IRAN Trying to BLEED US DRY /Lt Col Daniel Davis

Day eight today and things are not going in a good direction. There is no evidence that anybody is willing to back down. In fact, both sides seem to be digging in their heels deeper. They are saying more and more that they are firm in their war objectives. The United States overnight ramped up operations and had some just withering and devastating attacks on Thrron specifically and other places in Iran. As President Trump warned in a truth social yesterday, he was good on his word on that. as there were some tremendous fires at the airport in Thrron. Other of oil facilities were hit inside the capital city. There were, you may have seen some of these images, literally channels of of rolling oil on fire going down the the gutter in some of the streets of Tyrron. Just an apocalyptic uh scenes. It was just terrible. A water desalinization plant was struck. Uh, listen, that's problematic by on its own because that that that could be a war crime in and of itself because it was a that's a complete civilian strike. It has nothing to do with any military facilities. Doesn't have anything to do with war aims. It appears just aimed at causing life to be difficult for the civilians. Everything is chaotic and war. We'll have to wait and see what the information says and what investigations continue to show. But the problem is this is something that's going to be a tit for tat. So by striking these kinds of targets in Iran, there is news out just this morning that tan is returning the favor. I think it was uh I think it was Bahrain where there's some reports that one of their desalinization plants has been hit by an Iranian drone. And listen, this is not especially you you don't want to expand this war in these categories. Uh actually somebody just forwarded me literally just minutes ago uh this uh graphic that shows that attacking desalinization plants is not a front. The US wants to open horrible horrible strategic decision. Iran is 3% dependent on desalinization. US allies in the region somewhere between 40 and 90%. So I know Saudi Arabia is one of those in particular that is very dependent uh upon desalinization. And if you get into a desalinization plant war that our allies are going to come out on the worst end of this if it goes to it and now you start talking about hitting oil infrastructure and harming the Iranian ability to to generate any revenue. I understand that's something that Lindsey Graham had been begging for for many many months for President Trump to do. Now it looks like he's given into that demand as well. But that has probably very ominous warnings for our regional allies because it seems pretty reasonable that if Iran is going to have its oil infrastructure hit, its reprocessing fence, it's its pumping stations, etc., that they're probably going to return the favor. So, so far all we see is everything getting doubled down by both sides and everybody digging in their heels. Uh, well, listen, I I told you before, we talked about one a couple of days ago that President Trump had issued a truth. social that says he demands unconditional surrender from Iran. And I told you that the initial declaration of that I said that automatically means that you're standing setting up a standard that makes it nearly impossible without a ground force to accomplish because otherwise if you don't have a force to go in there you can't compel compliance with that and there's no reason for them to succeed. Therefore your ability to win the war on the terms you have set becomes nearly impossible. All they have to do is not surrender and remain viable and to continue to fire weapons at some some sustained rate over a period of time, then it's a it's a war of attrition and war of wills to see who can outlast the other. And if you set this really high standard, that makes it a lot more difficult for us. Well, last night on Air Force One, President Trump was asked about that very issue. What do you mean by unconditional surrender? >> Can you give us an idea of what unconditional surrender looks like to you? I mean, what do you want from Iran? >> I said unconditional, not conditioned. I said unconditional. It's where they cry uncle or when they can't fight any longer and there's nobody around to cry uncle, that could happen, too, cuz you know, we've wiped out their leadership numerous times already. So, it's uh if they surrender or if there is nobody around to surrender, but they're rendered useless in terms of military. Listen, I I know President Trump loves to sound tough and and he loves to be threatening. I get it. But you have to look at what does that equal? Can you kill every It's a country of 90 million people. So do you think that you have already killed a number of senior leaders in the opening hours of this conflict, but now then you see that the country is spread out and I I want to say it's I think it's somewhere around uh 20 20ome independent military districts that the country this massive country four times the size of Iraq is spread out into. Are you going to destroy old 27? Because if you're going to compel compliance and then force them into unconditional surrender by killing everybody, I mean, you you understand that without nuclear weapons, you can't you just can't meet that standard with our conventional force because Iran is so spread out and so much of their facilities are underground and in every region they have their own underground facilities. Some reports say that some of these facilities haven't even been used yet. these images where you have missiles firing seemingly out of the dirt. Those are some, but apparently there's many others that are still waiting to be used. So if you start knocking some of these out, others will step up because Iran has a plan, a resourced plan to stretch this out. So they have a sustained rate of fire that they're going to do and they're not going to fire from everything from all over the place at once to give away their hands. So the as if you take one out like that one Gary showed you a couple of days ago at least what it appears to be one of the sides of a mountain just blowing up. So apparently they got one of them but they're not going to show their hand to show where all of them are to make it easier for the United States and Israel to go after. So you can imagine that when you take that one out then there'll be another one that's going to pop up and it's going to start firing someplace. But in any case, Iran clearly has throughout this whole country all kinds of ability just like the Ukrainian side has after four years of war of unremented unlementing sorry unremitted disaster and and fire from the Russian side. It's just withering fire this just constant and and for the last year or so it's it's like every other day practically these huge rounds of missiles and drones that causing incredible damage. But Iran, Ukraine is a big country, so it can't be concentrated in any one specific part. We have the same situation here. Iran is a big country. It's got 90 million people. And the the terrain is much more difficult for us on the going against Iran than it is for Russia going against Ukraine. They have a lot of mountainous areas. They have some force and that presents one level of difficulty. But a mountainous area presents additional and more difficult constraints on the offensive t on the attacking side. So our task is much much more difficult. So the question's got to be what are you going to do? Do you think you can bomb it? Because I'm telling you if you don't go nuclear despite all the the brags that we have, all the weapons in the world and all the ammunition we need. That's not true. It's definitely not true. We're already running low. I told you before where a lot of our THAD interceptor or half of them are offline already. Many of our uh Patriot batteries have been destroyed. Thousands of interceptor missiles have been expended so far and we just don't have a pipeline that can replace them. There's already information that we're trying to take some out of our allies in in Asia, probably in Europe as well. That'll make very not a lot of people very angry and and we'll see how that works out. But you see, we're trying to pull it in from everywhere. We have the George W. Bush is being uh called into duty. Now we're sending a third aircraft carrier. And even if you have all that additional air power, it's the issue of the the munitions that matters more than the number of airframes. It matters how many bombs that you have. And you just can't bomb a country the size of Iran into capitulation. I mean, it's been tried so many times unsuccessfully nearly everywhere, but especially a a civilization that has a 3,000-year history, these people will fight to the death. I mean, they're showing that they will. They Shia Islam itself is built in large measure on sacrifice and suffering. So, the idea that you're going to go in and now throw a few bombs and and that they're going to give up after eight days is is just unrealistic or eight weeks or probably eight months and maybe even eight years. Oh, by the way, they fought one that long and they never gave up. I don't know why we think somehow it's going to be different. And you've probably seen that this uh this report uh in the Washington Post that came out yesterday said that Trump was warned about this very thing that a large-scale war was unlikely to oust Iran's regime. So Trump knew ahead of time. This is before the war was before Trump gave the war the order to start it. He knew it was going to be difficult, but he ordered it anyway. Now we're stuck. And so where do you go from here? If you can't bomb them into oblivion, if you keep trying that and all of a sudden, and there's going to come a point where he's going to see the the inventory, his generals are going to finally tell him, "Sir, we can't go below this level, whatever that number is. Otherwise, we literally become vulnerable everywhere in the world. All of our vast series of bases, that's somewhere between 700 plus all over the world. and our our our operations in in Asia, um even in our hemisphere, in Europe, etc., all over the place, plus the Middle East, we don't have enough missiles and stuff to go around to fight anything anywhere else. And if you start going so far in this one area here, it's going to come at the expense of everywhere else, and we're going to be really vulnerable. And who knows, somebody could test us. And it's a job of the military to make sure that we don't get below that red line, whatever it is. Well, you're going you're moving so fast and you're spending so much ordinance right now. You're getting closer to that red line by the day. So that means Trump is going to be faced with doing one of three things as I see it. One, he's going to say, "We're just going to use an easy one here. We're going to go nuclear weapons." God help us if we do that, but you can't eliminate that as a possibility. Number two is that he's going to say, "Well, this is just not going to work." Um, so I'm just going to come up with whatever kind of mental gymnastics I can to come up and and verbal gymnastics and say, "Yes, we're going to we succeeded and we did all this stuff and so we declared victory and moving on." That's two. Uh, that's probably the most likely, the one I hope anyway, the most. And then number three is we may escalate further and go in on the ground. >> What are the circumstances where you'd send in ground troops? How are you thinking about that? >> I don't even want to talk about it now. I mean, it's uh I don't think it's an appropriate question. You know, I'm not going to answer it. Could there be possibly for very good reason have to be very good reason? And I would say if we ever did that, they would be so decimated that they wouldn't be able to fight at the ground level. >> I'm sorry, Ed, but I have to say that. He said, "That's a dumb question. I'm not going to answer it." And then he answers it. Uh but you see, he's even contemplating. But listen, let me just say whatever he may be thinking in his mind that he's contemplating it. Look, other than some kind of limited objective like uh actually uh former Commodore Steve Jeremy uh texted me this morning and said that uh he said one potential possibility there's been some word that maybe the 82nd Airborne has been alerted. He goes that obviously you're not going to invade anything with a light infantry unit, but you could say we're going to seize certain uh targets maybe on the coast of Iran or something like that. That's that's feasible. It's foolish because how would you sustain that over time and what would you accomplish by having limited objectives that a light infantry force like that could seize periodically and then they would become a target uh just like when Ukraine went into Kursk and and this foolish thing they had some success and went in there but it was a dead man walking from the beginning and sure enough Russia just slowly sealed it off and the same thing would happen to us if we did we can't sustain that over so much period in time I mean how would you even do it the cost would be astron astronomical and the casualties would be huge. So hopefully he's not thinking about that. But there's there's no path to saying we're going to do a 2003 Iraq war invasion or or a 1991 desert storm. Those troops just don't exist. You understand that? We don't even have that number of troops anymore. they don't exist on the total active forces that unless you're going to totally mobilize and bring all the national guard on on board and then you're going to get tear star and some others to say hey uh bring give us all your troops all your deployable troops France Germany it's time for you guys to pony up and whatever I doubt they would do it but that that would be required if you even want to have a viable opportunity here because the Iranian side does have formidable ground forces for defense and the terrain absolutely pri prioritizes and and aids the defender. So, it would be an astronomically expensive in terms of manpower and losses we would suffer to do something that probably wouldn't succeed. Let's hope he doesn't do that. Do you see what I'm saying here? There are three options here. They're all bad. One is least bad than the others, and that is doing your verbal gymnastics to just claim victory and move on. I think that's the most likely and the one I hope he gets. But I have some concerns about it. even especially in fact talking about diplomacy we don't have a real good track record in this environment here uh and there is so much arrogance involved with this watch this because Steve Woff was on board this and they were asked about the status of diplomacy >> I think I think that's going to be up to the president that's what I think but I but they didn't seem to be very amenable in this in those first set of negotiations you heard what I said I said we have the inalienable right to enrich They they they bragged about having uh 60% um enriched fuel enough for 11 bombs. They told me and Jared uh we're not going to give you uh diplomatically what you couldn't take militarily. So, you know, I think they're going to need a change of attitude. >> What sort of thing do you want to see in a deal? I mean, do you think you have maximum negotiating leverage at this point? I think the president has proved that we have >> Iran today accused the US >> of negotiating leverage maybe maximum but we're not looking to settle. They'd like to settle. We're not looking to settle. >> Okay, that that's really not helpful. We're not looking to settle. They're looking to settle. So what he just did there, if of the three op three bad options I told you that we have, the one that's the least offensive, he just made even more difficult because now he's saying we're not going to do that. We're not even looking to settle. So that means he's now pushed it off. So that means more people are going to keep dying. More things are going to continue to keep getting blown up. More of our inventory, our missile inventory, offensive and defensive, is going to continue to go down. More targets are going to get hit in the Middle East. Our allies are going to continue to suffer. our troops are going to continue to suffer and Israelis are going to continue to suffer because you're going to keep the bombing going on there and there's no attainable objective here. This idea that you're going to force unconditional surrender, that is not an attainable military objective, friends, it's just not. There's no path. And I get it. Rhetoric all over the place. people I've still keep seeing on Western media, especially here in America, and they're just beating their chest talk about how great it is and how they mocking the Iranian side and they're they show all these images of tremendous devastation in Iran. And that's that's a fact there is. It's just terrifying. It's terrible. It's much worse for Iran so far than it is for us and our allies. That doesn't matter in terms of a war. I mean, have you ever looked at the history of the Vietnam War, for example? I mean the what what happened there was just the amount of devastation and destruction and number of people we killed uh against Vietnam, the North Vietnamese at the time was just off the charts crazy. Way more than we lost. Way more than we lost and it didn't matter because they were fighting an existential struggle and there's no price they wouldn't pay and they did. Look at the Taliban. 20 years we just completely devastated initially wiped them out in in the 2001 2002 they were completely destroyed as an entity. They didn't even exist. The what survivors there were just melted into the population until they were able to recover and rebuild over time and then spent the next whatever it was 18 17 years until they pushed us out because their political will was higher than what ours was from a distance. This will be no different. All of the fundamentals are in place for us to suffer a strategic loss no matter how many bombs we drop. This is not hard to figure out. That's why that intelligence report, I haven't seen it, but I logically that's what the things talk about. That's why they say it was unlikely to succeed. And now that it's playing out that way, and yet Trump continues to go forward. And and uh listen I let's he we're talking about uh the uh diplomacy here and you heard what our negotiator Kushner was saying. Well let's look at what the Iranian side is saying. So here is uh foreign minister Abbas Iraqi for Iranian side and he's saying this is also last night. So the same day that Trump made his comments along with uh Witoff, he said, "President Pzeskian expressed openness to de deescalation within our region. Provided that our neighbors airspace, territory, waters are not used to attack Iranian people. Gesture to our neighbors was almost immediately killed by President Trump." And then he's posted this statement. I want to read a part of it. He said, "President Pzeskin's openness to deescalation within our region, provided that our neighbors airspace territory uh and waters were not used to attack the people, was almost immediately killed by President Trump's misinterpretation of our capabilities, determination, and intent. If Mr. Trump seeks escalation, it is precisely what our powerful armed forces have long been prepared for and what he will get. responsible for any intensification of Iran's exercise of self-defense will lie squarely with the US administration. So what you see there is this he's saying listen we're ready to go forward and and I I think we should believe them because they were signaling a lot of this stuff beforehand and and because of what happened in 2025 where we had been through five rounds of negotiations where had the sixth round planned and then we attacked and then this time there were three rounds and then the fourth one was planned and then we attacked again. Obviously they didn't believe us this time. They were doing everything they could diplomacy but only a fool would not believe that there was really no chance. It was self-evident and they certainly recognized that. So they had been preparing since 2025 for this outcome right here. And in really in large measure they've been preparing for decades before decades building all these missile cities scattered throughout the country. They had uh resource plans. They have enough of these uh weapons, enough of these ammunition scattered throughout their country so that it could survive this kind of thing. They never wanted to do it. They always used every diplomatic means they could to get rid of it. But now they recognize how the difficult the situation is for the United States. So they know that President Trump's pension is for something quick, clean, hard, and fast and out. And so they're going to do everything they can to make sure he doesn't get it. So they seem to be following a similar path that the North Vietnamese did. We're going to endure this tremendous bombing. And remember, we had air supremacy in in for many parts of the Vietnam War. we could bomb their logistics lines. Uh we could bomb their cities. Uh we had of course at that time we had ground troops and and still with all of that we weren't able to win. And now then the Iranian side sees that they have the same task before them. They're just going to bleed us dry. They'll cause as many casualties as they can. God help us if we put troops and make it even easier on the ground for them. But they are going to fight for the purpose of continuing to have this constant bleed of resources cause us to have to send all these bombs, burn up all these hours in our planes, and it's going to be increasingly difficult to keep up this space of operations. It's impossible. Actually, it's going to have to slow down. we don't have the resources to do it because when you start using our planes this much, you start getting into the uh the maintenance issues where you I think we had on our show here a former F-16 combat pilot and he said you need like eight or nine hours of maintenance for every one hour in the air. So, you can't maintain this space. You can have a surge period where you can go on a bunch of missions back and forth, but then you have to get into sustained rate and you have to have sustained maintenance, which means you don't have that many platforms to go on. So, we're going to have to have a reduction in our volume of fire coming up shortly if we're not already there. And the Iranian side is going to have to maintain. You see all this stuff, everything is set up for this to go a long time and for us to fail, strategically fail. Doesn't make any difference how much firepower we have, what the advantages on our side because the conditions for success are different. like in the the Russia Ukraine war. It's it's not there's some some some similarities, but there's also some big differences in that there's ground forces involved here and there is one side that can physically conquer the other. And so the Russian side from a position of superiority can continue to move and over time can cause the collapse of the defensive capability and eventually conquer the physical territory after defeating and destroying the armed forces to some certain level and then they can win that. We don't have that possibility here because we don't have the troops there. So there's no ground force at all. So you can't outlast them and then go and conquer the territory. We don't have enough in our entire inventory. We would have to literally go on a draft and get millions plural of people put into the armed force and then impale them into this to even have a theoretical possibility of winning. And of course politically we could never do that. So therefore, there is no path to a success, a strategic victory for the United States regardless of how much air power we have. So important to understand that the Iranians apparently recognize that. And they are prepared to sacrifice and to pay a big price to be able to get this to have any chance for a future. We're not prepared to do that. And politically, I mean, this is already starting to fray at the edges from Trump's supporters. eight days in. Believe me, the Iranians are paying a lot of attention to this. And that's why I think Abbas Iraqi is saying, "Hey, we're going to continue on and we're going to be able to outlast you." That's got to be their strategy. And that has a much better chance of success than ours does even from a position of military inferiority. Well, there's one other thing I want to talk to you about today because our our position has been made more difficult and and it actually helps Iran in that position because in addition to outlasting us, they also want to there's going to be the fight in the information realm. Well, the f one of the first strikes that we had was the uh the one that you may have seen hit the uh hit the children in in the the school. I mean, one of the very first right off the top of the bat. Uh there has been a lot of information coming out that now uh we know that it was in fact we was wondering whether it was an American or Israeli uh strike that hit it. Well now then according to CNN we know that it was US. >> Our analysis which is based on satellite imagery, geoloccated videos and the assessment of munitions experts suggest that the school was hit around the same time that an attack that American forces had launched on a neighboring Iranian naval base. This new satellite image shows several root revolutionary guard buildings near the all girls school. You can see how close they are. In red, you can see the craters at the center of the structures, including the school and what experts say look like precision strikes. >> And so that's what you have there. And that's the now then we know uh and then certainly CNN is not the only one reporting this. It's it's all over uh western media. This is not Iranian propaganda. These are American analysis. And for the longest time, there was no comment from the United States, only that we're investigating, so there wasn't even denials. Well, last night, President Trump uh made another unforced error. This is not going to play well. And so, he was asked that question in that same uh Air Force One meeting there. And instead of taking any responsibility for it, instead of saying, "Hey, uh, that we're doing an investigation uh, initial inquiry, looks like that it was a a mistake of targeting whatever he would want to say, whatever actually happened, we're going to make sure it doesn't happen again. Instead of doing that and putting the bid think to bed, he said this. >> Did the United States bomb a girl's elementary school in southern Iran on the first day of the war and kill 175 people?" my opinion based on what I've seen that was done by Iran. >> Is that true, Mr. Except it was Iran who did that? >> We're certainly investigating. >> Still investig The only side that targets civilians is Iran. >> We think it was done. We think it was done by Iran. >> Very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran. >> Come on, man. Again, don't treat people like we're stupid. Iran fired on itself in the opening salvos inside of deep inside of its own country. I mean, that that defies any kind of common sense and logic. If if both sides are firing at an area, let's say there there's one of a similar issue in uh in in in Ukraine and Russia around the Zaparia nuclear power plant that there's two sides that are fighting by there and there's some some shots that got hit earlier in the war uh on the one of the facilities of a nuclear power plant and both sides are blaming the other. No, he did it. No, they did it. It was them. They actually fired this. It was a mistake. Well, there's plausibility. It could have been either way because the forces are in close proximity. So both sides are firing at each other and and one side could have missed or they one side could have tried to cause a problem a nuclear uh catastrophe or whatever for their advantages. So it was plausible. Not here. We wasn't firing any missiles around here. This is not even one of those cases like did happen sometimes in Kiev to where the Russians were firing some things and the Kiev side was firing air defense missiles. Some of them missed it and ended up falling down on other parts of the city. Those create a different kind of attack. You saw in that CNN where they showed the satellite imagery that it was a bunch of schools. It was pinpoint targeted. Who's good pinpoint target? According to President Trump, we are. So the idea that and it's even his denial is is is illogical at face value. On the one hand, he says, "Well, they're not very precise. You know, they're they're really bad." And then on the other hand, there's the physical evidence of the satellite imagery. It shows very precise targets. It wasn't just a general strike that hit somewhere near it. It was pinpoint strikes. This is not going to go over well. So, if you're not going to take responsibility for it and it's obvious that it was not the Iranian side that fired on themselves in the opening round, there's no logic to it. And if you say, "Oh, well, they just they did it to themselves to generate sympathy so they could attack." Not in the opening round. No one's gonna be thinking about that at the time. This was a surprise attack. remember they're not going to be prepared to kill their kids on day one when their Ayatollah was meeting in a because they thought they weren't going to get attacked. You remember that people talked about how foolish that was and indeed it was that he had a meeting with his top leaders o in an above ground uh building that everybody knew was going to be targeted. I mean that that was a bad decision on their part. They're not going to then do something kind of foolish like that out of omission and then have an act of commission here that says, "All right, as soon as the the strikes start, we got this missiles and we're going to hit here." I mean, that is just illogical and irrational to say. And that is looking to put blame somewhere where it doesn't belong and refusal to take any responsibility. People around the world understand that when you're fighting a war like this, the information space is just as important as the actual battlefield because ultimately the war will not be won because one side has a military conquest of the other. It's going to be one because one side outlast the other's political will and if the Ukra uran Iranian side is has a stronger will and doesn't give up and you can't compel compliance on that and then the the the media and the public opinion around the world and in the United States starts to turn against the United States, you can't maintain then it doesn't even matter how much military advantage you have if it's costing you diplomatically and politically and therefore potentially economically, then you're going to be forced to compel comply and you're going to be have to change course and do something different. That's what war is all about. That's how this one's playing out right now. So, this is something we need to keep an eye on here. But right now, day eight, no matter how much firepower advantage we have, it's not looking good for our side. We're not doing the kind of things that should lead to a successful accomplishment. We we have military unattainable objectives and all we're doing is just throwing a bunch of ordinance around, blowing up a bunch of stuff, escalating it to other places. And I'm going to be watching here in the next day or two. Does Iran start hitting more desalinization plants at our allies in the region? Do they hit more oil infrastructure, our allies in the region? And how about the uh that issue with the straight of Hormuz? Do we're doing anything to get that open up? If the answer is no to that and the answer is yes to some of these other things, then the price of oil on Monday morning is going to keep going up. I think it ended at $91 and something uh at the end of trading on Friday. That's going to continue to go up. The gas prices are going to continue to go up and the pressure on President Trump inside the country from his base is going to continue to rise. These are a lot of these are unforced errors. We're going to keep tracking this for you as we always do here at Daniel Davis Deep Dive and I will look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Heat up

Lt Col Daniel Davis argues that a major U.S. ground invasion of Iran—similar to the 2003 Iraq War or Gulf War—is unrealistic and likely to fail. The U.S. does not have enough troops without a massive mobilization and allied support, and Iran’s mountainous terrain strongly favors defenders. Any invasion would cause extremely high costs and casualties with little chance of success. He says the U.S. effectively has three bad options, with the least harmful being to declare victory and de-escalate diplomatically. However, statements from U.S. officials suggesting they are not interested in settling make that outcome harder, meaning the conflict could drag on with continued losses, depleted weapons inventories, and attacks across the region. The speaker warns that bombing alone cannot force Iran to surrender, comparing the situation to past conflicts where superior military power failed to win wars, such as the Vietnam War and the U.S. war in Afghanistan against the Taliban. In those cases, the weaker side endured heavy losses but ultimately outlasted the stronger power due to greater political will. He argues Iran appears to be preparing a long war of attrition, absorbing damage while forcing the U.S. to expend resources, aircraft flight hours, and munitions. Because the U.S. lacks ground forces to conquer territory and sustain a long campaign, he believes the conflict is structurally set up for a strategic U.S. failure, even if Iran suffers greater immediate destruction.