At the Water's Edge

Did the Iran war flip the 2026 midterms, or was it gas prices? Chad Law, host of Common Sense with Chad Law, joins Scott Kelly to argue that voters punished affordability, not foreign policy, and that the new Democratic majority may not end the Iran war at all. Both parties take money from the same Big Five defense contractors, and a war that helped win 2026 could be just as useful in 2028. We als...

Democrats just won both the House and the Senate. So the war with Iran is over, right? Not so fast. In this solo episode, I break down what Congress can actually do to end a war, and why it almost never does it. What we cover:- The power of the purse: how Congress has cut off war funding before, from the Case-Church Amendment that ended the bombing in Cambodia to the Boland Amendments and Iran-Con...

The Democrats won the House and Senate in a blowout. Does that mean the Iran war winds down in January? Professor Robert Pape argues the opposite: the next 60 days may be the most dangerous stretch of the conflict yet. Pape explains why the real shock of the midterms wasn’t the size of the blue wave, but the share of MAGA voters who turned out to vote Democratic out of anger at President Trump. He...

Russia and China have about 60 icebreakers in the Arctic. The United States has three, and one of them is in the shop. Financial Times columnist Rana Foroohar, author of Sea Change: America's New Great Game in the Arctic Circle, joins host Scott Kelly to explain how the melting Arctic became a new front in great power competition, and why America's weakness there was largely self-inflicted...

The Pentagon just fired its top strategist in the middle of a war with Iran, and no replacement has been named. What could go wrong? Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has removed Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia, the Joint Staff's Director for Strategy, Plans and Policy (the J5). He is the second officer pushed out of that job since the administration returned. Within a day, the Pentagon's explanation w...

Is there a way to end the war with Iran that doesn't totally suck? And where's the line between an online grifter and a foreign state running influence operations against American elections? A week out from the midterms, OSINT analyst and YouTuber Ryan McBeth joins me to break down how information warfare actually works, and why the U.S. keeps leaving its own information operations capability on t...

Israel votes on October 27 in its first national election since October 7, 2023, and the final polls show no one with a clear path to power. Gadi Eisenkot's opposition leads, Netanyahu's bloc is holding at 50 seats, and the Arab-majority parties hold the balance, even though most leaders on both sides say they won't govern with them. In this episode, Scott breaks down how Israel's...

Ships keep getting hit in the Strait of Hormuz, Egypt is weighing whether to send troops to Saudi Arabia, and the IRGC is now threatening to invade neighboring countries if the US strikes again. Professor Robert Pape returns to explain why an Iranian ground invasion would play directly into American strengths, and why Iran’s more dangerous option is fracturing the Gulf states from within. We discu...

How is the war over the Strait of Hormuz reaching Africa? Ghanaian security and geopolitical analyst Fidel Amakye Owusu returns to explain how the Iran war is driving fuel protests, food insecurity, and the risk of state collapse across the continent. We discuss why removed fuel subsidies make this shock hit Africans twice as hard, how Gen Z protests brought down Madagascar’s government, and why m...

Houthi missiles are hitting Riyadh’s main airport, and it’s turning into Saudi Arabia’s worst-case scenario. One strike killed at least 12 people and injured around 300. Flights are cancelled, and the oil executives Saudi Arabia was trying to host have pulled out. This week I trace how we got here, starting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman: his rise to power, the 2017 Ritz-Carlton purge, and...

Ten ships hit in the Strait of Hormuz in a single week, the most of the entire war. Houthi missiles shut down Riyadh's airport in the largest set of attacks in Saudi Arabia's modern history. Now France has confirmed it is sending radar and air defense assets to protect Saudi Aramco infrastructure at Yanbu, less than a couple hours' drive from Medina. Professor Robert Pape returns to ex...

What happens when a U.S. brigade trains against Ukraine's drone forces? They usually have to reset the exercise within 24 hours. Major General Duane Miller, until recently Deputy Commanding General of Security Assistance Group–Ukraine, explains why America is not ready for the speed of modern war. After more than two years watching Ukraine fight, MG Miller argues that the speed of learning is now...

Fifty-nine days after it was signed, the Mecca Pact has been activated. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey have agreed to send forces to defend the kingdom against the Houthis. The alliance itself isn’t the real danger. The danger is when it was formed. Scott breaks down how the Houthis pushed Riyadh to call in its new allies: strikes on four Saudi cities, attacks on the East-West pipeline that le...

We’re in the most dangerous weeks of the Iran war since March, and the midterms are the reason. Professor Robert Pape returns to explain the wicked incentives pushing President Trump toward escalation before November 3rd, and why every option likely landing on his desk hands Tehran the advantage. Pape walks through the three clocks converging on the midterms. The USS Theodore Roosevelt and a secon...

Veterans die by suicide at a rate 72% higher than their civilian peers, and women veterans at a rate 101% higher. Lyndsay Tkach, Wounded Warrior Project's Director of Mental and Brain Health Services, has spent twelve years working on that problem. In the series finale, she explains why she calls suicide "a human issue" rather than only a medical one, and what it would take to reach veterans at sc...

Masked men with vans full of fuel outside the British base that launched B-52s against Iran. A FlyDubai co-pilot stabbing his captain on a flight to Tel Aviv. A drone knocking out power to the Prophet's Mosque in Medina. Three incidents in one week, as Iran's 45-day deadline on the U.S. blockade expires and a third American carrier heads for the region. Is Iran launching a terror campaign? I don't...

Trita Parsi argues Trump is looking for a "last chapter" in Iran, an ending that makes the whole war look worth it, and that diplomacy won't give him one. Iran's president flew to New York in the middle of a war to put a deal on the table, and Trump rejected it within days. Trita Parsi, co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, joins At the Water's...

Iran offered Trump a seven-day path to end the war. Robert Pape explains why taking it or refusing it both hurt him before the midterms. Iran's president came to the UN in New York with a deal on the table: a quick end to the fighting and a return of nuclear inspectors, in exchange for money up front. University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape argues the offer is a trap. Any upfront pay...

Joe Stabley is a Special Forces medic turned physician assistant — one of the most demanding career fields in the military, followed by a doctorate-adjacent civilian one. By any outward measure, he was a success. He also spent the better part of a decade managing suicidal ideation that started with a friend's death on a peacetime deployment before 9/11, and that he describes as something he still...

For more than a decade, Israel has been the only country in the Middle East flying a fifth-generation stealth fighter. That's about to change. The Trump administration has approved the sale of 48 F-35s and 49 engines to Saudi Arabia. Congress has 30 days to object. It almost certainly won't. But the purchase is counterintuitive. The F-35 has lost some of its luster: one was confirmed hit by radar-...

The midterms are five and a half weeks away, and Professor Robert Pape says most of the warnings are aimed at the wrong window. Political violence around elections isn't mainly about intimidating voters before Election Day. The real danger zone opens the moment the polls close and the counting starts, and it runs all the way through certification. The question is whether the losers will accept the...

Sabotage. Arson. Drone swarms over critical infrastructure. Cyber intrusions into American water utilities. Gray zone attacks are built to look like accidents, fall between agencies, and do their damage before anyone connects the dots. Fmr. NSC Director F. David Diaz, a Marine officer turned State Department and Joint Staff strategist who now teaches at Georgetown, joins Scott to break down his ne...

Sam Hargrove spent years being known for her smile — while privately battling a rage she couldn't explain, seven rounds of anger management, and a night she nearly drove her car into a tree. A communications specialist caught in an explosion in Iraq, Sam faced a specific kind of dismissal on top of everything else: "ain't nothing wrong with you," the running joke aimed at a "chair force" veteran w...

University of Chicago professor Robert Pape (Bombing to Win, The Escalation Trap) is back for his weekly read on the U.S.-Iran conflict — and this one goes to a darker place than usual. Pape lays out how Iran is quietly becoming an oil hegemon through the Houthis and Iraqi militias, why the IRGC's threat to "shock the world" might be a signal about Pickaxe Mountain, and what actually happens — mil...

The Houthis just took the entire Red Sea coastline — and it's about to drag Europe into a war it wanted no part of. In ten days, Houthi forces captured Yemen's Red Sea coast, seized the strait's key islands, and helped force the shutdown of Saudi Arabia's emergency oil pipeline — closing the second major chokepoint Saudi Arabia needs to move crude, right after Hormuz. Brent crude is over $107 a ba...