July 10, 2026 • 11 mins
Military analyst Mike Lyons talks to Jack Armstrong about two of this week's major US strikes against Iran.
Stupid Should Hurt: https://www.armstrongandgetty.com/
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
The US response has increased intensity eight times as many
targets were hit compared to the last time the US
responded to Iran firing on ships in the Strait. The
targets include some sixty Revolutionary Guards small boats. Sencom also
says the strikes included defense systems, command and control networks,
coastal radar sites, and anti ship capabilities. And we have
video of the US strikes hitting in Bandarabas. Iran responded
(00:24):
by firing into their neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain. The official
Iranian news agency claims to have hit some eighty five
targets in those countries. Details on the number of targets
are not confirmed by other sources, but sirens sounded in
Kuwait and Bahrain.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Now this isn't an I rerun. We aren't still on
vacation and you're listening to old shows. We are back
and this is new. We are back at war with Iran.
It would seem Iran struck several ships in the Strait,
violating the MoU According to Trump, which he says is
now dead, we hit ran pretty hard. I guess we'll
(00:57):
find out how hard when we ask lines here in
a second. And then Iran struck the countries around them,
as they like to do. Where it goes from now,
I do not know. Welcome Mike Lyons to the Armstrong
Engetti show again. Mike served with various military organizations in
both the United States and Europe throughout his career. Got
his degree from the United States to Military Academy at
West Point. Hey, Mike, what did you think of that?
(01:21):
How big a deal was this? How hard to strike?
Was this just a like a little love tap, I'll
let you know we're still paying attention or did we
hit them hard?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah? Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I've always thought that this has been the end of
escalation management from the very beginning.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
So I published an article and we'll see.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Journal about that, and sent Com is reporting eighty targets
hit with precision munitions. So this is not a proportional
response back. This is not a tit for.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Tat what we had been doing good in the past,
and so I think that that's a good sign.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I do believe. Now it just gets back to you know,
what are those targets. It looks like Iranian air defense systems,
command and control networks, the coastal rate our sites.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Those are so key.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
It looks like some of their anti ship missile capabilities
now are more out in the open and roun Revolutionary
Guard Corps, I mean, the small boats. You know, it
just shows you the target rich environment. It is from
a military perspective. When we stop, probably stops too soon,
and it looks like our response back is disproportional.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, Trump just said a few minutes ago, we're probably
going to hit them hard again tonight. So you're saying
there's plenty of stuff to.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Hit, Yeah, no question, And I think you know we were.
You've got to figure out a way still to you know,
make sure that it's it's not completely destroyed when the
country's you know, when we finally move this thing forward.
And so I'm for this, you know, this preparable deterrence
going after some of their revenue capabilities, but not necessarily
(02:44):
destroying you know, entire oil fields and entire things. But
but there are quasi military targets that would make them
very easy to repair when the time comes, but set
them back when it comes to trying to raise revenue
and things like that. So there's there's still many military
targets that hit many many to go after. And we're
at the cleanup phase of that now, I think.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
So.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
There was some reporting over the weekend that Trump had
decided a while back we were going to use our
military and force that straight back open, and Saudi Arabia
talked him out of it. So I guess that still
might be on the table if Iran's not willing to,
you know, stop firing on ships.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, that would really ramp up with our off tempo,
the pace that our military is working. We'd have to
bring maybe some more destroyers and cruisers into the into
the region, even though we have three carriers strike groups
right now that they're more focused on the aircraft and
the carrier themselves. But that's you know, a mission that
we could do. It could take months, but it means
(03:44):
really softening up any of the coastal batteries.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
That seem to exist that are there.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
The fact that they can get off any shots whatsoever,
either using drones or any kind of you know, precision
munitions to shows they still have this capability.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, Trump's over there. All the NATO leaders the Big
NATO meeting and the NATO Secretary General said this morning
that what the United States did was perfectly appropriate, had
to be done I mean, and that's not the way
NATO's really been talking about this whole Iran operation the
whole time. So is there any chance we get any
(04:17):
help from any of our NATO allies on this at
this point?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
You know, Mark Rute's influence on Trump, to me is
a masterclass.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And how to manage him, right.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
All these other NATO leaders are just can't manage Trump.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
McCrone thinks he's smarter than him. You know, the Germans tried,
you know, to be more technical. Let's say Keir Starmer.
That's you know, he failed miserably. But I think I
think Route cracks the code. He validates him publicly as
soon as Trump got on with that, the MoU is over.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Rute couldn't say it any quicker.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
I'm with you in the same breath, right, So very
clearly he's because a Trump whisper when it comes to that. Now,
the downside is that he's really only managing him. He's not,
you know, maybe not advising him, but he at least
speaks his language. He's not trying to be Macron, he's
not trying to be some other leader that that's trying
to be Trump's peer. He let's kind of Trump be Trump,
(05:09):
and I think from what we are right now.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I think that's still a good thing. I think it's
a good thing for NATO. I think it's going to
keep you, you know, well in sant of NATO.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Trump's talking as we're talking to you, so he's saying
more things like we may put the blockade on the
straight of Horne moves back in place, so we might
be back right back to where we were two and
a half weeks ago by the end of tonight.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah, the whip song is challenging to the military, going
back and forth again. The blockade just means repositioning some.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Of those ships.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
I think most of the military community that I had
spoken to didn't think we had finished the job, so
to speak. We gave the president enough leverage to start
to talk. I think he needed that for making sure
that oil prices didn't go crazy, and he was, you know,
keeping one eye.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
On the politics of this.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
But I think those in the military we felt that
it really wasn't finished. That this campaign should have gone
on longer than thirty seven days is really what it
went on for, should have went on at least.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Forty five, even sixty.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
It should have had a better logical conclusion with a
clear sign of US victory.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, the Wall Street journals reporting today is that they
were making no progress whatsoever, like zero on the whole
details around nuclear weapons, which is what the whole war
was about. So which doesn't surprise me in the least.
So what's the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario obviously
is that Oram gets a nuclear weapon, but we prosecute
(06:34):
this war, we continue to go forward and put pressure
on us. What should we watch out for that could
go wrong?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Well, you know, they had some kind of internal revolution
and that you have this humanitarian crisis that exists inside
the country because it implosed United States gets blamed for
that or something. I think I don't think we have
to worry about. You know, there's potentially some of our
military targets, but there's not a situation that I could
(07:00):
see that we're in trouble now unless the.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Chinese decided to enter the picture.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Off they decide, which I think should have been part
of the MoU. Anyway, I think that we should have
made sure that no other countries were going to come
in and assist the Roan, that that MoU is all
front loaded for the Iranians, it was you know, all
the all the United States activities were on the back
side of it. We don't want the Chinese in there,
we don't want any other countries in there, and we
(07:27):
often need stronger Gulf states to make sure that they're
focused on making sure we take this to the end.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
But but what goes wrong?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think the real the real challenge would be more
inside of Iran humanitarian crisis. Ninety million people's will have
to feed and keep water, and if the Ranian government collapses,
you know, how do they do that?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So also part of the Wall Street Journal reporting day
was that Iran has gotten back a fair amount of
their capability, was that with the help of China and
Russia that they rebuilt all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
I think they just basically took that out of the
mountains and they had a lot to begin with. And
again from a scale perspective, they still can't deploy hundreds.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
At a time.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
But when you have a lot, when you sneak, you know,
take a thousand rockets, let's say, or a thousand missiles
and hide them in the mountains and hide them in places.
If you look at the geography of Iran easy to do,
and all that they're doing now is just deploying those
that are out there. So that's where there's more targets
for us to kind of go after. I think that's
really what happened. There's no industrial capability to fix anything
(08:29):
that's not really on the table. It's the fact that
just shows you the level of ballistic missile capability. They
always had tens of thousands of missiles that they had ready,
that had built them be ready for the fight.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Are any of those countries surrounding around that keep getting
hit by the Iranians going to finally like really join
us in this battle.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Well, that's another great question.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
And you know, it just shows you how Middle Eastern
politics are, you know more in some ways based on religion.
A lot of it has to with that, you know,
the Shia Sunni divide that exists in that part of
the world, and so that they you know, you can't
change the geography, right, I mean, Tatar and the UAE
(09:12):
are doing what they can to avoid the straits, right,
they're building tunnels and things like that, but they should
have been building them before the Saudi's already did that.
They've got a pipeline going to the Red Sea. But
the politics are just not what we're used to, and
that they have to they recognize that there are what
they are.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Well, I have a feeling there's a chance we might
be talking to you again later this week after a
couple of more rounds of strikes in Iran. Mike Lyons
military analysts. You can follow him on Twitter at m
A j is in Major at Major m Aj. Mike Lyons,
I go there whenever something happens to see what you
thought about it.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Thanks Mike, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
The war's back on. I think clearly, well let's play
this just because we got a moment.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
To me, I think it's over.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
I don't want to deal with them. You know what
scum is. There's gum, there's sick people. They're lit by
sick people. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As
far as I'm concerned, it's over.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That he was asking about the MoU, the memorandum of
Understanding that you know, brought about the sixty day cease
fire and they get their money back before we start
the nuclear talks, which never happened. Shock shock shock, Trump
saying it's over. They're cuckoo, it's over. I hope he
means it, because he says this sort of stuff about
Putin or the Mullahs or the IRGC, and then you know,
(10:36):
by the end of the day he'll say, noh, he
talked to do a guy and he sounds like he's
a it's really exciting.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
JD.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Vans will come out and say, you know, it's really cool,
is they They they now understand that they've been doing
the wrong thing all these years, which was just the
lamest thing that has ever come out of Jade Vancel's mouth.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Oh Armstrong, Hetty
The US response has increased intensity eight times as many
targets were hit compared to the last time the US
responded to Iran firing on ships in the Strait. The
targets include some sixty Revolutionary Guards small boats. Sencom also
says the strikes included defense systems, command and control networks,
coastal radar sites, and anti ship capabilities. And we have
video of the US strikes hitting in Bandarabas. Iran responded
(00:24):
by firing into their neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain. The official
Iranian news agency claims to have hit some eighty five
targets in those countries. Details on the number of targets
are not confirmed by other sources, but sirens sounded in
Kuwait and Bahrain.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Now this isn't an I rerun. We aren't still on
vacation and you're listening to old shows. We are back
and this is new. We are back at war with Iran.
It would seem Iran struck several ships in the Strait,
violating the MoU According to Trump, which he says is
now dead, we hit ran pretty hard. I guess we'll
(00:57):
find out how hard when we ask lines here in
a second. And then Iran struck the countries around them,
as they like to do. Where it goes from now,
I do not know. Welcome Mike Lyons to the Armstrong
Engetti show again. Mike served with various military organizations in
both the United States and Europe throughout his career. Got
his degree from the United States to Military Academy at
West Point. Hey, Mike, what did you think of that?
(01:21):
How big a deal was this? How hard to strike?
Was this just a like a little love tap, I'll
let you know we're still paying attention or did we
hit them hard?
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Yeah? Thanks for having me back.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
I've always thought that this has been the end of
escalation management from the very beginning.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
So I published an article and we'll see.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Journal about that, and sent Com is reporting eighty targets
hit with precision munitions. So this is not a proportional
response back. This is not a tit for.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Tat what we had been doing good in the past,
and so I think that that's a good sign.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
I do believe. Now it just gets back to you know,
what are those targets. It looks like Iranian air defense systems,
command and control networks, the coastal rate our sites.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Those are so key.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
It looks like some of their anti ship missile capabilities
now are more out in the open and roun Revolutionary
Guard Corps, I mean, the small boats. You know, it
just shows you the target rich environment. It is from
a military perspective. When we stop, probably stops too soon,
and it looks like our response back is disproportional.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, Trump just said a few minutes ago, we're probably
going to hit them hard again tonight. So you're saying
there's plenty of stuff to.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Hit, Yeah, no question, And I think you know we were.
You've got to figure out a way still to you know,
make sure that it's it's not completely destroyed when the
country's you know, when we finally move this thing forward.
And so I'm for this, you know, this preparable deterrence
going after some of their revenue capabilities, but not necessarily
(02:44):
destroying you know, entire oil fields and entire things. But
but there are quasi military targets that would make them
very easy to repair when the time comes, but set
them back when it comes to trying to raise revenue
and things like that. So there's there's still many military
targets that hit many many to go after. And we're
at the cleanup phase of that now, I think.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
So.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
There was some reporting over the weekend that Trump had
decided a while back we were going to use our
military and force that straight back open, and Saudi Arabia
talked him out of it. So I guess that still
might be on the table if Iran's not willing to,
you know, stop firing on ships.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Yeah, that would really ramp up with our off tempo,
the pace that our military is working. We'd have to
bring maybe some more destroyers and cruisers into the into
the region, even though we have three carriers strike groups
right now that they're more focused on the aircraft and
the carrier themselves. But that's you know, a mission that
we could do. It could take months, but it means
(03:44):
really softening up any of the coastal batteries.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
That seem to exist that are there.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
The fact that they can get off any shots whatsoever,
either using drones or any kind of you know, precision
munitions to shows they still have this capability.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Well, Trump's over there. All the NATO leaders the Big
NATO meeting and the NATO Secretary General said this morning
that what the United States did was perfectly appropriate, had
to be done I mean, and that's not the way
NATO's really been talking about this whole Iran operation the
whole time. So is there any chance we get any
(04:17):
help from any of our NATO allies on this at
this point?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:21):
You know, Mark Rute's influence on Trump, to me is
a masterclass.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And how to manage him, right.
Speaker 4 (04:27):
All these other NATO leaders are just can't manage Trump.
Speaker 3 (04:30):
Right.
Speaker 4 (04:30):
McCrone thinks he's smarter than him. You know, the Germans tried,
you know, to be more technical. Let's say Keir Starmer.
That's you know, he failed miserably. But I think I
think Route cracks the code. He validates him publicly as
soon as Trump got on with that, the MoU is over.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
Rute couldn't say it any quicker.
Speaker 4 (04:48):
I'm with you in the same breath, right, So very
clearly he's because a Trump whisper when it comes to that. Now,
the downside is that he's really only managing him. He's not,
you know, maybe not advising him, but he at least
speaks his language. He's not trying to be Macron, he's
not trying to be some other leader that that's trying
to be Trump's peer. He let's kind of Trump be Trump,
(05:09):
and I think from what we are right now.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
I think that's still a good thing. I think it's
a good thing for NATO. I think it's going to
keep you, you know, well in sant of NATO.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Trump's talking as we're talking to you, so he's saying
more things like we may put the blockade on the
straight of Horne moves back in place, so we might
be back right back to where we were two and
a half weeks ago by the end of tonight.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
Yeah, the whip song is challenging to the military, going
back and forth again. The blockade just means repositioning some.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Of those ships.
Speaker 4 (05:40):
I think most of the military community that I had
spoken to didn't think we had finished the job, so
to speak. We gave the president enough leverage to start
to talk. I think he needed that for making sure
that oil prices didn't go crazy, and he was, you know,
keeping one eye.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
On the politics of this.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
But I think those in the military we felt that
it really wasn't finished. That this campaign should have gone
on longer than thirty seven days is really what it
went on for, should have went on at least.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Forty five, even sixty.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
It should have had a better logical conclusion with a
clear sign of US victory.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Well, the Wall Street journals reporting today is that they
were making no progress whatsoever, like zero on the whole
details around nuclear weapons, which is what the whole war
was about. So which doesn't surprise me in the least.
So what's the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario obviously
is that Oram gets a nuclear weapon, but we prosecute
(06:34):
this war, we continue to go forward and put pressure
on us. What should we watch out for that could
go wrong?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Well, you know, they had some kind of internal revolution
and that you have this humanitarian crisis that exists inside
the country because it implosed United States gets blamed for
that or something. I think I don't think we have
to worry about. You know, there's potentially some of our
military targets, but there's not a situation that I could
(07:00):
see that we're in trouble now unless the.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Chinese decided to enter the picture.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Off they decide, which I think should have been part
of the MoU. Anyway, I think that we should have
made sure that no other countries were going to come
in and assist the Roan, that that MoU is all
front loaded for the Iranians, it was you know, all
the all the United States activities were on the back
side of it. We don't want the Chinese in there,
we don't want any other countries in there, and we
(07:27):
often need stronger Gulf states to make sure that they're
focused on making sure we take this to the end.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
But but what goes wrong?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think the real the real challenge would be more
inside of Iran humanitarian crisis. Ninety million people's will have
to feed and keep water, and if the Ranian government collapses,
you know, how do they do that?
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
So also part of the Wall Street Journal reporting day
was that Iran has gotten back a fair amount of
their capability, was that with the help of China and
Russia that they rebuilt all that stuff.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
I think they just basically took that out of the
mountains and they had a lot to begin with. And
again from a scale perspective, they still can't deploy hundreds.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
At a time.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
But when you have a lot, when you sneak, you know,
take a thousand rockets, let's say, or a thousand missiles
and hide them in the mountains and hide them in places.
If you look at the geography of Iran easy to do,
and all that they're doing now is just deploying those
that are out there. So that's where there's more targets
for us to kind of go after. I think that's
really what happened. There's no industrial capability to fix anything
(08:29):
that's not really on the table. It's the fact that
just shows you the level of ballistic missile capability. They
always had tens of thousands of missiles that they had ready,
that had built them be ready for the fight.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Are any of those countries surrounding around that keep getting
hit by the Iranians going to finally like really join
us in this battle.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Well, that's another great question.
Speaker 4 (08:51):
And you know, it just shows you how Middle Eastern
politics are, you know more in some ways based on religion.
A lot of it has to with that, you know,
the Shia Sunni divide that exists in that part of
the world, and so that they you know, you can't
change the geography, right, I mean, Tatar and the UAE
(09:12):
are doing what they can to avoid the straits, right,
they're building tunnels and things like that, but they should
have been building them before the Saudi's already did that.
They've got a pipeline going to the Red Sea. But
the politics are just not what we're used to, and
that they have to they recognize that there are what
they are.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Well, I have a feeling there's a chance we might
be talking to you again later this week after a
couple of more rounds of strikes in Iran. Mike Lyons
military analysts. You can follow him on Twitter at m
A j is in Major at Major m Aj. Mike Lyons,
I go there whenever something happens to see what you
thought about it.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Thanks Mike, Thanks for having.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
The war's back on. I think clearly, well let's play
this just because we got a moment.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
To me, I think it's over.
Speaker 5 (09:58):
I don't want to deal with them. You know what
scum is. There's gum, there's sick people. They're lit by
sick people. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As
far as I'm concerned, it's over.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That he was asking about the MoU, the memorandum of
Understanding that you know, brought about the sixty day cease
fire and they get their money back before we start
the nuclear talks, which never happened. Shock shock shock, Trump
saying it's over. They're cuckoo, it's over. I hope he
means it, because he says this sort of stuff about
Putin or the Mullahs or the IRGC, and then you know,
(10:36):
by the end of the day he'll say, noh, he
talked to do a guy and he sounds like he's
a it's really exciting.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
JD.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Vans will come out and say, you know, it's really cool,
is they They they now understand that they've been doing
the wrong thing all these years, which was just the
lamest thing that has ever come out of Jade Vancel's mouth.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Oh Armstrong, Hetty
Hosts And Creators
Joe Getty
Jack Armstrong
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