Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Geopolitics.
Speaker 1: I'm here today with Jonathan Hackett and Andy Milburn. Mick
Speaker 1: Moulroy may possibly will likely be joining us in a
Speaker 1: little bit. Uh, you guys are seeing the same stuff
Speaker 1: I'm seeing. Uh, ceasefire seems to have completely collapsed. We're
Speaker 1: on like day eight of American strikes, you know, on
Speaker 1: whether it's Iranian shipping or Iranian you know, islands, different
Speaker 1: different targets. Iran has responded with shooting cruise missiles, ballistic
Speaker 1: missiles and drones at all of our bases in the region,
Speaker 1: which means and you know, shooting missiles against all of
Speaker 1: their neighbors.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Two service members died in Jordan from that attack, from
Speaker 1: one of the attacks.
Speaker 2: One is missing.
Speaker 1: So you know, this is like a real this, you
Speaker 1: know for people who think this is you know, obviously
Speaker 1: is so far away, but this is like real people's
Speaker 1: lives that are being lost on the Iranian side as well. Like,
Speaker 1: let's be frank, right, I'm sure we're not one hundred
Speaker 1: percent accurate where we're shooting.
Speaker 2: So yeah, some bits.
Speaker 1: Like the one quote that really like like stuck to
Speaker 1: Mike crawl a little bit was Caitlin Collins, a CNN
Speaker 1: who I think is probably one of the better White
Speaker 1: House reporters, asked Trump.
Speaker 2: What did she ask? Trump? But the hell did I
Speaker 2: have it? Hold on?
Speaker 1: This is a pretty glaring fucking quote. Frankly, She asked,
Speaker 1: you know what, the United States is bombing Iran again? Uh,
Speaker 1: you've been bombing Iran for months now? Is this just
Speaker 1: a new normal for the American people? Which I feel
Speaker 1: like is like a completely fair fucking question.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And the President replied, we were in Vietnam for nineteen
Speaker 1: year years. We're here for four months, so I think
Speaker 1: we've done a lot. That kind of shit coming from
Speaker 1: the president is one of the I know, obviously it's Trump,
Speaker 1: so like we're desentitized to the crazy shit he says,
Speaker 1: but he's talking about like actual fucking war, and Uh,
Speaker 1: the way he's just so blase about it to me,
Speaker 1: frankly as offensive And I'm being as as generous as
Speaker 1: I can be because I have other words that I
Speaker 1: could totally use. Yeah, it's a fucking joke frankly that
Speaker 1: this guy's the president and he's leading us into this
Speaker 1: fucking abyss.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: The escalation ladder seems to be getting longer and longer
Speaker 1: every day. The city doesn't seem to be no end
Speaker 1: in sight. So yeah, what are you guys tracking Milburn?
Speaker 1: Let's let's I want you to go first. I missed you.
Speaker 3: I miss you too, Dean, thank you so you No,
Speaker 3: I I think not, I think you know, we've we've
Speaker 3: talked about the strategy lacked off before in this UH program.
Speaker 3: It isn't simply us throwing rocks, you know. In fact,
Speaker 3: I know at least a couple of us were involved
Speaker 3: in planning for war with Iran before, and I'm wondering
Speaker 3: why some of the assumptions and some of the risks
Speaker 3: identified in you know, almost a decade of planning had
Speaker 3: been thrown out of the window, namely the anticipation that
Speaker 3: Iran would close the straits of All Moose, but also
Speaker 3: understanding the limits of an air campaign and through no
Speaker 3: one's fault, it's just very difficult to track down the
Speaker 3: assets which trying to track down rocket launchers and now
Speaker 3: small boats, drone places where drones are being stored specifically,
Speaker 3: you know, to leap ahead, what has changed about this
Speaker 3: phase of the wall To answer the question that's been
Speaker 3: asked the administration where you hope to gain out these strikes.
Speaker 3: The list of targets are specifically focused on Uranian assets
Speaker 3: that that could end up It was shipping in the
Speaker 3: straits of all moves, at least until until last night. Right,
Speaker 3: So those who were specifically radar sites acquisition radar in
Speaker 3: the southern part of the country, and again missile launchers
Speaker 3: places where intelligence was suggesting the ranges were storing drones.
Speaker 3: And although I haven't seen this specifically, I assume also
Speaker 3: small boats. But all those assets are easy to move
Speaker 3: around and hide and decoy and disperse, and especially in
Speaker 3: the country like Iran, and the long the war goes on,
Speaker 3: the easy it is to do for them to disperse
Speaker 3: the remaining assets. And so you know, the strike against
Speaker 3: Jordan last night, the strikes against Kuwait are not a surprise.
Speaker 3: What is perhaps surprising in this phase, and John can
Speaker 3: perhaps jump in to add more amplification on this, is
Speaker 3: the increased accuracy of Iranian missiles, right, And that is
Speaker 3: I understand mostly attributed to the fact that the Chinese
Speaker 3: are providing navigation system. It's no longer a GPS. John,
Speaker 3: what's do you remember the term? And it's b h
Speaker 3: it's by DO three or something.
Speaker 4: It's that it's the frequent GPS alternative.
Speaker 3: It's the Chinese frequency hopping version of the GPS, and
Speaker 3: I should probably google that. And we have various student
Speaker 3: members of our audience who will who will be able
Speaker 3: to jump in. But it's but anyway, B three A
Speaker 3: is what we call it. It's it's and the network
Speaker 3: is called the Baydoo three the millions military military grade
Speaker 3: signal we call B three A. And so very quickly,
Speaker 3: my understanding is that civilian GPS is you know, obviously
Speaker 3: it's a fixed known frequency. It's very jammable. In the
Speaker 3: Twelfth Day War and June twenty twenty five, both Israel
Speaker 3: and the US were jamming Iranian GPS guided munitions very
Speaker 3: hard and at worked. GPS guided systems reportedly failing at
Speaker 3: the rates of over seventy percent early in the conflict.
Speaker 3: Now ninety eight percent of them are getting through, So
Speaker 3: that is that's a concern. So although we're in a
Speaker 3: new phase of the wall, although we've narrowed our targeting options,
Speaker 3: the targets themselves are easy to disperse, and on the
Speaker 3: Iranian side, they're getting more accurate, so so that is
Speaker 3: that's certainly a concern. And you know, the last thing
Speaker 3: I'll say is that piling on more strikes again might
Speaker 3: give us a feeling of satisfaction. But as we've seen,
Speaker 3: we've also amped up the risk and the Ranians are
Speaker 3: going after and I haven't got confirmation of this, and
Speaker 3: the strike on the base in Jordan yesterday, I forget
Speaker 3: the name of the base. It's about sixty clicks from
Speaker 3: from Aman. But the Ranians are going after specific assets
Speaker 3: that we have, not strike aircraft on the ground, but
Speaker 3: they're going after the the A Wax, the easy two centuries,
Speaker 3: They're going after the KC one thirty five tankers, just
Speaker 3: like they did in Saudi Arabia. So for those of
Speaker 3: you who like CenTra gravity analysis, these are the critical requirements,
Speaker 3: right the high value, low density assets that we have.
Speaker 3: And we've got about seventy five percent of these assets
Speaker 3: in the region right now, so they're all vulnerable and
Speaker 3: we only have a limited number of them. So the
Speaker 3: Uranians know what they're doing. They're going after these assets
Speaker 3: and increased accuracy. And I'm not being chicken little here,
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that last all of this suggests that
Speaker 3: this last round of the war isn't going to be
Speaker 3: quite as easy as perhaps some people think to simply
Speaker 3: shut down the Uranians by piling on more munitions. And
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, you know what's our
Speaker 3: first priority. Our first priority is hormuse. We're not even
Speaker 3: talking about enriched uranium anymore. We're not even talking about
Speaker 3: the proxies, even though, by the way, the Iraqi Iranian
Speaker 3: backed proxies have only grown stronger this wall. And if
Speaker 3: anyone who's observed the after Martha Commanie's funeral, well we'll
Speaker 3: see a lot of the traffic control in a Raq
Speaker 3: was these militias. We're not even talking about those things.
Speaker 3: We're talking specifically about Hall moves. And the thing is,
Speaker 3: even if even if we manage through all our naval
Speaker 3: assets in the region, two carriers, over twenty surface vessels,
Speaker 3: untold number of aircraft, et cetera, et cetera, even if
Speaker 3: we managed to force an opening and the straits of
Speaker 3: Wall moves, the effect on the global economy remains because
Speaker 3: commercial we're talking about commercial ships. It's still high risk.
Speaker 3: Until the Iranians agree not to strike ships and there's
Speaker 3: some kind of negotiated settlement, the problem continues, and that
Speaker 3: is the issue I think we're facing right now. So again,
Speaker 3: the tactics don't fit in any coherent, overarching policy, and
Speaker 3: that's the bottom line, any overlaunching policy that can be
Speaker 3: achieved through the tactics that we're using.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I would also add on to that, In
Speaker 4: addition to the center of gravity component of this targeting
Speaker 4: that we're seeing, people are asking why are there these
Speaker 4: tip for TAT strikes going on? Why are they hitting
Speaker 4: bridges in Iran? Why is Iran hitting US bases in Jordan?
Speaker 4: Like this question is from the public. I'm trying to understand,
Speaker 4: you know, why are these targets the targets. One part
Speaker 4: of it is what you mentioned, Andy, that they're doing
Speaker 4: operational level analysis of target packages and deciding, both the
Speaker 4: US and Iran both deciding about you know, if I
Speaker 4: strike a bridge that links this base to this base,
Speaker 4: that has a stronger impact than if I just hit
Speaker 4: an aircraft at that base. And at the same time,
Speaker 4: if you look back to Operation Allied Force in nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety nine and Kosovo and in the Balkans generally, you know,
Speaker 4: Bosnia and so on, we had a multi discipline intelligence
Speaker 4: approach to targeting. In that conflict, we had not only
Speaker 4: air assets, which is a massive air campaign in Kosovo,
Speaker 4: we also had a very extensive human intelligence network inside
Speaker 4: of Kosovo that was helping us to identify and validate targets.
Speaker 4: So there were some targets that we already knew about,
Speaker 4: like military bases, which are fixed and pretty slow to
Speaker 4: change on a spreadsheet, but we also had new locations
Speaker 4: like point of origin sites when the enemy would be
Speaker 4: launching mortars or artillery, which they can move around very easily.
Speaker 4: In relation to bases, we'd have human sources on the
Speaker 4: ground who would say, Hey, that truck, although it was
Speaker 4: at X location today, now it's at Y location right now.
Speaker 4: So we'd be able to tell the pilots in the air, hey,
Speaker 4: adjust fire dynamically and go strike this point of origin
Speaker 4: site that we've noticed. With our imagery intelligence and with
Speaker 4: our signals intelligence, we also have human intelligence telling us
Speaker 4: that that's actually where they are, and that's actually what
Speaker 4: it is that we think it is. In Iran, we
Speaker 4: don't have this, so we're relying very heavily on signals
Speaker 4: intelligence and imagery intelligence to say that looks like a transporter.
Speaker 4: Erector launcher, it looks like it's there right now, and
Speaker 4: it looks like it has a weapon on it, We
Speaker 4: strike it, and then we don't really know what that
Speaker 4: strike did to it because we can't go validate with
Speaker 4: battle damage assessant, and we can't also say how many
Speaker 4: more they have left and other things like that that
Speaker 4: human intelligence can tell us, but that the other two
Speaker 4: disciplines alone have a hard time being really forceful on.
Speaker 4: The reason I mentioned that is because you look at
Speaker 4: why did Jordan hit Wafak Salty Air Base or MSAB,
Speaker 4: which is in Jordan. This base is well known. When
Speaker 4: I was in Jordan, we used to joke that this
Speaker 4: was the largest land based aircraft carrier that the United
Speaker 4: States has in the Middle East, because most of our
Speaker 4: air assets were at Waffak Salty Air Base separately from Qatar,
Speaker 4: which is where Air Force's Central Command is at, and
Speaker 4: there's a lot of air assets in Katark. Katar has
Speaker 4: been hit multiple times during this conflict, but MSAB, that
Speaker 4: base has been there a very long time. That's a
Speaker 4: well known target. There's plenty of open source satellite imagery
Speaker 4: of Waffak Salty Air Base. You can look it up
Speaker 4: on Google and see it the huge airfield. There lots
Speaker 4: of US military infrastructure there. So from an Iranian perspective,
Speaker 4: it's kind of a low cost strike in terms of
Speaker 4: intelligence because they don't really need to validate much to
Speaker 4: know that if they lob an intermediate range ballistic missile
Speaker 4: at it, they're going to hit something that's American. Now,
Speaker 4: the problem here is they don't know what exactly they're
Speaker 4: going to hit, and my suspicion is they did not
Speaker 4: intend to kill Americans in the strike. They probably meant
Speaker 4: to hit American assets, fixed assets, and that was not
Speaker 4: the goal because they know that by killing Americans. American
Speaker 4: military forces are highly sensitive to casualties. When Americans die,
Speaker 4: we tend to respond with overwhelming force. They know this
Speaker 4: firsthand because the reason cost some Solamani is dead is
Speaker 4: because two months before that Americans were killed in Syria,
Speaker 4: a contractor and active duty members were killed, and we
Speaker 4: launched an assassinated their most important military commander in response.
Speaker 4: And we have typically done that not just against Iran,
Speaker 4: but against many other examples, including in Vietnam, where most
Speaker 4: of our overwhelming responses that were dynamic in nature, not
Speaker 4: planned ahead, but by dynamic in nature were in response
Speaker 4: to US casualties like this, so I would expect to
Speaker 4: see a larger US response than we expect. Over the evening,
Speaker 4: we saw a strike on a couple of facilities, an
Speaker 4: IRGC facility. I don't think that's the end of the story.
Speaker 4: I think there will probably be increases in retaliation from
Speaker 4: this that the US is probably trying to put together
Speaker 4: right now to consider, Okay, how do we respond to
Speaker 4: this proportionally based on how we understand proportional, not how
Speaker 4: the adversary understands it, but how does the US military
Speaker 4: understand that? So I wouldn't think this is over yet.
Speaker 4: And on the tit for tat part of it, those
Speaker 4: intel limitations are real, so the US can only hit
Speaker 4: what it understands. So if the US doesn't understand let's
Speaker 4: say a underground facility, we can't just bomb it. We
Speaker 4: have to know what we're hitting. Like when you're putting
Speaker 4: a weaponeering package together and you're having the air officer
Speaker 4: actually sit there with you and talk through the targeting.
Speaker 4: As far as the intel side, you're actually picking strike points.
Speaker 4: You're saying, what are the locations on this facility that
Speaker 4: are the best the weakest to hit, or the locations
Speaker 4: that if we hit it will cause damage in a
Speaker 4: particular direction. There are lots of considerations. It's not just
Speaker 4: dropping a bomb. So a lot of these facilities we
Speaker 4: might not be able to strike now because we lack
Speaker 4: knowledge of what's going on inside that facility and around
Speaker 4: that facility, So we won't hit everything that's as valuable
Speaker 4: as we want to hit yet without that human intelligence
Speaker 4: on the ground. So that's going to be a limitation
Speaker 4: where you're going to see probably a lot of infrastructure strikes, bridges,
Speaker 4: water purification barracks, fixed military assets, because those are things
Speaker 4: we understand with limited information. You're not going to see
Speaker 4: strikes on let's say, a G two intelligence headquarters in Tehran,
Speaker 4: because even though we are striking a lot, we are
Speaker 4: still trying to limit civilian casualties as much as we can.
Speaker 4: And when you're looking at that G two headquarters, you
Speaker 4: don't really know what's in the buildings around it, so
Speaker 4: you don't know which kind of weapon to use to
Speaker 4: destroy that building, to make a blow up, to make
Speaker 4: an implode versus explode, and things like that. So you're
Speaker 4: going to probably see those larger headquarters entities left off
Speaker 4: the target list for now until we understand more about
Speaker 4: those targets so that we can ensure that we're hitting
Speaker 4: them the right way with what our doctrine says. And
Speaker 4: next to that the GPS issue that you mentioned, Andy,
Speaker 4: So there's actually three different major GPS like networks in
Speaker 4: the world. There's the free world GPS, which is GPS
Speaker 4: Global Positioning System. There's the Russian version, which is the GNSS,
Speaker 4: which is just like our GPS, but it's a Russian
Speaker 4: controlled satellite array that the Russians can use. Even if
Speaker 4: our GPS goes down, the Russians will still have GPS,
Speaker 4: and vice versa. This is a Cold War development. As
Speaker 4: we were developing our space program, which was a cover
Speaker 4: for our nuclear program, our intercontinental ballistic missile nuclear delivery program,
Speaker 4: the Russians are doing the same thing. You need GPS
Speaker 4: for that, so the Russians had GNSS for that. China
Speaker 4: was a late to the game. But China also had BDS,
Speaker 4: which is the bidy that you were talking about, Andy.
Speaker 4: So these are three different independent arrays of GPS controlled networks.
Speaker 4: Iran is relying on China's network, not on Russia's, but
Speaker 4: on China's network to get a lot of accurate information.
Speaker 4: So even if we try to jam Iran using our GPS,
Speaker 4: which sometimes they do depending on what the equipment is
Speaker 4: that they're using, there are areas that we can't jam
Speaker 4: as easily because it would require whenever you jam something,
Speaker 4: there's a diplomatic component to that. If we jam a
Speaker 4: Chinese system, we are technically in an active war with
Speaker 4: China by blocking their communication system. So there's going to
Speaker 4: be a calculation made. Is it worth blocking China's GPS
Speaker 4: for us to harm Iran? And if we could harm
Speaker 4: Iran somehow without blocking the GPS, maybe we choose the
Speaker 4: somehow option, even though it's less because we don't want
Speaker 4: to implicate China into this consideration. So there will be
Speaker 4: some calculation there going on with what's the cost and
Speaker 4: benefit of using this now? And also some of these
Speaker 4: technologies we have to work with GPS in particular, we
Speaker 4: don't want to use it in a conflict like this
Speaker 4: because we're saving it for later in a bigger conflict,
Speaker 4: because some of these things are very very technical and
Speaker 4: sophisticated and depend on the enemy not knowing we have it,
Speaker 4: and if we use it now we can never really
Speaker 4: use it effectively. Again, we could still use it, but
Speaker 4: just wouldn't be surprising and overwhelming and important as it
Speaker 4: would be if we waited, say in a nuclear war
Speaker 4: with Russia, for example. So there's also that calculation being made,
Speaker 4: just like Winston Churchill decided not to announce that we
Speaker 4: had broken Enigma as early as we had, and British
Speaker 4: civilians died because of this, because the importance of just
Speaker 4: having that as a secret was way more powerful than
Speaker 4: just telling the world that we had done so. And
Speaker 4: so there are still things like that in the world,
Speaker 4: including zero day vulnerabilities. We haven't seen very much talk
Speaker 4: about cyber attacks against Iran right now, and there's probably
Speaker 4: a degree of keeping those zero day vulnerabilities secret until
Speaker 4: the future time when we actually need to use these
Speaker 4: more powerful tools, and we've just calculated this is not
Speaker 4: the time, which at the operational level is a very
Speaker 4: wise move, I think, because it's always about measuring risk.
Speaker 4: You can never eliminate it, and you can never use
Speaker 4: everything you've got right now, because the value of it
Speaker 4: goes away the moment you use it, just like nuclear weapons.
Speaker 4: A nuclear weapon is powerful because it's not used the
Speaker 4: moment you use it, the threat is completely understood and
Speaker 4: completely on the table, and it changes the game, and
Speaker 4: the game is only good in your favor if you
Speaker 4: don't use your nukes.
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Speaker 3: It's a great, great point about cyber, you know, the
Speaker 3: one assumes that that is something that we would be
Speaker 3: integrating at this level, you know, Johnna, I mean to
Speaker 3: your point though about not using cyber because we're worried
Speaker 3: about exposing methods. I mean, I'm not sure, you know,
Speaker 3: explain that one to me. I'm not sure I buy that.
Speaker 3: You know, surely we would integrate cyber regardless. We've already
Speaker 3: conducted cyber operations against Iran in conjunction with Israel right
Speaker 3: in the past. Why why would we not do so now,
Speaker 3: especially especially now that we know that the Chinese have
Speaker 3: given them that you know BYD systems. I mean, we're
Speaker 3: trying to right, we're trying to side step. We realized
Speaker 3: jamming is no longer as effective. I think I assume
Speaker 3: that's one of the reasons why we've changed our targeting.
Speaker 3: I say, we collectively in the United States to a
Speaker 3: kind of node by no targeting, going after the surveillance towers,
Speaker 3: like the other day to hit the Chabaha surveillance tower
Speaker 3: in southern Iran. So you know, we realize obviously what
Speaker 3: is happening. I just can't. I mean, I just don't.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure I buy that were waiting on. We're
Speaker 3: reluctant to use cyber at some level. Surely we can
Speaker 3: use cyber operationally without perhaps exposing our methods.
Speaker 4: I think the more normal, let's say cyber operations are
Speaker 4: probably going on what I'm talking about, are the more exquisite,
Speaker 4: one time use things like we saw in Venezuela when
Speaker 4: the president was taken There is a massive cyber attack
Speaker 4: that night that blacked out the city. That's the kind
Speaker 4: of thing that you can only use one time because
Speaker 4: the way that it's used, the way that it's implanted.
Speaker 4: Once it's used, now it's known, and I would not
Speaker 4: be surprised if there were things in Iran that could
Speaker 4: be switched on and off in a way that would
Speaker 4: spectacularly turn the country off in a way that be
Speaker 4: advantageous for us in various ways, but the moment that
Speaker 4: we use we can't use it against Russia and we
Speaker 4: can't use it against China anymore because it will be understood, analyzed,
Speaker 4: exploited turned around. We had the same problem with stucks
Speaker 4: net when we attacked Natons the cyber attack in two
Speaker 4: thousand and seven. The reason Iran developed an offensive cyber
Speaker 4: capability that is very formidable is because they reverse engineered
Speaker 4: the stuckxnet virus that we used in two thousand and
Speaker 4: seven and they use it against Saudi Aramco in the
Speaker 4: Shamun attack, which brought down It was the largest cyber
Speaker 4: attack in Saudi history and destroyed huge amounts of infrastructure
Speaker 4: and oil output on the night of power during Ramadan
Speaker 4: when they use some other cyber tools to analyze pattern
Speaker 4: of life and identified that that was the best time
Speaker 4: to attack. That tool was a child tool of stucks net. Later,
Speaker 4: they also reverse engineered something called Flame, which was a
Speaker 4: cyber tool that the NSA independently developed that was very
Speaker 4: very capable of doing a lot of things. Let's say
Speaker 4: they reverse engineered that and they've been using it ever since,
Speaker 4: and we can't defeat it because the way it was designed.
Speaker 4: It was designed to be undefeatable verse engineered, but it
Speaker 4: can't be stopped. But the way that it actually works,
Speaker 4: So there's that idea of once it's in the wild,
Speaker 4: what happens next? What if North Korea gets their hands
Speaker 4: on this technology and uses it against US or against
Speaker 4: Australia for example. So there's this concern of the effects
Speaker 4: beyond the battle space of using the more exquisite Let's
Speaker 4: say that the one percent tools that we have. The
Speaker 4: other tools are out there, for sure, they're being used
Speaker 4: right now, absolutely, But then there's the cost of what
Speaker 4: happens once we fire this shot? Will it be fired
Speaker 4: at us?
Speaker 2: Too?
Speaker 3: So I mean the media is reporting that Trump's being
Speaker 3: briefed on well obviously is being briefed on military options
Speaker 3: in response to the US deaths. I mean something has
Speaker 3: to be seen to be done, right, And I suppose cyber.
Speaker 3: Another aspect of cyber, which may seem counterintuitive but nevertheless
Speaker 3: is true, is it doesn't have It doesn't have that
Speaker 3: kinetic political effect. Right if you're playing, if you're playing
Speaker 3: to a global and domestic audience, often the effects of
Speaker 3: cyber are not clearly evident and purposefully not publicize, which
Speaker 3: in a sense, if you're looking for especially with a
Speaker 3: war that's less than popular and you wanted to show
Speaker 3: that you're in charge, it's perhaps not as satisfying an
Speaker 3: instrument to use as kinetic targeting. But I know so,
Speaker 3: but talking about tit for tat, so we you know,
Speaker 3: do undoubtedly the options available, and there aren't a wide
Speaker 3: range of options. I mean, going after Iranian infrastructure, right
Speaker 3: it certainly energy infrastructure, another round against Ron's nuclear sites,
Speaker 3: or perhaps targeting one of the underground facilities like the
Speaker 3: one at let's it called Pickaxe Mountain, you know, perhaps
Speaker 3: going in again with bunker busters, something that's going to
Speaker 3: really make the news. So I mean, does appear as
Speaker 3: though obviously the military is preparing for those options. There's reportedly,
Speaker 3: I mean, it's all over Twitter, thirty three aerial refueling tankers,
Speaker 3: Kisey won thirty five's crowding the Tomak and Bengurian airport
Speaker 3: in preparation for something. But at the same time, the
Speaker 3: problem is, again I don't want to appear to be
Speaker 3: chicken little, but the problem is that the Uranians too
Speaker 3: appear to be telling the huthis Hey stand by for
Speaker 3: you and Houthi's moving assets into position being directed to
Speaker 3: move assets into position to give the BAM the band
Speaker 3: Al Mandeb a good slaking. Should the US take targeting
Speaker 3: to the next steps. So now we have both borderways
Speaker 3: threatened and effectively closed off, and meanwhile Iranian strikes on
Speaker 3: on on Kwaiti border posts, oil platform reportedly a desalination
Speaker 3: plant too, although that didn't make the news, but I
Speaker 3: saw it on x Kuwaiti consulate in in Basra to
Speaker 3: Amaradi tankers. Notably, Saudi Arabia has not been hit in
Speaker 3: this round, but they did. They've been issuing. They showed
Speaker 3: another condemnation today against all of these attacks and likely
Speaker 3: may well consider the if the Hoofies get involved this
Speaker 3: as a as a direct attack on Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I wanted to mention, Sorry, John, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did see a little bit of chatter talking about
Speaker 1: like US s letting Saudi Arabia off the off the
Speaker 1: chain for against the HOOFI. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: plausible or actually you know, in the cards. I just
Speaker 1: wanted to get your thoughts on that, sorry, John.
Speaker 4: Well, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular. Qatar obviously
Speaker 4: has been negotiating and helping to negotiate between various parties
Speaker 4: in this conflict. But Saudi foreign ministry officials, high level
Speaker 4: officials attended the funeral for how many which is significant
Speaker 4: if you look at who attended the funeral and at
Speaker 4: what rank were they. This is a very interesting analytical
Speaker 4: exercise if listeners want to look it up. It's very
Speaker 4: fascinating actually to look through like who sent who and
Speaker 4: who are they? The Saudis did send some significant folks
Speaker 4: and if you remember, before the war started, Saudi Arabia
Speaker 4: had been increasing its steps toward so let's say at
Speaker 4: daytant with Iran that Mohammed bin Salmon had been working
Speaker 4: toward and trying to do to to basically, you know,
Speaker 4: calm tensions in the region after especially nim Or Nimmer
Speaker 4: was assassinated a few years previously, are killed executed a
Speaker 4: few years previously. That was a major problem for Iran
Speaker 4: and Saudi relations and since then and both countries have
Speaker 4: been trying to kind of fix that damage. And I
Speaker 4: think seeing the Saudis at the funeral signals that hope
Speaker 4: is still there because Saudi Arabia seeks to benefit by
Speaker 4: regional stability, whatever that means, and the Saudis have their
Speaker 4: own interest. In fact, you know, there's something called a
Speaker 4: one two three agreement, which is a special nuclear agreement
Speaker 4: between the US and a foreign partner about how nuclear
Speaker 4: research and development should go. The US is negotiating a
Speaker 4: one two three agreement with Saudi Arabia right now, which
Speaker 4: will allow the Saudis to enrich uranium or and plutonium.
Speaker 4: And interestingly, there are no restrictions on weaponization on this
Speaker 4: particular agreement. Every one two three agreement is different between countries.
Speaker 4: When I was in Jordan, we were negotiating a one
Speaker 4: two three agreement with Jordan, there's had a weaponization cap
Speaker 4: on it or restriction on it. The Saudis negotiated one
Speaker 4: without it, which is a pretty big deal and also
Speaker 4: shows you know, that's Saudi Arabia trying to fix itself
Speaker 4: in the region as a power. And they have said
Speaker 4: Muhammed bin Salman himself said, you know, if Iran gets
Speaker 4: nuclear weapon in Saudi Arabia is getting one two And
Speaker 4: I mentioned all that context because Saudi Arabia cares about
Speaker 4: Saudi integrity, sovereignty and stability, price stability for their country,
Speaker 4: and so they're looking at this like, how do we
Speaker 4: balance against all these competing interests. We have this very
Speaker 4: powerful neighbor, Iran. We also have Iran controlling some elements
Speaker 4: inside of Yemen, but we also have shared interests in
Speaker 4: Opek and oil prices and economics in the region. So
Speaker 4: Saudi Arabia is playing a diplomatic not necessarily a game,
Speaker 4: but they're being careful about how exactly do they commit
Speaker 4: to either side, and what kind of side do they take,
Speaker 4: and how do they fit into this, just like Katar
Speaker 4: is doing, but for different reasons, and I think the
Speaker 4: attendance at the funeral kind of indicates that. And with
Speaker 4: the Houthis, maybe Saudi Arabia is allowed to be unrestrained,
Speaker 4: but does that mean they will be unrestrained. That's a
Speaker 4: question for the Saudi government to make the decision on,
Speaker 4: not the US to tell them, hey, go fight the Huthis.
Speaker 2: Instead, it's going to be a.
Speaker 4: Saudi decision about how much do we actually do here,
Speaker 4: because we do care about the day after the war.
Speaker 4: After the war ends, we still need to find some
Speaker 4: common ground with whatever Iranian government remains after this war.
Speaker 4: So we can't go too far and too hard because
Speaker 4: there could be repercussions. And it's a similar concept to
Speaker 4: what happened with UAE in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where
Speaker 4: there were divisions on how those two states decided to
Speaker 4: prosecute the war in Yemen, with the Saudis deciding one
Speaker 4: way and the Amordis deciding to remain. And that's a
Speaker 4: very interesting thing to think about because those states do
Speaker 4: care about the day after the war much more than
Speaker 4: the West and the United States cares about it.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, And you know, from a Saudi perspective,
Speaker 3: it makes perfect sense, of course, because I think and
Speaker 3: it'll be interesting, you know, John, I don't know who
Speaker 3: you feel about this, but I mean I don't We're
Speaker 3: not going to stop Iran from getting the bomb. I
Speaker 3: mean we aren't. Eventually Iran will get the bomb. The
Speaker 3: prize is too evident to be a member of the club.
Speaker 3: Brings such prestige, but it brings in fun us ability.
Speaker 3: Right look at North Korea, and it's just too difficult
Speaker 3: to actually prevent Iran from doing so. I mean, we've
Speaker 3: done our best at this stage. It's not as though
Speaker 3: we did those strikes back in June as a warning
Speaker 3: to the nuclear program. I mean, it was a wholehearted
Speaker 3: attempt to eliminate around this nuclear program. But for all
Speaker 3: the reasons we've talked about on this program, that's we've
Speaker 3: probably by launching Midnight Hammer. Again not a criticism necessarily,
Speaker 3: but by launching Midnight Hammer, the fact that it failed
Speaker 3: turned a near impossible task probably into an impossible one.
Speaker 3: Undoubtedly the Uranians have learned from that strike. They learned
Speaker 3: very quickly, right, They've learned how to better conceal, They've
Speaker 3: learned to do their centrifuges. The enriched Uranian gets dispersed,
Speaker 3: and even the you know, the technology we have cannot
Speaker 3: cannot put a holt to the program. I think my
Speaker 3: feeling is, without being an expert in that field, that
Speaker 3: we're just not going to prevent a run from doing so,
Speaker 3: you know, diplomatically, publicly we always say that this is
Speaker 3: it's unacceptable. But what do we really focus on? Probably
Speaker 3: where we focus on are the problems that are most
Speaker 3: imminent to us interests or mooses number one. Number two
Speaker 3: are the proxies. But specifically I mean not his Bolla,
Speaker 3: not even the Huthis, although they are a Second, the
Speaker 3: number one proxy that we should be concerned about are
Speaker 3: the Iranian back militias in Iraq, who've launched something like
Speaker 3: one hundred and eighty attacks on US forces in the
Speaker 3: last three years. I mean significant amount. I mean, and
Speaker 3: are only gaining traction in Iraq. That's that's a you know,
Speaker 3: after Hemu, that's the biggest issue. Again, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: that we tell Iran, hey, don't worry about it, but
Speaker 3: this looks to me perhaps as a way of at
Speaker 3: least hedging our bets. All right. So there are those
Speaker 3: who would argue, even if Iran gets the bomb, it's
Speaker 3: not an existential threat, not even to Israel, even though
Speaker 3: we hear Israel say all the time it's an existential threat.
Speaker 3: Israel's got the bomb too. But if you can if
Speaker 3: you can enable all right, or turn a blind eye
Speaker 3: to other regional partners in the rich and uranium and
Speaker 3: developing their own program, then arguably you help a little
Speaker 3: bit balance the nuclear balance of power right in the region.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not suggesting that's our work here, but
Speaker 3: undoubtedly that's in everyone's mind. So this agreement is on
Speaker 3: Trump's desk. He am my understanding. He hasn't signed it yet,
Speaker 3: As John pointed out, significant because until this point, the
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine deal with UAE was considered the
Speaker 3: gold standard, and for that UAE got the civil nuclear
Speaker 3: cooperation but explicitly gave up the right to enrich uranium
Speaker 3: or reprocess plutonium. You know, under this protocol does Saudi
Speaker 3: Arabia would not agree to do either of those things. So,
Speaker 3: you know, the US is currently fighting a war against Iran,
Speaker 3: but Trump himself has framed at least party has been
Speaker 3: about stopping around from using enriched uranium to build a weapon.
Speaker 3: At the same time, there's kind of perhaps the realization
Speaker 3: that this isn't really going to be possible. So now
Speaker 3: sitting on his desk as a deal that would let
Speaker 3: Saudi Arabia around its principal regional rival enriched uranium domestically
Speaker 3: with weaker safeguards than the standard Washington itself set for UAE.
Speaker 3: So you could credibly you could credibly say this is
Speaker 3: only a deliberate decision and an acceptance of the fact
Speaker 3: that we can't stop and ran from crossing that red line.
Speaker 3: So perhaps we'd moved the red line for other upon
Speaker 3: as in the region.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think if Saudi Arabia began in enriching uranium,
Speaker 4: it would be crazy to think that Iran would not
Speaker 4: try to do so again, just from a purely realist
Speaker 4: you know, like we in the West, we love political
Speaker 4: realism and the realist you know, theory of international relations.
Speaker 4: It's like a textbook example of Okay, step one, Saudi
Speaker 4: Arabia and riches uranium. Step two, Iran riches uranium. This
Speaker 4: is exactly how states think and work as states, as
Speaker 4: black boxes, like forget the emotional issues within the regime
Speaker 4: and ideology and religion, just pure political action, like why
Speaker 4: would you not do it? It would not make sense,
Speaker 4: especially when Israel already has over one hundred nuclear weapons
Speaker 4: and has not signed the Nuclear non Proliferation Treaty or
Speaker 4: the Biological Weapons controls or any of these other treaties
Speaker 4: and controls that other states have signed and have not
Speaker 4: followed perfectly but have still signed them, and those are
Speaker 4: still Israel just refuses to sign them at all, which
Speaker 4: kind of signals like what Israel is going to do.
Speaker 4: If they want to use these, they will use them.
Speaker 4: And if now Saudi Arabia has it again, the principal
Speaker 4: rival besides Israel. Now you have these two states that
Speaker 4: have both interests in keeping you out of the game.
Speaker 4: You're going to want to play the game, and you're
Speaker 4: going to do it clandestinely because you don't want.
Speaker 2: It to be stopped.
Speaker 4: So instead of stopping them and scaring them into not
Speaker 4: enriching uranium, we're going to actually be forcing them deeper
Speaker 4: and harder to find, and they will be doing it
Speaker 4: in a way that will be more difficult for us
Speaker 4: to stop. They'll also build alliances that may be surprising
Speaker 4: to us so that they can gain access to materiel
Speaker 4: and the information that they might not already have or
Speaker 4: has been eliminated or destroyed since twenty twelve, after Israel
Speaker 4: started assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists. We may see them make
Speaker 4: alliances with countries we wouldn't expect. China is a great
Speaker 4: example of that. China is an atheistic communist country. Iran
Speaker 4: is a Shia ideological you know, religious state, and their
Speaker 4: closest ally is China. That's not because they agree with
Speaker 4: Chinese atheist communism. It's because China is willing to be
Speaker 4: on their side and help them in this world where
Speaker 4: they're isolated. Just like in Sudan Iran, the IERGC built
Speaker 4: a navy base in Sudan. Sudan was their greatest regional
Speaker 4: partner for in the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands,
Speaker 4: the IRGC navy trained all of Sudan's navy. After Omar
Speaker 4: al Bashir was removed, the Emirates went into Sudan and
Speaker 4: started co opting the Sudanese government toward the Amorti side,
Speaker 4: and Iran lost a TOHL there in Northeast Africa. So
Speaker 4: that's just something to think about. Like, regional politics are
Speaker 4: very real here. It's not about ideology. It's about how
Speaker 4: do I keep my state strong Visavi your state? And
Speaker 4: the nuclear issue is the ultimate pinnacle issue for these states,
Speaker 4: jockeying for what power means to them. And if if
Speaker 4: my adversary has a nuclear weapon, you better believe I'll
Speaker 4: try to get one too, And that's how they're going
Speaker 4: to look at it. I mean, it would be kind
Speaker 4: of crazy to think otherwise.
Speaker 1: Would Israel be okay with Saudi Arabia, you know, having
Speaker 1: the door open essentially to getting a.
Speaker 2: Bomb, certainly not.
Speaker 4: I think there's going to be lobbying from the Israeli
Speaker 4: side to go against that, but ultimately it's US decisions
Speaker 4: about what do we want power structures to look like.
Speaker 4: In the Middle East, we have a lot of basing
Speaker 4: access and overflight with Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain.
Speaker 4: Those states all have a seat at the table. They
Speaker 4: get a voice, and they get a vote. It may
Speaker 4: not be as strong as Israel's sometimes, but it is
Speaker 4: something that is meaningful. And those states can ban together
Speaker 4: and say hey, we want X. Israel might say you
Speaker 4: can't have it, and the US says, well, unfortunately, both
Speaker 4: of you can't get what you want. I'm going to
Speaker 4: give half of X to you guys and stop the
Speaker 4: other half because of this other pressure or some other consideration.
Speaker 4: So it'll come down to what do all these states
Speaker 4: say and what do US interests look like at that time.
Speaker 4: And remember OPEK is very important, but we have a
Speaker 4: new change with OPEK. Emirates departed OPEK.
Speaker 2: This is a.
Speaker 4: Really interesting development that will affect how the US operates
Speaker 4: in the Middle East because it's going to affect economics globally.
Speaker 4: And the question is what happens with OPEK going forward?
Speaker 4: Vis A VI, These nuclear discussions because it's an energy
Speaker 4: issue fundamentally, you know, nuclear power is an energy issued
Speaker 4: the France's energy twenty five percent of it is nuclear power.
Speaker 4: So ultimately, you know, in the future, after the Emirates
Speaker 4: and these other Gulf nations try to divest themselves of
Speaker 4: dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear energy is going to become
Speaker 4: very important for those countries, and OPEK will become less
Speaker 4: and less relevant over time, and that's something that they
Speaker 4: are considering. It's something the US is also thinking about.
Speaker 2: Mc molroy Hello, all right.
Speaker 6: Jens, it's spend one of those days, as you guys
Speaker 6: already know. I'm sure you're already talking about it. It's
Speaker 6: just jumping from one to the next to the next.
Speaker 1: What is mainstream media talking about.
Speaker 6: Obviously the deaths of our service members in Jordan, which
Speaker 6: is tragic, unfortunately expected that it's going to happen as
Speaker 6: these things escalate, and thoughts solvishly to the family and
Speaker 6: friends of this and the one missing, which I'm not
Speaker 6: quite sure I understand how one is missing, but perhaps
Speaker 6: it's just the damage done to the location where they
Speaker 6: were present.
Speaker 7: One thing i'd bring up on that.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you guys have already covered it,
Speaker 6: but I want to know who's providing targeting information to
Speaker 6: the Iranians because it's it's they're not.
Speaker 2: This good, right, So we get talked about that a
Speaker 2: little bit.
Speaker 6: Yeah good, what was your guys? Well, I don't want
Speaker 6: you to recast what you already talked to the talk
Speaker 6: to the audience about. But my concern is it's China,
Speaker 6: Russia both, and I think the US, right, I would imagine,
Speaker 6: so yeah, I would imagine the intelligence community has been
Speaker 6: tasked of finding out determining it and if it fits
Speaker 6: in fact the case, there needs to be some kind
Speaker 6: of consequences.
Speaker 7: So I'm not saying we've got a world China anything, but.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we got to protect our service men and women
Speaker 6: at all costs. And if they get these targeting data
Speaker 6: that's allowing them to hit precise targets.
Speaker 7: Like that, we need to we need to address it.
Speaker 4: But the Russians did the same thing with the GRU
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan. If you remember, they're putting out information on
Speaker 4: US forces and things. And China has already provided imagery
Speaker 4: intelligence using their proprietary satellites that are not commercially available
Speaker 4: for Iran at the outset of the war, so it
Speaker 4: would be you know, par for the course to expect
Speaker 4: them to continue doing that.
Speaker 1: And the Iranians we mentioned they're using the Chinese version
Speaker 1: of GPS, that that's harder to jam on our end,
Speaker 1: all right.
Speaker 6: Yes, And other than that, I mean, it really does
Speaker 6: look like we're headed toward major escalation. I mean, if
Speaker 6: we're not already there, right and from all of the
Speaker 6: publicly available information on the flow of you know, the airflow,
Speaker 6: et cetera, this looks like it's going to go up
Speaker 6: and it's going to be prolonged. So we're looking at
Speaker 6: a and then of course we have the other shoot
Speaker 6: to drop when it comes to increasing direct attax on
Speaker 6: ships in the Red Sea Blahnda by the Huthis, you know,
Speaker 6: strikes Yeah, one important point that I did talk about
Speaker 6: this morning. You know, we're hitting facilities infrastructure in Iran, right, like,
Speaker 6: including potentially desalinization plants. As I'm sure Jonathan can tell you,
Speaker 6: Iran doesn't rely on desalinization plants near as much as
Speaker 6: the Gulf countries like Kuwaits like ninety. It comes from water,
Speaker 6: comes from the sea to desalinization, and I think like
Speaker 6: Ohman's about eighty percent, seventy percent in Saudi Arabia that
Speaker 6: I was looking at, and maybe around fifty percent in
Speaker 6: the UAE. There's like entire cities it would have to
Speaker 6: be evacuated if they successfully target a lot of desalinization
Speaker 6: plants in the Gulf. Right, So this is this is
Speaker 6: not parody when it comes to reliance on that. And
Speaker 6: Iran's clearly saying they're gonna they're going to hit economic targets,
Speaker 6: including energy and decimalization plants.
Speaker 7: And I think they already did in Kuwait.
Speaker 4: So and just to put that on there, it's three
Speaker 4: percent of Iran's water comes from desalinized water.
Speaker 7: Three percent ago.
Speaker 6: Didn't know that, so ninety Kuwait three And I don't
Speaker 6: know what the plan would be if they successfully knocked
Speaker 6: out the desalinization plants in some of.
Speaker 4: These countries, and in Iran, those desalinization plants are generally
Speaker 4: all in the south right by the Straits of War
Speaker 4: moves because those are kind of isolated coastal communities that
Speaker 4: don't have access to the same mountainous water resources that
Speaker 4: the rest of the country has. So by taking those out,
Speaker 4: it's a very localized target deck that has almost no
Speaker 4: impact strategically on the overall military situation in Iran.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. About a year ago there was a
Speaker 3: meeting here at the embassy and talking about various threats
Speaker 3: and what might precipitate a basically an audited evacuation of
Speaker 3: US and other foreign nationals. And they covered a variety
Speaker 3: of threats. But they are sitting next to a brit
Speaker 3: who works for an oil company here, and he leaned
Speaker 3: over and he said, hey, they haven't they haven't touched
Speaker 3: the most serious, which is if Iran goes after desalination plants.
Speaker 3: He said, that changes the whole game. And so you're
Speaker 3: kind of seeing that. It's an interesting point and it's
Speaker 3: probably one that wouldn't have occurred to US maybe, but
Speaker 3: it's talking about critical infrastructure number one and number two.
Speaker 3: It is particularly vulnerable. These plants are easy to hit
Speaker 3: and they tend to be well within missile range. And
Speaker 3: you know, in a country like all these countries, right
Speaker 3: with the air offense assets available, it's really hard to
Speaker 3: cover these dispersed sites against multiple types of threat. That's
Speaker 3: part of the problems we're seeing along with the you know,
Speaker 3: in an increased accuracy of Iranian missiles and then to
Speaker 3: mixed point about the who they's that's particularly a concern.
Speaker 3: It's you know, the the trigger point for that could
Speaker 3: well be the US up in the ante and hitting
Speaker 3: Iranian infrastructure. We had a senior hoof the official this
Speaker 3: week saying, you know, if the current situation gets worse,
Speaker 3: we're going to close the band the Bab Almen depth
Speaker 3: straight and where we're going to have an alliance with Iran.
Speaker 3: And we've already seen, uh, you know, after Yemeni forces
Speaker 3: bombed the Sinar Airport runway right a couple of weeks
Speaker 3: ago to block an Iranian delegation flight from landing. The
Speaker 3: Hufi's blamed Saudi Arabia for it, even though it was
Speaker 3: actually Yemen's own government forces, and they retaliated by firing
Speaker 3: ballistic missile salvo at Appa Airport in southern Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 3: So now now the hoofis are saying that there will
Speaker 3: be an outright siege on Saudi Arabia and that they
Speaker 3: intend to paralyze all Saudi airports if there is any
Speaker 3: more interference with those flights. So so that could be
Speaker 3: there's an additional possible trigger. And then on the shipping side. Obviously,
Speaker 3: they've been reported attacks and commercial vessels near the Ban
Speaker 3: band Almendeb and off Judea in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 3: And plus a separate incident was Saudi ban THEMNY forces
Speaker 3: intercepted a boat smuggling weapons manufacturing components for the bound
Speaker 3: for the Hufi's in the same strait. So you've got
Speaker 3: a tax going both ways already in the street. And
Speaker 3: that's yeah. Again, desalination plants, increased accuracy of Iranian missile targeting,
Speaker 3: and now the threat to the BAM. The escalation isn't
Speaker 3: all going to be one sided. That's I think the
Speaker 3: problem we're dealing with.
Speaker 4: And plus about five years ago, if you remember, the
Speaker 4: Saudi intelligence headquarters was struck by a drone that was
Speaker 4: either I think it was Kaypes Balaara, Yemen. But they
Speaker 4: had the precision capability five six years ago to hit
Speaker 4: deep inside of Saudi Arabia at fixed targets that they
Speaker 4: were aware of. They haven't forgotten that. In fact, they've
Speaker 4: gotten better and as you mentioned, Andy, they were receiving
Speaker 4: new parts to actually help make their weapons smarter, you know,
Speaker 4: putting electrical components on there to make the rockets more precise,
Speaker 4: to make the speed more correct, to make the trajectory better.
Speaker 4: So they're actually getting better at every component of how
Speaker 4: these weapons work, so that when they are used, they're
Speaker 4: going to have better and better capability. They're also learning
Speaker 4: each time they use one of these weapons, they're doing
Speaker 4: lessons learned and thinking about, Okay, last time we fired this, X, Y,
Speaker 4: and Z happened, how do we get around that problem there?
Speaker 7: How do we defeat this?
Speaker 4: And with the air defense is as you mentioned, the
Speaker 4: only real way to have a successful envelope of air
Speaker 4: defense is to have air defense systems physically located at
Speaker 4: all the target locations. And it can't just be one type.
Speaker 4: It can't just be let's say, a Jericho air defense missile.
Speaker 4: It has to be something that can hit at every
Speaker 4: single distance and trajectory and altitude because there are multiple
Speaker 4: different ways that these can enter the atmosphere and land
Speaker 4: on a target. Some of our systems like Patriots, can
Speaker 4: only intercept a particular vector of that envelope. We need
Speaker 4: other things like the air, like the iron dome to
Speaker 4: cover these gaps. And they understand this, it's all math.
Speaker 4: They understand, you know, this weapon fire is at this
Speaker 4: speed at this number of degrees. That means I fi
Speaker 4: fire at this angle, I can penetrate that pocket because
Speaker 4: I know they have these three types of air defenses
Speaker 4: that can only defend a ninety percent of the envelope
Speaker 4: leading ten percent open. And so this is something that
Speaker 4: they're understanding. And those rocket motors they're using allow them
Speaker 4: to actually adjust the rocket as it re enters to
Speaker 4: go between that gap in the air defenses. And we
Speaker 4: actually saw that in Jordan, the way that that the
Speaker 4: intermediate range ballistic missile was used. It was actually adjusted
Speaker 4: in flight to strike in a particular way. And that's
Speaker 4: something that they did conceptually know how to do, but
Speaker 4: they hadn't been really using it very much, and they
Speaker 4: just used it now, which means we should expect them
Speaker 4: to use it more. It was very successful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the Saudists are really really good with
Speaker 3: the They've got their Patriot batteries and they are excellent
Speaker 3: at i mean their air defense system. Their air defense
Speaker 3: guys are selected among the best of their intakes for
Speaker 3: obvious reasons, because they are actively outwarm more than any
Speaker 3: other service here. But the problem, of course is the equipment.
Speaker 3: It's the same problem that we the US are dealing with,
Speaker 3: and the acquisition problem with a drone and the shy
Speaker 3: head type drone flies low, you know, in a kind
Speaker 3: of sixty I mean it's from from about you know,
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty feet up to I don't know,
Speaker 3: a thousand feet or so, right and slow with the
Speaker 3: radar signature the size of a large bird. And that's
Speaker 3: exactly the profile that conventional radar, to include patriot acquisition
Speaker 3: radar is not good at capturing. And you know, these
Speaker 3: things get lost in the ground clutter, and then you
Speaker 3: disperse them, you're going to get you know, you're going
Speaker 3: to get them. You're going to get some are going
Speaker 3: to get through, especially as we talked about with their
Speaker 3: increased methods of combining drones with missile Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 3: I would say it's an impossible target set to eliminate
Speaker 3: the threat, but it's certainly extremely difficult.
Speaker 6: So the question is what are we going to do? Right,
Speaker 6: there's not great options and it's hard to see. You know,
Speaker 6: we're not going to give up that's strategically suicidal. Can
Speaker 6: we endure the pain of dramatically increased energy costs? It
Speaker 6: looks like we're going to have to. Can we do
Speaker 6: things to put more pressure on the regime, Absolutely, But
Speaker 6: the question is how long will it take to get
Speaker 6: enough pressure that they would actually kind of bend to
Speaker 6: our will and agree with something more in line what's
Speaker 6: acceptable to us, like secondary actions, pushing that trying to
Speaker 6: cut off the ground, you know, logistical corridors that they
Speaker 6: resupply and obviously provide some economic benefits, just like we're
Speaker 6: dealing with the maritime in the blockade. I don't know
Speaker 6: how long it's going to take, right, And I do
Speaker 6: think you know, obviously Iran thinks that they can play
Speaker 6: up the political issues is caused, which I think is true,
Speaker 6: but that's going to lead up to the election day
Speaker 6: in November, and then what happens after that, Right, their
Speaker 6: leverage if they have any, and I think they do,
Speaker 6: kind of goes away after that, right, because what happens
Speaker 6: happens in the election, then it is and then there's
Speaker 6: no more election for President Trump and there's no more
Speaker 6: election for his party wise still in office.
Speaker 7: So I mean, it just seems.
Speaker 6: Like it's going to escalate substantially and expand.
Speaker 7: What I mean by expand.
Speaker 6: Is we're already talking about it, the consequences of the Gulf.
Speaker 6: I don't know what they would do if they do.
Speaker 6: Uh see not only their energy infrastructures targeted, which it
Speaker 6: already has been and it can be, and that will
Speaker 6: increase the you know, the issue with worldwide energy lack
Speaker 6: of supply, but also the actual capacity to stay in
Speaker 6: the country, like Andy is talking about Angolan. You know,
Speaker 6: no water, can't can't live in a desert, right, So
Speaker 6: this is going to go from some of these beautiful
Speaker 6: cities to completely unpopulated if that happens. I don't want
Speaker 6: to be like a pocket apocalyptic here, but it's things
Speaker 6: that could happen. I don't I don't think what we're
Speaker 6: talking about is out of the realm of possibility here.
Speaker 6: So we got we got to be prepared for contingencies
Speaker 6: that we didn't plan for, or even if we did
Speaker 6: plan for them. I don't know what the answer would be,
Speaker 6: how do we keep a population and do buy or
Speaker 6: Doha or Kuwait city that doesn't have.
Speaker 7: Direct access to.
Speaker 4: I think probably the uncomfortable answer is that ground troops
Speaker 4: would eventually be required to have a decisive end to
Speaker 4: this conflict. Because we've had extensive economic sanctions. We've had
Speaker 4: extensive diplomatic interactions in various capacities. We have an information advantage,
Speaker 4: you know, lots of international pressure. The regime has been
Speaker 4: under pressure for forty seven years. Their entire economy is
Speaker 4: built around resistance. I mean, it's not like a new
Speaker 4: concept for them. So I wouldn't be surprised if the
Speaker 4: only way to actually decisively end this would be ground forces,
Speaker 4: which is not something I advocate for, like zero percent
Speaker 4: advocacy for that. I do not think it's a good
Speaker 4: idea for US forces.
Speaker 2: That would be yeah, because you have a brain.
Speaker 4: It would be like a Vietnam like commitment with probably
Speaker 4: Vietnam like ending, And I think it would probably be
Speaker 4: an unwise move for the US interest generally, not just
Speaker 4: the Middle East, but generally to do that. But if
Speaker 4: we're looking at it from a you know, unbuy rational
Speaker 4: outsider perspective, if it was like pieces on a chessboard,
Speaker 4: the only way to get the checkmate is to kill
Speaker 4: the king and bring it down. I mean, you can't
Speaker 4: just leave the king running around without ending. And that's probably,
Speaker 4: unfortunately the only way militarily to end this. Of course,
Speaker 4: there could be a diplomatic outcome that would be lopsided
Speaker 4: toward the United States that we could negotiate, which seemed
Speaker 4: to be what we were barreling toward with an uninformed
Speaker 4: backing into it. But I don't think that that's going
Speaker 4: to end well for the US. On the dramatic side, the.
Speaker 3: Thing is, I don't see use of ground troops. I
Speaker 3: see no options for US of ground troops that would
Speaker 3: be decisive unless you unless you're talking about an invasion
Speaker 3: force of three hundred thousand troops, I mean invading Arman
Speaker 3: with all the consequences that that would entail. I mean,
Speaker 3: none of the ground options that are being touted to
Speaker 3: this date, from seizing islands and moves occupying cog, occupying
Speaker 3: you know, the coastline, going after enriched uranium, none of
Speaker 3: those seem at all practical and heavily outweighed by the risks.
Speaker 3: I just can't for a moment think that the United
Speaker 3: States with planning an invasion. The war is unpopular as
Speaker 3: it is, but I mean, i'm i'm I agree with you.
Speaker 3: There's nothing there's no more of the same, there's no
Speaker 3: escalation path that's going to lead to success, for seeable
Speaker 3: success We've we've tried everything, right, So what are we
Speaker 3: going to do now? Hit energy infrastructure, hit nuclear infrastructure harder,
Speaker 3: and it's.
Speaker 2: Do some more crimes. Yeah, of Israel's books.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's option one. But I mean, to
Speaker 3: John's point, the option two is to find you know,
Speaker 3: his Qatar and Oman, finding some path to another ceasefire
Speaker 3: and and working out some way to reconcile the fact
Speaker 3: that Iran wants some form of control or tall authority
Speaker 3: over hormose and the US wants free passage restored. It's
Speaker 3: really all about homose. I think at this stage, I
Speaker 3: don't I think the US would accept any option that
Speaker 3: ignored that ostensibly ignored even nuclear Enrichmond at this stage,
Speaker 3: just to get the straits open. And no one's even
Speaker 3: talked about the proxies recently, you know.
Speaker 6: What I mean.
Speaker 3: It's no one's talked about control of missile, ballistic missile inventory,
Speaker 3: any of that stuff. It's all about hormos.
Speaker 2: That's done. That's done.
Speaker 1: I mean, if I'm the Iranians too, like in the room,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, guys, that's done. We don't even talk
Speaker 1: about that anymore, and faces like that's over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, The other thing that's kind of interesting us in
Speaker 3: the John talking about you know, du asked about Israel.
Speaker 3: Won't Israel be opposed to Saudi Arabia. It's really interesting
Speaker 3: to watch the dynamics in the Republican Party, specifically around
Speaker 3: the administration when it comes to relations with Israel. They
Speaker 3: are distancing themselves rapidly. You see JD. Vance's latest comments,
Speaker 3: and and it's ironic, isn't it really? Because netnya who
Speaker 3: has nowhere to go now. You know, when it was Obama,
Speaker 3: he could talk to Congress, but that's that's just not
Speaker 3: available anymore. When when when the right wing of the
Speaker 3: Republican Party, when the when the crew round Trump are
Speaker 3: distant to include Trump himself for distancing themselves from Israel
Speaker 3: and even implicitly in some cases advances Vance's case, explicitly
Speaker 3: blaming Israel for problems that we are facing. Now. It's
Speaker 3: you know, if I was, if I was in ISRAELI
Speaker 3: I would be really concerned about that. I think it's unprecedented,
Speaker 3: absolutely unprecedented. We didn't even see we didn't see anything
Speaker 3: like this under Biden. No was always not you know
Speaker 3: what I mean, but.
Speaker 1: We never we never had passurely attacked a Ran but
Speaker 1: killed their killed their leader. So expected things to be great,
Speaker 1: but I think the other president has been that stupid.
Speaker 3: It's going to have great implications, as John points out,
Speaker 3: for the for the balance of power in the region,
Speaker 3: especially as we're talking about this unprecedented, potentially unprecedented uranium
Speaker 3: Richmond agreement with Saudi Arabia. You know, who knows what follows.
Speaker 3: F thirty five's all over the place to you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's no doubt about it that the administration
Speaker 3: is trying to make good with Golf States, having realized
Speaker 3: that has forfeited a good deal of goodwill in this wall.
Speaker 4: And I think also you should be watching the elections
Speaker 4: in Sorry I was gonna mention the Israeli elections coming
Speaker 4: up October twenty seventh. There is a real threat that
Speaker 4: BB will lose control over domestic Israeli politics and possibly
Speaker 4: with Gottie Eisencote, who's a Sephardic Jew, not an Ashkenazi Jew,
Speaker 4: potentially taking over politics in the country with a coalition
Speaker 4: with very different views about how this conflict should be
Speaker 4: prosecuted and how relations with the US should be constructed,
Speaker 4: and things like this. So that's going to be and
Speaker 4: it's hard to predict what that will look like because
Speaker 4: it's a coalition based government, so we don't know exactly
Speaker 4: who will join that coalition and how those views will
Speaker 4: influence the state's view toward those things. So that's an
Speaker 4: interesting kind of spanner that's going to be thrown into
Speaker 4: this three way conflict between Israel, Iran, the United States.
Speaker 4: Because US elections in November will also change calculations. So
Speaker 4: it's a very short time right now. In three months,
Speaker 4: the politics of two of those three players will change somehow, somehow.
Speaker 4: It's hard to say, but it will be different than
Speaker 4: it is today.
Speaker 1: I mean, I hate to be the guy that says this,
Speaker 1: but we need to like bite the bullet for lack
Speaker 1: of a better term, and uh, don't put good money
Speaker 1: after bad because this is going nowhere fast and ground
Speaker 1: troops is political suicide for anybody who even thinks about
Speaker 1: and talks about it seriously in Congress or the White House,
Speaker 1: even Trump, who's like teflon don all that bullshit. Three
Speaker 1: hundred thousand troops in another fucking forever war. What did
Speaker 1: he campaign on?
Speaker 2: Right? Why did so many people back this guy even.
Speaker 4: With a one percent casualty rate, you're talking about three
Speaker 4: thousand Americans dead and a three hundred thousand person deployment.
Speaker 4: That's unpalatable. That's almost as many died in twenty years
Speaker 4: in Afghanistan. Rock completely unpalatable. And you're fighting an enemy
Speaker 4: who's a conventional military force, not an irregular insurgency in
Speaker 4: the mountains. With SA sevens, this is an actual military
Speaker 4: with with a lot of resources and international backing from
Speaker 4: very powerful allies. It would be a very different game
Speaker 4: than the one we had in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: In Iraq, you have to assume that, like the Pentagon
Speaker 1: has a force depletion, right like, so you know it's
Speaker 1: going to be way more than one percent, obviously, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know than it was in Iraq or Afghanistan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tall order, there's.
Speaker 3: No doubt, there's no exaggeration of numbers. By the way,
Speaker 3: I mean think about it. We invaded at Raq with
Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty thousand and we realized it was
Speaker 3: not enough to do.
Speaker 1: What we needed, like what eighty thousand contractors?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, you know, and that was against a
Speaker 3: vastly depleted force and different terrain, smaller country.
Speaker 1: Uh, you name it. Yeah, golf for one. How many
Speaker 1: troops that we have in there, do you guys know?
Speaker 4: I want to say a quarter million. Because there was
Speaker 4: the Saudi coalition that were Syrians fighting with us as well,
Speaker 4: we had we had a pretty wide coalition at the time.
Speaker 4: This time we won't have that.
Speaker 1: Riddle me that a fucking coalition to go into a
Speaker 1: fucking war. It's guys, we're out out of ours. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: What's going on here is crazy. You guys both know,
Speaker 1: and you guys are being gentlemanly, and I respect you
Speaker 1: and love you guys for it, but this is fucking crazy,
Speaker 1: and frankly, we need to just take the l and negotiate. However,
Speaker 1: we need to negotiate because if it's truly about uranium
Speaker 1: enrichment and nuclear weapons, that's what we should focus on.
Speaker 1: And more and more that JCPOA is looking better and
Speaker 1: better every fucking every fucking day.
Speaker 3: I don't think it is about you play weapons anymore.
Speaker 3: It's about Yeah, I think it's all about whole moves,
Speaker 3: you know, And and I don't know what's going on
Speaker 3: behind closed doors, but I look, if you, if you're
Speaker 3: a realist, you're gonna have to accept Iran's going to
Speaker 3: get the bomb. I mean, Iran is going to get
Speaker 3: the bomb. And anyone who says they're not going to
Speaker 3: get the bomb, tell me how they're not going to
Speaker 3: get the bomb. Explain it. Because we've done our best,
Speaker 3: we've shot our ball, and you know, as John says,
Speaker 3: unless we invade the country, we're not going to start
Speaker 3: them getting the bomb. So politically, diplomatically, of course, we
Speaker 3: say that's unacceptable. But what do we do. We hedge
Speaker 3: our bets and we focus on the things that really matter,
Speaker 3: getting all moose open. And I'm saying, go after the
Speaker 3: link with the militias in Iraq because those are a
Speaker 3: real those are a real threat to the region, they're
Speaker 3: a threat to us. I'm going to get beaten up
Speaker 3: for saying this. His bolla is not a threat to
Speaker 3: the United States. Okay, I know, if Hey, I get it.
Speaker 3: I know if Mark was on, he'd waxed lyrical about
Speaker 3: what happened in the eighties. Look, you know the japan
Speaker 3: and Germans killed a lot of Americans too. You know,
Speaker 3: you've got to move on. But his bolla is not
Speaker 3: a direct They're not a they're not our friends, don't
Speaker 3: get me wrong. I'm not saying his balla is good.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, what is what is the most direct threat
Speaker 3: of the United States among the proxies the Iranian back
Speaker 3: militias in Iraq, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: If we want any presence in the region, especially in
Speaker 3: Syria and even in Jordan, but especially in Iraq, we
Speaker 3: need to we need to curtail their ability to hurt us.
Speaker 3: And that is something that we need out of out
Speaker 3: of Iraq, I mean out of Iran, right along with
Speaker 3: the straits being open and and we and we don't
Speaker 3: tell them, hey, it's okay to have a nuclear weapon,
Speaker 3: but we understand beneath the surface they're going to get one.
Speaker 3: That's that's my feeling.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get beaten up for saying this. No,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's okay. I'm just saying it's impossible
Speaker 3: to stop it.
Speaker 8: The reality of the situation, the reality, yeah yeah, And
Speaker 8: so what else do you do, Well, you're trying to
Speaker 8: fact the balance of pair in the region other than
Speaker 8: is for perhaps you let other regional partners and rich uranium, right.
Speaker 3: And what's that's what that looks like.
Speaker 1: That's what's happening, and if you read John's book Ran
Speaker 1: Shadow Weapons, it is very clear that Iran's prime their
Speaker 1: aim the Iranian regime is to stay in power and frankly,
Speaker 1: after what's gone on over the last let's call it
Speaker 1: a year. Because I would, I would, I would put
Speaker 1: in the Twelve Day War with this. This is all
Speaker 1: one war. How would you not be fucked with ever again?
Speaker 1: Is if you have like a couple dozen nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: no one will ever fuck with you again, and your
Speaker 1: regime will be secure forever unless something on the inside happens.
Speaker 3: Undoubtedly. I mean this whole episode has just ran full style.
Speaker 1: Always feeling good. Yeah, we always end on a happy note.
Speaker 2: It's the best. Man.
Speaker 1: I just can't keep hearing like yeah, we're gonna keep
Speaker 1: going at and like we need to blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: It's just like complete wishful thinking that makes no sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Iranian proxies in Iraq, like the militias, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's go after them. Let's go after them with special
Speaker 1: operations or overtops. You know, the things were good at
Speaker 1: let's use them. But as far as like we think
Speaker 1: this is gonna happen, where they're gonna they're gonna bend
Speaker 1: to our will. They have the cards now we don't,
Speaker 1: and that's a fact.
Speaker 4: We gave them the cards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, February twenty eight, the horror moves open.
Speaker 3: It's definitely a segment of the American population, massive segment
Speaker 3: that does not understand this. Okay, there's a large segment
Speaker 3: of the population that doesn't give a shit, right unless it
Speaker 3: affects crisis that you can't you know, that's probably most population.
Speaker 3: But there's also as I've realized after I wrote that
Speaker 3: article about hey, Iron's kind of had a theory of
Speaker 3: victory here and they're pursuing it single mindedly, and that
Speaker 3: kind of contrasts them with what we've been doing. I
Speaker 3: got all kinds of not not as much hate mail
Speaker 3: as my articles about Gaza, but close to it, and
Speaker 3: and it surprised me. You know, a lot of it
Speaker 3: is from people who are, you know, barely literate, so
Speaker 3: I don't care, but uh, it really surprised me how
Speaker 3: ignorant a number of people are, and they think it's
Speaker 3: treasonous to to criticize US policy, which is absurd.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like it's like the most patriot you do, bro.
Speaker 3: Of our democracy are based on being able.
Speaker 1: To Those people are straight up their brain rotted, their brains,
Speaker 1: they have no wrinkles in the brain. They're absolutely fucking
Speaker 1: brain dead.
Speaker 3: But you know, you know that's sort of me. I mean,
Speaker 3: we have some in our audience.
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, you're brain if you're listening right now,
Speaker 1: you're fucking brain dead.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it doesn't matter. They're loyal listeners and they just.
Speaker 1: Like to subscribe though. You know, I all right, guys,
Speaker 1: do us a favor. Check out John's books Ran, Shadow
Speaker 1: Weapons in the Theory of Regular War. Those links are
Speaker 1: in the description. Andy Milburn he's putting out a couple
Speaker 1: chapters here and there for his new book about the
Speaker 1: war in Gaza. Incredible book that I didn't read the
Speaker 1: second chapter. The first one was fucking awesome. It goes
Speaker 1: into like the lead up to October seventh.
Speaker 2: Really really good.
Speaker 1: That book should be coming out soon, but those chapters
Speaker 1: are out in the substack. That link is in the
Speaker 1: description as well.
Speaker 2: Check it out.
Speaker 1: Obviously Andy's memoir When the Tempest Gathers great great book.
Speaker 2: What else?
Speaker 1: Patreon dot com slash the Teamhouse, help us support the show,
Speaker 1: you get episodes ad free and early, and you could
Speaker 1: send us messages that will actually read because the rest
Speaker 1: of them. I don't look at the regular comments. I
Speaker 1: know you guys sometimes dabble, but I don't give a
Speaker 1: shit what anyone has to say, frankly. But yeah, that's it, guys,
Speaker 1: A pleasure as always.
Speaker 2: I love you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great talk by everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, great talk.
Speaker 1: Say you love me too, John, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: I'll loves This is very distasteful.
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