🇺🇸 The Real Architect of the Iran Mess and its not Pete Hegseth

Yesterday, the military command for the Middle East unveiled its new podcast, “Inside CENTCOM,” featuring its commander, Navy Admiral Brad Cooper — the man most responsible for the Strait of Hormuz crisis and skyrocketing gas prices.

The timing couldn’t be more hilarious. The entire country just voted against his Iran war, and there’s Cooper, the architect, grinning and chatting up his workout routine, love of french fries and basketball. Asked about Operation Epic Fury, he says only that “I just couldn’t be prouder” and how even amidst the war he guards the “sanctity” of his workouts.

Considering that Cooper never bothered to make keeping the Strait of Hormuz open an objective of the war — which sent oil prices soaring — maybe he should’ve spent less time working out. But judging from his breezy podcast appearance, Cooper sleeps like a baby.

“Let me be clear: the Strait of Hormuz is controlled by the United States and our regional partners, not Iran, and it remains open for business,” Cooper said last month in a video infomercial for the war. It was on the same day oil hit $110 a barrel. It was his George W. Bush “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” moment. But Bush, at least, was a politician. Cooper is a uniformed officer, and the whole point of a uniformed officer is that they are supposed to stay out of politics.

Meanwhile, all the knives are out for Pete Hegseth. Good riddance.

But Cooper is even more responsible for your gas prices. He wrote the war plan, oversaw the strategy and the implementation, and even directed the day-to-day operation.

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” the saying goes. Cooper is a perfect example. Most Americans couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, and these days, that’s how the Pentagon brass likes it.

No matter what the mess in the White House or the nation’s capital, the uniformed military likes to say that it is above politics. Generals and admirals, the story goes, give their best “military advice” and just report the facts about their area of responsibility.

When the brass wants the public to like them, they roll out PR, like a podcast about French fries and free throws. But behind the scenes, they’re keenly aware of who’s in power and what their bosses want to hear, and they have politics of their own. (If you have any doubt that the brass has politics, look at Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, fired by Hegseth in August 2025. On Tuesday, she won a House seat in South Carolina as a Democrat.)

To understand how Cooper could pass off ‘Hormuz is open for business!’ as objective fact, rather than what it plainly was — a nakedly political statement defending the Iran war, and one backing Trump and burnishing his own record — you have to understand what his position as CENTCOM commander entails.

While the Secretary of Defense is responsible for overseeing war plans, it’s the uniformed military that’s responsible for writing them. By law, this task falls to the “combatant” commander, which in the case of Iran, is Brad Cooper.

🔗 https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-real-architect-of-the-iran-mess