America’s Place in the World Is About to Change in a Big Way. Tucker Responds.

**Tucker Carlson** (0:04)
So, the three headlines from the president's speech last night, at least in the short term, are no ground troops, didn't mention ground troops, yes, we are getting out in some number of weeks by the end of April, and there's not going to be regime change. Regime change, as he said explicitly, is not our goal. So, are those true? Well, of course, you can't tell, you can't know at this point, as Trump himself said. This has been a very short engagement relative to, say, the First or Second World War or Vietnam, but all of those wars began with similar promises. This won't last long, back by fall, all the kind of famous slogans that we chuckle about ironically decades later. They had no idea what they were getting into, and that is true, again, for every conflict. The second people start dying, you really don't know where it's going to end, and that goes for this conflict too. And all kinds of things could happen between right now and resolution, and some of them are awful. And there are also, by the way, signs that there is, as there always is, quite a distance between what politicians tell us and what they're actually planning to do or what they may do. So, for example, in the question of ground troops, the president didn't mention them last night, but they are apparently on the way. So American troops are on the way to the Persian Gulf, including portions of the Nevada National Guard, for some reason. So either that's a statement of intent, the administration does plan to put boots on the ground, or it's an option they want to keep open. But either way, that very much could happen, particularly if the US decides we need actual regime change, we need to subdue the country completely, change its leadership, demand unconditional surrender. None of those things can be achieved. It is pretty much believed by air power alone. So that could happen, and it could accelerate in other ways, too, probably too horrible even to think about, including the use of non-conventional weapons, nuclear weapons of some kind. And the effects of that would be what we don't know, because those weapons have never been used. The kind of nuclear weapons that modern nations possess are not even that closely related to the only ones that have ever been used 80 years ago in Japan. So what would happen next? Again, we can only guess, but it would be awful. So those questions were partly answered last night, but they're not really the right questions that we should be asking, because this is not just a war in Iran, it is, well really, it's a pivot in history. What we're watching is a change of power globally. And so the questions we really should be thinking about and that we're gonna get the answer to fairly soon would include who runs the world? Who's in charge of the world? Where are the real power centers? What is the nature of power? What does it mean to have power? How do you know if a country is powerful? Where does our power derive? Why is the United States a power exactly? And finally, what is the United States? Who are we? How do we understand ourselves? What do we stand for? What's our national character? Is there one? What are we defending when we go to war? So those are the questions that whether we want to ask or not, and they're almost never discussed in public for some reason, that we're going to get the answers to very soon, because conflict forces an answer to these questions, and this conflict in particular. This is a world war, which is to say the world, every nation in the world, while not obviously directly engaged in it, has a stake in the outcome, and the future of every country will be determined in part by what happens in Iran. So, to answer or try to answer the first question, who controls the world? Well, how do you know? Well, you know, because in terms of this specific conflict, the nation that controls the world will be the one that opens the Strait of Hormuz. Now, what is the Strait of Hormuz? Well, it's the choke point at the eastern end of the Persian Gulf, which is the source of fifth of the world's energy, probably 30% of the world's fertilizer, whole bunch of other vital elements that the world needs to run, that the global economy needs to operate. And you can't get any of those out of that region, except through that strait. And it's about 100 miles long, it's 25 odd miles wide at its shortest width. It is basically the source of Iran's power. It turns out one of the things we've learned is that Iran is not a military power. The president and many other leaders bragged about destroying its Navy and its Air Force, and reducing its capacity to build missiles, and ending its nuclear program. And that's relevant, certainly tactically it's relevant. But long term, its military, even its nuclear program, is not why Iran is powerful. Iran is powerful because of its geography, and that's true for all countries. Geography is the single most important fact of a country. Where are you on the globe, and what does that mean? And in Iran's case, its power is inherent. Because it is on the other side, the northern side of the Strait of Hormuz. So if you want the global economy to function, and it is globalized, every country is connected to every other country by commerce, you have to be able to get through that strait, and Iran is in charge of that decision. Which is to say, Iran can stop you from doing that. And for many decades now, Iran has threatened to do that. This is not the first time we've had a debate over the Strait of Hormuz, or it's been in the news. Because in every single conflict with Iran, open conflict, diplomatic conflict, beginning with the hostage crisis in 1979, extending through the war between Iran and Iraq, in which we took sides, Iran has said, hey, we will close the strait. And American policymakers have understood that is ultimately why Iran is a nation that you have to reckon with, that you have to take seriously whether you like them or not, even if you hate them, maybe especially if you hate them. So Iran is not a military power fundamentally. Iran is an economic power, and previous leaders have understood that. Our current leadership doesn't really seem to understand that, or has not said that in public. But Iran's power derives from its ability to shut down, or at least gravely damage, the global economy. So the only question that matters, long term, is who reopens that strait? And it seems obviously at this point that the United States went into the conflict with the mistaken belief that it could, we could, somebody could reopen that strait by force. It's hard to understand how anyone who thought about it for 10 minutes, 5 minutes, 2 minutes, could have reached that conclusion. How do you open it by force? Well, you could just blow up Iran, you could end its regime, you could kill its Ayatollah, you could take out its leadership, but does that open the strait? Think about what it takes to close the strait. Not much. In fact, almost nothing. Mines, the threat of mines, boats with explosives on them, drones, it's extremely easy to prevent commerce. It's very difficult to assure it. It's asymmetrical. And so it's impossible to imagine how an outside power could keep the strait open without the consent, not just of the Iranian government, which you could destroy conceivably, you could just nuke it, but without the consent of the people who live in Iran. Another way to put it is, game it out. You blow up Iran or you destroy any controlling authority within Iran. And Iran collapses. Does that open the strait? Well, of course not. It allows any armed group to control the strait and then to collect taxes, levies, tolls for all shipping that goes through. It allows pirates to take control of the strait. And that doesn't necessarily make commerce impossible, but it massively increases the cost and it discourages normal flows of energy. Because who's going to do that? Who's going to ensure a ship when no government can protect it or assure its protection as it passes through the straits? So again, even if you reduced Iran to the state of permanent civil war, ethnic conflict, even if you killed 90% of the people in Iran, or 99% or 100%, you would still be unable to promise shipping companies and oil producers and oil buyers that their oil or their liquefied natural gas or their fertilizer, their sulfur, or anything else they need from the Persian Gulf would actually be able to go through that strait into the Indian Ocean and out to the rest of the world. So that's not a solution. There's no military solution. That's not a peacenik position. War is bad. That's a practical observation that reflects reality. You cannot bomb your way to an open strait.