S8 Ep505: John Batchelor and Bill Roggio examine the US fleet near Iran, questioning the effectiveness of air power alone against ideologically committed regimes like the Houthis. 2.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2026
⏱️ 6 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel with my good colleague Bill Rajo, senior fellow for the Foundation of Defense of Democracy. |
| 0:21.7 | He keeps a Long War Journal, and Iran is the center of the story now with the war fleet |
| 0:26.0 | surrounding Iran and including the immediate threat of warplanes from the carriers forward, |
| 0:34.9 | and I have reason to believe Lincoln is still in the area, and from the missiles |
| 0:39.8 | on board the Arley-Burks that are surround that are part of the carrier strike groups, plus |
| 0:45.4 | the F-15s and all manner of aircraft throughout the region, ready to what, with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Bill, the record of using air power |
| 0:59.3 | against operations as sophisticated as al-Qaeda and Taliban, and I could go on, most recently |
| 1:10.4 | the Houthis, there is no reason to count on air power. |
| 1:16.8 | I'm puzzled why the masters of the DOD, which is a different group than those previous iterations, |
| 1:25.3 | believe air power is successful. |
| 1:30.3 | Where is that that they can point to, |
| 1:36.8 | Bill? John, you know, look, you said earlier, you talked about Vietnam, right? We had the full weight of the U.S. Air Force continuously rolling over Vietnam with arc light strikes B-52s and fighter bombers and just massively |
| 1:50.0 | targeting North Vietnam. And we couldn't defeat the North Vietnamese government. Air |
| 1:57.5 | power alone does not win wars, especially against a regime |
| 2:03.6 | that is committed ideologically. The North Vietnamese were committed to their cause. Al-Qaeda |
| 2:09.6 | is committed to its cause, the Islamic State. I don't, there is no reason to think that the Iranian |
| 2:14.4 | regime is any different. In a matter of fact, all the reason to |
| 2:17.8 | believe that it's more so committed. And you mentioned the Houthis. That is the perfect example. |
| 2:23.8 | That campaign was supposed to take six months. President Trump cut it short after one month |
| 2:29.1 | because he wasn't happy with the results. And what was achieved? That we got a ceasefire. The Houthis still exist. |
| 2:36.4 | They're still verbally threatening to launch attacks and occasionally launch an attack against |
| 2:41.3 | Israel or ship. There still exist. The Houthis, a third-rate militia, which we elevated |
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