← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:01]
A
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- [00:32]
B
Some crimes are never forgotten. Others are lost to history. Those are the ones we focus on in Crimes of the Centuries, a history meets true crime podcast revisiting murders, trials and frauds that once dominated headlines. I'm Amber Hunt, your host and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. If you like true crime that feels both cinematic and historical, find Crimes of the Centuries wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:01]
A
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark.
- [01:02]
C
And I'm Mark Hertling from the Bulwark. And we're welcoming all of you to Command Post, a weekly session that we do to talk about things military and national security.
- [01:12]
A
Not quite weekly, most recently because we skipped last week. Because why? General Hertling, why did we skip last week?
- [01:19]
C
Well, because I was busy unveiling a new book. My new book called if I Don't Return My Father's Wartime Journal. And I was up in New York doing different media events all week long and the Bulwark was extremely supportive in allowing me to do that. So the book is still for sale. It's still on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and Ballast Books and. And it seems to be selling quite well, Ben, surprisingly.
- [01:45]
A
Oh, I'm not saying.
- [01:47]
C
I'm saying that from my perspective of you being my editor because you didn't get a chance to edit the book.
- [01:53]
A
No, I did not. Which I'm now I'm not. I'm. I shouldn't say I regret it because I read the book and it is so, so, so good. Highly recommend everyone go get themselves a copy and read it. But I regret it because I would have loved to work on it with you. It's so good. It's so interesting. There's so much in there. But speaking of, so interesting, so much to talk about. We're talking all about Iran today. Yeah, the war has been going on for about three weeks now, and one of the things we want to get into here is, is how to tell which parts of it are going well and which parts aren't. This is something that you got into in your latest essay on the Bulwark Iran gets a vote in this war. People can read online@the bulwark.com if you like what we're doing. You can also become a Bull Work plus member and get all sorts of extra treats like comment privileges and members only newsletters, podcasts, things like that. So you prepared for us, General, a situation report, a sit rep, all about what's going on in Iran right now. So let's start out by walking through that and figuring out what all the moving pieces are.
- [02:55]
C
Yeah, I'll tell you the story behind that real quickly, Ben. When I was brand new to the Joint Staff, my first time ever in the Pentagon, I was a promotable colonel, which meant I was a colonel getting ready to pin on a one star. And when you're in that position, you can't assume your job until you're actually promoted. So I volunteered. I got there right before 9 11. I volunteered to be the night shift duty officer in the National Command Post. So one day, it was a Saturday night, I was, I was doing the 6pm to 6am shift and I was getting ready to leave, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers, came down to the command post and he said, hey Mark, the Secretary of Defense is in my office and he's going on all the morning shows and he wants a situation report. So I read.
- [03:43]
A
When did this happen?
- [03:43]
C
This was, this was in 2001, right after 9 11.
- [03:47]
A
Right after 9 11.
- [03:48]
C
Okay, right after 9 11. And the secretary of Defense at the time was the crusty old Don Rumsfeld, who was known to not be the friendliest guy in the world. So I quickly, within about two minutes, scratched some things on a piece of paper, ran into the chairman's office as a, as a colonel. And Secretary Rumsfeld was sitting at a desk with his feet up reading the Washington Post. And he looked over the top of the post and he said, hurtling. He says, I'm in. I'm on the morning shows in just a little while. Give me what's happened overnight and you've got 60 seconds to do it. So he then looked at his watch and I was on, on the timer. So I started giving him the sit rep at what had happened in Afghanistan overnight. And he kept looking at his watch as I was talking and shooting through this very quick situation report. And at the end, he looked up at me and he says, not bad, 56 seconds. You pass this station. So he was screwing with me, Ben. I mean, you know, truthfully, this was the Secretary of Defense playing with a young colonel. But I passed the test and the chairman was quite proud of me. But we're going to now give a 60 second sit rep on what's going on in Iran. We'll start off by saying strategic goals. Destroy the US's strategic goal, destroy Iran's missiles and drone strike capabilities. Neutralize Iran's nuclear and military infrastructure, protect shipping and reopen the Straits of Hormuz. And number four, degrade Iran's ability to project power through proxies. Iran's strategic goals, their political goals, we're assuming these impose costs on US forces and allies, disrupt global energy markets, mobilize regional proxies and partners and survive the regime threatening strike campaign. So Iran is basically trying to counter everything the military does from the United States. They see a power in the US military. The US military sees a power in Iran's ability to launch different ballistic missiles and threaten the regions. Now we could go on for the rest of this. Sick rep. It would take longer. But that's the opening salvo of what is happening on both sides in the strategic objectives, which I think says a lot about how the war is going.
- [06:01]
A
Yeah. And I think you can see some of the outlines there that a lot of the American goals and these are not necessarily the same as the Israeli goals. The Israelis are running a sort of parallel but not quite the same strike campaign in Iran. They're targeting a lot of the Iranian leadership. We're not doing that. So it's a slightly different set of goals, a slightly different way of going about it. But you can see that a lot of the American goals are about eliminating specific military or technological capabilities, eliminating the Iranian navy so they can't disrupt the Strait of Hormuz. Eliminating Iran's ability to, you know, export violence through its proxy networks. Eliminating Iran's conventional military and its nuclear program. The Iranian goals are sort of non military in a certain way, right? It is. Keep the regime alive.
- [06:56]
C
Yeah. We're talking about the asymmetric measures that they're looking at a non military approach. So go ahead, I interrupted you, but let's just all dump that into the asymmetric bucket.
- [07:07]
A
Yeah. No, it really all is they're saying, you know, what is America's weakness? Well, it's not the military. Right. Iran cannot match the American military, certainly not at the same time as the Israeli military. That's just not realistic. But what they can do is hit us where we are relatively weak, which is one, we are a democracy. So if the people get tired of a war, it's much harder for the government to prolong it especially since this administration didn't do a very good job of getting people ready for the war and bought in for the war in the first place. So when you say they're trying to extract costs, another way of saying that is put political pressure on the administration to stop the war. Another one is economic. Right. We don't like it when the price of oil goes up. And so when they have the Strait of Hormuz there right off their shore, they have a lot of influence over the price of oil internationally. So it is interesting that, you know, the, the President and the Secretary of Defense can talk about how much they've obliterated, how much they've destroyed in IR Iran. And we'll get to this a little later in the show. That all might be good, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the Iranians are out of options for fighting back because they can fight back economically. It's a different kind of national power they're using.
- [08:17]
C
Yeah, and not only that, I'd take it even one step further and say Iran is also attempting to influence the US Allies in the region. Now, you know, the President has made a big deal out of the fact that these nasty Iranians are striking other Gulf states. Well, that's true, but they're doing it not for the purpose, he thinks, to damage the Gulf states. They're addressing U.S. military assets in those Gulf states. So they're attempting to strike US Military targets, really in a true sterilized way in terms of not hitting targets other than maybe some airports that affect, like Dubai's interest in closing down an airport, but trying to bring pressure by those Gulf partners of ours to say, hey, us, we had enough. This is crazy. You're now affecting us significantly. Our, our tourists can't move in and out of Dubai. Our aluminum manufacturing can't happen in Qatar. Our fuel is being affected for all the kinds of things we produce. So, you know, maybe they may still be on the sidelines to a degree, but they're being affected by Iran's action against the United States that are stationed in their countries.
- [09:34]
A
Basically, our main defining strength as a country isn't just that we have such a big economy and such a big military. It's that we roll deep, or at least we used to. Right? Where America goes, so go a lot of other countries. If you look at just the list of countries that participated in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan or at some point during the operation in Iraq, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, or you look at the coalition of countries that participated in the first Gulf War, it wasn't just the United States. Those were long lists of countries, like 40 countries in some cases participated in those coalitions.
- [10:08]
C
It's interesting you say that because when I was doing an interview the other day, I'm going to name drop here with Nicole Wallace on her Best People show, which is, by the way, going to show this Saturday night at 10 o'. Clock. We were talking about not only my role as a young major in Desert Storm, but her role in the White House in 2001 under the Bush administration when she was putting the so called coalition of the Willing together. That was her main job as the communication director is getting various countries to join in in the attack into Iraq in 2003. So it was interesting to hear her perspective on this alliance management that usually emanates from inside the National Security Council in the White House. But right now that National Security Council, the nsc, is somewhat depleted.
- [10:58]
A
Yeah. And you can see evidence of why. Donald Trump just posted this not long ago on Truth Social. I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's super long. But basically he says we don't need any allies to help us clear the Strait of Hormuz. We don't need NATO because he says NATO's ripping us off. And we also don't need our other key allies like he name drops Japan, Australia and South Korea. No thanks. We don't need your help. Stay out of it. Which is weird because he was just insisting that all of those countries help keep the Strait of Hormuz open just a day or so ago. And now he's saying, never mind.
- [11:32]
C
We strongly encourage other nations whose economies depend on the Strait far more than ours. You know, we get less than 1% of our oil from the Strait and some countries get much more. Japan gets 95%, China gets 90%. Many of the Europeans get quite a quite a bit. South Korea gets 35%. So we want them to come and help us with the Strait.
- [11:58]
A
I would just want to say I want to get your thoughts on all of this sort of alliance management, since you're such an expert in it. But I will just say this is another asymmetric way that Iran can attack the United States is by further cleaving us off from our allies. Because America alone is not nearly as threatening as America with all of our allies and partners.
- [12:17]
C
Yeah, I think it was Winston Churchill that said there's only one thing worse than fighting with allies and it's fighting without them. He said that during World War II. And that's an appropriate Quote, for today, I believe. But when you're talking about the President slamming NATO for not doing the things he wants and coming to our aid in a war that he started, truthfully, having spent a lot of time in Europe, I understand why they're not doing. They weren't privy to the plan beforehand. They didn't know what was required. They didn't know what the objectives were, much like the American people didn't for the last three weeks. And they have a lot of resources that could help. You know, I was listening to the President this morning. He was talking about the UK not giving them one or two minesweepers that they can use in the Gulf. Well, there are other countries in NATO that have a lot of minesweepers. I'm going to name a few. Germany, Poland, Italy, the UK and when you talk about the numbers that they have and the fact that in early part of this year, the US Actually had four minesweepers that they decommissioned in the early part of the year and brought back to the United States from the Gulf area, you're understanding why several allies might be important if there are mines in the Gulf. And oh, by the way, there's so far no indicators that Iran has laid mines within the Straits of Hormuz or any other regions in the Gulf.
- [13:50]
A
Great. The amount of confusion we're getting for this administration is just staggering. We were talking a little bit just before we started recording about how NATO goes about deciding who's going to have what capabilities and who's going to offer what to the alliance. Could you talk a little bit more about that?
- [14:04]
C
Yeah. There's actually a committee within NATO headquarters in Brussels that determines what allies can contribute, depending on the size of the allies. You know, the President throws around this figure of, hey, I've gotten everyone to commit 5% of their GDP to the NATO trust fund. That's not true. First of all, there are no countries in NATO that are committing 5% of their GDP. The closest is Poland, and they're committing 4.3% of their GDP. But when you get into that GDP of smaller countries, let's take an example. Estonia. Estonia is not going to build an aircraft carrier. They're not going to put together a tank brigade. What, they come to NATO and say, hey, we're part of your organization. This is what our 2 or 3% of our GDP will give you. It will give you a very good special operations capability. So they contribute special operations forces. Bigger countries like the UK Or Germany, like I just talked about Poland, you know, they have a navy. So they're going to say, yes, what kind of capacity do you need from our navy? Because we also aren't going to build any aircraft carriers other than the UK So what kind of ships can we contribute? A cruiser, a destroyer, maybe a couple minesweeper? For Norway, it's an icebreaker. So those are the kind of things that are shared capabilities within the NATO headquarters, and that's very well coordinated to get the best bang from the buck from every country.
- [15:31]
A
And it makes sense that you would have different allies contributing different things. You wouldn't expect Italy to contribute an icebreaker. And this is a story we see a lot from what's happening in Ukraine since the Trump administration came in, that while the United States isn't donating as many weapons as we were, we're still selling them to the Europeans. It's a little bit more complicated.
- [15:52]
C
We.
- [15:52]
A
One of the things that the Europeans rely on us for is, for instance, intelligence. Like we have intelligence gathering capabilities that a lot of other countries just can't match. It is one of the unique things that we offer. And our allies have other things, and they all work together and complement each other, or at least that's the theory.
- [16:09]
C
Yeah. And the theory actually is mostly reality at NATO headquarters. The thing that is standard, the things that are standardized are ammunition type, you know, so a bullet in Norway will also fit a bullet in a gun in Italy. And even that is sometimes complicated, but for the most part, that works. So you want to standardize, and NATO calls them stanags. You want to standardize the majority of things you provide. And Ben, I know what you're thinking. Don't ask me what stanag stands for, because I don't know. But it's the standardized agreements, I think, for all the NATO nations in terms of how they will produce their weapons system. So it's fascinating. But like you said, they all contribute different things to the, to the alliance.
- [16:56]
A
Now, I promised this earlier. I want to try something here again if people want to read more about this little exercise we're about to do. Your latest essay at the Bulwark is called Iran Gets a Vote in this War. Highly recommend people read it. It's very interesting. I want to present to you my best brief for why this war is going well. And pretend you're Don Rumsfeld. Stop me when you hear something stupid. And we'll see. We'll see how far we can get to. Because I think.
- [17:28]
C
Because you just said the war is going well. Yeah. Well, listen, go ahead. I'm sorry.
- [17:32]
A
I think this gets to the issue you wrote about, which is how things can be going well and individual engagements and not well overall. So here's what I want to say. Iran has been a big problem for the United States for close to half a century. They have a lot of American blood on their hands, from everything from the Khobar Towers bombing to killing American soldiers under your command in Iraq and, and a bunch of other examples. I mean, the, the Marine barracks in Beirut, they're international sponsors of terrorism. In fact, they're the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and have been for years. They definitely had a nuclear weapons program. They've had it for a long time. You get a hem and ha about the exact wording of were they going to build a weapon or was it just a device? Or how close were they? But the fact is they were really trying to build a nuclear weapon. They were using eliminationist rhetoric about the only democracy in the Middle east, which is an American ally and partner. These were bad dudes. And right now, I would say not only has their military capability been severely diminished thanks to the strikes last summer in Operation Midnight Hammer and some follow on strikes during this more recent Operation Epic Fury, their nuclear program is drastically set back. Drastically, drastically set back. And I would say even more than that. One of the things that the Americans, and I think mostly the Israelis have been targeting is a lot of their internal security apparatus. So they're bombing the IRGC bases, they're bombing the besieged headquarters, they're bombing the parts of the Iranian regime that keep the people down and allow the government to spend so much money on things like terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and Katif Hezbollah in Iraq and allow them to spend so much money on a nuclear weapons program and a missile program. Oh, the missile program. All these missile launchers have been destroyed, all these missile batteries have been destroyed, these missile, you know, arsenals. So really it seems like. Oh, sorry, I'll just finish that previous point, which is the regime is also, for a long time probably is my guess, going to be focused more on its internal security and protecting itself against the Iranian people than on making trouble internationally whenever this war ends. So even if we don't get regime change, it's a major accomplishment to not solve, but really reduce the Iranian problem in terms of their support for terrorist groups, their nuclear program and their missile program and their military capacity overall. So when we're done, it's just sort of one problem that's off the global map. Right? Because we've sort of destroyed it.
- [20:16]
C
You have not said anything that's incorrect, Ben, and I applaud you for that great sit Rep. That you just gave it. The question becomes is this a long term solution or a short term solution, depending on how you define both short and long term. Is this attempting to apply diplomacy and economics and information and combat actions against a country that was and has been a pariah for the last 47 years? And what is going to be the result of all this destruction of the destruction of their military capabilities when they still have institutions in place that while they may still be damaged, they are continuing to provide leadership in this regime? The Middle east really depends not on personalities but on institutions. So as we have either Democrats or Republicans that are either charismatic or business like running for office, they have institutions and one of those institutions is the one that belongs to the Ayatollah. It's a Shia led primacy within Iran with a whole lot of disparate groups within that country. So the question becomes no matter how good our operational plan was and how good our strike capability in destroying all these weapons, the question now becomes what's next? What happens next to this very large country smack dab in the Middle East?
- [21:55]
A
Yeah, I think, I don't think anyone has an answer for that. So I can't, I can't form the,
- [22:03]
C
I know, I don't.
- [22:04]
A
Yeah, I can't form the Steven version of that argument because no one knows.
- [22:10]
C
And that gets back to, if I may, it gets back to what is the end state. And I think the administration currently has one of two options. They can either continue this fight with more capabilities, more military assets, more demands of this nation in the middle of the Middle east, or they can declare a victory, you know, give each other high fives between the Pentagon and the White House and walk away. Neither one of those options are safe, let's put it that way. They're both very dangerous and they will cause problems within our resolve within the United States, but also how our alliances see us if we walk away or if we go knee deep into Iran with combat forces, what are then going to be the results? Because this won't be finished just when someone says we quit.
- [23:11]
A
Right, Right. And I think that is really the argument that I feel like, though this administration doesn't want people to think about. They want people focused on what we're achieving, which militarily is very impressive.
- [23:27]
C
I mean. Right.
- [23:28]
A
You know, a lot of help from the Israelis. They don't want people to ask what the cost is and the cost is that. So I'm dropping my devil's advocate here. This is what I actually think the cost is that first of all, it is further fractured, fracturing our alliances, which is really bad. I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think a different administration could have conducted a very similar kind of campaign but gotten a bunch of our allies on board with it. It would have looked different. It probably would have been more focused on the nuclear issue and the missiles than on some of the other stuff, but it would have kept the alliances together. And the other thing is the global context. Right. It is much easier to think about just Venezuela or just Iran or next, just Cuba than to think about the entire world and prioritize. So, yeah, it's great to solve one problem in one part of the world in Iran using all this firepower and all these weapons systems and all these, all these, all this ammunition that we don't have a lot of. But then what do we do if China tries to take Taiwan? What do we do if Russia decides to invade another country in a couple of years and we haven't had time to make more interceptors yet? You know, it's, it's a question of priorities that I don't think this administration is very, very comfortable with.
- [24:39]
C
Yeah. And, and they're not. And one of the things you mentioned, the article that, that published today and the bulwark that, that I wrote and you kindly edited, and there's a line in that article that harkens back to the 1970s. And it was a book written retired Colonel Harry Summers, who had fought in Vietnam for quite a long time. And he recounted a conversation he had with a Vietnamese colonel by the name of Thu in 1975. And allegedly Colonel Summers said, you know, Colonel Thu, you never defeated us on the battlefield. And Colonel Thu of the Vietnamese armies replied, that may be true, Colonel, but it also is irrelevant. And the meaning of that statement is you can have these phenomenal military campaigns and battles and kinetic strikes, but if it's not aimed at something that the politicians want as an end state and what they want to see for the long term, it doesn't matter how much ammunition you spend, how many soldiers you put on the ground, how many airplanes or Tomahawk missiles you fly over a country, if it doesn't reach the stated objective, which truthfully, as we started off this program saying we don't know what the stated objectives were, we know what we're striking, but we don't know what the long term reach was other than to stop Iran from being a pariah in The Middle east. And that's going to really be hard because then you're affecting the ideology of a nation state.
- [26:12]
A
Would have been nice if someone had told them that war could be complicated, but I guess they weren't willing to listen. We are, however, listening when you all send us your questions. We asked you for your Iran questions and we've got some good ones here. So I think we have time for two. The first one, just as a reminder before I read these, you can send your questions to command post@the bulwark.com and we'll try to answer them. First one is from Michael Maiden. This is, I think, about the news reports that Russia was giving Iran targeting information to help it launch missiles at American military assets and things around the Middle East. His question is how good do you think that intelligence is? And second, given the bombing campaign by the US And Israel, does Iran have the weapon systems, the means to act on that intelligence and strike high value American targets, or is that just no longer within their capability?
- [27:05]
C
Yeah, it's a great question. And the first part of the answer is yes, certainly Russia has that capability, so does China. And yes, I would suspect both of them are passing this kind of information to their allies for no better reason than just for Russia's sake, a quid pro quo. Remember, Iran has provided Russia in their war in Ukraine with literally hundreds of shahed drones when they needed it and they were low on ammunition. So yeah, this is a, hey, you helped us in a time of need, we're helping you now. And the best, the best thing that an ally can give to a country that's at war is intelligence. We have been the benefactors of that to many other countries when they're fighting wars. And I know how that works. Our intelligence is very good and I know that Russia's intelligence capabilities are very good to. The second part of that question is can Iran use that and strike targets? The answer is pretty obvious because they have. They've struck in some major radar sites that belong to the United States that have been placed in various countries. There was a report of a ballistic missile striking an airfield that actually damaged, we don't know to what degree. Four US Refueling aircrafts, four different ones that were parked on the tarmac that hasn't been much publicized. There has been targeting of embassies, US Embassies throughout the Middle east and key locations where US Troops were stationed. The six deaths, the first six deaths were from a logistics base in Ashwaiba. And it was a key target that was a precise hit. So Yeah, I would suspect that they're getting some good targeting and they're using Iran, is using those to strike what they would consider high value targets that are affecting the campaign of the United States.
- [29:06]
A
Yeah, the only thing I'd add to that is you're right, it's the Russians figure it's quid pro quo because we have also been giving the Ukrainians intelligence information to help them launch their long range strikes into Russia. Now when the administration was asked about this, they said, well, you know, it's like, it's okay, don't worry about it. Everyone does it. Which is not what you want the leader of your country to say that it's okay for another country to, to be launching attacks at America. Their job is to protect the country. They shouldn't be okay with that. But that's what they said. It drives me bananas.
- [29:37]
C
Like, is it okay for another country to get intelligence from Russia and then launch a strike on Al Shweba and kill six Americans in one strike? I don't think so. I think that runs contrary to what we believe.
- [29:53]
A
Yeah. Especially I mean, if you're the President of the United States to say it's okay to, if another country attacks America, it's like, what are you, what are you even doing? Like, that's your whole job. Okay. The second question from Mark Creswell. This is really interesting and I suspect I know what the answer is. After every major military action, we learn months or years later that special teams were on the ground weeks or months earlier, gathering intelligence, training allies, etc. Without divulging anything. Isn't it naive to think there are no Americans on the ground in Iran now or maybe earlier in the war?
- [30:25]
C
Yes.
- [30:27]
A
I guess for a fuller answer, we'll have to wait some years.
- [30:32]
C
Yes. Those are the kind of things that I'm, I'm aware of that have happened in the past and even the most unique situations. So as a citizen without a security clearance now, I would suspect the same thing as the reader said in his question are happening now.
- [30:55]
A
The only, I honestly have no information on this apart from what I've read in books you can get at the library. Well, we know from, from Israel's attacks on Iran that it was not terribly difficult for them to get people into Iran who were prepared not only to gather intelligence, but also to help launch like drone attacks from inside Iran that's been publicly reported. So I imagine the Israelis had people inside Iran and I think if the Israelis had people inside Iran, they probably weren't the only ones. Is my guess, that's probably true. General, thank you so much for another episode of Command Post. And I think we should keep covering Iran because it's probably going to keep going on for another week is my guess.
- [31:42]
C
Yeah, it may be going on for at least the next couple of days. We'll see what happens. But it's going to be interesting because it's taken us out of our comfort zone. Well, it's out of my comfort zone, probably not out of yours, Ben, because of what we're seeing in terms of the asymmetric economic attacks being conducted by Iran. But that's going to, I think, take center stage in the next few weeks, as well as the president kind of dissing our allies for not providing the support he requires.
- [32:10]
A
Yeah. Our colleague Katherine Rampel is our real economic expert. I can't claim the same for myself because I can't do math. General, thanks so much. This is great.
- [32:20]
C
All right. Hey, thanks, Ben. It's always fun to be with you on the Bulwark Command Post. Send us your questions and join us next week as well.
- [32:29]
B
Some crimes are never forgotten. Others are lost to history. Those are the ones we focus on in Crimes of the Centuries, a History Meets True Crime podcast revisiting murders, trials and frauds that once dominated headlines. I'm. I'm Amber Hunt, your host and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. If you like true crime that feels both cinematic and historical, find Crimes of the Centuries wherever you get your podcasts.