Name: Retired generals break down Iran war strategy after week 4
Uploaded: 2026-03-28T16:36:26.000Z
Duration: 22 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I wanted to go through the four different military options the Pentagon is developing according to Axios.

There's the invading or blockading of Karg Island.

There's the invading La Rock, an island that helps Iran solidify control of the strait, seizing the strategic island of Abu Musa and two smaller islands that are near the western entrance to the strait, and

blocking or seizing ships exporting Iranian oil on the eastern side of the strait.

All four of those options are going to absolutely result in American casualties, not just wounded, but

Any time you put military on the ground at a fixed location, remember that Iran could absolutely strike any facility anywhere in the Middle East.

And so the idea that it is degraded, their capabilities are degraded, is true.

They still have substantial capability, as was mentioned by the previous reporter in Tel Aviv.

So let's not be let's not mince words here.

This would be an escalation of occupying Iranian soil, and

it will result in the lives of Americans being lost and, of course, the sorrow that will be experienced by American military families as well.

So when you see these soldiers from the 82nd Airborne deploying and these two Marine Expeditionary units deployed to the region, do you can you imagine a scenario where they are not used?

I certainly hope that this is all about posturing.

And I understand that because that happens through history so many times, is that you preposition forces and you have the the the sense to be able to not exercise them.

It's also something where let's just say that there were 6,500, 7,500 soldiers and Marines.

Whenever we went into Iran excuse me, Iraq, we had nearly 200,000.

So this is completely absurd to think that a small number of Airborne, which are very, very lightly armed Airborne soldiers, as well as, of course, Marines, could do anything other than I mean, yes, they could take an island, but

I was actually in the 82nd Airborne myself as a company commander a long time ago, back in 1979, when the Shah fell.

We were on alert to go into Tehran to be able to seize the airport.

they called off the mission because they knew that an Airborne brigade dropping into the middle of tens of thousands of armed military, we would not have survived.

That's really, really fascinating and puts that into perspective.

in the Gulf are urging the administration against putting boots on the ground to occupy Karg Island or to remove Iran's enriched uranium.

That's what a senior Gulf official is telling CNN.

They are worried that this would prolong the war, that it would result in casualties and high casualties, as you are pointing out here, and

also that it would trigger Iran to retaliate against those countries there in the region, against their infrastructure, which is so key, the long-term effects of that.

How much do you think that should factor into what the U.S. is considering here?

this is a 100% certain bet that if we occupy any of those, Iran will attack our allies in the region, and

they will probably start to attack power plants.

And as I've said before on various outlets, my concern, the greatest risk to the region is if they were to attack the desalination water facilities in the Middle East, because power can be restored fairly quickly, so to speak, maybe weeks.

Desalination facilities are extremely complex.

And if you go without water, the people cannot survive.

So it can get a hell of a lot worse than it is right now.

And we need to have cooler heads prevail.

The way the president has already said many times, declare victory, and

then let's let's negotiate how we're going to reopen the straits for everybody with Iran, and

What this entire war has begun is based essentially on a miscalculation of the will to fight of the Iranian people.

And 200,000 committed fanatics are very, very difficult.

And they are not they are not going to be swayed by any kind of an invasion, any kind of attack, any kind of shutdown of their oil or their their their the profits that they're making from sailing their oil.

They don't care because we are the great Satan, and they're fighting against the great Satan.

regime change will not result from any kind of a land incursion in in sovereign Iran.

So if it's not going to result in any of that, do you see what the strategy could be moving forward for the U.S.

I think that the only possible scenario that can lead to success, I believe, is diplomacy.

We are not going to do anything to motivate regime change.

Sure, we're bombing them the smithereens.

But the problem is that you've got this committed enemy that we're fighting.

Perhaps 20% of the country that's ten probably 20 million people support them strongly.

Sure, there's a lot of people that want democracy and all that, but they don't have the power.

And they have shown that they are capable of killing their own people.

The CIA does an assessment on regime change.

And one of the first questions they ask is when they do this assessment is, does the regime is it capable of killing their people at an industrial level?

If the answer to that question is yes, then it's not going to lead to regime change.

And that's exactly what's going to happen.

And we're going to put American lives at risk for essentially furthering pushing the football down the road.

But we're not going to get any closer to regime change.

Based on what you have laid out, right, and

your assessment of the IRGC, for example, the fact that the head of the IRGC's naver naval, rather, Navy, we learned yesterday, was killed, what is the impact, right, of that particular leader being taken out on the IRGC Navy, specifically because he was basically in charge, right, of this push to close the Strait of Hormuz and control it?

If he's gone, does it actually change anything?

I mean, they still have profound asymmetric capabilities.

They if we attack invade Karg, well, they'll have artillery they can fire at us.

They have a committed they have a naval fleet of perhaps a thousand small speedboats, a thousand miles of coastline in which to hide them.

They've got all kinds of capabilities, cyber capabilities, etc.

All those things are still going to be at their disposal, despite the fact that we've hit a lot of their military infrastructure.

They've shown already that they've had the capability to continue to fire missiles, and

it only takes a couple, three a day to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

So we're in a you know, there's really no way out of this other than diplomacy, because we are not going to beat them militarily.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Retired generals break down Iran war strategy after week 4

sort

essentially

potential

absolutely