How Can America Defeat Iran? With John Spencer

0:00John Spencer joins School of War today to talk, of course, about the war in Iran. But in this conversation, we step back. We talk about what's new, specifically the ability of the United States and Israel to conduct these extraordinarily precise strikes on Iranian leadership, what John calls the neurological campaign of the U.S.-Israel joint force. And in some ways today, we also talk about what's really old and timeless. We bring Carl von Klausfits into the conversation and his idea of the center of gravity and try to apply that to the war in Iran. Come be a strategy egghead today on School of War. Let's get into it. We're going to fight on the beat here. We're going to fight on the landing ground.

1:07We're going to fight in the field. And in the little dreams. We're going to never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome back to the show today. John Spencer, he is a retired major in the United States Army. He started as a private one all the way. I believe to Sergeant first class and then to the officer ranks 25 plus years in and around the infantry. He is today the executive director of the Urban Warfare Institute. He's got a book coming out this summer available for pre-order. It comes out in August. It's called 20 times. I almost died. John Spencer, thank you for coming back on School of War. Aaron, thanks for having me back. We are going to talk mostly about Iran today. You have been publishing a bunch since the war began. You had a really interesting piece in the New York Post about the new era of precision warfare in particular precision when it comes to the question of regime leadership into computation strikes. You had another piece on your sub-stack. I just saw it on X about how placements would look at the war.

2:14Why don't we start with precision? I'll tee it up this way. I saw a retired general. I'm pretty sure it was general madness. But as in my mind, it's sort of, there's a sort of, you know, there's a world of retired four stars who come out and offer their off of their thoughts and these things. I'm pretty sure this one was madness. And he said something that on one level is true, but on another level, one level is undeniably true. On another level, I wonder if your piece isn't a bit of a contradiction to it, which is that targeting is not strategy. You can have all the targets in the world, but it's just not the same thing as strategy. And I was thinking, gosh, you know, on some level, that's obviously right. I mean, you can blow up a bunch of stuff. But if it's not tied to some coherent theory of victory and a political end, yeah, what's it going to get you on the other hand, man, if all of your targets can just be the leaders of the other guys entire organization. It starts to take on a kind of strategic quality. So, John, I'm going to turn it over to you. What is this strange new world we're living in where it turns out actually it's a lot more straightforward to do leadership strikes than it was even say 10 years ago.

3:18Yeah, well, thank you for that. And I think that I'm being reminded of lots of pieces on the student of warfare, I listened to your podcast, of course, I learned something new every day. One of the greatest things I think it's ever been written for studying war, especially in real time is Michael Howard's the use and abuse of military history. They have to study within the with depth and context. It's an excellent article. Even this aspect, one is to build the ability to recognize where something's new. Like, you know, historians, I'm not a historian, I stay alive military history, but they're like, this is not new. It happened here, here and here. The element of what they call the decapitation strikes, although I don't think that's what we can call what happened at the beginning of this war in Iran. Whether if you're an air power theorist, you study like warden's five rings where he puts the leadership, you know, in the center of and that's where you attack. Whether you're a student of closet with Germany, whomever, and what are the objectives of war, right, an act of force to compel you enemy to do your will.

4:25I'm not, you know, I almost have a common sense approach as well. Like, you can't tell me that what we just did never before able to do it in history, isn't different than the past and challenges some of those old assumptions about, you know, even strategic strategy, right. This wasn't what happened at the beginning of this war, you know, wasn't a decapitation strike. I actually struggled with finding the right word because just to be clear within the opening hours, Israel, mostly Israel strikes, but US Israel took out not just the political leadership of another nation. It's entire kind of command structure. It's military leadership. So took out the Supreme Leader, his senior advisor, the minister of defense, the head of the IGC, and up to 40 other individuals in the opening moments. That's never been possible in the war in history. None of the great theorists, whether it was Napoleon, Klauselwitz, you name who we're talking about Sun Zoo.

5:29Could ever imagine that we would have the technology and this is really where we can get kind of drilled down for even a forced our general arguing against it is first recognized we're an uncharted territory. We've never had that level of precision munitions, which is just one element intelligence penetration, both not just human intelligence, although Masad is greater at that, but all source intelligence back by AR targeting. And also I add in your article about penetration, right, because there is this element of the evolution of the character of warfare, the enemy keeps going deeper hopes to protect what he wants to protect most, right, you attack their strategy. What this shows is that the United States and Israel probably alone have the capability to do this and it should change everything. Even if you, okay, look, yeah, you attack their means and their will, right? So it changes thing. It isn't a tactic to do this. It's actually a strategic.

6:31You know, these people, this regime, this nation had ideals about their behavior, their capabilities, and the will to keep doing things. Well, now we're saying that the United States alone has the ability to push a button and eliminate all the individuals we're talking about. And even the human factor, Aaron, right? So this is, you know, Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine has not taken out a single political or military senior leader yet. If you go back to all the greats and you know, I start the article about imagine had when the allies joined in World War II. If the opening moment we could take out Hitler, his successor, all of his field marshals, Rommel, all of them, and 40 other of the senior leaders of the Nazi regime. I don't care who you are. Yes, I know that organizations can continue to fight and I say that, right? The armies are still in the field. They can still fight. But knowing enough about Michael Howard's use and abuse of history, I can go back to those the context and those moments, whether it's Churchill Hitler, you name it leadership actually matters in the strategy in which your enemy is deploying.

7:39And if it's a push the button before we even begin delivering military means I can eliminate all those individuals and just I call it in the article a neurological strike, right? Because sometimes we say we attack the head or we attack the body parts, right? If you do a warden who's like one of the modern air power theories, he has the outer ring of kind of the military and he goes industrial and he goes into the center to the leadership aspect of it. But what we just saw was attacking all of it in this full spectrum. You severed the brain, of course. You you severed the parts of the body so that they're in chaos. Maybe they have a plan of decentralized action. That's great. But I'm just not buying it. And this is where even if you go back to causal with them, why he's writing so furiously during his time is because there was a revolution in military affairs. I'm sure you've had people want that debate what's a revolution in military affairs and what's an evolution. At that time, he was arguing that the Prussian military needed to adapt Napoleon's revolution in military affairs, which is the Lev Amaz.

8:42This is a revolution. This ability to look, yeah, I know they're hardened individuals with layers of radicalization, but if I can eliminate all of them and then start eliminating anybody they assigned. And you can't tell me just from a human factor that doesn't affect will. Yeah, I try to imagine what it's like to be this speaker of the Iranian parliament who apparently depending on who you listen to. I think he and the people around him are denying it, but there's a lot of talk that he is the interlocutor for the Trump administration right now through intermediaries for whatever form of diplomacy is proceeding. Like psychologically to be that guy and know that gosh, if this these negotiations turn sideways or maybe even, you know, if they don't at any moment, you know, I can realistically there's a good chance I can be found. And the only way not to be found is to go completely underground, which then renders you ineffective if you really can't communicate. If you're having to move through multiple cutouts, you know, et cetera, like there's no way to maintain effective command and control on any kind of reasonable timeline doing that.

9:50So I guess the counterpart you already pointed to the counterpoint, the counterpoint is, okay, but what if they plan to fight essentially without central control anyway and we could add to that what if they have a revolutionary ideology that is so widespread and seeped in that they could still achieve their war aims of survival say or you know causing enough chaos. At key strategic pain points for the United States, the straight of hormones being the obvious one that they could just play it out long enough play it out for six weeks, two months, three months that it's really cool from a military perspective with the United States and Israel were able to do to the leadership or could even continue doing it. But so long as they can just hang in there so long as they can just keep the straight closed and won't matter in the end, what's your what's your thought on that. What you're talking about is like sure if you were to take the element of the leadership out and decentralized them and all these parts and pieces are still fighting and happening in effects because they have a strategy as well right Iran has a strategy on achieving whether that's to impose economic cost to separate the allies to win without fighting all these elements.

10:58And that's why war one more we have some unfortunate kind of fallacies about quick wars right and we're five days into this and like always failing like this is crazy on that your specifics right we could we can analyze it against the objectives and I wrote this article as well were closures and say is like start with the political objective right the first demand is to understand the type of war you're in and I think. This is the crazy world that I'm living in is no matter how many times the US administration says these are our objectives this is what this war is about this is what it's not about people go with yeah but we're you know this is regime change and this is forever war nation building all that stuff on the ability to project power outside of Iran right to include the stretch of hormones right then you say they still have the interest in doing that and one how much I had to make this post we don't know. Right we have very limited variables that people are using to assess the strategy already in your days into it is that you can't discount one the nor neurological strike that was conducted and continues to be conducted like he said whether it's Larry and Jerry walking around the streets like boasting and then he's dead a few hours later whomever it may be but also the attacking the means of the enemy to continue its behavior right so if you want to talk about whether that's the.

12:26Counting the number of missiles they can get off how many launches they have available the drones and for the streets of our moves how much can they threaten commercial shipping in the streets and that's a that's a measurable element of is the United States in Israel or are they properly attacking the means of the enemy to do what he wants to do right to and to do what we want them to do which is come to the political table which is part of the conversation last couple days and. Come to terms right so you so somebody says that they're still operating there's still threatening the streets of our moves 24 days into it like okay i'm not saying hold my beer but you can't just get discount with the United States military is doing and maneuvering to do to stop that behavior and that's to take away their will and their means so that's like destroying their entire navy right 140 vessels sitting at the bottom of the sea.

13:26Soon you'll create these centric bubbles around the streets of our moves although I had an article in the Washington Post this morning about this is should be a lesson for the world on we need to reduce the strategic. value of the streets are from moves and it's possible but militarily right because tactics opera in the operational level and the strategic level the strategic goal is. was set from the beginning to destroy the navy and and we infer the ability to use the streets of her moves as a part of their strategy of proxeterism development of nuclear weapons and the ballistic shield I think that's happening. We almost have to wait and see who's right but they're not right to say that. One that decapitation strikes don't work. We're days into this and this was that was more than a decapitation strike or that taking away all their means to do what they want. This is where you could also get into you know air power has like three main elements there's the paralysis that we're talking about element that air power theory recommended.

14:30There's the denial aspect so history shows many times where air power is used not that that's the only thing being used right now I think that's the misconception as well. There's joint power being used there's air space there's you artillery and I can't wait till the army navy game to be able to talk to the navy about how we talk about a submarine or. other elements of it. There's so many forms of power so there's the denied enemy what they want to do element of strikes and then lastly there's the coercion right so that gets to everybody thinks that things are off the table when they aren't everybody thinks that things are on the table when they are they should be thinking that you don't want your enemy knowing what you're doing and that could be the car Island right so the coercion is I don't care who you are again whether you're an Iranian expert. That you think that the regime can survive without resources right so you can threaten its resources and I saw this guy counting how many ships were getting out of the the streets of Hamuz Iranian oil getting out right now and that's some type of sign of victory right we still have to see our definitions like you think that the United States couldn't stop that oil if it wanted to yes there is the international context that even closets was talking about in the 19th century.

15:49United States to strategy has to factor in international context and that is that price of oil who'd impacts all this element but the people that say that. decapitation strike is just a tactic it's not a strategy i'm like okay let's be truthful about what's actually happening in reality that we all can see not discount all the. actual indicators of what's going on let's sort of set a ran aside for a second we'll come back to it here in a minute but I want to get into the the nature of how I like your language of neurological strike how it's very marine of you are very john boy to view i should say john boy of course was it was an air force officer but largely frosted out of the air force in his day and embraced. uh towards the end of his career by that by the marines this is that you know one of the great theorists of maneuver warfare and somewhere in patterns of conflict his great. presentation on this subject as you know john he talks about is it like snipping the synapses it's it's language like that snipping the snipping i've never been able to sit through the whole thing.

16:52um there it is i'm a marine so i'm a as a marine officer you had it's like it's like being blooded into the crypts or something like you have to assemble so i'll finish the full point and then and ask you to respond but it's um I started paying attention to this this i'll use your language neurological. campaign it was really the fall of 2024 with what the Israelis did to Hezbollah as I started to think about it then I realized that you started to see signs of this kind of stuff in as early as 2022. In the Ukrainian counteroffensive against the Russians where there are all these reports of like one Russian headquarters after another getting blown up it seems with american targeting assistance. And so this is this is a data story as much as anything else what we're talking about here john as you know um the ability to harness all of the information that comes in from all these sensors and of course human intelligence as well and in fact human intelligence did that vital for figuring out how to do some of the filtering. But a lot of sensors everywhere in the battlefield to include the sensors built into civilian life people's cell phones you know apparently um uh traffic cameras play a role with common a so i understand Vladimir Putin's afraid i saw report Vladimir Putin's afraid to go to the kremlin now because of information that Moscow traffic cameras are collecting just using this world of data to build a targeting picture that's just so much more sophisticated than anything anything um uh until the last what five years.

18:17Maybe um and then the targeting picture has such fidelity um that if you add precision weapons and your ability to strike to it gosh i mean you've got real capability and so the fall 2024 as you know um these realies in the first few weeks of that campaign just sort of boiled the frog very slowly on hezbollah culminating in the killing of nostril law himself but they they wiped out the whole leadership of the red one unit you know this the hezbollah kind of offensive action special ops group. Um such that when they actually went in on the ground and whenever that was i'm going to say was October maybe of 2024. Um i i i talked to guys i mean i was up there um around this time and they said you know the first 48 hours or so we could encounter some company level resistance from hezbollah of course hezbollah you know in theory should be able to operate up to you know higher higher levels of command than that but within about 48 hours that was it and it was you know squads maybe platoon here and there but mostly squads fire team it was like five fighting an insurgency you know it wasn't fighting an organized military force anymore and the results of that campaign um uh you know we're not only dramatic in Lebanon itself but obviously contributed to the fall of Syria I mean the strategic effects of that fall 2024 campaign were tremendous so um you know what's your take on how this system of killing with potential strategic value um how it actually worked with the right

19:46You know, did the Americans in these railies have kind of a monopoly on this like the Ukrainians seem to be able to play on some level at least within Ukraine they can't reach out and touch Moscow to the same extent. The Russians as you point out can't seem to do it to the Ukrainians like how how what is the nature of this knowledge how is it spreading who has the advantage like if this is a revolution what is the state of the revolution itself Iran aside. It appears only the United States and Israel and you when you combine that to it's just like a beyond a superpower because there are elements of what Israel has invested in for decades and human intelligence. And artificial intelligence language you know LLMs and other aspects that when you combine them with that capability which is also unique for the United States to to put that munition around the world in a certain amount of time and be able to penetrate the earth to a level that other people really don't have. On the it's really interesting to watch and I say that if it is a uniqueness kind of like we have seen in war in the past that how long can we hold on to that right how long can we can hold on to that competitive advantage in this space and this some people might call it the AI race.

21:01This isn't just about tracking like you said using all the sensors this is also about putting sensors up right there I mean low orbit satellites and tracking like Israel did during the 12th they were missile launchers across such a large geography which is really one of the interesting parts about the page operation that impressed me wasn't necessarily its precision you know infiltrating the enemies logistical realm is being able to have an effect across geography. So precision and simultaneously across and I think that again going back to the opening of this war it was not just to tracking all these individuals but it was to simultaneously right to synchronize all of the elements that you had your 200 Israeli aircraft in the air you had you know whether it was Tom Hawk missiles or whatever all of it synchronized I don't know whose execution matrix that was but synchronized and all the way down to the second when the entire world is on fire. For the enemy that's a unique capability in of itself and whether you're one of the great powers like China you're one of these great powers China Russia.

22:06The one Russia's military has been put to the test it doesn't have any of these capabilities is it's arguably not even the second greatest military in Ukraine and I used to remember briefings in the pinning on where it was viewed as a near peer competitor to us China is the wild card although China's equipment and I put this in another article about I mean I think that's what I'm going to say. One of the lessons of the last four years to is just the Maiden China aspect of military gear or Maiden Russia you we won our enemies to keep buying that stuff because it doesn't matter if it was you know the Chinese proxy of Pakistan during operation send or all of Iran's Chinese in Russian air defense systems even Moduros and Venezuela. It doesn't work against the American Israeli systems that's a competitive advantage that looks simple right and cause was said you know everything in war simple but even the simple is difficult so it makes it looks simple like but I have a deeper appreciation of understanding not just the technology advancement that seems to be only ours.

23:13And how important it is to protect that in war but also the synchronization of all these elements of power right so it's everything from the information element right so you know Israel is kind of like the the world leading troller of the enemy because it's texting whoever's getting ready to be assigned the next general going yeah you don't want to take that job you want to leave the country and it was doing that in the 12 day war and it's doing it now in that element of even getting inside the census right tapping into a paper. Right tapping into a prayer app and starting to use the prayer app although Ukraine kind of did that with the DIA system and where they were tapping into report intelligence and turned everybody in the country into a sensor through their cell phone Israel has that ability of course to tap into the enemies technologies and using them against them I hope you're right about the Chinese and Chinese stuff being less good I mean I feel like if I had responsibility over the Pacific. Everything that we're talking about would make me very very nervous right now you know this is the point I've been on the show before I'll make it to you I'm curious to know how you respond but the fall 24 campaign in Israel which they're sorry in Lebanon which in some ways it's cleaner to stick with for the theoretical discussion because we know how it ends we don't know how it ends yet but that you know neurological campaign call it what you want that series of leadership strikes.

24:36To me it showed how maneuver was actually possible in the modern age because after a couple years of Ukraine people were basically saying you know gosh with drones and visibility on the battlefield like you just can't move anymore like you're just going to get cut up it's like well I think and you know the Israelis have had a bad time of it in Lebanon in 2006 they actually had some difficulty moving maybe not quite as much as as the press had said but it wasn't smooth and it wasn't as clean as they wanted it to be for sure. And so here it turns out that actually if you systematically dismantle the leadership structure of the other team you can start to maneuver maneuver becomes possible because they can't fight cohesively anymore and in fact that's exactly what happened in the fall 2024 when you try to take that example and apply it out in the Pacific by greatest worry john is that we are hezbollah we are hezbollah in this analogy and China is the Israelis and there we in our allies you know people like the Taiwanese are sitting there. We've got these big open oceans even the straight of Taiwan is 80 miles wide like I don't know it seems like pretty pretty tense experience to get on one of those troop ships and chug across 80 miles of open water and try to do D day you know without the preparatory you know three years of warfare to sink the Kriegs Marine and shoot the Luftwaffe down on the other hand though like doesn't this 2024 example show that like if the Chinese targeting picture in Taipei is good enough like do they know the corner of the bedroom.

26:01The you know the chief of staff of the Taiwanese military is bet is in do they know you know i guess i'll stop naming names here but do they you know our senior leadership in Pearl Harbor like do they know you know like like what's the texture of their targeting picture what's their capability to reach out and touch someone and what if they only have to reach out and touch a couple dozen people after which it's real havoc it's real havoc in mayhem and i'm just it concerns me yeah now it's a great question and this is why you know strategy. If you define it correctly in wars not a plan you you have on the shelf and you just take it off the shelf and start executing it's it's adapted to the uncertainty of what's happening and what your enemy is doing in that case the scenario as well right so again this is where I don't believe what's going on Iran which is a simple decapitation strike and then we thought we'd achieve our strategic goals you have to assess what the strategic goals are and i i'll quote TR fair and back on that aspect of Taiwan is that yeah if you eliminate it

27:01the leadership you can bomb it all you want but you got to put boots on the ground and seize that that would be the challenge in that aspect for the Chinese like what is their objective right they've focused a lot on area denial right the opposite of taking something they want to deny our ability to do something whether it's taken island or take you know penetrate into the mainland I mean if you want to really take something again this is where I just don't buy it and nothing I've heard says that what's going on in Iran is a regime change because if you truly want to change a regime there there are very few historical examples although you again you have to add in all the context of what the Iran is from what happened in January with the protest or why they were protesting what's the economic situation what could you do to course economically all of these things are that but in the Indo-Pacific one this is the the strategic element of what can they do what can we do and if they make a moment move right that's why wars three dimensional chest then what can we do right so if they can you know if they could take and get on the mainland of Taiwan quickly there may be limited options that we can then have to adapt the strategy rapidly to be able to do anything but I don't give this is why I love studying either war in the past or where it's happening now is because we can imagine people's capabilities and we do this a lot right we imagine people to be 10 fit giants and don't want to underestimate your enemy ever

28:31you want to try to think through what their strategy is going to be and I think like you said in the Hezbollah example it's a great it will go down as a historical example in full context of taking away every strategy you think the enemy might deploy from of course they took out Nusraala of course they did the major operation in the walkie talkie operation but they also eliminated 80% of their launchers you know they had targeted every single one of them within a matter of a couple days they eliminated what they knew would be no matter who's in charge of the button they also launched 70 special forces raid in advance into southern Lebanon to hit the caches in which the enemy relies on kind of as part of their battle pan so you know there's a reason that some of these maxims everybody quotes they get quoted because they're still applicable and if you want to defeat your enemy think through what their strategy will be and defeat that rather than you're just straight thinking that wars this absolute war or two militaries clashing to destroy each other to take all their

29:31land to destroy all their population that's not the reality and why I think so many people are just running their mouth about Iran is because they they're imagining what the the political goals are saying that the means aren't being applied to achieve those political goals so let's do some some claspitsian analysis of the war in Iran right now you had this long piece about claspits in the war on your sub stack you know I don't think I've actually ever asked anyone on this show which is which is a probably a crime at this point hundreds of episodes in to just talk about what the center of gravity as a term of art or a military concept is we've had episodes on on claspits before but I don't think we've I've ever just asked somebody that question so John Spencer anyone who's been through officer training is familiar with the term but we have a lot of people who listen to the show who are interested in military and strategic affairs but probably have never actually had a lesson on this score claspitsian idea of the center of gravity what what does it mean and what do you think the Iranian center of gravity is today we're recording on March the I'm just looking at my calendar March the 25th 2026 yeah well so you think that would be a simple

30:50answer actually I know it's not simple actually when I was going through the course for majors and debating my professor on look you know the the doctrine the whatever the joint pub says that center of gravity is this and you know clause with text says is this and it really becomes in the center of gravity the reason that that's not easy to answer is because you have to have you have to answer that question within the context in which is the way he tries to explain war and how to deploy a strategy to think about the war that you're fighting right step one is to the statesman has to identify the type of war they're in right whether it's a limited objective or an unlimited objective unlimited is regime change limited may be you know get them to stop doing something take a take something away from them or whatever it is so the center of gravity kind of in a very you know almost vernacular common speak is the source of their power to continue whatever strategy they're deploying to achieve a victory in that moment right so you know an easy example is whether it's you know to stop Saddam Hussein from his invasion of Kuwait

32:05then his center of gravity is it the Iraqi army in which is the power in which he's doing to invade another country right so you that's the center of gravity for the Iraqi regime in that strategy in our strategy like the I was a part of the invasion in 2003 this it was a regime change well in historically the source of power of a regime both politically and economically sometimes even military is the capital city so you have to take Baghdad and that's the center of gravity and it ended up showing historically true once Baghdad fell the army disbanded itself you have to quickly attack the center of gravity to achieve your goal quickly so that's why when Russia attacked on seven different funds invading Ukraine it wasn't concentrating on the center of gravity and doing it quickly it was separating itself across the entire country like seven different cities so some people you could make it really short and just say it's the the enemy's source of power but it's but it's not that simple it's in there whatever strategy right so now if we talk about Iran right so what is the enemy's sort center of gravity is source of power well you have to look at what it's depending on in the pursuit of the war goals right what are the enemy's political goals setting a context of that nation both

33:31and again this is why all the you can't understand one principle of cause without understanding the base principle right this is good I'm enjoying this right the paradoxical trinity right that that is understanding the nature of a war right which is what you need in order to understand with the political goals are both sides you have to factor what he calls a paradoxical trinity right which is primordial violence reason and probability in chance you can say that's the people the military and the politics right because all war is not unlimited and absolute words it does control by the reason of the political goals that are set the the military do get choices and the great genius supposedly a military history whether it's the great captains can figure out a way to attack the center of gravity quickly and of course the the people right the what they want out of it either in supporting it or what they think are the goals are all important so for Iran in the context of once the war began of course survival of the regime is this number one strategy keep the regime survivable right so then you have the all the hierarchies of who's in charge and who's not the other element is their strategy to impose cost so great that the enemy stops attacking right so this is the

34:51the economic cost not just on the streets or homies but on all the the allies and the the gas station of the United States person who doesn't know any of the context of the war but they see their the cost of their gas going up and then that's a part of Iran strategy to impose cost on you for waging the war almost like whether it's a be a bit or some other indirect approach or cause witsian or sun zood on it your attack is strategy but also the element of attacking the allies right so i think the center of gravity on one element of the strategy that's why center of gravity analysis not something you do before the war starts and then that's it that's what it is that's what you attack it has to adapt just like the plan does the strategy does so when Iran started attacking all these other nation states i think it was trying to make it a non coherence ally force against them right to get all these different countries involved and expand the international context of war that strategy right so the

35:57you have to attack each one of those and one of them being attacking their means to project power outside because that is a big part of their strategies to impose these costs on everybody else so that's their central gravity is their missile fleets um it is their naval capabilities not just in their ships but there's fastboats their drones their mines all these elements are their means and you can attack their will to do this strategy in other ways as well so i hope i don't there's no short answer to that question on what is a center of gravity defined as a source of power for the enemy strategies and that's why can change right and that's why the good example and while everybody has their own history which i don't i don't like a revisionist history but in the operation and operation of rocky freedom the first goal was to overthrow the regime and that's why the center of gravity was the capital then the objective changed and the nation building objective was set and once the nation building objective was set then

37:02the people were the center of gravity because you can't build a nation without the support of the people and that the whole legitimacy aspect of that so it changes and that's where a lot of people get it wrong and especially calling we're in this world world where people are calling balls and strikes days into a war um thinking that they know what what somebody is doing or what's happening on the ground yeah we can see the world a lot but that doesn't mean that uh we know a lot yeah i so i mean i guess my nominees just to keep the ball rolling here um because i don't really disagree with with anything you just said is um certainly any anything that gives them the capability to keep the straight of hormones closed if they if they lost the ability to um substantially slow traffic through the straight of hormones they'd be pretty well on the way to being cooked um uh there's not much left for them in terms of leverage over the west if the straight is open again and i see evidence that ameral Cooper and central commander going after those sources uh uh right now in terms of

38:06the you know the strikes you see on anti ship cruise missiles um uh the navy itself thinking thinking the Iranian navy itself which obviously be the primary mechanism for controlling the straight so that'd be one you know if you want to step way back you know you could nominate the nuclear program i don't think it's super relevant as a sort of lower end strategic operational concern it's irrelevant to the war um but in terms of Iran's ability to uh preserve its own regime or influence world events in the long run i think you could argue that the nuclear program belongs in the analysis at that more grand strategic level and then kind of related to both i would toss onto the whiteboard for consideration just the sources of their revenue and this is where carg island becomes interesting is like if you if you know a world if you start combining these in a world in which they can't stop stuff going through the straightening war and we have we the united states in israel have essentially you know um control over their principle revenue source

39:07what are they gonna do what's what's next at that point they could okay and there's a answer that question they could retaliate i mean with the missiles they have left they go after disalignization plans they mean they can cause more pain maybe really throw the markets for for a wrench it's a war both sides get the fight but what are they really gonna do when the money runs out um so that's somewhere in those three things would be where i would or i would be trying to figure out my plan so i would please be by the way where we are as best as i can tell absolutely i would put the missile program even higher um based on after the 12 day war and again these i get frustrated on commentators sometime about just not sent you know not we all know the same amount of information but you're selectively cherry picking pieces of data uh like during the 12 day war believing that it was just bombing of three sites right ispahan natan and uh for no it wasn't that it was the elimination of the entire nuclear scientist program their ability to

40:07make more centrifuges the ability to the weaponization programs it all this element but um so in the center of gravity if we say the regime survival is one of the sources of their power and that what they would want to protect and um and at all costs then you have to look at all of what israel has been doing which again going back to i don't believe this is just a de-decapitation strike the elimination of all the besieged leadership the elimination of any checkpoint that tries to put itself up or especially in uh population centers the the cyber headquarters all the different elements of the levers which the regime has always relied on to maintain its power right so this is not a regime change but you can definitely see in the enemy center of gravity on maintaining power within the nation and that relegates to all the behaviors that it employs is that these levers of the besiege the the law enforcement individuals um and other elements of the irgyc coup force and others and how those are being systematically attacked i don't want to create a new word although

41:10some people try to say that iran stradis or mose x stradis right we get kind of nifty on a sign into what the enemy is doing or what we're doing we're just attacking them um across a full spectrum attack across every source of their power so regime would be in my higher list of what their center of gravity is um attacking what allows them to maintain power even after the bombs stop falling and and i would remind everybody that admiral cooper has multiple times said populations stay hidden for now stay stay protected we're still doing all work of taking away the the regime's means whether that's on the streets or harm mose or any where else because we saw them attack like guitars lng supplies and and all the other countries their energy supplies which does impose more than actually the straits being kept closed which you can start to um prevent that but that missile program and and we know that they sent one farther than anybody thought they could towards Diego Garcia uh that missile program and removing that those means from projecting power

42:18and which is really the umbrella that was protecting their nuclear development because they want that umbrella but they weren't there yet they want that that and we've seen what they've done with this right so attack the the archer not the arrow um then that source of power to keep doing what they want to do and say they can do what they didn't do you've of lessened it or as a contest of will though Aaron this is all about not regime change it's about changing the regime's behavior yes you could do that by just taking away their ability to have that behavior but you eventually want and that's why it wasn't a leadership it was literally like not a mowing the grass we've eliminated echelons of the way they think and the behavior they want to continue doing and i think president Trump's right to say like i think eventually we'll get down to somebody who wants to have a different type of behavior and ask the whole you know whether it's the 15 point plan or something way different um that is war john spencer executive director of the urban warfare institute you got a book coming out in august 20 times i almost died uh 25 year veteran of the united states

43:21army infantry it's always fascinating to talk to you and um we're both going to watch how this plays out and maybe you'll come back on a little bit later in the year and we'll do some some after action let's do it