“We’ve Never Bombed Our Way to Victory:” Adm. McRaven on the War with Iran

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, amid the pomp and circumstance of hosting a king and trying to end a war, our next guest argues that President Trump must sideline nuclear talks and focus on opening the Strait of Hormuz if he wants to save the world economy. And you heard us just discuss all of this. Retired Admiral Bill McRaven has over three decades of military expertise. He oversaw the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden. And he’s become widely known for famous speeches like “Make Your Bed” for a graduation ceremony in 2014. Now, he’s collected some of those speeches into a new book. And he joins Walter Isaacson to discuss this, the Iran conflict and the importance of leadership.

 

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Admiral Bill McRaven, welcome back to the show.

 

ADM. WILLIAM MCRAVEN (RET.): Thanks, Walter. Good to be with you.

 

ISAACSON: You have a new book out called “Duty, Honor, Country and Life.” It’s got essays in it, speeches in it, even a few poems, and you say it’s a book about the American spirit. How do you define the American spirit these days?

 

MCRAVEN: Well, you know, I think of the American spirit as kind of the personification of what we think of as the American character. This idea that as Americans, we can do anything. You know, we can, we can put a man on the moon, we can send four people around the moon. We can cure cancer, we can we can take AI and do something good with it. But it is also the understanding that our values as Americans are important. This idea of equality and justice and the rule of law, and this idea that we want to be the good guys in the world. I think this is the American character and it is personified in the American spirit and the people that I have met over my time both in the military and in academia and healthcare and these stories that I tell, these speeches really are stories about people that have inspired me throughout my life.

 

ISAACSON: You talk about doing good. Let me take a specific example, which is USAID, our foreign aid program, especially when it came to health. To what extent – to somebody like yourself who dealt with military, the projection of military power to get people around the world to do what we wanted – to what extent does that undermine what we’re trying to do?

 

MCRAVEN: Oh, make no mistake about it. USAID was vital to our soft power in the world. And look, I got it. USAID probably had a lot of problems. You know, every government organization needs to be reviewed periodically. We need to kind of cut the waste. But at the end of the day, our ability as Americans to project soft power in the form of USAID and other humanitarian aid, really again, helped us with this reputation to be in the good guys. Every time, Walter, there was an earthquake, a tsunami, you know, a hurricane, any sort of devastation, you know, the American military was there with our big deck amphibs and USAID care packages that we put forth in, you know, countries all around the world. And this was meaningful, again, in strengthening those relationships. So it’s not just about being good for good’s sake – yes, that’s important – but it also has this value of strengthening our alliances and strengthening the bonds so that when we really need them, they’ll be there.

 

ISAACSON: Your book has come out just in time for the 250th birthday, July 4th of 2026. Tell me, how can this book and other books like it help us regain the American spirit and how can we use this birthday, this 250th, to try to diminish some of the polarization that sapped our spirit?

 

MCRAVEN: Well, again, as we approach the 250th – I gave a speech a couple years back at the New York Historical Society, and, and it was at a time and again, we’ve had these times in the last couple years where people were beginning to doubt you know, the strength of our democracy. So I talked a lot about our democracy, and I said, look and as you well know, probably better than anybody, Walter, this is still the great experiment. You know, we’re not done yet. And if we wanna make it another 250 years, then I, you know, I offered some ideas on how we needed to get there. And when you look back over the last 250 years, I started off with saying, look, we do need to be the good guys. I talked about, you know, the Marshall Plan or the Berlin Airlift, and the things that we have done globally to strengthen America’s sense that we are, you know, we have the moral high ground.

But then I talked about other things. I said, look, we need to be welcoming. The fact of the matter is we’ve got about 45 million immigrants that are here in the country now. We are a nation that has come over here by boat for the most part, either willingly or unwillingly. And the fact of the matter is we need to continue to be welcoming. 

We need to continue to be smart. I am concerned we are reducing our support to R1 universities, the research universities that really become the foundation for a lot of our growth and our innovativeness. You know, we need to continue to be strong, no question about it. We need a strong military. We need to continue to recognize the sacrifice of those men and women in uniform, those first responders and continue to do that. And my last point was, we need to continue to be compassionate because I think this is what sets us apart from Russia, from China, from other countries around the world.

 

ISAACSON: Let me ask you a very broad question. What is the role, what is the connection of the military to democracy?

 

MCRAVEN: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, for the American military, I think it is important to, again, come from the democracy. Now, come from the people of the nation. This is, of course, the military, as you know, it’s less than, you know, 1% of the of the American people have served in the military today. But that doesn’t mean that these 1% aren’t viewed with great respect in the communities they come from. And so their ability, the young soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, their ability to kind of get out in their communities, showcase how good these young men and women are, I think really helps strengthen our democracy. But it is also this recognition that as the military, we respond to the civilian chain of command, whether we like it or not. The fact of the matter is the President was elected by the people. He is the elected commander-in-chief, and we in the military have a responsibility to follow the legal orders of the President of the United States. And I have encouraged all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines to do that. As long as those orders are legal and consistent with the Constitution, then you follow them. And this is a strong part of our democracy, civilian rule of the military.

 

ISAACSON: You just said, as long as those orders are legal and constitutional. And, as you know, there’s been a controversy recently, Senator Mark Kelly who served in the military, six other, I think Democrats all reminded people in the military they did not have to obey orders that were not legal. And now Senator Kelly is being investigated. Tell me – parse that controversy for me.

 

MCRAVEN: Yeah, well, again, as a retired military officer, you technically still fall under the Uniform Code of Military justice. However, nobody in the history of the United States military that was retired has ever been prosecuted for speaking up when they were retired. And I do think it is important. I’m a huge fan of Mark Kelly. I appreciated what he did. I understand the controversy behind it. It came at a kind of a critical moment, and I understand the concern, but I tell this, I tell my, you know, audiences, the young soldiers sailors, airmen, Marines the same thing. You have an obligation to follow the legal orders of the commander-in-chief. You swore an oath. But you also should not be following illegal orders. Now, for the young troops, that’s hard. You know, the young soldiers, they’re not trying to parse the legal and the illegal, but this is really the responsibility of the senior officers, as I once was, and the senior enlisted to express their concern when they see something that isn’t legal. But I can tell you, in my 37 years in the military, never once, never once did I feel like somebody had given me an illegal order. There may have been orders I didn’t like and that I questioned, but there were never illegal. And therefore, you still have an obligation to follow them if they are legal.

 

ISAACSON: Do you worry that the military now – especially as some of the generals and high ranking officials have been quickly changed – would or could do President Trump’s bidding if there were an election dispute?

 

MCRAVEN: Yeah, I’m not concerned about that. You know, I know General Dan Caine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, very well. I know a lot of the senior leaders that are still in the military. These are remarkable men and women. They will follow the oath of office. They will support the Constitution. And I’m not really worried about that. I am concerned, of course in the last year the president has either fired or asked to retire somewhere around the neighborhood of thirty general officers. This has a cascading effect on the morale of, of the senior officers – not so much the junior officers and the junior enlisted – but it does have an impact on the senior officers. And, and I’m concerned that it puts them in a position where they may be afraid to speak truth to power. You have an obligation as a military officer to always give your best military advice. Not your best political advice, not what you think the president or the secretary wants to hear, but your best military advice. And we wanna make sure that’s that this, you know, purge, if you will, doesn’t impact that.

 

ISAACSON: A lot of the people, a high proportion of the people being purged that you just described are women and minorities. Does that concern you?

 

MCRAVEN: Of course it does. Of course it does. You know, CQ Brown and Lisa Franchetti were terrific officers. CQ Brown, the Chairman, Lisa, the chief of Naval Operation. And again, I don’t know why the secretary decided to move them on. That’s the secretary’s prerogative. So again, you know, you can’t debate the fact that the secretary and the president have the authority to do that. But yes, it does have a kind of a cascading effect across African American officers and and females wondering whether or not they’ll continue to have opportunities.

 

ISAACSON: We’re now two months into the Iran war. Tell me in your mind, as a military officer, what do you think the actual mission is?

 

MCRAVEN: Yeah, well, of course it, it’s hard to tell at this point in time. You know, every president since 1979 has been trying to change the regime in Iran. And Iran is a horrible regime. Make no mistake about it. The fact of the matter is, they have killed hundreds, maybe thousands, have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds or thousands of American soldiers, along with some allies. They are, you know, they’re spreading terrorism around the world. I have no love loss whatsoever for the Iranian regime.

But as President Trump came in – and again, this, he probably thought he had this unique opportunity to change the landscape in the Middle East. But here’s what the military leaders would’ve told the president from the very beginning. They would’ve said, look, changing regimes is hard. So if you think by bombing them they’re all of a sudden gonna give up, probably not gonna happen. Particularly in Iran, the regime is wide, and it is deep. So taking out the supreme leader just means that somebody else is gonna step up. And oh, by the way, you took out an 86-year-old man, now you got a 56-year-old man. And even according to Israeli intelligence, the new regime is even more hard line. So they would’ve told him, the military would’ve told the president, regime change is hard. 

The military would’ve also said, we’ve never bombed our way to victory. So in no point in time in the history of the military, if we bombed our way to victory, it was going to be hard. The final thing, they would’ve – well, they would’ve also said, look, if you think there’s gonna be this uprising and we’ll have a Jeffersonian democracy, that’s probably not gonna happen. It could, it could, but it’s unlikely. But the one thing they would absolutely, positively have told the President is, you never, ever, ever, ever talk about Iran without talking about the Straits of Hormuz. They would’ve told the President, as soon as you start bombing Iran, they are going to do what they can to change, to close the Straits of Hormuz. And clearly they have done that. 

So now the question is going forward, where do we go? Well, the Iranians have come forward, and they said, if you will lift the blockade, that we will open the straits. I’ve been saying for the last several weeks that this is something the president should have put on the table. He should have told the Iranians, I will lift the blockade if you will open the Straits, because he is gotta think about what are his strategic goals at this point in time? The world economy is getting crushed, and the only way it’s going to pick up is if we can open the straits. Unfortunately, now that the Iranians have come forward with this offer, I’m not sure the president will buy it, but the blockade, he can turn the blockade on, turn the blockade off. He should seriously consider this offer from the Iranians.

 

ISAACSON: Well, wait, you’re saying that the strategic objective right now should be to open the Straits? Well, the Straits were already opened. If we just do that and we don’t do anything with the Iranian nuclear program, is that worth this effort?

 

MCRAVEN: No, no. The piece of this that I, I failed to mention was you have to get the Iranians to the negotiating table. You have to do that. And what I’ve been saying over the last couple weeks is, if the president told the Iranians, we will lift the blockade if you will open the Straits and come to the negotiating table, now we can begin the negotiations. And again, this is what the Iranians have now offered. I wish the president would’ve moved before the Iranians. But the fact of the matter is they’ve offered this. And when you look back on the JCPOA, the Obama nuclear plan, it took 18 months to negotiate with people that were professional negotiators. So at least get the Iranians to the negotiating table. Then you can talk about the ballistic missiles, then you can talk about how much uranium can be enriched. Then you can grapple with all the sticky issues that are out there. But until you get the straits open, I think the president comes under a lot of pressure. And of course, so do the Iranians.

 

ISAACSON: You talk about ending the Iranian nuclear program and regime change having been the two big goals. So does that mean that if the Iranians do not agree to what we need, we would have to put boots on the ground? 

 

MCRAVEN: Yeah, I would certainly not recommend putting boots on the ground. One, you know, people sometimes underestimate the size of Iran. You know, I’m from Texas Walter and Iran is two and a half times the size of Texas. And I try to explain to people, look, that’s like telling people that you’re gonna put Marines in West Texas and expect them to move all the way to to Houston. You know, this is just, it’s hard, hard to do. Could we take Kharg Island? Yeah, we probably could, but it would be very risky to do so. I don’t see putting boots on the ground as a real option.
Not to say the president won’t, but I don’t really know what it would gain him. What I have been saying from day one was that if the Iranian regime survives, Iran wins. And so right now, the president’s in a very difficult position the Iranian regime, unless there is a collapse of the regime and a more moderate theocracy or, you know, some other administration comes in, back to your question, are we any better off than we were prior to February 28th? Well, we have decimated their navy. We have decimated their Air force. We have certainly put back their nuclear program. But how much better off are we? I think that remains to be seen.

 

ISAACSON: I don’t think anybody knows more about Special forces than you do. I mean, you got Bin Laden with your special forces. Is there a way to use special forces to get the enriched uranium out of Iran?

 

MCRAVEN: Yeah, I won’t go into details Walter, but let’s just say it would be very, very difficult. Not impossible, but very, very difficult and very risky.

 

ISAACSON: Does that mean that you’ve game planned this or people in the military have and they say, Hey, this is not easy?

 

MCRAVEN: Yeah, well, we have certainly game planned it for all sorts of scenarios and it is never easy. But again, I don’t wanna put any of the soldiers at risk if this plan is is getting closer, which I don’t know that it is. But I think, we’ll just kinda leave the discussion at that point.

 

ISAACSON: In your book, one of your themes is how your belief in God has helped you and sustained you. Tell me about that, and then also how you feel about the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth invoking God the way he does.

 

MCRAVEN: Well, yeah, I’ve always been a man of faith. And and I think that faith has helped me through some very, very challenging times. I talk about it in the book and it has meant a lot to me. But I’m also a believer in the separation of kind of church and state here. And in the military, I have spent time with, you know, with people from every religion, great soldiers and you never try to impress your religion upon, you know, your teammates. Whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, it doesn’t make any difference. You know, you’re, you wanna be an American soldier and, and again, keep your, you know, your faith out of the tactical discussions, if you will. So I’m not in favor of the Secretary in invoking the Christian religion, you know, in terms of how this is a crusade against Iran. I just don’t think that’s healthy for our our young soldiers – because, you know, again, the soldiers have the great opportunity anytime they want to visit a chaplain or a priest or a rabbi. And we need to make sure that stays in the military. This is vitally important to the morale of the soldiers. They need to have, you know, the chaplains available to them from whatever religion they happen to be. But you don’t want to you know, characterize a fight as a fight of religions. I think that’s again, a bad approach to take.

 

ISAACSON: Admiral Bill McRaven, thank you so much for joining us.

 

MCRAVEN: My pleasure, Walter