Professor Pape says Trump is planning major Iran escalation

Breaking Points posted a YouTube video on October 9 titled "Professor Pape: PROOF Trump Is Planning MAJOR Iran Escalation." The channel’s description says the Friday crew is joined by Professor Pape to discuss Trump escalating the Iran War.

Hill Daily published an article the same day by Mia Moore that summarized Pape’s claim Trump is planning a major escalation with Iran.

Scott Kelly opened the October 8 episode of his At the Water’s Edge podcast by reading Pape a rundown of overnight developments. Saudi Arabia’s main international airport had shut for several hours. The Mecca Pact had been activated, with Pakistan and Turkey saying they were sending troops to Saudi Arabia. A third aircraft carrier was heading into the region. Kelly, a former Green Beret and founder of Grayzone Advisory, also told Pape that Trump is telling the Pentagon to get ready for more strikes ahead of the midterms.

Pape’s reply was blunt. “We’re in the most dangerous weeks of the Iran war since March, and the midterms are the reason.” The 34-minute conversation, carried on the WRKdefined Podcast Network, placed the danger above anything seen in the prior seven and a half months even though kinetic levels had not yet matched March. “This is not yet at the point of kinetic levels that we saw in March,” Pape said. “But in terms of the danger and the risks to the world economy, to forces in the region, to the Gulf states, we are at a higher point now than we have been for seven and a half months.”

He laid out three clocks converging on the midterms. The USS Theodore Roosevelt and a second Marine Expeditionary Unit are closing within striking range of Iran. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve has plateaued while Iran strikes more tankers in Hormuz than in any week of the war. Inflation inside Iran, which Pape puts near 100 percent, is tempting an air campaign meant to break the Iranian economy.

Striking Iran’s refineries, he warned, could invite a retaliatory hit on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq facility that would hurt America more than Iran. Marine landings on Larak Island, Hormuz Island or near Chabahar would hand Iran fixed targets without breaking its kill chain. The discussion also took in a recent Tel Aviv flight incident and a drone threat that moved U.S. B-1 bombers out of an RAF base.