Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
US Military Strikes Iranian Nuclear Facilities: What Happens Next?
The world watches with bated breath as the Middle East teeters on another precipice of conflict. American B-2 bombers have crossed into Iranian airspace, delivering specialized "bunker buster" bombs to underground nuclear facilities while submarines launched missiles from nearby waters. The operation lasted just 25 minutes but may have consequences that stretch far into our future.
Veterans Dick Wilkinson and Adam break down the strategic implications of this dramatic escalation with expert insights from their military experience. This isn't just another headline—it's a significant shift in American foreign policy with real implications for deployed military personnel, global oil markets, and potentially even domestic security. As they explain, "Two-thirds of our nuclear triad just stretched their legs as a show of force," demonstrating America's overwhelming military capability while significantly raising the stakes.
The conversation delves deep into both tactical details and strategic questions. How were these strikes coordinated with Israel's earlier operations? What responses might Iran pursue—from proxy warfare and missile strikes to potential cyber attacks on American infrastructure? And how might this conflict affect local military communities like Colorado Springs, home to critical installations like NORAD and NORTHCOM?
Most chillingly, our hosts explore whether Iran's leaders might pursue a "death knell" strategy that could bring devastating consequences to both nations. "Are they willing to set themselves on fire to try to win a fight with America?" Adam asks. The answer remains uncertain, but the potential for miscalculation has never been higher.
For anyone trying to understand not just what happened but what comes next, this episode provides crucial context from those who've been inside military decision-making processes. Whether you're concerned about family members deployed overseas, curious about unusual aircraft activity over military communities, or simply trying to make sense of rapidly evolving global tensions, this discussion offers valuable perspective beyond mainstream headlines.
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Hello everyone and welcome to a special edition of Left Face. This is the Pikes Peak Regions podcast, where we talk about veterans issues and current events, and this week we're coming to you with a special episode after the United States has dropped munitions in Iran into their territory proper. So our primary topic today is going to be an update on that situation and how that affects our local military population. Today I'm joined with my co-host, adam, and my name is Dick Wilkinson. How's it going, adam? Doing good, dick?
Speaker 2:That was a long way to get your name there.
Speaker 1:It was. We got there People. They know who we are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, I was ready to jump right in too.
Speaker 1:So we did record an episode on Friday. We want to touch base on that. We had a special crossover episode, Adam. We got invited to that. Tell us more about what we can expect there, Adam.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we recorded with Justice with Jax. It's a local podcast here. Jax is somebody who has a lawsuit pending against the city for civil rights violation. Aclu picked up her case and they're waiting for a ruling on it. Uh, everything that she got charged with got dropped, but the government's still trying to keep all of her um information. Um, so she, you know she has this podcast trying to keep light to that and she brought us on to kind of talk about community events and things like that. But, uh, incredible host, like I thought it went really well. You know, she's really easy to talk to and incredibly knowledgeable on so much stuff. So, um, check out justice with Jax. When she drops that episode, we'll just put it out on ours just to do a little cross promotion with her. But uh, yeah, it was a great time. Thanks, jax, for having us out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, and uh, now, though, we were motivated, we said we might just wait for that episode, but then, of course, the events of the last it's been less than 18 hours now had prompted us to say let's get in here and do some coverage on this.
Speaker 2:It never ceases to amaze me how quickly things change in a Trump administration, because I mean this last weekend perfect example. It immediately drew me back to when he ordered the assassination of Soleimani. Oh yeah, you know what I mean Back in that. You know we were kind of building up to it and things like that and every day, because I was still serving, you check your phone to see if we're going to World War III. Every day you wake up and check your phone to see if you're going to World War III and I can only imagine what's going on with the military members in the area right now, that level of pressure and anxiety that's on all those folks. Now I have family members in the Middle East right now that they're getting the shelling every night. It's just crazy that we're going through this cycle again.
Speaker 1:I have a friend who's got approved retirement orders right now and you always get into that like chicken and egg situation where you're trying to separate of like. Please don't let the world blow up before my retirement date Right. And you know it doesn't matter what's going on. Like those those last six months, you're like you're super sensitive to every little news situation.
Speaker 1:Right, cause you're like this oh yeah, cause we remember the stop losses of the early two thousands, where people were due to separate and they were like where do you think you're going right? And then they were calling people back on their like you know, reserve time orders and they're like hey, you've been out for three years and you haven't.
Speaker 1:You're not a drill, you know you're not doing drill with reserves or anything, but we need time to come back. Yep, so you know that that's not unheard of. It's happened within our generation, within the last combat. You know cycle, so it's totally possible. When things get hot, they just cease all those orders and they're like ask again on the other side of this conflict.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and this is something that the Trump campaign campaigned on that no more wars.
Speaker 1:We're not doing this, and definitely not in the Middle East.
Speaker 2:If something goes down with.
Speaker 1:Taiwan or North Korea. That's different. But we're not going to just keep hanging out in the sandbox. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and now even with the Israeli response, it's like $250 million or something like that a day and just for their response, and that's a lot of that's coming out of American taxpayers right now. So he made these promises to keep us out of there and keep things. And badmouth Biden about everything that he did, and literally the same day was complaining about not winning a Nobel Peace Prize.
Speaker 1:Did you?
Speaker 2:see that he listed the reasons why he should have a Nobel Peace Prize, but I'll never get one. Let's drop some bombs. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, and so even on the right, people don't want this. This is so against the American will right now and what people care about and what we're trying to focus on, even on the folks on the right. Unfortunately, they're trying to focus on other horrific things, but this is something that they don't want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. I did see the coverage where some of the ultra-edge of the MAGA movement that are very isolationist Tucker Carlson and the like of him were saying like, oh, I can't believe basically we should abandon Israel at this point right, Even though we've been kind of knee-deep in everything they've done for the last 60-plus years. But they're in the position of like, hey, if Israel wants to fight their own war, let them, and that's not our stated policy for that situation.
Speaker 2:But Tucker Carlson is pretty clearly a Russian mouthpiece.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:So, like us, going to war with Iran is not good for Russia, because right now they can kind of keep us out of. Yeah, they're keeping us out of Ukraine, and stuff like that, you know, so, like, like they're making things work with us right now, but when it's a direct conflict with one of their closest allies, like they, they share a lot of military stuff with um and and I'm not, you know talking nukes, yeah, just munitions and tactics and like drones right intelligence.
Speaker 1:A lot of the russian drones are coming out of iran right, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So. So there's that, all of that, um, and they don't want that that that part of their tree shook up because they got their hands full still that's true. Um.
Speaker 1:So yeah, you see in you know, the, the russian mouthpiece, is like well, that would be a little green buddy on the ultra edge of the MAGA side, Right right. They'd kind of take that position Exactly.
Speaker 2:So, like Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress, she starts speaking up against it, like all these folks that are usually War hawks. War hawks and just so, pro-kill everybody.
Speaker 1:Yeah, blow it up and then we'll. We'll figure it out as soon as it goes against russia.
Speaker 2:They're like man, let's think about this. Whoa, whoa, pump the brakes. Let's get back to you. Know, our, our own holocaust on the southern border, you know america first.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, you know? What do you think about the? What got us to this point? As far as israel, I mean, it feels like it was a bit unilateral of the way that they kicked things off, like nine days ago, ten days ago, when they went and did basically the surface bombing, yeah, of everything, and left, you know, cut the head off the chicken but left the rest of it intact, right, and said come on, america, come through, and finish this off.
Speaker 1:That's why I don't think it's unilateral well there you go, that's you know what I mean when, uh, all the air, air defenses are taken down they wouldn't have took that level of uh emphasis to like how they did their operations if they didn't think we were going to come clean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, clean, you know, back, clean up, I should say and when they first started, uh, they started, we, or we started moving b2s out of diego garcia and that's a pretty uh like strategic nuclear, like move, move to do when you start moving things like that. So we had our own little distractions and warnings that we were giving to Iran at the same time that Israel was coming in to attack those defenses. Yeah, so to me it looks like a lot of collaboration between the two. There's a lot of owning that airspace Between the two.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of owning that airspace. After the initial attacks on the surface of the nuclear places, Israel continued to attack them for the next.
Speaker 2:They haven't stopped every day since then, and it's been what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:It's all the other military, strategic things. So yesterday, or maybe two days ago, israel did their farthest reaching attack that they had done, and it was into Bandar Abbas, which is like way far east in Iran.
Speaker 2:And that was to allow for an eastern channel of approach for flights. Right, that was the.
Speaker 1:Again it was they had never struck anything out in that range or in that region of Iran, so that it was clear that they were doing that. In case that was a corridor that we were going to use to approach Right, yeah, so there's been coordination since for sure you know, and so leading up to this.
Speaker 2:Even you know Israel starting the strikes when they know they couldn't do what they needed to do.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah right, like they weren't going to achieve the, the achievements that we, that we did yesterday or last night. Um, so them even starting.
Speaker 1:That is kind of a an indicator that yeah, they wouldn't have done it if they really had a yeah, big, very strong belief yeah, big brothers coming, coming through for them, yeah yeah, I just wonder.
Speaker 1:Uh, you know, I I don't know. It's it hard to say the strategy. You know as much as we work together and I know that the back channels are there and then the official channels are there, but I feel like Israel would draw us in right In a way where I mean it's like if they didn't have 100% assurances that they would, they would still take the first move try, you know, putting the ball on the tee right like they would. I still feel like they would have done that, even if it wasn't totally clear. Yeah, if it was clear that they thought iran was going to take a strategic lead or actually have a plan towards a nuke, then I think they would have done that, even if they didn't have a hundred percent confidence that America was going to follow through.
Speaker 1:I think they might've still kicked the hornet's nest and been like we did it Right, and that was their language to some degree for a good period of time. There that I heard all of the Israeli officials would say we've set the table and we hope that everyone else in the international community sees that we've made that. We've opened the door. They'd use that kind of language. Right, we made the situation amenable so that it's doable now, right yeah.
Speaker 1:It's kind of the same language that JD Vance has been using where he's like hey, we're open to peace talks now that we've destroyed you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, as long as you guys don't talk back like we're listening to you, right? But you say yes, sir, you say thank you, yeah, you know. So it's kind of mirroring that language and I think that's so naive to even like begin to believe that that's like how Iran's going to handle this. Like you know, trump talks about them saying death to America and death to Israel and things like that. That's not a slogan, that's not a bumper sticker for them. That's in their hearts. They truly hate us to their core. So us slapping the crap out of them like this they're not going to be like oh, it's not going to take that away.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're not going to be like. Oh our bad, scracribe the sticker off the bumper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're cool. We're cool Like come on man They've told us what they're going to do. That's true. The DNA is there, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we know what's going to happen, Like they're going to. You know Iran State Television. They put up a picture of all the US assets within range of their missiles and they said, like you guys started this, we're going to finish, yeah, so they've put their warnings out. Like I said, my family members, our friends, are over there right now. They're in danger tonight because we pretty much did like a Pearl Harbor to them. That's true.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about that then, Before we talk about what we think the future might be, let's talk about that then. Let's, before we talk about what we think the future might be, let's talk about what actually happened in the attack, Just in case anybody listening hasn't heard. I mean, we know what the headline is, but let's get a little deeper into the details of the actual mission that the U? S ran Um and we'll. We'll give this with a small caveat that this I'm getting some of my information from from DOD public media outlets, but you know, there's probably details that are not been declared yet and there's even things that have been changing over time. I've seen the number of munitions go up over this, so it could change.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the first thing that you know goes when it comes to war is the truth. Yeah, so yeah, things will change.
Speaker 1:So the details we're offering now are true as of, you know, 12 o'clock today, but Things will change. So the details we're offering now are true as of 12 o'clock today, but by 12 o'clock tomorrow the story is going to be different, right.
Speaker 2:However, the mission was a little bit telegraphed over the previous few days in that a lot of aircraft movements happened and took place from. Actually, before we even get into this, let's take a moment to applaud our Secretary of Defense, pete Hegseth, for not leaking this on Signal, on Signal, yes, like amazing, yes, amazing job. I agree, sir, great job, yes.
Speaker 1:Thumbs up. I have had that moment of reflection a few times, like wow, somebody took his phone away you know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. They gave him like a little flip phone.
Speaker 1:He's calling Big Bird started shooting stuff into Iran, they were like give me that, yeah, yeah, if you need to talk to somebody, you talk to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, jesus. His deputy secretary yeah so things started coming out.
Speaker 1:Things started moving, airplanes started moving, strategic aircraft started taking up missions that they haven't flown in months or years, and flying in patterns where they don't normally go. So, as it stands now, b-2 bombers were what delivered the bunker busting bombs. Yeah, and bunker busters were required because the facilities were built into the ground layers of earth deep, so that they would be protected from surface munitions.
Speaker 2:Right, Almost like a dehydrator type machine. Yeah, you know where you have, like the layers of a dehydrator, you know, and that's what's like sunk into the ground there. Yeah, sunk way down yeah.
Speaker 1:And so we had to use these munitions. They'd never been used in combat, in actual, they'd only been tested right. But the bunker buster bombs were designed specifically for these types of facilities, command centers and munitions stockpiles that are underground right 30,000 pound bomb B-2 can carry two of them at a time. There was at least six B-2s with two on board, so at least 12 bunker busters were dropped on either two or maybe three locations. The details on where the bunker busters went across the three sites that were hit are kind of iffy 25 minutes total from entering airspace to out of the airspace.
Speaker 2:That's insane yeah, so so the that would say mean to you know to my ears that they dropped both at the same time. Didn't swing around it because you're supposed to do it in late, like when you go into these big bunkers like this, you drop one round, have another round come through. So they dropped two at a time. Two at a time. They didn't like swing around. Yeah, I don't know that they would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or they just delayed the release out of that one aircraft by just 30 seconds, right, yeah, because it's all guided munitions, you know yeah they're out and then the next one's coming behind.
Speaker 1:Drop, drop, you know. So multiple bunker bushers on each target is really what that comes down to, which which tells us a little bit of information that we believe they had done a pretty good job at fortifying these positions. If the strongest bomb that's not a nuclear weapon, it required more than one of them to take it out, that's pretty serious.
Speaker 2:I saw a quick satellite after photo earlier today A photo yeah and it did not look like there was that much damage, but I know but, I don't know how those things like penetrate that's what I was gonna say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it the what I saw, because I've seen a lot of those images of fordo over the last few days and then I saw this after just one after picture of it. Um, the reason you can't tell is because, basically, if you went and kicked a sand dune, what would happen? Right, it would still look like a sand dune right, it would just be in a different shape.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's what happened. Is that that upper surface layer is probably, if you were there, it's totally rearranged from what you had seen the day before?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but from the sky it just looks like some sand shifted from one direction to another. Okay, you know what I'm saying? That's, what it looks like to me is that it basically the sand rolled downhill. But if you were there in person you'd be like, oh my god, that's a 200 foot wall of sand that fell down that hill. You know like it's not a minor change, yeah, but from the satellite it just looks like the sand right?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know, I thought that. I thought it was interesting, though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I think it's just proof that it penetrated the ground, you know like yeah, so yeah, yeah, just not knowing the explosion was underground right more than you know above the surface at all. So I I think to me that's probably an indication that it went as deep as it needed to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it was more effective. Yeah, so, because there's not a crater. Yeah so, yeah, yeah. And so those b2s they took off from Whiteman, flew and returned back. The ones from Diego Garcia that moved last week moved around. They're still there in the area. Another interesting part of the attacks was that and we used our submarines in these launches, so, and since then the Strait of Hormuz has been closed. I'm not sure which side they launched those on. I kind of want to look that up now. But using our nuclear-capable subs, because they're always armed, they always have, you know, when they go out to sea have, yeah, you know when they go out to sea, uh, so having them pop up in their waters launch missiles is another huge, huge, like uh flex. I keep telling people like two-thirds of our nuclear triad just stretched their legs as a show of force. Um, and you know that's terrifying, like I've been in those you know war rooms where you see the uh, the body totals and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:Like it's horrific what can happen when my nuclear stuff gets involved. But again we're at the diplomacy stage of well, we're cool if you're cool, nobody's cool man.
Speaker 1:That's true, that's very true. Well, you know, and the precision was there, the OPSEC was good enough, right? We don't know who did or didn't know. We telegraphed the fact that something was going to happen. Either way, ayatollah himself took over the airwaves and was like we're sorry everybody. And he was like we'll never do anything bad, ever again. I'm going to step down and my cousin, who's super not religious, he's going to be in charge. Now, if they had done that, we might not have blown it up, but we were probably still going to blow them up anyway, right, yeah, it was already penciled in Two weeks, Two weeks.
Speaker 1:That was the most unbelievable piece of all of it. Right, it was like what is that? What is he talking about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he's the. So I just read here are some more things coming out about him. After the Tiananmen Square thing, in like 89, he was being interviewed in like 1991, 92 something and he like praised the Chinese government. He's like that's a strong government, he was impressed with the strength, yeah, and that's just the type of person he is, so like he's looking for a reason to go in there and do this. And very little threat right now to American people until they respond Right, yeah, and then we'll see what those proxies do. Because the the Houthis, before president Trump even spoke, the Houthis said like no, we're coming for you. Yeah, like so.
Speaker 1:So the folks in Yemen, like anybody in that area, and well, that, and that takes us to the next part of the conversation, which is what do we think the response is going to be? So, now that we've kind of clearly, you know, we, we, we, the United States, has executed a limited strike, we have not really done any other show of force as far as like maneuvering or anything, um, so it's, it's believable, right that maybe we did. We have done what we came to do and, barring any other aggression, we would not continue to blow stuff up there. I think that's believable, regardless of where you sit in the fight right now.
Speaker 2:No, because we can reach out and touch somebody pretty quick. Well sure. I know we can, but Just because we haven't moved more assets there, because we already moved an aircraft carrier there earlier this year. We already are stacked in that region. The South China Sea is not far and we have things there, Sure. So we already have enough things that can quickly reach out and touch them if they want to have a conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, In modern warfare it's not like it takes 30 days to bring the heat. No, I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I don't believe that our posture in that regards says that we're done Okay posture on in that regards says that we're done okay.
Speaker 1:So that brings us to. You know, we can understand what we believe, based on our american bias, based on our veteran bias, based on our understanding of donald trump all that informs the american side of it. But what do we think the iranians believe is happening right now?
Speaker 2:you know, I mean what's their take on it. Like you know, I kind of mentioned earlier, this is kind of a Pearl Harbor type event for them. You know it that?
Speaker 1:was their crown jewel right, their nuclear capability. As far as government's promise to the people Right Was that we're going to maintain power in the region Right by doing what we're doing here.
Speaker 2:It really got them capable of staying competitive in the 21st century here, right, wrong or indifferent when it comes to them having nuclear capabilities, they had them and they relied on them heavily. And not just, you know, because when these centrifuges are spinning, a lot of the uranium gets used for their powers, for hospitals, things like that. Uh, it's the extra stuff, that the cape that we lost kind of track of, the capability to track that, that yellow cake that falls out when you spin it, enough, um, but uh, that, that, that all that other stuff like the the average citizen doesn't know about. Like their nuclear arms program, right, they know that when they they get dialysis from this nuclear powered you know hospital, sure you know what I mean like. So now you're, we're taking those things away from a people that already do not like us and, like you know, we stick our nose in a lot of places that shouldn't be. And now, even with this conflict, with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, that's 20% of the world's oil production.
Speaker 2:Trapped on one side of that, yeah trapped on one side of that now and just stopping the flow and that's going to directly affect them again, Just because we're not getting our oil and our plastics and everything like that's their lifeblood Right, so like they're going to feel it too Well and it's more critical to them, you know, because that's basically their only export Right.
Speaker 1:That's internationally valuable right. Yeah, Makes them, like you said, a player on the international scene.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so now you know, as an Iranian citizen sitting there in the dark.
Speaker 1:You can't rig the market as much you can't export to oil, yeah.
Speaker 2:But again, as the average citizen sitting there, you know 90 million people. Wherever it is those folks sitting there, they don't care so much about the geopolitics of it all. They know that they don't have power now. They know that their infrastructure won't get fixed because all of their money from the oil you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So like they're going to be living in a war zone for a long time, Okay, so there's a two that I appreciate that you brought that up as far as the citizens versus the government and there being a different kind of taken sentiment on the impact equals what they think about, right? Um, I'm thinking about it from the government, the iranian government perspective, as far as, like, what do they have to lose or what do they have to gain by, you know, doing some other level of attacks? Um, but then our uh, or, excuse me, not necessarily just the us position, there's this nascent idea of regime change out there that Israel, of course, wants, right, because they believe that they could somehow influence the next regime like from scratch. Right, can we start with square one and figure it out? Has that worked with anybody?
Speaker 2:in that region.
Speaker 1:That's happened over and over and over again in that region, and you haven't made friends with anybody yet.
Speaker 2:Right, you know. Yeah, if Eric Spring didn't teach you anything, it's like the next guys in line don't like you either.
Speaker 1:Don't care, yeah, so, but I understand their desire for like, well, these people have repeated themselves 1000 times that they want to, you know, river to the CS, right? Maybe the next people will have only said it a hundred times, you know, and so that's, maybe that's their position. I think the? U, the U S government, the U S people don't care necessarily so much about regime change, but the U? S government, we're always about some regime change, right? Well, that's kind of our thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we get a punch card, I think our next one, the next one's free, yeah.
Speaker 2:We get to install the next government for free, Make them pay for it. We've heard that somewhere we're going to open hotels in Gaza and we'll make Iran pay for it. Right?
Speaker 1:Don't give them any ideas. You get a timeshare. You get a timeshare. But the Iranian government. They've had problems with their population, never so much where it was really a chance of toppling.
Speaker 2:I thought a few years ago we had a chance. I really hope that America would have leaned a little harder on that one.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. It seemed like it might have happened a couple times in the last 20 years, but it didn't Right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So now all those dissonant people, though they can very easily become sympathetic towards their government right and most of the pundit.
Speaker 1:You know talk that I heard about people that have gone to iran, which I've not really, you know, I don't interact with people from iran that much, so people with a little more of a firsthand look on it were like, honestly, most people are going to turn more sympathetic after this situation Even your average person, who maybe wouldn't you know Towards the Iranian, towards the Iranian regime, and become more patriotic towards Iran and the Ayatollah. We saw it, yeah, we've seen it. So they said that's much more likely to happen than them. Take the opportunity to like, rise up, right, they don't think they have any way to do that? Like and not make their own situation even worse. Yeah, and so that there'd be more loyalty out of this than dissidence.
Speaker 2:Right and probably right, I mean, it's just like you said, pearl harbor yeah, pearl harbor 9-11 right, like they had that moment yesterday.
Speaker 2:So and I've been hearing a lot of uh, I got friends in different networks and they talk about the, the right wing message boards and stuff like that. There's a lot of people getting on board with the Islamophobia and attacking Iran. You know, on American soil, Like they get talking about attacks again on Muslim people. Sure, which you know. I actually want to kind of talk to the other side of that too. Sure, which you know, I actually want to kind of talk to the other side of that too. When we're talking about responses, you know, with the Iranian government, their responses, you know, aren't going to be, or don't have to be, limited to the Middle East. There's always been talks of sleeper cells and other different cells in America, and when they said like hey, you guys started this, we're going to finish it, Like I think they're going to try and call up every sleeper cell that they have, and so that's really where I wanted the conversation about their response to go is hmm, are they willing to set themselves on fire to try to win a fight with America?
Speaker 2:And I say, try to win, it's an asymmetric lineup, no matter how you do it right From a military perspective, from an economy perspective, from an overall just capability of the population perspective, but from a timing perspective, if they were to do something now, when America is already so divided, and if Trump tries to do something like a martial law in areas and things like that, when the people are so against the Iranians. So if there's some attack here on US soil and it gets attributed back to Iran and they try to do some sort of martial law or try to, like you know, have more control Camp type situation or something.
Speaker 2:Right. Will our people allow that to happen? I mean shit, we're already allowing people to get exported to El Salvador. But I think, timing-wise, Iran could attack and not spend as many resources, because we would shoot ourselves in the foot. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I see what you're saying there could be. Well, as with all asymmetric warfare, you have to get an outsized effect for your. Your punch has to carry more than it's worth. Your punch has to carry more than it's worth. You know. Your punch has to hurt, and that's, I guess.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying is they would have to pull a lot of asymmetric attacks in a fairly quick sequence or in a strategic way to where they compound on each other. Right. I'm not as worried about and loyal sleeper cells. I mean, you know we've seen things where concerts get shot up and, unfortunately, you know, like public places get attacked, cars drive down busy streets on the 4th of July, some of that kind of stuff might happen.
Speaker 1:Sleeper cell activity like that, any death is terrible, but we're talking, like you know, 10, 20 people, not like 9-11 level terrorism. I don't think they have that type of facility here right now, type of facility here right now. One thing that could have that kind of death toll is, um, cyber attacks on critical infrastructure, which iran has proven that they have the capability they have been caught inside us infrastructure to include private, like water systems and power systems. So again, what I'm I guess what I'm saying is is like are they willing to do something that is clearly over the line, like hit five water systems all at once and then it's guaranteed destruction?
Speaker 2:You know what I'm saying? We've already stood down all of our not all of our, but we've already stood down a good chunk of our cyber defenses. Well, yes, that's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:We stood down the Russian task force, who again works very closely with Iran.
Speaker 1:A lot of the CISA got dismissed right. And their mission got downgraded.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like those firewalls and those stops are already removed, there's less people watching the line for sure, yeah, so they could get away with it and not even really be attributed right away, Right right.
Speaker 1:Yes, but that's what I'm saying, though, is we would attribute it to them, even if it wasn't them right. Somebody else could hack the west and then blame it on them and be like I ran did it, but that's my point is like would they be willing to cross those lines where you're really going to poke the bear and then you just get destroyed, like it right now? If they tap dance through this, they get to stay in. The regime could stay. There's a way for the regime to stay in power. If they turn the lights off in three or four states and taint a water supply, that's not going to happen. The regime is going to change and the people are going to get kind of stepped on.
Speaker 2:They're not going to exist for hundreds of years. That will be contaminated. It's going to be bad.
Speaker 1:And so that's what I'm saying is, do they want to poke the bear like that, or is it going to be contained to a few rockets at a few bases, a few rockets at some ships, with some commercial ships?
Speaker 1:you know, like the same kind of stuff we're used to seeing them do? Or are they really going to try and do something that really hurts the American people or homeland? Not our projected forces we don't really care about. If you keep blowing up tankers in the Middle East, People don't get off the couch for oil tankers.
Speaker 2:Even shutting down the Strait isn't going to have the effect that they think. It is because, with Trump in the office, he's looking for a reason to increase our domestic production, so he'll just increase our domestic production. Yeah, we got ways around that issue, like we're not as hamstrung by that.
Speaker 1:This is sensitivity as it used to be. Yeah, yeah and and so, yeah, their leverage there is even less. So I guess that's what I'm saying can do. Would they execute a death knell type attack? That really would cause some damage to america, not like critical, but you know a couple thousand people might die. You know we might have some serious problems for a few months, but, like, then they're just gone you know like are they willing?
Speaker 1:to do that, or do they believe that that would even happen? I don't know. What do they believe would happen? Why did they test those systems to figure out how to get into our cyber systems If they didn't have some intention to do something?
Speaker 2:right, yeah, it's not just a, it wasn't in case. Yeah, right, exactly, you don't forward, deploy stuff like that to just check it out I mean, the saber rattling is kind of standard, what we know for, like north korea, even iran, you know, you know these big dictatorships, you know they have to saber rattle to to keep their people um, believe in the.
Speaker 1:Kool-Aid. Jingle the keys in front of the baby, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just keep drinking this Kool-Aid. Yeah, but in this case and with you know their history that we already talked about with kind of being a divided country, like they have the support right now to really push for Israel to be wiped off the map, Sure, and I think that'll be their focus more than America for now. So I think they'll still focus on Israel because they can get more support locally.
Speaker 1:And a lot more bang for the buck too. They can actually shoot Israel. They can't shoot us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, like you said, the cooperation there is so clear they can still say hey look, we're still wiping Israel off the map without directly engaging us too much. But I think the concern with what's going to happen is it's going to be more proxies hitting all of our resources around the area, and those proxies are always. You know, they attribute themselves to them, but you can't really tie them.
Speaker 1:It's a funding line and that's it. There's no.
Speaker 2:it's a decentralized kind of and that's always been enough in the past for us to say like, okay, iran, we're not. We know you gave them money, but you better.
Speaker 1:Right, but I don't think that. Like all the people in Syria. Right, they always kind of called, drew that line. I'm like Iran's got their finger in the pie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but.
Speaker 1:But they're not wearing Iranian military uniforms, right?
Speaker 2:So yeah, so like, but I don't think the Trump administration's that, you know.
Speaker 1:So, uh, so yeah, if the proxies, the proxies could draw iran, big, big iran, into the war faster than what they, what they're anticipating, sure yeah, I agree with you that the focus on is real and basically, um, you know, trying to rally people to destroy israel is probably, uh, more likely. Um, I unfortunately israel and what they've done in gaza whether your support you know the fact they flattened gaza or not it puts them in a really bad light right now. Yeah, where I thought, you know, I'll just, we're gonna, I'm gonna take a very neutral observer position on this.
Speaker 1:Everybody could get upset or not get upset, but, um, israel blew up every hospital in the palestinian territory within the first month of their counter-strike. I mean, every single one of them. They blew them all up. And now they said that hamas was in the basement and hamas was running, you know, command centers. Maybe they were and they could have been totally true and that could have been a valid military target, but it doesn't matter because they blew up a bunch of hospitals. And then here's the point of the story um, a hospital in tel aviv got hit and it man, israel was like this is it, this is the red line. Blood of civilians is a no-go.
Speaker 2:We're gonna flatten out, we're gonna, and everybody's like we're going to roll on our end.
Speaker 1:Huh, yeah, and this is like wait, wait, wait. You shot a hospital yesterday. You know what I'm saying you shot it for the 10th time yesterday with a tank. You knew that you were shooting. It wasn't a mistake, it didn't fall off course. You were 100 yards away and you blew the walls out with a tank. Yeah, they're not going to get the sympathy on the international community.
Speaker 2:You can't have your cake and eat it too. You know what I'm saying you?
Speaker 1:can't. Nobody's going to cry about your hospital because Gaza, and you may have the right to have done everything you did in Gaza, but then that takes away your right to ask for support when it happens to you. You can't, you just can't.
Speaker 2:You can't.
Speaker 1:You just can't. You know, yeah, you know. And so when they all, all the politicians from Israel, went to the hospital over throughout the course of that day and used it as the rallying cry like blood of civilians, come on man. Like that's also your rallying cry for why you're in Gaza. It's like cause they took the blood of civilians.
Speaker 2:Like, come on One thing that I read this morning because it was about Russian Medvedev. He's talking about how other countries might feed nukes to Iran and stuff like that. But one of the comments on the article brought up a really good point about Medvedev is a propaganda specialist for the Russian people. Like he says stuff for the russian people, yeah, and when western media starts grabbing their propaganda and spreading it, it just it feeds them and helps them out. So much, um, it's kind of the same thing there where, like we have so like those politicians going to that hospital, that was propaganda for their people, yeah, and like I don't think people really understand the impact of that. Like it goes everywhere. Now it, yeah, and like I don't think people really understand the impact of that.
Speaker 2:Like it goes everywhere now it's not like you can't just say things in front of your people get them right, right right everybody else is going to see that too and they're like, no like they're gonna, they're gonna call you on it yeah, like, like people don't understand that propaganda just gets flooded on both sides, left and right, to confuse and muddy the waters at each locality. So now that we're in such a connected world, now we're getting propaganda from all these other things.
Speaker 1:And that's how you get the meme. You get a meme where it shows the picture of the Israeli hospital blown up and then it shows five flat places in Gaza where there's no hospitals anymore. They're like let's trade who's the greatest basketball player of all time?
Speaker 2:you know how many rings do you have? Do the math, you know.
Speaker 1:So it was that happened this week. Yeah, so I mean I think you're right that keeping the pressure on trying to to destroy israel uh, makes sense. It keeps them. I guess it perpetuates all the level of conflict that they're basically thriving in, if you could say that they thrive from. So, without them trying to launch a totally death-enticing sort of situation with America, they can keep taking shots at Israel and kind of regroup, stay alive, you know. Stay to fight another day, rally their people and everything. Yeah, stay to fight another day, for sure.
Speaker 2:One thing that you know with all this stuff going on here locally being in Colorado Springs, you know we have NORAD NORTHCOM here. We see a lot of interesting vehicles in the sky. I got some experience in the nuclear enterprise and it's really interesting to see when these things kick off the activity that we see around town. I think earlier I saw a Takamo, which is like a Navy, take charge and move out where they can do command and control of our nuclear forces. Gotcha, there's NAOX, which is like an E6. It looks like an old Senate, but I think that was the one that you saw. It looks kind of like just a white plane a ton of antennas on it that you can literally control the world from. Yeah, they're crazy and there's always one in the sky or warm to take off or something like that. Incredible crews that fly on those things also. But we see a lot of those here locally.
Speaker 2:Last week before the no Kings protest, we saw a lot of helicopters downtown working with CSPD and things like that, learning to extract people. But people need to understand that even though we have things going down here locally, this is such a critical national spot. A lot of these helicopters are just moving important people to important places to make important decisions. You know there's a lot of movements going around here. Um, people track it pretty closely, like what's going on on the flight line, things like that. Uh, everybody needs to realize that this is a, this is going to be a big hub and there's going to be a lot of activity in our area.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the abnormal should seem normal for a little while. Like why are all those planes up? Well, there's a lot going on. Yeah, you know, I've got one too that I used to, when you're, when you're an intelligence guy, you are oftentimes you're doing your job remotely and you're you're watching something that's happening somewhere totally different part of the world, and I always used to try and like I would try and sort of think through the, through the soda straw out, to like where am I, what am I looking at right now, and what are those people doing? Right, they're on a, they're on a military base somewhere flying airplanes around, and I'm and I'm watching their activity from somewhere else in the world. And then you remember, oh yeah, they do that to us too, right yeah?
Speaker 1:And then you're like, wait a minute, I'm watching people take off in these special fighter jets and fly around in circles in the sky and then it took years of doing this. And then one day I'm watching. I think I was up at Buckley and I was watching airplanes take off and fly around in flying circles in the sky. And I think I was up at Buckley and I was watching airplanes take off and fly around in flying circles in the sky and I was like some dude in China is sitting there with headsets on and he's saying Colorado flight four airplanes up in active flying racetrack.
Speaker 2:And he was saying it in.
Speaker 1:Chinese and I was like that dude is watching this right now.
Speaker 1:How dare them? And they're talking about it just like we're talking about it. And they're talking about it, just like we're talking about it. And so it is. Absolutely. There is strategy in giving you know.
Speaker 1:Military deception or confusion is a thing, right. And so flying around a bunch of airplanes and helicopters into places that you don't normally fly them is great. When you're trying to confuse a strategic level enemy of like, where should we watch? What should we look for? And if they got three or four bases that they watched in forever, per you know, no matter what kind of military operations are going on, and then eight different bases all start having the same kind of activity, it really is confusing to the intelligence forces, uh, you know. And to the like planners of like, oh, oh, I thought those were the only four bases that could even do that. Now they have 12. Ah, that's a bit. That's a big difference, you know. And so those kind of activities also take place, and if you're standing on the ground near any base in the united states, you're never going to know if those people are doing training. If they're doing, they won't know that they're doing military deception. They're just told to go and fly the airplanes a lot. Next, week.
Speaker 1:Nobody tells them why you know they're like. You need to put some hours on that engine, All right you know, so and so those activities, you know they can be a little spooky, and especially if you're somebody who's lived here in Colorado Springs your whole life and you're like I've never seen one of those, I've never seen that one. You know that freaks people sometimes. Yeah definitely can.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was one time I saw the Guppy there. Did you ever see that? It was the plane that used to fly the Atlantis shuttle.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, Like the space shuttles around.
Speaker 2:It's a ridiculous looking plane, yeah, but like it's one of those ones where when you see it, you're like, well, that's unique, that's see weird things here, yeah, um, so you know, keep your eyes on the skies, but keep your head about you if anything is.
Speaker 1:You know, if you live here in colorado springs, you know enjoy the show, I guess right, yeah you know they're, they're, you're safe right there's nothing. There's no them doing what they're doing. If anything, you'll see them for a few days and then they're going to disappear right, and then you won't see them again you know.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah, yeah. If we see them all disappear, that's when you need to worry. Just go watch the news. You know. So yeah, yeah, yeah. If we see them all disappear, that's when you need to worry. Just go watch the news. You know, sometime in the next 24 hours something's going to happen.
Speaker 1:Right, so well, I you know I feel like we've covered it. Um, I guess you know parting words is uh, anybody that's in theater right now. You know our, our, uh, our concern is with you. Our prayers are with you. Uh, if you are on one of those ships that are trapped on the wrong side of the straight to hard moves right now which I'm sure there's at least one or two out there that sailed in thinking they were going to sail back out, and they're not doing that right now, you know we, uh, we're, we were thinking about you and we're, we're, we care that you get out safe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, y'all. Uh stay safe. And yeah, I don't even know how to end it after that.
Speaker 1:I don't know We'll see you all next week and I'm sure there'll be some of our predictions. We'll find out. Did they saber rattle? Did they? What happened? If the power's still on right, if Iran doesn't turn the power off right, yeah, so we've got like four days till we record World.
Speaker 2:War III or whatever.
