Get Back-in to the Missile Offense Business. Mike Lyons Talks to A&G

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: Get Back-in to the Missile Offense Business. Mike Lyons Talks to A&G
Date: July 29, 2026
Host: Armstrong & Getty
Guest: Mike Lyons, Military Analyst

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Overview

This episode dissects the latest rapidly evolving developments in the Middle East, following massive Iranian-directed drone and missile attacks on U.S. forces. Armstrong & Getty are joined by military analyst Mike Lyons to break down the U.S. and Saudi response, the shifting alliances—including the remarkable front of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. against Iran—the dangers of Iran’s decentralized leadership, and the troubling spread of the conflict into new arenas like the Caspian Sea. The roundtable also discusses America’s defense strategy, the limits of missile defense, and questions over policy coherence and military stockpiles.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Iranian Attack and U.S./Saudi Response

Timestamps: 01:02–01:27, 02:13–03:17

• Summary of Events:

  • Iran, via proxies, launched a major drone and missile strike on a U.S. military base.
  • U.S. and Saudi airstrikes hit multiple Iranian-backed targets in retaliation, signaling unified action—Saudi Arabia now overtly aligned (militarily) with Israel and the U.S.
  • The U.S. defense systems successfully intercepted the attacks.

• Quotes:

  • Armstrong: "That's the latest proof that in this newly shaped Middle East, Saudi Arabia is on the same side as Israel." (01:21)
  • Gettysburg: "Major attack on a US Military base by Iran yesterday, luckily we were able to defend it, but it doesn't change the intent." (01:43)

2. Iran’s Leadership and Decision-Making Chaos

Timestamps: 02:24–03:17, 14:12–14:39

• Decentralized Power:

  • Mike Lyons highlights Iran's power structure as highly fragmented.
  • Some factions handle diplomacy; others control missiles and choose violence—leading to unpredictable and conflicting Iranian actions.
  • Decision-making resembles a volatile mix of rival mafias, not a coherent state.

• Quotes:

  • Lyons: "The power is very decentralized. And while one sector can fire a missile at the other, one sector is trying to do a deal with the United States." (02:37)
  • Gettysburg: "Who's making these decisions in Iran? Is it two different groups? ...One of the groups that wants a fight has their finger on the button of ballistic missiles, so they must be a pretty powerful group." (14:12)
  • Armstrong: "All those groups and power centers are eyeing each other suspiciously... it's beyond volatile." (14:39)

3. Missile Defense vs. Missile Offense and U.S. Military Readiness

Timestamps: 03:17–04:23, 05:59–06:38

• Current State:

  • U.S. layered air defenses (Patriot missiles, naval assets) are effective, but Iran's growing precision points to outside help—possibly Russia or China.
  • Lyons asserts that pure missile defense is unsustainable; recommends shifting to offense and attrition.

• Quotes:

  • Lyons: "We have to get out of the missile defense business... and get back in the missile offense and go more on the offense." (03:59)

• On U.S. Readiness and Supplies:

  • Discussion about possible U.S. missile shortages as a rationale to pause bombing:
    • Lyons doubts this is a real crisis, but emphasizes that supply is finite and prudence is required.
    • Ukraine now has authority to manufacture Patriot systems, growing their own defenses.

• Quotes:

  • Armstrong (on supply leak): "I think whoever leake leaked that to the media is tiptoeing up to the line of treason." (06:36)
  • Lyons: "It's not. We go to the Patriot tree and pick up some more Patriot missiles... I'd like to think we're not going to run out of ammunition... but we have to be prudent from the economic side." (07:01)

4. Strategic Aims and Policy Confusion

Timestamps: 04:24–05:42, 08:08–09:12

• Lack of Clear Strategy:

  • Unclear U.S. strategy: use of force, sanctions, and diplomacy but no communicated endgame beyond regime 'compliance' rather than change.
  • Previous Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran failed due to loopholes.

• Quotes:

  • Lyons: "The first MOU now has completely failed. I mean that's not even a starting point... I'd like to see a 30 to 35 days air campaign like we did back kind of a Desert Storm...using military force...to see if Iran does break from the inside..." (05:02)

5. Foreign Involvement: Russia, China, and the Caspian Sea Front

Timestamps: 08:23–09:37

• Rising Chinese and Russian Support for Iran:

  • New reports suggest China is supplying Iran with shoulder-fired MANPADS to shore up air defenses.
  • The conflict is expanding—Ukrainian strikes against Russian assets in the Caspian Sea (previously considered untouchable) now bring that region into play, directly involving Iran as a conduit of weapons and support into Russia.

• Quotes:

  • Lyons: "The Chinese are now looking to possibly rearm the Iranians and so will the Russians... the next MOU has got to cover not just us and Iran... but... make sure that Russia or China doesn't have any capability to rearm Iran in the near future." (08:47)
  • Armstrong: "This is, this is a spreading not just geographically but it's become a different kind of conflict." (09:16)

6. Shifting Regional Alliances

Timestamps: 01:02–01:27, 15:01–15:23

• Key Moment:

  • Saudi Arabia now operationally aligned with Israel and the U.S. against Iranian influence—a radical shift from previous enmity.

• Quotes:

  • Gettysburg: "With Saudi Arabia fighting on the side of Israel... that was unthinkable not very long ago." (15:01)

7. Media Coverage and Perceived U.S. Responsibility

Timestamps: 10:33–11:11

• Critique of Coverage:

  • Armstrong and Gettyburg express frustration at headlines suggesting U.S. and Saudi actions are escalating/pulling others into the conflict, rather than responding to Iranian aggression.
  • The two highlight “media bias” framing the U.S. as the provocateur.

• Quotes:

  • Armstrong: "We dragged him [Saudi Arabia] into the fighting. Okay. It’s despicable." (11:07)

8. Unpredictability of Iranian Actions and Strategic Calculations

Timestamps: 12:43–13:46

• Human Error in Strategy:

  • Discussion on the possibility that Iranian leadership made strategic errors—reminding listeners both sides can miscalculate.

• Quotes:

  • Gettysburg: “Maybe the Iranians just plain misplayed their hand when they started this back up... If we can do dumb things, they can do dumb things.” (12:43)

• Strait of Hormuz as New “Nuclear Deterrent”:

  • Armstrong suggests Iran sees control of the strait as its paramount strategic card.

• Quotes:

  • Armstrong: “Control of the Strait of Hormuz is their new nuclear weapon. It's their new deterrent.” (13:47)

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Notable Quotes (with Timestamps)

• Armstrong on shifting alliances:
  "That's the latest proof that in this newly shaped Middle East, Saudi Arabia is on the same side as Israel." (01:21)

• Mike Lyons on missile strategy:
  "We have to get out of the missile defense business... and get back in the missile offense." (03:59)

• Gettysburg on Iranian leadership:
  "Who's making these decisions in Iran? Is it two different groups?... One of the groups that wants a fight has their finger on the button of ballistic missiles." (14:12)

• Lyons on global escalation:
  "The Chinese are now looking to possibly rearm the Iranians and so will the Russians." (08:47)

• Armstrong on media framing:
  "We dragged him into the fighting. Okay. It's despicable." (11:07)

• Armstrong on Iranian strategy:
  "Control of the Strait of Hormuz is their new nuclear weapon. It's their new deterrent." (13:47)

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Conclusion

This episode dives deep into the current Middle East crisis, examining the complexity of Iranian politics, the dangers of a purely defensive military posture, the uncertainty of U.S. policy, and the expanding threat landscape with Russia and China’s involvement. The discussion is a sober blend of strategic insight, concern about spiraling escalation, and a recognition that the unexpected is now the new normal in this region. Listeners are left with the grim understanding that alliances and frontlines have dramatically shifted—and that the world faces a conflict extending far beyond longstanding boundaries.

Transcript

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[Armstrong]

And now here's Armstrong.

[Gettysburg]

And yet.

[Armstrong]

US And Saudi fighter aircraft struck multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across Iraq in a strong response to over 30 IRGC directed aerial drone attacks in the last 72 hours. The unwarranted attacks against US forces were not successful. And that's the latest proof that in this newly shaped Middle East, Saudi Arabia is on the same side as Israel.

[Mike Lyons]

President Trump reacting to that Iranian attack on US Forces overnight in Jordan, President Trump tells Fox News about Iran. We are going to beat the effing s out of them. He went on to say. We'll be hitting them hard. They're going to get a beating.

[Gettysburg]

The problem of course, being that if you say that every other day and then often don't follow through on it. The I don't know if you're familiar with the whole bull boy who cried wolf story, but major attack on a US Military base by Iran yesterday, luckily we were able to defend it, but it doesn't change the intent.

[Armstrong]

I want to get into some of the bizarre media coverage of this, but that can wait till we discuss the, the basics of the situation with military analyst Mike Lyons, who joins us now. Mike, welcome. How are you?

[Mike Lyons]

Hey, good morning, guys. Great to be back.

[Armstrong]

What do you make of the attack by Iran? The, the heightened involvement of various proxies around the region? Where are we right now?

[Mike Lyons]

Well, you know, obviously this surprise attack takes place during the funeral of Lindsey Graham. You know, this is just, I think it's a message in who we're dealing with when on the Iranian side and the fact that they decided to do that. The US didn't attack when they were doing that ceremony for Khomeini back then. So I, I'm surprised But it just shows that they have a will and they've got some level of fight. I, you know, as I'm reading from Institute's study of war, they are reporting that the multiple different factions inside of Iran that are controlling lots of different things right now. So the power is very decentralized. And while one sector can fire a missile at the other, one sector is trying to do a deal with the United States. I mean, when Trump gets on and says they're talking to us, they're begging us to stop, well, it might be somebody in Iran doing that, but it's not the people that control all the weapons. So it's still very, very confusing and very fluid.

[Gettysburg]

Well, somebody who controls some pretty powerful weapons decided to attack a US Military base. So, yeah, you know, I don't know how many people agreed with them. How, how big of an attack was that, and what would it have been like if we hadn't been able to intercept them all?

[Mike Lyons]

Well, you know, again, the air defense systems that we have there are in layers, and they depends on what part of the atmosphere they're coming from. And likely with the Patriot missiles which took them out, and the naval assets that we have in the region. But the targeting would have been important in terms of location. And we think that they're getting, you know, the Iranians are likely getting this targeting data from Russia or China. It's very difficult for them with a few missiles that they're firing. Usually they have to fire them more en masse. The fact that they could be as accurate as they've been is telling. And I think we have to admit to the fact that they're getting help from somebody, and it's either Russia or China or somebody that has this, this other capability. But we, we have to get out of the missile defense business, frankly, and get back in the missile offense and go more on the offense.

[Gettysburg]

Wow.

[Armstrong]

Okay. I was going to ask you, the forces that we have aligned there in the region, how do they match up with what we need to accomplish? Although it's so complicated because you've got to figure out first what is the strategy? Is the strategy really truly the economic squeeze and just waiting till they capitulate or beg for mercy? How do you see things strategically right now?

[Mike Lyons]

They haven't committed, they haven't communicated that very well. And so I would say, as the strategy is, the military tax combined with the sanctions combined with some negotiations combined with pressure from allies, and that would order to get them back to the negotiation table. In a perfect world, you have regime Change, maybe, but right now we're looking for regime compliance. I think that would be a reasonable answer. The first MOU now has completely failed. I mean that's not even a starting point. And the first MoU had so many holes in it. That's the reason why it failed. So we have to learn from that, decide if we're going to do this again. But I would like to see a 30 to 35 days air campaign like we did back kind of a Desert Storm of continuous attritting their capability, using military force to do this in order to see if Iran does break from the inside or finally some of those coalitions come together and decide they want to have a deal.

[Gettysburg]

Yeah, There was a report the other day that Trump was getting some advice that the reason that we had stopped after 14 straight nights of bombing was he as told we're, you know, we've kind of heat all hit all the targets we can hit and we're down to stuff that it's really not worth the expenditure of weapons, blah blah, blah. Do you agree with that or no?

[Mike Lyons]

No, no, I don't think so. I think the, you have to bait them out now at this point they have so few missiles but they can't fire at scale. And so at this point you have to bait them out and see when they bring them and, and then we go and launch those attacks, use AI, use satellites, use all our soft technology and power in order to kind of do that because they on their side are not going to necessarily expend all their ammo as well. When they take a shot, they want to make a shot that they think they're going to hit something. But for, you know, they could still have 500 missiles left. That's still a significant amount of missiles that they desired. To fire all at once would be significantly damaging.

[Armstrong]

One of the big stories over the weekend and Monday I think it was, was that the other reason that Trump decided to call off the dogs is that we're running so dangerously low on Patriot missiles. We kind of had to. I think whoever leake leaked that to the media is tiptoeing up to the line of treason. I can't believe that somebody would leak that. Am I overboard with that?

[Mike Lyons]

Yeah, I don't think that's the case. But again, the weapons aren't an endless supply. It's not. We go to the Patriot tree and pick up some more Patriot missiles and decide we're going to have them to fire. There is a finite number as to what that is. I think we've been growing the Patriot inventory year over year for about the past 30 years. We did give a couple of batteries and I think batteries to Ukraine over the past few years and they've expended some missiles. So there are canisters but I'd like to think we're not going to run out of ammunition. But like anything else we have to be prudent from the economic side of it. We will get to a point where we have to really think through as to when we could start manufacturing. I'd like to see us start remanufacturing, re energize the defense budget. Andorra for example is a company that's doing things out of the extraordinary, not on the regular, you know, the military acquisition systems. They're getting missile defense systems to the market faster. We've now allowed the Ukrainians to license the manufacturer Patriot missiles. They'll get that, they'll get a factory up and running very quickly and they're going to be very much dependent on their own air defenses I think when their conflict is over.

[Gettysburg]

Okay, so that gets into, I think your piece you wrote for realclear defense.com the Iran War is back. The deal that ends it must not rearm Tehran and you wrote that before they attacked our base yesterday. But what was your, what was your main point?

[Mike Lyons]

Well it's a, it comes back to China. China again. There's reports now this morning Reuters is reporting that the Chinese are shipping manpads which are those shoulder fired air defense systems to try to help with the Iranian air defense systems. They won't be able to get their large scale SA400s that come from Russia. But the Chinese are now looking to possibly rearm the Iranians and so will the Russians there. I think one thing we haven't talked about is the front now opening up in the Ukrainian war into the Caspian Sea which borders on Iran, which is Iran has shipped their supplies and materials into Russia, their shahed drones and the things that go there. So, so overall the next MOU has got to cover not just us and Iran and what Iran's going to do, but it's got to make sure that Russia or China doesn't have any capability to rearm Iran in the near future.

[Armstrong]

You know, I prefer not to go to knee jerk alarmism or deal with cliches but what you just said definitely raises our level on the World War II DEFCON scale. This is, this is a spreading not just geographically but it's become a different kind of conflict. If that sort of thing is out in the open. Where are we in, you know, in that.

[Mike Lyons]

Yeah. Where would you measure a point? No, no, because with Ukraine now entering this Iran US conflict, but by, by hitting Russian ships in the Caspian Sea, I mean, look, five years ago when this started, no one ever thought Ukraine would able to hit a Russian anything in the Caspian Sea 1,000 kilometers away. The Caspian Sea is a landlocked piece of sea that borders Iran and Russia and Kazakhstan, those areas there. Russia thought they could put military assets in there and have a free reign. And everybody, there's been no NATO vehicle ever in there. We have no eyes on that at all. But the fact that the Ukrainians have opened up that front now is huge. So no question this conflict is expanding. You had Bibi and Zelensky and Washington yesterday looking at each other, I think, talking specifically about that. I think, you know, Israel is also part of that game as well.

[Armstrong]

Holy cow. Military analyst Mike Lyons. Mike, we appreciate the perspective as always. Great stuff. Let's stay in touch.

[Mike Lyons]

Great guys. Thanks for having me.

[Armstrong]

Thanks. You know, I wasn't going to get into what I brought up earlier, but the, the headline New York, New York Times, Iran war live updates U.S. and Saudi airstrikes drag more countries into fighting.

[Gettysburg]

Well, yeah, right. With like it's something we did to make this worse as opposed to Iran attacked a US Military base yester day. One of their strongest attacks yet. Thank God we're able to shoot down all the missiles. But that, and then we responded with the Saudi help because the Saudis are being attacked by the Houthis who do what Iran tells them to do.

[Armstrong]

Right.

[Gettysburg]

Yeah. That is.

[Armstrong]

Yeah, we dragged him into the fighting. Okay. It's despicable.

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[Gettysburg]

Interesting perspective. I heard on a podcast the other day from David French, guy who writes for the New York Times, that there is a tendency to think sometimes that your opponents can't be dumb or myopic or overreach or make mistakes. And maybe the Iranians just plain misplayed their hand when they started this back up. Because I was saying at the time, why didn't they keep this going? They got the greatest deal in the world, this MoU thing, and it stopped. And now they get to keep secretly trying to get a nuclear weapon while they're selling oil and making money. I thought they were going to drag that out for years until there was a new president. But no, they started the war back up again. It's possible that they just made. They did a dumb thing. If we can do dumb things, they can do dumb things.

[Armstrong]

Oh, yeah. Absolutely true. Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to think about what they're thinking. I've been trying now for quite a few weeks,

[Gettysburg]

you know, and I'll fall

[Armstrong]

back to the argument I've made before. They have decided that control of the Strait of Hormuz is their new nuclear weapon. It's their new deterrent. As long as we control the strait, nobody's going to mess with us or attack us anymore because they so desperately need the strait. And so we're going to fight tooth and nail to control the strait. That's the only thing I can come up with. The biggest unknown that is 100% necessary.

[Gettysburg]

The biggest unknown is what Mike Lyons brought up at the beginning there, to me, is, who's making these decisions in Iran? Is it two different groups? Is it 15 different groups? And then to me, the fact that, well, one of the groups that wants a fight has their finger on the button of ballistic missiles, so they must be a pretty powerful group. There might be other groups out there with different ideas, but I. They ain't got control of the missiles.

[Armstrong]

Well, and remember in a situation like that that all those groups and power centers are eyeing each other suspiciously with their hands ready to reach for their gun, in effect and saying, yeah, yeah, sure, buddy, I agree with you, pal. Let's hang together on this one there. And then they go back to their separate meeting places and, and say, holy cow, those guys are nuts. We got to keep an eye on them. So, I mean, it's beyond volatile.

[Gettysburg]

And with Saudi Arabia, as Peter Doocy pointed out, with Saudi Arabia fighting on the side of Israel, which, because they're an ally of ours, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel fighting against Iran, I mean, that was Saudi Arabia fighting on the side of Israel was unthinkable not very long ago. Sure.

[Armstrong]

Yeah. Wow. Round and round and round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows. Armstrong and Gettysburg.

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