Steven Bartlett

dollar as well as the American empire.

Because the American society does not have the political will, does not have the manufacturing capacity.

does not have the risk tolerance to fight this war in Iran.

Basically, America wants to fight this war as cheaply, as easily, and as quickly as possible.

So Trump really thought that, you know, if I sent my airplanes to strike Tehran and kill the Atatürk, they would just surrender.

That was literally his plan going into this war.

He paid no attention to the culture.

He paid no attention to the history of the Iranian people.

He had absolutely no respect for Iranians.

for the nation and when you do that when you disrespect your opponent when you underestimate your opponent when you yourself are not willing to commit to the fight you're going to lose so is Iran's game just to draw this out as long as they possibly can

There's a lot of confusion as to how this war started.

Even today, no one actually knows how this war started.

But I think that Trump, given his personality...

He was convinced that if he killed the leadership of Iran, then they would have no choice but to surrender.

And his proof of concept was, of course, on January 3rd of this year, total force went into Venezuela, kidnapped Maduro, and they completely surrendered.

So in Trump's mind, he wanted to replay the Venezuela scenario.

The short answer is he is a reality TV star.

He thinks in terms of optics.

He doesn't think in terms of geopolitical strategy.

The long answer is that the American military has become a corrupt and insular institution that is trying to generate as much congressional funding as possible in order to fund the military-industrial complex.