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[00:01]
Andrew Egger
What's going on everyone? It's bluff here and we're driving through the states in the Bluff mobile and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino style games. On Spin Quest, they have over a thousand games including live dealer blackjack and craps. With tons of slots and unlimited options, you can get a 30 coin pack for just $10. For new users sign up today, go to spinquest.com right now Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. That sound could mean a lot of things. And when something's going wrong at home, the hardest part can be figuring out what the problem actually is. At thumbtack, you can upload a voice message or a photo and our AI powered search will help diagnose your project. Plus, the pros we know have over 14 million five star reviews so you can hire with confidence. Thumbtack we know homes hire the right pro. Today, Donald Trump is dying to get out of this war in Iran. But Iran does not seem to want to let him off the hook. Just days after the President said that we should be moving towards some kind of deal in Iran, this weekend Iran issued its biggest ultimatum yet, its largest, most sweeping set of demands. Here is Donald Trump reacting to that in the White house just now. Mr. President, in addition to this big announcement, you've also been posting about Iran today opposing their latest demands. You said this last round of talks was Iran's last chance before decapitation. So what now?
[01:34]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
What you'll find out.
[01:36]
Andrew Egger
Are you still a massive escalation? Is that still on the table?
[01:39]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Well, we have that certainly that ability if we want to do that. Yeah, you'll find it.
[01:42]
Andrew Egger
I am Andrew Egger with the Bulwark, joined by our military analyst, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling to talk about the latest what's going on in Iran. General, can you just walk us through what exactly Iran is demanding as of this weekend and why it is an escalation from what we've seen from them before.
[01:58]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, Andrew, when this came out this weekend, it's, it's, you would have to say from a common sense perspective, it's laughable. They know that the President's not going to live up to it. So a guy named Mohamed Zolgidar, who's the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. So this is a real guy. This is a diplomat, this isn't the irgc, this isn't the Ayatollah, he issued a statement that was then later carried by Iranian State media. So it was the real deal and listed five requirements and I'll read them for you. The first one was the US Lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran. Okay. That's something that you could negotiate. Secondly, withdrawal of US Military from around Iran, which that one isn't really clear because they don't state which military organizations or countries they're talking about. So the United States has, the United States and various allied countries have installations all over Jordan, Syria, Oman, uae, Kuwait, especially Omega. So that's saying withdrawal. Is that something that most of the Muslims have asked for in this area? The third one, pay war reparations. And we saw a couple things this afternoon where President Trump and the Ayatollah were going back and forth on what kind of reparations there were. And we can talk about that in a second. Release all frozen Iranian assets. That's quite a bit of money. And then finally, here's the big one. End attacks on Iran's allies in the regions and threats against their country and their proxies. So this is now talking Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi PMF forces that have actually been mobilized to a degree and causing more problems inside of Iraq. So you're talking about anyone who is of a Shia background that's allied with the Iranian resistance, if you will. They said basically the United States can't attack any of them or shouldn't attack any of those. So this is a pretty significant demonstration of what they're looking for. When I first read it, Andrew, I thought, okay, they're poking the bear. They know that the Trump administration doesn't have a whole lot of options and the options are getting even less and less by the day. So they're basically showing their hand not only to the United States, but all the other Gulf states that are in the region, that they're taking on a new sense of power.
[04:31]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, this has been the thing that I've been trying to figure out because correct me if I'm wrong here, my sense of this set of demands is that it is already a pretty significant worsening of the deal relative to the MoU that was agreed to in a very fragile way between the US And Iran a couple of months ago. Now, insofar as all of this, first of all, it's more demands. The business of, I believe, reparations is new, but as well as Iran suggesting they're giving away less because this is all just again, to potentially reopen the Strait of Hormuz and not in a return to the pre war status quo sort of way, but just to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in a way that is now administered and told by Iran and Oman. And any mention of Iran's nuclear program, which was the other sort of leg of the stool for the MoU, is just absent from this. So it seems on the one hand like Iran is asking for, for more here. Is that basically accurate that this is
[05:37]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
a. Yeah, this is a power grab. They're not asking for more, they're asking for a lot more. I mean, some of these things are just unreasonable from any country to say something like this. But they also know they have intelligence in a couple of areas. First of all, this coordination council between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan is an interesting dynamic. The negotiations that Iran has been conducting with Oman, off the record, that council in terms of what can and what can't pass through the straits, even though Iran doesn't agree with what Oman is offering, the potential for the strikes against multiple targets throughout the region that are affecting other Gulf cooperation states, and the fact that they know that the President is facing an election in just a couple of months, as well as the reports that you know, truthfully are, they're rational and logical of the loss of precision weapon systems that the United States is decreasingly having the ability to have standoff weapons. So the only option you have left from a military force is either continue to deplete the weapons you have, the long range weapons, or send in the close in troops which are going to result in casualties. I mean, anytime you have a war where there's, as I like to call the term coffee breath close with your enemy, you're going to have casualties. And the President can't afford that because he was the guy that promised no more Middle Eastern wars. So they know that the President and his diplomats, as you, as it were, if you could call them that, are in a very difficult position in terms of what they can now negotiate. Especially with the fact that the President just keeps insulting Iran. I mean that's not diplomacy at all. That's going to turn a foe off quite a bit.
[07:40]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. This is the thing that has been psychologically interesting and maybe even a little confusing to me as I have been watching these sort of statements of bravado and counter bravado from Iran and the US the last few days is you can kind of make a psychological argument, I guess, that Iran knows that Donald Trump is willing to give a lot of concessions to get out of this war. He has shown this since the days of the mou. And I guess you could construct Construct an argument that it might be useful for Iran to leave him with a bit of a fig leaf here, to leave him with one or two things that he could then take to his people and strut and strut and crow and trumpet. Look, I got, I got this great deal. I got this great deal. And instead it seems like Iran is almost leaving him without a single diplomatic leg to stand on in terms of some of these demands. And it really does make you think like they are really betting that, that, that no matter what they say and do, Donald Trump will not have the appetite for going hot with this war again. And I just wonder, is that maybe too optimistic on Iran's part? I mean, it doesn't seem like, like maybe, maybe at this point Trump, Trump is in fact just spent and just done with this bombardment campaign. And maybe as, as you suggest, he, in fact, under no circumstances would escalate to ground troops. But it does seem like kind of a gamble on Iran's part. Or am I wrong about that?
[09:07]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
No, you're not wrong at all. It is a gamble on their part. But I think they, you know, to use the, the term that Trump uses so often, I think they believe they hold the cards that they, that the United States will not commit ground forces because if they do, they will have to have a massive number of Army, Marines, air Force going into this country. And it is, as I'm sure General Dan Kaine has told the President and the Secretary of Defense, this is not a country you want to conduct land warfare in. It will swallow up literally hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment. So I think Iran really feels they hold the upper hand in terms of not being attacked by ground forces. Hell, Andrew, I'll reincarnate the fact that Iraq fought an eight year war against Iran and never won with the fourth largest army in the world that they had at the time. So you can see that this is going to be tough with a lot of difficult terrain, a lot of major cities and 90 million people as part of their population base. The last thing I'll say on that is the President continues to insult Iran and basically call them out for things that he also did to them. I mean, if we were to pick ourselves up and suddenly put on Iranian uniforms and say, why would we be upset? Well, he's killed our supreme religious leader. He's bombed our city for 45 days.
[10:47]
Andrew Egger
Hit that school in the first days of the war.
[10:49]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, yeah, the school. The first days of the war. He tore up the JCPOA, which was negotiated over an 18 month period of time that showed initial agreement between Iran and the United States. He was working a peace deal and then suddenly pulled out and the next day started bombing them. So I think you could, if you're looking at it from the other side, and the continued insults against a culture that sees. I've used the Arabic term before. I don't know what the term is in, in Farsi, but the Arabs have a term called wasta, and it means respect for people. When you've lost respect as an Arab or a Persian, you've lost everything. So now I think they're sort of understanding the situation that the administration is in and they're rubbing Trump's nose in it, quite frankly. That's my gut feel.
[11:47]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Yeah. It's been interesting to see the President respond to this. Obviously, we played that clip just a minute ago. But let me read a couple of posts that he put up on Truth Social today, too. Basically responding to Iran's demands of new demands of reparations with a corresponding American demand of reparations. Basically just, just saying, you can't bully me. I'm gonna. I'm gonna bully you right back. So here's the President. I see that the representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran are asking for compensation for the damage done to them during the last five month military conflict started because they will not have a nuclear weapon, even though it was never mentioned in any of our negotiations or meetings. But it is an interesting idea because now I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their side bombs and many conflicts for which they are famous as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole and thousands of others killed in combat. He says compensation should be paid to the families of the Iranian protesters who have been killed by their own regime. And then in a follow up tweet, he says, follow up post on Truth Social. I should say also with respect to the Iran negotiations, Iran should be responsible for the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Gaza. President Donald J. Trump, is there anything to this other than just sort of, I can rattle my saber too? I mean, it just kind of seems like the bottom line here is that any last gasp of hope of a real diplomatic solution is vanishing as the two polls are both moving their demands in opposite directions.
[13:17]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
I think they are moving their polls in opposite directions, as you said. But the other issue is how many others will be drawn into this. This is expanding. This isn't just between the US And Iran anymore. As we've seen today, Prime Minister Netanyahu says he won't accept any of the 15 points that were in the US negotiations with Hamas. So Iran now has another reason not to make any deals with the United States because they can't back up something against our key ally Israel to do the things that we've been negotiating on behalf of. So if you're not just looking at this from an American viewpoint, if you kind of see what's going on in the region, you have all of the Gulf states and we've named them already, but all of them have suffered attacks by Iran and they depend in many cases on the US to defend them. With interceptors, air defense interceptors, they're not being defended. They're having hotels hits and bases hit and headquarters hit. And you know, we're there to be the so called protector and the allied partner of these individual nations, especially Kuwait. And they're continuing to be bombed. We're supposed to be allied with Israel and yet Iran sees a wedge between us and our greatest partner in the Middle east because we're not agreeing to the same kind of things. NATO is not supplying any forces to come in. Basically we're now in the true social post you just read now, the President is basically saying you're going to pay for every death that Iran has sponsored or contributed to over the last 47 years. And I mean, I hate to say this, but as the United States, we don't collect salacia payments. I mean, when I was in Iraq, I had to pay various Iraq leaders when we accidentally killed a citizen or someone of importance in a firefight. We had to pay money with a suitcase full of American cash to the leaders of the tribe so they can distribute it among the family of the person that was killed. We don't do that. What's the President going to do if Iran says, okay, we're going to pay you for all the deaths from the coal bombing and Beirut and all the other places. Where's that money going to go? It certainly isn't going to be paid to the widows and families of those who were killed in action because of a roadside bomb in Iran. I don't think unless they say, oh yeah, we planted that bomb back in 2007 and it killed three of your soldiers. Here's the money for those three soldiers. It's a ludicrous proposition and it just shows that the President, I think, is reaching for straws that are nonsensical in many ways.
[16:16]
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[17:17]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk just for a couple minutes about some of the economic ramifications. The Strait of Hormuz, basically. I mean, this has been the thing that ever since the nuclear program ambitions sort of went quietly by the wayside. This has been the thing that Donald Trump has been trying to get by hooker by crook to hang his hat on. To say we can finally end this conflict and call it a win is some sort of reopening of the Strait. Iran now seems pretty intent on keeping it bottled up. Ever since the MOU went up in smithereens, traffic through the Strait has crawled or has slowed back down very, very much to a crawl. We have not yet seen the sorts of really out of control price movements in oil and gas since the MOU imploded that we saw prior to the mou. I'm not an economist. I don't have a great sense of why that is exactly, except that there have been new pathways for some of this. There have been different ways that these companies have found to get some of that oil around this chokehold, but we're still spending down our stockpiles quite a bit. There's a question of how much oil we can physically pull out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserves before the rest of it is actually physically trapped in the ground. And nobody quite seems to know where that is. But I also wanted to point to one other headline here which is just it's something that I talked to a couple shipping experts about months and months ago, but just the plight of the mariners, the merchant mariners who are stuck on these ships in the Strait of Hormuz, some of whom have been there since March. I mean, that, that they're just, they're just trapped and they've, you know, they've, they've got systems now kind of jerry rigged together to bring food and water to the boats and things like this. But it's basically like they're, they're in prison. Right. I mean, there's a Guardian piece of reporting in the Guardian today, basically just talking about that. I mean, I struggle to think, and this is not my, my area at all, but I sort of struggle to think of a, of a comparable weird, like international humanitarian crisis when it comes to just all these people from all these different countries who are stuck on all of these ships and have been now for nearly six months. And I guess there really isn't going to be any obvious way to clear that up, at least in the near term.
[19:46]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, and they're not being able to go into ports except a few. But, you know, we did a story in the Bulwark, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the situation they're under with a lot of pressure for sailors having been at Sea for 210 days straight. They're running out of not just good food and potential potable water, but they're also running out of things like soap and toothpaste and the kind of basic hygienic necessities that you need. So when you talk about these crews on board these merchant ships, they're obviously much smaller crews on some of these tankers and ships, but at the same time they're just sitting there and their bosses are continuing to pay them, I would think, for doing nothing. They're waiting to deliver the goods that they've either picked up or waiting to pick up. And I would like it. Somebody likened it to me the other day saying they like to take cruises on cruise ships. And you compare a cruise ship that goes into a port every other day and everybody sees the touristy stuff versus someone that's sitting out in the middle of 100 degree heat in the Persian Gulf with no wind and nothing to do, you can imagine yourself getting pretty bored after six months just sitting there and not a whole lot of ships have moved in and out of there. And it's costing money to run those ships and it's costing money to insure them against a potential attack like there was last night against the, I think it was a UAE ship in one of the Omani ports that was hit last night and burned. So yeah, it's unfathomable to me. There's a reason I went into the army and not the Navy. I never wanted to be trapped on board a ship like this. But I can't imagine the situation of some of these people right now that are still on these ships. Yeah, yeah.
[21:44]
Andrew Egger
I mean, it really kind of makes your skin crawl to think about. At least it does just for me, just the claustrophobia of it. And yeah, I mean, it's a horrible, horrible situation.
[21:54]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
If I can just comment on the fact we had an article in the Bulwark about the price of precision weaponry and what that means beyond just the depletion of rounds and the inability to generate new rounds. And both the President and Secretary Hegseth are proclaiming that we're building new factories and stocking up the assembly lines and we're going to have replacements for these precision weapons. And what I would say is that's just not true. From my checks of the defense industry, there are no new factories being built from the organizations that build what I would call the big five. And that is the Patriot missiles and the Thaad missiles, which are your interceptors for incoming drones and missiles from Iran, as well as the Tomahawk missile, the ATACMS army missile and the new precision strike missile, which are all very expensive at millions of dollars apiece. In fact, the Thaad interceptor, one of them costs one missile, cost about $13 million. And we're using up and depleting many of those. So that's why you see the President in the first clip we played basically in the Oval Office saying, you'll see. Because his options in terms of using military force without depleting completely depleting these supplies of precision weapons is to put soldiers and marines closer to their enemy, the so called coffee breath close. I mean, if you don't have standoff munitions, which all of these things are, you're going to increase your capability of being attacked by a drone or Iranian missile. Or if you don't have missiles to strike deep into Iran, it's going to turn into a situation much like Ukraine had at the beginning of their war where they can't reach out and touch the enemy. So the only option you have left is to send actual bodies in wearing uniforms to conduct those attacks. And the President doesn't want to do that because again, to go into Iran, the troop to task that you would be required is probably in the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, considering the fact that when we went into Iraq in 2003. There were about 200,000 forces that went into a country that's a third of the size of Iran. So all of these things are consideration. The President doesn't have many military options left. His diplomacy has been terrible. He does have the potential for squeezing economically Iran, but that's going to take a long time and it's going to carry him I think into the election cycle, which he doesn't want to do.
[24:45]
Andrew Egger
It's just one mess after another. Well, unfortunately we're probably odds are going to have plenty more of the Iran war story to chew on over the weeks and you know, God forbid, months ahead. Thank you General Hertling for coming and talking us through all of this. Thanks to you all out there for watching. We hope you will subscribe to the Bulwark subscribe to the feed. Come on over to the Bulwark.com, read read what General Hertling has to offer up on the site all the time. It's great stuff. Thanks and we'll see you all next time. What's going on everyone? It's bluff here. And you know what's more American than America's 250th birthday? Supporting American owned companies like Spinquest, America's number one social casino with over a thousand games like Live Dealer, Blackjack and Craps. They're offering new users a $30 coin pack for just $10. Go to spinquest.com and sign up today. Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
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Summary7 min read

Bulwark Takes — "Trump Is Running Out of Options in Iran"

Podcast: Bulwark Takes
Host: Andrew Egger (The Bulwark)
Guest: Lieutenant General Mark Hertling (Military Analyst, Retired)
Date: August 10, 2026

Overview

This episode tackles the latest escalation in the US-Iran conflict, focusing on Iran’s sweeping new demands, President Trump’s shrinking military and diplomatic options, and the mounting regional and humanitarian consequences. Andrew Egger is joined by Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling for a candid, granular analysis of the realities on the ground and the maneuvering in Washington, Tehran, and across the Middle East.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Iran’s New, Sweeping Demands

[03:00 - 06:00]

Iran, via Mohamed Zolgidar (Supreme National Security Council Secretary), published a set of five unprecedented demands:
- Lift the US naval blockade and sanctions.
- Withdraw US military from areas surrounding Iran (unclear on specifics, but includes bases across allied countries).
- Pay war reparations to Iran.
- Release all frozen Iranian assets.
- End attacks and threats against Iran’s regional allies and proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi PMFs, etc.).
Lt. Gen. Hertling: "When this came out this weekend, you would have to say from a common sense perspective, it's laughable. They know that the President's not going to live up to it." [02:00]

Context & Analysis:

These demands represent a significant and deliberate escalation, signaling Iran’s sense of leverage and its attempt to assert regional dominance.
Reparations and the explicit demand to halt operations against Iran’s proxies are new.
The nuclear program, a central issue in previous negotiations, is notably absent.

2. US Position: Cornered Diplomatically and Militarily

[06:00 - 12:00]

Hertling notes that Iran senses President Trump’s lack of viable options:
- The President faces election pressure and the risk of US casualties if ground troops are deployed, which would contradict his campaign promises.
- US stockpiles of precision weaponry are dwindling, with limited ability to replenish, leaving risky close-combat options (the "coffee breath close" scenario).
- The US diplomatic position is weakened by persistent public insults and hostile rhetoric from Trump.
Lt. Gen. Hertling: "They know that the Trump administration doesn't have a whole lot of options and the options are getting even less and less by the day." [03:54]

Psychological Calculations:

Both sides are engaging in public bravado, but Iran appears to be betting that Trump won’t escalate militarily, instead squeezing him to extract maximum concessions.
Egger: "Iran is almost leaving him without a single diplomatic leg to stand on... it really does make you think like they are really betting that, that no matter what they say and do, Donald Trump will not have the appetite for going hot with this war again." [08:00]
General Hertling: "It is a gamble on their part. But I think... they believe they hold the cards." [09:15]

3. No Room for "Face-Saving" Deals

[12:00 - 14:00]

Unlike past negotiations, Iran seems uninterested in giving Trump a way to proclaim any sort of victory or achievement.
Trump's response has been mainly rhetorical tit-for-tat: demanding Iran pay reparations for attacks against US interests since 1979, a move Hertling calls “ludicrous.”
Trump on Truth Social: "I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their side bombs and many conflicts..." [12:10]
Hertling: "It's a ludicrous proposition and it just shows that the President, I think, is reaching for straws that are nonsensical in many ways." [15:45]

4. Regional and International Implications

[14:00 - 17:00]

The conflict’s expansion beyond a US-Iran bilateral dispute has paralyzed the region:
- Israel’s PM Netanyahu has refused to accept US-negotiated terms with Hamas.
- Gulf states remain under threat, and US regional allies are frustrated and under-defended.
- NATO is not offering support; American credibility as the region’s security guarantor is wavering.
- Mutual maximalist demands are driving hope for diplomacy further out of reach.

5. Economic and Humanitarian Fallout: The Strait of Hormuz Crisis

[17:00 - 22:00]

Oil and shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—vital for global energy—remains bottlenecked.
- Trump has pinned his potential claim of “victory” on reopening the Strait, but Iran shows no sign of relenting.
- Egger: "Ever since the MOU went up in smithereens, traffic through the Strait has slowed back down very, very much to a crawl." [17:30]
Strategic petroleum reserves are being depleted; it's unclear how long US and global stockpiles can cope before economic pain sharply increases.
Humanitarian crisis for mariners: thousands of multinational merchant sailors trapped aboard ships—some since March—unable to dock, living in near-prison conditions.
- Egger: "It's basically like they're, they're in prison. ...I sort of struggle to think of a, of a comparable weird, like international humanitarian crisis..." [18:30]
- Hertling: “Their bosses are continuing to pay them, I would think, for doing nothing. ...You can imagine yourself getting pretty bored after six months just sitting there and not a whole lot of ships have moved in and out of there.” [20:00]

6. Depletion of US Military Resources

[22:00 - 24:40]

US stocks of high-end weapons—especially precision munitions—are running dangerously low.
The administration’s claims of increased production are false or exaggerated; no new factories are being built for the systems most needed (Patriots, THAADs, Tomahawks, ATACMS).
- Hertling: "From my checks of the defense industry, there are no new factories being built from the organizations that build what I would call the big five." [22:00]
Without these, US options are reduced to close-quarter operations—huge risks, high casualties, and massive commitment of troops, all politically toxic.
- Hertling: "The President doesn't have many military options left. His diplomacy has been terrible. He does have the potential for squeezing economically Iran, but that's going to take a long time and it's going to carry him I think into the election cycle, which he doesn't want to do." [24:20]

Memorable Quotes & Moments

Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling [04:49]: "They're not asking for more, they're asking for a lot more. I mean, some of these things are just unreasonable from any country."
Andrew Egger [08:00]: "Iran is almost leaving him without a single diplomatic leg to stand on."
Lt. Gen. Hertling [10:48]: "If we were to pick ourselves up and suddenly put on Iranian uniforms...why would we be upset? Well, he's killed our supreme religious leader. He's bombed our city for 45 days."
Lt. Gen. Hertling [15:45]: "It's a ludicrous proposition and it just shows that the President, I think, is reaching for straws that are nonsensical in many ways."
Andrew Egger [18:30]: "It's basically like they're, they're in prison...a comparable weird, like international humanitarian crisis..."
Lt. Gen. Hertling [22:20]: "There are no new factories being built...all of these things are consideration. The President doesn't have many military options left. His diplomacy has been terrible."

Timestamps for Important Segments

[01:42] Andrew Egger introduces Lt. Gen. Hertling, outlines Iran’s new demands.
[02:00-04:30] Breakdown of Iran’s five-point ultimatum and implications.
[06:30-11:00] Hertling explains why Iran feels emboldened; discusses US military constraints.
[11:45] Trump’s social media posts on reparations; escalation of mutual rhetorical demands.
[13:17-16:15] Regional spillover: Israel, Gulf states, and the widening crisis.
[17:16-21:44] Economic impacts: the Strait of Hormuz, tanker bottlenecks, stranded mariners.
[21:54-24:44] Strategic munitions shortage, lack of new production, implications for US military options.

Tone & Approach

The episode is dense, direct, and unsparing—a blend of analytical military insight and unvarnished realism, with Hertling offering frank assessments and Egger pressing for clarity on the bleakness of the options available. There’s a note of frustration as both men discuss the lack of viable diplomatic or military “outs” for the US, and a deep concern about both immediate human costs and longer-term strategic blowback.

Conclusion

The big picture: Iran’s demands and strategic calculus reflect growing confidence and an assessment that the US is hamstrung by its internal politics, military exhaustion, and lack of diplomatic leverage. The US, in turn, is trapped between catastrophic escalation and humiliating retreat, while regional players and innocent bystanders bear the brunt. Diplomatic offramps are rapidly vanishing—leaving the administration, the military, and global markets in a perilous holding pattern.

Next steps: The Bulwark will continue to cover the evolving crisis, with General Hertling’s on-the-ground insights, as the situation in Iran—and Washington—spins onward.

For more in-depth coverage, visit TheBulwark.com and follow the Bulwark Takes podcast feed.

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Transcript21 lines

[00:01]
Andrew Egger
What's going on everyone? It's bluff here and we're driving through the states in the Bluff mobile and the best thing that we can do is play our favorite casino style games. On Spin Quest, they have over a thousand games including live dealer blackjack and craps. With tons of slots and unlimited options, you can get a 30 coin pack for just $10. For new users sign up today, go to spinquest.com right now Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details. That sound could mean a lot of things. And when something's going wrong at home, the hardest part can be figuring out what the problem actually is. At thumbtack, you can upload a voice message or a photo and our AI powered search will help diagnose your project. Plus, the pros we know have over 14 million five star reviews so you can hire with confidence. Thumbtack we know homes hire the right pro. Today, Donald Trump is dying to get out of this war in Iran. But Iran does not seem to want to let him off the hook. Just days after the President said that we should be moving towards some kind of deal in Iran, this weekend Iran issued its biggest ultimatum yet, its largest, most sweeping set of demands. Here is Donald Trump reacting to that in the White house just now. Mr. President, in addition to this big announcement, you've also been posting about Iran today opposing their latest demands. You said this last round of talks was Iran's last chance before decapitation. So what now?
[01:34]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
What you'll find out.
[01:36]
Andrew Egger
Are you still a massive escalation? Is that still on the table?
[01:39]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Well, we have that certainly that ability if we want to do that. Yeah, you'll find it.
[01:42]
Andrew Egger
I am Andrew Egger with the Bulwark, joined by our military analyst, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling to talk about the latest what's going on in Iran. General, can you just walk us through what exactly Iran is demanding as of this weekend and why it is an escalation from what we've seen from them before.
[01:58]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, Andrew, when this came out this weekend, it's, it's, you would have to say from a common sense perspective, it's laughable. They know that the President's not going to live up to it. So a guy named Mohamed Zolgidar, who's the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. So this is a real guy. This is a diplomat, this isn't the irgc, this isn't the Ayatollah, he issued a statement that was then later carried by Iranian State media. So it was the real deal and listed five requirements and I'll read them for you. The first one was the US Lift its naval blockade and sanctions on Iran. Okay. That's something that you could negotiate. Secondly, withdrawal of US Military from around Iran, which that one isn't really clear because they don't state which military organizations or countries they're talking about. So the United States has, the United States and various allied countries have installations all over Jordan, Syria, Oman, uae, Kuwait, especially Omega. So that's saying withdrawal. Is that something that most of the Muslims have asked for in this area? The third one, pay war reparations. And we saw a couple things this afternoon where President Trump and the Ayatollah were going back and forth on what kind of reparations there were. And we can talk about that in a second. Release all frozen Iranian assets. That's quite a bit of money. And then finally, here's the big one. End attacks on Iran's allies in the regions and threats against their country and their proxies. So this is now talking Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iraqi PMF forces that have actually been mobilized to a degree and causing more problems inside of Iraq. So you're talking about anyone who is of a Shia background that's allied with the Iranian resistance, if you will. They said basically the United States can't attack any of them or shouldn't attack any of those. So this is a pretty significant demonstration of what they're looking for. When I first read it, Andrew, I thought, okay, they're poking the bear. They know that the Trump administration doesn't have a whole lot of options and the options are getting even less and less by the day. So they're basically showing their hand not only to the United States, but all the other Gulf states that are in the region, that they're taking on a new sense of power.
[04:31]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, this has been the thing that I've been trying to figure out because correct me if I'm wrong here, my sense of this set of demands is that it is already a pretty significant worsening of the deal relative to the MoU that was agreed to in a very fragile way between the US And Iran a couple of months ago. Now, insofar as all of this, first of all, it's more demands. The business of, I believe, reparations is new, but as well as Iran suggesting they're giving away less because this is all just again, to potentially reopen the Strait of Hormuz and not in a return to the pre war status quo sort of way, but just to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in a way that is now administered and told by Iran and Oman. And any mention of Iran's nuclear program, which was the other sort of leg of the stool for the MoU, is just absent from this. So it seems on the one hand like Iran is asking for, for more here. Is that basically accurate that this is
[05:37]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
a. Yeah, this is a power grab. They're not asking for more, they're asking for a lot more. I mean, some of these things are just unreasonable from any country to say something like this. But they also know they have intelligence in a couple of areas. First of all, this coordination council between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan is an interesting dynamic. The negotiations that Iran has been conducting with Oman, off the record, that council in terms of what can and what can't pass through the straits, even though Iran doesn't agree with what Oman is offering, the potential for the strikes against multiple targets throughout the region that are affecting other Gulf cooperation states, and the fact that they know that the President is facing an election in just a couple of months, as well as the reports that you know, truthfully are, they're rational and logical of the loss of precision weapon systems that the United States is decreasingly having the ability to have standoff weapons. So the only option you have left from a military force is either continue to deplete the weapons you have, the long range weapons, or send in the close in troops which are going to result in casualties. I mean, anytime you have a war where there's, as I like to call the term coffee breath close with your enemy, you're going to have casualties. And the President can't afford that because he was the guy that promised no more Middle Eastern wars. So they know that the President and his diplomats, as you, as it were, if you could call them that, are in a very difficult position in terms of what they can now negotiate. Especially with the fact that the President just keeps insulting Iran. I mean that's not diplomacy at all. That's going to turn a foe off quite a bit.
[07:40]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. This is the thing that has been psychologically interesting and maybe even a little confusing to me as I have been watching these sort of statements of bravado and counter bravado from Iran and the US the last few days is you can kind of make a psychological argument, I guess, that Iran knows that Donald Trump is willing to give a lot of concessions to get out of this war. He has shown this since the days of the mou. And I guess you could construct Construct an argument that it might be useful for Iran to leave him with a bit of a fig leaf here, to leave him with one or two things that he could then take to his people and strut and strut and crow and trumpet. Look, I got, I got this great deal. I got this great deal. And instead it seems like Iran is almost leaving him without a single diplomatic leg to stand on in terms of some of these demands. And it really does make you think like they are really betting that, that, that no matter what they say and do, Donald Trump will not have the appetite for going hot with this war again. And I just wonder, is that maybe too optimistic on Iran's part? I mean, it doesn't seem like, like maybe, maybe at this point Trump, Trump is in fact just spent and just done with this bombardment campaign. And maybe as, as you suggest, he, in fact, under no circumstances would escalate to ground troops. But it does seem like kind of a gamble on Iran's part. Or am I wrong about that?
[09:07]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
No, you're not wrong at all. It is a gamble on their part. But I think they, you know, to use the, the term that Trump uses so often, I think they believe they hold the cards that they, that the United States will not commit ground forces because if they do, they will have to have a massive number of Army, Marines, air Force going into this country. And it is, as I'm sure General Dan Kaine has told the President and the Secretary of Defense, this is not a country you want to conduct land warfare in. It will swallow up literally hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment. So I think Iran really feels they hold the upper hand in terms of not being attacked by ground forces. Hell, Andrew, I'll reincarnate the fact that Iraq fought an eight year war against Iran and never won with the fourth largest army in the world that they had at the time. So you can see that this is going to be tough with a lot of difficult terrain, a lot of major cities and 90 million people as part of their population base. The last thing I'll say on that is the President continues to insult Iran and basically call them out for things that he also did to them. I mean, if we were to pick ourselves up and suddenly put on Iranian uniforms and say, why would we be upset? Well, he's killed our supreme religious leader. He's bombed our city for 45 days.
[10:47]
Andrew Egger
Hit that school in the first days of the war.
[10:49]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, yeah, the school. The first days of the war. He tore up the JCPOA, which was negotiated over an 18 month period of time that showed initial agreement between Iran and the United States. He was working a peace deal and then suddenly pulled out and the next day started bombing them. So I think you could, if you're looking at it from the other side, and the continued insults against a culture that sees. I've used the Arabic term before. I don't know what the term is in, in Farsi, but the Arabs have a term called wasta, and it means respect for people. When you've lost respect as an Arab or a Persian, you've lost everything. So now I think they're sort of understanding the situation that the administration is in and they're rubbing Trump's nose in it, quite frankly. That's my gut feel.
[11:47]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. Yeah. It's been interesting to see the President respond to this. Obviously, we played that clip just a minute ago. But let me read a couple of posts that he put up on Truth Social today, too. Basically responding to Iran's demands of new demands of reparations with a corresponding American demand of reparations. Basically just, just saying, you can't bully me. I'm gonna. I'm gonna bully you right back. So here's the President. I see that the representatives of the Islamic Republic of Iran are asking for compensation for the damage done to them during the last five month military conflict started because they will not have a nuclear weapon, even though it was never mentioned in any of our negotiations or meetings. But it is an interesting idea because now I am likewise demanding compensation from Iran for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their side bombs and many conflicts for which they are famous as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole and thousands of others killed in combat. He says compensation should be paid to the families of the Iranian protesters who have been killed by their own regime. And then in a follow up tweet, he says, follow up post on Truth Social. I should say also with respect to the Iran negotiations, Iran should be responsible for the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Gaza. President Donald J. Trump, is there anything to this other than just sort of, I can rattle my saber too? I mean, it just kind of seems like the bottom line here is that any last gasp of hope of a real diplomatic solution is vanishing as the two polls are both moving their demands in opposite directions.
[13:17]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
I think they are moving their polls in opposite directions, as you said. But the other issue is how many others will be drawn into this. This is expanding. This isn't just between the US And Iran anymore. As we've seen today, Prime Minister Netanyahu says he won't accept any of the 15 points that were in the US negotiations with Hamas. So Iran now has another reason not to make any deals with the United States because they can't back up something against our key ally Israel to do the things that we've been negotiating on behalf of. So if you're not just looking at this from an American viewpoint, if you kind of see what's going on in the region, you have all of the Gulf states and we've named them already, but all of them have suffered attacks by Iran and they depend in many cases on the US to defend them. With interceptors, air defense interceptors, they're not being defended. They're having hotels hits and bases hit and headquarters hit. And you know, we're there to be the so called protector and the allied partner of these individual nations, especially Kuwait. And they're continuing to be bombed. We're supposed to be allied with Israel and yet Iran sees a wedge between us and our greatest partner in the Middle east because we're not agreeing to the same kind of things. NATO is not supplying any forces to come in. Basically we're now in the true social post you just read now, the President is basically saying you're going to pay for every death that Iran has sponsored or contributed to over the last 47 years. And I mean, I hate to say this, but as the United States, we don't collect salacia payments. I mean, when I was in Iraq, I had to pay various Iraq leaders when we accidentally killed a citizen or someone of importance in a firefight. We had to pay money with a suitcase full of American cash to the leaders of the tribe so they can distribute it among the family of the person that was killed. We don't do that. What's the President going to do if Iran says, okay, we're going to pay you for all the deaths from the coal bombing and Beirut and all the other places. Where's that money going to go? It certainly isn't going to be paid to the widows and families of those who were killed in action because of a roadside bomb in Iran. I don't think unless they say, oh yeah, we planted that bomb back in 2007 and it killed three of your soldiers. Here's the money for those three soldiers. It's a ludicrous proposition and it just shows that the President, I think, is reaching for straws that are nonsensical in many ways.
[16:16]
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[17:17]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, yeah. Let's talk just for a couple minutes about some of the economic ramifications. The Strait of Hormuz, basically. I mean, this has been the thing that ever since the nuclear program ambitions sort of went quietly by the wayside. This has been the thing that Donald Trump has been trying to get by hooker by crook to hang his hat on. To say we can finally end this conflict and call it a win is some sort of reopening of the Strait. Iran now seems pretty intent on keeping it bottled up. Ever since the MOU went up in smithereens, traffic through the Strait has crawled or has slowed back down very, very much to a crawl. We have not yet seen the sorts of really out of control price movements in oil and gas since the MOU imploded that we saw prior to the mou. I'm not an economist. I don't have a great sense of why that is exactly, except that there have been new pathways for some of this. There have been different ways that these companies have found to get some of that oil around this chokehold, but we're still spending down our stockpiles quite a bit. There's a question of how much oil we can physically pull out of our Strategic Petroleum Reserves before the rest of it is actually physically trapped in the ground. And nobody quite seems to know where that is. But I also wanted to point to one other headline here which is just it's something that I talked to a couple shipping experts about months and months ago, but just the plight of the mariners, the merchant mariners who are stuck on these ships in the Strait of Hormuz, some of whom have been there since March. I mean, that, that they're just, they're just trapped and they've, you know, they've, they've got systems now kind of jerry rigged together to bring food and water to the boats and things like this. But it's basically like they're, they're in prison. Right. I mean, there's a Guardian piece of reporting in the Guardian today, basically just talking about that. I mean, I struggle to think, and this is not my, my area at all, but I sort of struggle to think of a, of a comparable weird, like international humanitarian crisis when it comes to just all these people from all these different countries who are stuck on all of these ships and have been now for nearly six months. And I guess there really isn't going to be any obvious way to clear that up, at least in the near term.
[19:46]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
Yeah, and they're not being able to go into ports except a few. But, you know, we did a story in the Bulwark, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the situation they're under with a lot of pressure for sailors having been at Sea for 210 days straight. They're running out of not just good food and potential potable water, but they're also running out of things like soap and toothpaste and the kind of basic hygienic necessities that you need. So when you talk about these crews on board these merchant ships, they're obviously much smaller crews on some of these tankers and ships, but at the same time they're just sitting there and their bosses are continuing to pay them, I would think, for doing nothing. They're waiting to deliver the goods that they've either picked up or waiting to pick up. And I would like it. Somebody likened it to me the other day saying they like to take cruises on cruise ships. And you compare a cruise ship that goes into a port every other day and everybody sees the touristy stuff versus someone that's sitting out in the middle of 100 degree heat in the Persian Gulf with no wind and nothing to do, you can imagine yourself getting pretty bored after six months just sitting there and not a whole lot of ships have moved in and out of there. And it's costing money to run those ships and it's costing money to insure them against a potential attack like there was last night against the, I think it was a UAE ship in one of the Omani ports that was hit last night and burned. So yeah, it's unfathomable to me. There's a reason I went into the army and not the Navy. I never wanted to be trapped on board a ship like this. But I can't imagine the situation of some of these people right now that are still on these ships. Yeah, yeah.
[21:44]
Andrew Egger
I mean, it really kind of makes your skin crawl to think about. At least it does just for me, just the claustrophobia of it. And yeah, I mean, it's a horrible, horrible situation.
[21:54]
Lieutenant General Mark Hertling
If I can just comment on the fact we had an article in the Bulwark about the price of precision weaponry and what that means beyond just the depletion of rounds and the inability to generate new rounds. And both the President and Secretary Hegseth are proclaiming that we're building new factories and stocking up the assembly lines and we're going to have replacements for these precision weapons. And what I would say is that's just not true. From my checks of the defense industry, there are no new factories being built from the organizations that build what I would call the big five. And that is the Patriot missiles and the Thaad missiles, which are your interceptors for incoming drones and missiles from Iran, as well as the Tomahawk missile, the ATACMS army missile and the new precision strike missile, which are all very expensive at millions of dollars apiece. In fact, the Thaad interceptor, one of them costs one missile, cost about $13 million. And we're using up and depleting many of those. So that's why you see the President in the first clip we played basically in the Oval Office saying, you'll see. Because his options in terms of using military force without depleting completely depleting these supplies of precision weapons is to put soldiers and marines closer to their enemy, the so called coffee breath close. I mean, if you don't have standoff munitions, which all of these things are, you're going to increase your capability of being attacked by a drone or Iranian missile. Or if you don't have missiles to strike deep into Iran, it's going to turn into a situation much like Ukraine had at the beginning of their war where they can't reach out and touch the enemy. So the only option you have left is to send actual bodies in wearing uniforms to conduct those attacks. And the President doesn't want to do that because again, to go into Iran, the troop to task that you would be required is probably in the hundreds of thousands of soldiers, considering the fact that when we went into Iraq in 2003. There were about 200,000 forces that went into a country that's a third of the size of Iran. So all of these things are consideration. The President doesn't have many military options left. His diplomacy has been terrible. He does have the potential for squeezing economically Iran, but that's going to take a long time and it's going to carry him I think into the election cycle, which he doesn't want to do.
[24:45]
Andrew Egger
It's just one mess after another. Well, unfortunately we're probably odds are going to have plenty more of the Iran war story to chew on over the weeks and you know, God forbid, months ahead. Thank you General Hertling for coming and talking us through all of this. Thanks to you all out there for watching. We hope you will subscribe to the Bulwark subscribe to the feed. Come on over to the Bulwark.com, read read what General Hertling has to offer up on the site all the time. It's great stuff. Thanks and we'll see you all next time. What's going on everyone? It's bluff here. And you know what's more American than America's 250th birthday? Supporting American owned companies like Spinquest, America's number one social casino with over a thousand games like Live Dealer, Blackjack and Craps. They're offering new users a $30 coin pack for just $10. Go to spinquest.com and sign up today. Spinquest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
[25:48]
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