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Foreign.
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Good Saturday evening, everybody. Welcome to Dispatch Live. Happy to be with you this evening to talk about the US And Israeli strikes on the Iranian regime. I have a terrific panel joining me tonight, Mike Warren, known probably to most of you, senior editor at the Dispatch, Mike Nelson. How should I describe you? Mike, former COO of the Institute for the Study of War, Special Forces, Badass Dispatch contributor, moderate at last being the greatest distinction. And Graham Wood, one of my favorite contemporary journalists, writes for the Atlantic. Very happy to have you all along. Let's jump in right away on the news. And Mike Nelson, I'll start with you. We saw a series of strikes today and I'm wondering if you can give us any insight. We've been talking about this for a while. This has been anticipated for a long time. Wonder if you can give us any insight on sort of what happened today, why this happened now, and what, if anything, we can learn from the targets that were struck and the people who were eliminated.
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C
Well, what happened I think in the last, I guess 36 hours since, since the piece came out saying that we needed to lay out a case for war, while there was a myriad of reasons that we could strike Iran, that the president needed to make a compelling case. And now we saw the president about midnight last night release his statement announcing the beginning of Operation Epic Fury and the strikes on Iran and laying out a little bit of the reasoning for it, although he was there's still some vagueness to some of the understanding now in between Midnight Hammer last year, last summer, which were the strikes against the physical infrastructure of the nuclear program, and now there seems to be some kind of reporting of some kind of threat and the imminence thereof is not quite sure, at least not to the general public. It was briefed to the Gang of Eight. Obviously it's known to the IC and the president himself. But it is still somewhat nebulous in our understanding that threat the president laid out and some of his interlocutors laid out today that there may have been an Iranian plot to use some of their short range ballistic missiles conventionally armed in the region. We saw that in the first week of January, in the aftermath or in the reaction to the popular protests that the Iranian regime cracked down on their people, killing even with the president's own numbers or those that he's disclosed up to 32,000 Iranian citizens, that he had threatened them not to seek retribution against or there would be consequences. And then there was suggestions from Secretary Rubio and Vice President Vance that they had accelerated and restarted some of their research towards a nuclear weapon or creating one we do know. And then Steve Witkoff obviously kind of, kind of sparked that off as well, claiming that they were one week away from weaponization or some version thereof. So I think there's something that happened and we saw Sec. Senator Schumer seemed to suggest with, with sobriety that there was something that was credible and known and, and discovered by our intelligence community that suggests that there was either a rekindling or an energy energy within their intent, their research or potentially their moving of the existing fissile material, the 60% enriched uranium that was unknown where it went after, after Midnight Hammer or there may have been this plan to do short or a large scale conventional ballistic missile strikes in the region. Regardless what seems or what is potentially reported was the specific inciting event for last night was this meeting with the Supreme Leader, with Khamenei and some of his senior leaders that by all reporting the Israel struck, killing several of them and by all reports Khamenei himself that that was a opportunity that could not be missed and they took the opportunity. The Israelis seem to have struck primarily counter leadership targets and the United States seems to have struck some of their capabilities. So you saw that the Iranian response was a little bit more muted than we might have expected. They did launch some missiles throughout the region. Those were largely ineffective and of lower volume than we might have expected. So it seems that those initial round of strikes had pretty good success both in striking leadership and degrading their ability to respond to those strikes.
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Yeah.
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Graham, my former colleague Brett Baer at Fox News used to cover the Pentagon for many years and now has been in the anchor chair for a long time but still has good. Sources cited an Israeli senior Israeli government official saying that some 40 up to 40 senior regime officials, including Ali Hamilton were killed during this operation. In your really terrific piece just out, you talked to several people, including an exile, an Iranian exile who spent time working for the regime, now believes the regime should be overthrown, saying that really you could effect some kind of regime change or at least the first steps toward regime change by taking out the top 10. If these reports are accurate today, it seems like these strikes may have taken out even more of that. What's your reaction to that? And you know, given your reporting, you've done such great and extensive reporting on the regime, on Iran General, on the Iranian populace and on the exile community. What's likely to be the response from the Iranian people? To the extent that we can, we can know that at this point.
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Thanks for having me first of all, and I just want to note first of all, that if they got 40 people, 40 senior leaders at once who are in the same room, then this is pretty remarkable. Remarkable, first of all, that they just put that many people who were important together in the same room. That speaks to some real insanity or lack of other options that they felt. The exile I spoke to is this guy named Jabba Rajabi, very unusual guy, and he has theories which I don't personally know how much credibility to give them, but I thought that they were quite interesting as someone who had been on the inside in a number of different capacities. And when he said he thought there was about 10 people who needed to be physically eliminated, he was suggesting, I think, that the number of people who could be simply turned aside, could be pensioned off was larger than you might think. And the number of people who didn't have simply, there's no place for them in a post regime scenario for them to be alive was actually quite small. Now, whether all 10 of those were in the room, I guarantee at least one of them was, I don't know. But the suggestion that a regime that has rotten so much morally and otherwise has a lot of people within it who actually don't need that much of a push to decide that this is not a regime worth dying for, that strikes me as very plausible. And the number, whatever it is, even if it's not 10, is probably pretty small, smaller than one might think. You weigh that, of course, against the fact that this is a huge organization. The IRGC is not a tiny organization and it has other forms of resilience. But yeah, if a decapitation or leadership strike early on has the success that it appears to have had, then, yeah, it could potentially be, you know, the, the set in the match in the first day.
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B
Yeah, pretty extraordinary that they got the Supreme Leader and appears, as you say, to have been confirmed, been confirmed by the Israelis, by the US Government. Pretty, pretty good start if it is, in fact just a start. Mike Warren, you know, to Mike Nelson's point earlier, we have not seen much of a case from Donald Trump for the United States doing what it's apparently begun to do here with a regime, attempted regime decapitation. In the President's State of the Union speech earlier this week, hour and 47 minute speech, he spent three minutes, all of three minutes on Iran and really presented nothing new, sort of a recap of old grievances. He did the same in his eight minute address to the nation today, earlier today. And then within 12 hours of these first strikes, he was giving interviews to Barack Ravid at Axios, talking about his off ramps. His meaning Donald Trump's off ramps. Is this the kind of limited engagement? I mean, Donald Trump famously campaigned against forever wars, said that he was the peace candidate, wasn't going to get the United States involved, particularly in the Middle East. Is he signaling now that this is going to be that kind of a limited engagement? And if he, and if he is, what does that say to the Iranians and the people left in the Iranian regime?
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D
With everything that, you know, all the answers that we are giving with some of us having sort of more expertise than others, I, I think the answer to that is we have to wait and see because it's, it's, there's so much that at this point seems to be out of even, even Donald Trump's hands. And the thing that I've been thinking about with regard to Trump's commitment to this in the run up to these strikes, you know, there's just all these questions about was the President going to follow through and fulfill the promise that he gave. You've talked so much about this, Steve, that he gave to those protesters in the last month where he said that, you know, go out there and, and you'll, you'll be backed, you'll be supported. And then, then there was a month basically of, of will he or won't he were moving, you know, strike groups into, into the region. But there was no public case being made as, as Mike's piece I think lays out very well. There is a public case to be made for this, but the President wasn't doing it and he didn't do it in that, in that State of the Union speech earlier this week. So the question that I, I have is really up to, I think what happens next? Because we know one thing about Donald Trump's approach. It's not necessarily that approach that say, sort of the most strident anti interventionists in his camp, maybe even including his vice president, have. It's not their view that, that no military engagement is really worth any, any of, is worth it. Trump likes to make these military engagements, but I think he knows that the likelihood of success is high and the risk to, in, in that moment of failure is low. Operation Midnight Hammer is a great example of that. He has not been unwilling to use American military force, but it's been targeted. It's been in sort of slam dunk scenarios and maybe they look that way on, on the other side of them, but he's got a track record on that and you can even go back to the first term, back in 2020, when, when he ordered the strike on Soleimani that I, I would argue probably started the series of events that have led us to this moment. Now he's the, he was the leader of the Coots Force and, and sort of the main chief strategist for the rogc. But, but what happens next? I, I mean, I, I just don't know. And I think that, you know, we can discuss this because I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of variance in sort of what happens next in terms of is there a, is this regime truly been decapitated? Who among the sort of civil society in Iran kind of can rise up and take the reins? Is it, is it just the next generation of the Republican revolutionary political, you know, coalition? Is it someone much more liberal, something in between? I think the questions of sort of what happens in the next day, what week, month, and what Donald Trump does and what the United States military does just depends on all of these unknowns. So, so I, it's the frustrating thing. I mean, I think it's important for us to talk about all of this on this day and, and, and get all this expertise. But it's just hard to know, and particularly hard to know when there's really been no communication from the administration about its, about what its plans are, what its goals are and how we can't judge against something that we don't really know. Why, why we're there and what we're doing and what's, what's the ultimate end for it.
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Yeah, we, we know. We have many Dispatch members joining us this evening. We also have a big crowd beyond the Dispatch. For those of you who don't know the Dispatch or are familiar with how we do business here, Mike's answer is the right answer. It's a good answer. We don't know, and we're not afraid to say that we don't know when we don't know. So we're not going to pretend like we know and talk about things when it's appropriate to say we don't know, we'll just tell you that we don't know. Graham, I want to go back to you on that question of red lines. On the one hand, you had the President starting in late December, using really forceful language, encouraging the protesters to come out. I don't think that's why the Iranian people took to the streets, but it certainly didn't discourage them. I mean, certainly encouraged them to come out and Said, if you shoot protesters, he said to the regime, we. We will shoot back. We will shoot, sort of, we will shoot you on their behalf. He said this repeatedly, half a dozen plus times. And then in that crucial weekend, that basically first full weekend of January, when the regime slaughtered, you know, upwards of 30,000 protesters, potentially depending on who you believe, the United States didn't step up.
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They.
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And there were concerns raised, both in the Trump administration and it's sort of more more broadly in the international community, that this was a red line moment. They'd crossed the red line, and we didn't respond. Does this response count, in effect, is he now making good on those threats even though they came? This comes much too late for the people who were killed in the streets.
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Yeah, I mean, in some ways, it's not for me to say. It's for the. The people who have lost loved ones and so forth in the massacres in January. I mean, it seems fairly clear at this point that when Trump said those things, there's a good chance that he wasn't thinking through the consequences for people who were about to be slaughtered hours or minutes later, and that he probably was simply briefed that, okay, doing something right now has a certain probability of working out, and that probability is not that close to 100%. So you can either look like a fool temporarily for having promised something that you don't deliver, or you can look like a fool permanently for trying to deliver it and failing publicly. Everybody involved. So I can see how there were a number of ways that face was going to be lost in that scenario. There was one thing that several things that came from that wave of protests, and in that sense, the 30 to 40,000 people who died and die in vain, which is that the remaining vestiges of legitimacy for that regime vanished into the air.
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Yes.
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And, you know, they were evanescent already. The last year has seen a number of things, somewhat quietly, in some cases, going away, like insistence on certain types of Sharia compliance that the regime used to describe as an existential matter for it gone. They just. You'd see, apparently. I haven't been there in the last year, but see people on the streets just not wearing hijab. Not something that you would have seen much before. So all those things were on the way out. And then for the regime, then once it already looked like all signs were pointing toward collapse or toward the necessity of some kind of serious reform. To kill 40,000 people made it even more difficult and, in fact, impossible to pretend that the regime was anything but a brutal one without legitimacy. So it's a pity for the people who expected Trump to act sooner, but I think there might be some solace to be taken with what's happened since now, what he said, if I recall correctly, about what happens next, that now's your opportunity. Iranian people, there might not be another one. I think that starts to limit expectations for what the United States will do and for what needs to happen from the Iranian people, which I think is in some ways appropriate. I mean, the Iranian people taking to the streets right now, I think is more likely than not. And if it happens, I think it will. You know, there could be scenes like the end of Ceausescu's Romania that happened over the next few days, or there could not. But there's now reason to believe that didn't exist a week ago for a lot of Iranian protesters, that the success, that success is possible if they try to do that.
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B
I mean, I think there are, as you point out and as Mike Warren points out, so many unanswered questions, unanswerable at this moment. But one of them is how deep the roots of the regime really go. You know, the, the exile that you talked to suggested, you know, if you, if you take the top off of the regime in a decapitation effort, the regime is sort of so unpopular and this is kind of so the moment that there really is an opportunity for people to rise up and take advantage of this space that Donald Trump has said he's created for, you know, non regime elements to, to take power or at least to fight for power. On the other hand, you know, you talk to some experts in the, the, the region, Iranian expats, and they will say the roots of the regime actually go much deeper. You know, 3,000 people deep, 5,000 people deep. And those people are going to hold on to whatever power they have left ferociously right now because they don't want to be on the outs. And if they end up on the outs, unless there is some, you know, some effort to give them some kind of amnesty, they're going to be in real trouble, like actually not surviving trouble. Mike Nelson, when you look at sort of what we've begun and the President said today that he, you know, there are more, there's more coming. I think he actually mentioned a week as a sort of rough time frame, maybe said over the coming week how much more work has to be done if these early reports are true. And do you have any sense from talking to folks in your world of what these coming days might look like, what additional targets would be?
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C
Well, so there are a couple different things to take into account there. First of all, to answer that question, we have to go back to the question of what are we trying to achieve at the end? And there have been four primary grievances. You know, it's more nuanced than this, but to bin them in. Four primary grievances we have with the Iranian regime. There's pursuit of a nuclear weapon, their nuclear program. There's their regional proxy networks and the regional destabilization that they cause, the short range ballistic missile program that they have or weapons that they have on hand and the threats that those represent to the regime. And then there's oppression of the Persian people. All of those are four different problems. But there is one solution, to my mind, only one solution that solves all four. And the President just laid that out last night. Now, in my piece I said in the State of the Union, I felt he was walking it back, taking kind of walking back support for the protesters, as though that is something that he had prevented it becoming worse through his threats and that he was focused on the nuclear program. Last night's comments and what we've heard since suggest that we are seeking regime change to address all four of those issues. What I think that the administration needs to be able to answer to themselves and eventually to the American people is if this continues and we do not see a very quick toppling, which of those four priorities are in order, in sequence, those that we are trying to pursue. Additionally, that last one, the oppression of the Iranian people and reversing that, is something that he has largely led to, to or left to the Iranian people, suggesting that they should rise up. And we saw reports that there was hacking of, of Persian prayer apps, telling them to rise up against their government today. So this seems to be something that we have seeded and are trying to stoke. But we are to some extent using hope as a method that, that this will result in a popular uprising that not only will seek or gain traction, but also will gain enough momentum to overcome that, that deeply rooted regime that you've talked about. Yes, we have seen that they have cut down the top layer and they're probably going to continue to do that over the next couple days and weeks. The question is if that gets down to a level that the popular uprising in so much or whatever that becomes rises up to a level that it can overcome it. And one of the things that I think we need to keep in mind is there is not necessarily a monolithic resistance. There is not a monolithic counter state within Iran. There are several pretenders to this mantle outside of Iran. The Pahlavis, for example, acting as though they're ready to fleet back in, just like Ahmed Chalabi in, in Iraq did. You've got the MEK sitting, you know, internationally and next door in Iraq pretending that they are a legitimate entity that could play a role in a counter revolutionary or post revolutionary Iran. And then you also have various ethnic minorities, you have Kurdish pockets and Baluch pockets throughout Iran that have their own separatist agendas. What comes together to oppose the regime is still largely a question as this continues and as we create pressure on the regime, if it does not collapse under its own way, if it resists in some way, shape or form. And we see, you know, General Connie, the commander of the, the Quds Force who replaced Suleimani, he's still out there. Larajani, by no means an unsavvy actor within governance in Iran is still out there. There are people who can continue to lead even though Khamenei is dead. And that's a good thing. But we have to see how much pressure we're going to be willing to continue to exert, how much of that is going to come from the limited amount of standoff weapons and precision guided munitions that we have and then how many ballistic missile defense capabilities we have to suck up the responses as we continue this offensive. So it may take a different look in terms of our precision to keep the, the pressure on and we may have to question how much support we're willing to give. And then the last thing I'd point out is twice the United States has engaged in political changes from the air or from the air and sea only that was Kosovo and Libya in one case, that created stability and transition in the form of Kosovo and the other form, it was complete chaos. Well, in Koso, after the Serbs withdrew, we helped install a security force that managed the transition. In Libya, we did not. So question is, if the regime topples, what's next and are we going to have any role in guiding it or are we just going to, you know, mark off the perimeter of Iran and leave them to themselves?
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B
Well, another question to you, Mike. You know, obviously before the US invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 and then throughout much of the, the aftermath of the US Invasion, there was talk of the Pottery Barn rule. If, if you break it, you, you own it. President Trump doesn't really talk in moral terms that way. And, you know, if you look at what he's done in Venezuela, he sort of shrugs his shoulder, shoulders at the idea of any moral obligation for the United States to step in or a sense that, you know, the Pottery Rule, Pottery Barn rule might apply. But separate, apart from the moral questions, and I think there are pretty profound moral questions if you undertake something like this, I think we do owe it to the people remaining to try to create some stability, but separate from that. Just in terms of our interests. Given the diverse set of actors that you just described and what seems to be an inevitable power vacuum, shouldn't the United States want to play a role rather than just say, boom, we took out your leaders, now have at it. Doesn't that sort of chaos feels to me inevitable at this point? Unless we have sort of a. Delsey Rodriguez, and there's no indication yet that, that we do. And I think the Iranian people would be much less happy with that than the Venezuelan people apparently are willing to tolerate. Just in terms of interests, doesn't the United States. Won't the United States have a role to play beyond just kinetic action?
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C
I would argue yes. And going back to your, how you led into this, I believe we do have a moral, but moreover an obligation in our own interests, as you, as you laid out. This is similar to a theory that one of my old professors, Anna Simons, wrote about. She called it the sovereignty solution. If a country is causing you, you know, causing you bother, you can come in and conduct punitive attacks and then you leave them to sort themselves out. And if it happens again, you conduct further punitive attacks. But it's not your job to sort them out. The problem here is, as we've seen with other places where chaos has broken out, Syria, most notably, the, the massive migration flows that came out of Syria into Europe in the last decade were not fleeing isis. They were fleeing Assad. They were fleeing the conflict. If, if there is chaos, that happens here. This is a population of 90 million, as Tucker Carlson famously told us. So those are people who will seek to leave the chaos. Those are people who, who need stability and, and reintegration. If there is some kind of change in their body politic, in the, in the way that the, that they seek governance and, and and everyday services. It is within our interests to main to help manage that transition if it happens, and particularly not just because of the chaos that will immediately ensue, but to make sure that another nefarious regime does not rise to the top. And I think oftentimes when there are multipolar revolutions that take place or multifactional revolutions that take place, often it is the most savage, it is the most brutal, it is the most ideologically repressive that float to the top. We saw this in the Cuban revolution, we saw it with the Russian revolution, we saw it with the factionalization in the Irish revolution in the 1920s. So that tends to happen if it's not managed along. And I think that's a real threat if just if all we are producing is air pressure that topples the regime and then leaves it to its own devices. Now that doesn't mean that potentially there is not a multinational solution that is not American led, that other people have interest in this too. And I think the President has been on board with other international actors need to play their roles, but it's likely not going to happen without US leadership in the least not happen effectively.
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B
Mike Warren, I want to come to you about the politics of this in just a moment. But Graham, before we do that, am I, am I right? I mean, you've done so much reporting on, on Iran over the years. Am I right that the Iranian people are much less likely to be sort of tolerant or accepting of if there were some, you know, arrangement that we learn about in the coming days that would be akin to the Maduro del Rodriguez arrangement, where we've in effect put in somebody from the old regime that we think we can manage it. It feels very unlikely to me that that would be satisfactory to the Iranian people or the huge swaths of the Iranian people. Am I, am I wrong about that? Am I overreading that?
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A
I do think that there's a lot of Iranian people who don't think that putting in place a new autocrat is what their friends, neighbors, children died for. So there would be a lot of very unhappy people about that. The other thing about Iran too is that although it was not a democracy, is not a democracy, there are aspects to it that do include the trappings of democracy, including public debate about things. And they in a way have had within an autocratic system a mock democracy that every Iranian is familiar with. And so the idea that you could go from a state that has a supreme leader at the top and then a highly stage managed democracy as well. To one that has a permanently non democratic nature I think would be pretty unacceptable to a lot of Iranians in that way.
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B
Yeah, I think it would be pretty striking. We don't know again, there's a lot we don't know right now. But there was a kind of split screen during the President's State of the Union address where he spoke in one moment about the horrors of the Maduro regime and what they'd done on human rights cases and celebrated people that survived that and what was a genuinely emotional moment but then celebrated at the same time the imposition of Dely Rodriguez on the Venezuelan people who was a key part of that previous regime. It just, it feels like that's tension that is would be less acceptable to the Iranian people. If at least if my read is is correct on this Mike Warren, on the politics of this,
- [32:21]
C
you know, much
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B
has been made of the sort of neo isolationist faction of the current Republican Party. I would say growing neo isolationist faction of the current Republican Party led in part by people in the administration like J.D. vance, maybe Tulsi Gabbard and people outside like Tucker Carlson who came out today and blasted the president for these strikes. How much does that factor in the president's ability to maintain support those given those splits? Or is this largely likely to be driven by whether it works or whether it doesn't?
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D
Yes, to that question. I mean I would say I was thinking about this in the run up to what I did not know would be would be today's strikes. I didn't know if they would happen or it would be today. But it seemed that the president's sort of the way it was difficult to pin down what he was planning to do. It wasn't just simply oh you know, Trump is crazy like a foxy, you know, you don't know what he's going to do next and that's his kind of superpower on the international stage. It felt a bit and it continues to feel a bit like managing the coalition and a big part of the coalition. And I want to sort of separate out actual voters from power brokers like who you mentioned, J.D. vance, Tucker Carlson, people within the kind of the medium range coalition that make up maga. Because I think the voters in large part are going to go with Trump and they're particularly going to go with Trump if it is successful. But even if it's not successful, I think or if it's, if it's sort of halfway successful or it's not what, what those who are actually concerned about the future of the regime or the future of the Iranian people or stability in the region. But it does just enough to kind of get him through the next couple of weeks or months. The MAGA voting base will go with him. I think what's more interesting and will be interesting to follow depending again on what happens and a lot of these things are out of Trump's control is what does that neo isolationist or hyper realist or. I mean there's a million sort of names we call them. But that faction of the Trump coalition which appears ascended in the form of J.D. vance. Right.
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C
J.D.
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D
vance at the moment appears to be, you know, the sort of the odds on favorite. Maybe nobody serious will challenge him for the Republican nomination for president in 2028. Does that this change. Does what happens in Iran change that? I don't know. I think it will be interesting to watch. I think it's interesting that somebody who we are all told is not interested in running for president in 2028. Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State is, is not from that particular faction on, on foreign policy. He is, he has been much more forward leaning on, on sort of this kind of halfway regime change idea within the, within the administration. Does, does he look better depending on how things go on the, on the other side of this, in the sort of, in the Republican political understanding of sort of who's up and who's, who's down, does J.D. vance look like he was. He's sort of maybe trying to lead something from behind. If he does end up sort of coming around as I think he will publicly and sort of supporting the president, whatever he does, those kind of machinations and people trying to position themselves will, will be something I, I'm going to obviously be following as a, as a journalist and a reporter. But I think it's so dependent again on what happens, what Donald Trump does and, and how he responds to the next days, weeks, months and years. I, I think there is a lot of consternation within the neo isolationist wing right now. They don't quite know what to do. You can, you can, you know, sort of gnash your teeth like Tucker Carlson. You can be photographed in a room somewhere like J.D. vance and Tulsi Gabbard to sort of. This is, this is posted by the way, by the White House. It's not clear that he was, they were in the same room as the President, monitoring what's going on in Iran and just sort of bide your time. But I think that I think this, particularly if it's more successful than Than, than not, this poses a problem for that part of the coalition. And it certainly makes things more interesting as we sort of think about what the Republican Party looks like after Trump is, is no longer in office.
- [37:15]
B
Yeah. Let me move to some questions that we've gotten in the YouTube comments. Question from William Bates. Without people on the ground, what makes us so certain that Khamenei is dead? My understanding, and you all jump in and correct me if, if I'm wrong about this or if I haven't given a complete answer, is that the Israelis have seen photographic evidence and that they may have had people on the ground who helped identify this. And there is a debate, I think, right now within the Israeli government about releasing that photographic evidence that would confirm that he has actually been killed. Anybody have anything to add to that? Is that, is that your understanding, just
- [37:55]
C
as you've said it's been. To explain it a little further, it's probably not Israeli people on the ground. It is that Mossad has successfully infiltrated the Iranian government so thoroughly that these are Iranians who have collected this information and passed it to Mossad. And that that has been at least reported by Reuters in i24 that they've said that Netanyahu himself has seen the pictures. So that's what's telling us, I think.
- [38:19]
B
Yeah. Question for Graham. Here we have, it looks like Gatha writes, I think the Iraq war led eventually to isis. Do you think the power vacuum in the Iranian regime will lead to such, similar to similar, such terrorist groups or states? It should be noted, Graham, that you literally wrote the book on isis. Do you agree with that characterization? The Iraq war led to isis. And what, how should we think about the, the, the work of terrorist groups now in, in Iran that might be unleashed by this? Many of them, Hamas, Hezbollah and others, have been badly damaged by the events after October 7th several years ago. Where does that stand? And do we, do we expect to see that kind of terrorist activity in the coming weeks and months?
- [39:18]
A
On the first question of whether the Iraq war led to isis, it's kind of a complicated thing to describe, but in some ways, yes, because there's a power vacuum, there is a total vacuum of governance. And then of course, Iranian backed Shiite factions come in and create an extremely sectarian environment in Iraq where Sunnis band together. And that's where ISIS came from. So where did it come from? It came from Iran in that sense. As a response to that, did it come also from the background chaos that was created by the Iraq war? Yeah, absolutely. That's True too. I think what there's a lot of ground between here and the creation of a new ISIS because of chaos in Iran. And it is true that one of the really, really bad scenarios would be the creation of a very unpredictable, very bad civil war, which, as Mike Nelson said, elevates the absolute worst people in almost every case. I will say this, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 was very ISIS like in that it had an enormous ideological component, even an apocalyptic component, that the regime itself tried to suppress later on when the apocalypse didn't happen. And you know, there were people who thought that the Ayatollah Khomeini was actually secretly the Hidden Imam and that when he came back to power that it would usher in the basically the end of the world. And when it turned out not to be the case, they pretended they never said that. They pretended they never thought that. So there's already been this very long period of disillusionment and kind of de ideologization of the formerly Shiite jihadist state that was extremely ideological. So what we see right now, it's not as if there's no one in the regime who believes this stuff, but there's a lot of people who are making very familiar, rational calculations that are legible to people who aren't part of that ideology. So it's not, I think, as if there's going to be a bunch of people who believe in the end of the world and who take extreme and religious positions and then act that out and die in large numbers because of that. There's plenty of terrible situations that could come about if the worst scenarios apply. But I don't think an immediate growth of an apocalyptic cult is one of them.
- [42:01]
C
Yeah.
- [42:02]
B
Mike Nelson, speaking of chaos, the question from FPL underdog, do we think neighboring countries were on board or even informed before the strikes? Were Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait, etc. Prepared prepared for Iranian retaliation and strikes? It's notable that they, in, in their public words at least, leaders of these other Sunni Gulf countries opposed this kinetic action, wouldn't allow the United States to use air bases or resources in their countries, I think hoping to avoid what we saw from the Iranians. So question, where are those. What's sort of the thinking in those Gulf states? To the extent that we can oversimplify and describe it broadly, number one. And number two, what were the Iranians thinking in lashing out right now?
- [43:01]
C
So to look at the, the Gulf ease as a, as a, as a monolith, I think would be a little bit of a mistake. And We've seen for example, Oman has, has reacted very angrily about this and I think that's sincere. Oman was trying to act as the neutral broker in negotiations and they seem upset at the fact that this is,
- [43:20]
B
has been for decades. It should be.
- [43:22]
C
Right. The Qataris as well play a little bit of a, in a, in a, in a kind way saying that they try to be the, the go between, between all in a less kind way. They tend to be do.
- [43:34]
B
You don't need to be kind.
- [43:35]
C
Right.
- [43:35]
B
You should just be accurate.
- [43:37]
C
Right. So the Qataris try to have it both ways with all parties. The other Gulf states, the Emiratis and the Saudis in specific have oftentimes been more adversarial towards the Iranians, sometimes publicly and sometimes behind the scenes. We saw it was reported back in, in the build up in around 2008 when it looked like there might be a strike either American, Israeli against an Iranian nuclear program that at one point in time it didn't look like the Israelis could range it. It didn't look like the Americans were allowed refuelers and that the plan was they would fly due to a desert landing strip in KSA in Saudi Arabia and then take off. Undisclosed that the Saudis were on board with an Israeli strike. And this was like I said this was, you know, 15 years ago or so. So the Saudis have often and under MBS particularly have, have been a little adversarial against the Iranians. These, the Saudis released a statement today after the initial strikes or after the counter reaction from the Iranians that they were on board with the coalition. I think that most, the Emiratis and the Saudis particularly were probably aware that something was coming and are secretly very happy that it's happening. If they're not overtly happy that it's happening. I would argue that again I think the Omanis and the Qataris are the only ones who are probably dissatisfied. The Qatari is getting caught in the middle again. Is the, the home to Auab, but Alid Air base. But I think that most of the region is going to see this. Most of the, the, the Sunni portions of the region are going to see this as, as an opportunity to, to not only work on behalf of the Persian people and bring them potentially back into the, the, the community of nations so to speak, but also to finally deal with their largest regional adversary.
- [45:25]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. Question from Brad Peters. In what scenario could you all see that the US would have boots on the ground in a similar way to what happened In Iraq, I'll take a first crack at that. I think that's a very, very unlikely scenario. I mean, everything that Donald Trump has said, but it must be said, in my view, Donald Trump doesn't have much of a worldview. I don't think there is such a thing as a Trump doctrine. And it's accurate to say that he's an ad hoc decision maker. So stipulating all of that, one of the things he's been reasonably consistent about, again, to the extent that he cares about consistency, is that he doesn't want to send US Troops to be the policeman of the world. You know, fill in the blank. Whatever reason, he doesn't. You said repeatedly he doesn't want to do that. And I think, you know, if you're Donald Trump or the people who support and defend him and you look at what he's done here, you look at what he did with Midnight Hammer, you look at what he did in Venezuela, the way that they can sort of square the circle is by saying these aren't forever wars. He said he was not going to get the United States involved in forever wars and instead was going to look out for US Interests. That's what he's doing here. And he's not interested in forever wars. He's not going to send, he's not going to put boots on the ground. I think again, going back to what I said a little bit earlier, both given the, the time and attention that he, you know, to use one example spent on it in the State of the Union, but also the lack of case for war in Iran suggests to me that we're not likely to, to see that kind of a broad effort and a US Presence to try to determine and drive outcomes in sort of post strike Iran. And any of you think that that's crazy or have a different view or, or something else to add?
- [47:22]
C
No, I think you're right that if it came down to between tailoring back some of our expansionist goal or our maximalist goals of the campaign or introducing ground forces, he would probably tailor the end state to make it something that we could achieve from a distance or negotiate an end state at that point in time. I do think that there is the potential, like what we saw in the negotiated settlement in Gaza where the isf, the International Security Force, is being led by an American, Jasper Jeffers. But Americans are primarily putting together a coalition of other allied nations that are going to do it. I think the, there's something we could do there, but I don't think you're going to see anything like operation Iraqi Freedom 2.0 rolling towards Tehran. I, I don't think that's within, I don't think that's within the scope of what the president had in mind.
- [48:15]
B
Yeah, I think that's right. Putting together a couple of the questions that we've gotten. What should we expect to see and hear from Russia and China?
- [48:25]
D
Were
- [48:28]
B
Iranian allies sometimes in, in fact, often in at least rhetorically, what does this do to them, both in terms of their ability to extend their influence in the region, but also what kind of responsibilities? I mean, what kind of reactions might we see from them?
- [48:50]
A
Graham yeah, one of the questions that we should be asking in addition to that is what were the reactions we were going to expect if there was no action that was taken against Iran? And already there were there were questions about what exactly is China going to offer to Iran in terms of defense capabilities? What is Iran going to offer in exchange for that lifeline bases in the Persian Gulf? Who knows? So one of the things that I think was part of the calculation should have been is there's a cost to waiting to finding out whether Russia and China are going to help out and what they're going to get in return. Russia is led to believe busy with some other things right now, so lacking bandwidth to actually save a regime. And then both China and Russia, I think this is very important. They are actually they're close with many of Iran's allies, in some cases closer than they are with Iran in many ways. More trade, for example, the places that they rely on include the Gulf, include Saudi Arabia, and they have close connection to Israel, too. So they could choose to invest heavily in keeping Iran and the Islamic Republic afloat. But they would have to probably really anger some of their other constituencies by doing that. Of course, China in particular, just as a matter of doctrine, I won't say whether in practice as well, simply says we considered other country's territory sovereign and we will not interfere in what they do even when they kill tens of thousands of their own citizens. So in this case, this is a challenge to that doctrine in pretty stark terms. So I think as a matter of principle, you could expect them to react very strongly and negatively against this.
- [50:58]
C
One thing I think it's important to point out, this will have other effects within another theater of war. The Russians are largely dependent on Iranian shahed drones resupplying them in their front in Ukraine. That's about to dry up and they're not going to get further resupply, at least not in the short term and potentially if this achieves its ultimate goal, not in the long term. So there are other effects that are beneficial to other theaters of war that are of interest to us.
- [51:24]
B
On the other hand, Mike Warren, I'll start with you on this. If you were China right now and you were contemplating starting some trouble, whether it's more in the South China Sea, whether it's with respect to Taiwan, whether it's messing with the Philippines, what would now be a pretty good time to do it in the United States? If you look at I heard one thing sort of came pass through from Aaron McLean, who's very smart about these things, said something like, and I may get this not precisely right, you know, half of the US Deployable naval assets are sort of occupied now. We've got a lot of stuff in the region. Wouldn't that be an attractive moment for China to stir up some trouble or just test and probe in advance, even if they're not planning to do anything serious for a year, two years, three years, test and probe right now to, to, to try to gauge our, our will?
- [52:28]
D
MIKE Warren, I think test and probe is the most likely, given the way that China sort of proceeds slowly and deliberately on these things. I also think that what happens over the next, I keep saying it days and, and weeks and months and what, how the United States handles what happens and what transpires. Does it say is there any sort of support or is there a lack of support for any kind of effort to, say, build a new regime in Iran or, you know, a new government? Does the United States sit back and allow that next generation to kind of step up and take up and continue the revolutionary regime? I think China is watching that very closely as they, as they test and probe potentially just to see sort of what at least this president's resolve is and what he's willing to do, how far he's willing to go in terms of taking action? And it's again, it's one of the reasons why this, why this is so concerning, given in particular that the president is Donald Trump. Look, there are a lot of people who have been advocating for regime change in Iran for lots of good reasons, I think. Look, Mike Nelson put lays this all out, lays out what the case is in his piece for the Dispatch yesterday about the case for this. But when you have a president like Donald Trump, who seems to be, you said it earlier, Steve, he makes decisions ad hoc. He also seems to be driven a lot by sort of what appeals to him in the here and now and what seems achievable what seems frankly, exciting, right. He likes, he likes to make sort of big, splashy, you know, efforts to, to say, hey, we, we, we accomplished this. This is, you can see this in the way he talked about, say, Midnight Hammer, for instance, and, and then the follow through just kind of depends on whether things go well or whether he's distracted by something else. So I think, you know, certainly China and, and other, you know, potential adversaries around the world are sort of watching what this president does. And, and I, I hope that China does not use this as an opportunity to use that. The fact that there is, are so many of our assets in the Middle east right now to, to, to try to say, invade Taiwan. It's a concern. I, I would say that my guess is that they'll be a little more deliberate, but, but they'll be watching and taking notes.
- [55:08]
B
Yeah. Mike Nelson, I want to ask a little bit about sort of the Commander in Chief in a moment like this. You know, I think there's been a really good case for something like this for the better part of two decades. In fact, I think there's probably a stronger case for this before Operation Midnight Hammer than there is today. You're right, as you said very early in our conversation that there, there's at least a sense of some new information that, that made this perhaps more urgent than we might have imagined. But again, in the President's State of the Union, he claimed that Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated. And, you know, now he's saying that there's an imminent threat coming from Iran. There's reason to be cynical about the case that he has made, the limited case that he's made, and especially about the case that he hasn't made where. What do you do if you're somebody like me and somebody who would, you know, with, with a, in a moment like this, with a commander in chief that I respected and trusted and believed in or could be enthusiastic about something like this, but I have real reservations about sort of character and judgment at a time like this in this president. So what. I guess not really about me, but the, the people who are charged with carrying out these acts of war, how much does that matter? When, when you're, when you look up at the commander in chief, are you thinking about that? Do you, do you. Does it matter to you as you carry out your responsibilities, or is it much more? This is my job. This is what I'm told to do. I'm doing it.
- [56:51]
C
Yeah. Well, I, I think the first and first and foremost, the United States military are professionals who will carry out the lawful orders of the civilian leaders appointed above them. President Trump is the lawful president. And this even though I argue in the piece from yesterday that he should have gone to Congress largely for political reasons to get the, the support for something if this turns into a longer campaign. But I would argue that this does. You know, I'm not a lawyer, didn't stay at a Holiday Inn last night. But still, this, largely, this, probably this, this discrete argument falls within his Article 2 power. So this is, this is a legal operation that he has ordered and the military is duly carrying it out. I can tell you, having spent, you know, five years under the CENTCOM umbrella directly, if there's one thing CENTCOM prepared for, it was striking Iran and, and, and taking out several critical targets. This is something that the, the professionals in the military in absent the Air force Central and 5th Fleet have prepared for and trained for. And there is no doubt that Iran is, at every opportunity over the past 7, 47 years, have proven that they will choose to be an enemy of the United States rather than the counter. So I do not think that there is any question about the legitimacy of the orders, of the legitimacy of the mission. It is a. Just as in 2003, I did not feel there was any question about the legitimacy of me invading and deposing Saddam Hussein. What made it messy was what happened afterwards. It was the day after Paul Bremmer got there and we de bathified and demobilized the army. So the next steps are going to be what makes the story of epic fury, whether it's viewed as a success or not. So I think that's what matters. I do think that a model for us all to look at today is the way John Bolton's reacting to this. He's had very unkind things to say about the President's character. He's currently being prosecuted, some would say out of political reasons, and he is cheerleading this on because he believes it is the right thing to do, just as I do.
- [58:51]
B
Well, that's a good place to leave it. We thank you all for joining us. Mike Warren, Mike Nelson, Graham Wood. I will push anybody watching to go read Graham's piece, an Iranian Network Is Ready to Act, published today in the Atlantic. And Mike Nelson's piece, there's a case for strike in Iran. President Trump needs to make it. That is at the dispatch.the dispatch.com. so thank you for joining us and talking through this Pretty significant moment, I would say in, in the Trump presidency, maybe in the history of the United States. And thank you all for joining us. If you are currently a Dispatch member, thank you very much for being a Dispatch member. If you are not yet a Dispatch member you can go to the dispatch.com join sign up there and avail yourselves of more of these kinds of conversations and the good textual work that we do every day. Thanks again for joining us.
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