James Stout (124:51)
having enough enriched uranium for an entire arsenal of nuclear weapons. His claim was fanciful then, and it remains even more so now after 2025's Operation Midnight Hammer saw the USA and Israel attempt to bomb nuclear facilities. Indeed, the White House itself published a statement On 25 June following Operation Midnight Hammer, in which they quoted the Israel Atomic Energy Commission saying, we assess that the American strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, combined with the Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran's military nuclear program, has set back Iran's ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years. The achievement can continue indefinitely if Iran does not get access to nuclear material. It also included a quotation from Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, saying, quote, based on everything we have seen, and I've seen it all, our bombing campaign obliterated Iran's ability to create nuclear weapons. That was less than a year ago. It seems unlikely that they destroyed much or any of the uranium that was stockpiled, but they certainly would have delayed plans to enrich that uranium or to build it into a bomb. Nonetheless, on 28 February this year, a massive campaign of airstrikes, himars, barrages and ballistic missile attacks on Iran began under the codename Operation Epic Fury. The acronym OEF will be familiar to many as the same one used by the USA for more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and other parts of the world during what it called the Global War on Terror. On the day I'm writing this, it's exactly 23 years since United States Marines tore down the statue of Saddam Hussein that stood outside the 17th of Ramadan Mosque in Firdah Square in Baghdad, removed his regime from power. Since then, for my entire adult life and much of my childhood, the USA has been dropping bombs on the Middle East. This month, the tempo and ferocity of the aerial bombardment took a step up to a tempo we haven't seen since perhaps the peak of the coalition war against the Islamic State, or perhaps even the shock and awe bombing campaign of 2003. And I want to go back to that campaign to explain exactly how we got to this one. The shock and awe campaign was based on a doctrine called rapid dominance that sought to establish a post Cold War military ethos for the United States. The theorists behind it, named Alman and Wade, explicitly outlined that to work, the shock and all bombing campaign had to achieve a level of national shock like that of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan, and that power and other civilian infrastructure might well be targeted. In an interview in February 2003, Ullman said, quote, what we want to do is create in the mind of the Iraqi leadership and their soldiers this shock and awe so they are intimidated, made to feel so impotent, so helpless that they have no choice but to do what we want them to do. So the smartest thing to say is, this is hopeless. We quit. The US attempted to pummel the adversary so hard in 2003 that it would demoralise troops and lead to a rapid victory through the use and display of overwhelming force in Iraq. 23 years ago, it sort of worked. The regime crumbled. In less than a month, the USA got its quote, unquote victory. And by the first of May of that year, George W. Bush had landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln off San Diego and given a speech in front of a large banner that read Mission Accomplished. 23 years later, the Lincoln is in the Middle east and bombs are once again raining down on Iran and Iraq, while one way, drones and missiles from Iran slam into targets all over the region. In Iraq, 23 years later, the United States Embassy is once again being attacked, a US journalist was kidnapped, and the State Department is telling citizens to avoid the region. The US bombing campaign in Iran this year dwarfs the 2003 Shock and Awe campaign, with the first day of operation Epic Fury being almost twice the scale of the 2003 bombardment. However, they do have Several things in common. Just like the bombardment of Iraq, even 23 years later, the US and Israeli air war showed us that there is no such thing as a precision bombing campaign on this scale. On the very first day of the war, 28 February 2026, a missile slammed into a girls elementary school in Minab. Then another, and then another. When the dust settled, more than 175 people had been killed, mostly schoolgirls between the age of 7 and 12 years old. The school was located near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base, but the school building itself had not been part of a military facility for a decade. And yet, despite targeting technology that allowed three missiles to scream across a continent and hit a relatively small target in quick succession, apparently the US military had not been able to ascertain, or perhaps did not care to ascertain, that the result of their strike was the death of as many as 100 schoolchildren. The fact that I am reporting this 40 odd days into the war suggests that despite an even larger scale campaign than the USA deployed in 2003, despite the killing of little girls, the Iranian state has not said, this is hopeless, we quit. As all one hoped they might. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei was assassinated in initial attacks, but power has since passed on to his son. Iran remains very much in the fight despite the massive display of force by the US and Israel. Instead of quitting and giving up, they have been sending ballistic missiles and one way drones into targets throughout the Gulf states, Israel and Southern Kurdistan. This is in part because the United States and Israel had no clear shared plan for this war. In 2003, the US aimed to remove Saddam Hussein and it did that. It made a massive cock up of everything it did after that. But this time we have two belligerent nations with very distinct goals who share a common interest in bombing the people of Iran. Israel, which by some accounts hit more targets than the USA early on in the war, is fighting to totally cripple the Iranian state in a no holds barred, no laws of war respected campaign that has seen it bomb factories, oil infrastructure and most horrifically of all, desalination plants. The goal for Israel is to make it impossible for Iran to recover. It seems to leave the region mired in poverty and resource constraint and make sure that no Iranian state, be it this one or a different one, can ever be a threat to Israel again. It has assassinated many of the figures who have the ability to negotiate for peace. And the recent ceasefire seems to be something that Israel does not feel itself to be beholden to. For the us, the goal seems to be to use something similar to shock and awe to force Iran into conceding its position and allowing the USA some access to its significant petrochemical resources. Perhaps emboldened by its success in Venezuela, the US might be expecting a similar client state relationship here. However, this has not been the outcome. Over the weekend of the 11th and 12th of April, JD Vance, Jared Kushner and Steve Wyckoff flew to Pakistan as part of a Pakistani brokered ceasefire to engage in peace talks with Iran. Before these peace talks, we saw both the US and Iran circulating very different bases for negotiation, with Iran demanding tolls for ships passing near its coastline, an end to sanctions and the removal of U.S. forces from the region. The U.S. demanded an end to the nuclear program in Iran, and at one point the President proposed a joint US Iranian toll on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the areas where there has been significant disagreement and so I want to explain a little bit about what the Strait of Hormuz is for listeners who are not familiar. Geographically, the strait connects the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, thus the Okanoshan. It's just about 39km wide across its narrowest point, with about a quarter of the world's liquefied natural gas and seaborne oil passing through the strait. Because of its geographical location, Asia and Europe are especially reliant on these energy products. Many of the Gulf states will have no maritime export routes without transiting the strait. In response to the United States and Israel's bombing campaign, Iran effectively closed the strait through a combination of missile threats claimed mining, very high frequency radio broadcasts, warning ships of the two previously mentioned threats, and uncrewed surface vessel attacks that blew up and damaged vessels, including oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. At the time of writing, Iran is threatening ships transiting the strait, and the US is attempting to blockade all ships that aim to go to Iran. Iran has previously allowed some ships a right to pass safely if they pay a toll payable in cryptocurrency or Chinese Yuan. Some ships appear to have certainly transited the strait, but many more have not, and this presents a serious issue for global trade. Luckily, the problems with global trade have not affected our advertisers. So here are some goods and services that will probably cost more than they did a few weeks ago. The United States has a lack of capacity when it comes to minesweeping. Many of the ships it does have which can do that are not currently very close to the Strait of Hormuz. On 12 April, it did send two destroyers into the strait normally to begin mine clearing operations. But these aren't really the sort of ships that would do that so much as they would work alongside the ships that do that to provide them with security. There is currently a safe lane through the strait that Iran seems to be sending ships through, but it's a little unclear to what extent, if at all, the strait is mined and what kind of mines were used. Naval mines can vary. They can be pretty simple contact fuse mines like the ones you might have seen in the minesweeper computer game, or bottom mines triggered by a number of mechanisms. Clearing a body of water this large would take a significant amount of time. Stopping transits through the street was not Iran's only response to the attacks. They have launched a massive fusillade of one way drones and missiles at targets across the region. Their Shaheed drones are one of the most significant military innovations of the last decade. They're cheap one way drones that can do tremendous damage at a very low cost. If you've ever heard of Shahid drone, you won't forget what they sound like. It's like a lawnmower flying over you. These drones have been so successful that the US has cloned captured drones to make its own one way drones, which it calls Lucas drones, and Iran has licensed production to Russia which uses them in massive numbers against Ukraine. These drones have provided a cheap and relatively easy to launch platform for Iran strikes which is focused on US allies Israel and Bashur Kurdistan. Bashur, meaning southern or Iraqi Kurdistan, has taken a particularly heavy toll. Much of this has been due to reporting in the early days of the conflict, which began with notorious fact check evader Barak Ravid. Much of this reporting heavily implied or outright said that Kurdish ground forces were repairing an assault into Iran. Ravid's piece, which reported that Trump had spoken to two major Kurdish leaders, was particularly shocking because it erroneously conflated Iraqi Kurds with Iranian Kurds, those from eastern Kurdistan and Rojalat. It's true that the majority of anti regime Kurdish armed groups from Iran retain bases in Iraq, but it's extremely unlikely that the KDP and the puk, the major actors in Iraqi Kurdistan, will be storming the border into Rojalat anytime in the near future. However, I have spoken to several of the Rojalati armed groups who are part of the alliance of political forces of Iranian Kurdistan. The groups involved are the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan or the pdki, the Free Life Party of Kurdistan The Kurdistan Freedom Party, two of the Kamala parties, and Habat, or the organization of the Iranian Kurdistan Struggle. The alliance predates United States and Israeli campaign. It came around earlier this year. Arash Saleh, a spokesman for the pdki, told me, quote, at this point the whole coalition is built upon some type of self rule inside Iranian Kurdistan as the main demand for all of them. And that is the main demand for all the Kurdish people in Iranian Kurdistan. This unity of groups is a positive step and it represents a real opportunity for liberation of the people of Rojalak. But none of these parties are willing to be the spearhead of an American and Israeli offensive without guarantees that they will receive support for their own goals, which are very different to those of the USA and Israel. In more recent weeks, President Trump has insinuated, and Fox News has claimed that he said this, but I haven't seen any recording of it, that the United States sent weapons to Iranian protesters through Kurdish groups, but that the Kurdish groups kept them instead of giving them to the protesters. Here's a clip of Trump implying this. And you'll have to forgive me for the jarringly awkward light jazz background music here.
