Victor Davis Hanson: What the Situation On the Ground In Iran Actually Looks Like

**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)
What is Iran trying to do? Iran is trying to talk, hit the golf, close the Strait, talk, repeat, wash, rinse, spin, wash, rinse, spin, drag it out, see Donald Trump lose the house, have the house left, and it's new Islamist socialist base cut off funds for Iran and then wait out the clock and get a democratic socialist type of president. What's going on? What's the big picture? We're missing what's actually happening every day.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
We're hearing more and more every day about Iran and Trump, as the midterms now are only about 90 days away.
There's kind of a narrative that is emerging left and right that we are bogged down. I've heard the word Vietnam evoked. Donald Trump may have contributed to that because although in that 150 days, we've been operating in the Gulf, we've only bombed Iran about 50 or so days, and we've been discussing 100 days. So the narrative has emerged that Donald Trump promises to hit them hard. They back down and they say they want talks. They do not want talks. They want to delay, delay, delay, delay. Donald Trump then sporadically hits them. They come back to the table. We have no idea who we're dealing with because the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard seems to be playing the bad cop and the moderate electorate moderate in quotation marks. Elected officials seem to put a happy face on things, and they either have no power or authority, or they're in league with the hardcore to give them time and say to run out the clock. So what are the relative pressures? Everybody is getting very angry of this on-off, on-off. And we're concentrating too much on what Donald Trump says. We know what each side is doing. Donald Trump has 90 days for the midterms. If he should lose the midterms, his team is convinced, A, that there will be an impeachment circus for the next two years, and B, anybody around him will be hauled before Senate and House committees, but mostly in the House, because I don't think the Republicans will lose the Senate. And they will be inquired, they will be researched, they will be be raided, and it will cost them a fortune, and that will be a circus. So Donald Trump doesn't want that. To avoid that, he has to have gas getting near $3 a gallon, the world price around $65 a barrel. The Strait of Hormuz is open, and all that requires him either to have a new Iranian government or a debilitated Iranian government or a negotiated settlement. What is Iran trying to do? Iran is trying to talk, hit the golf, close the strait, talk, repeat, wash, rinse, spin, wash, rinse, spin, drag it out, see Donald Trump lose the house, have the house left and its new Islamicist socialist base, cut off funds for Iran, and then wait out the clock and get a democratic socialist type of president that would follow the Obama regimen and pretty much appease them and let them do what they want. So what's going on? What's the big picture? I think we're missing what's actually happening every day. There is still an embargo on Iran. No tankers can come in with merchandise, food, material goods, industrial goods, and no Iranian oil is getting out. We have bombed now most of the rail links that go into former Soviet Union and on into Russia and on into China. So they are not getting imports and they are not exporting. They may have some airlift capacity in regional airports where China or Russia are sending in material, but it won't be much. But more importantly, they are debanked.
Assets are frozen. Economic embargo ensues, continues. They are losing in revenue about $500 million per day. And that loss is geometrically increasing, not just arithmetically. In other words, as you start to damage their infrastructure, their bridges, and we have their roads, and you start to inflict enormous damage on the military and they draw scarce resources from the domestic economy to fix it, the people are getting more anguished and poorer and poorer, and the country is getting worse and worse. We don't see that because of what? We don't see that because there's no ground troops, it's not embedded, we don't know what's going on. So while the left keeps saying to all of us, that time is running out for Donald Trump, we're in a Vietnam quagmire, the war is lost, we need to just look at not what the left says, not what the right says, not even what Donald Trump says, not what Iran says. Just look dispassionately and disinterestedly at two things. What is the actual state of affairs in Iran? We have tragically lost 18 soldiers and probably spent $40 billion.