The other day the Triggernometry boys sat down with a Professor Robert Pape to discuss the Iran War. Here are his main points along with my commentary:
- Airstrikes do not change regimes. Spot on. They don’t change their aims either. Although they may change their capabilities.
- The 12-Day War of 2025 didn’t work. That sounds about right. It would appear that Iran still has stocks of the stuff you make nuclear bombs out of.
- Kharg Island will be difficult to take. Nonsense.
- Iran has become an oil “hegemon”. In other words, by demonstrating it can close the Straits of Hormuz it dominates supply. I doubt it.
- Suicide bombing has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with desparation. While I am always open to other ways of looking at things I can’t help but notice that suicide attacks are almost never carried out by Westerners however desperate.
- The Obama deal – which Pape advised on – is as good as it gets. He’s losing me.
- Israel is involved in ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Now he’s completely lost me. “To Hell or Connaught” it is not.
- Israel will end up having to allow inspections of its – hitherto unacknowledged – nuclear facilities. Maybe, but there won’t be any bombs to inspect because by then the Israelis will have used them.
There was something else that bugged me. It was his general tone: defeatism mixed with smugness.
*Of course, this interview does no such thing. It seems to me that Obama’s guiding principle was the destruction of American liberties and their replacement with a communist tyranny. The Papes of this world just provided suitable intellectual cover.
“Israel is involved in ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
Israel absolutely undeniably WAS involved in ethnic cleansing in Gaza and has consistently admitted – if not bragged about – the same: when it cleared every single Jew – living and dead – from the territory in 2005.
But I don’t think that’s what he meant.
TPG,
Nicely put. I forgot they took the dead out as well…
There is no attempt for Jews to resttle Gaza. There is no genocide in Gaza. The population of Gaza has increased since 2023 largely because thier hags in bags are whelping implings for Allah. Largely because they’re on bennies and so are the blokes who because they don’t have to turn an honest dime are entirely bent on Jihad.
I know that is a horrid thing to say but it’s true isn’t it?
Gaza could be a really nice place if they had to earn a living as a tourist resort (beautiful beaches) and tax haven. Play the cards right, get ex-pats and tourists, stop building tunnels and rockets to glorify a C7th sadististic nonce and you know what? They might actually have Israelis wanting to live there and paying Shekels for it! Might even get me. The climate would be a nice change from Manchester.
Yes, TPG, Gaza has no Jews. It has a serious Allah problem though…
Surely this is an April Fools Joke?
Patrick has already made the comments I would have made – so it would be silly for me to repeat what he has already written.
I hope that Triggernometry is engaged in an April’s Fools joke – because, if he is serious, Professor Robert Pape is a swine, not a “military expert” – an enemy propagandist.
As for the conflict with the IRI regime – which has been engaged in “Death to America” for 47 years – my fear is not that it is a “trap”, but that President Trump will leave the job of destroying this regime (which has to include destroying the Revolutionary Guard) unfinished – perhaps we will find out with the President’s address this evening.
Well this gentleman certainly looks like a flabby faced coward. He talks like a flabby faced coward. So I am forced to conclude…
As for Trump, I doubt he will force regime change on Iran. There was a chance of that in January, when the people rose up against the regime, but they were slaughtered, and now have no stomach for it, much less the means. The most we can hope for is that much of the infrastructure of repression will be destroyed from the air, but that will not destroy the regime. The thing which finally beat the Nazis was Russian soldiers in Berlin. There will never be American soldiers in Tehran, and they know it.
The Obama deal didn’t work. Any courtiers fluttering about pretending it did are just sycophants sucking up to Emperor Obama.