Stephen: Professor Robert Pape, good to see you again. It's been 4 weeks since we sat down and talked about everything that was happening in the war and it's all moved at light speed. You made some predictions then. Many of them have come true already and many of them still unfolding. But I wanted to get you back to talk about what the hell is going on. And I think that's kind of how I started last conversation. But there's so much that's being said and I get the sense that there's a truth that sits underneath there somewhere... My first question to you, professor, is who are you and who are you to speak on this subject matter?

Professor Robert Pape: I am a professor at the University of Chicago. I have been there for 26 years almost 27 years and before that I was a professor who taught for the US Air Force. I taught conventional targeting and I thought I was going to go into the foreign service. I wanted to understand how we lost the Vietnam War and this became the origins of Bombing to Win.

Stephen: When you say air campaigns, for someone that knows nothing about military conflict, what do you mean by air campaigns?

Professor Robert Pape: What I mean with an air campaign is when you have military aircraft who were not just doing a single raid bombing one target one day, but doing a campaign over days, weeks, months... Why is it that when a strong power really gets its act together, it's not careless, it's really thinking hard, it then applies this force, a campaign overtime and comes out a loser.

Stephen: And you modeled for 20 years a war with Iran versus the United States... how did America come out of this situation?

Professor Robert Pape: There was a consistent set of findings you just couldn't ignore, Stephen, which is our bombers would always be able to destroy the target, the industrial facility that was enriching the uranium. The problem always was... you wouldn't be able to destroy the enriched material, the actual gold.

Stephen: So they could bomb these sites where they're making the enriched uranium, but it wouldn't destroy the enriched uranium. It would just put it underneath a bunch of rubble... you're basically just kicking the can down the road.

Professor Robert Pape: That's right... And at the end of last year they did operation midnight hammer where they bombed the sides with these incredible... exactly as we did in class... almost exactly the platforms... every single thing we talked about unfolded just as we had modeled in class.

Professor Robert Pape: My real specialty, Stephen, is the interaction of military action and politics. You're not just hitting an industrial target. The people in the country, the population, the regime, they're reacting to that politically... the political reactions by the population often are overwhelming the tactical military effects.

Professor Robert Pape: We have strengthened Iran... Iran has figured out that we can't beat them... We can see anything that's above ground... But what they've been doing is they have been not just deeply burying their industrial enrichment facilities, they've been deeply burying their arsenals of drones, deeply burying their arsenals of missiles... we can't stop their drone attacks against the ships in the straight of Hormuz. They know it.

Professor Robert Pape: We're at a branch, a fork in the road. There's no way to go back to February 27... either we go through with the ground war or Iran becomes an emerging not right away fourth center of world power.

Stephen: Explain that to me.

Professor Robert Pape: The shipping that goes through the straight of Hormuz, 80 to 90% of it is going right to Asia. The power that comes with that is with say India. India is not siding with the United States... Japan... She's distancing herself from the United States. That's exactly what Iran wants out of America's Asian allies.

Professor Robert Pape: President Trump is not even willing to do much to actually defend our own bases... What he's telling them is you go out there and start defending yourself. Well, that's not a guaranter of security... All of this coalition, it's not all siding with Iran right now. It's fragmenting. And that's weakening America.

Professor Robert Pape: Russia almost immediately offered Iran military targeting information to target US ships... Iran has control now of 20% of the world's oil. Russia has 11%... That means there can be either formal or tacic cooperation to take 30% of the world's oil off the global market. Let China soak up a whole lot of that. And that can truly produce mega economic consequences for America, for Europe.

Stephen: One of them was about Israel's role in this... there are some people that are skeptical that the intelligence is coming from Israel and that therefore that it might not be as accurate...

Professor Robert Pape: I would say Israel has been playing the role of diplomatic spoiler... Donald Trump said he was going to negotiate with a certain set of Iranians and literally the next day... Israeli air power killed them... The public description is that Iran is simply a paper tiger... That has been Prime Minister Netanyahu's language.

Professor Robert Pape: That statement that President Trump said that he will end an entire civilization in one night... this is the most declared statement of genocidal intent we've ever seen from an American president... what President Trump has done by making those statements is he's persuading all 92 million Iranians that he is willing to kill them... President Trump is bonding them together like never before.

Stephen: So, you still think the most plausible probable outcome is that Trump ends up sending ground troops in specifically to do two things... to go and get the uranium... and to defend the straight of Hormuz?

Professor Robert Pape: I still say there's a 70% chance that we're going to start a ground operation... It's because there's a trap... You have 92 million people desperate now for not just getting a nuclear weapon for deterrence, but for payback.

Professor Robert Pape: He is stuck. He's facing several bad options... he's going to become LBJ if he doesn't take a deal soon... It is an unstable balance here between three and four.

Stephen: Thank you, Robin... I am confused about which path is productive and most beneficial to society and humanity.

Professor Robert Pape: And let's hope it's not as much of a trap as I'm painting it. But if it is, then it's really even more important that... we don't mislead ourselves into thinking that this is just temporary.