Robert Pape

And it was really a tight blockade because we stopped the land routes as well.

That's what led us to do a ground war.

And what happened to Saddam Hussein's regime?

It did not crumble.

It did not crack.

The same problem of the water, you know, we're worrying about the water going in, and this was not enough.

It did not happen to the extent...

and so forth.

What happens instead, and this is my area again, how the pressure affects the politics.

When you take a country and you weaken it economically, and you cut its pie in half, and the government is still in place, what does the government get to do?

Redirect the remaining half to its supporters, take away the resources from its opponents.

And that's exactly what Saddam Hussein did, and that's what the Iran government is doing.

They're going to privilege the Revolutionary Guard.

They're not going to first take money from the Revolutionary Guard to go pay the pro-democracy movement in Iran.

That's Saddam Hussein, same thing.

Yes, the country's pie, the economic pie is cut by half.

But what happened is you became more beholden to support the dictator you didn't like.

And by the way, that's not unique to Saddam Hussein.

When Germany...

occupied France in World War II.