Iran Is Not Deterred | Robert Pape on the Escalation Trap

[00:00:00] Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the At the Waters Edge podcast, where we look for insights beyond the headlines and take a practitioner's view on national security and geopolitics. It's the 29th of June, 2026. Let's get started. Now today, we have the next installment in our ongoing series with Professor Robert Pape from the University of Chicago discussing the ongoing war between the U.S. and Israel and Iran. Now we've had some new strikes over this past week and new agreements signed in Lebanon that appears to be going nowhere.

[00:00:25] How does all this change the strategic logic for Iran, their aspirations for a nuclear weapon, what the options with Israel might be? Well, for all that, we go to the professor. And if you've enjoyed this content, please be sure to like, subscribe, and share an episode with a friend. It really helps get the show up to more people. Well, good morning and welcome back. How are you doing today, sir? I'm doing very well, Scott. It's great to speak with you as always. So lots of interesting news coming out of the Middle East over the past week. Iran attacked two ships in the Straits of Pramuz.

[00:00:54] We then responded by bombing Iran. They then launched missiles at both of our bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Word on the ground is nobody got hurt, which is lovely. And yeah, now folks are saying that we're going to go back into a ceasefire that I'm not sure we are ever really in so that we can do talks on Tuesday, tomorrow, which Iran is saying haven't been scheduled. And there was a trilateral agreement reached with Lebanon, Israel, and the U.S., which, of course, nobody from Hezbollah was involved in,

[00:01:24] because although they are widely derided as a terrorist organization and for good reason, they are also the de facto government in southern Lebanon. They have been for quite some time now. So those talks seem to be going, well, nowhere, as they've always been. That seems to be what we woke up to this morning. Am I missing anything? No, Scott. I think you've covered the waterfront. We've essentially had four days of kinetic action.

[00:01:48] We have had an agreement in Lebanon between the government of Israel and the government of Lebanon. That's the main. And what Netanyahu did is he gave a clear presentation, a video presentation, where he explained Israeli troops aren't going anywhere. So this is, and if I understand correctly, there was some firing or some shooting over the weekend as well in Lebanon.

[00:02:18] But I haven't had myself time. There's so much to track down. I haven't even had a chance to track that particular corner of the actual shooting, whether or not that happened or not. But what you're really seeing, Scott, is very similar. We were on a week ago, and I was explaining that this is what we need to expect, which is we're in the middle game of the escalation trap. We're not in the end game of the escalation trap.

[00:02:45] And everybody wants there to be peace. But the ceasefire, to the extent we even had a ceasefire, is functionally over. Now, when I say the ceasefire is functionally over, let me just explain. I don't mean we're immediately going back to daily bombing runs. I don't mean we're going back to a four- or six-day air war.

[00:03:08] What I mean is we're in a period in the middle game of the escalation trap where there'll be days of bombing and violence, and there'll be times when there's not. It's a pause. But this is military action and pause, not a ceasefire. As I also explained last week, the main initiator of this violence is going to come from Iran,

[00:03:37] or Iran and Hezbollah during these next few weeks. So, yes, the United States is responding. J.D. Vaughan said violence will be met with violence. But this is not just a situation where the United States is initiating and then Iran is responding. And this is just what I explained last week in the post on the escalation trap,

[00:04:03] which is for the next few weeks, probably through the 60-day period of the MOU, we should be expecting that Iran is going to be the initiator of violence. And that's exactly what happened this week. We responded because this is too embarrassing on the part of the United States not to respond. And then Iran is responding to that. So that's how you got the spiral.

[00:04:30] Now, why is all of this happening here? Well, number one big thing to see is Iran is not deterred. Very important to understand. So Iran wasn't deterred by the United States assassinating its supreme leader. That didn't deter Iran. They took Hormuz. Then they weren't deterred by six weeks of bombing.

[00:04:59] They didn't give up for our moves. Government didn't collapse. Then they weren't deterred by two months after that of a U.S. naval blockade. Remember, we were supposed to punish them. That was supposed to cripple them in a week. We had this water coning. All these things we're supposed to be bringing them. Oil infrastructure was supposed to completely collapse in two weeks and their whole economy disappears. What is happening is the opposite. They're not deterred.

[00:05:27] And that's very important for our folks, our troops to know. They're just simply not deterred. And that means that we can't count on them being deterred. It's so just very, very important to see this. Now, what is underneath all of that is this is actually about the changing balance of power. You see, Iran survived and that changed everything.

[00:05:54] We're just simply not used to states really being able to survive. And it's not even that they just survived, Scott. It's not even a draw. They got ahead. So this isn't a case where, oh, like Korea, everything's a draw. No, they got ahead, which means the balance of power is shifting. And it's shifting abruptly. It's startling. And it's shifting against us.

[00:06:21] The United States was the preeminent power in the Persian Gulf going back decades. And then Israel was the rising power in our umbrella. They were rising under our umbrella. They probably couldn't have been the rising power without our umbrella. And Iran was the declining power until 120 days ago. Now, things have abruptly changed. And Iran wants more power.

[00:06:51] It wants to keep Hormuz. It wants to extend its security, its sphere of influence here through to Lebanon. This is also through the Red Sea. So what you see here is Iran is using this period of time since the MOU was signed to gain power and not to lose power. Now, President Trump, recall that he was supposed to be defeated, right? Weren't we saying, oh, yeah, he accepted the L?

[00:07:20] And we remember everybody said, yeah, he accepted the L, Bob? Well, no. Really? Did he really accept that L? Really? So he did for a day. I admit he did for a day. But let's just start with Secretary Rubio. Okay. Secretary Rubio is not accepting the L here.

[00:07:38] This is almost a direct violation of what he's doing to Article I of the MOU, because what he's doing is he is undermining Article I, which is effectively that the United States guarantees the territorial integrity of Lebanon, which means Israel is not in Lebanon. Well, that's not what just happened with this framework agreement.

[00:08:05] And in fact, when Secretary Rubio went to the Gulf states, so he flew to the Gulf states afterwards, he was explaining we are hiving off the issue of Lebanon from the MOU. Okay. Okay. Where is that signed off on? Where's the initials of the Iranians there on that? And so this is a – these are basically – that's step one. And then what is the United States also doing?

[00:08:31] I don't want to say it's Rubio and then it's the president, because this is an administration that is really, I think, operating – I see coherently, not incoherently. But they are trying to break Iran's grip on Hormuz. And how are they doing that? By having ships pass through the southern passageway of the Strait of Hormuz, which – without any administration coordination with Iran.

[00:09:00] And that – this combination, it's a little hard to know whether it is just Hormuz or whether it's Lebanon or both. But this combination then led to Iran saying they had enough. And that's when they attacked that ship. Essentially, it's a brushback pitch like in baseball. You know, you – you know, somebody's over – the batter is too far over the plate or whatever, and the pitcher is going to move them off. That's exactly what happened here.

[00:09:28] And then you went back and forth, a little bit like the pitcher and the batter in baseball. It kind of spirals up. It spirals up. Except there's no umpire here, Scott. So it's not like we have the umpire who is throwing them out or something. No, that's – imagine it's the spiral here where there's no umpires. Nice. So eventually you get to the point where the batter gets frustrated, walks over to the pitcher's mound, and starts beating the guy with the bat. And getting right in the face, and then you got through the benches.

[00:09:54] And so this is the brawl nature of this whole thing. Now, this is – from our troops' perspective, of course, the number one thing is will they get hit? And you saw that Iran did hit some targets apparently either in or near our base in Bahrain. It's a little hard to know because we're going to great lengths to prevent anybody from knowing any single thing. Yes.

[00:10:22] So I'm not – I don't want to say that, you know, too – I want to just qualify that. I, too, am following it the way everybody else is. But nonetheless, that does appear to have happened. And which means that our troops are not off the hook. They're not out of the target set by any stretch. But there's another thing in addition to that, which is the economic consequences.

[00:10:47] So if you recall, for weeks, Scott, we've been talking about this, and then President Trump, you know, validated. The issue of the oil inventories being drawn down, that means the world's economy is heading to a cliff. That's still happening. We didn't – this suddenly didn't go away. In fact, the 19th, which is 10 days ago, I realized, but that's the latest information we have of our Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

[00:11:15] They drew down another 10 million barrels. So we're at 331 million, where we were at 340 million. It's 9 million barrels. So we were – we're drawing it down. We'll get the new reading in a few days. But there's no reason to think we're not drawing down these reserves because the ships are not where they need to be. And also, as a result of these four days, the ships cut back down again. So everything – the traffic just went right back down.

[00:11:44] It's like a yo-yo. You see what I mean? And that is what I think Iran wants to do. Iran is using its leverage. The leverage is Hormuz. The leverage is tanker traffic in Hormuz. And what are they doing? They're doing enough kinetic action to lower that tanker traffic. And I think they probably think they've got a grace period here for months because Trump doesn't want to restart a giant major campaign.

[00:12:12] I mean, he did threaten to obliterate the country again, but nobody really believed it. So I don't think – He's also threatened to obliterate, you know, Denmark and Greenland. So, you know, he says that a lot. Yeah, I really don't think it's – I don't think that's the – The one group that's paying attention to President Trump are the oil markets. And I think that's also what you see in the last few days, which is it's – you know, we had the oil markets close on Friday. Within minutes, we're bombing Iran.

[00:12:42] Within minutes. And then just before the markets open, within minutes, President Trump said, oh, no, we're all back to – we're all good now. Everything – we're all standing down. And what you've got is you've got – Donald Trump has got a tight grip on the oil markets. Yeah. At the Water's Edge is supported by Grayzone Advisory. Grayzone helps businesses and organizations understand geopolitical risk before it becomes a crisis.

[00:13:09] If your company is exposed to conflict, supply chain risk, defense markets, or international instability, Grayzone provides executive briefings, strategic analysis, and decision support to help leaders understand what is changing and what to do next. Learn more at grayzoneadvisory.com. Yeah. So some folks overseas that I've been talking to, they're very curious about the logic behind Iran targeting two freighters going through the strait.

[00:13:36] Because it seemed like an overreaction when theoretically talks are ongoing. They can destroy the goodwill that they have. They actually target the ships. Like one of those ships they really went after. They could have killed a bunch of civilians. Oh, yeah. Create an environmental disaster. Big part. And the logic behind it almost seems silly because they know that we're going to respond. Then they go after our bases. Now, yeah, they got the last shot off. But Lord knows what happens if they actually kill an American where that resets this entire conversation.

[00:14:02] But what you just mentioned about the economic leverage, regardless of the status of the talks, should we expect Iran to keep needling ships with kinetic attacks over the coming months just to keep the economic pressure on the U.S.? The answer is yes. Okay. Their strategic logic is blisteringly clear, Scott. And I realize people think that, oh, they're playing brinksmanship and isn't it dangerous?

[00:14:32] They might go over the edge too. No, that's not how they're thinking about this. This is not a game of brinksmanship where they're daring us and so forth and so on. I know it could look like that. But I study shelling. I study brinksmanship. I know this is part of a – so I don't see this as a brinksmanship crisis. What I think is it's a straightforward, coercive, strategic logic where they are moving into their period of maximum coercive leverage.

[00:15:00] That leverage isn't quite here yet, but it will be here when those oil inventories run down in about four to six weeks. So we're now on – it's June 29th. Somewhere around July – let's call it August 1st, which is in about a little over four weeks. That's when those oil inventories are going to get down to these really, really scary levels. Now, they're already scary enough that they got President Trump's attention about 10 days ago.

[00:15:29] So now, though, that's what they're doing. They are planning. Their strategic logic looks absolutely crystal clear to me, which is they know their leverage is going to grow. They know President Trump doesn't want to start the air campaign up again in a really extended way. What they want to do is they want to keep those ships down, and they especially want – it's not so much they want to surely keep them down.

[00:15:57] They want to force them to coordinate with Iran so that then Iran can charge the fees, which is the power. That's the power struggle that's going on here. It's about the fees, but it's not because fees are money. It's because fees are power. And Iran, if Iran was able to get those fees and sell its oil, within probably about 24 months, it'll be the richest country in the Persian Gulf, much more than Saudi Arabia.

[00:16:27] So this is a fantastic boom. Talk about wealth coming in here. All the things that are coming here for Iran just breed fantastic wealth, and wealth equals power because you can use that wealth to buy an awful lot of military stuff. So a question I had, and I'm starting to think it might not even matter.

[00:16:52] You know, if Iran holds to protecting the territorial integrity of Lebanon as a condition, eventually at some point the U.S. is going to have to reign in Israel. Lord knows how the heck the political will to do that could ever be manifested in Washington, D.C. If someone could do it, I would think it would be Trump, but what we've seen recently, not very encouraging.

[00:17:13] But it seems like even if Israel left southern Lebanon, retreated back to their own borders, gave Iran everything that they wanted, the logic for Iran would still be to keep doing kinetic strikes, keep up the pressure. It's almost like the status of negotiations and the status of getting what they want is irrelevant to what they gain by maximizing pressure. I think it's going to be hard to – you're right. I mean, you're basically right.

[00:17:37] In the next couple – before the MOU runs out in middle of August, Iran has an enormous incentive to keep those oil inventories running down, Scott. That's the idea. That's the metric. Run down the oil inventories as much as possible, which therefore means keep the shipping down.

[00:17:59] And especially, you might let ships out, but you don't want that many coming in because that'll just create the – if you really go back to normal, then that would be a – so what you want to do, as you're saying, is keep that up. Now, the thing – now, what's happening in Lebanon, this is still going to be a secondary – an important issue.

[00:18:21] I don't know if it's quite secondary, but it's an issue of their belt for the long term because what they don't want is they don't want there to be – they control Hormuz. And pipelines end up going through Syria and bypassing Hormuz in the next couple years because that will then drain away their power. So, if they're looking out as I think they are, I mean, I just see the geography of what they're talking about.

[00:18:51] Lebanon is important because it actually seals that gap with Syria. So, if you're going to have a pipeline that's going to get the oil out through Syria, it's got to go through the MED. And Lebanon is a perfect aircraft carrier for drones to hit things coming out. Now, it doesn't mean the pipeline will literally go through Lebanon, but it does mean that it will be – Lebanon is like perfectly placed to deal with that.

[00:19:21] And I also think that longer term here, they're going to want to close Israel's seaborne trade in Haifa. So, basically, if you just play this out here a little bit further, Iran has all the makings of becoming that primary, that regional hegemon. And how would that happen?

[00:19:45] That would happen by holding on to Hormuz with a death grip and then extending the perimeter out to Lebanon so that you could cut off any bypass. But also have Hezbollah drones and also Houthi drones to be able to attack the port cities and the port – not even the cities, but the ports themselves – of the seaborne trade for Israel.

[00:20:09] So, that combination here is really – well, it wouldn't wipe Israel off the map, but it would be a real step down in power. Israel would become a second-tier power. You see what I mean? I call it a nuclear Sparta. It would not get away the – you wouldn't get rid of Israel, but it would be a much weaker country than it is today. And this is only 12, 18 months away. Yeah.

[00:20:37] The other thing that I think after 60 days is don't be surprised if Iran is much more aggressive in developing nuclear weapons. And you already saw that just in the last couple days. Yesterday, the FARS News Agency, which is very closely connected to the IRGC, put out that they need nuclear weapons. They say they've become quite clear. Now they need nuclear weapons. So, they're starting to talk this talk.

[00:21:07] Now, they may not, but this would make perfect sense from a realist perspective. If you are going to gain security against countries that have assassinated your top leaders, crippled you with sanctions for decades, toppled your governments, then you're going to want to do everything I just said, plus have nuclear weapons. And that's the trajectory I think they're on.

[00:21:34] And I don't see us stopping that trajectory short of a truly major war. And I think there's a good chance we're not going to fight that war. I myself don't think it's worth fighting that war because a war would be so horrendous. But that said, I'm not here normatively. So, what I'm not doing, Scott, and I know this frustrates people because they'd like to hear me either bash Israel or bash the administration or support the administration or support Israel.

[00:22:01] They want me to somehow be in the political lanes. I'm just not going to do that because what I'm trying to do is call the assessments of what's coming. And if I just go political, then you lose the ability to assess. So, anyway, so I'm showing you what I think. And so far, for almost four months, week by week, this has been pretty, you know, this has been spot on. A couple weeks ago, everybody wanted us out. Peace is broken out. War is over. Okay.

[00:22:31] Been defeated. Trump has owned the defeat. And it's all over now, right? Well, no, this is the middle game. And I'm sorry that it's not ending. But the big thing is, as I'm saying, we need to understand that it's Iran who's not deterred. They may initiate more violence. They're going to be able to claim violations of the MOU because we are violating the MOU. It's just that simple.

[00:22:59] But then the issue is for the world is the leverage that they have with the world's economy. I think ultimately what's coming, Scott, is they want to squeeze us to get our forces out of the Persian Gulf by the end of the year. So they want to squeeze before the midterms. They might want to squeeze around the midterms because they want to send – they want the public here.

[00:23:25] And you just saw it with the election of all these folks that are so anti-Israel in New York City. This may not be that hard. I mean, this may be coming. Well, let's talk about the timing of nuclear weapons real quick because I've been trying to war game this out. It seems like there's two logics that we've come up with, you know, a bunch of former mid-level officers. One is that Iran could sprint to a nuclear weapon and use that to settle the current dispute on the most favorable terms as quickly as possible.

[00:23:51] The other more savvy approach we came up with was, well, no, you wait until after this Trump administration's out because then when you make the nuclear weapon, the current American administration just goes, oh, well, one more thing that Trump screwed up. Let's move on. Whereas a current Trump administration might overreact. Trying to get the exact timing right of this, Scott, it's easier to get the direction of effect.

[00:24:13] So I realize people would like to time it, but this is not a polling market and it's not a, I'm not sure how much the timing really changes. So what I would ask your group is what exactly would they change based on that timing? Are they going to do a nuclear preemptive war? I don't think so. So what exactly is going to be the timing change? Because that's what's going to be going on on the side of the Iranians.

[00:24:37] So I don't think that's quite the way they are likely to think about it. I think a better way to think about it is it's a little bit more like a terrorist attack. People try to analyze the timing of it. And I've been doing this for 25 years, including with DHS and all the war games. They all want to time it based on the idea of the perfect timing and so forth by the day, the week, and so forth.

[00:25:03] When the truth is most terrorist attacks, certainly of any size, happen when the group can get their act together to pull it off. To literally pull it off. Okay? We're not taking the feasibility part of this seriously. Now, what does the feasibility part of Iran going nuclear crossing the threshold look like? The feasibility is when they have multiple nuclear devices.

[00:25:32] Don't even have to really be weapons, but multiple nuclear devices. All, at least several, able to detonate within several days. And that's no small, you know, hat trick. That's not a small thing to pull off three, four of these things or much less five or seven of them. And that's probably what's really going on.

[00:25:55] Because once you have the ability to have, say, five or ten nuclear devices, and you can then detonate as a test, peaceful test it will be called, okay, these nuclear devices. You're going to want to not just test one. You're going to want to test two. And because the second one says, you got more. And that probably is going to be quite a thing to pull off.

[00:26:24] Because obviously this is what, if President Trump gets wind of this, this is where our commandos go in. Even if half of them get shot dead, this would be the mission. It's sort of like a go, it's like a Bin Laden snap, you know, mission. You're going to go in, even if half of the group's going to die, because you want to stop the nuclear weapon. You see what I mean? So that issue, I think, is being left out of the analysis, as I'm hearing.

[00:26:51] And it makes sense, because they're thinking about it. Well, how could, you know, Iran time it in the right way? And when would they, you know, be safer doing it? There's no safe here. If you had a new Democratic president, like AOC is president in 2028, and she gets the intel that, you know, you got 48 hours here, and then they're going to detonate this nuclear test.

[00:27:22] Man, there's a lot of pressure on her to, just like there is on President Trump, to go in and, you know, hard to go stop that. You see, and I don't think that, you know, saying, well, she'd be a bigger wimp or this is not right. I think that more likely is the feasibility. And that's the part we can't see. See, that's the part that drives us kind of batty because you can't really see it.

[00:27:48] So we knew before 9-11, Ben Laden was determined to attack in the United States. What we didn't do is connect the dots on the feasibility that it was much closer than it appeared. That's the actual Richard Clark problem. Richard Clark's memo is absolutely fine. It has no feasibility associated with it. That's why it's not running up to the president stronger.

[00:28:14] It's not because President Bush didn't take seriously, you know, the loss of New York or something. You see what I mean? It's a feasibility problem. And that we don't have as much of a window into as we like. We have great intel, but this is a really, really hard intel problem to get the timing down like that.

[00:28:34] You see, but you'd have to say they are feasibly able to detonate two or three nuclear weapons, and they're going to withhold it, hoping to get a more dovish American president. Really? Really? You're going to hold that for years? I just think that's your, the feasibility is much bigger, like coefficient on the variables here.

[00:29:02] You know, capability times will equals threat. And we've spoken like a political scientist. What's that? So it's spoken like a political scientist. Well, yeah. So just, yeah. And I know that's frustrating for the folks because they want to, they can talk about the will part. And they can vaguely talk about the macro capability, but they can't do the feasibility and get the coefficient right on that capability. That's what's happening. Okay. Well, I know we're at time.

[00:29:30] Really appreciate you speaking with us this week. And thanks for asking that very detailed question, Scott. That's why I like to come on with you because you're dealing with people who really are trying to get at this. And hopefully this is helpful because we might think, oh, sure. Everybody in the government, they know all this stuff. Well, we wouldn't be in this. Yeah. We wouldn't be in this fix. That's a different, angrier podcast. Let me tell you what Afghanistan was like. No, never mind.

[00:30:01] All right. Thank you so much. Absolutely.