Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Please note that it was recorded before Friday’s announcement that the Strait of Hormuz is open. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Victor Davis Hanson: Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. I know a lot of you have been exasperated by the reaction to the Iran war, from the Democratic grandees in the House and Senate, the liberal media, The New York Times, particularly The Washington Post, NPR, PBS, and network—even The Wall Street Journal’s news section. And then we have some people on the right who have also looked at the war and said it was lost, it went south, it was gonna—World War III, blah, blah, blah.
All of them share one thing in common, excuse me, two things in common. One, they wanted it not to go well. Wanted it not to go well because it would reflect badly on President Donald Trump and his administration. And if you were a Democrat, that would give you some momentum going into the midterms. And if you were a disaffected former supporter, it would prove to the world that you were right all along, and Donald Trump is reckless and got us into a forever, unwinnable war.
But whatever the particular reason was, both of them were not historical analyses. Both these people never were empirical. They were never historical. Had they looked at America’s wars in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and more importantly, more recently, the bombing campaign in Serbia, or the bombing campaign in Libya, or the first Gulf War, or the second Gulf War, or the Afghan—they would’ve come up with some data, some information.
And then they could have compared this particular engagement and compared it with the others, or they could have said to themselves, I’m not going to prejudice what happens. I’m gonna look at exactly what the data is on the ground. How many missiles were destroyed, who was taken out? Had they taken out the Israeli commander, command and control, have they shot down 45 planes as they did during the first Gulf War, U.S. craft? And then they could have come up with a reasoned analysis.
But they didn’t do that. They didn’t do that. But the evidence was there. The evidence was there. In the first five weeks, the United States, with the Israeli Air Force, wiped out most of the top echelon of the four ruling cliques in the Iranian nation. That would be the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regular army, the theocratic apparatus at top and the elected politicians, such as they do have elections. All four of them were attrited.
And right now, they would also say to themselves that they are motivated by two or three catalysts that explain everything they say. One, they don’t know who is in charge, and they’re all grasping for power, and they’re all terrified somebody is in charge that they don’t know about. Two, they’ve seen 30, 40, 50 people taken out, and they don’t want to identify and be a leader and be dead. Three, they’re competing for power, and that manifests itself in two ways.
No. 1, they’re afraid of the hardliners. So, they send out, communiqués, they freelance, not official all the time, and they wanna sound harder than the other person. So, they’re not accused of being soft. Usually the theocratic clique, what’s left of it, or the Revolutionary Guard, what’s left of it, accuses the politicians and the army of being too soft.
And the final catalyst that explains this crazy stuff that emanates from Iran is they’re afraid of the Iranian people. The Iranian people are sick and tired. Before the war even started, the hyperinflation was strangling them. They couldn’t afford gas. They couldn’t afford food, they can’t go out of the country, they couldn’t get … and it’s 10 times worse now. And they’re gonna be restive just like during the fall of the Berlin Wall. You didn’t see a revolution immediately. It was weeks and months in Eastern Europe and two years in the Soviet Union before it became Russia again.
That means in the next two years, I think, you’re going to see a lot of popular resistance, and these people know it and they know that if they go down, they’re going to be … they’re gonna have a Nuremberg war crimes trial, and the people are gonna take it out on them, so they don’t know where the nexus of power is.
So, it is confused. But people couldn’t just accept that they had to say, Donald Trump got us in a forever war, even though, tragically, but, lost 13 or 14 or 15 depending on the calculus we use. We never have had a war like that before. We’ve never taken on a country of 93 million people that had the most fearsome, terrible reputation of being dangerous and unpredictable, and running the Middle East with a ring of fire proxies in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, indomitable.
They had terrified seven presidents. And yet in five weeks, we destroyed its ability to make war. Yes, they have a few drones, a few ballistic missiles that can cause damage, but not if that damage will be replied to as Donald Trump has warned them, by the destruction of their oil capacity or their electrical generation, which all presidents had done. We did it to Serbia, we did things to Libya. We did it in the first Gulf War, it being dual-use. We took out bridges, we took out generation. We didn’t in World War II, we didn’t Korea, we didn’t Vietnam. Donald Trump’s the first president that hasn’t done that in a wide-scale fashion.
So, what has happened? It took four or five weeks in the country of that size, area and population, to find these tunnels, to find these hidden airfields, to find these silos, to find these people in bunkers, and systematically we got to the point where their military is almost gone.
Then the next stage happened. Trump said to them: We can have a negotiation style if you meet our demands. And that was to—it was self-interested in the sense that he wanted a peace, so the prices would go down, oil would be more available. The midterms are coming up, but it was also to let the regime, such as it was after this main luminaries had been killed, it was to give them a chance and show the world that Trump was not a madman. He was willing to negotiate.
And they, of course, said no. They said no because they hoped that popular resistance in Europe and popular resistance in the Democratic Party and on the left and on the old, some of the MAGA apostates on the right, they would so pressure Trump that he would give in to them. He didn’t. So, that was obvious. He’s never given in to anybody. He’s always done what he thought was right, whether you agree with it or not.
So, then we came into the third phase. We had the destruction of the military, No. 1. No. 2, we had the negotiation cycle, and now it’s the ultimate and finale to the war, and that is economic strangulation. Iran walked right, put their head right into a noose. They said, we’re gonna shut down the Strait of Hormuz, only us can determine who gets in and who gets out, and they have to be pro-Iranian. And we’re not gonna let Gulf states sell oil. Ha ha ha. We’re gonna—and everybody said, oh, that was brilliant.
The Left went crazy. It was delighted. Oh my gosh. The Pentagon was caught on unprepared … The Pentagon had been preparing that for 50 years. Under Reagan, they opened it. They know how to do it. So, all that Trump said is that’s a good idea. Shut down the strait. And let in the good guys and stop the bad guys.
But your bad guys are our good guys. And your good guys are our bad guys. So, we’re gonna take a page outta your book, and we’re not gonna let in anybody anywhere near Iran, and we’re gonna let in everybody else. And the difference between the strategies is not just that we flipped it, but you have no wherewithal, PT boats, and a bunch of mines won’t stop us, but we have a huge fleet. And that will stop you from stopping us. And if you decide that you wanna send the remnants of your missiles into the Gulf or Israel, or at our fleet, go ahead. Because we haven’t even decided to hit dual-use targets yet. We’re not like Barack Obama and Libya and taking out television stations and ports.
We’re not like Bill Clinton and Serbia that destroyed every bridge on the Danube and took out their grid of a million and a half people. We’re not Harry Truman that destroyed all the hydroelectric plants in North Korea. We let you off easy. Well, it doesn’t mean there’s not an American tradition of hitting dual-use targets.
So, we’re gonna hit your electrical and put you in darkness and we’re gonna hit Kharg or take it. We’ll either take the oil and rob it from you or take it. And what was the result of all that in the last 48 hours? Ships are coming in that we let, and ships are not coming in, that we don’t let, and people, economists at the major research universities in Europe, the United States, have now flipped on a dime and they’re actually looking in empirical fashion, at last, at what this means. And the ranges are absolutely stunning. $400 million, and more, per day lost economically to Iran, whether that’s lack of oil sales or petrochemical sales, or lack of key imported mechanical goods, electrical goods that keep their infrastructure running, or food. They’re in dire straits.
They’re losing all of their income from the Strait of Hormuz and they’re losing all of their income from the petrochemical and oil. And they were broke to begin with, and they can’t do anything about it because Trump did it sequentially. Military, first, chance of negotiation, second, put the boot on the neck, third.
So, what is gonna happen now? You’ll see two things. Two things, possibly three. They may decide they want to go down in a blaze of glory and empty their arsenal of remnant ballistic missiles and drones. If they do that, they will be in darkness, and they will have no oil for the next 10 years. So, that we’ll see if there’s saner heads among them.
No. 2, they have a choice to agree to negotiations, and this time they’re not gonna have every clique saying 15 here and 10 demands here, and no, no, they’re just gonna have 10. And if they don’t abide by them, the United States can force them to abide by them. Or they can just simply give up, give up, no demands, nothing.
Just say we’re done. And they’re gonna have a … and what I meant by give up is the regime gives up. I don’t know if it’s gonna be immediate, but the people take over. All of those are favorable results for us. And so to conclude, I don’t think that it’s a very wise thing every 24 hours to be glued to your computer or the television and whatever. A pundit on the left or a Democratic senator says, or disgruntled person on the right says, then take that as gospel and not look at the data and not look at the evidence that’s out there to examine both, as I said, empirically or historically.
’Cause if you did do that, you could see there was very, very little chance of winning. There’s only one last caveat: Iran is ruined militarily and it’s going to be ruined economically if it doesn’t give in, and they they’re now going to negotiate with a different attitude. If you believe that they will abide by a demand that we’ve given them, no nuclear material for 20 years, whatever it is, then you have to believe that they will never break their word.
I don’t think they’ve ever kept their word.
And No. 2, that there will be a president someday, like Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, and people of that caliber and mindset would enforce every one of those negotiated demands. And I don’t think they will ever tell the truth or honor any of their commitments.
And I don’t think that the next left-wing or Democratic president would ever force them to, which means we better get them to surrender unconditionally or [have them] face economic ruin, which will usher in a regime change.
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