What Iran Was Like Before the Revolution — From Tehran to the SEAL Teams

About this video

The guest recounts his journey from growing up in a Navy family and living in pre-revolutionary Iran to joining the Navy and eventually becoming a Navy SEAL. He describes how his father, unable to pay for college, persuaded him to enlist, leading to attendance at the Naval Academy and later lateral transfer to the SEAL teams. The guest shares his experiences from pre-9/11 SEAL operations through taking command just before September 11th, 2001, and explains his perspective on the subsequent Afghanistan deployment and long-term U.S. strategy in the Middle East.

Key takeaways

• The guest describes pre-revolutionary Iran (where he lived in the late 1960s-70s) as wonderful, with great skiing, weather, and people, characterizing it as ‘an amazing country that’s been hijacked by this revolutionary regime’
• The guest attributes his decision to become a SEAL to meeting Tommy Norris at the Naval Academy, stating that after spending a day with Norris he knew that’s what he wanted to do
• The guest argues that President Bush’s long-term strategy for Afghanistan and Iraq was to maintain forward bases for 40-50 years (similar to post-WWII Europe and Asia) to allow the region to develop, but this strategy changed when the Obama administration decided to ‘pivot to the Pacific’
• The guest emphasizes that his mantra throughout his career, inspired by his BUD/S swim buddy Rick Holman, was ‘we’re just going to do it’ - a philosophy he relayed to SEALs under his command

Episode details: published March 2, 2026 · 10.3K views · 30:04 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Stories told by Mike Ritland’s podcast guests are the guests’ own accounts, attributed to them — not independently verified. Commentary is Ritland’s, presented as his analysis.

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