Iran War: What is the US Strategy? | Live with Michael Rossi

## A week of war and the illusion of quick victory One week into the latest confrontation with Iran, the central lesson is stark: the assumption that high‑profile strikes or targeted decapitation could produce a rapid, decisive outcome has collapsed against the reality of resilient state structures and asymmetric retaliation. The conversation captured in the recording reveals a set of misreadings and wishful narratives that propelled policy choices into a conflict dynamic neither fully anticipated nor strategically planned for. What began as a sequence of dramatic, media‑friendly actions—intended to demonstrate control and resolve—has instead exposed the limits of military precision as a political instrument and the dangers of relying on fragmented intelligence, partisan incentives, and sectarian narratives to set foreign policy. This is not merely an operational failure. It is a political and cognitive one. Early expectations that Iran would quickly collapse, or that a decapitation strike would remove the political will to resist, underestimated the diffuse nature of Iranian governance and the deep social and institutional roots of its regional influence. The result is a war that, rather than being short and surgical, risks stretching into months with escalating costs for regional stability and for the credibility of those who pushed for easy answers. ## Decapitation, resilience, and the fog of war The notion that eliminating a single leader would produce regime change was a recurring theme in the discussion. That calculation overlooked how authority and decision‑making in Tehran are distributed across multiple organs—military, clerical, and political—and how public narratives of martyrdom and resistance can strengthen cohesion in times of external pressure. The conversation emphasizes that previous pronouncements about the demise of Iran’s leadership have proved premature in the past; structural resilience and institutional redundancy matter more than symbolic decapitation when it comes to sustaining governance. Operationally, the conflict also demonstrates the classic fog of war: competing narratives, conflicting intelligence streams, and rapidly shifting claims about who struck whom and why. Three competing storylines emerged in the media ecology: one from mainstream Western outlets portraying imminent Iranian collapse and broad coalition success; another from alternative analysts warning of catastrophic strategic consequences for the U.S.; and a third composed of granular, often sensationalized frontline reports circulating on encrypted messaging platforms. None of these narratives provided a coherent, shared map of political ends and military means. That strategic incoherence—tactics without a clear, long‑term strategy—was repeatedly highlighted as the central American deficit. ## Narratives, media, and the politics of meaning How a war is narrated often shapes its trajectory almost as much as battlefield events. The exchange in the recording traces how media framing and political rhetoric converged to produce a patchwork of justifications: preemption, defense of an ally, punishment for alleged plots, promotion of democracy, and even providential destiny. These multiple, often contradictory rationales served two political functions: they mobilized different domestic constituencies and they gave policymakers flexible cover. Yet they also undercut the possibility of a coherent strategic plan. When the public justification for war constantly shifts, it strains democratic accountability and makes it easier for opportunistic actors to drive policy. The role of mainstream and legacy outlets was discussed with particular skepticism. Coverage that animated narratives of rapid victory or framed criticism of coalition motives as conspiratorial can balloon into diplomatic and moral blind spots. At the same time, alternative channels—YouTube analysts, Telegram leaks, and social media commentaries—created a secondary information ecosystem that sometimes amplified worst‑case scenarios and sometimes revealed overlooked costs. The net effect was fragmentation: no dominant, credible storyline commanded public trust, and that vacuum opened space for both overconfident bellicosity and apocalyptic gloom. ## Religious politics, messianism, and the instrumentalization of faith One of the most striking themes in the conversation is the documented presence of millenarian and religiously framed motivations within parts of the U.S. political and military ecosystem. Reports of evangelical actors influencing policy discussions, and of service members being told the conflict is part of a providential end‑time drama, point to an unsettling fusion of doctrine and geopolitics. Where religiously framed belief systems predominate, war risks being reframed from a calibrated instrument of statecraft into a means toward metaphysical ends. This matters for two reasons. First, religiously driven motivations reduce the salience of conventional cost–benefit calculations, potentially making policymakers—and some military actors—less sensitive to civilian harm and long‑term strategic costs. Second, the presence of such narratives complicates alliances and messaging: opponents can exploit the perception of ideological zealotry to rally domestic and regional audiences against the coalition. Even if faith‑based motives are not the sole driver of policy, their salience in decision circles shifts the moral horizon of the conflict and makes negotiated exit routes harder to conceive. ## Allies, agency, and the imprint of Israeli objectives A recurrent assertion in the discussion was that the conflict is primarily an Israeli initiative for which the United States has been enlisted. Whether framed as an effort to curb Iran’s region‑wide posture or as an attempt at a strategic realignment (a “Greater Israel” aspiration), the war’s proximate catalysts appear to reflect Israeli priorities tightly intertwined with U.S. operational support. The result is a diffusion of agency: U.S. forces acting less as independent strategists and more as enablers of an allied campaign. This alignment has practical consequences. It increases the risk that American actions will be judged in regional terms as part of a broader Israeli project, reducing wiggle room for neutral mediation and increasing blowback across the Middle East. It also exposes domestic coalitions in allied states to pressures of complicity, as policymakers in countries beyond the U.S. and Israel are asked to reconcile normative commitments to international law with geopolitical calculations and pressure from powerful patrons. ## Civilian harm, proportionality, and the erosion of international norms The conversation repeatedly returned to the humanitarian dimension: attacks on schools, civilian infrastructure, and noncombatant life. Such incidents do not merely generate moral outrage; they degrade strategic objectives by fueling cycles of reprisals, hardening popular resistance, and shrinking the political space for de‑escalation. The invocation of precision weaponry becomes hollow when civilian casualties mount and when symbolic violence is used as a signaling method. Equally concerning is the erosion of norms around proportionality and the selective invocation of international law. When leaders argue that a state’s prior abuses negate its legal protections, the door opens for ad hoc exceptions that weaken the overall architecture meant to constrain violence. That logic resonates beyond this conflict, setting precedents that other states might cite in future crises. ## Strategy vacuum and the demands of neutrality Perhaps the clearest analytical point to emerge is the absence of a coherent long‑term U.S. strategy. Tactics have proliferated—strikes, targeted assassinations, air defenses and reprisals—but without an articulated political endgame that reconciles security aims with diplomatic pathways. The military axiom quoted in

Iran War: What is the US Strategy? | Live with Michael Rossi After one week of war, what is the US strategy and how is the population in the US taking this newest warscapade of the president of peace? #Pascal Welcome everybody back to Neutrality Studies, and to Michael Rossi Polisai with, of course, Michael Rossi. Michael, welcome back. #Michael Rossi Thank you, Pascal. Good morning. Hope everything’s well with you. Happy Saturday. It’s Friday evening here in New York, and it’s been a busy week. #Pascal Oh yes, a busy week indeed. The Iran war is now exactly one week old. It started pretty much around this time, Japan time—maybe a few hours later on your end. I think it was midnight or 1 a. m. in the U.S. when the first strikes hit. So, almost a week. Michael, what have we learned in the meantime? And can you give us a little rundown of what you think were the most important things that happened? #Michael Rossi Yeah, well, you know, I had started our conversation with Ambassador Freeman last time by paraphrasing that quote from Sophocles: one must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been. Here we are a week later—one must wait until Saturday to find out how much has been accomplished in the last week. As we were finishing up our conversation last week, I think within the last 15 minutes or so, it was just coming in through Telegram that Hamani was murdered. So as we were talking, I had shut Telegram off because I just didn’t want to get all the noise coming in. #Pascal Yeah, and Ambassador Freeman was making the point that Khamenei had been declared dead at least six times before that, during his 30 years of rule, right? So we were all very skeptical about whether the United States had really killed him or managed to kill him. But it turns out, yes, they did—they murdered the official leader of the Iranian state. -- 1 of 21 -- #Michael Rossi And as you and I talked about on WhatsApp right afterward, if I'm not mistaken, that was one of the last major obstacles to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. #Pascal The man who issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons—absolutely. He forbade them, saying they were unholy, ungodly, that Iran would not make one. #Michael Rossi Well, a lot of good that’s done, because, you know, the Ayatollah is dead. Long live the Ayatollah. If I'm not mistaken, I think they selected his son—he’s among the highest ranks, I believe. #Pascal My latest information is that he hasn’t been officially appointed yet, but he’s basically the agreed- upon candidate. #Michael Rossi So, if we can understand all of this, first of all, I think the biggest thing to take away from the last week is that, contrary to many presumptions within the Trump regime, the Iranian state has not collapsed. There is no regime change. If anybody thought that one could initiate regime change by simply decapitating the religious, symbolic head of a state that is largely run by the Islamic Revolutionary Council, not the Ayatollah, then whatever information they were being given—from whatever diaspora sources, Israeli Mossad sources—they really, really need to check the credibility of those things. Two things I can say beyond that: there were two really, really good videos that have come out on YouTube, both on our colleague Glenn Diesen’s page. The first one, shortly before you, I, and Ambassador Freeman spoke, was Glenn talking with Jeffrey Sachs, who gave his initial prognosis, saying this is going to be a disastrous war for the United States. And the one within the last 24 hours was Glenn interviewing Douglas McGregor, which is fascinating—really fascinating. I encourage all our viewers to go to Glenn’s page and check it out. McGregor, who’s much more of an insider from the U.S. military standpoint, is simply saying this is Netanyahu’s war, one that Trump and the Trump administration have been dragged into. Trump, as an individual, is just severely compromised—politically, economically, reputationally. And we’re being given all kinds of conflicting reasons, rationales, narratives from Rubio, from Hegseth, about why we’re involved in all of this. I think the initial understanding was that we could just, you know, go into Iran, throw in some missiles, get them to capitulate—just like we allegedly thought -- 2 of 21 -- would happen with Venezuela. But it turns out that, within this last week, Iran is not only resilient in this war but has conducted a significant amount of damage on American military, economic, and oil refinery bases within the Middle East, including many areas within the GCC, the Gulf Cooperation Council. So we’re talking about Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, among others, that have been significantly hit. And what’s even more important to note is that—again, I’m still operating in a gray zone, we’re still operating within the fog of war here—but the amount of devastation and destruction inflicted on Israel is one of the biggest kept secrets out there. Videos showing the destruction of places throughout Tel Aviv have been significantly edited—heavily, heavily censored. But what we find are really three emerging narratives, and it could be anyone’s game. We have what the Western media industrial complex wants us to believe—the so‑called legacy media: The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, but also Fox News. BBC, The Telegraph, Sky News—all of them are painting a picture that Iran is about to collapse, that the U.S.‑Israeli coalition is about to achieve full control over Iran’s airspace. Another narrative is the gloom‑and‑doom prognosis coming from many YouTube channels—people like Glenn Deason, among others—saying this is an absolutely disastrous war that the United States won’t be able to recover from, and that it’s being dragged basically into Armageddon by Israel. And then the third one, the third narrative, is what we get from various Telegram channels that—take them as you will—are a little more balanced, in the sense that all three sides are just inflicting heavy, heavy damage on each other. However, the thing to take away from all of this is that, one week in, whatever victories Trump or Netanyahu thought they were going to achieve over Iran have now proven to be not reachable in a matter of days, but weeks—if not months. Right now, we’re talking about months. We’re talking about how this war might last until September or October. How convenient—just in time for the midterm elections. So that’s basically the long and short of what I can see on my side. What about you? I mean, you do this wonderful thing where you ask a lot of questions to people who are guests on your channel, but no one has ever asked you what you think about all of this. You know, what do you see on your end? I know I’m suddenly preemptively taking over and asking you the same question. #Pascal Oh, no worries. I put out my little opinion pieces on my channel whenever I feel I have something to say. I mean, one of the most important insights for me last week—or one of the most shocking ones, really—is that there’s a considerable number of people involved in this on the U.S. side who are just outright Christian fanatics, like evangelical fanatics. And I don’t have any visuals right now, but we saw it yesterday, or the day before, when there was a prayer in the Oval Office with Trump’s main evangelist—Paula White, I think her name is—a pastor who was there praying with him. -- 3 of 21 -- And okay, this praying—fine. But Pete Hegseth, I wasn’t aware that he actually has two Christian fundamentalist tattoos: one being a Jerusalem cross on his body, and the other one, *Deus vult*— “God wills it.” And that he’s actually a very fundamentalist Christian believer in Christian Zionism, and that he’s portrayed some of this U.S. “necessity” to go to war with this belief in, um, bringing about the end days. I mean, that was quite shocking. #Michael Rossi Yeah, you know, I'm going to say this right off the bat, just to get one thing out. I think it would be absolutely hilarious—I mean, I would laugh my rear end off—if, in bringing about the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, He appeared in Damascus instead of Jerusalem. And if you know what that means, it basically says that, really, the Muslims were correct all along. #Pascal I keep saying I’d laugh the most if He actually appeared in Salt Lake City as it is. That’s the other one, yeah. #Michael Rossi I mean, that would make the cut. Look, we’re talking about how evangelical Christianity is kind of like the modern-day version of high Episcopalianism in the United States. It’s a state religion—more or less the religion of the ruling elite. Episcopalianism in the ’50s and ’60s was what evangelism is today. But yes, I saw that picture of a number of pseudo-Christians praying over their pseudo- Messiah, and it’s just absolutely laughable. And, you know, I say this within the Lenten season as someone who is a practicing Orthodox Christian myself. There are times when I really understand why we had gladiatorial games with Christians back in the day—just to get rid of some of these annoying individuals. But I mean, it is something in which, yes, there’s another thing we can take away from this last week—and that’s really a convergence of narratives that have been leading into this all-out situation. You know, as far as Israel is concerned, is this their attempt, their chance at achieving “Greater Israel”? We already see that they’ve laid claim, like their own version of *Lebensraum*, to vast areas of Lebanon and Syria—and, coming soon, Sinai. As far as the evangelicals are concerned, a lot of people in the United States don’t give them much credibility, but they do have influence. They have access to many, many people in politics. #Pascal And you know, what worries me is not just that a few people in the White House—which is bad enough—share this kind of lunatic belief. But let me just share this one with you. Here we go. There’ s this so-called religious—well, it’s called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation—which is a -- 4 of 21 -- proper NGO founded by this guy, Mike Weinstein. I think it’s basically his project, but he’s been running it for many, many years. And he’s basically a Jewish former member of the armed forces. It’s apparently his goal to keep the forces secular—to say, like, “No, no, no, this cannot be a religious force. We need to keep religion out of the military.” He created this foundation where people can basically call in or write in and complain when the firewall between religion and the state has been breached within the armed forces. They put out several articles last week; this is just the latest one I got yesterday: thirty Democratic members of Congress urged the DOD Inspector General to investigate MRFF clients’ complaints about commanders framing the Iran war as an end-times prophecy. That refers to another one they put out the day before yesterday—or maybe two or three days ago— saying that their organization, MRFF, has been inundated with complaints about gleeful commanders telling troops the Iran war is part of God’s divine plan to usher in the return of Jesus Christ. So it’s not just the White House; it’s actually in the U.S. military forces—quite a number of commanders, officers, and others who share this belief. And, you know, my point in the video I made was that if enough people believe this, then the war is no longer about rational aims, nationalist goals, or just defeating Iran or achieving regime change. Then the war itself becomes a goal, right? The war is, in and of itself, a good thing to the people who share this view—that you need the war, you need the good-against-evil fight, the final one, in order to get to the second coming of Christ. That would change the entire rationale. I mean, all the discussion about, you know, is it about regime change? Is it about the oil? Is it about control? Is it the neocons?—would be kind of out the window when this is the main motivation. Now, I don't th