Venetia Rainey (3:08)

For today's episode, we're going to take a step back and assess the war. One week in, a lot has happened, from the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the bombing of a primary school to the widening of the war to the entire Middle east and Israel invading Lebanon. So I want to step back and ask, how is this war going? Is America hitting the various objectives it's outlined over the past week? And what should we watch for in the next week to come? To discuss all of that, I'm joined by Colonel Simon Diggins, former British army officer with service in Middle East, Afghanistan, Ukraine and West Africa, and Matthew Saville, director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute. Matt Simon, thank you so much for joining us on Iran. The latest. Let's just start with a quick reflection. And how do you think this is all going? Matt, kick us off.

Matthew Saville (3:57)

I think my starting position would be that I think the US and Israel are making more progress towards their military goals, but I think there is a genuine question as to whether those can be properly connected to their political goals. Whilst I think the Iranians are really struggling in the face of US and Israeli air superiority and there are some really big unknowns about their ability to endure. But you can begin to see the outline of a strategy, if you will, that might enable something to survive afterwards. And I think in many respects what's happening at the moment, we are seeing things that we planned for for years in the region in terms of conflict and lots of assumptions have come true that there are also a lot of lessons in terms of modern war. And I think the interesting thing about the Middle east as people who spend a lot of time looking at Ukraine, is that they provide some additional points of data on things that we shouldn't forget when we're focusing on a very land heavy, very different war in Ukraine.

Venetia Rainey (5:18)

That's fascinating and I'd love to come back to that later. Simon, what are your reflections a weekend to this war?

Colonel Simon Diggins (5:23)

My major observation is around this has been a long time coming, that there's been an ongoing crisis about what is the legitimate security needs of Israel and also you might say, about Iran, but also the security needs of the Gulf states. And there's been a sort of continual ramping up of tension over those issues now for a number of years. And every so often it's a bit like a Volcano which occasionally blows a little fissure out the side and some lava flows out. And we saw that in October 24, we saw it in June last year. But this time the top has blown and I think that's kind of where we are. So I kind of see it in those terms, in kind of purely military terms. We are seeing in some respects a repetition of what we've seen before. We saw shock and awe in previous iterations from the Americans, indeed from the whole Allies. And we saw bits of that last year. So I think that's part of it. Michael is also quite right to point out that the focus has been so much in the military sciences on what's coming out of Ukraine that we've sometimes forgotten some of the other issues and the other ways of conducting warfare. And we're seeing some of that as well at the moment.

Venetia Rainey (6:32)

Okay, well, maybe let's start. Thank you both for those reflections. We've heard a lot from America, from Pete Hegseth, from Dan Kane, from Donald Trump about the various military objectives. I've tried to sort of boil them down to the ones that come up the most. Destroy Iranian offensive missiles, missile capabilities, including their missile production. Destroy their navy and other security infrastructure. That one's quite vague. Make sure they'll never have nuclear weapons again. A White House statement added that. Make sure Iran's proxies can never lay roadside bombs and such alike again. And then, of course, regime change. Maybe we can start with the missile production aim. How is that going, Matt?

Matthew Saville (7:06)

Well, this is where you get to some of the unknowns, which is that we don't know how many missile cities there are. And we've got, you know, open source and other researchers can expose a lot of the missile program, but the totality of it is probably only known to governments. But based on what we are seeing, this is an area where they do appear to be being successful in terms of locating as much as they can and, and striking it. And we should, I should make clear that there are a number of different targets here. So there is ballistic missile production capacity, which is everything from fashioning the missiles to manufacturing propellant and all of the components of what goes into a ballistic missile, the guidance system, etc.

Colonel Simon Diggins (7:54)

Etc.

Matthew Saville (7:55)

Then there is what are called the missile cities, which are these large underground facilities where they either store the missiles, in some cases they launch them from, but in many cases what they do is they put the missiles onto what are called transporter erector launchers, but basically the missile launchers, and then they drive it out and then they, they launch them ideally in salvos, and then they drive back in and those appear to be being located and identified and attacked. And if you can't get into the, the missile city, you can at least essentially block the entrance. If you can't get the missiles out, it doesn't matter how many they've got. And then there is hunting the launches. And there was a lot of video emerging of these being struck, particularly in the case of hitting them before they can launch or just after they've launched. And this creates a bottleneck in the Iranian offensive capability because if you can destroy the launchers, you have almost no way to launch the missiles. And the figures that are being released, and you know there's some good open source detective work being done, suggest that ballistic missile launches, I think yesterday were about a tenth what they were on the first day of the war. We've seen imagery of Reaper drones operating largely unhindered. They're able to loiter, basically hang around for hours. When the missiles then emerge, they can essentially communicate and bring in air power that is now able to loiter and then strike these targets. So we're seeing a strike complex, as it's called, effectively drastically reduce the time taken to find, identify and then strike all of these things. The big caveat is we don't know for certain whether or not there is an element of deliberate husbanding of ballistic missiles. And how much is the drop off down to the fact that the Iranians are instead focusing on launching drones, using those to try and exhaust air defenses, and then they're going to come back with ballistic missiles when the air defenses have been used up, particularly across the Gulf. That's plausible. But I would suggest that there has also been a significant drop off in drones being launched suggests that this is more down to US and Israeli success than Iranian planning.

Venetia Rainey (10:21)

I mean, it's probably a combination of both. Right? Estimates from the US Department of War suggest that an 86% drop off in Iran's missile salvos and a 73% decrease in its drone warfare activity since the, the beginning of the war. Those sound like very impressive statistics, but as you say, we have to expect that there is an element here of Iran starting to withhold stuff, understanding that this will be a protracted conflict and needing to hold some stuff back to keep firing it later. Tehran has already fired more ballistic missiles than it fired during the entire 12 day war in June last year. Simon, the drone aspect of this is really interesting, and it's so much harder to find these drone factories. Ukraine has Direct experience of this. What's your reflection of Iran's use of drone warfare so far over this week?

Colonel Simon Diggins (11:06)

I think they have to say that they're a good way of targeting things and they are cheap and easy to produce. And as Matthew Ryder points out, you can either fire a 20 million anti ballistic missile at a drone or you can fire it at another ballistic missile which costs you about $20,000. So there's an issue there. I can say one point if I may back on the missiles which actually is the nature of the Iranian armed forces and taken them in the totality, which is not just the missile systems but the totality and kuna conventional forces and the way which their armed forces are so distorted, I mean because of the sanctions that are being placed since 1979 are on them, whilst they still have what you and I would recognize as an army, navy and an air force, they've not been able to actually deploy them or organize them or restructure them. I saw some propaganda film the other day which had a very smart 1970 Sea King involved in it and what looked like a 1944 landing craft. I mean that's basically what the Iranians were able to do to do so, where they put their effort into, along with their good friends the North Koreans, Libyans and all the rest of the usual suspects, they've been able to develop these ballistic missiles. So there's a psychological value to Iran about the use of these missiles and their possession of these missiles which I think goes to the heart of how they see themselves, how they see themselves defending. So by attacking what you might call the sort of psychological center of gravity of the armed forces, you're not just writing down a missile system which can cause you harm. You're actually cutting right to the heart of how they see themselves and what they're doing. So this is a double value, if you like, in dealing with these missiles. Clearly you want to stop them from taking countries like Israel or other friendly countries. But also you also go right to the heart of how Iran projects itself into the world. So I just add that to the conversation. All war is a battle of wills and it's a psychological struggle. So this is a psychological struggle to the anti missile battle which we're seeing as well. But the use of drones, we know they're drone leaders. We saw their popular drone, the Shahed drone basically sported to Ukraine and we saw some very strong words from President Zelensky, basically refusing to be at heavy show any sympathy whatsoever because he said so many of his own Countrymen have been killed by drones provided either directly to Russia or through the factories that Russia had there. And I think the way I think about the drones is, is this is why I do link it back to the Ukraine, Ukraine war. What if boots went onto the ground? Now, who those boots would be would be very interesting to see. What if those boots went onto the ground? We know that some 80% of all the casualties in Ukraine appear to have been caused, but caused by drones put boots onto the ground. And the kind of relative invulnerability at the moment of us, Israeli, indeed, other, other countries, because they fly, they fight and they come back, would just start to disappear. And that's where the drone warfare and the sort of, maybe the dispersion of drones into the remnants of whatever the IRGC looks like from there would become very, very dangerous and give a very different sort of war to the one we've had to deal with so far.

Venetia Rainey (13:57)

You mentioned there that Israel has been attacked. It's not just Israel, of course. This war has now dragged In, I think 15 countries by the latest count, you know, almost the entire Middle east, including a missile, we don't know whether on purpose or not, that flew towards Turkey. Azerbaijan has been hit in the last 24 hours. The other sort of crucial part of this missiles maths, if I may, is the interceptor missiles that the Gulf countries have. We don't know to what extent their stocks are depleted. But you have to file several interceptor missiles at each incoming missile, is that right? How much will this be preying on the minds of America's allies in the Gulf?

Colonel Simon Diggins (14:31)

Well, I think they are, of course, talking up their stocks. War is psychological, you know, so they're talking up their stocks and their logistics there. And we've been here before, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be, we shouldn't be naive about this. During the first Gulf War, I mean, the key logistic resource that the British army had or it was concerned about in the, in the, in the first Gulf War was it was its challenger tank engines. And the commander of the British forces in the army, General Sir Rupert Smith, on a daily basis was briefed how many spare tank engines he's got. So we're in exactly the same position now. But now the issue is where do we sit in terms of interceptor missile stocks and everything that goes with that. The Americans are kind of saying, we've got as many as you need. The Iranians have said we've basically got more missiles than you can knock down. And the truth will be somewhere in between, between those two things. But it will be looking very carefully. And again, I use the Ukrainian experience. President Zelensky was very straightforward. He said, I do not know why you're firing these interceptor missiles at these. I thought we'd learned that from the first year of war in Ukraine. Don't fire a golden bullet, knock out a plastic thing, get up there, get close in with your 30 millimeter cannon, your aircraft, and shoot them out in the sky with that. Not sit away 18 miles away and fire an Amraam missile at them. We always learn lessons, but the wrong ones. But I suspect that the, if you like, the, not the rules of engagement, the technical sense, but so the operational guidance will be starting to be changed to our pilots and those who are operating missiles. But actually now you're getting close and you shoot out the sky in the same way the Ukrainians do. You don't, you don't sit off 18 miles away and knock you out the sky like a video game.

Matthew Saville (16:03)

I think this is an area where things are a little bit opaque. So I think there is justifiable concern of what is happening with Gulf stockpiles. I do think in many cases they're not using, for example, Patriot PAC3 MSC missiles to shoot down shahed drones. They do have other systems that they can use. But the fact is there is probably a need in some cases to do that. It's a very contested airspace. And also bluntly, the volume of ballistic missile fire that has come their way has probably exceeded some expectations. So for example, the UAE has received a significant proportion of Iran's outgoing fire. I think on the last stats, possibly more than Israel has. And that reflects the availability of Iran's short range ballistic missile capabilities, many of which can't reach Israel or don't threaten it to the same extent, but really pounding the Gulf state. The challenge there is that whilst the Iranians I think are actually yesterday was saying, no, we're targeting US facilities, we're not targeting our Gulf brothers, I think the Iranians have hoped that, that they can inflict enough damage on Gulf states to get them to pressure to call this off. And I think they are overweighting the evidence of their attack on Aramco seven years ago, which is that they launched drones and cruise missiles and the Saudis took fright and the US didn't respond. But in attacking the Gulf states this time and Azerbaijan and possibly Turkey, I think the Iranians are really playing with fire in terms of uniting people against them rather than causing friction. Now that might change a week from now. If they're still able to launch attacks and intercept stockpiles of various types run short. But at the moment that is not working.

Venetia Rainey (17:55)

Can we talk a bit about what the Iranian missiles have been hitting, the ones that are getting through? They've hit quite a few US bases across the region and I've been reading the targeting sensor network and radar infrastructure. Open source imagery suggests that Iran has targeted several high value sites, including radars at the Muwafak Salty Air Base in Jordan, in Omdahel Qatar Base, at the Al Ruwai Air Base in the UAE and at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. And according to the Hudson Institute, the Qatar strike was particularly important because they hit the US Space Force's an FPS132 block 5 ballistic missile early warning radar stationed there. Matt, do you want to come in on the significance of that?

Matthew Saville (18:34)

Well, this is where we get to if you are concerned that the Iranians actually do have a cunning plan, this might be some of the evidence towards that, which is that I don't think they're using ballistic missiles to target these sites. They're using drones or possibly cruise missiles because they can be reasonably precise. But going after those systems, I think they've also potentially hit a radar that supports one of the Thaad batteries. So something that is optimized for ballistic missile defense. They might be attempting to blind some of the best sensors that provide most warning of incoming ballistic missile attacks. And so if you are concerned that the Iranians might be husbanding using their other systems, some of which are reasonably accurate, to take out these big radars might presage an attempt a few days from now to then strike those countries or locations with ballistic missiles, missiles which they think they've got a better chance of getting through. Because at the moment we're looking at a ballistic missile interception rate across the board of I think close to 90%.

Colonel Simon Diggins (19:41)

If I may just add to that, I think that we should recognize that this is the sort of targeting is frankly normal. If you look at what the Israelis did Last year in June 25, their first set of targets were all about Iran's air defense systems, including their sensor systems to engage in. So in a sense what they do, the Iranians do are responding in kind. I think at the end of the day. And there's always this kind of you try and blind the opponent before you hit them with a blow they can't deal with. I think this is where the what is the coalition of those who are either attacking or being attacked, in other words, Americans, Israelis, and all the other countries now will probably have the advantage. Modern systems allow a sort of network system. So you take out one node or one sensor node, then the other nodes, the other layered nodes start to replace the picture. What you're after, of course, is a recognized picture that shows the whole of the one piece clearly a major radar system. You don't want to lose it, you blind it. You will have other systems in place that give you some sort of advanced capacity, may not be as good. It will give you something from that. You don't have a single point of failure. So what the Iran is doing is predictable, is what I would do if I was an executive in that position. But I think in this battle of advantage, disadvantage, I think America, Israel and all those other countries will ultimately prevail because. Because they have got a much better network system of information. Not perfect as we saw with the, with the Kuwait downing of the F15s, you know, so that networking is. It has to be put together. But overall they will have a much better network system in which indeed they demonstrated in October 24th than the Iranians have got in terms of their ability and in fact their countering ability as well.

Venetia Rainey (21:15)

So let's move on then. One of the other US objectives was to destroy the Iranian navy. And we've heard lots about this, that this week we've covered that on Iran. The latest yesterday and the day before. The targeting of the Iranian warship just outside Sri Lanka, which was torpedoed and filmed and then released with the video. And we've heard a lot about how various ships in the Gulf of Oman have been sunk. We do know that the Iranian navy is not just its official warships, but also its fast boat capability. We were sent a fantastic voice note by one of our listeners, a former Royal Navy officer, about exactly that. Let's just hear that now.

Ed Reed (21:46)

Ed Reed here, former naval officer who transited the Straits of Hormuz about eight times throughout my career, predominantly six times of those as a gunnery officer between 2014 and 2016 for the Straits of Hormuz, the fiat threat was always considered the most dominant rather than the Iranian main naval fleet itself. And we would focus on early identification and personnel surging. For those personnel not already in position for a straits transit, key teams like lookouts, gunnery teams would already be in place. On two of the straits transits I did, we actually had an IRGCN swarm come out and shadow us. They came out and then paralleled the ship at about two cables, which is about 400 yards. We had a small Farsi phrase Book on the bridge and we used to communicate that via vhf, used to talk to them about our legal right to transit. Never heard anything back. They just kind of paralleled us and then after all, went back inshore. Although to be fair, that could say more about my Farsi dialect than any of their intentions. And predominantly it was. It's more about them showing us that they're there and us showing them that we will not be bullied in the legal use of the seas under international maritime law.

Venetia Rainey (23:02)

Simon, do you think the Americans are any closer to being able to neutralize this fast boat threat?

Colonel Simon Diggins (23:09)

Well, I think that you put your finger again, go back to one of the earlier points, one of the original issues that the Iranians have had given the limitations of what they could do in terms of conventional warfare across the piece they've gone for a bit they can do, and these fast boats, and I've seen them myself operating out of the Emirates in that case they use for smuggling. All the Iranians have done basically is convert them from smuggling boats to minor war vessels, which is exactly what they're doing. And they are hard targets. The intention is to have so many of them using what they call their swarm tactics. The boats are hard to maneuver. They're equipped with missiles, which also. And the aim is to overwhelm the capacity to analyze and then defeat the target. And again, we can go back and go back as far as the Falklands War, where one of our Royal Naval ships was sung then because so many, so many incoming targets were coming towards it. The system closed down. Now, I think our systems have improved since then, but the aim is to overwhelm the ability of the sensor, target and engagement matrix to, so that they at least one get through. And as they rightly say, as many people said before, yes, we may be knocking 90% of the missiles out of the sky, but if 10% get through, those 10% could cause a significant amount of damage. And that's what they're trying to achieve, which is why, of course, I've been really high up front and I know we've been struggling with what the US war aims are. But one of the key war aims they declared was the destruction of the Iranian navy. And that was really one of the things that they were very, very clear about, and rightly so. It's not just the, you know, the few remaining corvettes or destroyers that the Iranians have, but it is these fast patrol boats and their ability to, as they want to do, close the Strait of Hormuz. That's exactly what they're going to try and do?

Matthew Saville (24:48)

Yeah, on the navy, I mean, of course they have two sets of naval forces. They have the remnants of a classic navy, the Zama Republic Navy, and then they have the IRGC navy. And it's not a surprise that the US in particular have gone after this because a significant proportion of what the Iranians have prepared themselves to do was use anti ship cruise missile coastal defenses and these fast boats to threaten forces in the Strait of Hormuz and in the region. And it's been, it was a major planning challenge for years. And that's a combination of small attack boats, explosions, explosive boats like jet skis that would kind of launch the front or would be suicide boats. They spent.

Venetia Rainey (25:34)

Have we seen the use of any of those, by the way?

Matthew Saville (25:36)

So far I don't think we have. So this is one of the interesting bits is this is the bit where the US has very sensibly stayed a little bit further back, you know, out of the range of some of these. This is why it's great to have an aircraft carrier. You can move it, you can stay back and then smash everything. They spend a lot of time talking about very high speed torpedoes that they were going to use. Those have all been neutralized in terms of the threat to US military forces. But they are having an impact in terms of threatening to close the strait. In terms of, you know, essentially we've seen some attacks on tankers and movement through the strait appears to be massively reduced. This was always why the presence of UK maritime forces in the region was so important. And particularly our minehunter force, you know, the crown jewel was that we had an excellent specialist minehunter capability and our commitment to regional planning. Always assumed we're going to help keep the strait open or if they mine it, we will get in there and deal with that. And of course we don't have that anymore. So, no, it's no surprise that naval forces are a key target.

Venetia Rainey (26:43)

To what extent do you think the Americans have managed to tick off this goal of destroying the Iranian navy?

Matthew Saville (26:49)

They're pretty much close to being out of conventional service combatants. I have no idea what impacts they've had on the fast attack craft. A lot of them live in sort of protected locations and tunnels and things. Anyway, they don't have targets at the moment. I think this is an area of danger because the Iranians are having an impact on maritime traffic without having to use these capabilities. So you, you might suspect they have managed to preserve lots of these fast attack craft for the time being. And have a study and use explosive drones to attack tankers. So there will be an element of hunting down and trying to deal with that still to come.

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Venetia Rainey (29:12)

We'll maybe leave the objective of trying to make sure the Iranians never have nuclear weapons, because I think that's quite a messy one and maybe it doesn't have a neat target that we can talk about. But let's talk about the other one that keeps coming up, the other objective that keeps coming up regime change. We had Donald Trump talking in the last 24 hours about how he wanted to handpick Iran's next leader. He's ruled out Moshab al Khamenei. Ali Khamenei's son says he's a waste of time and a lightweight. And he says he has to be involved in the appointment, like with Dely Rodriguez in Venezuela, and that he has several people in mind who would do a good job. And I just want to add something else that he said earlier this week, but that I missed. Apparently, he said that he had chosen a number of candidates to replace Ayatollah Khamenei, but admitted that they'd all been inadvertently killed in American and Israeli strikes over the weekend. This time, according to Trump, the military is taking steps to ensure that everyone on his new shortlist survives. I mean, I think this speaks to how difficult regime change is going to be. How do you think the Americans are getting on with this, with this goal?

Matthew Saville (30:07)

I mean, this is the bit where the some of the confusion in stated US Policy and the Risk of there being a divergence with the Israelis is a problem. The first thing is it's really difficult to achieve this a through force alone when you're not invading and they don't have ground forces. I would say that the plan is we'll use the Iranian population as the ground forces, and maybe we'll have some kind of irregular forces by using the Kurds. The challenge there is there has been a huge gap, well, relatively speaking, between Trump's help is coming statement and the help actually turning up. And in the interim, thousands of Iranians were massacred by the regime involving the Kurds, depending on how that is presented, could work well to distract and draw away IRGC ground forces, the besieged, their militia that they use to suppress dissent on the street. But if that's badly presented, that will really cause some prominent Iranian nationalists to take fright. We don't know how brittle the regime is, so that we don't know how close it is to being tipped over the edge. In other words, if. If their power to suppress dissent is smashed, would another uprising basically overwhelm the regime's ability to resist it? So I think that's problematic. And if the Israelis are just interested in killing all of the senior leadership, then are they coordinating that targeting? Then you get the final point, which is the tension. If that's a nice to have and they will accept eliminating the ballistic missile force and entombing the nuclear program, then you need someone to negotiate that with at the end. Well, if you've killed all the senior leadership, who has the authority to negotiate with you? And doesn't that mean that the Iranian population will then see this as a sort of cynical drawing of stumps before the mission has finished? And so regime change and regime coercion come into tension at a certain point. And this is the bit where it's not clear if a degree of improvisation will actually harm their ability to achieve some of their objectives.

Colonel Simon Diggins (32:37)

I'm less skeptical than some. I mean, all the commentators have been. Have been riding out, you know, and they've been dragging out even from the 1990s, and people talking about sort of mission creep and end states, they're kind of dragging off, you know, dusting down their vague memories of concepts from a while ago. I can also look at other ideas where essentially, as sort of, you look at what is the nature of this sort of an autocratic regime, particularly one that claims to be so blessed by God. Actually, it's extraordinarily fragile. And I think what the fragility of such a regime would Be if it's cracked hard enough. I think this is part of the kind of military program. If it's cracked hard enough, the fissures are so great that it just falls apart. Now there are routes to the IRGC and to the theocratic regime in Iran. I mean in terms of where they are. But the question is how deep were they. And I think if this an operation had taken place a year ago, even two years ago, I would probably be arguing almost exactly the same as those who are saying. But look at Iraq, look at Afghanistan, look at Libya, all the rest of them. But actually after the experience of the revolt and we've had now two major revolts in a short period of time, the woman life freedom vote of 2022 and the revolt that took place at the back end of last year, beginning of this, I think that the real fragility and the how shallow the roots of this theocratic IRGC controlled regime are have been amply demonstrated. Of course they can turf out half a million sort of, you know, paid bazij to come onto the streets of Tehran to commemorate the death of the Ayatollah. But actually there is a significant portion of the Iranian population who just want rid of them and ridden them as quickly as possible.

Venetia Rainey (34:12)

I don't think anyone disagrees that a lot of Iranians would like to see the end of this regime. But we have not had any credible reports so far of major defections which is one of the things that everyone has been watching for. No defections within the IRGC or, or in the Iranian army known as the artes. And although the senior leadership ranks have been decimated, analysts are just saying that the ruling structure is resilient. We just haven't seen any cracks yet

Colonel Simon Diggins (34:36)

and may well we need to crack them harder. I mean, I don't know. I think at some point it's going to give and I think when it gives, it's going to give in a really, really hard and terrible way. I mean I don't think this is any way kind of with any kind of joy whatsoever, but there will be significant civil conflict in Iran. You can't have a regime like this that basically terrorizes people for 47 years and not expect backlash and reaction to it and indeed desperate attempts by remnants of the regime to try and hand over. The comparison with the Venezuela is interesting, but there had clearly been a significant amount of what you might call political preparation of the battlefield prior to the removal of Madura. I mean Maduro had been given various ways out. The Americans were clearly in contact with not just quite credible opposition people within, in the Venezuelan regime, but actually it would appear to be most of the rest of the government, apart from Madura. And so when Madura was kind of plucked out of his safe house in a very short, very sharp Special Forces operation, the regime was just carried on. Now, the way in which this operation has been conducted, that will be harder to tell. And as you say, the Israeli Americans cutting the lawn with the. Of the leadership of Iran, you reach a kind of point where who are you going to end up talking to? And we did have that in Iraq in 2003. One of the first orders that was given by the Kurdish official authority was basically was to remove Ba' Athists from almost every level of society. The net result was there was nobody to talk to.

Venetia Rainey (36:08)

And that ended up being a huge strategic mistake because it sowed the seeds for, you know, civil war in Iraq for the next two decades. I mean, I wonder if you could speak a bit more about why you're convinced that this doesn't have the potential to turn into another Iraq.

Colonel Simon Diggins (36:23)

I don't turn to the right. I think it will have its own characteristics. I do believe we're probably going to end up with something that looks like civil disorder within Iraq and some bits of it will be very bloody and very difficult. I mean, where we are hearing just. And the only rumors and someone denied about the, for example, arming Kurdish separatist groups in the, in the north, that is extraordinarily complex. I mean, the largest portion of the Kurdish population, interestingly in the world is in Iran. No, it's not in Turkey and it's not in northern Iraq. So you have got that as part of it. And they were also the group that were most opposed to the imposition of the Islamic regime in 1979 as well. So there's an area there in terms of the population of Iran as a whole, only some 60% are actually what you might call Farsi. They're actually the kind of native Persians. They've got a significant minority issue. And it may well be what we end up is a kind of is fracturing along those ethnic lines. That's not been a major issue before. And then you've got the ideological splits that exist between those who want to secularize and be modern and those who want to stick with what they see as a native Islamist regime in their country. So I do predict that the transition to whatever new politics would be will be messy. And it may look how the characteristics of a civil war. I don't believe it would be exactly the same as what happened in Iraq. Iran is an extraordinary civilization, extraordinary country, but that just makes it very difficult for those who are outsiders to deal with it. We're not getting any real indication, though. I'm sure the Israelis are all over it, as to who to talk to and who not to be talking to. Whether the conventional military decides to split off from the irgc, I don't know. But it's going messy. But it may well be that we're looking at a different future for Iran.

Venetia Rainey (38:06)

I wonder if you want to come back on that.

Matthew Saville (38:07)

Well, I think, I think the regime's lost legitimacy. It's killed thousands, probably tens of thousands of his own population. It's responsible for a water shortage. It has impoverished the population. You know, the, the, the promise of what it might, you know, achieve through resisting sanctions hasn't been met. And I, I think they've, they've lost the population. So I think the regime is in its, you know, it's in a zombie phase. It's, it's dead, but still walking. The problem is, is how long does that still walking bit last for?

Venetia Rainey (38:43)

There is also the problem that this American Israeli military operation war could have the counter effect. Right. I mean, we've spoken to our Foreign Correspondent Akhtar McCoy on this podcast this week, and he was talking about how, you know, Iranians are united by American and Israeli intervention. It's not something that they welcome, although they would also like to see the fall of the regime. I just want to read out the latest death tolls as we have them. According to the Iranian Red Crescent society, more than 1,200 people killed. We don't have a breakdown combatants versus civilians there, and that includes 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in the attack on the first day of the war. There is mounting evidence of report by the New York Times this morning of report by Reuters that the US Was responsible for that and that it was inadvertent because there was a IRGC naval base adjacent to that school. But these sorts of incidents are not going to rally people behind the American and Israeli operation, are they?

Matthew Saville (39:41)

No. I mean, I don't think it's going to be a rally around the flag effect either. And I think people will if there is the promise of removing the regime. You get the impression from what's coming out from people on the street that they will tolerate this, that they, they do, in fact, welcome strikes that are targeting the regime. As the conflict extends, though, there is always the danger that you get more of these incidents which happen in war, and the problem is is that either people will see that as callousness and begin to doubt whether or not they're really fighting for them. There is also the risk of some kind of more conspiratorial thinking which does pop up a lot of the time, which is the US and the Israelis are so precise, you know, they're able to work out exactly when Hammenei was meeting with some of his senior advisors. It therefore can't be an accident that they have bombed this civilian target and that begins to erode support as well. And so you, you know, that danger remains.

Venetia Rainey (40:40)

Simon, as a former British army officer who served in the Middle east, should the UK be getting more involved here?

Colonel Simon Diggins (40:47)

I absolutely believe they should have done. I think it's very interesting you'll all have read the Tim Shipman article in the Spectator. Clearly it was on the cards. I mean, I see this as a moral issue quite bluntly. I don't glorify war whatsoever. I've seen quite enough to know what it is. Bias is basically moral issue. This is a ghastly regime that murders its own people, hangs rape victims, blinds female distance is clearly responsible for terror across the Middle east and subversion in our own country. Oh, and by the way, it regards us as their enemy. You know, for me it's an absolute no brainer. I mean, all the sort of the faffing around and the kind of worrying about whether or not there was a, there was a legal justification. They've been at war with us 47 years. We have been slowly boiled to accept a level of sub dissidence, subversion and frankly opposition to them that we haven't recognized that basically that's exactly what's happened to us. And they were, and I know you're important about a nuclear threat. They're aiming to acquire a nuclear weapon which they can continue their terror across the world. Matthew doesn't agree with you about that, but Eli will have to disagree on that one. So, yes, very long answer to your very short question. We should be much more involved and actually we should be involved now. Let's go and kill the archer and stop worrying about the shield.

Venetia Rainey (41:57)

Matt, what are your thoughts on whether the UK should become more militarily involved?

Matthew Saville (42:00)

I think I am more cautious on this, although that represents a particular school of thought within UK policy, which is we've got history with the Iranians. You know, they run operations in this country. They attacked our embassy, I did deployments in Iraq where I was rocketed by proxies, equipped and trained by Quds Force. You know, my first work as an analyst in government was looking at the links between Quds Force and sheer militants. And they killed one of my colleagues. So I don't have a lot of love for this regime. They see us as enemy number two. Well, they used to. You know, it was the us. Wonderful US, too. Having said all of that, I think if the UK government is looking at what the US has told it, and never mind that there is this kind of legalistic aspect, but if fundamentally they are unconvinced by the strategy that the US is pursuing and think it will result in a mess, I can understand why they say we should defend our partners in the region. You know, they deployed combat aircraft and other forces to defend them, but we probably shouldn't get involved in the strikes. And I think that reflects the reality of our effort would largely be token. The Israelis are operating in the first night of the war. They operated 200 combat aircraft, so their largest ever operation. Well, that is more combat aircraft than the RAF has. In total, the US has probably fired 140 Tomahawk cruise missiles. We could, if our one operational submarine wasn't in Australia and had been in the region, it would probably fired three or four. So if the UK thinks this is, largely speaking, you know, good in intent, but overall not likely to succeed, why should it contribute a token force to not achieve much? Because the reverse is the US and the Israelis might expend lots of this effort and they might succeed, and that would be great. It would be transformative for the region. But a UK contribution is not going to make the decisive impact. So we should defend our partners. And if they're getting criticized for that, maybe they should do more of that. But we've got to look elsewhere. I mean, we don't know how they're seeing the threat from Russia at the moment. Looking at operations in the high north with the Navy, like this is where the hollowing out of the UK's forces, or rather, you know, they're good, but they're small means you've got to make big choices on where you put them. So I, I actually, I understand the moral argument. It would be a good thing to eliminate the Iranian regime and replace it with a stable, democratic Iran. But you have to ask what the UK would achieve by providing a token effort. So that sounds callous, but we're not necessary to make this succeed and we're not going to influence them.

Venetia Rainey (45:00)

Simon, what are you going to be watching in the next week, what are the sort of key developments that we should be keeping an eye on?

Colonel Simon Diggins (45:06)

I think I'm interested to see what on the military science side, what I'm interested to see is where the US targeting goes. We've seen the attacks on the leadership, we've seen attacks on the ballistic missiles, we've seen attacks on the Navy. The other aim they put forward is the writing down the nuclear forces. We know how complicated and difficult that is, but I think that's where they're going to go. And then hard to judge will be their elimination of the irgc, and that's going to be a much more distributed, much more sort of local target, because that's where they are. So that's on the military science side. I think what I'll be looking for on the kind of, if you like, the military, political and the shiki side is splitting of alliances or potential splits within the alliance, the split within Iran. Do we start to see some groups starting to split off and say, no, we need to find a different way? And also whether the this. I won't say coalition of willing. I think it's a coalition of those who've been forced to join together because the way in which the Iranians have done the targeting. So I can't find a handy phrase for it, but you know what I mean.

Venetia Rainey (45:58)

Anyway, coalition of the dragged in.

Colonel Simon Diggins (46:01)

Yeah, coalition that dragged in. Coalition. They attacked. But were that coalition. They attacked and you know, they've got the moment they're unified by a single enemy, whether they either get tired of it or they see a way through it from there. So those, those are the things I'll be looking out for.

Venetia Rainey (46:15)

That was Colonel Simon Diggins, a former British army officer with experience in the Middle east, and Matthew Saville, Director of Military Sciences at the Royal United Services Institute. That's all for today's episode. We'll be back again on Monday. Until then, that was the run. The Latest Goodbye Foreign. The Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Veneesh Charaney and Roland Oliphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following around the latest on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave us a review as it helps others find the show. To stay on top of all of our news, subscribe to the Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatchers newsletter or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine the Latest. We're still on the same email address battlelinestelegraph.co.uk or you can contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show. Notes the producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producer is Louisa Wells.

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