The Iran War Expert: I Simulated The Iran War for 20 Years. Here’s What Happens Next

You've been running simulations on a war

with Iran.

>> 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.

>> Professor Robert Pap 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.

>> 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.

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world. And uh yeah, let's do this.

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?

>> We are going through a crisis uh more

very intense right now, but it's a

crisis that we have been through before.

um 20 years ago with the Iraq war. Uh

even before that um 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. What is the headline that people

need to be aware of when you've looked

at 30 years of these types of wars?

>> That bombs don't just hit targets, they

change politics.

>> What does that mean?

>> 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. who

have you advised and at what level have

you advised them on strategy, war, etc.,

etc.

>> 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.

>> I also heard that you've been running

simulations on a war with Iran.

>> 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.

>> B2s being the aircraft

>> 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.

could be dispersed anywhere now. And how

many of those are are actually

developing toward a bomb? We will not

know. So what will we do? Regime change.

>> From all of your years in I mean 31

years old you start teaching about air

power and and war in this regard. And

you are 65 now.

>> Yeah. What is the from everything you

know 30 30 plus years studying this

stuff Iran running simulations on Iran

advising the White House being a master

and probably arguably the most informed

person in the United States right now

about air attacks like the one the US

performing on Iran? 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? 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