Post from Truth Social

Welcome back America. It's always a pleasure to have America's wise man on the program Victor Davis Hanson It's a good friend Hoover Institution senior fellow has got a great podcast as well Thanks for coming Victor. So let me ask you this question Thank you. If you can put your self in the shoes of the Iranian regime How do you think they're looking at this right now? Well, we don't know because this is a very unusual war. We have no ground troops no embedded reporters We don't know the extent of damage, but it seems to me that they have been economically devastated 90% of their military is inert, but they have enough Missiles they think and the Gulf states are so vulnerable they think that and the Straits of Hormuz are so frat that that traffic is a fragile entity that they can cause havoc and then delay the process maybe hope for a global recession and drag it out until the midterms They also are playing a very strange game. They're giving signals that the people talking to us the quote-unquote elected leaders That they are at odds with the Revolutionary Guard and we don't know because we've eliminated so many people if that's true but you get the sneaking suspicion that they are the good cops and The Revolutionary Guard and the theocrats that every once in a while try to take out a carrier or hit the Kuwaitis or somebody they're the bad cops, but they actually work in unison and Then the negotiators say to us well, we can't control these people. We're sorry We don't know what they're doing in the Gulf laying mines and everything But don't don't ruin the negotiations and then that gives each of them credibility I guess against their competition for power, but at some point we have to to stop it and There's a lot of ways to stop it Mark because militarily it's not a problem It's a political problem and it involves the world economy and the midterms and everything but we could I think that the president can find a way to kind of square that circle if he he tells him informally there's going to be a deadline to this nonsense and You're not you're going to regret it and we're going to do enough damage to your economy and your military that It's going to take you a quarter century to recover and we're going to leave a residual force That's going to keep that straight open along with the Allies And then I think he can say that to them because we can't continue to do this because they interpret survival with victory I know that sounds Orwellian, but they do Every day that they're still there. They say see we took on the superpower of Civilizational history and we're still here and they couldn't stop us and they give no context that all of our restraint is itself imposed on us It's humanitarian. It's political, but it's not military and We don't have to use you know great weapons. We can defeat them from the air as we were doing But we've lost about almost two months time in these negotiations And they they interpret that as and they look at magnanimity on our part as weakness to be exploited Mark Not as magnanimity or kindness to be reciprocated That's just the way they do and you can't believe anything they say because they don't believe it's a lie They think it's a strategic advantage not to tell the truth, so it's difficult to negotiate with them Let me ask you this question Victor In some ways every war is different. We understand that But in World War two we required victory We required that the Japanese surrender we acquired victory wanted it over once and for all it was the same thing with Germany Italy was destroyed and so forth and so on Obviously tremendous amounts of damage to the civilian population to industry To communities just a massive throughout Europe and so forth and so on in this case there's a lot of pressure and a lot of people I hear saying that we can't have a Victory per se we've got to figure out how to contain them. We've got to come up with an agreement. That's enforceable and So from your perspective as a historian, I'm curious what you think It's possible in the short term. I'm sure but it is a possible in the midterm and the long term to contain them We have to take a break as soon as we come back. That's my question to you. We'll be right back Welcome back America Victor Davis Hanson. So does a victory against Iran look different than victory say Against Germany, Japan, Italy and so forth. Yeah, it does a little bit because in the post-war era We're in the era of nuclear weapons so there's always a restraint that you can't escalate with enough damage to humiliate the enemy and Ensure that he'll never never again make war against you and change the government as we did to a certain extent in Korea But certainly in World War two and then we're a therapeutic culture So, you know in an age of global communications you miss a target and there's a CNN reporter right there saying you're a war criminal Or you're you with the International Criminal Court might indict you if you miss it artillery strike target So there's all sorts of self-imposed restraints, but that said human nature doesn't change mark And you you you turn military victory into strategic resolution By making it impossible for the enemy to continue the war you can do that by changing the government You can do that by destroying their economy and making them but it's all it's more periodic rather than final in the sense Everything is periodic. You never really ever defeat some you try to win them over to our cause I think that's what the president is doing He's he's saying that we're going to hurt their economy to a certain extent that they won't be able to make war even if we don't have to be there with this full force and we're going to try to destroy their military capability for 10 years and then we're going to set in motion enough chaos That they won't be able to fund Hezbollah Hamas the Houthis are rebuild this Maybe a half a trillion dollar loss of 50 years in their military industrial nuclear complex We're going to make that very difficult Politically for them so if they start using all of their new money if the blockade ever and they start investing in the the same old same old the people are going to rise up and you know, it's not a Crazy thought the Berlin Wall fell and it was two years before the Soviet Union collapse in weeks But often months for the rest of the Warsaw Pact to collapse so I think the president thinks he's setting in motion the humiliation of this regime and making them have a lose-lose choice to either rebuild and use when it's over rebuild and Then a or if they do they're going to alienate the people even further. So there's ways to get around these self-imposed restraints Yeah, my only problem with some of that is never when they don't have a nuclear weapon So we don't have to fear that from them. Thanks to what the president has done and number two They're already pushing the Hezbollah to continue doing what Hezbollah is doing and number three The Houthis have been completely untouched and number four communist China and other bad actors out there I suspect they're gonna want to help Iran especially when President Trump leaves and if they see a weak Democrat as president Perhaps like an Obama or Biden. I think they're gonna make their run for for the finish line or to do more in terms of very negative activity to us and to the Middle East and plus their ideology is They think from Allah your last word Yeah, well, that's a problem And we've had four general four administrations and they invaded the Russians invaded Ukraine and three of them are their neighbors and they'll say sure With Bush Obama and Biden but not during Trump So if he can reestablish deterrence at least for two years I think he can quiet the Chinese are not in a good position vis-a-vis where they were two years ago Russia is not they've lost their toll or their clients and Venezuela and Syria and now Iran China's hurting we're ascendant, but we just have to manage that a little better I think and Wrap this up if we wrap this up then the further problems will won't escalate and we saw that with the bombing last June And we saw it with Venezuela. We saw it with Panama that creates momentum, but if we get stalled in negotiations and The the people come out of the woodwork and try to take advantage but not a strong a strong show in Iran That will be really determined beautifully said my friend Victor Davis Hanson. Thank you, and I can speak for the country God bless you and stay well stay well. Thank you mark much appreciated and goodbye

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