I wargamed Iran for the Pentagon - here is how it could end
The Global Story
BBC
3.8 • 666 Ratings
🗓️ 2 April 2026
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Roughly 10,000 additional US troops have now arrived in the Middle East, giving President Trump options ranging from an invasion of Kharg Island to an elaborate special forces operations to seize Iran’s ‘nuclear dust’.
For years, the Pentagon has run war games to try and plan for what might happen if the US went to war with Iran. Our guest, Ilan Goldenberg, was in the room during the Obama years, taking part. Ilan Goldenberg is Senior Vice President and Chief Policy Officer at J Street. Previously, he was an adviser on Iran for President Barack Obama, and for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Producers: Lucy Pawle and Viv Jones
Sound engineer: Travis Evans
Senior news editor: China Collins
(Photo: President Donald Trump. Credit: Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | I want to play you some tape. |
| 0:08.0 | The person you're about to hear is our guest on the show today, |
| 0:11.5 | but this is him speaking on another show, |
| 0:14.3 | about six years ago, about a hypothetical war between the United States and Iran. |
| 0:19.9 | And this is what he predicted Iran would do. |
| 0:23.5 | They'll just sort of release everything they got. They'll start trying to try to drop mines in the |
| 0:30.4 | straits. They will drive oil prices to 150. They'll try to get Hezbollah, and I think probably |
| 0:35.9 | successfully get Hezbollah to start launching missiles at Israel. |
| 0:38.9 | They will launch missiles at bases all over the Gulf. |
| 0:42.3 | They'll try to sink American ships. |
| 0:44.0 | They'll try to attack Americans. |
| 0:46.9 | His name is Elon Goldenberg, and he used to work as an Iran expert in the Pentagon and the White House. |
| 0:53.8 | And when we heard him speaking here in this clip, |
| 0:56.7 | apparently predicting many of the events of the current war all the way back in 2019, |
| 1:02.2 | we thought, we should speak with that guy. |
| 1:05.6 | Because right now, the big question in this war is, |
| 1:08.9 | with thousands more American troops now in the region, |
| 1:12.4 | where could this conflict go next? |
| 1:15.6 | From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redman. |
| 1:18.2 | And today on The Global Story, will Donald Trump put boots on the ground? |
| 1:23.4 | A top expert whose war-gamed Iran tells us what could happen next. |
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