Professor Pape: Iran Is 'VIETNAM ON STEROIDS'

Joining us again is Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago. He is also the author of The Escalation Trap on Substack, a great substack which we highly recommend and we have a link down in the description. But he's joining us once again to talk specifically about the theory and framework which he has invented and now popularized, the escalation trap, and how many of the current events in Iran fit very specifically into the frameworks and systems he's laid out.

So, sir, first of all, thank you so much for joining us again. It's great to see you.

It's really great to be here again, and thank you for all the explanation here that we're able to give to this audience. I see a hunger for this, and I really appreciate what you're doing.

Of course, and likewise, because we wouldn't be able to do it with somebody like you. So we did actually flag a very interesting segment that former CENTCOM commander, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis actually gave at a recent conference where he warned very much of how you should not confuse targetry with strategy. Let's take a listen to what he said and we'll get your reaction.

A situation where targetry never makes up for a lack of strategy. And by that I mean 15,000 targets have been hit. There have been significant military successes, but they are not matched by strategic outcomes. Now some of the strategic outcomes early on, unconditional surrender, regime change, we're going to dictate who the next supreme leader is. Those were clearly nonsense.

Those were delusional.

Clearly nonsense and delusional. Professor, these are sobering words from the former Secretary of Defense here, Jim Mattis. And how does it fit with the current option set that we have in front of us for what's going to happen next in Iran?

Well, what we are watching now is not a path to peace. It is the escalation trap. Both sides, I believe,, and a more disastrous war. What you're seeing with Secretary Mattis is an indicator. He almost never speaks publicly, and when he speaks, he almost never criticizes his former boss, President Trump. So the fact that he's speaking at all

and criticizing Trump is important. Second thing to note is this framework that I've been offering here, the difference between tactical success and strategic success, I think in part to your program, other programs, the Substack,

this is helping to make sense of what otherwise appears chaotic to so many people, which is how can our bombs hit targets and yet we're getting sucked into what appears to be this wider, longer war, the administration asking for $200 billion more,

how does all that make sense? Well, these simple frameworks that I'm offering, you're seeing it's not just helpful for me, not just for a professor, it's really helpful to make sense of what's otherwise just a confusing situation, and he's using them.

Let me go ahead and get your reaction to this new report that just came out this morning from Barak Ravid, who is very close with U.S. officials and also Israeli officials, usually sort of prints the things that they give to him. And so it says here, Pentagon prepares for massive, quote, final blow of Iran war. The idea here seeming to be another escalate to deescalate idea. They floated four different options.

Number one, invading or blockading Karg Island. Number two, invading Larak Island. That helps Iran solidify its control of the Strait of Hormuz. Number three, seizing a different strategic island named Abu Musa and two smaller islands which lie near the western entrance to the Strait and are controlled by Iran but also claimed by the UAE. And number four, blocking or seizing ships that are exporting Iranian oil on the eastern

side of the Hormuz Strait. They also theorize that there could be some sort of an option to try to go in and seize loose nuclear material, which is something we have heard before as an idea. So what do you make of this report? And also, how does it fit in with the, you know, claims from Trump that oh, we're negotiating with the Iranians

and Netanyahu apparently leaked to his press that oh, we think there's gonna be a ceasefire this weekend.

So what this is is very strong evidence that we're heading towards stage three of the escalation trap that I outlined on the sub stack days before the first bomb fell. So I explained stage one would be bombing, attack the leaders, we would hit target, likely kill leaders. Stage two would be Iran would lash back and they've now lashed back, not just hitting the GCC countries, but taking the straight of foreign moves.

They are more powerful than they were before, both dangerous and powerful. And then I said, this would drive us to stage three. And I said, it would be framed as limited, limited territorial conquest. And that idea of limited,

we should understand what that is, is not anything like a final set of moves. That's the beginning of stage three, which will then become irreversible. The true red line here that makes it really impossible to walk back from is going to be any of those options you just laid out that now they're going through.

And it doesn't really matter which one, because all of them are going to include deaths by our troops, much more than we have. And as those troops die, and we will try to keep this to a minimum, I've taught for the US Air Force, I have confidence we'll try, but as they die, the 35 to 36% of the public supporting this war will harden. They will themselves psychologically double down. This is what I deal with. I deal with action, military action and politics, not just in the enemy

country, but in our own. And this is how you get that hardening because that 36% will say to themselves, quietly or publicly, those 100 or 200 Marines, 80 parachuters died for me. And I don't want their deaths to be wasted. That's how you get the continuous double down. That's how then this becomes really politically

almost impossible to stop. And you end up with likely something like starting with a limited operation that expands to perhaps a three to six month war of attrition. That is where stage three, that's that red line of stage three.

I've been laying this out and you're seeing strong indicators that this is not line of stage three. I've been laying this out, and you're seeing strong indicators that this is not a path to peace. We're heading right to stage three, and stage three is a cliff, and it is not like the other stages. Each of these three stages is a phase level,

not just more attack, phase level of the escalation trap, And this will be the key red line.

Professor, I've been thinking about you so much, especially with those words, final blow. I'm like, oh, I've never heard that before, except in every conflict ever. You have a tweet here, E6, we can put up here on the screen, which is North Vietnam, how they were able to use negotiations to deepen divisions in the US. I'm just wondering if you could lay out the historical parallel of where we are

to that political aspect of our population.

There are so many parallels to the Vietnam War, it's stunning. Pete Higgs says sounds just like Robert McNamara. Where the Pentagon inching up, ratcheting up, moving up the escalation rung, we're just about just one more blow

and we will find the breaking point. That was the famous phrase used in the, with McNamara and the Johnson administration in the Vietnam War, we're gonna get their breaking point. Well, notice this is exactly the same rhetoric,

almost word for word out of the president and Pete Hegsa. And then if you look at what is occurring at each stage of the incremental escalation, which we swore we would never do again, at each stage of the incremental escalation, you have tactical success, we win a tactical outcome,

but we don't get the strategic outcome. The other side is not collapsing, it's in fact hardening, it's doing things to hurt us in really powerful ways. And even worse than the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese never controlled 20% of the world's oil. So this is Vietnam essentially on steroids now, because you have not just the escalation

dynamics of the Vietnam War playing themselves again right in front of our eyes, but the stakes are much bigger than the Vietnam War, and it's because Iran has a grip on the throat of the world's economy. 20% of the world's oil is huge, and what have they been threatening

just in the last 24 hours? They're going to expand that to the Red Sea. They're now saying, and it could be with the Houthis, keep in mind a year ago when President Trump did a one-month could be with the Houthis. Keep in mind a year ago when President Trump did a one month air campaign against the Houthis, he failed.

He's had to give it up and say, oh, can't beat the Houthis, gonna have to go find something else. So this isn't like, we haven't beaten Iran, and the idea that now we're about to beat, we haven't beaten the Houthis yet, And now they are on deck here. So think about this, they're on deck.

That's another five, 7% of the world's oil. This is now, we're not gonna be able to talk down the price of oil much longer at this rate.

Let's put E5 up on the screen, because you're talking about the political dimension of this, which obviously is extremely important. We're already in midterm season. There's all kinds of primaries going on. People are picking their candidates. It is truly right around the corner. And to your point, the war is already very unpopular.

And usually, wars are actually pretty popular when they start. It's only later that they become unpopular. But you can see the opposition number ticking up day by day. At the same time, we talked about this some earlier in the show, President Trump's approval rating is ticking down day by day. There was a new poll that had him out

at a new low of 36% approval rating. So as, you know, if we move into this next stage, you're saying that the support that exists for the war will harden. What about with the rest of the public?

What would that look like? It will fracture even more. So I realize you may not know, but in September I have a big book coming out about American political violence. And my nightmare scenario has been for several years that we would have this trajectory of what's happening in America domestically. And you can already see we had Chicago, Minneapolis, et cetera, et cetera. And a mega international crisis like Iran happened

at exactly the same time. And what you are seeing here is the evidence that this was right to have the fear because that chart you just showed, that's historically unprecedented here. As long as we've been doing polling.

Now we don't know what happened before the 1930s, so we don't have polling going back that, you know, 150 years or 200 years, but nonetheless, if you go back here to when we started polling, we don't see that the American public normally rallies around a president when they use force and has in all these other cases

and air power in particular, there's the promise of quick victory, no cost. So you tend to get even more rally around the flag with air power. That's not happening here. So we're starting already and what what's unfortunately we're heading toward.

And this is, if we go off a cliff internationally, there's an iceberg we're gonna hit as a country in the fall. That's what I'll be talking about then, because I will explain, we're heading to what I call fractured legitimacy,

a new term. So remember, I do the frameworks. call fractured legitimacy, a new term. So remember, I do the frameworks. You're about to get a new framework, I'm sorry to say. And it's the books already coming, they're already being printed, they're already coming out.

It's the new press, so they'll be very glad I'm telling you about this right now. They're waiting for me on the other end of this call. And so I'm just pointing out that unfortunately, this is not just simply another international problem. It's actually the worst international problem.

This will be bigger than Iraq. Could be more costly in American military lives than Iraq. That was 4,400. But it will surely be more costly geopolitically and with the world economy than Iraq. And so what we are heading toward

are these lines crossing in September. And this is really unprecedented for our country, beyond unprecedented. So I'm very concerned about those numbers.

Yeah, just thinking off of the top of my head, like some historical parallel, what are you thinking? October 1917, you know, Russia, like World War I. I mean, I don't wanna go crazy, but like what are you thinking?

No, I'm going to explain, again, you're trying to get me to get the book out, I understand. No, I don't, no, the nightmare scenarios people are talking about, the Civil War scenarios here, they're just not helpful because they're not realistic, the movie, you know, battle after battle, you know. So what we have here right now is you have people that are novelists, you have people following this, they're making money on this. Here you just don't have the escalation framework person

or people who've been focusing on that for 30 years. You have people who say, oh, I can catch that wave. This isn't what this book is about. This is not a Johnny come lately. I've been working on this book for five solid years and that will be clear with all the data. There will be five years of opinion poll data that I've

collected here and we have nobody has that 20 years of now 20 national surveys over five years on the support for political violence in the United States. So again, this isn't just a quick book to kind of catch up to a wave. You will see when the book comes out, this is a complete, this is again, like the escalation trap. What you are seeing is not the product of instant reaction.

You are seeing that there's somebody who's been focusing on these issues for years Iran war 20 years American political violence five years. Well that and then is married to frameworks and you're seeing the frameworks are Valuable and that I will offer even more frameworks down the road, but for this crisis I just want to point out,

we really need to just understand that when we hit that stage three, as we're heading toward, we haven't hit there yet, and I'm doing everything I can to try to pull us back from that. But what that's gonna do to that 36, 39% you showed, is it's likely going to harden it initially.

And see, the bottom did not fall out by the public in the Vietnam War overnight. And it's not a linear thing exactly with casualties, although it does tend to sort of go there. Need to understand that there are people supporting this war and as people die for them, for their position,

they will be sticky, much like there were people very angry when we withdrew from Afghanistan. So you will see a similar dynamic here. Now over time, it will likely come down. But that may not happen for for a period of months, we just need to be aware, that's the stickiness here because we're going to permanent losses

and that's going to have a political role. Now the other 60%, they're going to harden too. So this is what we're facing. It's facing a fracture, but as that fractures, you are still have a president in office, that president controls the use of force.

And so you may well see this doubling down. And I think you're heading toward if we cross into any of those ground scenarios here, no matter who allies, no matter who else comes, you are likely to see this months long war of attrition. And then you haven't seen anything yet with the global economy. The shocks we've seen so far, these have all been mitigated by talking down the price.

That's not going to be possible once we cross phase three.

Wow.

Professor, just last question for you, I think, here as we prepare for the end of the deadline, you're saying that any sort of ground scenario basically enables stage three to begin, that it will probably have an attrition. Is there simply no way, you think, in your framework, or there could be some quote, limited operation?

And they're probably gonna be very efficient? Well, no, because what you would do, like let's just take one of those four scenarios, 82nd Airborne, that's about what you would need a thousand paratroopers to take the airport on Karz Island, then you would try to reinforce that, but it's a thousand.

So let's say you only took the airport on Karz Island, let's say dozens, maybe even a hundred die as they're coming down, because they're being shot at as they're coming down in the parachutes. So you now got the cost but then are you just going to leave them there?

And how are you going to get them back? You see, are you going to fly in C-130s to get them out? Are you going to fly in Ospreys to get them out? What exactly are we going to do once we got them there? Because see, they can, they're the pointy end of the spear, meaning they take the entry point, but they don't hold the entry point. They don't reinforce the

entry point. And after a few days, they're going to run out of food and water. So you really can't, you got to make a decision. So you now have a thousand people and yes, you lost some portion just to get them there in the first 24, 36 hours or so forth. But now they're there and are we going to walk from a thousand people? Because it seems like the Iranians are up for killing every single one. So I think this is really how you then, why that word limited,

I think is really disingenuous. It's not, I do use it, I put in scare quotes because that is how I thought it would be sold to the public. It is how it's being sold. But I think we should be under no illusion that there's an actual equilibrium point.

The only equilibrium point is if the Iranians say, oh, we changed our mind, we're suddenly gonna give up the straight-up four moves, welcome you in with open arms here We're just seeing no sign of that in this regime and the regime just killed 20,000 to 30,000 of its own people to stay in power. Why are they not going to kill?

Americans and every single one they can get well scary stuff. But as always we enjoy talking to you, sir Thank you so much for joining us escalation. Thank you very much for letting us enjoy talking to you, sir. Thank you so much for joining us. Escalation Crap on Subscribe. Thank you very much for letting us explain this

to your great audience, thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Our pleasure.

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