Former General Gives Brutally Honest Iran War Assessment | Command Post
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Command Post edition of Bulwark Takes, Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) and Ben Parker break down how Trump’s snub of NATO allies is shaping the Iran conflict, and how even spectacular military success against the Iranian government and military won’t necessarily lead to victory.
Have questions about the Iran war? Send them to commandpost@thebulwark.com and we’ll try to answer them in the next episode!
Read more from Mark's piece here: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/iran-gets-vote-in-this-war-thormuz-trump-hegseth-israel-strategy
Buy Mark's book, "If I Don't Return: A Father's Wartime Journal": https://www.amazon.com/If-Dont-Return-Fathers-Wartime/dp/1966786727
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bullwork. |
| 0:01.7 | And I'm Mark Hurtling from the Bullwork, and we're welcoming all of you to Command Post, |
| 0:06.7 | a weekly session that we do to talk about things military and national security. |
| 0:11.3 | Not quite weekly most recently, because we skipped last week. |
| 0:15.4 | We did. |
| 0:16.0 | Why, General Hurtling? |
| 0:17.1 | Why did we skip last week? |
| 0:18.5 | Well, because I was busy unveiling a new book, |
| 0:22.3 | my new book called If I Don't Return, my father's wartime journal. And I was up in New York |
| 0:28.4 | doing different media events all week long. And the bulwark was extremely supportive in allowing |
| 0:33.4 | me to do that. So the book is still for sale. It's still on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and |
| 0:39.6 | ballast books. And it seems to be selling quite well, Ben, surprisingly. And I say that. |
| 0:46.0 | I'm saying that from my perspective, you view being my editor because you didn't get a chance |
| 0:50.4 | to edit the book. No, I did not, which I'm now, I'm not, I shouldn't say I regret it because I read the book and it is so, so, so good. Highly recommend everyone go get themselves a copy and read it. But I regret it because I would have loved to work on it with you. It's so good. It's so interesting. There's so much in there. But speaking of so interesting, so much to talk about, we're talking all about Iran today. |
| 1:13.1 | The wars were going on for about three weeks now. And one of the things we want to get into here |
| 1:19.9 | is how to tell which parts that are going well and which parts aren't. This is something that you got into in your latest essay on the bulwark. |
| 1:30.5 | Iran gets a vote in this war. People can read online to the bulwark.com. If you like what we're doing, |
| 1:35.8 | you can also become a bulwark plus member and get all sorts of extra treats like comment privileges |
| 1:40.4 | and members on the newsletters, podcasts, things like that. So you prepared for us general |
| 1:46.0 | a situation report, a sit rep, all about what's going on in Iran right now. So let's start out |
| 1:51.3 | by walking through that and figuring out what all the moving pieces are. Yeah, I'll tell you the |
| 1:55.6 | story behind that real quickly, Ben. When I was brand new to the joint staff, my first time ever in |
... |
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