involved taking, again, the mechanized forces, heavy forces, using two ports in Georgia in order to get them into the continent, moving those forces over into northern Azerbaijan, which in this scenario we saw was at least passively supportive of U.S. forces, then inviting south into the southern part of Azerbaijan,

which we thought would be where fighting was, and then invading into the northern part of Iran. And the biggest issue with that scenario, first off, the fact that they used this in a non-classified, unclassified training scenario, which again, the Azerbaijani's were enemies in this scenario, and we had Azerbaijani students real world sitting in there, which, again, that tells you everything about the level of just confidence we have

in strategic planning in the U.S. military. But the fact that this was a declassified scenario tells me that nobody thought they were going to use this. Or at least it was implausible to think they were going to use this. But that scenario involved, again, those two ports that you needed in Georgia in order to get stuff in there. Those are the same two ports that Russia took away in, was it 2009, when they had that hasty attack or hasty operation by Russia on Georgia. So again, if you don't have the ports, you're not getting anything in there. was that part of the fomensing revolutions in Georgia during the 2000s to try to possibly set something up for the future? I'd have, well, I think more than likely. I mean, that was never officially said.

During the period, there was a lot of military cooperation between the United States in Georgia, mostly for training. we had actual assets at those two ports. I know that because I had students who were actually at those ports doing terminal operations when the Russians rolled into town, which is one of the weirdest things. They actually said they were really nice and polite, the Russian commander, and said, you guys got to stay on post. Tell us when your supply convoys come in so we can make sure they come through. But you got to stay there and we're okay is what they told the Americans.

Is there any possibility of staging in Pakistan? That's another thing, right? So could we? I can't see Pakistan cooperating. Part of the problem is since September 11th, the U.S. has played a diplomatic game of Pakistan against India. And for those who don't know, the British Empire, when they partitioned the former India,

the Muslim parts became India or became Pakistan the rest became India and then Pakistan eventually had a split up where Bangladesh became an independent country So since September 11th We've had a diplomatic game Balancing Act of playing

India against Pakistan Because those countries engage in Armed Conflict against each other Have fought each other Despite the fact they're essentially cousins They fought themselves each other several times And anytime the U.S. cooperates more closely with one country, it alienates the other. Now, all the time that we spent working in Afghanistan forced us to cooperate with Pakistan

because heavy equipment had to come in through ports in Pakistan and then be shipped north into Afghanistan. The last few years, the Biden administration has tried to heal the relationship with India, which arguably is a good thing. You know, the world's first or second most populous country, there's no reason for us to have a pissing contest with them. But unfortunately, that goes back. It damages that relationship with Pakistan again. Could we stage there?

Maybe. I don't see us doing that. It's also an interesting bit of geography where the coastal parts of Iran are fairly coastal, but within dozens of miles, you start having the mountains, you know, rough mountains pop up, and you have to cross those mountains. And you may not have any major targets or population centers

until 100 miles inland. So it's sort of like the problems with the amphibious landing. If you invade through Pakistan, you end up in a part of the country where you still have to get through the other side of the mountains, and it doesn't necessarily help you a great deal to come from that direction. So number one, I can't imagine that.

number two, even then it puts you in a situation you wouldn't want to be. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Liddle, more to value.

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And then you have the whole eastern side of the country all the way down to the mid-central of the country with just a gigantic mountain range. So you'd have to deal with the same issue from Iraq, from Turkey. Even if Israel's friend, Azerbaijan was willing to help, you're still dealing with mountains. the only way you're going to avoid mountains is to go in from Afghanistan, and then you're, I mean, what was that 3,000 miles? Which is mounts. Which is, I'm sorry.

No, I'm sorry, I kind of go. Which number one pack, or Afghanistan is mountains, you know. So it's like you're saying you're avoiding the mountains. Yeah, that's relative and it's still really bad. And even then, the Taliban is probably not going to give us, you know, support for invading Iran. All right. So, I mean, taking into consideration two years prep time.

everything. Let's just rule everyone out. Obviously, Azerbaijan is friends with Israel. Would there be, I mean, that would be probably outside of Turkmenistan, the closest, the closest route to Tehran. And that doesn't seem likely either. Yeah. And again, that's part of the problem is hypothetically, you could use Azerbaijan. And again, the war game scenario uses Azerbaijan. So strategic planners, were convinced that you could do that. So I think that's possibly completely plausible. And it puts you near Tehran, you know, decapitating the administration.

Again, in order to get stuff into Azerbaijan, heavy equipment, you'd still have to go through using the ports of Georgia, which I don't think Russia's going to allow us to do. Because, again, they demonstrate their ability to seize those in the course of an afternoon. So if you don't have those ports, it doesn't necessarily matter that you go through Azerbaijan because you still don't have equipment. All right, well, I think the next, I guess the next thing that you would go towards

is very long-range air campaign. So what was the wargaving on that looking like? Yeah, that I've had to do a lot of the research outside. As an army officer, we don't necessarily care about air war as long as our side wins beforehand. And if we don't win, we're not going there. It shouldn't decoupled the Army Air Corps.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a reason the Marine Corps ensured that they retain their own aviation. When they originally created the U.S. Air Force, the plan was also to give all the naval aviation assets to them as well. And the Navy fought back on that. And even before the Navy won their fight, the Marine Corps made it very clear they were going to keep their own aviation. And they did. So, yeah, a lot of countries that have successful, large countries that have successful independent air forces like the former Soviet Union actually had multiple services where you'd have, you know, a strategic bombing air force.

You'd have a strategic airlift air force. You had a separate airlift air force just for the paratroopers. And then you had, you know, an air force that did close support for the army that would work with them directly. and the problem is by turning the Air Force into the headquarters for everything, we've created the problem where they don't necessarily do close to air support with a whole lot of effectiveness. As a ground soldier, I have my hatred of the Air Force for a reason, but they're not like Marine Corps aviation that does CAS very effectively.

And they're still mad that we have helicopters, and they're really angry that we made them keep the, the A-10 war-tog, which they didn't like. I thought that that's one of the most badass-looking machines I've ever seen, been up close to. John Boyd was one of the guys who his office was responsible for developing

what became that. And it was a purpose-built close-air support aircraft, and it's a great thing, piece of equipment. And part of the problem is nobody in Air Force acquisitions really supported a second generation version of that. So they basically tried to make it obsolete and retire it. And I don't even know what the status of it is today.

I think it's been retired. But, you know, it's sort of like they, you know, they took their ball home and didn't want to play with anybody else. And they're really angry that we made them continue to operate those planes. All right. So how what would aerial attack? What would aerial warfare on Iran look like? That's a good question. This is probably the biggest X factor that we don't know about.

And part of the thing is anytime you have big revolutions and military equipment and military affairs is you go through a period of uncertainty about what you think your equipment can do, what your new weapons and tactics can do. And then you actually see them in combat and then everything changes in light of reality. Late 19th century, you know, machine guns, early machine guns, like the Maxim

Gun, the Gatlin Gun were developed. The British actually had made heavy use of machine guns throughout the late 19th, early and 20th century, but they mostly used it against tribesmen in Africa. So Arabs and black tribesmen and a lot

of times they were using them against people who were largely using, you know, fairly convention mounted or, you know, close order tactics. And machine guns against people marching close order is just a slaughter. And it worked probably as much as anything just to discourage uprisings. But at the same time, nobody really had an idea of what those were going to do on the Western Front when two armies using those weapons met each other. And again, early 1914, the Western Front, we had engagements. with incredibly high number of casualties,

then troops dug in, then there was a race to the sea in which you had the huge trench lines going from the English Channel all the way down to Switzerland and long periods of trying to break the stalemate of the trenches. And I think it's very plausibly, with changes in aviation and drones in particular, that we're seeing something like that. In Ukraine, we've had a lot of incidences

where we know that American armor and mechanized tanks and infantry fighting vehicles are nowhere near as good as we thought they were as soon as you take away air supremacy. If you take away air cover, you know, tanks and Bradley's and things like that suddenly become very easy to destroy or at least disable. And, you know, it's also become very hard to maintain air supremacy because of man-portable shoulder-fire anti-aircraft systems, things like the American Stinger. So we're in a situation where it's really hard to maintain air supremacy. You can create a situation where basically everything that flies,

dies, and suddenly that forces how the ground war changes. So that's part of the, you know, again, this is all X factor, and I'm saying that there are changes here that we don't entirely know yet. And I encourage caution because of that. So the Iranian Air Force, you know, they started off, or at least the Islamic Republic, started off with stuff the Shah's Air Force had. They had F-14s. They had some other American fighters.

They didn't have the first generation of avionics targeting stuff. A lot of cases, they never updated their stuff, and they're using third-party repairs. so they don't necessarily have very good targeting in communications and radar stuff for those weapon systems, which a lot of their planes are fairly out of date by now.

So it may not matter. But we do know that they have some amount of anti-aircraft stuff, and the fact that the American pissing contest with both Russia and China has forced the bricks to share a great amount of military technology. We don't

know how much, but there is a level of military cooperation there, which again is unknown, which leaves a lot of room for potential threat. So what anti-aircraft systems have the Russians provided with them? More importantly, what anti-aircraft systems would the Russians provide

for them? And the answer is we don't know and all of them could be bad. Which means that there's a very high possibility that they could kill aircraft that we have, that we've never really forecasted losing.

Because again, one of the common themes of the U.S. military is, yes, we're incredibly powerful. We don't necessarily have the ability to absorb casualties. The ability to have men weapons and equipment destroyed or captured

or disabled and to continue to fight as you reorganize around your casualties is a fairly hard thing to do. And, you know, the fact that we don't really have to practice doing that we may have difficulties working around that. So hypothetically, it's not just what we lose in aircraft, it's our ability to continue to function as cohesive units after that.

The other thing is drones. How effective are they drones? How effective with the drones that Russia or China would provide them with be? And again, drones, hypothetically, you use drones to fight fighter aircraft. It's important to understand. You don't need them to be great dogfighters. you don't even necessarily need them to be great with missile technology. If you can, with some degree of accuracy,

fly those things into your planes using drones and then just run them into aircraft, you could probably knock down a fair amount of fighters. And especially the reality is if you're a drone controller, a drone pilot, you're not going to die when you ram that other enemy aircraft. So you don't necessarily care. So there's a high degree of possibility that Iran could inflict casualties on a long-range aviation attack

and that those things could really mess up in attacking force. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favorite Liddle items, all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.

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by the Wild Atlantic Surounds. Your five-star getaway, where every detail is designed with you in mind. Give the gift of a unique experience this Christmas with vouchers from Trump-Dunbeg. Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunbiog, Kush Farage. So the things that I had heard recently, I can't remember I think I might have been from Larry Johnson, that they definitely had Russian S-300 systems. the I think what is their version of the C-130 is at the AN12 cub is that what it he said

I don't know it's something like that a couple of them landed full fully loaded three or four months ago in Tehran which probably he thinks had the S-400 and then there's actually talked that there's actually an S-500 an S-550 now and properly, when you take into consideration, the mountainous terrain and everything properly placed, I mean, it really, it goes to show why when Israel launched their assault recently, they really didn't do much damage. I think there was one civilian died for, for military personnel, and the damage is being reported has really been minimal.

and I've actually seen footage of a lot of what they launched there just being taken down and taken right out of the sky. Yeah, number one, again, back to the military cooperation with the BRICS country. I'm 100% certain. It's happening. But what do we know about those? Like you said, there's a couple landings where, as far as we can tell, anti-aircraft systems were landing. I'm largely skeptical of anything that comes out in America media about what the Russian military is doing just because everything the American media has been so inaccurate.

I'm sure, I'm 100% certain that Iran wants Russia to provide those assets. I think it's more likely than not that Russia has provided those assets. But which assets, I don't know. It could be a lot, especially if they have next generation shoulder fire weapon systems. So yeah, my big question. caution there would be they probably have a lot more than we think they have, especially if they're small enough and they can be dismantled. You can potentially put them on civilian airliners.

You can even put them on regular passenger planes and break down the components to ship them in cargo. So things like that are completely possible where they would have a lot more stuff than we think, not to mention the potential to move stuff in there directly from Russia. And again, like you said, the mountains are good for cover and concealment. especially if you don't control anything around those mountains. This isn't like Afghanistan where for 20 years, yeah, we didn't necessarily control the key mountains, but we had some points, and we had some forces in the area,

and we had some idea of the geography. Iran would be completely different in that circumstance, where we wouldn't know. So, yeah, it's everything you said, but to a degree much higher than we would anticipate, meaning you're right, and it's probably a lot worse than you think. And then not to mention the fact that their missile technology, which we don't really know a lot about, but we've seen the Houthis launch missiles at Israel that have been reported to turn 90 degrees in midair. So what exactly do we know about Iranian technology and what they can do to fight the military?

back. That's a good question. I haven't seen anything declassified on that. Excuse me. So I've seen very little or nothing declassified on that. So what do we know? We definitely know they can do long range target being with some degree of precision. The fact that, you know, they dropped stuff that was at the Iraqi airfield that

that we had a American personnel that time. I think that was in 2020, right after Soleimani. I was on that base, so I feel bad that I don't remember on the top of my head because I was stationed at that base at one point. So all indications are they missed on purpose, where they were demonstrating their ability to target, and they didn't miss, and they intentionally shot a warning shot,

demonstrating that they could shoot things. Or they were just like the most recent. Or they were saving face for the attack. I think it's exactly what they did. They were demonstrating to all sides that they could do this and that they would do this if they had to, but that they didn't want to escalate further. That's my understanding, my interpretation. So it's more than just saving face.

They're demonstrating to America that they could do this, but they're choosing not to, which is a very different level of restraint that Americans are used to. the thought is that those massive attacks by Iran against Israel, those large missile attacks, that they were probably used as a reconnaissance in force. Number one, there seems to be a fairly high dud rate on the Iranian missiles, which suggests that they were using old stocks and munitions, stuff that they had to get rid of anyway that they were firing, and they were targeting them in such a way that they could observe Israeli

missile defense in order to get their tactics down, in order to find the launch points, and in order to build data for future attacks, which I think is highly likely. It's also the kind of complexity that Iranians are known for. So they have that kind of targeting capacity, and they probably have it to a much greater degree of precision than anything in the U.S. military. long range precision missile artillery is not something the U.S. military is very good at. So let's talk a little bit about that. So a lot of people look at Iran as like this backwards country, these backwards people, their women still have to wear head coverings and things like that. And they just basically assume that they don't have, they don't have any scientists. They're anything that they would be using. They would be, it would be being supplied from somewhere else like Russia.

and everything like that. So what do you know about their capabilities as far as their... The culture and technology was? Yeah, well, the country historically was called Persia, then the last Shaw's father. So the second and last Shah, when he took charge, renamed it as Iran.

Iran literally means the land of the Aryans. And like a lot of... Well, it wasn't a colonial society, but a lot of societies going through decolonial. There's the whole fight about whether or not the culture should represent the dominant ethnic group or multiple ethnic groups. And by naming Iran, it was essentially saying it's not just for Persians. It's for all the other minority people who are there as well. Just as an aside, ethnic Persians only make up about 60% of the Iranian population.

You've got some Arabs. We got Kurds. You've got Balukis. You've got lots of people of various relations. apparently, you know, it's a diverse country. There was a great deal of a great amount of modernization that occurred under the Pahlavi dynasty. Education was brought in, you know, famously we've all seen, you know, the photos from the 50s and 60s, the women in many skirts in Iran. Iran, or Persians especially, but also Kurds and some of the other ethnic groups are a little unusual in the fact.

that they're simultaneously, they have a reputation for being both very religious in the practice of Shiite Islam, well, you know, being very worldly and how they live their life, which there's really hard to compare them to something, maybe like old school Italian, Americans who are, you know, very Catholic, but that's never stopped and stood in the way of them being able to deal with reality in places the priests may not like. I don't mean that as an assault. the Catholics or Italians. So they had a fairly modern education system that was trying to modernize the culture. They had modern universities that which were established with Western support,

mostly British, some American. A lot of them do a lot of English language education because, again, STEM training is only done in so many languages in the world, and English is one of them. So lots of, you know, what we'd call third world countries, the actual educated people speak fluent English because that's what they need to do in order to do a STEM education,

to go become an engineer or whatnot. There was, after the Iranian Revolution, there was a big purging in the beginning where many of the Shaw's loyalists were removed, but that didn't necessarily damage the educated, or, yeah, it didn't necessarily remove the educated, factor in society because the revolution, the Iranian revolution, wasn't even really an Islamist revolution in the beginning so much as there was an anti-Shah revolution amongst people who were

Shiites and became a Shiite revolution because Khomeini was the only guy who could unite the factions. So a lot of their educated people weren't taken out. Like I said, students were a huge part of the revolution. So you had lots of people with higher education. some guys with PhDs and whatnot, but a lot of people with STEM education. So my point here is these are not monkeys living in caves. These are people that a large strata of society is very educated. A large part of contemporary Iran is urban.

Either urban or they live in a greater metropolis metropolitan area, meaning they live in essentially what would be suburbs or even rule air. areas that, you know, within a half-day drive of a major city. So these are not, you know, bumpkins in the middle of nowhere, even in places where they may be in the middle of nowhere, they have a fair amount of ability to travel. The fact the country has oil means they have a fair amount of electricity and power of different sources, which means you can have computers.

anecdotally I could know when I was purchasing things as a purchasing agent for the Iraqi army we imported a lot of our goods from Iran so I can tell you for a fact computers are easy to come by in Iran even though we had embargoes against Iran we bought stuff from Iran

the fact that they're working closer with Russia means that there's lots of things they can get now they couldn't get in the best so it's this idea that they're living in the caves like the Taliban were in 2001 is not in any way accurate about Iran. What about their manufacturing of weapons? Specifically, you know, what Ludwak talks about, where, you know, if you have to import your own weapons, if you have to rely upon someone else, you're basically, you become a slave

to them. Do you know what their manufacturing level is? That's a good question. and I only know a little bit, and I should have prepared better for that. I know they can manufacture small arms. I know that AKs have been made there before. I know munitions have been manufactured in various degrees there. I assume that's a fairly easy part of their industry,

since if you don't necessarily have currency, don't have hard currency that manufacturing munitions is a really quick way to make money towards a more expensive country, or more economically developed countries around you. I don't know about their ability to produce, like, aviation assets or higher-in armor equipment or missile systems and whatnot. But I'm also not necessarily, I wouldn't necessarily be worried about that if I were them

just because an alliance with Russia means you can get those things. You also potentially have the ability to trade things, for them that they are going to find valuable. So that answers your question. Well, also taking into consideration the spirit of my question, if they are relying on Russia for so much, how much of a sway does Russia hold on them, in your opinion? That's a good question.

I think Russia could exercise a great deal of sway over them if they wanted to. I know, well, especially if they're providing anti-aircraft system. So the short answer is probably a lot. Russia has not directly forced a whole lot of things other than trying to seek greater alliances with those countries against the United States and setting up mutual trade systems, you know, such as getting outside the American banking credit system.

My guess is they probably have a lot of sway over them since Russia was completely locked out of Western markets and they've worked with other countries to create alternative systems and Iran has been locked out for, it was a decade plus now, so they have every reason to cooperate. So I imagine there's probably a lot more influence than we've seen so far. It's also a situation where Putin for all, of his talk of him as being an overbearing dictator, and I don't necessarily have any love

loss for him, but he has demonstrated the ability to be, to exercise sort of a soft touch with people that he's influencing, meaning that he'll more request and cooperate for things than trying to force compliance on things, which ironically is sort of the American way of doing diplomacy, despite the fact we say otherwise. So I think Russia could probably exercise a great deal of influence and probably has more influence than we've seen so far. When you say that, it's pretty easy to understand that if Ukraine wasn't so captured and under NATO and other influences, how he would have a soft touch with them, how he would, he'd have no problem with diplomacy. and it looks like

in 2009 diplomacy was gone really well with them until obviously the coup. Yeah, and my position on the Ukraine war is I don't take either side there. I know lots of guys on our sphere like to take Russia's side by default. I don't do that

and I actually have an immense amount of admiration for Ukrainians. I do think that by cooperating with the West they're doing things that are detrimental to them in the long run. I think the war in Ukraine is an unfortunate consequence of American overbearing behavior, which is a force to dichotomy between Russia and Ukraine in which people, which killed a lot of people we claim to care about. So, yeah, the Slavic parts of the former Soviet Union,

and before that, the Russian Empire have, an interesting history. So, like, historically, the, the ethnic Russian people, the Ruski people, as opposed to just the people who were citizens of Russia. Traditionally, they referred to themselves as greater Russians with the idea that the Ukrainians and Belarusians were, you know, other varieties of Russian cousins. So, yeah, there's a huge amount of connection there, which, you know, the fall of the Soviet Union and post-World War II, or, yeah, post-Colns. World War geopolitics has, you know, created a cleavage between those related peoples that probably wouldn't have existed otherwise. And again, I do not deny the existence of the Ukrainian people like some do. But I also think the fact that America has claimed to support

Ukrainians has killed a lot of Ukrainians. All right. Well, it seems that Israel, you know, what Iran has been there, They're one month away from having a nuke for, what, 30, 35 years now. And Scott Horton has said they've been like six months away for 12 years now. Yeah. So all of this bellicosity towards them relies upon the United States getting involved. And then you're saying that this would be, it would take two years to even get this prepared for an invasion. And then the invasion.

So it's... Conservatively. So what is... Does Israel really, in your opinion, does Israel really think that this is going to happen, that they can do this, or is there something else going on here? I'm tempted to think there's something out.

I think a lot of this has to do with Netanyahu essentially flailing in order to stay in power. I think he's behaving like a cornered animal. Because when this war ends, even in a basket, the fighting in Israel ends, more than likely Netanyahu's going to be indicted. They're probably going to put him in prison this time.

And because of his age, she'll probably die in prison. And I think even if it ends on very good terms, that's extremely likely to happen. So again, I think Netanyahu's behaving like a cornered animal and a lot of it's driven by his behavior. I doubt that anybody in the IDF thinks that a land war, a land invasion conquest of Iran is possible at all. You know, maybe in 2002 before we invaded Iraq, we thought that that could happen and we were going to just move U.S. forces into Iran.

But reality proved otherwise. Obviously, Israel wouldn't go send its own forces. They have a hard time getting their reservists to go and fight in the West Bank. banking the Gaza Strip. They're definitely not going to go fight in Iran. I don't think the United States will ever have the ability to wage that kind of offensive war ever again. I don't see people sending their sons away, especially in a world where people only have one child. So it's not just the population growth issue.

It's the fact that most parents today only have one or two children and you're not trying to kill your child, your only son. your neighbor's only son in order to piss shit away for people who aren't willing to fight for themselves and have to create conflict with everybody in their world. What do they really want? I think a lot of this is about buying time, and I think that people under existential threat, which, you know, Netanyahu and the potential of going to prison, I don't think they behave rationally, I think that explains a lot. So with Trump now picking his cabinet,

and he's definitely the few picks that we were even talking about before we started recording, aren't good because just because it seems like they're all friendly to Israel, the three or four so far right now as of recording. Yeah. But this still doesn't really, when you hear people complaining about this, you hear them complaining about it because we don't want to go to war with Iran. So what I'm trying to do by have this conversation with you is showing people that that's not the issue. That's completely off the table. Everyone knows it.

And, you know, other than somebody starting to launch. nukes, we need to shift our, still pay attention to what's going on with this insane alliance we have with this little shitty state in the Middle East. But this isn't going to be about Iran. Yeah. Well, I would say more than anything, it's important that the politicians who represent us, and again, democracy is bullshit and we know it doesn't really work. But the fact that Trump just got in power, because of populist support, he's at least open to understanding what his base cares about. And we have to make it understand that Trump understand that you can't do this, that war with Iran can't happen.

And again, I prepped with Bill Bupert from Chasing Ghosts podcast for a lot of this. One of the conversations we had this morning was the American military right now is essentially divided between two world views. A lot of what the Obama and Biden era did was essentially put woke officers, you know, everybody's favorite pet subjugated groups into the military in higher levels as a sort of purge of the officer corps, the general officer corps of the army, to make it less right wing. And unfortunately, so much of the counter reaction against that in the military and America's supporters just think, no, we're America. and we can go fight the world.

So the response to the woke, unfortunately, a lot of times is saying, let's go and invade, you know, let's start World War III. In part of what I'm trying to fight is, you know, people who are at least culturally on our side, trying to get them to understand that war with Iran

will be existentially devastating to America. You know, I'm from Appalachia, greater Appalachian, I'm from the South. You know, people like me die in these wars. I don't want people like people like me to die. So, especially so certain classes and cultures of people who hate us can go in a, you know, rule the ashes of the world after we've, you know, blood and died for them. I also want to make sure that people in our side, everybody on our side understands that war isn't free, right? People

die. And everybody said, yeah, of course not. It's like, no, America hasn't fought a real world against a real enemy in a very long time. And I remind people, even during World War II, you know, something like 80% of the Vermeck's cows' buildings were inflicted by the Soviet army. You know, the reality is the United States provided a lot of logistics and then opened up the second front to placate Stalin

in the course of a World War that we made the world safe for Stalinism. So World War II, we were kind of like, we were sort of like the kick return team of World War II, right? I mean, of the Allies. We fought, but we were not quite the front line starting lineup. It wasn't like the Pacific Theater. It wasn't like the Pacific Theater.

And I'm not degrading anybody's contribution and their sacrifice. And the dead are equally dead no matter where they fought and against who they fought. But understand that World War II, the Western Front, European Front, we did not fight the war that we seem to think we fought. And unfortunately, war with Iran could mean that. It could be against an army that is entrenched, which has a fair amount of support. And despite the fact that people say that they hate the Islamist regime in Iran, invading their country will change that immediately. You know, when gangbangers come into your neighborhood, suddenly your next door neighbor you may not like, you're willing to cooperate within the fight, the intruders. And we could create

that situation. And my biggest fear is Iran is some dipshit trying to do things invading because they don't know any better, which is a real fear I had with Kamala, getting in there. And as soon as our forces get bogged down, we're bogged down in sort of like an Eastern Front scenario in World War II, where we're slugging out for an extended period, except now we're doing that in a world where there are nuclear weapons on the table. So again, what I'm rambling here to everybody saying, look, war with Iran without any better war, sorry for my profanity, but it's fucking stupid. And people like me and you are going to die,

and they're going to die for the people we hate. So let's not do that. And that's what I'm trying to say to everybody, and I apologize for my profanity. No, not a problem at all. No. Let's end you right there, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for letting some expertise to this. And let's do it again real soon. Thanks, ma'am.