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- [00:00]
A
As events accelerate in the Middle east, the team here at ARC Media is increasing our coverage. More conversations, more context, more time spent trying to help make sense of what's happening. And all with an expanding cast of podcast hosts, analysts and journalists. Our Inside CallMeBack subscribers help make this expanded coverage possible. It helps us be here when it matters most. If you're not yet an inside Call Me Back subscriber, this is an important time to join us. To subscribe, you can follow the link in our show notes or visit ark media.org and to our insiders, thank you. You are listening to an ARC Media podcast.
- [00:49]
B
If the regime is likely to fall, if you believe in whatever phase two is and phase three is of this operation, if the Israelis have a great plan that we just don't know about and you think the population is going to take over, and Reza Pahlavi, the crown prince, the son of the shah, somehow has this secret coalition in the waiting and a network that's activating inside the government and cities are just going to start falling like you saw when Al Shara marched on Damascus. It's just going to magically happen and there's a plan for it. You don't want to blow up Iran's oil exports. Doesn't make sense. That's the main revenue stream for the country. If you're going to keep the lights on, if you're going to prevent chaos, if you're going to keep a transition orderly together, you're going to want that oil. However, if the regime is not going to fall, if this is going to be the regime that we are going to have for the future, do you want the regime with 1 and a half to 2 million barrels per day in illicit exports to China, making the money to rebuild quicker, faster and repress the people more, I would say no. And so in that scenario, I would say your closing act needs to be taking down their oil export capability. Take the revenue offline for the foreseeable future. Then you should ensure that you give the people that extra boost after military operations are over by taking away the money from the regime. If we don't do that, it will be a very, very important strategic blunder.
- [02:19]
A
Foreign. It's 5:00pm on Wednesday, March 11 here in New York City. It is 1:30am on Thursday, March 12, in Tehran and it is 12:00am on Thursday, March 12, in Israel. Here is Arch Media contributor Deborah Pardes with the news.
- [02:47]
C
Three more ships were hit by projectiles in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. Iran has effectively shut down the Strait since the start of the war in a campaign to disrupt global energy supplies. Earlier, the Pentagon said it had sunk 16 mine laying ships in the strait, through which about a fifth of the world's daily oil and gas supply passes. President Trump said on Wednesday that if Iran is indeed laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz, the US Military response will be, quote, at a level never seen before. Also on Wednesday, the International Energy Agency said that member countries will unlock 400 million barrels of oil from their reserves to ease the impact of the war. That'll be the biggest release ever. And U.S. interior Secretary Doug Burgum said later that American oil companies will soon announce increased production. Israel expects that missile and rocket fire will be heavier than normal on Wednesday night, according to reports. Tuesday night was already a difficult one for Israelis, with warning sirens sounding at least four times. Israel's home front command said on Wednesday that more difficult days are ahead and nationwide restrictions will have to remain in place at least through the week. Iran's new supreme leader, Mujdaba Khamenei, was reportedly wounded in airstrikes and that's why he's not been seen in public for days, according to Iranian and Israeli officials. This is a news update. I'm Deborah Pardes.
- [04:15]
A
Now onto today's episode. Almost two weeks into the Iran war, the biggest question in Washington is how long will it last? The conflict, which began with massive US and Israeli strikes on February 28 that killed Iran's supreme leader and triggered retaliatory strikes across the region, now has officials assessing that the campaign could stretch for weeks or longer, while at the same time hinting that the war is in its last days. So today we're asking the question many policymakers and analysts are debating, is the Iran war actually heading toward an end or just getting started? To unpack this question, I'm joined again by Rich Goldberg, senior advisor at the foundation for Defensive Democracies, where he runs the energy and National Security Program. Rich has a long career in government in Congress where he was an instrumental player in advancing sanctions across the board, comprehensive sanctions against Iran. He served in the first Trump administration in a national security role related to Iran. He served in the second Trump administration, where he stood up the National Energy Dominance Council at the White House. And Donald Trump describes him on Iran as someone who gets it, or at least that's how he described Rich in a Truth social post just days ago. So, Rich, hopefully you will help us get it. Thanks for being here.
- [05:35]
B
Thanks for having me.
- [05:36]
A
Like many of us, Rich, you've been paying close Attention to the messages concerning the question of whether the war is coming to an end. How would you summarize the different messages coming out of the White House? And how should we think about who said what and what matters?
- [05:51]
B
Yeah, I think there's two sets of things going on here. Number one, military objectives and the progress towards achieving military objectives. And those are being briefed on your daily basis by the Pentagon, whether it's Secretary Hegseth, General Kaine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and sometimes down at centcom, Admiral Cooper, the commander of Central Command. And they've laid out sort of their scorecard, their progress report, and they're briefing it every day. What is happening in this phase of the war? What is happening this phase of the operation? And remember, at the outset it sounded like there were going to be phases. And this sounds like we're still in the first phase. And that phase has to do with destroying all of Iran's war making capabilities and capacity externally. That has to do with their missiles, especially their missile launchers, their capability to launch missiles, whether that's the longer range ballistic missiles, we call them medium range ballistic missiles that are attacking Israel, the short range ballistic missiles attacking all of the Gulf region, or the drones that we see with somewhat better effect than the missiles getting through and hitting energy infrastructure, hitting tankers in the Gulf area and their naval capacity, vessels that could launch drones, vessels that could mine the Gulf or the Strait of Hormuz, all of those being their external threat to the United States, to Israel, to the Gulf, to the global oil market. And with the Pentagon saying they're going to be moving not just to attack the current threat, in other words their current stockpiles, their current launch and attack capacity of what they've already made, but also more upstream, the industrial base, the ability to reconstitute, the ability to manufacture, really trying to set them back in all of these threat programs by many years. That's the Pentagon objective that they've laid out. That's the metrics by which they continue to update. And by the way, in that space, it doesn't seem like we're done yet. And it still seems like there's something that's supposed to come next. And what that next is is still sort of vague. And remember, the Israelis are out there doing something as well we should talk about, but that's separate from what else is going on in the world. And that has to do with the flow of energy and the downstream effects of the flow of energy being restricted out of the Strait of Hormuz right now, and most importantly domestically in the United States, the impact of rising oil prices on gas prices and the political impact that that has, the potential economic impact, not just today, when you see the price of the pump go up, but all the different inputs into the economy of what it could mean in a month from now, in two months from now. And thinking of midterm elections in the fall, and what are going to be the impact if we have some sort of global recession or other inflationary pressures in the United States. And so you sometimes hear language that's supposed to signal to the oil markets, calm down. This is not an endless war. This is not going to go on forever. This may wrap up sooner than you think. And what does sooner than you think mean? That could be the end of this Phase one. Phase two could just look very different. From an operational perspective. The end of phase one might simply mean Iran no longer has the ability to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage. We move into a position where there's a free flow of energy. So in this phase, where people have real fears of the economic implications and the dislocations that are occurring, calm down. This phase should be over soon. We're doing enormous damage. And then tankers will flow, then energy will flow, and we will help that happen. But for right now, hang on. Understand there's a military mission underway and it is being achieved. That's where I think we are. And so there's confusion between the President's messages aimed at the global markets, and you saw that message to great effect earlier in the week, when oil is starting to rise above $100, above $110, on its way to $120. Just total panic starting to set in irrationally into the market. The President goes and makes a statement like, well, this is going really well. This might wrap up soon. And he crashes the price of oil by $40 in an instant. It'd be breathtaking. And we're seeing the volatility and the fear and the speculation in the market where you can have a Secretary of Energy that appears, make an erro and live news, you know, a tweet that goes out.
- [10:09]
A
This is Secretary Wright who said, what did he say? He made a statement and he pulled it down.
- [10:13]
B
He simply said, you know, we've had the first tanker escorted by the US Navy, potentially misinformed, had some bad information, put it out there, thinking he was doing the right thing. And. And it moved markets, right? Just wiped trades off the board. I mean, just. And then the minute it had to be corrected. The post was taken down. White House confirmed it had not happened yet. Oil shoots back up. So we're seeing all of the risk premiums and where they fall in the market. And the President, if he knows one thing better than anything, it's the power of messaging, the power of marketing, the power of signals, and how the market reacts to all of those things. And so his sort of job is keep the country on board to achieve the military objectives. And to do that, you need to make sure you manage the oil market at the same time.
- [10:59]
A
You say at some point we'll be in a situation where Iran will not be able to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage. That sounds great. And obviously it sounds like a worthy long term aspiration and an immediate strategic and tactical goal. How does that actually work? What does that look like? Because, by the way, as far as I'm concerned, I'm sure as far as many of our listeners are concerned, that's a game changer. Once Iran cannot hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage, something like 20% of the world's oil flow, energy flow, goes through the strait. So Iran holds that hostage. Iran holds a big chunk of the global economy hostage. If we can prevent them from doing that, that is an inflection point. So tell me what that looks like. How soon you think that could happen?
- [11:42]
B
Well, I'll note that we have been moving steadily. The second carrier strike group that was on station off of the coast of Israel, this is the USS Ford and its larger carrier strike group. We have been moving that down the Red Sea to be in position to augment the existing carrier strike group that was already positioned closer to Iran. I would expect that is to have additional naval capacity for what might be coming, to prepare for escorts as necessary. But basically, what does it look like it means at some point, whether it's Admiral Cooper, General Kane, the people who are assessing the threat from Iran and the needs of the Navy and the needs of the air forces, both Naval air forces and US Air Force, to attack the threat. You make an assessment that the threat has been reduced to some level, has been mitigated to some level. They've run out of so many launchers that they just cannot launch attacks as they used to. And the squadrons that are on the carrier are up in the sky attacking targets just all day long, and they're working through their target sets. Once you can divert those squadrons to additional counter drone defense, once you can divert your destroyers to escort duties and augmented missile defense for tankers, then you can Reposition your assets, reallocate your resources, and actually provide for the defense of the tanker community to go through the Strait of Hormuz, potentially with the US Navy, but also you'd be facing a much more thinned out threat because you've reduced the threat on the other side just by destroying their capabilities. I think that's what we are waiting to see. We had sort of started this conflict with news that this was an insurance problem, and to some it could still be. Insurance was pulled originally by Lloyds of London. The war risk insurance for the hulls and the cargo on these tankers. And the US Stepped in and is now, by the end of last week, offered up to $20 billion of coverage from the Development Finance Corporation. There's additional, almost unlimited money available for insurance coverage in the U.S. government from the U.S. maritime Administration of the Department of Transportation under a law that goes back to preparations for World War II back in 1936. We have other authorities available if we needed them on the high seas. But I think right now the President, at least from General Kane and Admiral Cooper's advice, focused on achieving the military objectives here in phase one and then having enough resources to devote to additional augmented defensive tankers to get energy flowing if needed when that phase one is coming to a close.
- [14:05]
A
In terms of what the administration's most likely scenario of how this would play out, at least their most likely scenario of how this would play out when they went into this war, leading up to the war. How would you compare that to how things are going? Do you think there's anything that surprised them?
- [14:21]
B
From everything that I've seen the Pentagon leaders talk about and everything I've heard, this is going according to plan. I think we underappreciate because of Iranian propaganda, because of regime propaganda. And it's so good. And they have so many allies across the globe. They have allies in the United States, quite frankly, in our media that is telling us all kinds of narratives. And we also have some sort of time, sabotage, leaks from ideologues, maybe isolationists, maybe they're in the Pentagon, maybe then they're in the intelligence community. Community that are trying to tell a different story of, oh, we underestimated this. Oh, we know there's an intelligence analysis that says this isn't even achievable on the limited objectives that Admiral Cooper, General Kane have set out. We are making mincemeat out of Iran's and the IRGC's military capabilities. I mean, vast destruction in their missile program, vast destruction. And I understand that sounds Weird when you are running to a shelter as you're listening to this and there's a missile coming in and it's like, what is he talking about? Vast destruction? The rate of attack is dramatically going down.
- [15:28]
A
Meaning the rate of attack from Iran.
- [15:30]
B
Correct?
- [15:30]
A
Yeah, their numbers, and I've mentioned that on previous episodes, but I think it's important for people to remember we just tend to focus on headlines that flash across our television screens or our iPhone screens of the kinetic activity from Iran. But if you actually look at the data, it's quite striking where it's been on a real steep decline in terms of just the number of projectiles that are being launched and even more importantly, the number of projectiles that are landing.
- [15:55]
B
We are intensifying the attacks on all of their underground storage facilities. These are what they used to call their missile cities. So think of Fordo and what we all thought about it as a hardened underground under mountain nuclear facility. Think of that for missiles and just, you know, cars and trucks running around under a mountain potentially with missile launchers and missiles, missiles themselves and stockpiles of all kinds of very dangerous missiles. Those are getting attacked by the US military on a nightly basis almost, it would seem. And so the storage, the stockpiles, and now if you listen to our Pentagon, the industrial base, I mean the entire manufacturing base, so the entire supply chain of missile making is being laid waste. That is not sort of a turnkey revival. That is years of work that is being destroyed. And yes, they may still have some missiles, they may still have some missile launchers. They may be able to get off a flurry to try to show strength. We're still here, we still have missiles. We can still threaten you to make you feel like this is never ending and maybe we can't achieve our objectives. But it would seem the Pentagon does not believe that based on their own assessments and understands that they are making tremendous progress. The entire coastal defense of Iran is gone. The naval defenses of Iran is gone. And again, this is only what the American military is doing. We don't get the level of granularity and metrics and updates from the Israeli side the way that we get from the Pentagon, in my view, we get sort of characterizations, we get qualifications, qualitative descriptions instead of quantitative descriptions. It would seem, just looking at the weekend when you saw the plumes of smoke going up and reports of disagreement on what the Israelis might be striking, that the Israelis were hitting infrastructure that the IRGC uses. In this case it was fuel depots, by the way. We saw A similar strike during the 12 day war against a fuel depot that the IRGC used and it caused that same sort of plume smoke. Everybody freaked out. Or they were attacking oil, wasn't the case. They were attacking the fuel supplies of the irgc. But I mean, if they have as many sorties up as we do, and they are just having the same number of targets as the United States does, and they're dropping as many munitions as the US Is in some of these sort of totality reports, what are they hitting? That must be just laying waste to the command, control and communication of the IRGC itself and the physical repression apparatus, the control of the country. And what cities are they hitting outside of Tehran that we're not really tracking? The hold on the country that might be buckling in front of our eyes that we don't even realize because they still have an X account, they still have the ability to put a press release out, they can still go on television and give an interview at the regime level. If you're Larajani or somebody, you can just say, hey, we have a new Supreme Leader. You didn't destroy, destroy us. Even if that Supreme Leader doesn't have full control of what's going on. So these are the unknowns of what is happening under the hood. And if I at least take the military progress on the US side to heart and I think about the capabilities of the Israeli side and the number of targets they're working through, this has to be a vast amount of destruction going on, not just to the war making ability externally, but the war making ability of Iran against its own people. And that is sort of the big question mark that hangs above all of us is what's going to happen next. If you've actually run your target bank and you've achieved all your limited military objectives of capability and capacity, what's next?
- [19:31]
A
Okay, so then in terms of what may have surprised the US Anything I don't have information.
- [19:37]
B
You know, there's all these press reports that, well, the President thought they would just collapse very quickly, they would surrender very quickly. I don't know. You then have a counter report that leaks out saying that the President had already been briefed on an intelligence report that said they wouldn't collapse quickly and you couldn't collapse the regime. If you look at the fact that the President waited weeks to build up the force posture that he did, it would seem clear that all the threats you see in front of you were fully briefed and anticipated. And we are responding to those threats as best as we can waiting for the moment where the tipping point arrives and their threat has been dramatically reduced. Our offense continues. And then you move into whatever the next phase is supposed to. Supposed to be. I bet he was surprised the Kuwaiti shot down three jets. I bet that was a surprise to people.
- [20:22]
A
Okay, I want to get to what could possibly succeed this regime. But before I do, just on the military campaign, do you see any scenario in which Israel continues its campaign in Iran without the US well, it's always
- [20:36]
B
been interesting to me that when asked, Secretary Hagseth always says something like, and the Israelis may have their own strategic objectives. You know, the Pentagon's briefing, what the Pentagon is supposed to focus on, what the US Military is supposed to focus on and how they're supposed to grade success for the president on achieving their military objectives. And yet there is some other objective undefined that the Israelis apparently have that they are working to achieve. Now, we may endorse it, we may support it, but it is not the assigned military objective of the United States military. And this of course relates to the fact that the Israelis were the ones that took out Khomeini at the start of the conflict, not the Americans. And so there is this sort of tightrope dance where the US Knows what Israel is doing is completely coordinated, soup to nuts in every way in this operation with the Israelis. But strategic objectives wise, we grade ourselves on one set of criteria. And the Israelis seem to be grading themselves on a different set of criteria that they have not published. That is an interesting question. There will be a point at which our military leaders say, Mr. President, we have exhausted the targets that we set out to hit. We have achieved all that we can on those set of targets, on those set of capabilities with air power. What would you like to do now? And it is possible that there is no further role for the US Military other than very specific big strategic targets. And that could be in different ways than just an air campaign. For example, I told you about a whole bunch of threats at the outset of our military objectives and what's been briefed from the Pentagon. Can anybody raise their hand at home and tell us what I haven't talked about, which seems like a pretty big omission, the nuclear program. There are nuclear sites that are untouched, still Pickaxe Mountain, the future, deeper, more impenetrable, more hardened enrichment facility than Fordo that is nearing completion, was not hit in Operation Midnight Hammer. Loose material, trapped material, we should say, highly enriched uranium that has apparently, based on whatever indications, whatever intelligence is out there, it's now just becoming a fact that there is a large amount of high enriched uranium and low enriched uranium in tunnels trapped, buried by last year's strikes that are somehow accessible, that the Iranians have figured out how to access it. And they were already working apparently on restoring their centrifuge capabilities from last year. And if you combine their advanced centrifuges with this highly enriched uranium with a new facility that's harder to hit than fordo, you have a crash nuclear program very quickly and you can break out. And so the questions, of course, swirl of is there a US Special operator role in all of this? Will we need to have a quick insertion team that is capable of going to weapons of mass destruction sites, removing weapons of mass destruction or material and getting out of the country quickly? Is that something we can do based on the assessment of the sites? Is that something the Israelis will do or can do? Is this a covert action? Is this an overt military action? One of the most important things that US Set out to do at the beginning was achieve air superiority across the country. I think this is really interesting, Dan, because you've always talked about in the past the corridors that the Israelis opened in air defense. And we talked about it way back when in the Khomeini, the supreme leader had no clothes, the Ayatollah had no
- [24:00]
A
clothes episode that was April 24th. You were ahead of your time.
- [24:03]
B
So we have this idea that the Israelis just had a certain set of objectives, certain targets that open corridors over Iran. You don't have to get all air defense throughout the country. You don't have to have total air superiority over Iran. That is not the case today. We are talking about, when the Pentagon briefs it, air superiority over Iran, period. That's a lot of targets we're hitting on the air defense side to be able to know that the US Or Israeli air force pilots and naval pilots can go anywhere they want over the country at multiple flight levels with minimum minimal risk and fear of somebody coming up from the ground. That opens questions of what else you can do with that airspace being yours. Whether you had to secure a perimeter for a limited ground operation of special forces to do something for a limited amount of time. Whether you could make airdrops to population centers, whether you could provide isr, as we call it, intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance drones that just sit above a city and watch the people and watch the irgc, if they're still there, and take out specific targets, potentially with missile strikes, targeted strikes against key leaders, trying to break down control of a city or guiding people on the ground, through secure communications, don't go this way, go that way. I mean, could you have something that actually helps the people take control of the country through simply airspace superiority? These are all the questions that swirl through my mind as we start thinking about what is next. If this is phase one, and maybe the president's saying, we're nearing completion of phase one, which is different than saying it's over. What is phase two?
- [25:38]
A
Rich, everything you're describing here obviously is focused on air dominance or air superiority or whatever we're calling it these days. Can you imagine a phase in which some kind of meaningful ground force deployment. I'm not talking necessarily about what we had in Iraq in 2003 and after, but I'm just talking about some kind of meaningful, because in the debate and those watching, monitoring the war closely, that is the way it's characterized is kind of the point of no return, is the deployment of ground forces. I'm not hearing that in what you're describing in these scenarios you're describing. So tell us how you think about the possible introduction of ground forces or not.
- [26:16]
B
It seems hard to imagine in my mind, the political support for a ground operation in Iran does not exist. We are already seeing political food fights over an air campaign and naval campaign against Iran. The introduction of ground forces by the United States, which immediately takes on higher casualty numbers amidst energy uncertainty, economic uncertainty, seems very, very, very unlikely to me. So that's a political response. But as a practical response, it also just seems dumb. It does not seem like in a country of 90 million people with a large IRGC force that's on the ground that has to flee right now from airstrike, be wrested, controlled by the population, out of government institutions with the use of tactical air cover, that you would want to put yourself in a position where the Iranian side has the numbers, the Iranian side has the strength. It's their territory, it's their tricks up their sleeve, you would turn this very, very quickly, potentially into a quagmire. I don't think there is support for that. I don't think the President has envisioned that. And certainly from the objectives that have been briefed, which is why you've never heard a regime change objective briefed by the Pentagon. It is not something we're either, first of all, we're not force postured for it. We're not seeing the movement of ground troops available to invade Iran. It's not happening. It's like this idea, but remember back in Iraq, it took a long time to build up the Actual forces. You actually have to move hundreds of thousands of people, potential into theater. It's not happening. So I don't think it's planned for. I don't think it's a good idea. I don't think it's going to happen. There are limited ideas that are out there, though, that would still need some sort of landing force and actually holding territory. One that has sort of gained this popularity out there, and some commentators talk about it, is seizing Iran's main export terminal for oil, which is on this little island that sits off the coast of Iran called Kharg Island. You probably heard about it in the news at this point. That's where all the ghost tankers, all these black market oil tankers load up the oil from Iran and bring it across the Strait of Hormuz and onto China in violation of U.S. sanctions, by the way. It's actually still happening right now. While the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed to most other traffic. These ghost tankers, one or two of them are making it through every night and taking oil from Iran to China. This is creating a lot of controversy over what to do with Cargill and what to do with Iran's ability to export oil and the tension there. And I think this bled out from the weekend on. The strike on the fuel depot is twofold. Number one, we're already stressed on the oil market. There's confusion and volatility on the oil market. You're just going to add more confusion by trying to seize carg, by trying to stop the oil from flowing. There's going to be a narrative, oh, they're going to attack more viciously and respond and try to finally just blow up all the oil fields in Saudi Arabia and just take down their loading facilities and export. They're already trying to do that, by the way. They're already trying all those targets. So I don't buy that argument of why you wouldn't do this. The second argument, which I actually buy a lot more, and here's where I think there is a tension in strategy, objectives and likely outcomes. And we're going to have to have this debate right now and very soon behind closed doors and have an outcome for it, because it could be very meaningful for the next 20 years. And that is this. If the regime is likely to fall, if you believe in whatever phase two is and phase three is of this operation, if the Israelis have a great plan that we just don't know about and you think the population is going to take over and Reza Pahlavi, the Crown Prince, the son of the Shah, somehow has the secret coalition in the waiting and a network that's activating inside the government. And cities are just going to start falling like you saw when Al Shara marched on Damascus. It's just going to magically happen and there's a plan for it. It you don't want to blow up Iran's oil exports, doesn't make sense. That's the main revenue stream for the country. If you're going to keep the lights on, if you're going to prevent chaos, if you're going to keep a transition orderly together, you're going to want that oil. However, if the regime is not going to fall, if this is going to be the regime that we are going to have for the future, or at least until the people can figure out a way over the next several months to take back the country, do you want the regime with 1 and a half to 2 million barrels per day in illicit exports to China, making the money to rebuild quicker, faster and repress the people more? I would say no. And so in that scenario, I would say your closing act needs to be taking down their oil export capability. Take the revenue offline for the foreseeable future. You don't have to destroy the oil itself, but if you can cause some kind of very targeted damage, that basically takes their revenue off the board for six months and you would need to rebuild it and they don't really have a capability to lash out at that point. If phase one was successful, you've destroyed their war making capability and you're providing escort in the Gulf, then you should ensure that you give the people that extra boost after military operations are over by taking away the money from the regime. If we don't do that, it will be a very, very important strategic blunder.
- [31:43]
A
You mentioned earlier, Rich, the we've been talking a lot on our podcast. We did an episode, our last episode was the 400 kg of highly enriched uranium which you were referring to earlier, that is buried beneath the ground. And there's a big question about whether or not the US or Israel or both will try to extract it. As Amit Sehgal said in our last episode, this would be not only strategically very important, but visually it'll sort of present itself as a very symbolic win.
- [32:10]
B
I agree with that. I think that's astute.
- [32:12]
A
Yeah. Okay, so then if that's the case, what does that actually look like operationally to go get 400 kg of highly enriched uranium beneath the ground? It's just, I just think it's hard for listeners. It's hard for me to visualize what that operation looks like.
- [32:25]
B
It is hard to visualize it. And I'm going to add a layer of complexity that makes it harder to visualize for myself. And that is the unknowns of the situation. So if we had a vision of all the intelligence available and all the assessments of the sites in question, do we actually know where the material is? Do we actually know the state of the material and its handling requirements? Do we actually know whether it is dispersed over a larger area or is it all in one place? Do we know if you need construction equipment to reach it? Now you're developing sort of the next step of okay, how many people do I need, what kind of people do I need, what equipment do they need and how long might it take and what's my operational clock to defend the site? If you don't have control of the country, if you think there's still a threat, if this will leak out, if it will become known, whether through social media or simply there's watchers there and they've signaled to the IRGC the Americans are here, then you know there is a clock running and there are drones coming and there could be missiles coming and there could be troops coming. So what are you going to have to do to defend that site from all of those threats and for how long can you sustain that? Could be indefinite. The answer could be indefinite if we have total air superiority and we dedicate enough assets to this area and we watch for every drone and we watch for every missile and we can just go from air to ground and take out any movement of personnel and you can keep this site totally secured for infiltration and extraction over an indefinite period of time. Then I breathe a little sigh of relief. I don't think it's risk free. As we've seen the drones get through, we've seen that at US bases that have great counter drone defense, they can send their drones to this site to try to attack the forces that are on the ground there. They can try to launch some sort of close in ballistic missile. If they don't care about hurting the site itself, they just want to attack the Americans. How are we defending against a ballistic missile attack inside of their own territory? These would be interesting questions to be raising if I was on the military planning side, on the intel side, red teaming all of this. But what do I know? No, I'm not in fact on the special operations team. I'm not on the planning team and I'm not in the counter Weapons mass destruction team, which sits within our Special Forces. And these guys are brilliant and they've trained on this and people are sitting in some room going through all of this right now. And maybe there's an Israeli component to it all. Obviously we're going to have to rely on them for the intelligence piece. That's why I think it's difficult. I mean, I've laid out for you a vision of one scenario of really what it could look like at the most complex element. But if it's sort of straightforward, of no, it's just down that hole, dude, go get it. And all you need is this sled and you're going to just bring it out and we're going to helicopter it out. It could take a matter of hours and the Iranians won't even know we were there. It's possible.
- [35:31]
A
Okay, and you and I were talking offline and I just want to put a little finer point on it here. In this conversation you explained why ground forces are not going to happen or unlikely to happen in terms of being deployed. There's also this discussion out there that I want to get into the scenarios here for where we go from here in terms of what the President could be presented with these days in terms of what's achievable. And one of those scenarios that's certainly being debated is regime change. Is it doable? Is it desirable? And then the question out there in the commentariat is, well, it can only be done with deployment of ground forces. You can't get regime change from the air. And you mentioned to me that that is a narrative or a characterization from another era that, that people just stated as though it's like this dispositive statement like, oh, no regime change from the air. We're only in the air right now, therefore no regime change. Can you respond?
- [36:26]
B
Yeah. So I'm going to fuse together in this answer several things that I think are all related and all really important to understand. We are watching one of the most complex, likely AI driven operations in American history and in Israeli history, all seamlessly coordinated between our two militaries with advanced technology, from our jets to our drones to other operations and logistics and intelligence and targeting. Some of that is our innovation in the United States, and some of that is Israeli innovation in Israel. And we're putting it together to maximum effect. There will be books written about all of this from the taking out of Khomeini at the beginning. But I think when we actually understand what has happened behind the scenes under the hood throughout the There will be classes on everything else that has occurred and its meaning in the AI defense technology world. I say that for a couple reasons. Number one, it goes to the heart of this question. Can you take down the regime? Can you buckle the regime? Can you destroy leadership and capability to control the country? Command control, communication from air and sophisticated technological solutions? And I believe that it is possible, absolutely possible. I think the targeting that we're seeing right now from the Israeli side is driven by new technology, new innovation. I think the ability to get so much real time information, put it together, automate all of it, and allow for a kill chain to unveil itself with maximum accuracy and maximum speed across various targets. Fusing in the intelligence as it comes is a breakthrough of modern defense technology. And I think this can be applied in various parts of the country. Do I think you're just going to have one massive moment where the regime falls? I don't know. Maybe. What I do know is nobody can predict how a regime falls in history. And I also would say that the idea that the intelligence community can make an assessment of the durability of a regime is preposterous. They can tell you how many missiles they might have, they can tell you how many launchers they might have, they can tell you how many people work in this office. Maybe they can tell you how the IRGC is structured, they can tell you who's been named the supreme Leader. That's what I want intelligence for. But when the intelligence community gets to say, and I don't think they can withstand the following things, or I think you could do all these things and it won't matter, that's where it becomes. I think not. I know. And if we learned anything from such, assessments of Kyiv will fall in 72 hours and Kabul will stand despite the Taliban marching. It's that those kind of assessments I consider op EDS from the intelligence community, not intelligence reports, not assessments. And so we have to clear the noise of what is real and what is not real. And I am not telling you the regime will fall. I don't know that. What I do know is there's a lot of creative ideas. If the population is with you, if you have covert capabilities, if you have agents on the ground, assets on the ground, embedded with populations, secure communications to talk to them, total air superiority to watch every neighborhood potentially, or go city to city at a time and help the people on the ground. The ability to airdrop material, the ability to over land, smuggle in material very quickly over porous borders, armed groups that might materialize or already exist in the background. All of that is there. And it depends on whether we're creative enough or the Israelis are creative enough to utilize it all at the key moment where the bombs stop dropping and people come out into the streets. And so I don't know, I can't prejudge what will happen, but I don't think think you need a ground force for that. In fact, it's a bad idea. You can do more empowering the population that already wants to take back the country.
- [40:23]
A
Two observations on that, Rich. One, when you hear this line, you can't get regime change from the air and you need ground forces. I think the reason critics and analysts make that point is because they say only ground forces can create a sufficiently secure environment on the ground for the masses to come out and begin protesting the regime. And so, I mean, I'm simplifying it, but that's like the gist of it. There's only so many conditions you can create for protesters to come out safely to challenge the regime. There's only so much you can do from the air. And the point you're making, which I think is a very important point, is the technologies available being deployed by the US And Israel. They may be able to create those conditions from the air. That's just the reality. And I'm asked a lot for lessons learned in comparisons to the Iraq war, which obviously I had some experience with as a US administration official, as a civilian. And I try to tell people the Iraq war was 23 years ago. The kind of war we are fighting now would have looked to us in 2003 and 2004 and beyond as science fiction. So the idea that you're trying to learn lessons from this war, from the two plus decades ago, given every news headline these days is about this revolution that's going on in technology. Just leave aside what's happening in the military space. There's this revolution in technology and quantum computing and AI and I mean every conversation, the idea that that is not also, oh, by the way, transforming how wars are fought, we have a real time case study of it right now. No, I don't know exactly how it will go, but the idea that you're going to take, take the lessons from one military experience over a couple of decades ago and try to determine how this is going or will go based on that. When the nature of the war fighting is just like I said, it would have looked to us back in the early 2000s as science fiction, there's going
- [42:15]
B
to be a policy after action Here as well, there's going to be military after action reports and looking at the successes and the tactical improvements and wow, what did this technical technology do? And while isn't this amazing? Can you believe we pulled this off together? There's also going to be a policy reflection on what it means to have a technological superpower democratic ally that has the available financing to acquire US Main battle platforms, that can then be infused with that technological innovation and then be able to harness all their other defense technology innovations for US Desired end states and the availability potentially of an ally, that same ally, forward towards a threat in another region away from our borders, having redundancy to our own defense industrial base, not just the United States, providing redundancy for that ally's defense industrial base. What do I mean by all of that? We are seeing the State of Israel take US airplanes, US jets, the F35s, the F16s, the F15s, put bells and whistles on them, adapt their tactics and techniques and procedures over many years of actually taking them into battle in various ways, whether it's in Lebanon or Syria or in Iran itself. Apply all those, pass them back to the United States and then take all of their AI defense tech innovation, apply that into their targeting system, their intelligence systems, infuse that into their jets, which then get to speak to our jets. Because the beauty of Israel having the money to buy American jets is that our jets are talking to each other in real time through the software. They're sinking together, they're thinking together. The pilots get to let the planes talk together. We didn't exercise this. This is breathtaking. We didn't exercise this. Think about how many exercises the US And Great Britain had to have together before Normandy, before invading. This is not planned except on paper and by computers and by AI. And so if there is a lesson here, it is the need to capitalize on this moment and say, how do we have a US Israel defense technology relationship that ensures we have Israel with the means to acquire very expensive US Main battle platforms and America with the ability to capitalize on all of Israel's technological innovation? And then look at how many interceptors we're using, how many munitions we're using. I want to make sure Israel's building those too, in case I need them. When I'm in a war in China or somewhere else in the world, I need to draw on more stocks of interceptors and munitions in the same way that we've used to think about Israel's in a big war, seven front war. They need to draw on these interceptors and munitions back in the United States if we can reframe the relationship there and do it also not just for Israel, but other partners. We're talking about emergency orders right now of Ukrainian counter drone technology from the battlefield in Ukraine to battle the drone warfare that the Iranians are conducting. We have a defense technology alliance system that is coming together and we need to think about the US Israel relationship and the US Relationship with other allies in that way going forward. I think that reframes this idea of foreign aid and dependency and how we have arguments over aid to Israel and can message that to the American people and show the return on investment of a true defense partnership, even if part of that partnership is yes, $3 billion, $4 billion to get another F35 squadron or F15 or F30 16 squadron. See the value add it's billions of dollars of return on investment.
- [45:49]
A
All right, Rich, we will leave it there. Thank you for this. I'm sure we will be calling you. Hopefully you'll call us back in the days and weeks ahead because I agree with President Trump. You get it? Your voice is important here. Thanks for doing it.
- [46:04]
B
Thanks for calling me back.
- [46:09]
A
Foreign. That's our show for today. If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members only show, Inside Call Me Back. Inside Call Me Back is where Nadavael, Amit Segal and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arcmedia.org that's arkmedia.org call me back is produced and edited by Lon Benatar. ARC Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Wiener. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor. Sam.