Victor Davis Hanson: "Trump is Playing A Much Bigger Game Than You Think..."

[0:00]eliminating the greatest terrorist threat of the last 47 years, who's as a terrorist entities killed more than any other terrorist entity Americans, greatest army, greatest military in the middle entire Middle East, but reduced it to ashes. without sizable or any losses really of American, 13 dead, that's tragic, but that that's quite of an achievement. And so in that case, I don't know whether that that crazy rhetoric is part of it. Had nothing to play with it, kept the Iranians terrified, kept them off balance, I don't know. Right now, there's a ceasefire with Iran and there's ongoing negotiations, but they seem like they're going to fail. Check out this great clip with Victor Davis Hansen talking about the ceasefire with Iran and what the next steps might look like. We'll watch it together and then we'll talk about it, but first, hit that subscribe button over there in the corner, we'd love to stay in touch. Check this out. I don't know of a war where you negotiate right in the middle of hostilities like this. Nobody tried it in World War II in Vietnam. It was a waste of time in Paris. Korea, they, they, they negotiated for a year where they killed another 15,000 Americans. So I, I, I don't, I don't know of anybody who was constantly trying to negotiate while they were bombing. And it was just a matter of, he kept saying, I've got a negotiator. We're talking, and the, the hardcore would say no. So then he would up the ante. And as the five weeks wore on, their position worsened and his strengthened. So now when he said he wants negotiations, he's willing to negotiate, and if they open the straight, etcetera. They're willing to consider at least profess to do that because they have suffered a geometrically increasing level of damage. And we haven't. We've had, we've suffered political damage to the Trump administration. There's no doubt about it. He's his polls have been down, although the recent Rasmussen poll, if you watched it, the daily poll had him back up to 47% after the rescue. So I I don't know what the actual politics are, but he's in a position of strength. I don't know if he knows he is, but he is. Basically, is this a victory for Donald Trump? Does does this ceasefire represent a victory for his sort of strategic campaign? Well, if it's honored it is, because when all of the rhetoric and all of the politics vanish, and if they abide by the agreement, and we stop and the straight stay open, and we are vigilant, and if they break the the agreement not to enrich, or they go back to this buried facility and try to extract and we keep we can stop that. If we're vigilant, then it is, because he comes back and he says, when I came into office, Iran had the ability to make 11 bombs apparently post facto, we've realized. They had missiles that would reach Europe, they had shut down through the proxies, the Red Sea, they had caused October 7th, and they can't do that anymore. At least for the foreseeable future, and if they think they're going to try, I or any future president can stop them at very minimal cost. This has cost about 50 to 60 billion dollars. It's about probably a quarter of what was stolen in California under the Newsom regime by welfare fraud. And we've lost tragically 13 soldiers. We lost the same amount in one day in Afghanistan getting out of Afghanistan. So if everybody just keeps calm and looks at the actual data, the cost, the benefit, uh, and who wins and loses, I think it is. It's going to be I think in two months, nobody's going to be talking about this if it holds. I really don't know, um, what the sizable or significant military targets are left. We've hit the barracks, we've hit military munitions, we've hit arsenals, we've hit storage, we've hit depots. We've destroyed their air force, we've destroyed the major chips of their navy, we've destroyed their air defenses. They may have shoulder fired missiles as we saw, but there's no more military targets that are significant. So then he he would have said, and I think he did say that, then what what would put them uh, at a disadvantage to the extent that they would open the straights of Hormuz and maybe lose power or influence and this revolution would continue. And they said, well, you can hit the infrastructure, because that will paralyze the regime. They won't be able to have any communications without electricity. And maybe they will fall or be squeezed before the population, um, is it? And that's what he was talking about. He didn't do it. I didn't think he'd ever do it. I did think that the Iranians believed he would do it. And I think that's, I mean, we've had a lot of people say things like that. Curtis Le May said in World War II, he'd be tried as a war criminal for bombing Tokyo. He said during the Vietnam War, my are intent is to bomb them back to the Stone Age, which Trump mimicked. But rhetoric, it's, it's his style. And is it presidential? I can't comment on that other than it's deliberate. It's deliberate hyperbole, it's deliberate recklessness to keep everybody completely unsure of what he's going to do. So each time he has taken out Solomane or Baghdadi or bombed ISIS or hit the Wagner Group or bombed the nuclear facilities in 2025, or kidnapped, taken, taken extradited Maduro or the latest bombing, no one had any idea that it was coming when it did. None. And I think that's because they don't, they don't know what he means when he says all these things. Is there a political price to be paid? Yeah, I think so. I think it hurts him politically domestically, but I'm not sure. Uh, it's very similar to the Yam Kipper War in 1973 when Richard Nixon sent Kissinger to negotiate. And he said to him, as he had done during the Vietnam bombing of 1973, it was I am the madman, and you are the good cop. So I'm going to say all kinds of things. I'm going to bomb Vietnam during Christmas. I'm going to let the third army, the Egyptian third army perish in the desert. Then you go over and tell, tell them that I'm crazy and they better watch out. So it's a good cop, bad cop. In this case, J.D. Vance has been assigned or taken on the role of emergency diplomat. And that's obvious because he wants the mega base to see that there are people within his administration that silently, quietly, implicitly don't want it to continue. So Vance goes over to tell the Iranian negotiators, whoever they may be or the allies, Trump is kind of out of it. We've got to do something because I don't know what he's going to do. And that's, and Rubio and Vance play that role. And I, it's been done before. I, there's risk to it, but the final thing, Stephen, is, when you look back at all of these things, all we can do is compare them to prior US and NATO actions. We bombed Serbia for 72 days. And we did, we hit, we destroyed their civilian infrastructure. We killed, you know, a lot of civilians. We, we bombed Libya for seven months. That was a British and French initiative that drafted the United States in, and it made things worse. We got out of Afghanistan and got 13 people killed in one day and left 50 billion dollars of munitions and weapons and a three million, three billion dollar infrastructure of new bases, uh, buildings, university programs, the new brand new embassy. Uh, so compared to what we have done in the past, eliminating the greatest terrorist threat of the last 47 years, who's as a terrorist entities killed more than any other terrorist entity Americans, and to have lost 13 people in it and pretty much reduced its much feared and formidable. Greatest army, greatest military in the middle entire Middle East, but reduced it to ashes without sizable or any losses really of American. 13 dead, that's tragic, but that that's quite of an achievement. And so in that case, I don't know whether that that crazy rhetoric is part of it or had nothing to play with it. kept the Iranians terrified, kept them off balance, I don't know, but I do know the results have been much more impressive. than Barack Obama's Iran deal or Joe Biden's escape from Afghanistan or the 500 predator missions by Obama or the bombing of Libya. If you compare him to past, not to mention the huge misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2003 to 2008. So I, I don't think the rhetoric and when you look at that picture is as important as the actual results. If you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, the war with Iran has already been a massive strategic win for the United States. Not because everything's finished, not because the situation is simple, but because of what's already changed. For years, Iran has built power on projection, on influence, on the ability to stretch across the region through proxies and militias and threats. The idea was simple, they don't need to win a direct war, they just have to make the cost of confronting them too high. And that illusion has been shattered. That what we've seen over the last few weeks is the exposure of Iran's limitations. Their infrastructure has taken real hits. Their ability to coordinate across multiple fronts has been strained. Their deterrence, the very thing that kept adversaries cautious, has all been weakened. Military analysts have pointed out something very important. Iran's strength was never just in weapons, it was in perception. The perception that they were untouchable, that they were unpredictable and too dangerous to challenge head on. But once that perception cracks, everything changes. Because power is not just what you have, it's what others believe you have. And right now that belief is shifting. At the at the same time, the United States has demonstrated something equally important. Precision, reach, and restraint. Not chaos, not endless escalation, but the ability to act decisively, hit meaningful targets and then step back. And that matters because it sends a message not just to Iran, but to the entire world. America is still capable, still present, still the stabilizing force that can shape outcomes without losing control of them. Now, let's talk about the ceasefire. But if you listen carefully to what experts are saying, there's deep skepticism. Why? Because ceasefires don't succeed on hope. They succeed on alignment of interests, and right now there's interests are not aligned. Iran's leadership needs to project strength internally. They can't be seen as backing down. At the same time, the United States and its allies are not going to accept a deal that simply resets the board and allows the same threats to rebuild. So what you have is a pause, not a resolution. A breath maybe, but not an ending. And history teaches us something very clear, when the core issues remain unresolved, ceasefires tend to be fragile. They hold for a moment and then they fracture. So what happens if no deal is reached and right now there's it doesn't seem like there's going to be one reached. Vice President J.D. Vance has announced that they haven't yet reached a deal. This is where the analysis becomes very grounded. Military experts are already outlining the likely next phase. First, you're going to see continued targeted operations. Not large-scale invasion, not full war, but precise intelligence-driven actions aimed at limiting Iran's capabilities even further. Second, you're going to see increased pressure on Iran's network, not just within its borders, but across the region. The goal is to disrupt coordination, weaken influence and reduce their ability to project power outward. And third is going to be stronger alliances. One of the quiet but significant outcomes of this conflict is the way it's pushed regional and global partners closer together. Shared threats creates shared purpose, and that alignment becomes a force multiplier. The Gulf states, they're going to be more involved, probably. And finally, a long-term strategy of containment. Not rushing into chaos, but steadily reducing the ability of Iran to destabilize the region over time. This isn't about a single moment, it's about shaping the future. And here's the deeper point, strength is not measured only by how wars begin, it's measured by how they redefine reality. Right now reality is being redefined. The myth of unchecked power is fading. The balance of influence is shifting, and the United States together with its allies is demonstrating that leadership still matters. Not loud leadership or reckless leadership, but steady, disciplined moral leadership, and that's what's ultimately determining the course of history. Because in the end, the greatest victories are not the ones that make the most noise, they're the ones that change what is possible. And that's exactly what we're witnessing right now. If you like this content overall, hit that subscribe button over there in the corner. We'd love to stay in touch. Take care.