[Host]: You've been running simulations on a war with Iran.

[Robert Pape]: Yep. Every strategy for 20 years and it's playing out right now. So I can tell you that we are losing control of the situation. Like we don't know where that nuclear material is, but they have the material for 16 nuclear bombs and we've given them every incentive to develop them.

[Host]: Professor Robert Pape might be the single most important credible person we all need to listen to right now. The Supreme Leader that we took out was against nuclear weapons. The new Supreme Leader, and he's way more aggressive.

[Host]: He's advised two decades of presidents in the White House. President Trump is really stuck, but he thrives in chaos and spent 30 years building the curriculum that trains the Air Force for the exact type of war that's taking place now in Iran. And one of the most mind-blowing things I've learned is that there are three stages to this conflict. Unfortunately, Professor Robert Pape, who has two decades of being correct with his predictions, gives a 75% chance that Trump is about to escalate to stage three. In this episode, we're going to explain exactly what this means.

[Host]: Professor Robert P. What the hell is going on in the world? Now, I should ask I should ask first, who are you and what have you spent the last several decades of your life studying and doing and how does that relate to what's happening in the world right now?

[Robert Pape]: We are going through a crisis more very intense right now, but it's a crisis that we have been through before. 20 years ago with the Iraq war. Even before that we saw the bombing of Gaddafi, we saw the reactions there. Now I have been studying military strategy, air power, international terrorism, now terrorism inside the United States and also political violence in the United States. It's not related to particular groups. So I've been studying political violence for 40 years.

[Host]: What is the headline that people need to be aware of when you've looked at 30 years of these types of wars?

[Robert Pape]: That bombs don't just hit targets, they change politics.

[Host]: What does that mean?

[Robert Pape]: That means that before the bombs fall and even as the bombs are falling now, we tend to focus on the tactical success of bombing. We tend to ask, did the bombs hit the targets? And it's with the smart bomb age, it's almost mesmerizing. They hit the target and destroy the target crater build crater dirt crater concrete destroy buildings 90% of the time. The problem is wars are not just about the hardware. They're not just about the military operation of putting a bomb on a target. They're about politics. And when the bombs start to fall, the politics in both the target, the enemy change and the politics in the attacker, the initiator change. And that threshold is the beginning of what I'm calling the escalation trap because you get at stage one tactical success. Often what's missing here is the next consideration which is politics.

[Host]: who have you advised and at what level have you advised them on strategy, war, etc., etc.

[Robert Pape]: So, uh, in the when I finished my PhD, uh, right away we started to fight the first Gulf War, which was an allair power war and I found my work from the 1980s suddenly more relevant than ever. I was in the Washington Post, USA Today, frontline uh, designing the stories because, uh, we didn't have the talking military heads at the time. And then I get a call from the US Air Force and they're asking me to come in and help not just teach but to build the curriculum. Then what happens as time goes on, I end up I end up advising every White House from 2001 to 2024 uh including the first Trump White House.

[Host]: I also heard that you've been running simulations on a war with Iran.

[Robert Pape]: Yep. The last class of every strategy for 20 years. In fact, we did it just last uh uh last um uh May uh just before we started the bombing and 90 minutes. So we the the class goes a whole quarter uh strategy in all kinds of different ways and we ended with the bombing of Iran and what did that mean? That meant we uh look took out the whole target. We have the target set laid out. We have the attack plans. We really go through the bombing of Natans, Ford, uh Esfon there. there's a number of these facilities and so forth. Um, and then we play out and then we look at what's going to happen and what you see right away is 90 plus% those B2s are going to destroy those targets.

[Robert Pape]: these stealthy aircraft that can penetrate the airspace very few risk of small risk of loss and then you see but we don't know where the nuclear material is. The whole point of this is not to destroy a building. It's to get at the 5% 20% 60% enriched uranium. That's the material for bombs. And last May, it was very clear they had the material for 16 bombs. Now, not to... 16 nuclear bombs... One six... nuclear bombs... Yes, nuclear bombs. Not to produce them all in a single week, but over a period of months. And then at after we did that simulation, we didn't know where a single ounce was. And we weren't going to know for months after. So at the end of every I make some predictions. I say what's going to happen? What's going to happen is after about a year, we are going to panic because that material could be dispersed anywhere in Iran, anywhere in that country. And that country, look how big that is compared to the United States.

[Host]: What is the headline that you're trying to send to the world at this moment in time? Like what is it we're missing? Because we're seeing Trump come out and Trump say it's going well. Everything's amazing. We've taken out all their guys. What is what what are we missing?

[Robert Pape]: We're missing that. We're stuck in a trap of our own making. I'll explain what that trap is. But the key consequence of the trap is we're losing control. We are losing control of the situation. And what you were seeing with President Trump is he's trying to regain control. Now the problem is that starting not just a week ago Saturday but starting back in June when we took out Natan's fore we started to lose control and what are we losing control of knowing where that nuclear material is and we now have civilian satellites and you can see them moving things. What would they be moving around the nuclear areas? I wonder you think they're moving the the the the you know what are they moving here? It's most likely going to be that nuclear material cuz they're planned for this war just as we have except they've been preparing for how to be resilient, how to now lash back in increasingly aggressive ways. They are winning the escalation part of the war and that's not an accident. this you can see coming in stages.

[Host]: I'm going to try and summarize this... So earlier last year, last year the United States suspected that Iran were very close to enriching uranium. They're at 60%.

[Robert Pape]: They're at 60 already.

[Host]: If they get to 90%, they have a bomb... And then the United States dropped these big bunker buster bombs. They flew those B2 um airplanes in, dropped these bombs, smashing up the site. And then it felt like it was over. And then we the United States went into negotiations with Iran to try and get some kind of deal done.

[Robert Pape]: to get the material we didn't get. You see, why are we even talking to them? If this is really obliterated the program, why are we bothering to talk to them? What exactly are we talking about here? Do you notice the inconsistency here? So when you say we thought it was over, that's the public. Okay. Now the public need to understand they're very busy people. They're playing for the price of eggs. Okay? So, this is they're not supposed to be able to be up on us.

[Robert Pape]: Yeah. Why would we be talking to them? Why Why are we talking to them? You see, so right from the get-go, and and by the way, all of the um it's the Israelis, uh we have a thing called the Defense Intelligence Agency. Um their reports that were done after the bombing, uh were leaked and they all say the same thing, which is we created holes. We probably shook these underground chambers. We're not sure because we had no eyeballs on that, but we have no idea where that enriched uranium is. And we have good reason to worry they got them out because we actually have a satellite picture that shows two days before we bomb Ford, there's a bunch of trucks moving stuff out. Gee, what do you think you might move out if America's about to bomb your site again? I I don't think they're moving out the popcorn. So, um, and it's pretty this material can be moved in what look like large scuba tank. They call them scuba tanks, but I I I I try to show pictures of this, too. They're they're they're actually like as large as this table. So, you need basically trucks. Trucks like that satellite photography shows they took out. So, so we can't say for sure, but what you see is these are the indications that you worry they've dispersed the material even before we hit the site.

[Host]: and then we attack. The United States attacks in February. February 2026...

[Robert Pape]: Yep. February 2026. February 2028. We start again. This time with regime change. Notice we don't go even after the physical m the nuclear material. We don't know where it is. So for the average person, the average person would think if you take out the supreme leader, then the war is over. Drop the bomb on the person and the war is complete.

[Robert Pape]: Yeah. So let's talk about your your Jenga thing here because what what I find Stephen. So keep in mind I am advising teaching some of the most brilliant minds in the in the country. Now a lot of these smart people though, they don't know that they they've been given like one inch deep briefings, maybe even one sentence briefings. So their image is often like this and it's wrong. This is what they think the regime looks like. And they think that because they've been given b they basically have been consuming probably for years one or two sentences about the structure. They know there's a supreme leader. They might know there's nuclear facilities, missiles command. And so it looks like, oh my goodness gracious, that if you could just simply take out the right node, you would be able to make this whole thing fall down. Okay, but that's the wrong image, Stephen. This is the way smart people think. The problem is this is a false image of most regimes, even the bad ones, and certainly the Iranian regime. Let me just focus on the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime is more like a matrix. It's more it's not brittle the way this is. So you can keep trying to pull things out but with a matrix or uh I think the corporate structures now are built to be adaptive to change because you have so many changes that happen. The structure needs to adapt to change. That is basically the structure of revolutionary regimes going back to before World War I.

[Host]: Okay. I want to ask a dumb question. when they took out the supreme leader in Iran, I who's going to give out the instructions?

[Robert Pape]: The adaptive system adapts and fills in the holes. It fills in the holes usually with what's left. And in this case, the supreme leader that we took out this particular hole, this was the guy who had two fought was they're called these are religious edicts. It's like a people uh edict against nuclear weapons. It's a religious he's the leader of essentially the religion a little bit like the Shia pope and he um is actually issuing religious doctrine and as and that's called a fatwa and as a religious doctrine he issued two that said Iran should not have nuclear weapons. The guy we killed was one of the guard rails against nuclear weapons.

[Robert Pape]: No, no, he's developing the enrichment material. They hadn't been fashioned yet that we know of as nuclear weapons. Okay. So, we're worried about again this enrichment going from 5% to 20%, to 60%. But they hadn't actually taken that next step, which is more of an engineering step to develop the nuclear weapon. Now we took out the person who at the very tippy top was balancing the hawks and doves and he had decided for decades to issue this these fatwas. He did it not just once but twice. His son who took over the new supreme leader no fatwa yet. That fatwa died with this guy. So will the new leader come in? uh it's not clear he's got the religious authority to do anything like what his father did. This is this is a very different world and he's known to be way more aggressive than his father. Uh he's been in charge of the the bosi the uh basically the uh the the police that like to go and kill the protesters. He's been the guy who's who's been very very uh strongly uh supporting if not leading that particular effort. And last night it was announced that he has been appointed as the new leader of the new supreme leader.

[Robert Pape]: That is part of the army. The Iran has a million men in arms. A million. That's is that's as many as we have in our 300 million people. They have 92 million. They have a million in arms. And about 150 or 200,000 of them are what are called the revolutionary guards. These are the most aggressive, the most uh well-trained. Um these are the most dedicated to the regime. The news the son who just we just uh just took over is the prime candidate for that group. So when we took out a link here, it's not just being replaced by another It's being replaced by a very aggressive individual who's backed by some of the most aggressive part of that millionman army. So this is what I was trying to explain in my substacks where when you take out the leader, you may kill the leader, but you get in its place a harder regime, a more resilient regime, a tougher regime that wants to lash back even more aggressively because you killed dad.

[Robert Pape]: You killed dad. And also, if you don't lash back, how does the new leader get his credibility with everybody else? If he's a wimp, why doesn't he get a bullet in the back of the head? You see the new just because he's appointed a new leader, he's still just just like when you're the head of a new uh company like let's say you take over a there's a company that's in shambles and they get rid of their CEO and they bring you on. Okay? Well, you got to have a plan. You see, and if you don't have a plan to turn that thing around pretty soon, you know, Elon Musk had to have the big plan. If you don't have that plan, guess what? You're out. Same here. So you have incentive structure here for not just replacing not just wimpy replacements certainly not pro-American replacements. You have incentives for lashing back against the attacker. Which is why when we tried to kill Gaddafi in 1986, he lashes back and uh takes out Panama Flight 103, killing 271 civilians, 190 Americans. When we try to take out the Malloic regime to degrade it in uh March 99, Malloic lashes back, sending 30,000 ground forces into cleanse, that is get rid of a million civilians in Kosovo. uh this over and over.

[Robert Pape]: Let me just explain. So here we are. It is uh here is of course Iran and imagine it's back in June. So I'm going to start the story in June. This is the beginning of the smart bomb the escalation trap stage one. We hit uh Foro... And what does Iran do here? They lash back. And who are they lashing back against? Israel here... and they send 3,000 Israelis to the hospital, the most since the 73 war. So, a long time. That is stage one. Okay. Now, what happened when in February 28? February 28, they're lashing back a bit against Israel for sure, but now they're at stage two. This is why I published this piece today in foreign affairs about how Iran's winning the escalation war. So it just came out just a few hours before we came on. And what's happening here is called I call it horizontal escalation because what they're doing now is they're using drones mostly a few missiles but mostly drones. This was almost all missiles no drones and they're using their drone capacity which they have a lot of and it's precision. These drones are like precisiong guided weapons. They go right to the target and what they're trying to do is break this coalition.

[Host]: Why Why would they want to break that? Why my friends are escaping Dubai at the moment? And I've got a friend staying in my house in Cape Town because he doesn't want to be...

[Robert Pape]: because they want these countries to kick the Americans out of their country. Okay? Get rid of the uh embassies. Get rid of the bases. If you can then we don't have the platforms to plaster them. You see, these are our basically groundbased aircraft carriers... they are threatening the tourism hitting the economic nodes they're hitting uh hotels uh they're hitting the airports what they are trying to do is by threatening tourism which it varies from 5% to 10% of the GDP of these countries. It's not trivial amounts here. They're basically trying to drive wedges between these countries and America.

[Host]: Now, what what happens if we decide to have one of these limited ground uh uh deployments here? Because after all, we still don't know where this material is. What does that mean?... Cuz I I saw Trump being asked about this on the plane yesterday, and he didn't seem to deny it was going to happen.

[Robert Pape]: It means you try to control a limited amount of space, say the space around Fordo or the the nuclear facility that you bombed in June, and you would send the say 82nd Airborne in to control the space. I see. So 82nd Airborne is is a division that we have that's especially equipped to uh go into hostile area and land and control say airports control space. Think about controlling all the size of LAX.

[Host]: Do you think it's likely that America will put boots on the ground, American soldiers in Iran?

[Robert Pape]: I think it's at least 50/50 if not immediately. So people keep expecting the escalation to be continuous and then when there's a pause uh as there was between June and February, they think, "Oh, it's over. I'm going to go now worry about something else."... But that's not how escalation operates. Escalation can happen have a ratchet effect that has that's spaced out by months of what seems like peace only to come right back and you're stuck in that escalation momentum.

[Robert Pape]: which is exactly what we've seen and for the reason I'm telling you we don't know where that nuclear material is that has been the $64,000 weakness in this entire entire idea of using air power not just in the last 10 days going back to June... 2018, Trump just ripped it up, walked away unilaterally, and from that point on, it's been pedal to the metal by Iran in upgrading that enriched uranium. And that's how you got to that material that would be enough for the 16 bombs. And right now, we don't know where that is.

[Host]: So what happens after stage three?

[Robert Pape]: the retaliation approaches the homeland... if ISIS with its 30 to 40,000 uh remember ISIS was not a state Iran is an actual state with 92 million people so if ISIS can fment commander directed inspired suicide attacks and other attacks in San Bernardino... so why exactly is Iran not if I mean ISIS was a lot weaker than Iran?... Russia in 96 with our help, we played a trick on them. Assassinated the Chchin leader... Then the new guy took over... and he uh launched within three months, not the next week, Operation Jihad... Launches a waves of suicide attacks, massive kidnappings here.

[Host]: really... [globalized]?

[Robert Pape]: you are already seeing it global with the supply chain and you're seeing it with the oil so that's already happening so um what Iran said today... is okay we will allow Gulf States your oil tankers to come through if you kick the Americans out... if you don't, we got drones... Yeah. Well, we can talk about it in like technical terms, but the big thing to say is this is what's going to increase the price of gas at the pump and it's already gone up. When you cut the flow of the oil, it has global effects. It doesn't just affect this little region here. It doesn't just affect China over here. It affects everybody.

[Robert Pape]: Russia we find out is providing targeting intelligence to Iran much the way we provide targeting intelligence to Ukraine to hit uh uh targets in Russia. And what does that mean? That means those drones which are precisiong guided now can more easily find exactly which ship to hit... I think Trump actually when asked said something words to the effect of, "I wouldn't blame them because that's what we do to them."

[Robert Pape]: My assessment here is China uh is probably thrilled that we're on the verge of getting into another quagmire in the Middle East and that they would gladly give up... to suck us in to a another forever war with Iran that would go on for years and years. Oh my goodness gracious. Because they see themselves as growing through Asia and spreading their wings through Asia. And so to get us pinned down in the Middle East with an even bigger problem than we had with Iraq, this is mana from heaven for China.

[Host]: If Trump was listening... what would you say to him?

[Robert Pape]: What I would tell him is take the deal. I would say stop right now and do everything possible to go back to the deal you rejected the day before you started bombing. And what your goal should be is to get as much of the 60% enriched uranium out of the country as possible.

[Robert Pape]: President Trump is on the horns of a dilemma and he has no golden offramp... choice, sometimes called a Hobbesian choice, a Hobsonian choice where you cut your losses, accept political loss now... Or the other is you double down and you go on for more weeks... and you're really now in Lynden Johnson territory.

[Host]: what is the prediction you have for the future that most people do not want to hear?

[Robert Pape]: The most the biggest danger that we face, even bigger than Iran and all the problems we've just talked about, is the normalization of political violence in our own country... the book will explain this is probably the greatest danger that we face because if we are our own worst enemies. Think of what that means for us being that great power.