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Speaker 1: appreciate you guys listening. Thanks a bunch. Hey everybody, welcome
Speaker 1: to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics, a midweek episode.
Speaker 1: It's been busy around here, so might as well do
Speaker 1: an extra episode a week. We have Jack Murphy for
Speaker 1: our resident Irishman, so happy Saint Patrick's Day to everybody
Speaker 1: who celebrates. Jonathan Hackett and Andy Milburn. Lot going on
Speaker 1: as usual. We just saw yes just like update like
Speaker 1: terms of news, we saw the Defense Ministry get smoked
Speaker 1: uh in Iran yesterday or last night, I guess they
Speaker 1: they confirmed it. We have a bunch of news actually
Speaker 1: that happened, and we didn't talk about this before him,
Speaker 1: but we just saw Joe Kent, the he's like head
Speaker 1: of CT resign and say because of the Iran war
Speaker 1: and that Israel basically dog walked us in. I really
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about because I've seen it like popping
Speaker 1: up in the press and like actually talking to like
Speaker 1: regular people that are like a lot of people are
Speaker 1: worried about like a possible like Iranian sleeper cell attack
Speaker 1: or or hesbla sleeper cell attack, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk to the experts to see like what the actual
Speaker 1: like is it actually possible? Is there a real threat?
Speaker 1: We've seen a couple three actually attacks, one in a
Speaker 1: synagogue that was a Lebanese person who's whose family died.
Speaker 1: He rammed into the synagogue and killed a few people.
Speaker 1: We also saw the tech the Austin shooter and the
Speaker 1: uh what was what for? Was he at what? There's
Speaker 1: another guy too that shot up a bunch of people
Speaker 1: and then the cadets stabbed.
Speaker 2: Them and killed them in university and yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1: So we've seen like these lone wolfs. As far as
Speaker 1: we know, it's a lone wolf attack, not like these
Speaker 1: organized where they could trace it back to like a
Speaker 1: sleeper cell, you know, Iranian intelligence or hesbola. So I
Speaker 1: have the experts here, So you guys tell me how
Speaker 1: how much how at risk are we in the United States?
Speaker 2: I can go first few on. So I was a
Speaker 2: counter intelligence agent. This is exactly the kind of stuff
Speaker 2: we looked at both inside the US and against our
Speaker 2: allies and partners as well. And counter intelligence always looks
Speaker 2: through the eyes of the adversary, which we call red,
Speaker 2: to understand the red's perception of blue, which is the
Speaker 2: friendly forces. So in this situation, and I'm looking through
Speaker 2: the eyes of hesbolla to think about how do they
Speaker 2: want to do stuff inside this country? And they have
Speaker 2: people here, they have ideas, they have goals that they
Speaker 2: want to achieve. But there's a missing ingredient for any threat,
Speaker 2: and that is capability. So they could have intent all
Speaker 2: day long, they can dream about these big plans, but
Speaker 2: if they don't have the capability to do it, it's
Speaker 2: very low threat, right. So that's what we're always looking
Speaker 2: for from the exploitation side and the neutralization side as
Speaker 2: far as counter intelligence is concerned. That's what the FBI
Speaker 2: is going to be looking at right now, is Okay,
Speaker 2: they have the intent. Not much we can do about that.
Speaker 2: You can't kill an idea, but we can reduce capability
Speaker 2: on their side, or we can look at the things
Speaker 2: they might be interested in and get ahead of them
Speaker 2: so that when they go try to use those capabilities
Speaker 2: they don't work out the way they expected them to.
Speaker 2: This is kind of a basic level to look at
Speaker 2: this picture. When we talk about sleeper cells, it's important
Speaker 2: to find what does that mean, because, like you mentioned d,
Speaker 2: there might be an inspired lone wolf that just doesn't attack.
Speaker 2: That's not a sleeper cell. Sleeper cell, but definitily is
Speaker 2: a much deeper, long term thing where the person was
Speaker 2: sent there way ahead of time with a very simple
Speaker 2: mission statement, and they remain quiet and integrated into the community,
Speaker 2: working in that community like a normal person for a
Speaker 2: long time until they receive some form of activation to
Speaker 2: do whatever it is the task was that they were
Speaker 2: sent there to do. That means that years, many years
Speaker 2: in some cases, that they have to be doing this.
Speaker 2: The mission has to be very simple because things will
Speaker 2: change over time, and if you give them too detailed
Speaker 2: of a mission, that mission might not even exist, that
Speaker 2: capability might not exist in the future when they're activated.
Speaker 2: And that's important to think about now because this is
Speaker 2: kind of a black Swan situation where the way the
Speaker 2: US and Israel are attacking Iran, that's very difficult to
Speaker 2: predict when and how that would have happened. It could
Speaker 2: have just been something like if there is a war
Speaker 2: in Iran, do x It might be something this simple,
Speaker 2: and the individual that is a sleeper would not be
Speaker 2: sent there alone. They wouldn't know the others in the network,
Speaker 2: but they would not be alone. And this means there's
Speaker 2: compartmentalization that has to happen, and there has to be
Speaker 2: a handle or overhead that's actually helping to coordinate the
Speaker 2: activities of these individuals. So that introduces another layer of complexity.
Speaker 2: And we have seen how Iran has done things in
Speaker 2: Unit States in the past, and also compared to other countries,
Speaker 2: it's very different than how they operate in the United States.
Speaker 2: I can get into official and non official activities they've done,
Speaker 2: especially using business cover for commercial activity, cover what they're
Speaker 2: doing in the United States, but on the whole They've
Speaker 2: been pretty amateur in the United States. And it's not
Speaker 2: because they just suck. It's because their capability level, like
Speaker 2: I mentioned earlier, is low for a variety of reasons,
Speaker 2: not least of which is it's difficult for a handler
Speaker 2: to get into the United States, which means they typically
Speaker 2: have to communicate over distance through phones or other electronic means,
Speaker 2: or through non non personal communications like leaving notes somewhere
Speaker 2: or something like this. That's a limitation on their capability.
Speaker 2: It's a limitation on what they can actually achieve when
Speaker 2: they're here. The other problem is money. They're not part
Speaker 2: of the swift banking system they have in Bens in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, so they either have to use it a
Speaker 2: huala or some kind of other activity to conceal the
Speaker 2: origin of the money they're using to pay for these activities.
Speaker 2: There is an example on in twenty eleven where it
Speaker 2: was around two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They were
Speaker 2: trying to pay to a cartel member to give a
Speaker 2: weapon to a gentleman in Texas who was supposed to
Speaker 2: go assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, d C. The
Speaker 2: cartel member said Hey, I'm a cartel guy. I'm going
Speaker 2: to go tell the DEA that this is going on
Speaker 2: because I don't want to be involved in your own
Speaker 2: And that's actually how the US found out about that,
Speaker 2: which is kind of interesting, and that was a very
Speaker 2: expensive operation that just evaporated because the capability was so low.
Speaker 2: I'll stop there at that kind of functional level and
Speaker 2: we can talk more about it. But that's how I
Speaker 2: would kind of like set the frame around this discussion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a great frame too, John. The
Speaker 3: question of capability is so important. And another example I
Speaker 3: would make to people that demonstrates where there was a capability,
Speaker 3: a surprising capability even was when the Russians began the
Speaker 3: full scale invasion of Ukraine and these sabotage cells suddenly
Speaker 3: activated across Russia. You saw military infrastructure, oil infrastructure really
Speaker 3: across the breadth of the country.
Speaker 4: Going up in flames.
Speaker 3: So there was an intelligence or intelligent entity or entities
Speaker 3: that absolutely had a capability. I mean they had the
Speaker 3: people in place, but they had the capability, meaning there
Speaker 3: was pre plane targets, targeting packets were done up, and
Speaker 3: there were cachet site locations full of explosives and those
Speaker 3: cells were activated through some sort of covert communications method
Speaker 3: or cove com. So that's one example of you know,
Speaker 3: where where you see a capability doesn't come out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: So when you see a bunch of strikes like that happening,
Speaker 3: it lends itself to the safe assumption that there is
Speaker 3: an intelligent entity behind this. It's not lone wolves, it's
Speaker 3: not you know, it's not just dissident groups. I mean,
Speaker 3: dissident groups don't come out of nowhere with a capability
Speaker 3: like that. It takes them time to evolve and find
Speaker 3: their way with those things. So that's one interesting example
Speaker 3: to look at. The other I was mentioned into John
Speaker 3: before the show was the and we get into a
Speaker 3: little bit in detail, but the book Burnbomb Destroy about
Speaker 3: the German sleeper cells that were here during World War
Speaker 3: One conducting acts of sabotage, also quite amateurish, but it
Speaker 3: evolved over time, and they used incendiary devices, probably not
Speaker 3: that different than the stuff that the cells in Russia used,
Speaker 3: you know, one hundred years later to destroy ships, you know,
Speaker 3: ships that were on their way to Europe. And when
Speaker 3: it really got effective again this question of capability was
Speaker 3: when you're using sleepers, you're using a surrogate force or
Speaker 3: something of this nature. I've had a CIA officer describe
Speaker 3: it to me because he tried to he did do
Speaker 3: this in Afghanistan. He's like, imagine trying to play pool
Speaker 3: and you're sitting on top of overturned trash can ten
Speaker 3: feet away from the pool table, and you got like
Speaker 3: three queues that are like duct taped together, and you're
Speaker 3: like trying to like hit the hit the ball and
Speaker 3: knock the eight ball in the corner pocket. He's like,
Speaker 3: that's kind of what you're trying to do. The further
Speaker 3: away from it you are, the harder it becomes to
Speaker 3: control those operations. With the German case, you know, they
Speaker 3: became effective once they got a no shit German intelligence
Speaker 3: officer into the country to start coordinating and running some
Speaker 3: of that stuff. And then that brings us to more
Speaker 3: current situation with Iran and are their sleeper cells in
Speaker 3: the United States Just a couple of things to tag
Speaker 3: on to what John already illuminated there. There's one case
Speaker 3: back in the nineteen nineties. I just had to look
Speaker 3: it up to get the name right. It was Captain
Speaker 3: Will Rogers three. The skipper of the USS Vincennes in
Speaker 3: San Diego, there was a bomb found in his van,
Speaker 3: and to this day, I don't think it's ever been
Speaker 3: fully explained what that was about. There's thoughts in the
Speaker 3: intelligence community or there has been over the years that
Speaker 3: that was an Iranian plot. But the Iranians also whack
Speaker 3: people globally. I mean, they're not like cautious about that
Speaker 3: there is an Iran and op And I'm just saying
Speaker 3: in Europe that the bomb didn't go off, but when
Speaker 3: they deconstructed it, it was a very advanced bomb. It
Speaker 3: shocked a lot of people in the security community in Europe.
Speaker 3: So the Iranians don't have a lot of hesitation with
Speaker 3: this sort of stuff. But now, you know, are these
Speaker 3: cells in the United States? And I think I think
Speaker 3: we have some pretty good proof that they aren't, that
Speaker 3: those cells just don't exist. After the Solemani strike, you
Speaker 3: would have expected something to have cooked off, And now we're,
Speaker 3: you know, bombing the hell out of Iran and fixing
Speaker 3: the due potentially a ground invasion. I mean, if the
Speaker 3: Iranians are not activating those cells now, then explain to
Speaker 3: me what the trigger is, because they're already in an
Speaker 3: existential crisis right now. I mean, they're not going to
Speaker 3: topple easily. But if not now, then when that's that
Speaker 3: would be my question, And I think that's sort of
Speaker 3: the counterfactual. You could look at this to try to
Speaker 3: determine if these cells even exist. I would say they
Speaker 3: probably don't. However, there are people in this country. They
Speaker 3: could be lone wolves, they could be you know, support agents,
Speaker 3: people who are sympathetic towards the Iranian regime who take
Speaker 3: action on their own or maybe at direction from you know,
Speaker 3: back back in Iran. One thing that I was told
Speaker 3: about just yesterday is a bunch of suspicious packages have
Speaker 3: been showing up at McDill Air Force Base, directed towards
Speaker 3: Sentcom Central Command. The FBI is investigating this, they're involved.
Speaker 3: I have not heard that an actual bomb has turned
Speaker 3: up yet, but I mean this could even just be
Speaker 3: a psychological operation to send packages that look like bombs
Speaker 3: to just you know, get people on the base, you know,
Speaker 3: cautious or afraid. So we'll see what happens with that.
Speaker 3: I don't know what's uh, John, is anything I'm missing
Speaker 3: here that you'd like to elaborate on.
Speaker 2: I just want to kind of pull on a thread
Speaker 2: that you mentioned. You mentioned sabotage and a couple of
Speaker 2: things like this, and again from that counterintelligence framework, So
Speaker 2: there are four types of attacks we'd be looking for
Speaker 2: from a potential sleeper element like you're mentioning, and those
Speaker 2: attacks would be against certain types of targets, right because
Speaker 2: you're trying to achieve some objective by doing this thing.
Speaker 2: The four types of targets are persons, organizations, installations, and
Speaker 2: then people generally, and there's a specific type of attack
Speaker 2: that targets each one of these. So, for example, attacks
Speaker 2: against persons are typically espionage related, attacks against organizations are
Speaker 2: subversion related. Then against installations it's sabotage. Then against people
Speaker 2: or other things to get terrorism as that kind of
Speaker 2: catch all at the end. But when we're trying to
Speaker 2: protect against these things to produce that capability I was
Speaker 2: talking about, you know, like you mentioned, there might be
Speaker 2: a low moul or even a person in contact with
Speaker 2: some goods forced guy overseas. They could have that intent
Speaker 2: all day long. But if we can actually go after
Speaker 2: the persons, organizations, and installations to defend those those categories,
Speaker 2: we can more precisely protect them. So even if the
Speaker 2: adversary had some really good intent and maybe even a
Speaker 2: little bit of capability, the target suddenly becomes too hard
Speaker 2: to strike and they're going to have to flow around
Speaker 2: it and go somewhere else. So this is kind of
Speaker 2: the thing we look at when we're trying to preemptively
Speaker 2: neutralize these activities is evaluating our own installations, like McDill
Speaker 2: Air Force Base, for example. We'd be thinking about how
Speaker 2: the vehicles get in on the base, how to packages
Speaker 2: go around here, like where are the cameras? All these
Speaker 2: things to get these things already ahead of time. So
Speaker 2: if something like this comes up, the person approaching their
Speaker 2: vehicle already understands how to evaluate their vehicle before getting
Speaker 2: into it due to heightened threat environment situations for example.
Speaker 2: So these are the things to keep in the back
Speaker 2: of the mind as a person evaluating what are these
Speaker 2: actual threats and what is the actual capability. And I'll
Speaker 2: mention the Bojinka plot, which was a pre al Qaeda
Speaker 2: type plot in the nineteen nineties that college Sai Muhammad
Speaker 2: and some others were planning to bring a bunch of
Speaker 2: aircraft and crash them into buildings, which sounds a lot
Speaker 2: like September eleventh, but this was before September eleventh. The
Speaker 2: reason they weren't able to do that they had a
Speaker 2: really good plan, excellent ideas, and a lot of intent,
Speaker 2: that they had almost no capability to do it. It
Speaker 2: wasn't until later on that they actually shifted their operations
Speaker 2: to be able to have the capability years later in
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, to actually execute such a threat
Speaker 2: with the capability required to do it. And I only
Speaker 2: highlight that because the intent didn't change the entire time.
Speaker 2: What did change was their ability and the opportunity to
Speaker 2: do that attack.
Speaker 3: Just one more thing I'd like to touch upon here
Speaker 3: with the nature of sleeper cells, potentially especially sleeper cells
Speaker 3: from an authoritarian regime that are placed under cover in
Speaker 3: a country like the United States.
Speaker 4: There were a few.
Speaker 3: The Soviets didn't have as many as we probably thought
Speaker 3: they did, but at the end of the Cold War
Speaker 3: it was revealed that they did have some sleeper agents.
Speaker 3: In the Milt Bearden's book The Main Enemy, he talks
Speaker 3: about one of them, a check guy, who they had
Speaker 3: placed in the United States, and after the Wall came down,
Speaker 3: I think I believe he came forward. If I remember correctly,
Speaker 3: and he had just integrated into the community, like he
Speaker 3: had a family, he had like kid playing in Little
Speaker 3: League baseball and this sort of stuff. And he was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I have like this trunk of like rusty military gear
Speaker 3: in my basement if you guys want to come get it, Like,
Speaker 3: I don't give a fuck. And I think this is
Speaker 3: a problem too with that a country like a Ran
Speaker 3: would have you send sleepers to the United States when
Speaker 3: they're here for a prolonged period of time building their
Speaker 3: cover and building their capabilities, unless they are the most
Speaker 3: hardcore ideological dude, they are going to start finding a woman,
Speaker 3: They're gonna get a job, they're gonna have kids, the
Speaker 3: kids are gonna get into school, and then when that
Speaker 3: activation code finally comes thirty years later, they're like, do
Speaker 3: I really want to like screw up my whole life
Speaker 3: here and end up in a supermax for the rest
Speaker 3: of my rest of my days because this authoritarian regime
Speaker 3: that doesn't give a shit about me wants me to
Speaker 3: go and kill a bunch of innocent people. So I
Speaker 3: think that's another dynamic that comes into play when you're
Speaker 3: trying to use sleeper agents.
Speaker 2: Actually jack on that. So even not just sleep agents,
Speaker 2: but embassy personnel from these countries. I was doing a
Speaker 2: lot of work in North Africa to the US embassies there,
Speaker 2: and there were a few North Korean diplomats that in
Speaker 2: the countries that have North Korean embassies there in Northwest Africa.
Speaker 2: Those diplomats are not allowed to return back to Pyongyang ever,
Speaker 2: they have to rotate around the embassies in Northwest Africa
Speaker 2: because the government au oritarian government is worried about the
Speaker 2: exposure they've had to things like alcohol and parties and
Speaker 2: restaurants and freedom even in Northwest Africa, to the extent
Speaker 2: that they will not allow them to return back to
Speaker 2: rotate back to the mainland.
Speaker 4: That's crazy.
Speaker 3: What I'd heard is that the embassy personnel from North
Speaker 3: Korea have to travel around in threes. It would make
Speaker 3: Detroit play, yeah, to make it impossible for the agency
Speaker 3: for CIA.
Speaker 4: To recruit them.
Speaker 2: We have the same thing with the Chinese as well.
Speaker 2: When I was in the Defense Attache staff, the Russians
Speaker 2: would always come in a group of three the Troika.
Speaker 2: The Chinese would always be in a group of three,
Speaker 2: and we wouldn't interact with the North Koreans. But they
Speaker 2: also would, and so would the Iranians because they know themselves,
Speaker 2: the government knows that this is going to happen.
Speaker 3: Right, Is this like mutually assured destruction. Everyone's spying on
Speaker 3: everyone else.
Speaker 2: They had to go to the bathroom in three's at
Speaker 2: any events that we were at.
Speaker 4: It's wild.
Speaker 5: Thanks to me and you guys.
Speaker 1: And restart what you were saying. I apologize you were muted?
Speaker 5: Am I muted in?
Speaker 1: Now you're good? Now you're good?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 5: Do you customarily mute meet during these.
Speaker 1: Up are yelling at Richie?
Speaker 5: Oh okay, all right, yeah, so you know, going getting
Speaker 5: back to to Iran though, I mean, I think and
Speaker 5: and John you know way more about this than I do.
Speaker 5: But you know, this term sleeper cells sounds sexy. It's
Speaker 5: it evokes Hollywood. It evokes that mini series, you know,
Speaker 5: the Netflix. I think it's a Netflix mini series about
Speaker 5: Russian sleeper cells, but I think it's fed a salmon.
Speaker 5: That's not the way that the Ranians operate. They can't
Speaker 5: afford to operate that way, as you know, as Jack
Speaker 5: pointed out, what put a cell into the United States
Speaker 5: and with the instructions to act if a war comes,
Speaker 5: you know, if war occurs. I mean, neither cou'sforce nor
Speaker 5: has BOLLA has that kind of resources. Although and that's
Speaker 5: just not that modus operati, right, I mean, they plan
Speaker 5: for specific operations, and they insert people for those operations,
Speaker 5: but they don't send people to the United States for
Speaker 5: two or three decades and have them integrate in the
Speaker 5: American society, apply for green cards and residents. All of
Speaker 5: this just on the contingency that something might happen. And
Speaker 5: I think, you know, although it's say it, there's another
Speaker 5: factor to this, right or the gain. I mean, although
Speaker 5: this is a super sexy topic that's likely to get
Speaker 5: everyone's attention, if you are planning this from an Iranian perspective,
Speaker 5: domestic attacks within the United States are actually a relatively
Speaker 5: hard target. You've got plenty of softer targets spread out
Speaker 5: across not just Middle East, but globally. US interests, overseas,
Speaker 5: diplomatic missions, military bases as we've seen. You know, even
Speaker 5: military bases that should be hardened in the Middle East
Speaker 5: are still subject to attack from from the Uranians, where
Speaker 5: they can cause casualties without all the planning and everything
Speaker 5: else involved in putting action cells within within the US.
Speaker 5: So you know, i'd say that there's there's just no chart,
Speaker 5: I mean, very little chance of a Hollywood sleeper cell
Speaker 5: type scenario. And what we've seen historically a small targeted
Speaker 5: networks you know, that are that are that are put
Speaker 5: in for a specific mission, and we've kind of the
Speaker 5: other thing is I think we kind of conflated. And
Speaker 5: I like to give your thoughts on this, John Iranian
Speaker 5: direct Granian action, which would be Kup's force, right, which
Speaker 5: is the Forron six Stone operations, arm I gcs except
Speaker 5: and and proxies like Hesbala Hosbala does have and overseas
Speaker 5: you know, a section that's focused on overseas operations, and
Speaker 5: I forget what it's called. It's like the i JO
Speaker 5: or something. John, You'll probably probably know that Islamic organization. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but they but as far as I mean, there was
Speaker 5: an attempt to attack on the Saudi ambassador right back
Speaker 5: in twenty eleven. But aside from that, we've seen mainly
Speaker 5: you know, fundraising, logistics, procurement, that's kind of things that
Speaker 5: they focus on mostly, and and and integration with criminal
Speaker 5: networks in the Western hemisphere. That's a great point, actually
Speaker 5: seems to me. I'm sorry, it just seems to make
Speaker 5: just go ahead, Jim.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna mention the financial thing you're talking about.
Speaker 2: So Latin America, in particular, Brazil, for example, has six
Speaker 2: million Lebanese people. There's almost as many Lebanese people in
Speaker 2: Brazil as there are in Lebanon, and of them are
Speaker 2: either Druze or Shia descendants from Lebanese diaspora. And Hesbola's
Speaker 2: main source of money, even though the regime pays them
Speaker 2: a lot of money, their main source of money is
Speaker 2: drug sales, and a lot of those drugs are from
Speaker 2: South America, especially cocaine being sold in Africa, and Dakar,
Speaker 2: Senegal is the main entry point into all the entire
Speaker 2: continent of Africa from Latin America, which is a Hesbola
Speaker 2: controlled throughway. And actually in Dakar, Senegal, there's a big
Speaker 2: Hesbula problem, and there's absolute Iranian embassy right down the
Speaker 2: street from the Hesbela house that they live in. Our
Speaker 2: team house was across the street from where the Hesbola
Speaker 2: house was when I was there, and it's a very
Speaker 2: interesting little microcosm of what they're trying to do to
Speaker 2: fund themselves, and part of the reason they have this
Speaker 2: Islamic Jihad organization, even though the name of it sounds
Speaker 2: like an ideological thing, is actually more of a force
Speaker 2: protection asset to protect the money and drugs moving back
Speaker 2: and forth between these nodes, to make sure that people
Speaker 2: aren't going to steal it or do something to it
Speaker 2: so they can bring it to the Middle East. Saudi
Speaker 2: Arabia is a huge purchaser of these drugs, so was Syria.
Speaker 2: We had a thing in Lebanon when I was there
Speaker 2: where we had an aircraft that was a Saudi prince's
Speaker 2: aircraft that is full of ecstasy pills that has bulahead manufactured,
Speaker 2: and this disc prince was selling them and we found
Speaker 2: it on his aircraft even though it was diplated or dipnoted.
Speaker 2: And these drug networks require a lot of strong arm muscle,
Speaker 2: including these overseas operatives who may be trained to protect
Speaker 2: the stuff, but could also be activated and turned to
Speaker 2: do other things like we were talking about earlier. They
Speaker 2: could do sabotage, they could do subversion, they could conduct
Speaker 2: terrorism if they need to, especially because they have these
Speaker 2: networks that can already move in between in and out
Speaker 2: of between these different countries, especially into Latin America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we just I was into Karn like twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: Have a nice new embassy we just built there right now,
Speaker 3: significant significant Lebanese population in that country.
Speaker 5: But I would guess, I don't know, I would guess
Speaker 5: his Balla's external operations capability is likely being degraded compared
Speaker 5: to about a decade ago. I mean largely because of
Speaker 5: I mean series to be a key hub for moving
Speaker 5: people in equipment and a cool set. Environments become much
Speaker 5: more content tested and and Asbola has has its own
Speaker 5: problems on its hands in in Lebanon itself. You know,
Speaker 5: I just again, it just seems to me are far fetched,
Speaker 5: but but attention grabbing topic, that is, that has surfaced
Speaker 5: without any foundation and uh in in uh in in
Speaker 5: in fact, right, I'm not I'm not dismissing the risk,
Speaker 5: and of course it's always a risk, but minimal compared
Speaker 5: to its real risks facing us, right like the collapse
Speaker 5: of the global economy and uh and and and continued
Speaker 5: attacks on on U S forces and interests and related
Speaker 5: interest overseas.
Speaker 3: So I mean, I don't know if we're ready to
Speaker 3: shift gears, but I'd love to hear you two guys
Speaker 3: opining about the MEW on its way to the Persian Gulf.
Speaker 5: I was waiting for for for John to kick it off,
Speaker 5: but I'm happy to happy to do so. Yeah, this
Speaker 5: has been one of the one of the most important developments,
Speaker 5: perhaps not the most of my attention grabbing developments are
Speaker 5: in the last last week is the movement of a
Speaker 5: Marine Expeditionary Unit, the thirty first Marine Expeditionary Unit out
Speaker 5: of Okinawa a garden spot. Does those who spend any
Speaker 5: time there?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 5: And why is that important? Well, thirty first MEW has
Speaker 5: actually lower level of capability than the mews that are
Speaker 5: based out of the United States. You know, I'm not
Speaker 5: saying that it's a It's been known as a security
Speaker 5: corporation view, right, I'm going to get beaten up by
Speaker 5: thirty first MEW guys for saying that. But it's definitely
Speaker 5: a lower level of capabilities. My point is it's an
Speaker 5: odd choice if you are indeed plan to conduct raids.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't necessarily I you know, it wouldn't be my
Speaker 5: first choice of MEW. It's a four deployed amphibious landing force,
Speaker 5: but it's very small. You'll hear a lot of talk
Speaker 5: about two thousand marines, but actually those who go ashore
Speaker 5: it's pretty near a twelve hundred, which is a relatively
Speaker 5: very small So, you know, I think if they do
Speaker 5: go ashore, it's going to be very quick. They're going
Speaker 5: to hit specific targets, the raids, and then withdraw. They're
Speaker 5: not going to invade Iran, which is what I've seen,
Speaker 5: you know, And that's the problem, right you're here talk
Speaker 5: about ground force and people don't understand the nuances. So
Speaker 5: there's certainly the general public. So marine expedition units I
Speaker 5: mentioned about two thousand marines, amphibious ships typically three or five.
Speaker 5: They have helicopters, tilt rotor aircraft, limited aviation support, and
Speaker 5: it's primarily for raids crisis for US sponse Straits of
Speaker 5: Horror moves, potentially targeted raids within the Straits of Horror
Speaker 5: moves the islands there because because as we've seen, you know,
Speaker 5: you can't there's a couple of problems with the air campaign,
Speaker 5: and I mean there are certain things that you that
Speaker 5: as we've we've found out, hard to destroy, locate and destroy,
Speaker 5: missile launchers being one of them, drones, faster tag boats
Speaker 5: can be hidden, coastal radar and mines. You know, all
Speaker 5: these things can be can be moved around quite easily.
Speaker 5: And although we've seen very optimistic rejections about what we've destroyed,
Speaker 5: the real truth is, as anyone who's dealt with battle
Speaker 5: damage assessment knows, is that once you get past kind
Speaker 5: of like an estimate of fifty percent pass part fifty
Speaker 5: estimate that you destroy the enemy's capability, it's really difficult
Speaker 5: to be precise about it. And the point here is,
Speaker 5: at what point do we say the Strait of hor
Speaker 5: Moose is open for traffic? Right, because unless we're really
Speaker 5: sure we've eliminated the risk, Well, how are you sure
Speaker 5: you eliminated the risk unless you put someone ashore to
Speaker 5: do that kind of assessment, to conduct rates, to destroy
Speaker 5: UH targeted operations, to destroy enemy infrastructure, and then and
Speaker 5: then report it. So you know, I so I mentioned,
Speaker 5: I mentioned missile launchers. There's on on these islands. There's
Speaker 5: there's also potential for underground storage that of of missiles
Speaker 5: and other weapons systems. Another another factor disrupting battle damage
Speaker 5: assessment and the Gulf is undoubtedly the Ringians used decoys
Speaker 5: and camouflage just the way that you know we would
Speaker 5: and the way that Ukrainians have have continue to do
Speaker 5: in that conflict. So what value do they bring? Okay,
Speaker 5: why would we land them? Spell clear tunnel complexes, you
Speaker 5: aside from the missile launches, destroy radar systems, eliminate drone
Speaker 5: launch sites and confirmed targets and neutralize those are all things.
Speaker 5: I know we're going to talk about separately the enriched
Speaker 5: uranium problem. But if we're just talking about kind of
Speaker 5: conventional targeting for raids in the Gulf, that's that's more
Speaker 5: or less what we're talking about. And there's a series
Speaker 5: of violence. John, I'm going to butcher the names, but
Speaker 5: there's ab Abu Musa right, the one right at the
Speaker 5: entrance to the strait. I think if we were, you know, normally,
Speaker 5: we'd have to point these out on a map, but
Speaker 5: we haven't got that far far technology yet. And then
Speaker 5: there's like the it's spelled t u n B Tunb,
Speaker 5: a couple of islands over that which are directly overlooking
Speaker 5: the shipping lanes right and Kesherm Island, which is near
Speaker 5: Bandura bas which is major of Courserinean support. And we
Speaker 5: know that at least open source intelligence suggests that that's
Speaker 5: been supporting drones drone attacks. So any of those islands
Speaker 5: could be the target for raids. But of course you
Speaker 5: put twelve hundred marines are sure it's not quite as
Speaker 5: simple as that. You're going it's a major, major operation.
Speaker 5: You're going to have to have all kinds of support
Speaker 5: for that, and of course you elevate the risk it's huge.
Speaker 5: Oh hey, I mentioned I forgot carg Island, which is
Speaker 5: our favorite topic. Right, it's primary arounds, primary oil export
Speaker 5: terminal critical to each economy. As we've heard some back
Speaker 5: and forth about whether we're going after the oil terminals
Speaker 5: on that island or whether we want to preserve them,
Speaker 5: and perhaps a difference of opinion there with the Israelis
Speaker 5: that we can talk about. So you know, a rate
Speaker 5: of seizure of car could I could disrupt further Iranian
Speaker 5: oil oil exports of that. Indeed, that's one of our
Speaker 5: our objectives. But also again conduct battle damage assessment, which
Speaker 5: which as I've said, is a is a significant problem.
Speaker 5: So when you step back, so the MEW moving towards
Speaker 5: the Middle East, all it does is represents it more options,
Speaker 5: right I doubt I don't know I'm speculating. I doubt
Speaker 5: that they're being moved there with a specific mission in mind.
Speaker 5: There will probably be a series of contingencies, and probably
Speaker 5: the decision hasn't been made whether or not to land them.
Speaker 5: And by the way, you know the last thing I'm saying,
Speaker 5: this is a mew A Marine Expeditionory unit. I explained
Speaker 5: how small it is. Arguably you get more out of
Speaker 5: it while it's at sea, right, it has kind of
Speaker 5: an operational impact then, because you could land it anyway,
Speaker 5: you keep the NB casting. Once you've landed it, it
Speaker 5: becomes very tactical and you elevate your risk, right because
Speaker 5: now you've sucked into that one location.
Speaker 2: And I want to talk about the streets for a minute. There.
Speaker 2: You talked about Andy that it's really important because we're
Speaker 2: talking about measuring how safe are the straits, whether we've
Speaker 2: reduced to fifty percent, ninety percent, et cetera. Looking at
Speaker 2: absolute numbers of straits transits. On February twenty seventh, there
Speaker 2: were one hundred and forty plus per day of oil vessels.
Speaker 2: That has trickled to six over five days, like one
Speaker 2: per day. Roughly, there were eleven Iranian vessels in Persian
Speaker 2: Gulf in the past couple of weeks that were able
Speaker 2: to transit out and bring oil to China, which is
Speaker 2: why they're actually selling more oil right now than they
Speaker 2: were before the conflict started. And the only vessel that
Speaker 2: has actually gone out and exited the straits with oil
Speaker 2: was yesterday. It was a Pakistani flag vessel that had
Speaker 2: agreed with the Iranian Foreign Ministry to allow to transit
Speaker 2: through for various political reasons. And there were two Indian
Speaker 2: vessels that are allowed to move back to repatriate some
Speaker 2: Iranian bodies from the Sri Lanka coastline that were bombed
Speaker 2: by the submarine a few days ago. So if we're
Speaker 2: looking at that, it's down down below single digit percentages
Speaker 2: of transits through there. It's absolutely not secured. In no
Speaker 2: reality is it safe to transit through there. And the
Speaker 2: other challenge is maybe from a military perspective, it's physically safe,
Speaker 2: but if you're an insurance company that's ensuring a Marek
Speaker 2: ship with three hundred million dollars worth of oil on it,
Speaker 2: you may be very hesitant to ensure that ship. And
Speaker 2: so this is another like political external factor that the
Speaker 2: military can't really control. It's going to have to be
Speaker 2: at the political level that this problem is solved, or
Speaker 2: else these vessels won't feel safe enough and the insurance
Speaker 2: companies won't feel safe enough to ensure those vessels even
Speaker 2: if it is physically safe to pass through. So that's
Speaker 2: another step that has to occur, as far as messaging
Speaker 2: from the US side and from the Israeli side to
Speaker 2: tell the world that hey, it is actually safe, or
Speaker 2: the US can absorb some of that risk by promising
Speaker 2: those insurance companies that they'll almost subsidize that insurance, kind
Speaker 2: of like the federal deposit insurance we have for deposits
Speaker 2: and banks, which is something that has been discussed but
Speaker 2: isn't fully in place yet. And then on the MEW
Speaker 2: portion of it, you mentioned, it's this small, versatile entity,
Speaker 2: and it's actually the smallest of a certain type of
Speaker 2: marine task organization called a Marine Air Ground Task Force,
Speaker 2: which is something unique to the Marine Corps. For listeners
Speaker 2: who don't know this, this task force is very scalable.
Speaker 2: From that MEW size, which is roughly twenty two hundred
Speaker 2: total people including logistics and other support and command element,
Speaker 2: it can move up to a brigade size element and
Speaker 2: it can move up to a force size element. These
Speaker 2: are kind of like increasing scale echelon for what a
Speaker 2: command might need. And by comparison, during the two thousand
Speaker 2: and three invasion of Iraq, there were mews that were there,
Speaker 2: but they were part of larger, much larger entities doing
Speaker 2: a ground force invasion of Iraq, which is arguably a
Speaker 2: far less complex invasion than the terrain facing the ground
Speaker 2: forces in Iran, which would require many, many more units
Speaker 2: of a much higher scale to actually traverse and secure
Speaker 2: those high terrain features to safely move into the country
Speaker 2: from a conventional ground force invasion perspective, So when looking
Speaker 2: at this MEW, people are thinking about boots in the ground,
Speaker 2: probably of some kind of conventional combat force, and it's
Speaker 2: important to be hesitant there in question, well, how much
Speaker 2: would that MEW actually achieve and would it even be
Speaker 2: safe for it to go aground with the small size
Speaker 2: it has, because that's not what the MEW is for alone.
Speaker 2: As Andy mentioned that MEW is to do things amphibiously
Speaker 2: from sea ship to shore and then back to ship.
Speaker 2: That's really what it's supposed to be for. That could
Speaker 2: be seizing a beach, holding a beach securing a location
Speaker 2: for follow on forces to flow through things like this.
Speaker 2: They're not supposed to be their long term and they're
Speaker 2: not supposed to be the main combat element. That's what
Speaker 2: things like the eighty second Airborne and Marine Divisions are for.
Speaker 2: We have a great map up here. We can see
Speaker 2: straits of war moves.
Speaker 4: Masters of technology.
Speaker 1: Ye have Jack gaming clutch with this one.
Speaker 5: I'm impressed.
Speaker 1: Do you see Crag Island though, bit more north?
Speaker 2: Uh? There? It says Kark, which is correctly spelled. Yeah, yep,
Speaker 2: and that's one hundred kilometers from Abadan.
Speaker 3: And I was reading about this island too today that
Speaker 3: this has supposedly underground missile facilities on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can actually see them on Google satellite imagery.
Speaker 2: You can see the Russian you know, the Russian surface
Speaker 2: to air missile, the SA nine structure. They usually have
Speaker 2: like a pentagon formation. You can see those all up
Speaker 2: and down the island.
Speaker 1: Have we not been hitting that island? I'm sure, I'm
Speaker 1: assuming we have been.
Speaker 3: We The desalination plant we hit was on that island,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of messed up like it. It basically
Speaker 3: deprived thirty villages of fresh water.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: How isn't that a war crime.
Speaker 4: I'm not a jag, but it sounds like it.
Speaker 2: Remember we don't have those silly rules of engagement anymore.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's right, no more politically correct wars. I'm
Speaker 1: so excited about that. John's trying to get me triggered. Bro,
Speaker 1: this is such a good episode, and he's doing he's
Speaker 1: doing this on purpose.
Speaker 5: I know it, you know it. I mean it raises
Speaker 5: it raises a point that I don't think is commonly understood,
Speaker 5: not even in the military, right about uh, the enemy's
Speaker 5: order of battle and understanding how much you've tried it,
Speaker 5: and even with all the technology the United States has
Speaker 5: add its disposable what a difficult task that is made
Speaker 5: more difficult by, you know, the terrain, by the fact
Speaker 5: that when you're talking about the nature of what is
Speaker 5: being potentially could be hidden, and we talked about missile
Speaker 5: launchers and drones, small boats, all these things that are
Speaker 5: could significantly remain a threat are easy to disperse and conceal.
Speaker 5: So it doesn't matter what you have. So so these
Speaker 5: press conferences where we are trotting out all the things
Speaker 5: that we have done don't really answer the mail the
Speaker 5: real question is what does Iran have left and that
Speaker 5: that arguably could be what Marines Ashore could do, although
Speaker 5: personally I think I would just for a number I mean,
Speaker 5: I would select different special operations forces to do that.
Speaker 5: If you if you're concerned as BDA and two thousand
Speaker 5: marines one view once, once you committed them. As I
Speaker 5: made the point earlier, you committed them, right, it's not
Speaker 5: something that I mean, yes, you backload them on ships,
Speaker 5: but it's not as though you can hop all around
Speaker 5: the straits and whole moves using them again and again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually a good point. We were on the
Speaker 2: Special Operations Operations Task Force in Iraq in twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: and we did a lot of strikes. I think it
Speaker 2: was thirty thousand strikes in six months, and we had
Speaker 2: to do battle damage assessment after all those strikes to
Speaker 2: ensure that we were hitting targets right with the right
Speaker 2: things and all that. And even that when we were
Speaker 2: we had the ability to get inside the night area
Speaker 2: and actually measured the BDA, we had a very hard
Speaker 2: time to get accurate BDA on the ground where we
Speaker 2: actually were because you have human intelligence that's not always accurate.
Speaker 2: You have signals intelligence that only gives you a piece
Speaker 2: of the picture. When you look at the physical infrastructure,
Speaker 2: that doesn't actually tell you about capability. It just tells
Speaker 2: you about the building, right, And if there's bodies in there,
Speaker 2: we don't know which bodies. You have sources at the
Speaker 2: hospital trying to tell you who they were, but you
Speaker 2: still don't know. And that's when you're actually physically there.
Speaker 2: And we don't have that scale of deployment in Iran,
Speaker 2: which on a much larger scale of destruction already. That's
Speaker 2: going to require precise bda to actually measure did we
Speaker 2: hit the right things with the right equipment and with
Speaker 2: the right follow on effects.
Speaker 5: John One thing that hasn't received much attention though, to
Speaker 5: my surprise and certainly in the media and discussions are
Speaker 5: this time around, in Iran's nuclear facilities. I mean, there
Speaker 5: hasn't been mentioned of destruction to them in the battle
Speaker 5: discussions of battle damage assessments. You know, first of all,
Speaker 5: what's your take on that? And secondly, do you think
Speaker 5: have sets the next phase of this operation.
Speaker 2: I saw some satellite imagery on January thirty first, I believe,
Speaker 2: of some of the facilities, and they're basically buried underground
Speaker 2: by the strikes that we did, and the thing there
Speaker 2: is you don't know how much is buried or if
Speaker 2: there was even anything buried there. And back in June
Speaker 2: when we were striking some facilities, the regime had already
Speaker 2: moved some of the uranium to other facilities. So it's
Speaker 2: very difficult without having people on the ground to actually
Speaker 2: know what's in there. And that's not human sources, because
Speaker 2: even the sources might not know because they're not digging
Speaker 2: in the soil. They might be just guessing and saying, well,
Speaker 2: it looks like this was destroyed, so I guess that's
Speaker 2: probably what this is. You would actually need to go
Speaker 2: there and measure with some technical equipment to figure out
Speaker 2: what amount of material remains underground, and the only way
Speaker 2: to do that is to obviously dig underground. It's a
Speaker 2: very challenging thing to do because these facilities were very
Speaker 2: deep underground in the first place. If you've seen some
Speaker 2: of the strikes that we did that were the penetrators
Speaker 2: that went that, they basically are very heavy. They hit
Speaker 2: the ground, go underground before they explode, this little pinpoint
Speaker 2: hole in the ground before they go in, and they
Speaker 2: do it with a bunker buster explosion deep underground. You
Speaker 2: have no way to measure what the efficacy of that was,
Speaker 2: or even if that was the right location in that
Speaker 2: complex where you should be hitting it, because nobody's got
Speaker 2: a flag there saying the uranium is here, even if
Speaker 2: at the facility they might have moved it to a
Speaker 2: different wing. There might be other tunnels. We can do
Speaker 2: a lot of measurement in signature intelligence or amazing to
Speaker 2: see what soil was moved where, when, how much soil
Speaker 2: was removed, So we can estimate how large the tunnels
Speaker 2: are based on what the amount of material that's been
Speaker 2: removed is, but that doesn't tell you what the configuration
Speaker 2: of the tunnel is and all these other things. There
Speaker 2: could be some side room that we never knew existed.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of variables and difficulties on top
Speaker 2: of this. Even if you had a good human network
Speaker 2: in the country, it's a kind of a black box
Speaker 2: without actually physically being there with the tools you need
Speaker 2: to measure this material.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and there's no you know, when there's talk about
Speaker 5: not just damage to facilities, but the potential of securing
Speaker 5: enriched uranium itself, right, you see that speculation. I mean,
Speaker 5: one of the core problems is aside from the fact
Speaker 5: that as we talked about, damaged facilities doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 5: that what we see from damaged facilities doesn't necessarily give
Speaker 5: us an accurate picture, and trying to track where that
Speaker 5: material is, what condition it's in, whether it has been moved,
Speaker 5: whether it can be moved that short notice, all those
Speaker 5: things are questions that are going to be very tough
Speaker 5: to answer if indeed that becomes the same mission.
Speaker 2: And actually that's a great point about the complexity of
Speaker 2: this because there isn't just like a box of physio
Speaker 2: material in a facility. There are varying ways that this
Speaker 2: is stored depending on where it is in the process
Speaker 2: of enrichment and refinement. But you know, in the early stages,
Speaker 2: you might have some yellow cake, for example, that is
Speaker 2: contained in a pretty obvious structural container. But once you
Speaker 2: start putting it in the centrifuge cascades, which one uses
Speaker 2: the specialized cascade system of centrifugees because they're not allowed
Speaker 2: to get the larger centrifuges that the nuclear powered countries have,
Speaker 2: so you basically have these very long lines of centrifuges,
Speaker 2: all produced by the German company Siemens. That's another thing
Speaker 2: to talk about how they got there. Anyways, they're there.
Speaker 2: They've got these things all linked together, and these very long,
Speaker 2: almost like tubes of many centrifuges spinning at different speeds
Speaker 2: to try to separate and enrich the uranium in a
Speaker 2: particular facility like natons for example. They maybe thousands of
Speaker 2: these centrifuges and they're pretty good. They're bigger than my
Speaker 2: head per centrifuge, right, So, I mean, if you want
Speaker 2: to go get these things out, you're not talking about
Speaker 2: a guy going in with a backpack and just putting
Speaker 2: the uranium in his backpack and walking out. You're talking
Speaker 2: about a very long tailed logistical requirement to support just
Speaker 2: the movement. Not talking about the safety or these other things,
Speaker 2: but just the actual logistics of getting this stuff out.
Speaker 2: How many people would you need, what kind of equipment
Speaker 2: would you need? There might even be a thought going
Speaker 2: on in the decision making process about what if we
Speaker 2: just physically destroy enough so that nobody can dig down
Speaker 2: there and get the stuff, Because that might actually be
Speaker 2: a better solution than going over there and actually digging
Speaker 2: with heavy machinery to get this out. And I'm sure
Speaker 2: this kind of discussion is going on right now with
Speaker 2: the National Security Council, and I'm sure Marco Ruby is
Speaker 2: talking to himself in the different positions that he holds
Speaker 2: to try to figure out how to advise himself to
Speaker 2: tell the President about how to get this uranium out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the hottest part of the mission isn't getting there,
Speaker 5: it's what you do when you do get that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to talk too much about what's actually
Speaker 3: going on or potentially going on right now in regards
Speaker 3: to this, but a little bit of historical data that
Speaker 3: may be useful for to help people think about this.
Speaker 3: The counter WMD mission, I mean, of course, has been
Speaker 3: you know, with JSX since its inception. Early training exercises,
Speaker 3: DELTA was going up against simulated improvised nuclear devices and
Speaker 3: having EOD guys come in and disarm them. But then
Speaker 3: it kicks into high gear. Or in the nine teen
Speaker 3: eighties when Gadaffi had an underground chemical weapons facility in
Speaker 3: Tarhuna and Jaysock was tasked with a mission or planning
Speaker 3: a mission to go in and destroy it. And interestingly,
Speaker 3: the way it was planned was that Marine Corps hovercraft
Speaker 3: would come up over the coast of Libya, come as
Speaker 3: far as inland as they could. Then they would offload
Speaker 3: trucks with the Jaysok guys on it. They would then
Speaker 3: drive to Tarhuna using industrial drilling equipment drilled down from
Speaker 3: the surface into the facility and then in basically cement
Speaker 3: mixer trucks pour an explosive slurry down into the facility
Speaker 3: and detonate it. So it was a pretty crazy plan.
Speaker 3: I guess it's for the best that it never had
Speaker 3: to be executed. That situation was resolved diplomatically and Gadaffi
Speaker 3: shut that facility down. But that was sort of the
Speaker 3: beginning of Jaysock sort of looking at this problem set,
Speaker 3: and it's evolved over the years. It's been called the
Speaker 3: deep Underground Mission or the hardened deeply buried target mission,
Speaker 3: and over the years that has evolved into essentially, you know,
Speaker 3: Jasok going in to conduct WMD sabotage to like just
Speaker 3: go in and destroy those facilities, and it could be
Speaker 3: like chemical weapons vats, it could be physile material, whatever
Speaker 3: the case may be.
Speaker 4: And then that evolved.
Speaker 3: You know, by the time you get into like the
Speaker 3: mid to late nineteen nineties, it evolved not just into
Speaker 3: the destruction but to seize the material and take it
Speaker 3: out with you. And Jaysok has done extensive training on
Speaker 3: this at the Nevada test site and underground tunnels and
Speaker 3: things like this, practicing explosive breaching like breaching heavy vault
Speaker 3: bunker doors underground. It's a very technically difficult mission to accomplish.
Speaker 3: And they've done this and I mean all the way
Speaker 3: up until yeah, some other stuff I won't even get
Speaker 3: into right now. But the cbrnpeck to the radiological material
Speaker 3: aspect of it makes this mission that much more dangerous,
Speaker 3: especially if you're going into targets that have already been
Speaker 3: hit with air strikes. You don't know like have those
Speaker 3: vats been cracked open? Did they topple over? Is this
Speaker 3: stuff already in the ground. So it's it's a very
Speaker 3: technically and logistically complicated operation to pull off.
Speaker 1: And I have a question, it's not going to be
Speaker 1: like some quick like Madua raid a few hours overnight.
Speaker 1: It's going to take days or weeks I'm assuming to
Speaker 1: do this, So there would need to be security, you know,
Speaker 1: It's not just a quick in and out, you know,
Speaker 1: thanks for coming.
Speaker 5: In a in a foreign in a sovereign hostile country.
Speaker 5: You need you're going to need a secure perimeter for
Speaker 5: an extended period of time, right, I mean days to weeks,
Speaker 5: a secure perimeter control, surrounding terrain, protection against counter attack
Speaker 5: which come from in any domain. Right, So as a
Speaker 5: marine expeditionary unit potentially could provide it could accomplish that mission.
Speaker 5: I know, let me rephrase that, that could potentially be
Speaker 5: a mission assigned to the marine expeditionary unit. But it's
Speaker 5: never been done before, right, It's not something specifically that
Speaker 5: marine strainfall for that period of time. And you can imagine,
Speaker 5: I mean, so you so you've got all that, You've
Speaker 5: got all that inner problems right inside that court, and
Speaker 5: all the problems that you're going to have to deal
Speaker 5: with locating the material, verifying it, securing it, either destroying
Speaker 5: it or removing it. And then you've got the you've
Speaker 5: got the external security problem, which is immensely complex too
Speaker 5: and makes you all of which makes you hugely vulnerable.
Speaker 3: The you know, this is pretty much unprecedented what we're
Speaker 3: talking about here, and the precedent you would look to
Speaker 3: if anything, It's not like the Maduro raid or the
Speaker 3: Bin Laden raid or something like that. Actually, what I
Speaker 3: would look to is there was an operation in the
Speaker 3: early years of the War on Terror in the early
Speaker 3: two thousands, so CALM was somewhat involved, but mostly it
Speaker 3: was DITRA, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, went to a
Speaker 3: island in Uzbekistan where the Soviets had a chemical weapons
Speaker 3: facility back in the day, and there was tons and
Speaker 3: tons of anthracs in the ground. If terrorists wanted, they
Speaker 3: could just go to this island and dig anthrax out
Speaker 3: of the ground and they'd have their sample ready to go.
Speaker 3: So DITTRA goes in there with all their subcontractors and
Speaker 3: raytheon contractors and everyone else, and they destroyed that material.
Speaker 3: They dug it up out of the ground and destroyed
Speaker 3: the I think like sixty tons of anthracs it came
Speaker 3: out to. Now, the difference, of course, is this was
Speaker 3: a permissive environment. This was done with the cooperation of
Speaker 3: the government of uzbeka Stan. You know, we want to
Speaker 3: go in and destroy these WMDs and keep the world
Speaker 3: safe and use Beckastan's like okay, bring your boys in,
Speaker 3: we do this. It wasn't an armed military operation, but
Speaker 3: what we're talking about in Iran would have more in
Speaker 3: common with what I just described than with like a
Speaker 3: Maduro raid.
Speaker 2: And plus we're talking about this as if it's like
Speaker 2: one facility. There are at least twelve different facilities and
Speaker 2: different provinces spread all over the place. You have to
Speaker 2: repeat this twelve times or more successfully to achieve the
Speaker 2: objective that you're looking for. So that means every single
Speaker 2: time you do it, you're introducing new risk, new layers
Speaker 2: of complexity, new opportunities for attack. Because let's say you
Speaker 2: do it like three times, Well, the adversary is going
Speaker 2: to measure how you did those three times and figure
Speaker 2: out all kinds of ways to exploit the next nine times.
Speaker 2: You have to do this because you're going to have
Speaker 2: to keep repeating the same TTPs every time. And if
Speaker 2: you reveal your clandestine methodologies in that first couple of goes,
Speaker 2: you can't use them anymore in the same way that
Speaker 2: you did previously.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if this was a what we call a coed brief, right,
Speaker 5: a course of action brief, you look at the cons
Speaker 5: that we've stanked up here, and it's very difficult to
Speaker 5: think of throws that would balance against those cons.
Speaker 3: And yes, strategically, Andy, I mean, you look at this
Speaker 3: kind of operation that we're talking about. Explain to me
Speaker 3: how this brings us closer to victory in Iran? How
Speaker 3: does this bring us closer to a democratic Iran? Okay,
Speaker 3: you're getting some physsile material out of the ground and
Speaker 3: denying that to the Iranian government if they ever get
Speaker 3: back on their feet to the point where they can
Speaker 3: recover that stuff. But this doesn't really bring us closer
Speaker 3: to a victory or a win the kind of win
Speaker 3: even that you know, President Trump seems to desire. I
Speaker 3: don't think it gets us closer to his own stated
Speaker 3: objective here.
Speaker 2: It's similar to Desert One. I always go back to
Speaker 2: Eagle Claw in Iran because this is a very similar
Speaker 2: thing where there's that risk benefit in the military planning
Speaker 2: side of it, and then there's the political choice to do
Speaker 2: it anyway, even though it's extremely risky and a commander
Speaker 2: would never give this green light unless the president tells
Speaker 2: them what you're doing this. And it's the same thing
Speaker 2: where there's these layers of especially air and logistics capability
Speaker 2: that there's so much complexity in there. And it only
Speaker 2: takes one crash at a fuel bladder in a desert
Speaker 2: to change the whole thing in a direction that you
Speaker 2: didn't expect and that people just will not accept.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the difference being the rescue of US hostages in
Speaker 5: Iran arguably was a strategic comparative, right and correct, Whereas
Speaker 5: securing enriched uranium in sites in Iran it's hard to
Speaker 5: align with any strategic comparative that would justify the level
Speaker 5: of risk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, especially when it's buried under rubble. They don't have
Speaker 3: any access to it, apparently.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, I'm glad we've dealt with that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Let's let's also not forget that this was they were,
Speaker 1: the uranium was on the table right before we started
Speaker 1: bombing Iran.
Speaker 2: Didn't exist twenty fifteen.
Speaker 5: Well, it gets back to perhaps a lack of coherence
Speaker 5: in describing what the end state is. The desired conditions
Speaker 5: are the termination of hostilities, right, and we haven't seen
Speaker 5: yet kind of a coherent statement. So we're speculating, and
Speaker 5: I'm sure military commanders I don't know, but I hope
Speaker 5: that they are saying, hey, boss, we're going if our
Speaker 5: goals are reduction of Iranian capabilities right to the point
Speaker 5: where Iran is effectively neutralized and cannot do X things
Speaker 5: for X period of time. Then these are the conditions
Speaker 5: that need to exist, and we are one week, two
Speaker 5: weeks away from those conditions, right, that's kind of the
Speaker 5: conversation that should take place. But Boss, if you want
Speaker 5: to destroy the nuclear facilities and set them back six months,
Speaker 5: one year, two years, then we need to extend the
Speaker 5: campaign by X number of time. And finally, if you
Speaker 5: want to regime change, we just can't get that from here,
Speaker 5: not within their campaign. Hopefully these conversations are taking place.
Speaker 4: Spoiler or they're not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, I'm sorry to be a doomer, Debbie Downer
Speaker 3: on ya, Andy, I don't think those conversations are taking place.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, one would hope those conversations are taking
Speaker 5: place in an open forum too, you know, I mean
Speaker 5: these sort of conversations. That's one of the disadvantages with
Speaker 5: waging more as a liberal democracy. And I say little
Speaker 5: l all right, liberal democracy as in you know, look
Speaker 5: it up what it means. Not not you guys, I
Speaker 5: meant for those of our audience who start screaming every
Speaker 5: time you mentioned is that, Yeah, you lose a little
Speaker 5: bit of the opeteness right that an author authoritarian regime
Speaker 5: has about the way it ages war. We owe to
Speaker 5: the American public, normally via their elected representatives, and explanation
Speaker 5: of why we're at war and what the objectives are
Speaker 5: because everyone's aware of the cast or perhaps they're not
Speaker 5: at this stage, which is a good point that I'll
Speaker 5: finish on. Really, and you know, I'm not being a
Speaker 5: hand ringer here, but I don't think anyone has a
Speaker 5: clear picture of the overall cost of this war. I'm
Speaker 5: not talking about the billions a day that we're spending,
Speaker 5: and I'm talking about the effects on the global economy,
Speaker 5: the effect on our alliance networks, alliances. Sorry, that was
Speaker 5: a poorly worded phrase.
Speaker 1: John, You wanted to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Iranian elite like real estate portfolio in the UK.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really fascinating. So Ali, I'm sorry, who's this
Speaker 2: individual that's closely affiliated with Amah Najad? If everyone remembers
Speaker 2: this colorful individual from the presidency that caused the Green
Speaker 2: Revolution two thousand and nine, So he just opened up
Speaker 2: thirty three new luxury apartments in London using investment money
Speaker 2: that he got from Iran, which is fascinating because they're
Speaker 2: not part of the international banking system, they're not part
Speaker 2: of the Swift banking system, and the money was taken
Speaker 2: from a regime affiliated account, right So that's all opening up.
Speaker 2: But that's not even the biggest dollar amount because right
Speaker 2: now Mochtaba, the potentially alive or dead leader of Iran,
Speaker 2: has a one hundred million dollar real estate investment in
Speaker 2: London as well. That was just talked about a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago that the British government approved this purchase. It's
Speaker 2: just fascinating thing because people think, like, aren't they heavily sanctioned,
Speaker 2: aren't they not part of the banking system? How are
Speaker 2: they getting this money? The thing is, you know, the
Speaker 2: sanctions have certain levels of efficacy. There studies done that
Speaker 2: say that it's actually not as effective as you think,
Speaker 2: and they're not really effective against an authoritarian state because
Speaker 2: that authoritarian state controls the market. So it's the regular
Speaker 2: people that can't access the banking system and then these
Speaker 2: the small group of elites, can get outside of it
Speaker 2: and go do things outside of the country like we
Speaker 2: see right now, and a great example of that, Andy
Speaker 2: and I think we were talking about this a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago with how are they selling oil? And
Speaker 2: what they're doing is they have these banks all over
Speaker 2: the world. Bank Melli is an Iranian owned bank. It's
Speaker 2: a state owned bank. Bank Melli has a branch in
Speaker 2: Hong Kong and it has a branch in London. It's
Speaker 2: got a branch in Hamburg, in Paris, and these banks
Speaker 2: are in those countries. They can actually do business in
Speaker 2: those countries. So if you sell your oil in China
Speaker 2: for three hundred million dollars per vessel, you take that
Speaker 2: three hundred million dollars. You don't send it back to Iran.
Speaker 2: You bring it over to Bank Melly in Hong Kong
Speaker 2: and then wire it to London and then go open
Speaker 2: up your real estate business in Seville Row right. And
Speaker 2: this is what's going on. It's very interesting because most
Speaker 2: about for example, the new Supreme Leader, he's never worked,
Speaker 2: he's never earned a paycheck, and he has one hundred
Speaker 2: million dollars that he can use to open up businesses
Speaker 2: in real estate in London. And this is just very
Speaker 2: important for listeners to understand about exactly when we talk
Speaker 2: about the regime. They're terrible to their own people. But
Speaker 2: they're also highly corrupt. And this corruption is the thing
Speaker 2: that you can see outside the country. You know, Canada,
Speaker 2: for example, a few years ago, the former Central Bank
Speaker 2: director of Iran fled to Canada with three point seven
Speaker 2: billion dollars in assets. You don't bring that in a
Speaker 2: suitcase to Canada. That's wired to Canada. And the government
Speaker 2: of Canada proves that. We actually have a professor at
Speaker 2: the University of Pennsylvania who's the son of masume Ebtycar.
Speaker 2: And if you remember during the hostage crisis, there was
Speaker 2: a woman that was the speaker in English during the
Speaker 2: hostage crisis inside the US embassy in Tehran that was
Speaker 2: the spokesperson for the new colonel of the regime. Her
Speaker 2: son is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. How
Speaker 2: is that possible? Right, Zaref former foreign minister went to
Speaker 2: Ohio State University. Right. The more you look at this,
Speaker 2: the more you realize that these elites, they just escape
Speaker 2: all of our restrictions. And this is why there's such
Speaker 2: a problem right now to disconnect between the people in
Speaker 2: Iran and these elites. No matter what you do, they're
Speaker 2: going to find a way to snake around it because
Speaker 2: it's not a democracy. You know, they can be as
Speaker 2: corrupt as they want and the people can't do anything
Speaker 2: about it because first of all, they don't have any guns.
Speaker 1: We got to add on a good better note.
Speaker 5: Well, I've got that at some point, and I think,
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a slight change of topic, but I
Speaker 5: think it's important. I think a lot of people will
Speaker 5: learn from this. And this gets back to our discussion
Speaker 5: of the North Korean policy of the troika. Right, three
Speaker 5: people wandering around together, and I want to point out
Speaker 5: that that within the Marine Corps, our own research or
Speaker 5: the troika has has really revealed that it's ineffective totally.
Speaker 5: So we used to operate. And this ties in with
Speaker 5: Okinawa too, because this is the liberty policy in Okinawa
Speaker 5: that two marines. It used to be the buddy program, right,
Speaker 5: But then we discovered of the course of oh, I
Speaker 5: don't know, maybe four decades, that where one marine gets drunk,
Speaker 5: the others likely also to get drunks. So the policy
Speaker 5: became they had to travel in a troika. But guess
Speaker 5: what we found that the same.
Speaker 1: Three guys got drunk instead of just want.
Speaker 5: So and if in North Korean said having the same problem.
Speaker 5: The other point alcohol, Yeah, they and Check pulled up
Speaker 5: an excellent point too that he talked about where sleeping
Speaker 5: cells break down, and he said, you know they someone
Speaker 5: finds a woman, right, I mean, that's that that that's
Speaker 5: the beginning of the scene.
Speaker 3: I mean, even I believe uh Muhammad Atta, one of
Speaker 3: the nine to eleven hijackers, was dating a stripper down
Speaker 3: in Florida. I mean, these guys get sucked into this stuff. Hell,
Speaker 3: maybe if that had gone on a little longer, he
Speaker 3: wouldn't have done what he did. As I was saying,
Speaker 3: it's only the most committed ideological people that can really.
Speaker 4: Stay committed to that.
Speaker 3: And I've heard some stories about the Chinese actually not
Speaker 3: so much sleeper cells per se, but more like espionage
Speaker 3: where they're like super committed maoists and they like they'll
Speaker 3: like live a life of poverty even if they have
Speaker 3: like an advanced degree, because they're putting all their money
Speaker 3: into you know, helping out the fatherland or whatever.
Speaker 4: It's very weird, actually.
Speaker 1: Jack, you remember, go ahead, Sorry, John go.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, the Ministry of State Security actually
Speaker 2: is very unique in the great power espionage world because
Speaker 2: they don't recruit generally, don't recruit non Chinese people. They'll
Speaker 2: typically only recruit Chinese citizens from China who are in
Speaker 2: the target country. Like for example, they're going to Berkeley
Speaker 2: getting a chemical engineering degree, but they're a Chinese. That's
Speaker 2: who the MSS will go after because they know they
Speaker 2: have the very like they can measure that loyalty, and
Speaker 2: it's they don't have to develop it as much as
Speaker 2: we would have to develop, for example, recruiting an Egyptian
Speaker 2: guy to work for US in Egypt.
Speaker 3: You know, well, it's also it's also that you know,
Speaker 3: if they even find somebody who's not a Chinese citizen
Speaker 3: but of Chinese ethnicity and they still have family back
Speaker 3: on the mainland, I mean they call the the MSS
Speaker 3: calls them up and says, a visiting your aunt the
Speaker 3: other day. I mean they get the message right away.
Speaker 3: I mean they know what they're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Jack, what was that story about a virologist who's a
Speaker 1: doctor working in the United States, you know, probably making
Speaker 1: a decent living. Yeah, he was living in like Squalor
Speaker 1: because he was.
Speaker 3: Like I was a friend of mine work that case
Speaker 3: where it was a Chinese guy had a job working
Speaker 3: for the government. He was an MD, but he was
Speaker 3: living out of his van and he was selling ghost
Speaker 3: guns at a gun shows. And so there's no there's
Speaker 3: as far as I know, there's no proof of like
Speaker 3: a Chinese intelligence nexus. But I've heard enough stories like
Speaker 3: this over the years you start to wonder, like is
Speaker 3: it really about making money or is it this guy
Speaker 3: just acting as a chaos agent, like selling ghost guns
Speaker 3: to Latino and African American gangs in New York City
Speaker 3: In this case, all.
Speaker 1: Right, great, now we're just brought in China trying to
Speaker 1: fuck us up too. Great.
Speaker 4: Well, there's other stuff too.
Speaker 3: I mean if you start looking at like the Order
Speaker 3: of the Nine Angles and like one of their founders
Speaker 3: lives in Russia.
Speaker 4: Now, I mean there's stuff.
Speaker 1: That what is that? I don't I've never heard of that.
Speaker 3: It's it's like a Satanist nihilistic movement that came out
Speaker 3: of the UK initially, and those guys go and they do,
Speaker 3: you know, spree shootings.
Speaker 4: And stuff like that. Sometimes.
Speaker 3: I mean, again, I couldn't prove anything as far as
Speaker 3: like an intelligence nexus, but there's enough things that like
Speaker 3: you're squinting at it, like what the hell is going
Speaker 3: on here?
Speaker 1: What a way to end Satanist fucking shooting spreeze. Yes,
Speaker 1: I want you guys to check out The high Side,
Speaker 1: Jack Murphy Sean Naylor. They're working on a really good
Speaker 1: article coming out soon having to do with Jaysack. Really
Speaker 1: interesting with several at this point. Yeah, actually yeah multiple
Speaker 1: uh multiple pants on the fire the with Zach Dorfman right. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's he's helping out on one of them. What else
Speaker 1: we got, Andy mill Burn? Of course, Andy, give us
Speaker 1: a flex just show us one one. No, all right,
Speaker 1: we'll do that after.
Speaker 5: You got me on that for the teamhouse.
Speaker 1: From that, I want you guys to check out Andy's book.
Speaker 5: The Time He Went Shutless as well as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah you did, that's a clu. We'll get you shirtless again,
Speaker 1: not drunk, We'll get your shirtless again. We'll get to
Speaker 1: get a John shirtless to drop his reputation of a
Speaker 1: couple of notches too.
Speaker 2: Uh uh.
Speaker 1: Your book When the Tempest Gathers an incredible book. Check
Speaker 1: that out. That link is a description John's book of Course,
Speaker 1: Theory of a Regular War and a Ran Shadow Weapons. Uh.
Speaker 1: All those links are down in the description. I know
Speaker 1: Andy you're working on another book having to do with
Speaker 1: Gaza in Israel, right, like that's cooking, So we're looking
Speaker 1: forward to that one. And uh, of course Jack's got
Speaker 1: a new book coming out in June, very exciting fiction. Uh,
Speaker 1: The Most Dangerous Man. I read it. It's really good.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, all those links are in the descriptions. Support
Speaker 1: to show, Patreon dot com, slash the Teamhouse. You get
Speaker 1: both eyes On and Teamhouse episodes AD free and early
Speaker 1: and there's always a pleasure. Guys.
Speaker 5: Thank you, yeah, thank you, Thanks guys, all the best us.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, I want to tell you about my new novel,
Speaker 3: The Most Dangerous Man, out in June. It is a
Speaker 3: novel about a Regimental Reconnaissance Company soldier who gets kidnapped
Speaker 3: while he's on a mission to West Africa, and when
Speaker 3: he wakes up, he finds that he is now being
Speaker 3: hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through
Speaker 3: the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on
Speaker 3: stories that I heard over the years about safari guides
Speaker 3: taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa.
Speaker 3: I took that and I took a century old short story,
Speaker 3: The Most dangerous game and modernized it. And the product
Speaker 3: is this book, which I think will feel temporary and
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Speaker 4: Thank you and please check it out.