Victor Davis Hanson: Trump Is Preparing for the Final Phase Against Iran

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome to The Daily Signal Podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take.

**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:08)
We stopped full-scale fighting almost a hundred days ago, and these tit-for-tats have been ineffectual in the sense they have not stopped the missile barrages to the Gulf States, and they have not given us control over the Strait of Hormuz, and we do not have control of the enriched uranium. So where are we now?
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal.
We're approaching 140 days since we first attacked Iran on February 28th of this year. And we only really had, people call this a war, but it's basically 40 days of actual bombing, tit for tat, followed by 100 days of negotiations with Innersplice with some tit for tat exchange of missiles and drones. But for the most part, we have negotiated. Now, we know the strategy of both sides. The strategy of our president was, he wanted to stay in power, meaning he wanted to have control of the Congress. Otherwise, his initiatives and agenda will be ossified if the Democrats take over the House. They will impeach him if they take over the House. And he's protected against conviction by running the Senate. But if he should lose the House or Senate, in other words, if things would blow up, he would be in deep trouble. So his point was always to make sure that Iran did not have the ability to produce a nuclear weapon and did not have the ability to launch missiles all over the Gulf and did not have the ability to close the Straits of Hormuz.
But the negotiations interrupted that cycle in which Iran also had a strategy, and their strategy was if we can drag this conflict out and punctuate it with missile launches and write out the retaliations, which would be proportional or symmetric, we can run the clock out all the way to the midterms. If we do, the Democrats will take over the House of Representatives, and maybe they will not allot money to continue Trump's war. More importantly, maybe this will be the start of a new government in 2028, and we'll be home free as we were with Biden and Obama. So that was their strategy, drag it out, drag it out. Who won? Well, we'll see about the denouement, but for now, Iran has been able to survive because we stopped full scale fighting almost 100 days ago, and these tit for tats have been ineffectual in the sense they have not stopped the missile barrages to the Gulf States and they have not given us control over the Strait of Hormuz, and we do not have control of the enriched uranium. So where are we now? We still have the same pressures on Donald Trump. We've got less than four months now until the midterms, but the economic news has been surprisingly good.
Inflation at a per month rate is at a historical low almost, and unemployment is about 4.2.
GDP is strong at 2.3, 2.4.
Stock market is high. The full effect of tax cuts and greater energy production and deregulations are starting to be felt along with foreign investment. So Trump thinks that along with the redistricting and the Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering, he might have a chance to upset the historical reality that 39 of the last 41 midterms have gone to the out party. So he still thinks he has a chance, and he still wants to conclude operations and go home, and the Iranians know that. So where are we now? I think we can see what he's doing. The last four days, he's had very, very strong strikes. Some of his critics have said on the right, we are hitting all of these dockworks and these small mosquito fleet and the fuel for missiles. Why didn't we do that earlier? Well, we didn't do it earlier because we were negotiating, and we were measured and proportionate. And to deal with the Iranians now, you have to be unmeasured and disproportionate. So what we are seeing now is a full scale effort to destroy all of their military abilities. That would mean going to the factories, the industrial complex that makes these missiles, find them where their launchers are, find their drone fields, clear the corridor near the strait of all of their anti-aircraft ability, their missiles, their drones, and their small fleet of vestigial boats that they use to mine the strait and attack tankers. Clear it all out. Do this for a week or two weeks and then stop and see if they want to concede. If they do not want to concede, then I think you would have another week of dual-use targeting and that would mean they were going to bring in the B2s and hit Pickaxe Mountain, seal the areas under suspicion of harboring enriched uranium, hit the bridges, hit some of the power grid, and then go home and say to our allies, Iran is now mostly inert. They have no air force. You in the Gulf, you have 600 combat front-line aircraft. You have missiles. You have missile defense. You can defend yourself from an inert Iran.