The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | March 7th, 2026: Fighter Pilot Breaks Down The First Week Of The Iran Air War

Episode Date: March 7, 2026

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: One week into the conflict with Iran, the coalition air campaign continues at full intensity as aircraft strike military targets across the country. Former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot Ryan Bodenheimer joins us to explain how these operations are unfolding, what the targets reveal about the strategy, and what the early days of the air war tell us about where the campaign could go next. The war may soon expand beyond the skies. Reports suggest Kurdish forces could engage Iranian troops along the country’s western border, potentially opening a new front in the conflict. Bill Roggio from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies joins us to break down the possibility of Kurdish involvement and what it could mean for Tehran’s already stretched military. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting https://PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. YouTube: youtube.com/@presidentsdailybrief Ethos Life Insurance: Protect your family’s future with fast, online life insurance from Ethos—get your free quote in minutes at https://Ethos.com/PDB  Goldbelly: Discover iconic meals from legendary restaurants delivered nationwide with Goldbelly—get 20% off your first order at https://Goldbelly.com using promo code PDB. DeleteMe: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://joindeleteme.com/PDB and use promocode PDB at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome to the BDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. And yes, I am back on the road. All right, let's get briefed. First up, we're now one week into the conflict with Iran, maybe you heard about it, and the air campaign shows no signs of slowing as coalition aircraft continue hitting military targets across the country. Former U.S. Air Force fighter by Ryan Bowdenheimer, you may know Ms. Max Afterburner, joins us to give us this insight at the ongoing air campaign. Later in the show, the fight against Tehran may be moving onto the ground with reports that,

Kurdish forces could soon engage Iranian troops along the western border. We'll break it down with Bill Grosio from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. But first, today's situation reports spotlight. The U.S. and Israeli air campaign over Iran continues to intensify with coalition aircraft striking missile launch sites, air defense systems, and military infrastructure across the country. Officials say the goal is to degrade Tehran's ability to retaliate, while steadily dismantling, the regimes commanded control networks. Over the past week, waves of aircraft and long-range strikes have targeted radar installations, air bases, and ballistic missile facilities, all part of a broader effort to establish air superiority and keep Iran's remaining military

assets under constant pressure. The big question now is how sustainable that campaign is and what targets make them next. Joining me now is Ryan Bodenheimer, aka Max Afterburner. Now, he's a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot who flew seven, 70 combat missions in the Middle East. You can check him out on his YouTube channel at Max Afterburner, USA. Ryan, welcome back, man, to the PDB Situation Report. Mike, thanks for being here, man. Thanks for having me. We got a lot to talk about today. Do we? Do we now? I think so. I think there's a little something going on. Yeah, okay. Well, let's get into it. Give me, if you could, your assessment. I know that this is a

big, broad question, but give me your assessment so far of the air campaign. Yeah, I think we've seen kind of the systematic approach, which is normal. So there's operational plans that are built that have all these different phases in them. Now they're classified. I had the ability to work on those with the F-15E. And basically the air campaign just gives you a phased approach to achieve air dominance. And that's something that we saw happen play out. So early on, you do what's called standoff weaponry.

So you use AGM 158s. These are like stealthy cruise missiles. I mean, you can see videos online of these stealthy cruise missiles going in at low altitude initially hitting a lot of the I ads, the integrated air defenses. So everything I can tell is it followed just a really solid approach to, all right, take down the different things that can shoot us. And that you need to do that off the bat with stealth and standoff. So it looks like that was executed really well. It looked like air dominance was achieved within a few hours. And that's combined with different cyber systems, space systems to also help take down the ability of the Iranian regime's ayads to communicate with each other. So that really followed what I think was a very solid recipe for success in the

southern part of Iran to allow then, now we've got heavy bombers going in with impunity at this point. So there's different phases, but that first phase is basically create what's called silent corridors where you can't get targeted from the different surface to air missile systems. And then you just ramp that up, make sure those things stay quiet, and you have the ability to strike them as they turn on. And now you just have the bombers go in and start just taking out targets. We are surprised at how quickly the military declared that had air superiority over Iran. You know, I thought it would be a little harder than Venezuela, but I think it's just, it's a testament to the focus of their specific squadrons in the U.S. Air Force that focus on this exact thing.

That's what they do every single day. So there's the training they get to go in and do this is just, it's insane. It's like, you know, you've got special teams on a football team. You've got defense. Well, the U.S. Air Force has what's called seat suppression of enemy air defenses. And that's a mission. Specifically, there's specific fighter jets that that's all they do. So now that I looked at how long it took, you know, maybe an hour or so, it doesn't really surprise me.

But I did think some of the Chinese systems that were being brought in, you know, the rumors that they're, this isn't confirmed, but rumors that there were surface to air radars being in being brought in. I mean, I'm sure China would love to test some of that stuff against F-35s, right? So I thought, yeah, this is probably going to be harder because some of these systems might be more advanced in Venezuela. but I think the men and women in those cockpits had prepared for that. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm glad you brought up the Chinese aspect to this because we did see that, right? We saw Chinese their defense systems that they had exported to Venezuela. We also saw in Pakistan to some degree not perform necessarily the way that the Chinese marketing brochures were touting them, right?

I mean, because they've been out there for some time now for years, right? advertising themselves as an alternative to Western arms suppliers. And so the reporting is that the Iranian Air Defense Network was sort of a patchwork quilt of Chinese systems, Russian systems, homemade systems, you know, reverse engineer in Iran. So is it your impression that those systems that are being produced, by the Russians and Chinese in particular are sub-quality? Or is it that we're just, this is going to sound wrong, but is it that we're just so capable?

Yeah, I think you're spot on. You know, China, well, they wanted the PR. They wanted a sales pitch here. If they could do anything coming close to taking down, not even just an F-35, but any type of Western fighter, that would be huge PR for them to sell a lot more of their weaponry, right? So I think they probably threw the kitchen sink at, you know, the capability that they tried to give Iran, not to mention they liked the fact that they were, you know, getting most of Iran's oil. So thinking of that, okay, they brought in their top systems.

Yeah, I think, you know, fighter pilots have never been accused of being humble. And I think this is another case where they don't need to be because you're just, you're so focused on that. And there's actually tactics, like, where certain aircraft will be the bait to try to draw out what's there. I mean, that takes some serious cahones, you know? And that's the mindset you have with these aviators that they're like, you know, I'm going to go up there and be the bait because we're so good that I can be the bait and still take out your surface to air missiles. So that confidence, I think, comes from a lot of, you know, behind the scenes, you know, backroom vaults where you see American ingenuity playing out. These engineers that are building a lot of these systems are, I mean, they're big brain people that have a capability that a lot of fighter pilots don't have. But then you combine, you know, that kind of disregard for your own life.

Like, hey, I'll go up. I'll be the bait with some of the advanced engineering. But I think it is, yeah, it was a good point. I often say that I'm amazed at what smart people can do, right? I mean, if it was up to people like me, we'd still be sitting around trying to figure out how to make fire. But so I am always astounding. And these are the sort of the moments, right, during this conflict when you understand just how advanced we've become in terms of creating these systems. And also to your point about fighter pilots, one of my brothers was a F4 pilot in Vietnam. And, yeah, we've never, never, ever described him as humble.

That's just never something. That's an insult. I mean, no, I'm just kidding. So is it the case that, and I know technology, you know, changes to some degree things that happen, but is it the case that the way that you were describing the process, the beginning of our conversation, and how they approach this sort of campaign, it made me think almost like, well, there's not much new under the sun. when it comes to how you structure a campaign like that. I mean, is that the case?

Is what we saw in the initial week or so in Iran, can you say, well, that's just how you do it and that's how we've done it for generations in terms of building an aerosol? And again, realizing that technology can factor into this and make some adjustments. Yeah, I think the cool thing about our military that people might not know is, you know, we've got these plans on the shelf ready to go. And so our fighter aviators, our bomber pilots, you know, our aerial refueling pilots, ISR, intelligence surveillance or reconnaissance drone operators, your part is all, you know, in that book. And that book's being continuously updated, you know, and it's classified what's actually in it. But it really puts everybody on the same

sheet of music. And as technology advances, you just change the plan, update the plan. You get intel from, okay, now Iran maybe has this system. so we need to train this way or counter it this way. And a lot of our fighter squadron, you know, training curriculum is based on the intel we're getting of what's this latest system and how do we defeat it. And those are on the shelf for North Korea. Those are on the shelf for the Taiwan Straits.

They were on the shelf for Iran. So as you're getting close to, you know, maybe a conflict going down, you're going to pull, so every squadron is going to have a version of that that they can all share. You're going to pull that down and update it and iterate it because, okay, this game might be more closer to happening than the North Korea one, so we're going to focus on this one. Is it the case that when you, I mean, again, I know conditions on the ground change constantly, but do you have the intelligence that tells you we're going to be going in and

we're going to be facing this type of air defense system? I mean, how specific and realizing it can change from conflict to conflict, but to what degree is that a factor? Yeah, I think it's a factor, but even before that, you know, we, as fighter pilots, you get a, you have a threat briefing pretty much every day from your intel. Every fighter squadron has an intelligence officer and department integrated with it. And so you get a threat briefing pretty much every day that keeps you up to speed on what the threats are, you know, with every single country.

And then, so what I would do, I would get that threat briefing from Intel and the morning and then when I took my formation out to go train you know with two ship or four ship of f15 e's uh I would integrate whatever that latest threat was into the actual training we were doing and we would have that be replicated and you know pretend like we were going up against that exact threat so it keeps you kind of you know fresh where you're updated and you're training to the latest threat so then when it's time to go into Iran you're like yeah I've been training against this for a week or two all right hey listen uh and if you could stay right where you are Ryan. We do have to take a quick break. I apologize for that, but we'll be back with more from

Ryan Bodenheimer. You probably know a miss Max Afterburner. Check out his YouTube channel for sure. But we'll be right back with more with Ryan here on the PDB situation report. Stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, whether you're in a one or two income household, if you're a breadwinner, well, you're carrying a lot of responsibility. Of course, you know that. Mortgage payments, tuition bills, everyday bills that don't just disappear should something happen to you or your partner. But thinking about it, thinking about the what-ifs in life, well, that can be overwhelming. Well, I'm here to tell you that taking steps to protect your family financially is now a lot easier than it used to be. It's why I recommend ethos life insurance. That's ETHOS. Ethos is fast. It's easy and it's 100% online. You get a quote

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Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Ebbglis. Before starting Ebbglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about Ebbglis and visit ebglis.com or call 1800 Lilleyrx or 1-800-545-979. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining me once again is former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, Ryan Bodenheimer. You probably know him was Max Afterburner, and you can check it out his YouTube channel. And I think you definitely should be checking out his YouTube channel if you haven't already. Just search up at Max Afterburner USA. It's that simple. Ryan, thank you very much for sticking around. Appreciate it. Hey, thanks, Mike. Thanks for the plug. Really appreciate that. Of course. Hey, you know what? I am a marketing machine. That's what I am.

So, listen, there's a lot of ways to take this conversation that we've been having about the air campaign. One of the questions I did have is, I think people have been, I don't want to use the term impressed. I mean, you know, everyone's got different views on this conflict. But I can't help but be impressed by the coordination between the Israeli and Israeli. and U.S. Air Force teams, right? So talk to me about that. How complex is it when you're in a conflict like this and you're working so closely with a liaison partner

with another nation? Yeah, it definitely can be challenging if you don't do it a lot. But the thing that's really impressive about the Israeli military, U.S. military, is how the communication has been really good for years. And so when you have that, where you have the ability to train together, like we've done quite a bit, and then you have

similar systems. So the F-35I, for example, you know, is very similar to the U.S. F-35 that's flown by the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. There's a few adaptions that Israel does to their own avionics and things like that. But overall, the fighter pilots can kind of talk the same language. The aerial refueling tankers all have the same, you know, connections, just little things like that, just make it easier, right? So you're kind of speaking the same language.

language when it comes to that. And then right now, you know, you're in operation centers where there's an Israeli liaison and a U.S. liaison pretty much in all the different headquarters. So you can de-conflict. It looks like a lot of the deconfliction they did was to have Israel focus on a lot of the targets in the north of Iran. The U.S. is focused on targets in the southern central part of Iran. So again, that's just on the same sheet of music. So so far it looks like the de-confliction has been really good. Yeah, that would seem to be critical, right? I mean, ensuring that target packages are properly to bind it up and there's not that crossover necessarily, unless it's designing that way. Absolutely. And fighter jets, right? So you've got a sky full of, you know, dozens, hundreds of fighter jets at any given time.

And we saw what happened with the friendly fire incident in Kuwait. So the whole goal is to prevent that. And Israel's got a massive amount of jets. US has a massive amount of jets. So it's really important to make sure the aircraft are all talking to each other. They're all synced up on the same. network. And a lot of that comes to the avionics specialist, the maintainers, the people on the ground on both the Israeli and U.S. Air Force to make sure the jets have what's called the right crypto. And that's basically a discriminator of who's friendly and who's not. And you have to change that sometimes every 24 hours, sometimes every 48 hours. So just little things like that could literally mean the difference between life and death. And I think so far, you know, what we've seen is just the professionalism of both sides has made no blue-on-blue incidents happen,

like we saw in Kuwait. Yeah, I don't want to ask you to speculate, but do you have any insight or thoughts on that Kuwait friendly fire incident? Yeah, I mean, very bizarre right off the bat. The only insider info I really have is that it was a legacy F-18. And what that means is it's just the least advanced F-18. The U.S. Navy has pretty much, I think, fully primarily transferred to the F-18 Super Hornet, which is way more advanced avionics, way easier to see what's going on, bigger screens,

bigger interoperability, and that matters. Like, when you're a fighter pilot in the heat of the battle, if you're in an analog setup, which is like the Super Hornet is, it can cause more mistakes. So I don't know the details behind this Kuwaiti pilot, how much training they had. But I will say they're already at a disadvantage. if maybe you're getting communications from a ground-based radar saying there's some hostels in this area, interpreting a radar and a legacy F-18

is going to be tough for even the most advanced fighter pilot when you're in a combat situation with drones and missiles all around you. So I'll say that. I think my opinion is this was an accident. This is a really big mess up, but there will be a full investigation from the U.S. military, Kuwaiti military,

to see what actually happened. But the goal here is, you know, make sure it's not on purpose, make sure that there wasn't some buffoonery, like with loading those types of crypto things I was talking about, that wasn't being done correctly. I mean, that's something you've got to fix right away. Is it just buffoonery, you've got a technical term? It is.

Yeah, we learned that day one of flight school. Well, that's going to be bummer if you walk out and, you know, the only fighter jet left in the parking lot is like a legacy, you know, FAT, you say, like, God. It's like going out in an enterprise lot and all you got left is a, I don't know, I don't want to denigrate any brand of vehicle. So I'll stop talking now. What's been the most impressive thing that you've seen over the course of the initial week or

sell of this campaign? Well, I've seen a lot of the Gulf partners kind of step up, which I think is cool. I know early on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, you know, they were kind of saying, we don't want any part of this. You can't use our bases and things like that. So I think the relationship that's been built from the U.S. military to the Gulf partners, there's a lot to say about how that's been beneficial. Early on, Iran launched two Sioux 24s, which are a Russian attack bombers.

So they look, they're about fighter-sized aircraft, but they're built for bombing. And from all the reports I've seen, they took off from southern Iran, and they went to about 80 feet over the ocean, so really low, trying to make their way to all you D Qatar to drop bombs on, you know, likely U.S. base there, but who knows, we know what they were going to target. So seeing the Qatari F-15s who train a lot with U.S. F-15 pilots, they were scrambled, they launched, and they shot those things down a few miles before they could do any damage. Now, there's Patriot missiles on the shoreline and other things that could help defend against those, but, I mean, it's pretty awesome to see the Gulf State stepping up and saying, oh, okay,

We see Iran's true colors, and now it's clear to the world that they're a terrorist regime. Yeah, I think that's you've highlighted, at least from my perspective, what is one of the most important aspects of this campaign so far, which is the way that the Iranian regime imagined that if they struck out at, now they've attacked, I think it's 13 neighboring Gulf states, Arab states, And their thought process, you would imagine, is that, okay, if we do that, then those states, you know, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar, Ukraine, all of them will pressure the U.S. and Israel to stop the conflict. And it had the opposite effect. It appears, anyway, not necessarily publicly. And you can't, right, they ask, I don't think it'd be nice if they would come out forcefully and say, that's it. That's it. We are, you know, we're united here against this brutal Iranian regime, but I don't think that's a realistic thing to expect. But, you know, behind the scenes off the radar, they have kind of united in a way against the Iranian regime, further isolating the Mullahs and the IRC. I think that's a really important point there.

Absolutely, especially as we see what comes next, right? Like, what do you think? comes next? Well, I think right now I really enjoy the focus that's happening with the air campaign striking, you know, B-2s just last night, striking ballistic missile facilities, underground hardened facilities. So I think continuously taking it to these missile launchers, so you eradicate their ability to launch any of these ballistic missiles. And then the production facilities are now being targeted according to the Admiral of Sancom, Admiral Cooper. So that'll be, I think that's smart. Take away any of their ability. to produce any of this and just prepare the battlefields. So I think, you know, again, the timelines

and the operational plans that I worked with are all classified, but let's just say a broad number. It takes us, you know, two months to completely wipe out all their ballistic missile facilities, launchers. Because again, these launchers are hiding now, right? So they'll pop out, they'll launch, and then they'll go in and just hide in like, you know, like a Dr. Evil-style cave. So they're going to keep doing that. Like, that's what they're going to keep. doing so we got to keep targeting them. Yeah, people of a certain age are really appreciative of the Dr. Evil reference. Younger folks who are, what?

Who's who? Yeah, they are. Younger folks see the Dr. Evil memes. They haven't watched the movie, but I'm pretty sure they know the memes. They should be watching those movies because there were no finer films ever made than the All Powers. Classic, man. And they relate to the Ayatollah. If you think of Austin Powers just, you know, replace them with the Ayatollah, there you go.

Yeah. Or, of course, the, well, no, I was going to South Park movie. And, yeah, never mind. Let's just start wander off that that minefield.

So let's, if I could, I ought to be mindful of time. One last question. There was a lot of talk about, and I don't only get too much in the weeds in terms of, you know, the various aspects of the various aircraft, but we were a lot to talk about the growlers.

How important are those to a conflict like this? Yeah, very important. So a big part of the growlers, what they do is electronic attack. And when you go up against an IAD system, integrated air defense system early on, if you can just electronically scramble the signals with those different radars and keep them from talking to each other, you just break down the network. And what that does is it disconnects the radars from each other because when the radars are teamed up with each other, they give a full picture of, let's say, the southern part of Iran. But if a growler comes in and is able to, you know,

scramble the different electronic communication waves in that radar, then it can't talk to the next one. And then that basically just weakens and isolates and gives more of an ability to fly other jets in without even having to drop any weapons on it. What did you call it silent corridors? Is that what you're in? Yeah, silent corridors, it's a part of that.

So the EA18G would be a part of that. F-22s would be a part of that. And then there's F-16 CJs, which are uniquely suited once they find where these things are. They're uniquely suited to strike them with harm missiles. But their number one mission is to strike any surface-to-air missiles. So the E-A-18-G is a super-capable electronic attack aircraft, but it's kind of, it's a team member that teams up with other aircraft. Well, listen, Brian, really appreciate all your insight. It's terrific having you on again.

Do you have any questions for me by any chance? Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, your background CIA, kind of where my military thoughts go is, all right, so we've got the pointing into the spear now going in, hopefully removing all the infrastructure of the IRGC, which it looks like daily. it's being plinked off, taken away, reduced effectiveness. But we're seeing IRGC members in the streets. You know, I saw it on X yesterday.

They're in the streets with machine guns, just firing machine guns into apartments. You know, they're basically kind of the death throws. They're on their last leg, it seems, or they're desperate. And now we're potentially going to allow Kurds to come in and fight. But what does it look like taking down these IRGC members? They're said to be 100,000 of them. How do you root that out at a country that's relatively advanced infrastructure-wise? Yeah, the problem is it's not the Venezuela situation can't be used as a template for Iran.

You don't have a defined, I mean, there's an opposition, but it's not, there's no history in recent times of a defined opposition, right? it's always been external outside the country. And you're talking about unarmed people, as we've seen from the recent protests, where they slaughtered thousands of them. And so, and the RGC is, you know, essentially not all, but mostly made up of real believers from an ideology standpoint, the Islamic Republic. And they, you know, swallowed that completely.

So you're shifting them off of a position, getting a fracture within that organization. is what's hoped for, and you're looking for people within the IRGC, within the armed forces and other elements to say enough's enough, and maybe we can lead a transition, right? So you get that splintering of those organizations. But, and then from an info perspective, that's what the CIA does well, looking for those openings. They're looking for people that they could use.

And then you get that top cover for the people of Iran. But look, the IRGC's already come out. They were very clear over the past 48 hours, said, you come out in the streets, we'll kill you, meaning the people of Iran. And they've declared that. So you're asking a lot from unarmed Iranian people who've just seen thousands and thousands of their friends or family members slaughtered on the streets. In recent protests, you're asking a lot of them to come out when there is no internal armed opposition. I think that has to happen. You have to get a major splintering within the existing infrastructure in order to give

that ability for the variety of people to rise up. Yeah, that makes sense. So when it comes to, like, let's just say the Kurds, as an operator, you know, CIA operator, how do you know who you can trust and who you can't? Like, which are these factions? Because if you turn loose an even worse faction in Iran, now you might have a worse problem, right? So human dynamics-wise, how do you assess that? I don't know what you're talking about.

We've never seen that. happened before? No. Never. So, yeah, the problem, well, first of all, you know, I think this sounds really cynical, but you never really trust anyone. And I don't, I'm not talking about anyone. I mean, I trust my wife who's the best person I'll ever meet and my kids. And I think you, you have to approach the courage and understanding that there are a number of different factions, right? And, and some that we don't want to get involved with for a variety of reasons.

It's not, the Kurds are not really the answer to any of this. It's interesting and you could cause some chaos up in the Western Frontier area. And I think maybe that's what they're thinking, if they are in fact dealing with some Kurdish factions and possibly arming them. I think they're looking at that. They're not talking about the Kurds coming in and, you know, creating a sweeping change in the regime. that they just don't have that ability.

But it caused some chaos and perhaps pull some resources from Tehran and elsewhere from the Iranian regime to have to deal with it. I wouldn't make much of that, though, frankly. That makes sense. Yeah, I think that's the biggest problem right now, right, is how do you fight against IRGC members that have weapons training? They've got all the weapons. That seems like a tough problem to me.

Yeah, I don't know that we're heading towards, you know, that happy day when you do get, you know, the removal of the models in the RGC and a new government that actually provides a really bright future for the people and also peace and stability for the region. You know, I'm not saying that, you know, it's going to be the end all, and we'll always have peace, but you'll never get shorter midterm piece as long you've got the MOLS in the RGC there. It's not in their game plan. So I don't know that we'll get there. You know, we may find that the best case scenario is, look, we've just defanged them, we've, you know, destroyed all their weapons, to a degree possible.

And, you know, there's maybe we've kicked the can much further down the road than we have in the past, right? And so it will be a problem, but it will be a problem, you know, 50, 20 years, whatever, 25 years from now. That's a possibility. Ryan Bowdenheimer, everybody knows him as Max Afterburner. What I got to tell you, thank you very much for being on the PDB situation. report, man, and everybody should be heading over to YouTube and check out at Max Afterburner USA. Listen, thanks very much, Matt. I hope to see you soon. Thanks, Mike. Great to be here. All right. Well, coming out next, a potential new front in the war with Iran, as Kurdish fighters

along the country's western frontier may soon enter the fight. Some reports say that they already have in small numbers. We'll break it down with Bill Rosio from the Foundation for Defense of Democles. Stay with us. Hey, Mike Baker here. To tell you about a great company out there that every food-loving person should know about, it's called Goldbelly. Have you earned about them?

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Spelled BABB-B-B-E-L-Slas Spotify. Rules and restrictions may apply. History is complicated. The story of human progress is long, messy, and riddled with controversies big and small. On conflicted, we dive headfirst into history's most infamous events and contentious figures. We try to entangle the good from the bad, the fact from the fiction and the monsters from the misunderstood. From boundary-shifting conflicts like the partition of India or the Soviet-Afghan war to enigmatic personalities like the Byzantine Empress Theodora or the depraved Marquis

Assad. There's no shortage of fascinating topics to investigate on conflicted. So if you love history or just enjoy a good story, go and check out conflicted wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. We just talked about the war in the skies over Iran, but now it's time to talk about what may be unfolding on the ground. New reporting suggests the The CIA has been quietly working with Kurdish opposition groups along Iran's western border. The idea appears to be to arm Kurdish fighters and encourages them to engage Iranian security forces inside the country. If that happens, well, a good force Tehran to divert troops away from major cities,

potentially creating space for unrest against the regime, while it's already, of course, under pressure from U.S. and Israeli strikes. But the plan on carries risks. I know you're shocked by that, from Kurdish factional rivalries to concerns from regional players like Turkey. For more on this, we're joined by Bill Rogio. He's the editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Long War Journal and a friend of the show. In quite a sharp dresser too, might I add. Bill, great to see it, man.

Always a pleasure, my friend. Thanks for having me back on in this very interesting times. What, what, is there something going on in the world? Yeah, that's happening. And I'm not sure what, but we'll fit in a night. So let's, there's so much to talk about here, but let's start from this perspective. Do you think that the Trump administration is moving towards putting boots on the ground? I think the Trump administration is very, very hesitant to put boots on the ground.

I really hope they are not considering this. The only type of boots on the ground I would support is, let's say, they needed to occupy some islands off the coast or a small portion to conduct some operations, search and rescue or position. I would not recommend this administration to doots on the ground for an actual, you know, an operation to overthrow the regime or anything like that. Because, frankly, look at our history. look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan, look at how these war, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops at times in both countries. Governments that were supportive of our effort, and we still lost these wars. I mean, Afghanistan, 20 years to turn it back over to the Taliban. Afghanistan or Iraq, I think we shorted ourselves, the Obama administration, that was a 20-plus year plan. But he withdrew and basically that's become an Iranian, say, trappy. So, you know, if this isn't an issue at case,

I never questioned our military's capabilities. It's a question of political will. And we have to keep in mind that both of those wars were launched with significant support. I believe Afghanistan was around the 90% mark of support from the American public and Iraq. I don't know the exact number. I'm positive is over. I don't know what the numbers here in Iran. I haven't looked at the polling. But I can't imagine it's close to 50. That's just a bad starting point. Those wars are, ended, those Iraq and Afghanistan ended badly, you know, with a beginning with popular support. And I will say one more thing, too. I'm very aware that the Trump administration has significant concerns about, so last summer I'm aware that they were very concerned. I won't say how, but I'm aware, but they were very concerned about just bombing Iran last summer with leading to an Iraq's a situation. They did not want to repeat that. And I think that information made it out into the public.

But, yeah, so I can't see them doing this, but I could see them being pushed to do this. This is the problem when you get into operations, mission creep. That's the, you know, everything starts, you know, it's a great idea. We can win an air campaign. You can overthrow the government be the air. And then that doesn't work. And then people start saying, well, maybe we need to do this. And look, history is right with these.

Look at Vietnam. It started with an envisone. assist mission and turned into one of the longest wars. Yeah, I think the mission creep point is a really sound one. But I do think there's two parts to this, right? One is when we talk about that for potential here, I think one of the things that they could prevent that, right, why you would have this hesitancy within the military command structures because a lot of these guys at the mid-level, the senior level, didn't come out of a

the global war on terror experience, right? They came out of that 20-year war that you referenced in Afghanistan. They came out of the extended period of time in Iraq. And so perhaps, now, there's two parts of this, like I said, perhaps they've learned their lesson. The other side of that quote is, I don't think we're very good at learning lessons from even recent history sometimes. And there is a very strong tendency on the part of the human condition to think, well, we can do it better this time, right? We saw it going into Iraq. We saw it going into Afghanistan. Yeah, we understand there were problems. There's been problems going all the way back in Afghanistan. Alexana's like, great, yada, yada, yada, yada. But we can do it better. So I worry about,

I worry about that balance there. But I do think also the White House, but they were very clear early off, right? Not necessarily stating their objectives. That took them, you know, two days, three days to get to the point was okay, let's walk about our objectives, but they were clearly on saying, this could take, you know, four weeks, take five weeks, whatever. They tried to define the fact that this was going to be a short-term operation, even if it did take a matter of weeks rather than days. What can you tell us about the situation with the Kurds? There's been some talk. It's kind of died down a little bit, but there was some talk about, look, the agency, the CIA is out there working with the Kurds possibly trying to arm one or more of the factions. There was some talk

even that hundreds, maybe thousands of Kurds had moved into Iran during the past week as part of an effort to create chaos perhaps. I don't think they're big enough and, you know, I don't think the potential is there, I mean, for them to take over the country. It's not that simple. But tell us what you can about the Kurdish situation. Yeah. You know, First, only issue, what you had mentioned with the administration. I don't worry so much about the military leadership, although I do worry about them some. Look at Admiral Cooper played basketball with especially designated global terrorist in Syria. So what lessons did he learn, did we learn there and basically put Al-Qaeda's head of Syria and not put him in charge, but accepting of that?

So, you know, I look at this and I wonder what lessons, but these decisions are ultimately made politically, right? And I do hope that the Trump, and I do suspect, you know, with J.D. Vance, I think President Trump himself are very, very sensitive to the issue of Goodville Ground, but your issue with the Kurds, your actual question to me. You know, it seems like every problem we have in the Middle East seems to boil down to the Kurds, doesn't it? In Iraq, it's the Kurds. In Syria, it was the Kurds. The Kurds in Iraq that we worked with, I could accept. The Kurds we worked with in Syria. That was the PKK or the Turkistan Workers Party.

And we ironically named them the Syrian Democratic forces. This is a margous. This terrorist organization listed by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization. And we backed them. Bad idea. You didn't, you know, it caused Turkey to have Syrian, look, I'm not going to defend the Turkic government or Erdogan or anything like that. But if you want to sour relations with the Turks,

start working with the PKK. In Iran, this group that is said that this PGA that is said to launch an operation with thousands of troops, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly happened here that we're talking about backing. It's the Ukrainian version of the PKK. It's a subsidiary, basically. Yes, yeah, exactly.

It's an actual subsidiary. It's the Iranian plant. We abandoned our Kurdish. allies after 10 years and they basically got smacked down by outside his branch in Syria. The Kurds want the solution here. They can be a thorn in the side of the Iranian regime. They could operate locally in the northern areas of our land. Sure, that's fine. I just really, P.J.A.K. by the way, is also listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government. If you want to have a ground game in Iran, it needs to be the Iranian people. It needs to be

the Iranian opposition needs to organize and needs to arm. The Kurds are going to do this alone. And organized resistance, which I'm not seeing any evidence or very little evidence of. Yes, they're going to the street. Yes, they're fighting against police and whatnot. But they're not picking up arms because they're very difficult to get in Iran because it is a police state. But look, if groups like the PGAK and Balooch separatists and whatnot, you get weapons, so can the Iranian people. And that's where, if we're going to have regime change, and my position is if you want to ensure that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons,

and it's not going to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles that can threaten us, it's not destroy the missiles and nuclear program that exists on the ground. It's changed this regime. And if you want to change this regime, It needs to be done on the ground, and it needs to be done not by us, not by the U.S. We could support them via air, by providing with covert operations, et cetera, et cetera. We could be a support. You should not put American boots on the ground.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. Look, I think the problem that the Iranian people face is that because I think that we always look at things in very simple terms. And by that, I mean, the West tends to, right? because that's how the media does it, right? We've got a three-minute, you know, segment that we can do here. Let's have a beginning, a middle, and the end. So everything gets simplified. And so the Kurdish situation got simplified.

Oh, the Kurds. We're, we're arming the Kurds. And now they're going to move in and they're going to help take over the country. And you think, well, well, which faction of the Kurds, right? Because, yeah, there's a number of them, as you pointed out, some listed as terrorist organizations, some with definitely competing agendas. You've got the problem of Turkey. and, you know, though they're a NATO member, they've been very clear for, you know, some 40 years about their feelings towards the PKK and any branch of the PKK.

So it's a very complex situation. I think I would argue, and we, I want to talk to you about this on the other side of the break, but I would argue that you can't stand back. You can't stand outside of Iran and think, well, how come the people aren't taking their opportunity now? Look, they tried to take their opportunity. They were slaughtered by the thousands, right? Just recently by the regime, tens of thousands detained. They're not armed. You've got a security apparatus that is very repressive and brittle, as they've proven over years.

So unless you get a significant fracture, I think the way this has to work is you get a significant fracture within the IRGC, the armed forces somehow were able to identify. and maybe those conversations have already been happening, you're able to identify individuals within that infrastructure that are willing to step out and make a change. And if they can do that and they have the credibility with those organizations and there's enough of them and they build up some mass that they do splinter and separate from this regime, then you've got a chance. That would be a scenario that I could see happen. Otherwise, Well, let's talk about what otherwise happens when we get back from this break. Bill, I'm sorry for bearing it on. I'm going to step off my soapbox now. And we're going to be right back with Bill Rosio.

After this quick break, I are on the situation report, so please stick around. Hey, Mike Baker here. Let me take just a moment of your time to talk about security, specifically your online security. And to tell you about Delete Me. It's a great company out there working hard to make people safer online. Delete Me makes it easy, quick and safe to remove your personal data online. at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Look, it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online. You know that. Having your address, your phone number, your family members' information, just hanging out of the Internet, well, that can have actual consequences in the real world and can make you vulnerable

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The new elixir collection, featuring three perfume intense scents, inspired by a unique orchid accord, paired with vanilla, each with its own distinct attitude, each with its own universe, bold elixir, sensual, woody, addictive, magnetic elixir, sweet and romantic like a lingering touch, solar elixir, a radiant expression of joy, ultra-concentrated for amplified impact and lasting power. Find your euphoria. Discover the euphoria elixir collection by Calvin Klein. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. Joining us once again is Bill Rogel, editor of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's Long War Journal. Bill, thank you very much for sticking around. So let's talk about that. Have you seen any indications of fractures or fissures within the regime itself, any sense that there is an ability to highball, elements of the IRGC, the armed forces, and get them to support some change from this current

repressive regime. Well, first, you weren't on a soapbox there. You merely were reading my mind. You were saying exactly what I'm thinking. That certainly has to happen. I do think the Iranian people do need to organize and arm themselves. But one way they can definitely make inroads is to get elements of the military to support them, if not get the entire military. So keep in mind, there's the IRGC or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's basically the Praetorian Guard for the Islamic Mullah regime. They have hundreds of thousands. They have the Navy.

They have an IRGC Air Force. They have IRGC Ground Force. Then there's the CODS forces, which is basically their external operations branch as special forces. They're probably the most ideological driven. There's tens of thousands of them. But Durant also has its own army, its own Air Force, its, you know, and its own Navy. The Iranian people need to be working with them to cleatim.

I have not seen evidence of this happening. But the theory is that U.S. military pressure will hit all elements of the regime, not just the IRVC, but the regular army and Navy and airports, and force them to make a decision, force them to decide. And not certain this could be done in four to six weeks. That's my big concern. I look a lot. I'll use an example.

Saddam Hussein in Gulf War I. Saddam Hussein in Gulf War II, all right? He did not break. His regime did not break. Even with the U.S. invasion, a ground invasion, did not the Iranian, or I'm sorry, the Iraqi military did not discard Saddam in his regime. It stuck, it stuck it out. And I, you know, that was essentially.

an oppression regime, a regime of fear. The Iranian regime, the IRGC, they're believers, they're true believers in the cause, in their Islamic revelation. The Iranian military supposedly not so much, but a lot of what I heard is that elements of it have been become more radicalized over time. But, yeah, so I haven't seen evidence of this happening. The idea is that this military pressure will force these divisions,

I just, I'm concerned that it's not enough. Yeah. Well, we've heard some reports, you know, and again, you never know, until you get something that's verified, actually credible. But there have been some reports that there's been back channel conversations going on on the Intel side, right? So, you know, the agency of CIA, you know, having conversations off the radar with elements of the Iranian intel. tell apparatus and possibly looking for that transition capability, right? Do we have any chance of that happening? Now, President Trump came out and, you know, as said on a handful of occasions, you know,

put down your weapons, you'll have complete immunity, right? But do the right thing. You know, whether that is a strong enough message. but again to your point look I think there was a sense going in that we do this we drop some munitions that people see that and ride is up and it's just discounting how difficult that process would be for those people to do this so what's a scenario are we looking at a situation I don't want to sound cynical, but are we looking at a situation where at the end of all this, whether it's six weeks, whether it's four weeks, whatever it may be, we're looking at basically a reshuffling of

the deck chairs with the regime. We've certainly, you know, killed a number of their leaders and obvious commanders with the IRC and elsewhere, but are we looking at that where we've pulled all their teeth, we've destroyed their ability for the medium term to, you know, produce, manufacture weapons, but essentially that's it. People are still living under that same regime and what we've done is said, okay, we've done enough damage for now. We'll have to deal with this in whatever, 10, 15 years. So first, hold you mentioned the back-to-handle negotiations with elements of intelligence. I just would remind people, keep in mind, the Iranians are really good at stringing us along with negotiations, with pox.

I don't put much stock in that. I just look at how we dealt with the Taliban, how the Taliban fooled us in negotiations. Back in 2011, we thought we were talking to the Taliban's, one of the top Taliban leaders who eventually became the Taliban's Amir. And we were actually talking to some guy who just rook eight subcontents of thousands from us. So I would question, you know, do we know who we're talking to in Iran, right? I've been at this a long time.

I do tend to be cynical. I hope I'm wrong about this. You know, you raise an interesting point. I want to make one more thing. The Iranians, I know they've made significant sacrifices, tens of thousands slaughtered and detained. I hate to say this, and my Iranian friends hate to hear this. But it's not enough, clearly.

They have to fight harder if they want to overthrow this regime. I get the sense. that they're sitting back waiting for us to do the heavy lifting force. Not a perfect analogy, but look at the American Revolution. We fought for years and lost tens of thousands, which if you translate that and those numbers with the population of America was 2 million at the time. I mean, a horrific percentage of casualties of the population. It took years before France came to our support.

And then still we had to spill a lot of blood, not just, not just in soldiers, but in civilians that were killed. You know, if you want to overthrow an oppressive regime, you have to pay a horrible price to do it. I wish that wasn't so, but those are the facts. Now, to you a question, that does factor into this here. You're correct.

If the regime will be a hydrant, we can defang it, but those fangs can grow back. We can chop off heads, those heads, will grow back. And I fear, yes, we could set their program back five years, 10 years, 20 years. But who are you leaving behind? Are these people going to be even more determined and more angry at the West? Do they redouble efforts to conduct terrorist attacks against, you know, using asymmetrical warfare and terrorism throughout the Middle East? They're not, I just, they're Italy, I look at our campaigns against Al-Qaeda for two and a half decades, the Islamic State

for a decade. They rose up in 2014. We've conducted masterful decapitation campaigns and yet these groups process. And do we think that we can decapitate an Iranian regime, which is just as ideologically fervent, which are true believers, as much if not more than al-Qaeda or the Islamic state that have the resources of a regime and hundreds of, not millions of people that are true believers that wield the power of the state. This is where, yeah, I don't think this is cynical cynicism by me. I think this is just reality and I hope I'm wrong about this. Being pragmatic, Bill, I think it's not, again, yeah, between the two of us, I've said this before. It's like, you know, where those two old guys of the Muppets show up in the balcony.

I don't know, right? Just hollering at things and just complaining and saying, is that going to work out? But I think it's, the West has a hard time. And we've seen this over the years, right, decades now that we've been engaged in this, you know, longstanding war on terror. And the West has a hard time understanding the value system of the radical, you know, ideologues.

And so we think about this and we go, well, of course they're going to fold. Of course they're going to look and say, we want something better. We want a better life. Of course we want the bombing to stop and we want to say, okay, what else can we do? Now let's have a stable society where we can, you know, all the yaddy, yaddy. That's not how it works, right? It works for a lot of people, but not for the people that are in charge right now. So I don't know, you know, where this goes, but I really wanted your tag on.

And, you know, the, I guess if you had to game this out, right, if you were going to jump into the polymarket or calcium or whatever those predictive markets are, and you were going to place them at that as a terrible way to enter a conversation, but where would you say this is going to be? Let's give it, let's give it another month. Where are we in a month's time? You know, and I want to reiterate a point you just made, our greatest failure in the war on terror and currently is a failure to understand the ideological fervor of our enemies. They are true believers. They're not pragmatic like we think of pragmatic.

You know, they're not just salesmen, businessmen leveraging for the best possible outcome for them. They believe. Where do I, if I was to put money, I would go with what I'll call the Houthis scenario. Keep in mind last year when the Trump administration launched its war against the Houthis, because they shut down the Red Sea. They created a campaign plan that was supposed to take six months to destroy all woody capability.

President Trump tired of this within a month. He didn't like the results of what was happening because the Houthis were still capable with striking. I mean, the Houthis, who are compared to the Iranians,

have probably 100th of the capability. He cut a deal with them. Right? Now, is Trump going to cut a deal with the Iranians? I don't know, but he can declare that military operations are over, that we succeeded in defining the Iranian regime, and keep them around. That's probably where I would place my bet. I'd like to see what all the options are, but when I gain it all out, I suspect that's what happens. But certainly there is a reality or an alternate universe where the regime does collapse. I mean, but even if their regime collapsed, collapses, I would expect there to be some type of insurgency. So those are the two options that I think I would place my bet first on the with the scenario

and then possibly some type of collapse or power vacuum, maybe in a balkanization of the Iranian state and a civil war. So like neither of those outcomes are all that great for us. You know, the best outcome would be. You know, look, there's a lot of these elements that have caused that's no much trouble over the years, right? They love nothing more than a power vacuum or chaos, right? That's, and we've seen that repeatedly. So, and I think that has been the concern all these years, right?

You can argue, why is every administration kicked a can down the road and, you know, gone through this, this, this, this feckless charade of, you know, nuclear discussions over the years? And it's because of what you're describing, Bill. it's because of this fear of, well, I don't know what's going to happen, right? And history tells us oftentimes that what back fills a change in this sort of situation is not better. It's worse. So that's been the fear. But I'm also of the mind that all we've been doing for administration after administration is putting lipstick on a pig and trying to deal with this repressive brutal regime that has caused so much. death and mayhem and instability.

And you never will get to long-term peace in the region. I completely believe this as long as the Mullahs and the RGC are in charge. But that change has to come, as you correctly pointed out, I believe, from within, right? You need a collapse of the regime internally from within. You need brave enough people or people with enough vision or people who just have enough self-preservation instinct, you know, to say, and maybe their families are hammering on them, say, why don't you affect? Why don't you, you know, do something, right? Maybe that's what happens, and that gives top cover for the Iranian people to have a better life. Bill, I got to tell you,

this is a great conversation, as always, and I hope you do come back and we pick up the phone and call you because I think it's going to be in the near future because I'm going to hold you to that bet on what's going to, this is going to look like at the bottom. month's time. Yeah, we definitely should check up on that. Yeah, look, the Iranian, look, Will, again, I say this all the time. Will's win war. The Iranian people need to find that will to fight against a regime that has will in abundance. And yeah, I would love to come back to you in a month and let's see where we are. Yeah, hopefully it's a happy ending. All right, man, Bill Rocio, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Thank you again for joining us here on the

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