Loading summary
Transcript28 lines
- [00:00]
A
Every president that I'm aware of has wanted to get the hell out of the Middle East. Welcome to Shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller center of Public affairs at the University of Virginia. My name is Elliot Cohen. I am professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and a contributing writer at the Atlantic. Now, normally I would be joined by my partner in all things strategic, Eric Edelman, but he is finally taking some well deserved vacation. But we have a wonderful guest for you who I'll be introducing in a moment. But first of he doesn't have to be associated with this if he doesn't want to. I, I do think I should share our jackassery of the week, or actually two. And once again, it's our favorite whipping boy, Pete Heth, the Secretary of Defense, not the Secretary War, as he thinks he is, for two items. The first item is the Pentagon has been sifting the list of recognized religions for chaplaincy and those kinds of purposes, and they decided that the Mormons are not Christians. Now, being Jewish, you know, I'm not really an authority on the subject, but it does seem to me if it's called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, that there's some sort of reasonable claim there to be Christians. So more seriously, what I think this probably reflects is, is an element of bigotry. I mean, there's been there long been some, some parts of the evangelical world in particular, I think, which really do not view Mormons as Christians. Now, needless to say, the Pentagon pulled this back after a bunch of Mormons got very, very excited on the subject. But, but it is something revealing and it's, it is part of a larger pattern of the intrusion of what I think I can only call sectarian kinds of beliefs into, into the Pentagon. And we've talked about some of those before. The other thing is in many ways even more serious and that is at the recent observance of June 6, the, the date, the anniversary of the landings at Omaha and Utah beaches in, During World War II D Day, once again, Secretary Hegseth is there and he spent a good bit of his speech denouncing European immigration policies. A A good friend of ours, Bruno Turtre on X, said this is a desecration and I fully understand what he has, what he meant by that. It is, it was totally inappropriate. And once again, you know, the, the Trump administration had an opportunity to be gracious, to reach out and to European allies, but above all to observe that anniversary with the solemnity and spirit with which it should be observed. And once again, they blew it. Well, with that, let me move on to introduce our guest who I really am delighted to have with us. It's my very, very good friend, Kenneth Pollock. Ken is Vice President for Policy at the Middle East Institute. He's had an extraordinary career. He was a CIA analyst, very highly decorated for work, I believe, on the first Gulf War, which is when we, I think when, when we met, he, despite my efforts to try to get him to get a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins Seiss he went to MIT. I've, but I don't bear grudges, at least not very much. He's had a terrific set of experiences in both the think tank world at Brookings, at the American Enterprise Institute. He served on the NSC staff as both Director for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, but also as Director for Persian Gulf affairs. He, in addition to his classified work, he has written by various counts, something on the order of 10 books, which is shocking. I'll just read some of the titles and they're, they're not just books. They're, they are important books. Armies of sand, the Past, Present and Future of Arab Military Effectiveness. Unthinkable. Iran, the Bomb and American Strategy, that was published in 2013 and the issue is still with us 13 years later. A Path out of the Desert, A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle
- [04:36]
B
east
- [04:39]
A
and the Persian Puzzle, the Conflict Between Iran and America, that's 22 years ago in 2004, as well as a book called the Threatening the Case for Invading Iraq. A a controversial book, as you might, as you might expect. But he's a wonderful friend and colleague. He's one of, he is one of the country's foremost Middle east experts. He works with two highly regarded friends of mine from days in the State Department, Ambassador David Welch, Ambassador Stu Jones at the Middle East Institute. And we have a lot to talk about. So, Ken, welcome to Shield of the Republic.
- [05:20]
B
Thank you so much, Elliot. It is always a pleasure to be with you. And as a listener to Shield of the Republic, I am deeply honored to now be a guest.
- [05:29]
A
Well, it's not going to be the last time. So before we get into substance, could you just say a little bit about what the Middle East Institute is? You know, it occurs to me that a lot of our listeners, we have many listeners in Washington who are sort of familiar with the landscape of the think tanks, research institutes and so forth. You know, most many people have heard of Brookings and AI and CSAs, where, where I currently work, but there are many others and MEI is one of the most important, but probably a little bit less known to people. So could you just say something about what MEI is and how you found yourself there?
- [06:06]
B
Sure. So MEI is an interesting organization. It is an institution that has many parts. So there is a think tank. That's the part of it that I run. It is actually the biggest part. But we also have an arts and culture program with art gallery. We have a wonderful library. I apologize, it is only about the Middle East. But if you're interested in books on the Middle east, all kinds of beautiful atlases, works of fiction, works of non fiction history, etc. Our library has it. We also have an educational program, although that's a little bit in abeyance right now. And we are the oldest US think tank devoted solely to the Middle East. We were founded in 1946 and it's been through, as you can imagine, over that course of time. It's been through a variety of different iterations. And the way that I found myself there was that having more or less kind of played out its thread in, in a previous iteration, there was a decision among the leadership and the board to try to revitalize it, take the organization in a slightly different direction. Having built a Middle east center, at the very least the Brookings Institution with another old friend of ours, Martin Indyck, an experience that I found incredibly rewarding. Very challenging, but rewarding. I thought this was a great opportunity to take this organization, which had come a long way, and take it to the next step. And just briefly, the way that I would describe that is that we've set about trying to build a Middle east think tank. A think tank really focused just on the Middle east of the absolute highest quality, but one that is also very nonpartisan. Right. I mean, this is. I know this is an issue very close to your heart, to Eric's heart. You talk about it all the time on Shield of the Republic that we've obviously become so partisan and so many of the think tanks out there have really become nothing but advocacy organizations. And we decided to move in a different direction and to really go back to the idea of real expertise and real analysis that simply starts from the evidence, lays the analysis on top of that, and then formulates policy recommendations from that without any regard for. For the parties and where they may be on issues, but to just call balls and strikes. And we've been so far very, very happily rewarded that there does seem to be a real appetite in Washington, in the country, in the world again. For that kind of expertise, for that kind of analysis on the Middle east, which, of course, I feel is what has been so lacking, at least over the last couple of decades.
- [08:53]
A
Yeah, no, and I'll just say, I think you guys really have achieved that. And it's particularly hard on Middle Eastern issues where, where even in the best of times, you know, all kinds of partisan feelings and attachments run very, very strong. And that you've been able to all have level heads. It really speaks to the leadership team that you've got. Okay, let's plunge right into substance. You have spent a large part of your career studying Iran and our, the conflict with Iran. I should have also pointed out in the introduction you're also a very capable military analyst. You've been teaching defense analysis courses. You taught them, I believe, originally at the CIA, but then at Georgetown. Another recruitment failure on my part. And so I'd like to do is let's begin with where you think we are in this war. Now. We're taping this on June 12th. There are, as there ever are with the Trump administration, contradictory signals about where they're about to sign a deal or, no, they're not about to sign a deal or they're about to begin the most intensive wave of bombing since the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. I think let's set aside that for the moment. But I'd like, I really would like your take on where we think, where you think both sides are in the war, and not just both sides, but a lot of other folks as well. So kind of a quick situation report. What would you say?
- [10:15]
B
So I would describe it. I've been using this term, which, again, you will know it actually comes from a different part of strategic studies. But Bill Zartman came up with this term, the hurting stalemate. Now, again, he meant it about a different idea entirely, but I think it applies, right. Both sides are hurting. Both sides have an ability to cause the other pain. Neither side is really looking to escalate at this point in time. And obviously, different actors I think include, including President Trump, would very much like to de escalate and in fact, exit the war as best they can. But we've got ourselves caught in this set of circumstances. And again, we're in one of these, you know, classic coercive. Lockups where both sides have got their hands on the other's throat and are squeezing and trying to choke the life out of the other. And, you know, both are simultaneously hurting but also believing that they're really close to causing the other side to capitulate. Right. And you know, we've seen this any number of times in warfare. I know you've written about it in various books that you've written. And it's very, very difficult to know how close you actually are to that point where the other side is ready to give up, especially because so much of it is the psychological question of do you believe your adversary is about to give up? Right. Because if the other guy is about to give up, let's hang on for just a little bit longer. And we've got an Iranian regime. Let's recognize this version of the Iranian regime is even more troublesome than the original version of the Iranian regime. And that was nothing to write home about. But Ayatollah Khamenei, at the very least, was very conservative with a small sea right monstrous human being, but nonetheless very conservative, very concerned about the United States, always looking to de escalate, in part because he always worried that the United States would escalate to regime change. Well, we escalated to regime change right at the get go and we killed him and much of the other senior leadership. What we've got left immediately went to their normal contingency plan, which was shut down the Strait of Hormuz. That's what we always knew they would do if we tried to change the regime in earnest. And what they found, lo and behold, was that the United States was. Wasn't going to immediately then come for the regime. In fact, we were going to back off. Now, President Trump did respond, I think the best way he could, which was with a blockade. But again, as you know extremely well, as many of your listeners know extremely well, blockades can be very effective. They take time. And it is very difficult to know exactly where we are in terms of inflicting the kind of pain on Iran that might cause them to give up, especially because what they're seeing from President Trump seems to have convinced them that he is desperate and I think understandably, right. Again, I know you and Eric have talked about this. He is oscillating between these extreme threats and then a willingness to make very significant concessions to the Iranians. And so I think this is where we find ourselves. And the last point I'll make, Elliot, is that I hope that this blockade is working. I hope it does work, because of course, the alternative courses of action are so much worse. They're either really make massive concessions to the Iranians and we should probably talk about them because we're starting to see some of this start to play out in terms of what the Iranians could expect from these kinds of concessions or very significant escalation, I think well beyond what most people are thinking of. I'm just, you know, as you pointed out, a long term observer of the Iranian regime. I am skeptical that bombing alone is going to cause this leadership in Tehran to make the kind of concessions that we need them to make, to consider this war to ultimately have been successful.
- [14:24]
A
You know, one of the things, and you and I have discussed this, that really strikes me is it is difficult to imagine two opposing sets of leaders who are further apart psychologically. You know, I, as you know, I've, I've written a book. You've, I believe you've seen the manuscript and you've commented on it, which I say that the first strategic virtue is empathy. That, you know, the ability to, to get inside your enemy's head. Not, not to like them, not to sympathize with them, but just to imagine what it's like to be them at some level. And you're right. I mean, people always fail to do it. But here I think that you, they are so far apart that however, even if this is resolved with some sort of kick the can down the road, ceasefire, which is what people are talking about now, who knows if it'll happen even then, that, that is very far from being the end, the end of the story. Let me ask you as just as a also putting on your military analyst hat, was this a good idea badly executed, a bad idea badly executed, or good idea bad idea executed about as well as a reasonable person could have expected.
- [15:50]
B
That's a tough one. So let me start here. One of the things that I've increasingly concluded, both from my own time in government and working in the policy world even after that, but also my study of history, including recent history, is that I increasingly believe, Elliot, that execution is far more important than the idea itself.
- [16:12]
A
Completely agree with that. Totally agree.
- [16:15]
B
I figured you would. Right. This is. Eisenhower's plans are nothing. But planning is everything. Right. And it's not quite that the means justify the ends, but it absolutely is that. A bad plan well executed is typically much better than a good plan badly executed. In fact, I'd say almost always. So from my perspective, the execution really is critical here. And the original idea, look, I felt that the original idea was very problematic. It does seem to be the case that President Trump believed that he could remove the regime very quickly and very easily, and that this would either cause the Iranian people to overthrow it or else some more pliable figure to emerge who would make the kind of deal that he wanted or that he could simply claim credit for having gotten rid of this version of the regime and that I would say that was always going to be a very, very long shot. I think it was a bad gamble to make. I will also say, you know, it's hard to know exactly how much further beyond the accomplishments of what he calls the 12 Day War. This war is really going to take us. Right. On the one hand, there's no question we have done a lot of damage to the Iranian military, particularly its air force and navy, to the ballistic missile program to a certain extent, to the drone manufacturing program. We've done a great deal of damage to them. And my feeling is kind of, you know, if you could end this war without making any concessions to the Iranians on the Strait of Hormuz, and you know, we also need to always keep in mind and on Iran's threat to be able to resume the ballistic missile and drone strikes on the GCC states, if you could somehow magically do away with that, you could say we've done a lot of damage to the Iranians. And you know, given who the Iranians are, given the fact that, you know, they, we should always remember this, they declare themselves our enemy and they act on it. Right. And they've been doing it every single day for 47 years. Right. We should never lose sight of that fact. And for those reasons, this damage is meaningful and positive in that sense. But the problem is that you can't just wish away the Strait of Hormuz and the threat to the GCC states. You know, just before, you know, we came on the air with you, I did check the news feeds and there's a report out there, which is something that I was aware was going on and was expecting it all along, that the Emiratis have agreed to pay the Iranians somewhere between 10 and 20 billion dollars. Oh my goodness, yes. To enable their ships to get through. These conversations have been ongoing. The Iranians have been saying to all the Gulf states, you know, that we can a not only interdict your shipping through the Sheriff Hormuz, we can lob ballistic missiles and drones at you whenever we want to. And okay, let's say you intercept 99% of them. How many businesses are going to want to invest? How many tourists are going to show up? How much trade are you going to get if three or four times a week there is a big boom in the sky because a thaad or a patriot went up to have to intercept one of our drones and Missiles. Right. This is not acceptable for the Gulf states. And while they'd much prefer for the United States to win a military victory, if we're not going to, and it doesn't seem like we're there yet, they're going to wind up paying off the Iranians. And if the Iranians can wind up getting 80, $100 billion a year from the Gulf states for a number of years, this is a country, remember, with about a $400 billion economy. That's an enormous amount of money. And so whatever damage we may have done to their navy, their air force, their ballistic missile program, their drones, if they have access to those kinds of resources, they will rebuild them very, very quickly.
- [20:27]
A
Yeah. Do you think if the war had been competently executed, which, I mean, that it's a not, it's not just a counterfactual, but it's particularly given this administration, which, as you know, I've a pretty dim view of. But let's say they had begun the blockade immediately. Let's say that they had focused military action from the get go on securing the Strait of Hormuz, which they didn't really do. I mean, initially, a lot of the strikes were going lots of other places. If they had behaved rather differently to our NATO allies who have certain assets, which would be helpful, not just NATO, but some of our Pacific allies, if they had done more to kind of work with the Gulf states, could the outcome have been at all different? Or do you think that the odds that are created by geography and by the technology of ballistic missiles and drones is just such that an outcome like this is pretty much the inevitable one?
- [21:29]
B
Well, let me start with a very important caveat that you've taught me over the years, which is, of course, wars are incredibly unpredictable, so we should always recognize that. That said, so I think all that would have given us a better chance. What I would say, though is I think it would have been much better off had we gone into this war with the notion that this was going to be mainly about forcing the Iranians to give us a better deal on the nukes on the ballistic missiles. I think that the first mistake was the decision to try for regime change. And once you made that decision, pretty much everything else follows from it. Now, you know, if you had an administration that had been willing to put ground troops ashore on the northern littoral of the Persian Gulf. Yes. Add that to the mix, probably could have done better. That's certainly not Donald Trump. But the problem is that once you made the decision to try for regime Change. The Iranians were going to shut down the Strait of Hormuz again. We've been, we've collecting intelligence on them, working on this problem, reading their writings, listening to them, war, gaming against this, planning against this since the early 1990s. Right. We knew full well that if we try, made a determined effort at regime change, that would be their move. And there as well, because of how we got into it, it was going to make reopening it even more difficult than it was always going to be. But you know, this is one of the good.
- [23:08]
A
Well, no, I was just going to say on the regime change question, the thing that struck me about it was so, you know, there had been this, this really a popular uprising against the regime. The regime kills 10, 20, 30,000 people.
- [23:25]
B
We don't know exactly.
- [23:26]
A
We're not in a position to do much about it. We didn't do much about it. But, but, but you know, the theory of the case, or the, if you will, the theory of victory, to use a more technical term would be, well, we bomb them, we really kind of disrupt them, the IRGC and then the people of Iran rise up and overthrow the regime. And, and you know, I think just common sense would say, you know, clearly you're huge numbers of Iranians loathe this regime. The chance that they'd be willing to go out and do that again after tens of thousands of their fellow citizens have been butchered, plus whatever happens in the torture chambers and so on, that just doesn't make sense. And I, I mean, I don't know. You know, you've got better contacts, I suspect, in the administration than I do. Do you think anybody raised those issues or you think they were just sort of sailing blind on with their prior assumptions?
- [24:24]
B
My sense is that they weren't, or if they were, they were brushed aside. I mean, it does seem like the President, you know, the President just said he makes decisions based on his gut and there's a lot of reporting out there and my own sources tell me that it's essentially accurate that the vast majority of his most important foreign policy advisors were against the notion of regime change and going this big. And again, to your point, Elliot, could you have gotten the Iranian people to do it? Perhaps. But I think what you would have had to have done is instead of telling the Iranian people to go home and sit tight and let us blow up a bunch of stuff and then later on you'll be able to do it. I think you would have had to take a much bloodier minded approach and call on the Iranian people to rise up immediately and then tell them we were going to provide air support. And I think it would have been an even bigger campaign. But you know, between drones and look, we did have more or less air supremacy. I think we could have provided some degree of air support. At the very least, we could have hammered IRGC and law enforcement command and besiege elements as they came out to fight the people. I mean, you would effectively be using the Iranian people as the ground force.
- [25:57]
A
We would be giving them air coverage. So let's. I don't think there's much point in speculating exactly what the outcome will be
- [26:04]
B
because it's like I said, it's Trump. You don't know what he'll do tomorrow.
- [26:08]
A
And you also don't know to what extent the Iranians will also screw things up because, I mean, Eric and I have argued a bit about this. I think on the one hand Trump would like to escape this. On the other hand, there are some things he's not willing to do to escape it, I believe, but they would very well be wrong. But let's talk a little bit about the nate about the regime. So they did take a battering. They did lose an echelon of leadership. It's not clear who the single decision maker is. I guess we now think that Muchtaba is alive and functioning, but that wasn't certain for a while. There's General Vahidi who seems to be the people person. People talk about most. But how solid is the regime and what do you think is is the long term trajectory of the regime? That's just one other thought. You know, I think you're absolutely right. You say, look, this regime that's been at war with us for 47 years, it is in the DNA of the Islamic Republic. Don't let anybody try to convince you otherwise. And so this is in some ways a campaign in a war that's been going on since 1979. The regime is, on the whole, one has to say, from the point of view of the people of Iran, a tremendous failure. I mean, it's impoverished the country in certain respects. It's causing a lot of misery. It hasn't dealt with a lot of basic problems. It's cut it off from the west, which actually many Iranians would like to be connected to. What is the trajectory of the regime, do you think, with or without whatever it is that the United States and Israel end up doing?
- [27:46]
B
So I think that it is downward, but of course whether it will just be kind of a long a Long decline or it's going to follow the tipping point. None of us knows. Of course, that's always the problem. And we hope it's going to follow the tipping point model. But you never know. You never know when the tipping point comes, if it will come. You know, I think that if you were simply to step back and look at the history of North Korea, you know, they've defied expectations over and over and over again. And, you know, we can point to examples, much better examples, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the collapse of the Assad regime, and then you can point to a North Korea and say, or Cuba and say, you know, how have these regimes survived? And of course, they've survived through force. And, you know, we should always remember that force unfortunately works. Right? The one, the one rule that social science has about revolutions is theta Skocpol's famous observation that revolutions only succeed when the government loses either the willingness or the capacity to use force. And as long as they don't, they will stay in power. And this, of course, is a great question about Iran. And it's one of those where, you know, boy, would I love to see it lose the capacity or the will to use force. And, you know, from my perspective, again, Elliot, that's what I would have preferred. The Trump administration helped the Biden administration, the Trump administration, the Obama administration. And honestly, that was my feeling, you know, after the jcpoa, was that when it became clear that the Iranians were not going to take the JCPOA as an opportunity to have a better relationship with us, which is clearly what President Obama hoped, that we should have recognized that, okay, we just gave them the greatest opportunity that they were ever going to get. All right, I'll put it this way. They were never going to get an American president more pro Iranian than. Than Barack Obama, who famously, you know, announced that this, or said, told Jeff Goldberg that the Saudis were going to have to learn to share the Middle east with Iran. Right. Just an unbelievable statement from an American president. When the Iranians, you know, and the
- [30:13]
A
last thing the Saudis want to hear, that's for sure.
- [30:15]
B
Exactly, exactly. And when the Iranians, you know, threw that back in our faces, that should have been the moment that we recognize that, that we did have to start to develop an approach in terms of regime change with this regime. And again, that's where I still find myself. But again, one of the things I worry about with this agreement, whatever it's going to be, if there's going to be sanctions relief for the Iranians, if There are going to be massive side payments by the Gulf states to Iran. Right. This is not going to help the cause of regime change. This is suddenly going to put lots, huge amounts of money in the hands of this leadership. And you know, what we've seen all across the Middle east, at the very least, is that that kind of disposable income typically allows you to either buy off your opposition or buy the loyalty of your security forces. Right. And those things go hand in hand and they enable you to avoid coups and revolutions.
- [31:16]
A
Now, that's a very important point, that you can buy the loyalty of your security forces, who of course know what's waiting for them if the regime falls. I mean, I think this was a point we had. Stephen Kotkin, Russian HISTORIAN in and was quite eloquent on that subject. Maybe let's step back a little bit. Every war, of course, reshuffles the deck in a variety of ways. Could you talk a little bit? What, what do you think are some of the long term implications for the Gulf states? I would also say for Israel and, you know, and you can go broader than that if you want to go Europe as well from this war, no matter even if it ends in a somewhat inconclusive way. What do you think are going to be some of the things we should be observing and looking for?
- [32:00]
B
Sure. And if we could, I'd love to talk about China as well.
- [32:03]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [32:04]
B
Some interesting stuff there. So for the Gulf states, and obviously, you know, I speak to folks in the Gulf all the time, including their leaders, and you know what's been interesting, Elliot, is let's be very clear. One, the Gulf states did not want the United States to do this. Right. They adamantly opposed it. They tried to prevent us from doing it. We did it anyway. They were very pleased with the extent of American support that they've gotten during the war and of course for the Emirates, the Israeli support as well. But they're now very, very concerned about how this war is ending. I think the only way to think about it is that they are making their peace with what they think is going to be a very bad outcome for them. Because the truth is, and again, you had some bad press reporting on this a number of weeks ago. There was a period of time where the Gulf states said, okay, we didn't want to get into this, but we're into it. The Iranians have attacked us. You Americans better finish them off. You proclaim regime change. Do not end this thing with them in power. Well, it's become clear that we're going to allow this regime to remain in power. They don't like it, but they've changed once again to all right, we're going to have to make our peace with it. And so what you're seeing them do, as I've already suggested, is simultaneously a sense of we're going to have to stay close to the Americans because only the Americans can literally defend us against attack by the Iranians. Right. And again, one of the reasons I want to talk about China is they've all figured out that China is not an alternative to the United States of America. And I think that's a very important outcome of both this war and the larger war that we've seen since October 7, 2023, at least not in the near term. China is not an alternative. But they've also come out of this with the sense that the United States is now the great rogue power and they cannot trust us. We are not predictable. We are not reliable, at least in terms strategically. Grand. Strategically, sorry, I know you're not a fan of grand strategy, but at that kind of a sense, and therefore they're going to start looking for alternatives. The problem they have is right now they don't have any good alternatives, but they are going to go looking for them, and that's going to very much color their thinking about us, about other countries. Again, part of what you're seeing is this very unhappy, very grudging, once again, Gulf reconciliation with Iran. We're not going to be rid of this regime. It is going to retain some capacity both to interfere with shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the ability to mount attacks on us, even if they're just harassing attacks, nonetheless, attacks that will have a severe impact on our economic and social stability and welfare moving forward. And if we can't get the Americans to eliminate that, then we're going to have to find some sort of reconciliation. And you know, that's what you're seeing from them. So on the one hand, as the Emiratis are looking like they're going to pay, and that's what I expected, tens of billions of dollars to the Iranians. They and the Saudis are also contracting to buy huge numbers of drones of their own. And so it's both of these different things. The Gulf that's going to emerge, I think, is going to be a very different one because I think, in short,