← Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
Call Me Back - with Dan Senor
What is the military strategy in Iran? - with Gen. David Petraeus
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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.
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B
The President has been very clear that what he is after is regime change. Now is the time to rise up. What is the character of those who take over? Will there be somebody that can become the Dulce Rodriguez of Iran who will respond to direction from the United States and say, you know, you're exactly right? All this death to Israel and death to the United States and nuclear program and arming proxies. What has it gotten us? Ruin. Absolute ruin in a country that should be one of the world's greatest energy superpowers.
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A
It's 11pm on Saturday, February 28th here in New York City. It is 7:30am on Sunday, March 1st in Tehran and it is 6am on Sunday, march 1st in Israel as Israelis begin a new day. Earlier this evening, the Iranian government confirmed that on Saturday, during the first hours of the joint Israeli and American strike on the Islamic Republic, the decades long Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed. The attack reportedly targeted Khamenei during a meeting with members of his inner circle who were also eliminated. According to Iran's media, Khamenei's daughter and grandchildren were killed as well. Prime Minister Netanyahu was reportedly shown images of the Ayatollah's body. Those were later shared with President Trump who declared that evil Khamenei is dead. Iran retaliated with missiles targeting Israel as well as six other countries. Throughout the day, sirens were wailing across Israel, sending Israelis in and out of bomb shelters in response to approximately 200 Iranian ballistic missiles. A direct hit in Tel Aviv resulted in the death of one 40 year old Israeli woman and dozens more were injured. According to Emirati state media, one person had been killed in Abu Dhabi. Iran's attacks were described as brutal Iranian aggression by Saudi leaders who reportedly have been privately lobbying President Trump to take action against Iran for some time now, while also publicly calling for diplomacy. And now onto today's episode, what is the state of play after the first day of Operation Epic Fury, which is the name of the operation for the U.S. military and Operation Roaring lion for the IDF campaign. What is the military strategy that is being deployed? How is it all being coordinated between these two countries and others in the region? And what are the risks and opportunities of this war? To answer this, we are joined by General David Petraeus. General Petraeus is a retired four star US army general and former director of the CIA who also led coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and it's widely recognized for shaping modern US Counterinsurgency strategy. He was also the commander of US Central Command where he had led US Military operations in the Middle East, Central Asia and parts of South Asia. General David Petraeus on the military strategy in Iran. This is Call Me Back Foreign
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B
and
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A
I'm pleased to welcome to the podcast for the first time General David Petraeus. General Petraeus, thanks for being here.
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B
Great to be with you, Dan.
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A
So normally in podcasts or typically you often hear debates about opinions and sort of abstract ideas and all sorts of analysis, but what you rarely hear is actually an in depth sense of the operational and tactical complexity of a military operation, certainly one on the scale of what we've just witnessed, which is to me still kind of jaw dropping. And so we thought there was no one better than you to help us think through what actually goes into something like this that we're witnessing. And then where can it potentially go? So let me just start with asking you if you were still a commander in the military and you were asked by the President to pursue certain objectives or to create options for certain objectives, how does one go about the military planning for this? Because again, it strikes me that it's not just the US military planning, it's the US Military planning in coordination with the Israelis and in coordination with a number of allies in the region. And a very ambitious operation. So can you just paint a picture for my audience of what happens? How does one get to work?
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B
Well, look what goes into this, Dan, is actually decades and decades, generations of experience and expertise. Aviation off a carrier deck in particular has evolved over again many decades. This is a generations long achievement. All of that has taken place. The intensive exercises that the commanders have had, decades in a number of cases for the senior leaders, many iterations of this. Of course, we've been a nation at war in many respects since 9, 11, off and on. Obviously it had tailed off a bit in more recent years, but here we are and Central Command is the most experienced by far when it comes to Actually carrying out the combined joint operations that we're seeing unfolding here today. And keep in mind that it's also carried out in intimate coordination with the intelligence agencies of multiple countries as well. In fact, this was an extraordinary intelligence success. And also, by the way, I'm just stunned by the extraordinary arrogance of the Supreme Leader and the other senior leaders who presumably thought, well, they didn't come attack us in the middle of last night, because normally these are carried out at dark, we own the night and so forth. In this case, we waited until the sun came up, they came out, they had meetings together. These were clearly pinpointed, and that gave the military the precise locations that were then attacked. With this stunning historical achievement of taking out the Supreme Leader and a number of the other senior military and security force leaders, noting there obviously is a succession plan. In fact, the Iranians even confirmed that there was a succession plan during some conversations publicly last week. We've done this before. We've taken out senior leaders of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, my most principal adversary when I was the commander. So the question right now, having confirmed apparently that the Supreme Leader is dead and also several others, is what will be the character of the individual who follows? Will it be someone who all of a sudden proves to be a pragmatist, or is it going to be another ideological hardliner like Khamenei, who believes in that success is just surviving, which of course, he didn't even achieve this time. Now, it was interesting to hear the president just recently, a few minutes ago, put out a social media post, noted that there are large numbers of the Revolutionary Guards Corps and other security force elements that are defect that want to lay down their weapons. That would be very, very welcome news. The challenge here is that there is not an Ahmad Al Shara figure out there. There's no opposition leader who can step forward and say, rally to me. We'll take down this terrible regime that has taken a country with the second largest natural gas reserves in the world and the third largest oil reserves, a civilizational society, great education and everything else, and has driven it into the dirt. I just heard a calculation. Someone went back all the way to the Shah's regime and apparently the rial has actually devalued by 99% since that time. A stunning achievement on the part of the Iranians to take a country with such potential and literally drive the economy into a deep dish.
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A
You said something a moment ago about the difference between operating at night versus during the day and Just for our listeners to understand that in the previous operations that Israel was in, the US Were involved in with Iran, when you go back to April 24, October 24,
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B
June 25 and Maduro, and these strikes against extremists and so forth, and as
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A
you mentioned, Qasem Suleimani, even that operation, these are always done at night. So just can you paint that picture? What risk was Israel and the US Taking by conducting that part of the operation during the day versus doing it at night? And why did they take that risk?
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B
Well, because they assessed that they had mitigated sufficiently the normal risks of operating during daylight, which is that the enemy can see you and shoot you down. But keep in mind that during the last operation, the 12 day air campaign, the Israelites Israelis with RF35s we provided to them took down the sophisticated Russian provided S300 air and ballistic missile defense system and virtually all the other air defenses that could reach an aircraft flying above, say 12,500ft or so. So they really were defenseless. I'm sure that there were some initial strikes to confirm that, to take down anything they might have reconstituted. But normally, for example, we didn't conduct special mission unit operations during the day very often. We did it almost always at night because you have special aircraft circling above and you'll want the enemy to be able to see them and try to shoot them down and they typically would go away in the morning. We also don't have operations here where we're actually putting anyone on the ground with a helicopter that might be vulnerable, could be seen during the daylight, not at night. So I think this was a calculated and a brilliant move, actually, if you think about it.
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A
Brilliant move, meaning you got the element of surprise. Because the Iranian leadership clearly didn't think that there was going to be a daytime operation.
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B
Yes. And you had just had an announcement by the Omani Foreign Minister that there was a new offer.
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A
Right. That they were close.
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B
Yep. And the President was displeased, but he wasn't again rattling the saber. So there was a tactical surprise, I think achieved and that proved to be sufficient to take out a number of the senior leaders.
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A
Okay, can you paint a picture for us in terms of at least of what we know, what is public about the US Military assets that have been deployed, like just generally speaking, what's out there, where and what are they doing? Because I think it's very confusing to try to make sense of the map.
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B
Yep. Let me come back just quickly, but you asked about how do you develop options look, this plan has been in the works all the way back to when I was the Central Command Commander In 2009 when we were asked to develop a plan to destroy the Iran nuclear program. So we've had these plans in existence, they've just been updated repeatedly. By the way, when I was a Central Command commander, we thought we were going to carry out the operation and we'd rehearsed it inside the United States. So that's how these plans come about. Now what is also really important, and there were reports about this, is that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Central Command commander, they're the two that really matter. In this case, CENTCOM having come up with the plans, of course, the Joint Staff supporting the chairman going through them and then the chairman and Central Command presenting them to the decision makers. The chairman apparently rightly pointed out there are serious risks here. And one of those entails what I mentioned earlier, which is the missile math. And one of the reasons that I believe the 12 Day War was brought to a close when it was, was because there were starting to be worries in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and also in Washington about how many more missiles and launchers do the Iranians have relative to how many interceptors do we have. And you don't want to make too close a call with that. Needless to say. In fact, a missile just did get through and hit apartment block in Tel Aviv. I'm sure you've seen the footage of that. And they cause enormous damage. So again now let's think about the lay down. We've had the aircraft carrier task force, the Abraham Lincoln, the Honest Abe out there. They're outside the Gulf essentially off the coast of sort of southern Iran, southern Pakistan. There are destroyers inside the Gulf and that's important because they have the, it's essentially a patriot like ballistic missile defense system and radar. These are all integrated, integrated also with the destroyers. And then you have Israel's system, of course, that's integrated Jordan and the rest. And you have destroyers in the eastern Med, not only to protect that aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford, the largest in the world, but also to network again with all of this and if necessary, if Hezbollah begins to strike Israel or goes after our assets, we have that aircraft carrier with an extraordinary amount of combat power on it that can respond into to southern Lebanon as well. Now what is interesting here is that we have not had access to the bases that we normally would have. If you go right down Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, there are some side deals. We believe it may Be that air refuelers are able to use one of the major bases that we have there, but not strike aircraft. The Brits are flying, by the way, but they're flying in defense, as are some of our aircraft. Jordan is a base that we have a substantial number of aircraft there, F15s and others.
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A
But through most of the Middle east other than Israel, it sounds like we did not have access to the bases that we typically have access to.
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B
That is correct. They really did not want to be part of offensive actions that would bring about the retaliation that we have actually seen, which is another big Iranian miscalculation. Saudi Arabia, which I understand sent mixed messages. The public message is that, you know, we, you can't use our bases. The private message was if you don't do something, you're going to look bad here.
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A
A message to the United States. The message was from the Saudis. Yeah, if you don't do something, it's destabilized.
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B
And again, presumably airspace is open. I can't imagine that again.
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A
Right.
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B
But publicly the presentation by the Gulf states was we're not in this, don't hit us. And they did get hit, which is stupid on the part of the Iranians and also a miscalculation. And that means now they're going to be foursquare behind us and we'll see as it goes on. I wonder if they will open up some of their bases. It's obviously a lot closer if you're flying out of a Gulf state base right on the coast to get to Iran. Although it does then introduce some vulnerability for those aircraft given the greater ability of Iran to strike now than it used to have a couple decades ago.
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A
Okay, so you walked through what assets US Assets are out there or in the region.
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B
Keep in mind there's submarines as well and submarine has very large numbers of cruise missiles and I suspect that those have been used. You always want to use the unmanned stuff to take down what they might have that could threaten our manned aircraft. There's also air launch cruise missiles that you can launch without having to get right over a target. There's a bunch of assets here and I'm very confident that our forces are using them all superbly in this operation.
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A
And in service of what strategy?
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B
Well, the President has been very clear that what he is after is regime change. I mean, he said this now is the time to rise up. And they have indeed decapitated the regime leadership to a reasonable degree. We don't know how many more beyond the Supreme Leader. I think they got The Revolutionary Guards Corps, commander in Chief, I believe they got the Defense Minister, the President, we're not exactly sure. But a number of senior leaders. So. And that's going to have a very disruptive effect. But they have a succession plan. They have deputy commanders, and they've been through this before. So that will disrupt operations for a while. It may degrade some of the command and control capability, but again, there will be others that will assume those roles and carry forward. And then again, the question really is, what is the character of those who take over? Will there be somebody that can become the Dulce Rodriguez of Iran who will respond to direction from the United States and say, you know what, you're exactly right. All this death to Israel and death to the United States and nuclear program and arming proxies, what has it gotten us? Ruin. Absolute ruin in a country that should be one of the world's greatest energy superpowers.
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A
And the biggest challenges. What would you like if you just had to take off the biggest challenges in an operation like this?
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B
Sure. It's the missile math again. And by the way, keep in mind that this administration has carried out a number of operations now that have been nearly flawless. And yet some of them much dicier, I think, than people seem to realize. Then a Zoell operation, 150 aircraft, he simultaneously shut off the lights, shut down the Internet, dealt with all the quick reaction forces, took out all the air and ballistic missile defense systems. But at the end of the day, the individual received the Medal of Honor. The pilot, he got hit three times landing his very large MH47 with a. With dozens of Special Mission Unit operators in the back. But at the end of the day, it's almost miraculous to carry that out and not have somebody killed. There were some seriously wounded, but again, no one killed. But there can be something that can happen somehow, something miraculously gets through defenses and sinks a ship with hundreds of soldiers on it or sailors on it. So that I think, I'm sure that the Chairman went right through all of those different challenges.
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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
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Yes. And that is his job. I think, by the way, he's been doing a very impressive job in terms
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A
of the Israeli role. You come at this from the American military perspective. You've worked very closely over the years with the Israelis. Can you talk a little bit about the Israeli role in all of this?
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B
Sure. Look, the intelligence that Israel has had over the decades inside Iran has been stunning. Remember that Israel was not part of Central Command when I was the commander. I advocated for that, but it just was still a legacy that it was with European Command. So I couldn't go to Israel myself. So the Israeli Chief of Staff would come to the Pentagon and we would surreptitiously meet in the office that I would have. He'd just sort of wander by and, ah, come on in. And the very first time that happened, he opened up a notebook, it was just the two of us, and he showed me photographs that had clearly been taken inside very, very sensitive facilities in Iran. I already knew, and the agency had told me how extraordinary their intelligence was, how much they penetrated. But we've seen that repeated since then. Think about the operation that stole all the nuclear records right from downtown Tehran. Look at the operation carried out during the 12 day air campaign where Mossad set up drone bases, drone launch sites out in the desert inside Iran, and then put those together with exquisite intelligence to target over a dozen nuclear scientists and the other senior leaders that they took out. So, so again, they are extraordinary in this particular category and many others. And the agency works very closely with them. And then the combined product, of course, is what also enables military and other operations. What we'll be curious to see is has there been something else afoot? Is there some kind of operation to try to help an opposition develop real capability? The problem so far, of course, has been that these hundreds and hundreds of thousands of demonstrators have essentially actually been spontaneously gathering. It's almost like flash mobs, but without real leadership and certainly without military capability. Remember, what enabled Ahmed Al Shar in Syria was that he had built a real force. And that force proved to be overwhelming with the rotten regime forces that were left inside Syria of the murderous Bashar Al Assad. When the Hezbollah forces couldn't come to the rescue, Revolutionary Guards Corps weren't there and Russia, air power and special operations forces weren't available. What can be the equivalent here? Where is a force which could also perhaps attract to its ranks the disaffected Revolutionary Guards Corps and other security force members the President highlighted.
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A
So just in terms of the synchronization of these two systems, the Israeli system and the US system, because it's not like in the 12 Day War, my understanding that Israel was operating at the front end and then, and you know, while the US may have been involved, it was really Israel's show at the beginning and then the US came in.
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B
No, they're big liaison teams, Dan. There's big liaison teams with each other. Common operational picture is shared, all the air picture is shared. There's a very elaborate System to integrate what each of us has and to provide it to the other. And there are elements of our force quite substantial on the ground in the curia, I'm sure, or other locations that enable very close coordination. And I'm sure that they're at Central Command headquarters as well. They always.
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A
So it's a central operation that's coordinating
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B
well, There are many central operations. What you have is a system of systems. The unique aspect of Central Command is that it has had a combined air operations center, active, doing real combat operations on a daily and nightly basis for decades. You know, it started again with the response to the 911 attacks. It kept building, it got bigger and bigger. It drew down some. It's probably not necessarily in the old headquarters, which is a two story temporary building above ground out there in one of the Gulf states because of the threat now that exists. And I'm sure that a number of our different headquarters have slimmed down, gone underground or relocated somewhere out of range. But no, we've had a combined air operations center. It's very easy to plug that all in. You have a terrific air picture. I mean, think of this as a regional FAA center and they've got enormous resources to show this. And keep in mind, in the air we have AWACS and other aircraft as well. So there's very, very substantial coordination of everything in this effort. And the STICK missile defense system too, that's all shared, it's all integrated. What was interesting during my time as Central Command commander is I couldn't get the Gulf states to share with each other. So what we did is we had them share with us and then we pumped it back to them. So we were the integrators. We called it bilateral multilateralism. And that is ongoing as well. That's how all of this. Keep in mind all the different elements that are part of the air and ballistic missile defense architecture. The early warning, the radars, the tracking of these missiles, determining who's going to take it and all the rest of it. And it's happening very quickly, some of it at machine speed with certain of the capabilities because you're not quick enough, you're hitting a bullet with a bullet. It the physics of this are astonishing. But the tragedy is as we saw with the strike that actually hit in Tel Aviv during the 12 Day War, I think it was roughly 5 to 7% of the missiles did get through and of course avoided any catastrophic. But that's something you can't always count on happening. And Dan, you know, of course there is a Coordinated division of labor just as there was during the 12 day campaign. Although in that case the Israelis really did the first 10, 11 days. And would we piled on massively with the B2 bombers, which again we haven't yet seen. And I'm sure they'll materialize at some point here. They'll fly out of US bases and be refueled in the air all the way out there until they drop their massive ordinance. They can go all the way up to the 30,000 pound precision munition that is called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which is what pile drived its way through the deeply buried site at Fordo. But in this case, the Israelis very likely were the ones that said we'll do the regime leader targets. We've got the precise intelligence, real time. We've done this before. We have the aircraft that can do it. You focus on this. Sometimes you have a geographic division, sometimes you have other ways. You're essentially doing again aircraft command and control, just like aircraft controllers do in the FAA towers that are airlines, except on a very broad and regional scale. And as I mentioned earlier, I suspect there are other than the British that are flying right now as well to help with the ballistic missile defense effort.
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A
You know, during the President's State of the Union address last week, General Petraeus and then also the statement he issued over once the operation was underway, the statement he made, he framed everything about this operation. I've been struck by this in the context of America's interests, America's national security, for instance, the State of the Union. He talked about Iran's ballistic missile capabilities being able to breach U.S. bases in Europe, maybe someday in the U.S. and about how the Iranian regime had so much American blood on its hands.
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B
This is the legal underpinning for this operation. This is self defense. Keep in mind the President's powers versus Congress's powers. And the President has very broad authority if it is self defense. This is how they cast the operation to kill Qasem soleimani in Trump 1.0. They said that he was planning imminent attacks. So we had to take action. We couldn't consult with Congress. We needed to go at the time where we had that fleeting target identified. And so I think that's part of what is going on. I suspect he will actually then notify Congress the way the War Powers act requires. But I think they just didn't want to get into it with Congress ahead of time. And of course let's acknowledge that, that if you control both houses of Congress, things are a little bit Easier than certainly if you do not an operation like this.
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A
You were obviously very involved in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Very involved.
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B
And the Central Command, we had separate operations during that time outside of those Yemen, Somali pirates, maritime freedom of navigation and so forth.
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A
But take Iraq 2003, which I think actually is when you and I first met. My understanding is what the US deployed to the region now for this operation in terms of naval assets and air assets, not ground forces obviously, but in terms of naval and air assets, what the US has deployed in recent months to the region is comparable to what was deployed to the region in the lead up to the Iraq war. Is that roughly accurate?
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B
I just don't know, Dan. We had an awful lot of aircraft all up and down the Gulf at that time. We had two Dado aircraft carriers and so forth. There were an awful lot of strikes that went in and we had a lot of naval forces inside the Gulf. So they're much closer at that time to the target than we have comparably now. So again, I just don't know. What I do know is that when I took command of U.S. central Command, there were 250,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines in the theater, another 250,000 contractors, and we always had two aircraft carrier task forces and the airfields were, were full of planes in Al Udid, in Qaher and in Abu Dhabi, in Kuwait, even off and on in Bahrain and some of the other countries. So no question this is a very substantial force and I don't think it's fully at strength yet. I am waiting for the B2 bombers to enter this. I'm waiting for the B52 bombers to do what?
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A
What would those do that hasn't been done?
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B
Well, we want to go back and certainly pulverize Esfahan. If they actually have underground stocks of 60% uranium. We want to away as much of their not just the missile launchers and missiles, but their manufacturing capacity because they were trying to rebuild this. That's why many of us expected that a month or two from now Israel was going to go back anyway. We want to really set them back in all the areas that are most worrisome and most threatening to US national interests and our allies and partners in the region, especially Israel. Given the death to Israel, which always follows death to America in terms of now going forward.
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A
Just, just wrapping up this conversation, what do you think is at stake right now? I've said this is incredibly impressive what the US and Israel have done here. So from a military standard, future of Iran. So say more about that say more about that? Because Iran is not just about the future of Iran. It's Iran's role in the region.
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B
A future of a huge country which has incredible potential and has not realized it remotely, which has sowed the winds of its own demise here by arming these proxies, all of which now are dramatically degraded. Possible exception of the Houthis, but even they have been taken down a few pegs. Syria is no longer an ally for them. Hezbollah is a shadow of its former capability. Hamas not destroyed by any means, and that is a challenge, to be sure, but dramatically degraded and encircled. So it's about what decision does the future leader decide to take? What trajectory does he want to continue? Does double down on again, death to America, death to Israel, and be a religious hardliner? If so, then they're in for a tough time and we may be as well. Or do they want to be pragmatic and see what an alternative approach might provide? We'll see how that goes. But could be one that sees that its potential would be vastly greater if they just tried to get along in the region, as opposed to being this ideological hardline regime in a country which, by the way, is one of the more secular and educated in the entire region.
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A
But do you think you can get stability? If we're saying, are we headed for a period of chaos, a period of stability, you're painting a picture of a path, possibly to stability.
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B
You can only answer this by starting with it depends. Just like any economist answers any question.
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A
On the one hand.
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B
On the other hand, yes, there's a number of factors that will determine whether there's civil war. I mean, could this be the moment when the Azeris rise up or the Kurds or the Turkmen or the. The Sunni or what have you? You just really don't know. Can this be the Syrian civil war for a decade before someone pulls it back together? Or could there be some leader who steps forward? It depends absolutely on who the leader emerges. And then does that leader have the most guys with the most guns? You know, it's not normally in this kind of situation, regime being toppled, that the good guys come forward. It's not necessarily the person the people would have elected did. It's the person that can actually galvanize the most force and then go forward and establish control. And that's what we're going to have to see. And that's where, as I mentioned earlier, it would be really interesting if Mossad and maybe my old great organization, the CIA had been doing something behind the scenes to set the stage for someone to emerge. I mean, you hear the Shah's son and so forth. But it hasn't been In Ron since 1978, I believe it is. You know, there's no, no Panjshir Valley here with Ahmad Shah Massoud ready to lead the Northern alliance, although tragically, he got assassinated right before that happened.
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A
Last question for you. You wrote this terrific history, military history book with Andrew Roberts, which we'll link to in the show notes. You know, Hamas launches this attack on October 7th. And here we are two and a half years later as you're laying out here, a region, the Middle east, being transformed before our eyes in ways that no one from Yahya Sinwar or the supreme Leader of Iran possibly could have imagined that this is where we would be today. Is there anything in modern military history that is comparable to this, the extent to which, you know, this sort of own goal by Hamas that then catalyzes this kind of military response that transforms the circumstances and the geopolitics of an entire region like this? I'm just hard pressed to find anything like it.
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B
Well, the 911 attacks certainly spurred quite a number of actions, not all of which turned out as quickly and as easily and as nicely as we hope. Needless to say, the Arab Spring comes to mind as well. But it seems to me that the scale of this and the significance of this, that that the pariah of the region and its proxies have just done themselves in so substantially is a bit unprecedented. But with that, Dan, it's really been great to be with you and I thank you for the invitation.
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A
Thank you, General Pre trace. I appreciate it. Thank you.
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B
You bet. Foreign.
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A
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 the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arkmedia.org that's ark media.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 Weiner. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio Audio. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.