uh I'm told that there some consideration has been given to putting a marine force of perhaps 2,000 on the ground in Israel uh we'll see whether or not that happens obviously 2,000 Marines on the ground in in Israel guarantees that somebody's going to get killed if you go to war with hisbah and Iran it's going to be impossible to avoid having something fall on you but uh it's not going to make a great deal of difference to the outcome on the ground that let's be frank that's the numbers are just too small so I don't know but I think air and missile power uh that's where we're we're headed and we've got probably as much as we can load onto any of the platforms the AIS Cruisers destroyers plus the aircraft carriers and we're prepared to fight and we will go in and we will attack shoulder-to-shoulder with the Israelis and we will end up at war with uh I suspect most of the Middle East and I think we're probably going to end up dealing with the Fallout here at home inside the United States because we got these open borders we don't know who's in the country I think we do have an inkling of what's in the country and I think from the standpoint of the people running the the administration and the government they might think this is a great thing you know if we can drag the American people in the United States into a permanent state of conflict with everyone in the region uh that's good for Israel the Israeli endstate is greater Israel as a minimum what what we described earlier and they think that's achievable uh that may be uh I don't know I have I have my doubts but that's their firm conviction no one is interested in in taking and holding anything least of all Americans uh there's nothing to take and hold it's of any real value to us I think the interest is in destroying Iran not holding it not not utilizing it or exploiting it but destroying it right but Iran is a large can't destroy Iran right I mean we can cause lots of damage but we can't destroy it just with air and missile power right well you can do you can do an awful lot of damage uh you have to look at where the population of Iran is actually concentrated much of Iran is Desert and Mountain where there frankly isn't much uh it's an area larger than Western Europe so look look at where the 79 million Iranians live it's not very difficult to destroy their water supply destroy their power grid destroy uh ultimately over time their armed forces that can be done now it's not going to be easy they're going to fight back and they have some capability now that they did not years ago and I'm talking about their ability to reach out and touch us to attack our 26 bases in the region and kill Americans there's no doubt about it but you can do so much damage that you create another wave of refugees and migrants that start going where well they'll they'll pour into turkey uh they're they're going to go north they're going to try and go into Europe uh they're not going to sit there and be destroyed starve to death or uh you know end up dying for lack of water I mean you can you can inflict those kinds of Damages you don't need to go into the country and I think the Air Force is probably and the Navy salivating at the prospect because that's what they've uh they've always theorized could be done you can win a war without any ground force well if your only only goal is destruction and murder they have a point because there's no reason why we would want to intervene on the ground in Iran there's nothing there for us what why are we doing it so we are essentially extending the range and capability of Israeli striking power intelligence surveillance reconnaissance and so forth that's what we're doing and that can do a lot of damage now we haven't discussed who else may object to the total Destruction of the Iranian State and the mass destruction of its people there are other states out there that are not going to be particularly excited about that clearly the pakistanis are not going to be excited I don't think India will be excited by it uh I know the Russians are are going to be horrified if that happens and again we come back to Turkey Turks aren't going to like it if you go to Northeast Asia it's not just the Chinese who want access to the Straits of Hormuz which would likely be closed it's also Japan Korea a number of other states in the region that depend on access to those fossil fuels in other words this has Global impact and the impact is not just in the region it's Global and it's going to be economic it's going to be political and Military and at some point we may discover that we're up against far far more adversaries and opponents than we reckoned would be the case okay you got to you got to distinguish the desired end state which is greater Israel from what is possibly going to happen that's very different from that end state does that make sense uh there's the potential incursion into Lebanon against Hezbollah by Israel but then there's also the potential that this could escalate to include Iran I want to look at those separately so first of all just talk about from the military perspective uh is is for the idea after having fought almost 10 months of War now in in the Gaza Strip do they have the capacity and the ammunition supplies by the way to launch an incursion in into uh Southern Lebanon which you know by all accounts the hisb has been basically preparing for since 2007 2008 uh for this kind of conflict well I think the Israelis certainly have the ammunition they need uh We've provided almost without question anything they asked for so I don't think there's a shortage on the ammunition side now the ground force as you know is much like a large Army National Guard you have very competent exceptionally professional people at the top who know what they're doing but once you get down below the lieutenant colonel and Below level you're running into large numbers of people who are effectively reservists or Guardsmen they are not extraordinarily well trained although I'm sure they've gotten a lot of good training and experience in over the last 10 months uh they've taken a number of casualties I've seen all sorts of figures something like 70,000 casualties four or 5,000 dead I have no idea because as we know you know the first casualty in war is always the truth neither the Israelis nor anybody else involved in this is willing to tell anybody the truth so we we don't know but I think we can say with some certainty that the ground force has been stretched but keep something in mind the Israelis see this as primary primarily an air and missile campaign with a ground force that will go in to mop up but I'm talking specifically about hisbah we are also viewing this as air and missile campaign and that if for no other reason because we don't have much to send in terms of ground forces I think I want to look at that you're talking about the missile forces uh one of the things that seemed evident from the I think it was June strike when in Iran sent 350 missiles and drones uh and the the uh Iron Dome allegedly anyway knocked out 95% or something like that but it was in analysis afterwards we had Professor Ted postalon who said when you look at it actually many of the missiles were not intercepted and many of those that were were designed to be shot down to try to avoid escalation but he said that if if Iran had actually wanted to harm Israel they could have picked a lot different targets and caused a lot more damage and Hezbollah number one their time of flight now is far less than they would have and they have more of these missiles uh there's some suggestion that the Iron Dome may not be very effective at all and it could Israel could be seriously harmed by the uh blumil well the Iron Dome is never performed to the level as advertised you know 90 plus% intercepts that's always been nonsense so no they're getting something in a neighborhood of 50 to 60% of what's out there but keep in mind that everyone's missile Arsenal or stocks are designed to exhaust the air defense capability so you can run the Israelis and for that matter us out of anti-missile missiles very quickly doesn't take very long and we are not uh disposing over hot manufacturing lines or or you know building missiles and Rockets hand over fist on a daily basis so we we have limited supplies the Iranians and the his and the uh Shiites in hisbah are in a different position that what we don't know is how this will begin I think it's pretty obvious that you're going to get a major war in the region that's unfortunate a lot of us have tried very hard to persuade everyone not to do go down this road but I think Mr Netanyahu will as a result I think there will be an attack on hisbah by Israel now bear in mind you know you've got Lloyd Austin saying we're going to help them if they're attack well they're already under attack and the Israeli attitude is that we're the permanent victims in the region so whatever we do is defense anyway yeah so you know that that's a foregone conclusion what kind