Transcript: “This War Will FAIL” w/ Prof Robert Pape @ TRIGGERnometry

And that’s true in all of my work, really, not just the air power part of my work. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve advised every — when I worked for the Air Force, I got in big debates about bombing strategy to end the Bosnian civil war. And I was very strongly showing the limits of leadership decapitation, which was becoming the Air Force’s favorite way to use precision air power. And the bombing strategy that stopped the Bosnian civil war had no leadership decapitation. It was almost pure hammer and anvil. It’s almost right out of Bombing to Win. And that was my first time of actually having any real contribution, I would say.

And then as time went on, that just continued. From 2001 to 2024, I’ve advised every White House, including two Republican, two Democrat. I don’t pick a president. I advise about the best way to manage these escalation dynamics for the good of the country. And so I hope that gives you some sense of where I’ve come from, why I’m here. And I used to joke I was going to — I’m just still studying for the Foreign Service exam. Pretty sure I’ve aged out of that at this point. So I think I’m sort of stuck as an academic. I love being an academic, by the way. It’s the perfect place for me.

Why Did the Strikes on Iran Happen?

FRANCIS FOSTER: So, Professor, we’ve been really looking forward to this conversation. And there are a lot of people in the UK, America, right around the world who woke up, saw the strikes happening and thought, “Why did this happen? This doesn’t seem to make any sense.” So could you just explain what you think is the American strategy for this war and why they started?

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Yeah. Well, I can also try to explain why these strikes — I couldn’t have saved the date, but why they were almost inevitable that they were going to happen. So I’ve been modeling the bombing of Iran for 20 years. And it’s important to understand that starting in 2002, the relationship between the United States and Iran fundamentally changed. Now, for decades before that, there was political tension. Absolutely. There were issues of Israel. Absolutely. But what happened in 2002 is that’s when we discovered — the American government discovered — that Iran was going to enrich uranium. That became the Natanz issue. And they were getting equipment from Pakistan. So this was 2002. Well, in 2002, these were just holes in the ground. Think of it as giant football fields underneath the ground about 100 feet that were being dug out.

By 2005, they actually had some concrete facilities and they were actually starting to put centrifuges in. That’s when I started to model the bombing of Iran right from the get go, right from the beginning. I do this in my strategy class at the University of Chicago, which I’m about to teach again. I taught last spring and I teach every spring, and the last day is a 90-minute simulation of the bombing of Iran and what’s going to happen. I’ve been doing that for now — it’ll be 21 years.

Also right from the get go, I was very familiar with the idea of double tap attacks. In fact, I think I may be the first person in print to talk about that, in a Sy Hersh article. Sy Hersh was a reporter for the New Yorker, did a lot of pieces for the New Yorker. And he called me up one day because we had talked on other things. And he said, “Bob, I really think that we’re going to use a nuclear weapon to take out Natanz.” And I said, “Sy, I realize you’re always looking for a controversial angle here because that’s what he made his whole living on. But that’s just not what we’re going to do.” And he said, “What do you mean?” I said, “We’re going to do double tap attacks with precision weapons.” He said, “What do you mean? I’m calling the Air Force. Nobody’s talking about this.” And I said, “No, let me explain to you, Sy.”

“So you know that GPS exists and that is how we guide our bombs. What you may not know is GPS is not two dimensional, it’s three dimensional. So even though in history we have never done this, what we’re going to do is — the necessity is going to create the mother of invention. And even though we’ve never done this in history and there may be no plans in the Pentagon to do this — we’re going to do double tap attacks.”

And he said, “What do you mean, Bob?” I said, “We’re going to take 2,000-pound bombs — which we had at the time, called JDAMs — and these create radii of blast where in dirt it’s about 50 feet, in concrete it’s about 25 feet. So just to give you a sense of the radius we’re talking about. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to target Natanz and we’re going to have one bomb hit the first top of Natanz and we’re going to time the second bomb to come in 15 to 30 seconds later. We’re not going to wait to do bomb damage assessment. We’re literally going to plan the double tap and we’re going to estimate how deep the first one went and then we’ll have the second bomb hit just about 25 feet or so deeper. Then we’ll have a third bomb hit and we’re going to get into those centrifuges.”

Well, he published that — it’s either 2004 or thereabouts in the New Yorker. Your listeners can go find it. Well, that is how I started to model the bombing of Iran. So I said we’re going to take these B2s we’ve got, here’s the target set, here’s what we can find. Now as I’m doing this, Iran is developing from Natanz to Fordow, and there’s a whole discussion of that I can give you. And then when Fordow came on, we built the MOAB, which is the 30,000-pounder. So all the way along the way, every year I’m updating.

Now that’s like the details of the actual on-paper plan. But what does it mean in terms of the attack? What’s the strategic reality? So right from the beginning it was always going to be clear that we — the Americans — would be able to attack Natanz and Fordow with 90-plus percent tactical success. Meaning the bombs would hit their targets, we would kill scientists. So I went through all the different targets that we were going to destroy, and we would be able to do that more effectively by far than the Israelis because we could carry in our bombers bigger payloads than they could.

And so what you would end up with is a high degree of tactical success in stage one of the escalation, but very little strategic success. And why is that? Because this tactical success would not destroy, disable, or melt down the enriched uranium that is the actual strategic tool.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Why not?

The Escalation Trap: Stage by Stage

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Because you couldn’t be sure you would ever, you might be able to disrupt the centrifuges. So, just to give you a sense of the way this is set up, let’s just pick Natanz for one here. So Natanz is like a football field — 100 meters by 25 meters across. And you’ve got rows of centrifuges which are about the size of us, maybe a little shorter than us, except there’s thousands of them in these rows.

So when you do the double tap attacks, you are always likely, even if you didn’t quite get to the chamber itself, to cause earthquakes, and that earthquake would always likely be — so this is, having studied bombing for a long time, it’s the blast effect. You see what I mean? So the blast effect itself was very likely to disable maybe 50, 70, maybe even 90% of these centrifuges, in which case you would stop the industrial production, enrichment of the uranium.

But the problem is that you wouldn’t necessarily even cause fires down there. You would just be shaking everything up more or less. Maybe you might cause fires — you wouldn’t really know for sure. I’m not saying that none of it could have been destroyed. What I’m saying is that what you could be sure of is the shaking of the centrifuges. That would be the BDA, the bomb damage assessment from afar, would give us high confidence we had created the earthquakes. You see what I mean?

What you wouldn’t be able to see — and this was always the uncertainty — was what happened to the enriched uranium. Now, I’m not saying for sure none of it would have been damaged. That’s not the problem. The problem coming out of this is that enriched uranium, especially as the quantities grew over time, you would only need portions of that to produce nuclear weapons. You would also need even smaller portions of that for radiological weapons, which I’ll say more about down the road.

So right from the beginning, there was stage one of escalation. In my escalation trap that I published before the war started, I laid out three stages of escalation we were going to go through — and this was days before the war, all three stages. And we’re now about on stage three.

Stage one of the escalation trap was the bombing tactical success. And we’ll go back to June in Fordow and Natanz, where you do destroy the facility as an industrial uranium enrichment production center, just as I’m describing. It’s 90% plus likely that happened. But you wouldn’t know what happened to the uranium itself. And that then would lead to stage two.

And I always said about a year later, two years later — actually it happened about eight months, a little bit sooner. That’s when you’d get the regime change war. There had been regime change called for from Israel. How would you actually get America behind the regime change war? You would start by going after Fordow and Natanz. Once you did that, you started the trap, because you triggered — you did destroy, but you probably triggered, you wouldn’t know for sure, but you probably triggered — dispersal of that material. And we saw some—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: —satellite evidence of that.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: And I have that on my Substack. So we actually have some of that in the civilian world. I can guarantee you there is HUMINT, SIGINT — there’s a lot more.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And in fact, just thinking logically, given the 12-Day War, President Trump said they obliterated everything, destroyed everything. The fact that there is now a follow-up is clear evidence of the fact that President Trump and his team believe that material is still there.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: And President Trump — I cannot get inside his head, I’m not going to put him on the couch — but notice, even after the 12-Day War, what did we do? Right back to negotiating with the Iranians. Now if we had actually destroyed all that enriched uranium — the thousand pounds of 60%, the 10,000 pounds of 5 and 20% — what are we talking to them about? I mean, what is there actually to discuss?

Stage Two: The Regime Change War

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So stage one is the United States hit them.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: There’s no trigger of dispersal possible. And then over the months, your intel — you have no more IAEA, which was your best intelligence. So people think, “Oh, it must be the CIA and Mossad who are the best.” Well, they can turn individuals James Bond style, but there’s nothing like going on site and actually looking right across. And if I’m the IAEA, I want to actually measure the enriched uranium and actually get my measurements out. There’s nothing that’s going to beat that.

So once you bombed, you were number one tactically successful, but you’re strategically at a minimum uncertain — likely failed — and it’s dispersing. And then number three, your intel is terrible, terrible. So that’s going to put you in a situation of overtime panic, because you will get little drips and drabs of additional intel of this and that happening with that material, and we will simply panic. We won’t say we’re panicking because we want to exude control, but we’re losing control here. And that’s what then sucks us into what we said would lead to stage two, which was the regime change war.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So just — I’m asking questions just to make it very extra simple. Your explanations are brilliant, but I always like to clarify things for our audience—

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: —even more so, Konstantin, it’s perfect.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Okay, so what you’re saying is: stage one, they have nuclear facilities and material, you try and take them out, but it was unlikely to fully work. It clearly didn’t work. So stage two is you go — and we know this from some of the things that are being revealed about the negotiations that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff had with the Iranians. The Iranians claim to have the ability to make 11 — 11—

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: They said—

FRANCIS FOSTER: Right.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: They’re talking smack across the table. This is what the Iranians—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And they’re saying, “We’ve got the nuclear material to make a bunch of bombs.”

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And your argument is, well, that’s when everybody basically panics.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: And so I’m saying they were probably incrementally panicking along the way, because that material in June was enough for between 10 and 16 bombs. And that is with a high degree of confidence — that’s the IAEA’s estimate. We know the time to make those bombs and so forth — it’s not a few days. It’s more like finishing the enrichment is a few weeks. That’s when President Trump was talking about the few weeks. But then it’s probably six months after that to actually fashion the bomb. So we have some idea of the actual dimensions.

And so I’m not saying that it’s literally the Foreign Minister of Iran’s comment—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: —but the package of information we’re getting from intel, from the negotiations altogether, that creates a picture.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: It creates a panicky picture because it’s Swiss cheese. Some pieces are hard like this, a lot of it is empty like that. And you are concerned because there’s so much of that material. This isn’t just tiny amounts. It’s not the 300 kg of 5% that was there with the Obama deal. Now we have fantastic amounts more. And so even portions of that can be really, really concerning. And it doesn’t even have to be for a nuclear bomb.

The Radiological Threat

So you’re now seeing the precision drone capabilities of Iran, which I have to say I’m a bit surprised was not taken more seriously ahead of time, because Iran produced 55,000 of those precision drones in 2025 and gave them to Russia. So the idea that you wouldn’t think they would have a lot of thousands here for themselves — and they’ve just given everything to Russia — I think this is kind of foolish.

But put the radiological material on the tip of a drone—

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yes.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Now that’s going into Doha, that’s going into Dubai. Now take some of that material and hand it off to Houthis, Hezbollah. Now you have the possibility of radiological bombs in Tel Aviv. These are radiological — they’re not the same as a nuclear. But if these things happen, you’re going to see evacuations like you have not seen. People have panicked before, but this is probably one of the things that’s becoming very concerning, as this intel spreads.

And I’ve been saying this in assessments for 20 years — that these are the ways that the politics of the situation intersect, not just the mechanics. My work is looking at the mechanics of things as it intersects with politics. And the politics is what’s left out in these discussions of escalation dynamics — and was when I taught for the Air Force as well. Again, pilots in the Air Force, best in the world, putting bombs on target. They’re told, “I want political end state victory.” How do you get there? You’ve got to go through politics. And the politics is what I’m laying out in the escalation trap, stage by stage. I’m discussing the interaction.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Yeah, understood. So stage two is you didn’t get all the nuclear material—

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: You go back for regime change.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And why do you go — why can’t you just keep bombing or try and use intel?

The Regime Change War and Its Strategic Failures

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, you said you’ll do the negotiate. Well, how are you going to get a grip on that material, the nuclear material that is now you’re worried is going to have some nefarious purpose. And I’ve given you a number of them. You only have two choices. One, the Iranian regime will negotiate it away. That’s what happened with the Obama deal. But once we went through the… And I always argued for something, I didn’t know it was the Obama deal, but I was arguing that that would be the best thing we could do even before we had a thing called the Obama deal. And there’s a whole story about the kind of linkages there, that when I was on Obama’s primary team, I was recommending for that. So if you want to, if you’re interested in that. But the point is that the reason you go for regime change, Konstantin, is because you’re desperate and you think, well, okay, the negotiations aren’t giving me a big enough deal. They still want to keep their 3.5 enriched uranium. They’re not giving the whole thing up like they did for Obama.

So what are you left with? You’re left with trying to take out the regime. And it’s not because it’s a great option. It’s not. History will show it’s not. But the fact of the matter is, you’re getting more and more desperate here. And I think that’s really what led to stage two. And that’s what I said. This is how you will get the regime change war by the United States. It will be an air war, and it will also fail. It will fail because in 100 years, air power alone has never toppled a regime. I always went through the modeling of the regime itself. I do this on my Substack. Glad to do it here. There is nothing special about this regime that makes it more or less likely to collapse. In fact, it’s the other way around. And I’m glad to explain all that.

But the fact of the matter is, you’re going down this road. And then the trigger — when would you push the go to go for regime change? Well, in history — this was in 2003 as well, and other cases — America typically goes the hour it has eyeball sighting of the leader it wants to kill. Not a general idea, not a vague idea, but often eyeballs on the target. And then there’s a gap because you have eyeballs on the target. Maybe a sat phone here. Well, it takes about six or eight hours to get those bombers there. F-117s, B-2s, whatever. It’s going to take a little bit of time to get there, no matter how fast you think you can make that happen.

In 2003, this is when CIA Director Tenet ran into the Oval Office with George Bush, somewhere around the 20th or 22nd of March, 2003. And he writes this in his book, so there’s nothing classified here. This has all been made public. And he says to President Bush, “We’ve got Saddam in our sights. He’s at Tarnac Farms. He’s right there. We’ve got our human agent in the basement, and Saddam is going to have dinner there tonight. He was there last night for dinner. He’s coming again for dinner. And we have our agent there with a sat phone and he is telling us this is happening.”

So that’s when George Bush, in March 2003, orders the F-117s to go. They timed it right for the dinner. And also, just so you know, we didn’t tell the human agent, so we left the human agent in the basement and we bombed the farm, destroyed it, and killed the agent as well. And it just so turned out that Saddam just decided not to go there — not for any reason, just the randomness of history, of luck. So that’s why we didn’t kill him at that time.

But this is — and I said the most likely reason that would trigger the regime change, in a very tactical sense, is you’d have some probably human eyeballs on the leader that you want to kill. And I didn’t know it’d be the Supreme Leader, but that makes perfect sense under this. I’m not saying it’s a good idea, but I can see the tactical reasons for this, and I think that’s what happened.

I think what you had is you had this pressure of essentially fear of what was happening with Iran dispersing nuclear material and what could happen with that over time, mixed with this very exquisite intelligence about this day, this hour, this leader, this group is right there. And it’s not one or the other, it’s all of those coming together. And I’m fusing it here for your listeners because I can understand why they’re confused. They’re getting sound bites of six seconds here, six seconds there. This is why I wanted to talk to you, to give a fuller picture of why.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So we are now in the regime change war.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Yep, yep.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What’s next?

Why the Strategy Is Failing

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, the regime change war is failing, and it’s failing strategically, not tactically. Just want to be super clear again. Our smart bombs are hitting their targets 90 plus percent of the time. Our military is hyper professional at making those bombs hit those targets. The military is not failing here. The strategy is failing. We have to be super clear about that.

And why is the strategy failing? It’s because at this stage — stage two — the goals are, number one, topple the regime, meaning positive regime change, where this regime goes away and new leaders come in who are more amenable to what President Trump wants. That’s what I mean by positive regime change. Well, that’s not happening. And it’s not happening because what you’re seeing is the pattern of history over a hundred years. This has never happened — just to be super clear, not rarely. It’s never happened. And that’s what my books show and so forth.

But why not? It’s because when you kill the leaders, as we did here, and as we’ve done before, the replacement leaders — all the incentives are for the replacement leaders to come in more aggressive than before. Some of it’s age, just because they’re younger. It’s like my graduate students are more aggressive than I am. But some of it is just plain organizational.

So just imagine that when you have a situation where there’s a two-actor game — the society versus the regime. Now you bring in this third outside actor, the foreign military power. That’s a Godzilla. This isn’t some little pipsqueak. We’re the Americans. We’re the omnipowerful American military. And on top of that, in 1953 — long time ago, but still historically will be remembered — it was the United States that toppled a democratic leader with the CIA controlling pieces of the Iranian military. It was a military coup that we orchestrated. We didn’t use air power; we literally made the military do it. Well, that’s when we put in the Shah, a dictator, not democratic. And the SAVAK — the SAVAK was the secret police. And the secret police were right up there with Joe Stalin’s secret police. So this is not a nice situation.

So this is what the Godzilla is over here. This changes the politics. And it changes the politics because suddenly, whatever the tensions were here — the gap, which is real — just like 40% of America supports Donald Trump today, there’s a gap between America and our government. Does that mean that if Iran assassinates Trump, and we know they’re trying, that you’re going to get the Democrats here in Times Square, they’re going to come out, they’re going to have a party in Times Square and they’re going to invite the Iranians to come on over for the party? That’s not going to happen. You see the same dynamics here.

So the leaders who are taking over now are much more likely to be hawkish because of the issue here with the —

KONSTANTIN KISIN: — we have to fight Godzilla, you got —

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: — to fight Godzilla, and the Godzilla is going to eat us here if we either fight him now or fight them later. But we got to fight Godzilla.

But even the pro-democracy movement starts to create problems, because now you are a traitor to your country. You’re not getting self-determination. And when President Trump says, “Well, we will pick who will be your leader” — the former Shah’s son — not good enough. Well, that’s probably a good… I’m not saying he would be a good choice. What I’m saying is, notice that it’s the President of the United States who’s picking who the leader of Iran is again. So no matter how we describe this, no matter how much we try to put a velvet glove over this, this is the use of force to dominate Iran’s society. And that is what then takes away self-determination. It shrinks the pro-democracy movements. It builds nationalism, which confuses parts of this — and not instantly. I want to make it clear that politics takes time to work itself out.

Iran’s Lash Back and Horizontal Escalation

So now what is this going to mean in stage two? Lash back. Lash back. So you are likely going to see not just a hardened regime, but a regime that’s still very capable. They’ll take more risks. And that’s what you saw with the horizontal escalation. I published a piece in Foreign Affairs literally days after the bombing. How could I do that? Because I had it ready to go, that this was very likely going to be Iran’s lash back, because they had drones, they have mines, those drones have precision on them. This was always likely coming. Could I be 100% sure? Of course not. That’s why I didn’t publish before.

But once it started and I saw on the Saturday that the Pentagon was saying, “Well, these aren’t serious attacks by Iran. These are just the spasms of the dying body,” that’s when I knew that there was a lot of, I thought, misunderstanding of what the politics and the way this would work itself out.

There are a lot of cases in history that are similar to this. I could explain to you — not with drones, but with the lashing back in an orchestrated way. And I had a sense of what Iran’s capabilities were because again, I’m focused on air power. And Iran had a lot of precision drones they were giving to Russia. Why wouldn’t they use them in their own defense? And this regional escalation strategy is a reasonable lash back for them. That’s a rational approach.

And now we’re coming to the end of stage two here, or starting to move to a new stage, because that horizontal escalation strategy hasn’t just been a retaliation strategy. Iran has gained power with that horizontal escalation strategy. So let me explain that.

Iran as an Oil Hegemon

Before the war, Iran controlled 4% of the world’s oil. Four percent of the world’s oil. Today it controls 20% of the world’s oil. So five times more — that’s a big increase.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: By closing the Strait of Hormuz?

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, by controlling the Strait of Hormuz, yes.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Because they still let Chinese and Indians through, right?

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: They let their oil through, yeah. So just to also be clear, when I say control, there’s actually quite a bit of control. It’s not just damage. It’s controlled damage. Extreme disruption is probably a better phrase. What they’re doing is they are hitting about 20 tankers so far, almost one a day, that are coming from the UAE or Saudi Arabia or some of the other Gulf states. And that has totally scared that traffic, so it’s almost down to zero. But they have had about at least 14 tankers — these are the ones you’re describing — that are flagged by India or China. And these are carrying Iranian oil. Iran is actually exporting slightly more oil now than before the war started. Slightly more. And so now that’s somewhere around 15 million barrels of oil, which is about $1.5 billion at today’s prices. So they are making money on this war. That money is sitting in Chinese banks. That money can be used as collateral for all kinds of bad purposes, and could be used for reconstruction, but also a lot of other things.

So let me also put this in a little more of a historical context. Since the 1970s, the number one goal of America in the Middle East — what was the number one goal of America since the 1970s? Not Israel. Preventing an oil hegemon. What is an oil hegemon? One state controlling all the oil that would come out of the Middle East. For all that time — 50 years — the Soviet Union never became an oil hegemon. We prevented that in different ways. Iraq never became an oil hegemon. That’s why we fought the 1991 war over Kuwait. Iran, up until now, had never been an oil hegemon.

These puddles of oil — there are four puddles of oil here: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. These four puddles of oil have been compartmentalized, essentially. Now they’ve been unified under the control of Iran, who now has a more dangerous regime. And not just an enemy, but an arch enemy of the United States. Say nothing of an arch enemy of Israel, of course, but an arch enemy of the United States. We have caused one of the number one enemies here to now become an oil hegemon.

So think about that for a moment. This is part of — and notice that the trap gets… it’s not just stages of escalation. I call this a trap for a reason. Every stage, it has been harder for President Trump to walk away.

The Escalation Trap: Stage Three and Ground Forces

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Let me ask one more quick question before Francis takes over. I guess the key discussion in relation to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is how permanent or long term this is.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Oh, absolutely.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Before we started I was looking at the Kalshi odds and the Kalshi odds for it being opened by 1st of May are very low. It’s like low 30s I think, as we sit here today. But June, I think July, I think July 1st is like 78% or something.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Yeah, these are all the smart money here and I deal with the smart folks all the time and they make all the smart mistakes. So you just got to understand. I definitely understand. People with 120, 150 IQs are super smart and they go through lots of calculations. Their computers and their brains move very, very quickly and they can make an enormous amount of money really fast. So I got that.

That’s not strategy. Okay, so this is again weaving out a whole lot of different stuff. Stages here. And I don’t do. I don’t have any money in those markets. I’m not playing the money game here because that’s not what I do. I do risk assessment.

Now, you’re quite right, though, about the. But let me just back up one stage here because you’re trying to get to again, this calculation, like you would bet on it. All right, but let’s just back up for a second.

Notice that at stage one and stage two, America is losing control. And we’ve had the illusion of control going through. You see, at each stage, I call it the illusion of precision control. Because the precision weapons, they’re so precise. You can marry that with this hyper precise intelligence. We can do it now on our phones, really, with Signal chat and everything. I mean, we can do this so exquisitely. It’s not just creating tactical success. It creates the illusion of escalation control when it’s actually slipping away.

Now why is it slipping away? It’s because when President Trump does the bombing last June, he, I think for his own political purposes and from what he just said, I think he really did just want to walk away. Okay, but he himself is continuing the negotiations. He knows he can’t walk away because tactical obliteration does not equal strategic stopping of the bomb, of the nuclear material. Just doesn’t. And I suspect he knows that because he said as much as that.

And now we’re at the stage where after the regime change, stage two of the escalation trap. Now Iran is an oil hegemon. So the idea that he’s going to walk away when all this enriched material is now dispersing and all those problems on top of that, now it’s an oil hegemon. And that billion and a half dollars will come in every two weeks. Every two weeks. You see what I mean?

So now you’re getting a bigger and bigger. There won’t be a Godzilla, okay? But they’re going to be bigger than Bambi. Maybe there’ll be a bear versus Godzilla, but it’s there. There won’t be Godzilla. I just want to be super clear, but you’ve changed this. This is now Iran is gaining power here, relative power, that is, that’s the pull here, for President Trump to go to stage three, which is likely coming in the next week or two, not three months from now, but now in the near term, which I called before the war started, the limited territorial option. And what I mean by that is we would take ground forces and they would be limited ground forces, that’s how it will be called. And they will be limited here at first.

Stage Three: The Limited Territorial Option

FRANCIS FOSTER: Sorry to interrupt, professor, when you say limited, what’s the number? What does that mean in terms of.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: No, I do lay all this out and I also did it in a video briefing afterwards on March 8th that your listeners can go find on the Substack. So what we’re talking about are the, if once you know that your opponent has become more powerful and it’s about oil and gas in this transit here, you’re going to try to take that power away. And but your options of air power, if you could do it with air power, this would not even have happened. So you’re going to be forced to go to ground power options. Same with also the nuclear material.

So what is that going to look like? That’s going to look like taking Kharg Island. That’s going to look like taking coastal areas right on the Iranian coast, right on the other side of the UAE here. So if you just, if we had a map, you would see that the Strait of Hormuz is here. That’s kind of a narrow point. Dubai is here, Iran is here. But then there’s the larger part of the Persian Gulf. Well, you are going to want to control this whole, at least big parts of this coast because that’s where a lot of missiles are coming from. Not all, as I’ll explain, but this will make perfect sense to start talking about as we’re doing. And then Kharg is up here.

And it’s because if you’re really going to open these straits in a way that you can have the flow of the UAE, Saudi and all the other Gulf states, not just oil, but food, other things coming through here, you’re going to need a fair bit, a fair bit of control. And these are Marine missions. So we have one Marine division. This is about a Marine division sort of problem here in terms of the size of the territory to control. That’s why we’re moving Marines. So I’m not at all surprised we’re moving the Marines. This is exactly what you would do here. It’s not a, there’s nothing secret or classified about this. This is just if you know about operations, you know that this would happen.

The Iranians, I think, are well prepared for this. And why do I say that? It’s because they hit Azerbaijan on day two. Now why did they hit Azerbaijan when that happened? I didn’t hear anybody on any of the cable channels be able to explain this. Okay, well, once you would look at a map from this perspective, which is assume that if you’re Iran, you’re studying this for 20 years, you’re planning that if they do regime change, we’re going to do something like this, we’re going to become an oil hegemon. Okay. What is the next move in the chess game? It’s the ground. Where would you stage the ground from? Well, you’re going to have to come on the sea. Azerbaijan is a great staging place. It’s a great staging place.

And once I saw that they hit Azerbaijan here as a brush back pitch, that told me they were right on it. That told me they are studying this appropriately. It’s like people studying old chess games for 20 years. They’re going down the natural routes because they’re persuading. They’re telling Azerbaijan, “Don’t even think about letting American ground forces use you as an aircraft carrier as a staging area here in Azerbaijan.” Got the message? Yes, sir. Iran? No, we’re not doing that. Okay, we got the message and so far that’s been the way it is.

So you start to see right away that the stage three of these limited territorial conquests here, these options lead to military control routes that start to become pretty predictable. And that is what we’re facing right now. So we’re now at the cusp of moving into stage three.

And as we move into stage three, this will be another sort of shock to the public and to the world because ground force, oh my goodness gracious. You know, this was the one thing that President Trump was never supposed to have done. And of course we’ve just come out of these forever wars and there’s still more issues with ground forces I’ll describe. But in this situation, the amphibious assaults that we’re talking about, these are some of the most dangerous military operations ever here. And the fact we’re a Godzilla, this big, huge. We’re still talking about exposure here.

So what I am explaining, I just did a Substack last night on this where I’m trying to explain that we’re about to transition from disruption costs that are temporary, relatively quickly you can reverse them, to damage costs which are much more difficult to reverse. And that’s what this stage three is really about. It’s not just military operations. We’re moving to a different equilibrium of the escalation. This is a whole threshold we’re crossing and it’s a threshold of the type and length of the costs that we’re talking about.

The Political Cost for Trump

FRANCIS FOSTER: So, professor, saying all that, I mean, what you’re saying in layman’s terms is effectively, boots on the ground are inevitable and 75%.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: I’ve said this before, there’s nothing mechanistic, Francis, just so you know, and I know people when I. And I’m talking very, very directly as much as I can. And so it’s fair for people to say, “Oh, Professor Pape’s being just too mechanistic about the world.” I do want to qualify even myself, and say, I’m not saying anything is 100% inevitable, of course, but what you’re seeing is the trap, and it’s 75% likely. That’s the way I would.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Well, the Marines are already on the way to the Middle East.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Oh, yeah. They’re halfway there, and they should be there, you know, sort of end of next week. So this is a Friday here, the 20th. I would expect by the 27th they’ll be there. They might need a few more days. We don’t know exactly here, but we’re not far from the cusp of a decision point by the president at this point.

He’s planning, putting pieces in place again after being in sort of West Wings here, four different administrations. I don’t believe presidents really commit in advance. I believe what they do is they bring pieces together, and then only at the very last second do they actually know what they’re going to do. Okay. Because I think this is just the way presidents are. I don’t think it’s just Donald Trump. And I think he is coming to a point, a pretty clear point of decision, called a D-Day here. And I don’t know when that’ll be exactly, but it’s going to be in the next week or two.

FRANCIS FOSTER: But that’s going to be a political catastrophe for Trump, isn’t it? Because he ran on a platform of there’s going to be no more wars, there’s going to be no more forever wars. I’m not going to get involved. I’m not going to sacrifice any more American lives in the Middle East. Well, if he does that, he’s going back against every one of his promises, and that means that he will potentially not only alienate voters, but also the base itself.

The Horns of a Dilemma: Trump’s Two Terrible Choices

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Yeah. So he is on the horns of a dilemma, Francis, where there is no golden off ramp here. The idea of the golden off ramp here — that’s long past. So what President Trump is really facing is two terrible choices, and he’s going to have to choose between them. They’re terrible for the world, they’re terrible for his presidency. So these are not like one is good for the world — and I would argue one is better — but they’re not golden.

The one that you’re describing is he goes forward and crosses the threshold of phase three, and you’re explaining this — what people will be talking about next week — there will be a 4 and 5 to the escalation trap. I have not even put on the Substack yet that I’ll be talking about on my next live briefing on Sunday. So there’s more coming here. We’re not done with the stages of the escalation trap.

But you’re right, he is going to be creating an enormous political liability for himself right now. You know that Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, others — he’s just had the first recognition from his administration, at a very high level, breaking away from this. These are pro-Trump people. These are people who campaigned for President Trump. And so you’re seeing this fracture here.

But he’s got another problem on the other side. And I think this is why he’s going back and forth, which is if he doesn’t go forward, then Iran is going to be an oil hegemon — 20% of the world’s oil — it’s going to keep it. So it’s not as if President Trump has an out where, okay, Iran, I’m going to declare victory. And now I’m going to pull all my forces out. I’m going to cancel the Marine Amphibious. I’m going to send that back to Japan. I’m going to take the aircraft carriers, put them back over to Venezuela. I’m going to do Cuba — okay, so I’m going to go get myself pinned down in Cuba.

And so let’s say he does that option, which I think he’s been thinking over — Iran is not going to look at that and simply say, “Here’s your oil back, UAE. Here’s your oil back.” The Supreme Leader’s statement has been quite clear. It’s — I grade people every year, and I did this in the Air Force as well — Air Force officers on their coercive strategies, the logic and quality of their coercive strategy. The leader’s statement is a B plus, A minus. Okay, it’s not perfect. But this is not a C student. And I’m not saying he wrote it either, okay? But I’ve seen C students — this is not a C student. They really understand the pressure points here and how they’re using them. And I’m glad that I can unpack that for you.

But what I’m trying to tell you is there is no sign that if President Trump picks up the armada and says, “I’m just going to now get bogged down in a different war over here with Cuba,” that Iran’s going to say, “Oh man, glad that’s over. Here’s all the oil back.” I don’t think that’s happening here.

And so you’re going to have a situation where these are the two choices he’s facing. And Iran will start to make real geopolitical hay out of this. The oil hegemon — it’s only been a few weeks that they’ve had this control. We’re not seeing yet how this is going to play out with China, India, Russia, other Gulf states. This has the potential to fracture the GCC coalition that Trump and Jared Kushner have been spending years to build with the Abraham Accords against Iran.

I’m not saying that they will all fracture all at once, but you just saw the first fracturing in President Trump’s orbit in Washington. So what I’m expecting is these multiple different Gulf states are going to start to go their own way — they’re going to have slightly different interests here. And also Iran has been very, very smart in that what they’re effectively doing with their propaganda — and this can be turned up many notches — is they’re telling the GCC, and not just the leaders but the publics, “This is all a war for Israel.” And what it means to be a war for Israel is Israel’s conquest of you.

So you’ve got to sit back for a second, and people are going to start scratching their heads and saying, “Why exactly am I paying costs here to help Israel take me later?” This is what Iran has seen, and that’s why I say it’s a B plus, A minus in terms of the coercive strategy. It’s not perfect, but it’s a pretty strong approach. And there’s no reason to think they’re just going to give up 20% of the world’s oil because there’s real geopolitical hay.

Qatar, the GCC, and the Fracturing Coalition

FRANCIS FOSTER: But if you take your point about Israel and the propaganda — we look at what happened to Qatar, the gas field of Ras Laffan, which produces around 15 to 20% of the liquid natural gas that the globe needs in order to continue functioning. That got bombed and effectively shut down for between three to five years. And Qatar are furious. I mean, they’re not going to be pro-Iran at this point.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, let’s talk about this. So first of all, that was in retaliation for Israel, right? And what happened here — the Qataris said in their statement exactly: “We’re mad. But just so you know, everybody, we’re not getting in this fight. We’re going to stay diplomatic.” So they reinforced neutrality here as a result of this. Even President Trump said he’s not happy with what Israel did.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And Bibi promised not to do it anymore.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, yeah — I don’t think anybody’s counting on that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What I’m trying to get at is your point, which is this was retaliation for Israel striking Iran’s gas facilities, which even President Trump didn’t want to happen.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: That’s right. And so that means President Trump can’t end this war on his own. He can pull out on his own, yeah, but that’s not going to end the war — because it’s not going to end Israel’s attacks, it’s not going to end Russia’s intelligence to Iran, and it’s not going to end Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz and therefore 20% of the world’s oil.

So what you have is a situation where President Trump is on the horns of a real dilemma, because it’s lose here, lose there. And so it’s a matter not of where there is a gain versus a loss. It’s a matter of assessing which loss you want. It’s pick your poison. Which loss do you want to take?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And just to be clear, Bob — option one, which you’ve described in quite a bit of detail, is you pull out now, you leave Iran with control of the Straits of Hormuz, you leave the current regime in place, you still haven’t got control of the nuclear material, and that doesn’t seem like a win.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, it’s actually hugely risky. Of course, there’s all kinds of risks related to that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: The other option is what we started talking about, which is you put Marines on Karg Island, you put Marines on the coast of the Persian Gulf to try and control it. Can that work?

The Military Calculus: Amphibious Operations and the Cost of Exposure

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: That’s what I was talking about earlier, Konstantin, about shifting from disruptive costs that we’re paying to damaging costs that are not reversible. You’re going to take the amphibious operations — this is Saving Private Ryan. So let’s talk about that military dimension.

The principle here — because I know you have a very smart audience — is exposure. That’s the key thing. The attacker, in order to take ground, always has to get up and expose themselves over the ground they want to take. The defender can be in foxholes, behind things, camouflaged, and so forth. That’s why the defender always has a 3 to 1 advantage at the tactical level. It has to do with this issue of exposure.

Well, that issue of exposure is at its maximum in amphibious operations because there’s no cover on the water. And you’ve got Russian intelligence kind of even exacerbating that. And then when you get up to the territory — as some of the shows I’ve been on have shown — the cliffs, the actual terrain, this is some of the most difficult terrain to try to control. You’ve got mountains, you’ve got stretches of beach. For the defender, there’s all kinds of crevices and crannies. But for the attacker — the side that has to actually take the territory — the exposure is at its maximum.

We will absolutely have the best professionals in the world working this problem. I spoke to the Army War College about a week before this kicked off. I have military officers coming in for their PhDs under me. I really have nothing but the greatest respect for our military — they’re really quite good at what they do.

That said, there’s only so many ways you can approach Karg Island. And that will have been assessed not just by the US military for decades, but by the Iranian military. They will know their terrain better than anybody else. As much as we think we will be able to assess their terrain, they will know their terrain. So if there’s a possibility — I’m not saying there is — for surprises here, we will have some tricks up our sleeve. They may have tricks up their sleeve. But overall it’s about the length of time of exposure.

The longer the time of exposure, the transit time to go from the Strait of Hormuz up to Karg is going to be somewhere between a dozen and 20 hours for the amphibious. And they’re big hunks of metal. The most easy targets to find are big hunks of metal in open water. So they’re going to be exposed for long periods of time. You will do everything possible to defend them, without a doubt, but that’s a lot of time.

And then when they get there, there’s going to be hours to get on and actually control before they can get undercover. So if you watch the opening of Saving Private Ryan, it’s very similar — you’ve got to cross the open area and be exposed. Then when you get on the other side, you can go pillbox to pillbox and you’ve got some cover. So it’s not as if you can’t.

I’m fully expecting we’re going to win. I’m not saying we won’t take the ground. It’s really a matter of the cost. And I can’t give you a number. We haven’t done any amphibious landing like this in so long, up against really this kind of a determined enemy. It’s going to be very difficult to put numbers on this. I think this will be hard for General Caine, our Joint Chiefs. He will be asked by President Trump how many are going to die. And I think it’s going to be hard for him — not because he’s going to be dovish or not want to give the numbers. It’s just going to be hard because he’s going to have to go back to when we did this in World War II. I mean, where are you going to go to find the good, actual deep analysis of this?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: And part of the calculus, I imagine, in any president’s mind at this point is what happens afterwards — at least I hope it is — which is we will take hundreds of Marines as casualties, God forbid. Now what?

The Escalation Trap: Economic Warfare and Political Fallout

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, and then let me say the next piece. So we’ve only focused on the military casualty piece as this is happening. From Iran’s perspective, this is now a much bigger threat to actually achieve. Now we’re bringing ground forces in. So remember, I’ve said air power alone has never toppled a regime — that’s over 100 years. Sometimes you put ground forces in and you can do that. Okay? So Iran’s going to know that, and they’re going to — even if they don’t know it, they’re certainly going to feel it right away.

So once this even starts, even though it’ll be described as limited — they’re not going to Tehran, we’ll say all that, I’m sure — that’s not how the other side’s going to see this. They’re going to see this as the beachhead like Normandy to the end of Germany. Even though that was 10 months later, so did the Germans. Everybody understood that even though there’s a lot of miles to cover, once you get the Americans — especially the Americans and the British — onshore, Germany is in real trouble. Same here with Iran.

So what’s going to happen is they’re likely to be very willing to destroy the oil infrastructure in response, just to be very blunt. Why would they destroy the oil infrastructure? It’s because they’re going to want to impose long-term damage, and they’re not going to be concerned that they would want to use it for themselves, because for them they may be dead — as a regime — in six months. So they’re not even probably worrying about that.

Once you go down this road, you are increasing pressure on the regime. Chances are you may actually topple it, not in a day, but over time. And also then more risky strategies by them, which will have costs on us. There’ll be damaging costs, because when you destroy the infrastructure, these are special-made pipelines and rigs.

In the 90s, where I really got into this, was when I was teaching for the Air Force. The leadership decapitation crowd in the Air Force — who were my bosses, literally my bosses, the actual architects of all of this — so I know all their arguments really, really well. They really liked the idea of electric power targeting. So they brought in people from the electric power industry to teach us how to take down electric power plants and grids and so forth. And nothing classified — this was not a secret briefing or anything. I had students who wrote master’s theses on how to destroy electric power plants that are still available, that you could still see.

The big thing I learned is that in an electric power grid, you can take out the transformers, which are like the fuse boxes in your house. That knocks out — it causes a brownout, like when you overload the system, when there’s too much — it’s too hot and there are too many air conditioners. And that is a problem for a week or two because you can fix the fuses. But if you go after the actual infrastructure, which is the generating halls, and you destroy the generator halls, they’re out for a minimum of six months, maybe a year, because those larger pieces of equipment are the actual infrastructure.

This would be the equivalent of the transmission pipelines going from the land to the tankers and things like that. These are special design — there’s not bunches of them laying around. So when you start to destroy that, and that’s what’s happening in Qatar. What happened in Qatar is they didn’t just hit a little LNG facility — they went after some of the infrastructure. And this is again moving up the escalation ladder to damage. That’s why the Qataris are mad, because that is out for a minimum of a month, maybe three months. And that assumes they’re even going to fix it, because if they fix it, Iran could do it again.

So you’ve got a situation where the damage here is not reversible, like the shipping could be reversed — because Iran will simply say, “Ah, you can pass.” Once you start destroying the actual big pieces of the infrastructure, this is months. And that starts to dovetail with what the economists are now telling us in the newspaper, which is you don’t have to worry about the price of oil until it stays that way for a month or two. Then you’ll get a recession. And everybody says, “Oh, that’s so comforting, because we know it could go right back down.” Not if you destroy the infrastructure. Once the infrastructure is taken out, now you’re in that months-long period.

I can’t give you a more precise estimate because I don’t know exactly what the damage will be. But I’m trying to lay out the principles here. You just need to have spent 30 years figuring out how to take down economies and what that looks like for real. And this is what this looks like here.

This is also, by the way, not something that you do when you’re a pilot in the Air Force. You don’t spend five or six years studying the enemy oil and gas grid and so forth. What happens is once you get into the crisis, you bring in people to give you advice and you try to do your best by staying up and pulling all-nighters. I’ve spent long periods of time thinking about how air power and other military instruments actually interact with economies. And this is what I’m trying to explain — we’re about to move from what I call disruption to lasting damage. And that is going to put us in the OPEC ’73 territory.

So that’s why you see me really, really gearing up, coming on your show. Why am I spending 18, 19 hours a day doing this? I’m extremely concerned, because as much as this has been dangerous so far, we’re going to cross the next threshold, which will be much more difficult. I’m worried. And so I’m going to do everything I can to explain that, because crossing this threshold I think is going to lead to the beginning of truly lasting, irreversible — over several months at quickest — cost. Not just a day or two where Iran will simply decide, “Oh sure, your ships can pass.”

Economic Warfare and Its Political Consequences

FRANCIS FOSTER: Because what you’re essentially talking about is economic warfare, and then the knock-on effect of that is that it’s going to affect not only economies — it’s going to also affect politics right the way through the West. It’s going to change how people vote. It’s going to change how people see particular leaders, how people see the right, the left.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Now you see why the Europeans don’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole. Because as these costs start to accumulate in this way, if they’re part of the coalition causing it, they then face being toppled by their own people. Because if this goes down this trajectory, those costs are going to be like the biodynamics where we had 9% inflation — that’s going to be nothing.

And the ground war is not just something that you can do and then take back. What you’re doing is you are sending the most credible signal that you intend to use ground forces to topple this regime. You can say all you want that you’re never going to do that. If you’re on the other side and it’s your survival that’s at stake, you don’t believe this. Just like when we laughed about Netanyahu promising not to bomb. So you’re really going to take President Trump at his word that he would never think about using ground forces? No, you’re not going to do that.

You are going to see that what’s coming at you is not just one hand of the gorilla — which was the air power — but now it’s the other hand and both legs of the gorilla starting to get involved. Again: D-Day, Saving Private Ryan, Normandy — June 1944 leads to May 1945.

Israel’s International Reputation and the Blame Game

FRANCIS FOSTER: And it’s also not only going to affect the reputations of certain politicians at home — this is really going to damage Israel’s international reputation, because there are a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum who are looking at Israel and going, “You started it. This is your fault.” Do you agree with that?

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: I think the blame game has already started. Because when a victory has a thousand fathers, defeat is an orphan. Well, that’s what you’re seeing here. So everybody’s starting to try to tack to what they should, because they’re seeing which direction this is going.

And who are you going to blame? I don’t think you can easily blame the US military. There may be some people that try to do that, but I don’t see how you blame them. They’ve been tactically superb through this. They’ve saluted when the President has said jump, and said, “Yes, sir.” So I don’t see how you blame the military. I don’t see how you blame the Democrats here — they have no power, and they were blindsided by this whole thing. So I don’t see how you say they are the ones who wrecked the whole thing.

So I think it’s going to basically start to come down to Israel and President Trump and the Republicans. There’s always been this division inside of MAGA — about half against foreign wars and the other half more on the other side. And you saw that with Ukraine. Well, this is the same thing. It’s the same split within MAGA. MAGA’s holding together at the moment in the opinion polls only because they’re supporting Trump. But as this unfolds and as you get into the midterms in the summer, the way I say this is that I think Trump is going to start to have an LBJ problem.

Trump’s LBJ Problem and the Midterm Consequences

So if he crosses this Rubicon and goes down this road, I see this stage going on for quite some time. And I think that’s why the $200 billion request is coming through — they want to put that request through now. Because if you cross this Rubicon — I’m not saying he’s going to do it, but I think it’s 75% likely — you’re going to need to spend $200 billion and more. This is going to be very expensive.

This war is going to go on. And as that war goes on, this is where the real problems are for the senators and House members when they run for reelection in the midterms. You already had a situation before this where there was likely a modest blue wave coming, where the Democrats would win the House and maybe a few seats in the Senate — not quite clear they would take the Senate. In this situation, you could see a much bigger blue wave coming.

And why would those House members and senators want to just go home? I don’t think they’re going to. I don’t know what they will each make of it. Just like the Gulf states, this will fracture the coalition of MAGA, and it won’t necessarily be a clean division. It’ll be more like what I’m describing. When coalitions fracture, typically what happens is the actors that are part of it start to go their own way. It’s not clear that it’ll all break in one way. I’m not saying they’ll all break against Trump either. It’s going to be probably seat by seat, state by state, but it’s not going to be the unified situation it is today. It’s going to be a more fractured situation.

So those are the real political costs that are coming. And I would say by June 1st — now we’re going through the primaries, and we haven’t crossed the Rubicon yet of stage three. But as that were to unfold, I would say it won’t take long. You won’t have to wait till August for this.

The Tet Offensive Parallel: How Political Strategy Defeats Military Power

This will LBJ. When the bottom fell out of LBJ’s presidency, it was March 1968. We’re very much in a similar escalation trap here, where LBJ had been promising that just one more rung up the escalation ladder would get them out of the escalation trap. Everybody realized by the end of ’67 that we were in an escalation problem, because the VC were getting stronger and stronger and taking territory — actually literally taking territory.

And then what happened is he kept promising it, and there was a spectacular event called the Tet Offensive. The Tet Offensive was at the end of January 1968. What the VC did is, over a period of just a few days, they did a parallel attack across multiple different fronts at the same time, multiple different of our bases at the same time. And they lost each and every one of the individual battles. 25,000 of them died apparently in just that week or so of the offensive.

This led to the political bottom falling out of the Vietnam War. As I’ve often said, we lost — we won every battle in the Vietnam War, including in the Tet Offensive. We lost the war because what they did was a political strategy similar to the horizontal escalation strategy that Iran is doing. This is a strategy where the end point is political fracture, not gaining territory. And the political fracture is the soft underbelly of America. That’s how our enemies beat us.

Remember, I said I wanted to know how we lost the Vietnam War. It was because we didn’t understand the politics of the situation. We didn’t understand how militaries and politics fit together. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 30-some years.

The Price of a Deal: Pressure on Israel and the NPT

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So coming back to the military side of it, I get the sense that — but you certainly feel that even though it’s a terrible option, pulling out and not continuing the escalation would be the right.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, it’s fair, but I want to pose a third, at least a variant of that, which is — so I think once you see these terrible choices here, then you’re quite right, Konstantin, that you’re going to want to take your losses now because you might be able to recover your presidency. If you wait, then you’re in Lyndon Johnson where it’s unrecoverable. Your presidency is just gone. You’re a lame duck with two years to go. So you’re right. This is where I would advise the West Wing here.

But what I would say is that the price you’re going to have to pay, the politics price here — it’s not enough to just pull out, because then you’re leaving this behind. If you really want to take option one, you’re going to have to cut a deal with Iran. You’re going to have to go back and you’re going to have to cut a deal with Iran.

Now, before the bombing started, here’s what the deal looked like at 3:15 Eastern Time in the Oval Office with Witkoff and Kushner. And we know this because this is exactly what they said, which is that Iran will not give up its enrichment. It wants to keep its 3.5% and it’s promising to meld together the 60 and 20% to 3.5. And President Trump said, “Just not good enough.”

Well, in order to cut a deal now with Iran, you’re going to have to accept that right away. Okay, so that’s number one. Number two, you’re going to have to probably accept the oil sanctions coming off. And given the price of oil is going up, notice that Bessant is already talking about doing that. Okay, so they’re already doing that. That issue is already on the table.

But number three, there’s a very good chance that Iran will not reopen the straits here on a consensual basis — will not reopen the straits unless there’s pressure put on Israel, because Israel is that bombing card. Israel has been — remember, the 12 Day War wasn’t started by the United States bombing Fordow. That happened in the middle. It was started by Israel. This war, the tactical intelligence for killing the Supreme Leader and the bombs that killed the Supreme Leader were Israeli. So we need to understand that.

I don’t think we’re in a situation anymore where you’re going to get a deal here without pressure on Israel. To be very specific, I think the most likely thing is that Trump would have to force Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Right now what Israel wants is Iran to have no nuclear weapons and to have all this on-site inspection. Well, Israel has all these nuclear weapons and no on-site inspection because it’s not part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

So I think that what is likely going to be the thing that will be discussed will be that Trump will force Israel to sign the NPT, which means tit for tat, on-site inspection. If there’s on-site inspection in Fordow, there’s on-site inspection in some of the nuclear sites in Israel. So think about that.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So Israel would have to give up its nuclear weapons.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: No, no, no, no, no, no. It would have to — just keep in mind we are a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and we still have nuclear weapons. Here’s the way that works, Konstantin. And this has been going on since 1970, which is when you sign, you promise you will eventually give up your nuclear weapons. And notice how America has signed and we still got a lot of nuclear —

KONSTANTIN KISIN: — weapons, just like everyone else.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Just like — so that part is not real. The real part is the on-site inspection, which is intel. That is the actual teeth in the NPT. So that’s the part that Israel’s — it’s not actually giving up its nuclear. It may say that, but it’s not the reality. The reality is that there will then be tit for tat, and President Trump — this is going to be a big political cost.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I was going to say, I mean, you started a war because you wouldn’t do a deal, that you now have to do a worse deal. That’s a humiliation. I mean, there’s no two ways about it.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: That is the political — that’s what I’m saying. You pick your poison.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So it’s either that or — what I also would like to explain —

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: And you can possibly save your presidency, or you don’t and you can’t save your — what I’m saying is there’s no option here to come out the victor like Gladiator where everybody’s cheering for the new general. That’s not happening in this situation. And if we keep waiting for that, then what it is is Lyndon Johnson. These are the real choices, I think, in front of the President.

And what I’m saying is you’re absolutely right. But this is why we have to put this bluntly out here, because people from your program will be listening, people in the West Wing will be listening. And this means very directly that they will have to put pressure on Israel, and that pressure will be threatening to cut off the military aid for real, not just kind of.

Now, he can try to gussy it up. And by the way, President Trump — I do believe, just to put something here about why he might be able to do this — it’s not just because of his relationship with Israel, but President Trump is the best PR politician we’ve had, certainly the equal of Obama, certainly the equal of Reagan. Some of my friends who don’t like Trump don’t like it when I say this. I think he’s better. Just think about this: he did January 6th and got reelected. Okay, just think about this for a moment. We have not seen, I think, this level of understanding the media and how to — he understands the media better than the media understands the media here. So if there’s somebody who can recover his presidency even with all these liabilities, I believe it is President Trump.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: He can sell this deal as an actual victory to at least his base.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: And enough time will pass. They’ll find other things. He has time to recover. You take this down where we’re still talking about this — not just talking, but fighting this war in July — that’s gone. That’s space. He needs space for the PR. The PR is not something he can ginny up overnight.

Temperament, Trump, and the Gaza Precedent

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Let’s talk about that. Because temperamentally, I wonder — you know, your assessment of 75% — just from judging characters, I imagine he would be quite tempted to go with a hard option potentially.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, sure, because he’s faced with these horns of a dilemma and he has some hope. But I also think he put pressure on Netanyahu to stop the ethnic cleansing in Gaza in September. And I was one of the people who was thinking that he might well do that. And it’s for the good of Israel, because I didn’t believe that it was in Israel’s interest to cleanse the — Netanyahu may think that, but I didn’t think it was in Israel’s interest.

And I was on podcasts in this city — Norm Dorfman does the Comedy Cellar here. I’m sorry I said the name. Norm’s — now he’s going to get mad at me. No, but — yeah, please, Norm. But you can go and listen. He and I had a — let’s call it a feisty hour and a half discussion about this in August. And I kept saying that what you’re not seeing is I believe that in fact President Trump himself may see the wisdom of going down this road.

I’m not saying there was any connection here whatsoever. But what I am saying is that I do think that President Trump has the power, and I think he may well have the interest. He may see that what I’m saying here is the best for the country, the world, the region, and his own presidency.

The Third Shoe: Suicide Terrorism and the Lessons of Iraq

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Bob, I want to come back to the other option, which we haven’t followed up — the military option, the Marines on Karg Island, controlling the coast. You’ve hinted that there are more stages to this if that option is pursued. So so far, we got to — let’s say they get the Marines, dangerous operation, very high risk. Let’s say it’s successful with casualties. The Iranians begin to destroy their own oil facilities, and I imagine likely the other Gulf states as well at the same time. At this point, I am not a great strategist, but I imagine the temptation from Israel and America is to say, “Well, look how terrible these Iranians are. We gotta go harder.”

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: So let me give you and the listeners some framework here. For the last 30 years, my scholarship has been about air power, economic sanctions — lots of books, articles on sanctions and suicide terrorism. And we have not talked about the third shoe, okay — terrorism.

After 9/11, I compiled the first database of all suicide attacks around the world. Israel did not have this database. They had a database of attacks — who was attacking them — that was 20% wrong. And I showed them and they fixed it. So I compiled this database and it produced a finding. I’ve published two books on this, lots of articles, but it produced a finding which is that 95% of all suicide attacks are not due to religion. Half of them at that point in 2001 were by secular folks — the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. But 95% were in response to foreign ground forces. It’s not that you didn’t have any of those attacks before. It’s that when you put the foreign ground forces in, they went up 20 times. Just to give you a sense — many, many cases of this.

Well, before this was even published, I knew Paul Wolfowitz. He was our Deputy Secretary of Defense. I knew him from the 90s, had other connections with the Pentagon. I gave Secretary Wolfowitz the studies. And this was somebody coming from me — I’m basically a liberal Republican. I had all these friends in the NSC. You could imagine that I was possibly going down that road. Well, this is why I never went down that road. It’s because I was showing them rather directly that if they invaded Iraq — and I said this in so many words to them — if they invaded Iraq, they would touch off the largest suicide terrorist campaign in modern times. They would produce more attacks on Western targets. I didn’t know London was coming a few years later, but things like that — they were not stopping the next 9/11. They were assuring things like that would happen in the future.

Came back — this is in November 2002 — and again, nothing classified here, but it’s not been widely known — from Andy Marshall. Some of the listeners here will know who that person is. A highly credible conduit that: “We’re not going to take Iraq off the table, Bob, but what we are going to do is pull our forces out of Saudi Arabia.” That’s how we opened IUD and Qatar. So that’s how that happened, because of this analysis. That’s what led to IUD being open. That’s what Marshall told me.

Well, then we did launch the war in Iraq. And five months after the war, the largest suicide terrorist campaign of modern times actually happened, just as I was explaining.

And who started my center, the Chicago Project? This was in February 2004. I had the Wolfowitz-Rumsfeld Defense Department reach out. They wanted more work on suicide terrorism. I had to create a center. So my center at the University of Chicago was at first called the University of Chicago Project on Suicide Terrorism. Over the years I’ve kept the acronym CPOST, but I’ve morphed it to Chicago Project on Security and Threats, to expand it a little bit. But I’ve kept CPOST. So it’s so ironic, but it was the very people that I was telling were doing exactly the wrong thing that started the center.

And then Wolfowitz left and Edelman became the next deputy. And there were all these interactions because, as he said, the NSC really wanted to know how good was Pape’s data, because there were other places we were thinking of putting armies in — and we never put those armies there. So there’s a whole set of stories about that.

So when I say “advised” and so forth, this is some of that experience. I’ve had experience where people that I have disagreed with — and this was public — so I knew then I was never being hired by an NSC. And once you go down these roads, notice that nobody’s really going to want to hire you, because you can’t — I’m not a card-carrying Democrat, I’m not a card-carrying Republican. I’m a professor who’s laying out the escalation dynamics and willing to talk to anybody to try to get the better outcome for the country.

Escalation Dynamics: The Marines Option Revisited

KONSTANTIN KISIN: So what are the escalation dynamics if President Trump pursues the Marines again — force risk?

The Risk of Terrorism and the Logic of Suicide Attacks

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: So the number one risk here to produce large amounts of anti-American terrorism — and we’ve seen little bits now but nothing like could happen — is going to be ground military presence, and especially the idea that it would lead to regime change. So even if we try to take that off the table, the other side’s not going to believe that. And that also means the 92 million people in Iran aren’t going to believe that. Some will be hopeful, some will be opposed to that. Here, that’s going to mean others in the region — here you’re going to see all what we call the tentacles of Iran, the proxies, so to speak. Here you’re going to stir up a hornet’s nest of terrorism.

Not on day one. It took about five months before it really got going. And so we can’t put a time, we can’t do it to the day. That’s what everybody would like. They’d like to precisely time it so they can put money on Polymarket or whatever. But the bottom line is we know the direction. It’s like moving a super tanker, and five months, seven, eight months down the road, you can expect a pretty good amount of — and this terrorism could be pretty serious.

So just coming on this flight here, I didn’t have to take my shoes off. We didn’t do that after 9/11 until the first shoe bomb. So we’re not talking about the shooting sprees of 10 or 15 people being killed. If this goes down this road, the kind of indiscriminate terrorism we’re talking about — we’re talking about malls, airplanes — those are the targets that will come up immediately. Think about it as ISIS potentially on steroids, because ISIS was a group who did those kinds of attacks. ISIS was a group of just 30 or 40,000. Well, the Revolutionary Guards and also the Basij — that’s a million.

Iran is already very good at propaganda. They’re a state, they’re not a group. They already do cyber, they’ll have plenty of ability to go on Telegram, they’ll have plenty of ability to do things that we’re not even aware of. I think we don’t even know how a state as powerful as Iran would be able to use the Internet and propaganda to inspire attacks. And that’s why I think it will happen.

I think there may be some sleeper cells and some command-directed attacks, but what ISIS showed is the power of what you can do when you inspire attacks and explain that the attacker should take one or two weeks to prepare and give them some ideas for how to do so. ISIS did this better than Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda tried to do this, but that’s what ISIS really did. It wasn’t so much the tactics of the programming.

I’ve been studying terrorism in detail — 8,000 suicide attacks, one by one, with research teams at my center. I believe that the issue is preparation. How much time does the would-be attacker put into it? The attacker in Texas was quick, just right off the bat, killed two, wounded about another dozen. But that’s not somebody who spent a week or two preparing. Crooks — the guy who went after Trump — he looks like he spent a week or two, and look how much closer he got. Unfortunately he missed. Unfortunately Trump turned his head. But what I’m saying is that it’s the preparation that’s the issue. The longer the preparation — certainly two weeks — if somebody is willing to put that much time in, there are just a lot more possibilities of bad things happening. And that is what I’m worried about as we go forward.

Why Ukrainians Don’t Resort to Suicide Attacks

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Just a very quick aside before Francis takes back over. You said it’s not really about religion and it’s about ground troops. But why aren’t Ukrainians blowing themselves up, killing Russians?

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Because they don’t need to. It’s about success. There have been a couple of instances reported in the news as suicide attacks, and we’ve drilled into them and we don’t think so. My books explain all of this. The issue here is last resort.

If it’s all about religion, what should be happening is all these Islamic groups should be — I kind of put it as — looking for the first excuse to get the quick trip to heaven. Any old excuse, they should all be doing this. That’s not what you see in the patterns of these suicide campaigns. That’s not what Hezbollah’s pattern was. That’s not what Hamas’s pattern was.

In my books, I lay out the pattern over time. These big books study the trajectories of the campaigns and also how they begin with non-suicide campaigns, and then often begin with political protests. The first Intifada, which was more like throwing Molotov cocktails, is the beginning of Hamas — not suicide attacks. So Hamas, right off the bat, is Islamic fundamentalist. They want the end of Israel. That was all true in 1987 in the charter. Their suicide attacks don’t start until years later, and then it’s not really going until you get to the second Intifada, which is after 2000.

So what you see is that the trajectory of terrorism is that the tactics get more desperate and more deadly over time. Ukraine, they’ve held the Russians — except for the first three days of the war.

Go back to the first three days of the war. This is, by the way, the smart bomb trap from the Russian side — they fell into the escalation trap, and it’s very parallel to what’s happened to us. Stage one: they thought they had a quick and decisive victory strategy, with air and ground power, not just air power. They get right to the airport in Kyiv, right to the gates of Kyiv. They get very, very close. But the fact is they couldn’t get over the edge. And then within just a few days — and by the way, I said this to some Congress folks who came literally right out of a classified briefing, telling me they had just been told that Kyiv’s going to fall in three days. I said, “It’s not going to. It’s 90% likely — I’m not — ” “But Bob, you haven’t been in the briefing.” I’m telling you, they’ve got too much wherewithal here.

So the bottom line is they don’t fall. And what do they do? They lash back. They take back over. From March, April, May 2022, they’re recovering, lashing back. And who’s holding on by their fingernails? It’s Putin — until he then fires all his military. This is when he’s doing all the rearranging of his staffs and so forth, to go to stage three. Stage one had the quick and decisive. Stage two, the lash back. Stage three for Putin was the war of attrition. And right now, there’s barely been any movement since June of 2022 — you’re talking about a handful of miles.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: 22.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: 22, yeah. Oh, I’m sorry — 22, yeah. Thank you. Since June 2022, three and a half years plus, barely any movement of the line of contact.

So why would Ukraine resort to suicide attacks? What they’ve come up with is other ideas, like drones. You’ve got donors, some of them from Chicago — Jennifer Pritzker is one who has given all this money to the Ukrainians to build drone factories. And the drones are really making it difficult for Russia to gain any territory. And so what does Russia do? They’ve got their drone factories in Iran, and they’ve made it difficult for the Ukrainians to take territory. So you’ve got basically a stalemate, like Korea, that is occurring.

They don’t need suicide attacks. My book is called Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, and it explains that it’s not a religious logic the way most people think — it’s strategic. And that explains the ebbs and the flows, the origins and the ends of the campaigns. If it were religion, everything should just be a constant.

Why Haven’t Strategists Predicted These Outcomes?

FRANCIS FOSTER: Look, there are going to be a lot of people who are listening to you, Professor, who are thinking to themselves — they’re looking at the strategies, particularly that the Americans have pursued in the Strait of Hormuz — and they’re thinking to themselves, “Why is it that they haven’t predicted what is going to happen?” They’ve got some of the most intelligent people, they’ve got access to some of the most brilliant military minds in the world, military strategists, et cetera. Why is it that they haven’t predicted what’s going to happen?

The Smart Bomb Trap and the Illusion of Precision Control

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: I call it the illusion of precision control, Francis. I’ve been in the rooms when very, very senior, super smart people, and there’s no cameras on, are getting these briefings about what air power can hit. And from people with stars on their shoulders, it is amazing to watch. And this can be Republican, Democrat. This is not about party, this is about human beings.

You put people in these rooms here, and I show you, and you really believe not just maybe these bombs will hit their targets 90, 95% of the time, but it’s going to be the reality. Two things are inescapable. Number one, immediately the mind goes, what leader can I kill? Even if the briefer is not talking about that, by the way, immediately the mind goes to that, because the briefer is explaining — and again, these people, many stars generals — that the bombs will hit within 5 to 15 feet. They’ll talk about the winds and they’ll talk about all these different conditions. And then it’ll be immediately, “Well, that’s about the size of this room. And who would I like to take out from this on the other side here?” So, number one, that’s where the leadership decapitations idea really comes from.

But there’s a second thing that the mind goes to that I’ve seen. And again, I think this is just human nature. I don’t think it’s any deeper than that, which is the illusion of control of the escalation after that. Because I can have this exquisite opening. It’s like a chess game where I have the exquisite opening in chess. It may be the absolute perfect exquisite opening in chess, but it’s still just the opening. It’s not the middle game, which is really where all the strategy in chess is all about — the territory and the moves and the feints and so forth. And then it’s not the end game. Just like in chess, you can study endgames, but you can’t really think about what endgame strategy to have until you get through the middle, you see?

So strategy here with the smart bombs — I call this the smart bomb trap — because what happens is it’s like an opening in chess. You are so absolutely mesmerized by the accuracy of what you’re about to do and the perfection of that opening that you’re really imagining you can totally control the middle game. You can control the escalation from that point on. And even if the briefer — and I have no reason to think General Kaine would not have been cautioning President Trump — starts to give caution about what might happen, “Don’t overread that opening, sir,” and there’s the middle game. Even if they do that, seeing that and seeing it so close and believing it’s true, I think it creates the illusion of control.

Historical Examples of the Smart Bomb Trap

And that’s why I think you’ve seen this when President Reagan dropped bombs to assassinate Gaddafi in April 1986. The bombs hit there. That was the very first precision decapitation campaign. We hit his tent, killed some of his family. He just stepped out of his tent, literally — he was sleeping in a tent, literally, just for a second. But two years later, he brought down Pan Am Flight 103, killed 271 civilians, 190 Americans, as his retaliation.

President Clinton — let me pick a Democrat. March 1999. President Clinton wants to negotiate for the pro-democracy movement in Kosovo, and he wants to tilt the talk and the hawk-dove balance in the Serbian government, who’s on the other side. So he launches what was supposed to be a three-day air campaign, hitting 51 targets in and around Belgrade in order to shift the hawks and doves, shake, if not degrade, if not topple, the Milosevic regime. And the bombs hit their targets perfectly.

But what happened is the Serbian regime did not fall. It was hardened. And Milosevic countered by ordering 30,000 troops into Kosovo, and he expelled — that is, ethnically cleansed — a million Kosovars from the country. That’s 50% of all the civilians from that province. And we had to fight — it took 78 days and putting a ground army there. We didn’t actually have to conquer it, but to take it if he didn’t back off. And that’s what led Milosevic to give up. It was a disaster that we only pulled out of at the end by putting in the ground forces. So this is what we’re up against with the smart bomb trap.

Now, I talked to the person on the NSC — President Clinton’s briefer, whose job it was to give all the worst-case scenarios. I won’t say the name. And he showed me the 400-page briefing. This was a year later, because I interviewed Aldasari, the president of film. I spent a lot of time studying these, not just kind of casually. And so he showed me the briefing, still marked top secret. Well, he wrote it, so he could show somebody who didn’t have a clearance. And he just said to me, “Bob, it never occurred to me that the Serbs would be that vicious, even though they described it as one of the most vicious regimes ever.” He said, “It just never occurred to me, or to us. We just couldn’t imagine that level of evil.”

What Should Trump Have Done?

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Professor, so all of that being the case, the one question we haven’t asked you strikes me as kind of important — it’s academic, but also kind of important — if we agree, I don’t know if we agree, but I imagine we agree that Iran shouldn’t get nuclear weapons.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Yeah.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: What should President Trump have done?

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: He should have gone back to the JCPOA, the Obama deal. Because if you can push this problem off 10, 15, 20 years, do it. It’s not the best — it’s still a problem deal — but it is that deal. Once President Trump broke the deal and withdrew, we saw that Iran put pedal to the metal, and it took years, not just a day or two, it took years before it could start to really rebuild its enrichment program. So the deal, with all its warts, was actually a good deal. And it also provided 24/7 camera-level inspection of everything.

And I think this is what he should have done. He should have taken versions of the deal that’s been on offer, as imperfect as it was, and he would have had to sell it — find a way to say it’s better than Obama’s deal. And a lot of people would just believe him.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: I’m just thinking from a strategic perspective — and there are probably gaps in my thinking about it — but if Iran and other countries know that we effectively cannot use air power, or indeed ground power, for the reasons you’ve articulated, to deal with the nuclear threat, wouldn’t it be perfectly logical for them to pursue nuclear weapons irrespective of any deal that we do?

Containing Israel as a Strategic Offset

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Well, now we’re teaching them very strongly that they must have nuclear weapons. I think that’s why — I want to come back to what I said is the offset with Israel. So if you can offer Iran the possibility that Israel will be contained — containing Israel — that’s worth quite a bit. Because you really, as much as I’m laying all this out, notice I’m saying things are 75%, that means there’s still 25% over here. So if I was advising Iran, I would say if you can get the containment of Israel, you take it.

And what does that mean? You keep your 3.5% enriched uranium, but you open yourself back up to the IAEA, you open yourself up to 24/7 inspection. You’re going to get some tit for tat where you’re going to get some inspection of Israel now too. So this is not just you who’s up for this. What I would say is, if you want to maximize your survival and you’re Iran, that’s what I would do.

Because there is some chance that we’re going to go down these roads. And as much as we’re saying we’ll never put 100,000 troops in Iran, think about this right now — J.D. Vance said we’re never putting ground troops in Iran. And what are we talking about doing next week? Ground troops — still limited at the beginning, but there’s no way that Iran can really be sure we’re not going to come at them with some multi-division attack down the road and that they’ll be able to offset that. So I would still say that the bottom line here is containing Israel for Iran. That’s something I think they would be foolish to give up, to surrender, because this is an uncertain world.

Closing Remarks

FRANCIS FOSTER: Professor Robert Pape, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Thank you guys. Great questions. Thank you so much.

FRANCIS FOSTER: No worries at all. Final question is always the same — what’s the one thing we’re not talking about that we really should be?

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: We still haven’t talked as much as we should have about the enriched uranium that’s floating now — dispersing. We think it’s dispersing, at least some, inside of Iran. It could be dispersing outside of Iran. And so we’ve talked about stage one, two, and three. I told you stage four. I’m worried about the terrorism. There is a stage five in the fall, which is that dispersed uranium finding its way into bad things happening. So I see a lot of bad possibilities here that get worse.

That’s why I’ve been putting out images on X of the funnel getting worse over time. And I’m hoping we won’t have to have those Sunday briefings where I go through those in hours. I’m hoping we can stop it here.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: That’s us. Thank you so much.

PROF. ROBERT PAPE: Thank you.

KONSTANTIN KISIN: Appreciate it.

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