Sometimes it’s good to back up and ask the basic questions: How do we know Iran was even developing nuclear weapons?

On this episode of the show, the Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis walks us through the history of the Iranian nuclear (weapons and energy) program. It’s got it all: diplomacy, assassinations, cowardly politicians, and uranium fever.

Lewis is a professor at the Middlebury Institute, member of the National Academies Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and former member of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board. He knows the tale well and he’s here to tell it straight.

• Damning the strikes with faint praise.
• “The hard part of a nuclear weapon is not the explodey part.”
• Making a nuclear weapon is a solved problem.
• The Iran-Iraq war and the origins of Iran’s nuclear weapons program
• The ladders of Natanz, how they cascade down
• Energy programs are always bigger than weapons programs.
• Unmasking the International Atomic Energy Agency
• Israel’s war on the program
• How to enrich uranium
• The “torturous” process behind the Iran deal
• Congressional cowards
• “A new generation of suckers”
• The French movie goodbye

The Deal

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com

Pauline Shanks Kaurin PhD. was, until recently, the Stockdale Chair for Professional Military Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College. She’d been there since 2018, teaching philosophy and ethics to U.S. military officers and the occasional civilian. Then came Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, and marching orders she said stifled academic freedom.

So she resigned.

On this episode of Angry Planet, Pauline talks us through her decision and tells us what she saw from the inside of one of the U.S. military’s most lauded academic institutions as the new administration seeks to restrict what’s taught in the classroom.

• Disclosures and caveats
• “A moral dilemma I couldn’t resolve”
• On Obedience
• Admiral James Stockdale
• “We’re all in vacation mode.”
• “The snitch line”
• Purging books, telling professors what not to talk about
• “I don’t want to be on Fox News”
• It happened fast
• Suggestions of pulling manuscripts at the editor
• What happens to a military that isn’t taught honor and ethics?
• Compliance versus deference
• Avoiding discomfort as a policy position
• Disagreements as combat
• A heavy metal argument
• The cost of taking a moral stand
• “Everyday is ethics day”

A Military-Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest

Disgraceful Pardons: Dishonoring Our Honorable

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can’t win a war with airpower alone, despite what the U.S. Air Force will tell you. For more than 100 years, the masters of the air have promised that military and political objectives can be achieved if you just let them drop enough bombs.

It’s a theory that’s been tested, and fallen short, many times. Operation Midnight Hammer, the Trump administration’s use of 14 GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators on Iranian nuclear sites, is just the latest test. The promise is that this has set back Iran’s nuclear program (it probably has) but Israel is hoping for much more—regime change in the Islamic Republic.

Time will tell, but I’m not betting on it.

On this episode of Angry Planet we zoom out and talk about the strategy behind airpower in the 21st century. Robert Farley, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Kentucky, is on the show today to give us his thoughts on the Iran strikes, airpower in general, and the lessons to be learned from watching the war in Ukraine.

• Should we abolish the independent Air Force?
• Was Israel’s war on Iran a success?
• Has airpower ever forced regime change?
• Curtis LeMay mentioned
• Bombing doesn’t create revolutionary fervor
• Airpower as theater
• “Israel-splaining”
• What’s a Golden Dome for anyway?
• Are FPV drones part of the air force arsenal or infantry weapons?

Strikes on Iran Show the Force, and Limits, of Airpower

Robert on PBS in Kentucky

Buy Grounded: The Case for Abolishing the United States Air Force

The Five-Ring Circus: How Airpower Enthusiasts Forgot About Interdiction

Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.