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The Lawfare Podcast
Lawfare Daily: How Two Intelligence Community Veterans View the Iran Conflict, with Chip Usher and Aaron Faust
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Aaron Foust
You know, I think we did plan for interceptors, but only up to a certain time frame and we're fast approaching, if we haven't already arrived at the time frame when we will start to run out and our allies will start to run out of interceptors of the kinds that can actually stop the Iranian missiles.
- [01:55]
Scott R. Anderson
It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson here with Chip Usher, the Senior Director for Intelligence at the Special Competitiveness Studies project and a 32 year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Aaron Foust, who was previously the division chief for Iran within the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau.
- [02:12]
Chip Usher
If all we did was agree to a cessation of hostilities tonight, the Iran that we would be left with, yes, seriously degraded, but, you know, certainly more, you know, angry and committed to rearming itself. You know, perhaps taking a fresh look at its nascent nuclear program than ever before.
- [02:33]
Scott R. Anderson
Today we're talking about the war in Iran, how we got here and where it might be going. You can find more of Chip Usher's analysis on his Fault Lines newsletter via substack, and you can find Aaron's satirical take on current affairs@ ridiculocracy.com so, Aaron, I want to start with a little bit of a level set for folks who may not be as deeply immersed in the Iran questions and Iran problems that folks who deal with Middle east policy have been dealing with for decades. Talk to us a little about what the consensus has been around the real threats that Iran does present, or at least challenges Iran presents to US national security and has for a while, and also give us a little bit of sense of what the dominant U.S. strategy has been for the last decade or two.
- [03:23]
Aaron Foust
Sure. Well, I think really you're seeing a lot of the threats that we've all been concerned about right now that we've all been concerned about for a very long time. So Iran has always had the ability to affect the free flow of oil and energy through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. We saw that during the Iran Iraq war, which led to our Navy facilitating tankers through the strait at one particular time. Iran has supported proxy organizations like Hezbollah and Iraqi militia groups, Hamas, etc. I don't know if we call the Houthis proxies. They're more partners. We can get into that later if you're interested. And those proxy organizations in particular during the Iraq war in Lebanon, et cetera, have killed Americans, including Marines in 1983 in. In Lebanon, obviously we know about the IEDs during the Iraq war, which Iraqi militia groups and the IRGC directly were responsible for hurting Americans. And so they in some ways have a direct threat to the United States. They also, since the killing of qasem Soleimani In 2020, you know, they have directly targeted and claimed that they're going after President Trump officials at that time that were involved in that assassination. And we've seen extra security being given to and more recently taken away from some of those individuals. So they're targeting, in many ways, Americans directly. We also have had concerns, obviously for a long time about their nuclear program and their ballistic missile program. And the concern is if their ballistic missile program ever gets to the point where they can fire a missile that it can hit the United States, and especially if that missile is nuclear tipped, that is obviously the biggest threat to the United States homeland that we see and the biggest threat to Americans. So we've been spending a lot of effort for a long time now in making sure they don't get a nuclear weapon and making sure that their ballistic missile program is in a box, or no longer, for that matter. They're also a huge threat to our allies, of course, Israel. They can hit Israel with both proxies and missiles, as we've seen in the last couple years. They can hit our Gulf Arab allies with missiles and they can threaten their energy infrastructure, which they've done during this conflict and they did previously in 2019 and in other years. So Iran has sort of a multifaceted array of options to hurt Americans and American interests, both political, economic and geostrategic. To add one more thing, I think they've also been proliferating technology to Russia, for example, and to use drones in Ukraine. That's been a big one of late. And we've also seen them proliferate the same kinds of drone technology, in particular in recent years to other countries around the world.
- [06:17]
Scott R. Anderson
So we saw the Trump administration take military action against Iran last year as well. In the summer, we saw a limited strike following the initiation of a military campaign by Israel against Iran, where the Trump administration opted to make a limited set of strikes against nuclear facilities in Iran, obliterating it, in the president's words. So I know assessments of that were somewhat mixed in other quarters. And then by my reading, although feel free to disagree with this as people who probably watch this closer than I did, it seems the administration then quickly pivoted to pressure the Israelis and encourage the Israelis to wind up their military operation to having essentially achieved one of their main objectives of constraining the nuclear program. Chip, talk to me a little about the Trump administration's approach there. How consistent was that with the approach the United States has usually taken towards Iran, and why did it adopt that more constrained model that it appears now to have abandoned six to eight months later?
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Chip Usher
Well, I think you're referring to Operation Bende Hammer, which was another combined U.S. israeli operation, obviously, last summer that in the presence words, obliterated Iran's nuclear capability. And perhaps the reason for restraint at that moment was derives from maybe two factors in my view. One is the objectives were limited and they were narrowly focused on the nuclear weapons program. And then the second, you know, may have been the, the analysis or assessment at the time as to how fragile or shaky internally the o' Braunium regime was in. And I think that that assessment probably went through a very significant recalibration later in January of this year when Iran saw a very like, unprecedentedly large display of public protests against the regime that it reacted to quite brutally. Estimates vary, but they killed anywhere from 7 to 30,000 of their own citizens, but at part a little bit of a high watermark for the domestic unrest of that country. And so I think that that may be partly why the Trump administration took a different approach with the campaign that it launched in late February.
- [08:38]
Scott R. Anderson
So we see the administration plan to undertake this much more substantial military operation earlier this year, a really, really substantial campaign aimed at substantially, you know, degrading Iranian military capabilities, hitting Iranian military political leadership, although I know there's some Israel, Israel may have played a greater role in certain of those strikes the United States has, but certainly part of the broader campaign. This isn't the first time that this idea has been raised. Certainly we've heard it in public discourse, we've heard it raised by public allies like Prime Minister Netanyahu in the past. So there's some sense about what we expected that might look like. So in January, before we knew clearly what the administration was headed on, what would you have thought, Chip, about what an operation like that might present? The challenges it might present, risks it might present, compared to something much more limited, constrained, like what the administration pursued previously. And how have those predictions come to pass? Which ones have fallen short and which ones maybe have kind of exceeded even the expectations of informed watchers like yourself?
- [09:42]
Chip Usher
Yeah, sure, yeah. And just to clarify for the listenership out there, I'm not privy to what the intelligence community briefed to the White House or the Pentagon prior, during or since the kickoff of the conflict. So this is sort of my educated guesstimate, if you will. But look, I think the intelligence community more than likely sort of presented the straight facts and analysis sort of derivative of what Aaron and I, you know, participated when, when we were in service. And you know, those themes would probably have been as follows, that Iran is, you know, ideologically committed and that ideology runs deep in, in the country, despite the wave of protests that we saw in January. You know, yes, people can kind of take different cuts at this, but I would say maybe 10 to 15% of the Iranian population are like really the base of support for the regime, but with a population of over 90 million people, that's not inconsequential. And they clearly control the military, the security forces, and most importantly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. So the idea that just a, the swift decapitation campaign would be enough to change the character and nature of the regime is not likely to have been something that the intelligence community put forward to the administration. It may have been something that policymakers assumed or had hoped for, but I don't think it would have been necessarily reflected in sort of my understanding of how assessments have been compiled in the past. And the other element of this is Iran time and time and time again has demonstrated the willingness and the capability to retaliate, sometimes to initiate, but in a very asymmetric method. And sometimes this is referred to as horizontal escalation. And that's exactly, I think what we've seen played out. And there's certainly was precedent when prior flare ups and prior crises between the United States of Iran, where the response coming from the regime was sometimes covert, hidden, delayed, hitting soft targets, not just punching back at the US military, but sometimes targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure using a variety of means at their disposal, which Aaron spoke to, including cyber, including proxies and using terroristic techniques. So certainly those two elements would have been there. And again, we were not privy to the dialogue that existed prior to 28 February between the intelligence community and the White House. But had they sort of presented what has unfolded, more than likely an intelligence community would have pointed to this horizontal escalation risk. And certainly based on, you know, every war game and every scenario that I ever participated in, would have included the warning that the Straight Hormuz would be under threat from drones, from, from missiles, from fast attack boats, et cetera. So more than likely those elements were delivered. The policy committee and the military makes its own determination based on their assessment of our capabilities and what the political objectives may or may not have been. But probably that was the flavor of what was provided.
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Scott R. Anderson
So, Aaron, in the lead up to kicking off this military operation, we did see some measures that I think have been interpreted, at least in hindsight, as preparing for some of these contingencies, saw a large military buildup, including capacities that could be used to help, you know, shoot down ICBMs and drones and help defend, to some extent, defend maritime traffic. At the same time, you saw other measures not pursued. For example, much coordination with allies. At least as far as we can tell from media reports, a number of allies seem to have struck fairly by surprise by this action, at least by my accounts. Although again, I welcome correction on that. What is your sense about how prepared the administration seemed to be going into this for this whole range of contingencies? Where have they been caught by surprise, and to what extent is it surprising where they've been caught by surprise? Where is the Delta for the things that we might have expected them prepare for? But they don't seem to have had plans or contingencies in place to address those yet.
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Aaron Foust
Sure. Well, I think you see, with just sending ground forces now, I think it's the Marines and the airborne that are being sent over right now. They clearly did not have, with all the military buildup, they did not have the ground forces in place to do any kind of, in this case, probably limited operation to seize Kharg island or to do any kind of boots on the ground mission. I'm also not privy to whether there are any special forces in the region that could go in and somehow do more battle damage assessments on some of the ballistic missile sites or some of the nuclear sites to potentially even. Secretary Rubio recently said, when asked about how do we know about the nuclear program and what's going on with all the uranium that's still in the country, he said, well, we're going to have to go get it. And so I'm not sure if we have people in the region right now who could go get it. At the same time, it seems like there wasn't a lot of thought put into exactly what is the strategic objective that we're here to accomplish. Because as Chip mentioned back in June, it was a much more limited objective. It was to degrade the nuclear program, not to eliminate it, but certainly set it back, destroy as much of it as possible, et cetera. It was not to decapitate the regime, although I think the administration would have been happy if the people had risen up as they would, you know, during this attack and overthrowing the regime. But that was, you know, more, it was more of a limited objective. The objectives that they've stated officially even on the White House website. And I know there's been a lot of, you know, the administration has gone back and forth about exactly what they're going for is that the total destruction of the nuclear program so they can't develop a nuclear weapon, the obliteration of their missile program, including all of their production facilities, launchers, et cetera. They don't really say anything about drones actually on whitehouse.gov but I think that's also a big part of it. The destruction, kind of total destruction of the Navy and then severing their proxy networks. Those are all extremely maximalist goals. And to achieve those goals, you either need to, at end the, you know, you have to do something extreme. You either need to produce regime change so that you have somebody new in power that you can, you can talk to. And I'm not advocating that. I'm just, this is just my analysis of what would be required to get there. Or you need to do some kind of ground based invasion with US Troops, proxies, whatever it is, to make sure that you can go get this material, you can secure these sites. You actually know if you blew up a building, if there were things inside of it that were destroyed as well, or whether they removed ahead of time or, you know, and so those are really hard. Iran is four times the size of Iraq. We didn't do so well there. And so, you know, that option doesn't seem like a particularly great one to me. And so in all of the administration statements, I haven't heard yet exactly how they're going to square this divergence in the means that they're using, which are purely military, with some kind of, if you're not going to overthrow the regime and you're not going to go in and kind of do these more difficult things that are going to put American troops lives at risk. How are you going to square that circle between the political objectives that you're trying to achieve at the end of this thing and the military means that
- [17:35]
Chip Usher
you're using just to amplify something that Aaron pointed to and that is the drone threat. I'm very certain that the intelligence community included the drone threat because we've been tracking shaheds for quite some time being launched against Iraq. They provided shaheds and the production capacity for shaheds to Russia, so very much a central focus for the intelligence picture. But it is, it's a little bewildering and a little frustrating that the United States, which had the perfect opportunity after several years of conflict in Ukraine, which has been just a crucible for the future of conflict involving drones, and they have companies and their American companies and others that are providing, you know, pretty sophisticated drone versus drone and other counter drone technologies that could have been pre positioned, should have been pre positioned to deal with this threat. And I think now there's a rush to get some of these capabilities in place. But you know, this was foreseen and it's a little frustrating that we weren't sort of more quickly at learning the lessons from Ukraine and incorporating that into the strike plan.
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Aaron Foust
And the other thing that I'd add, I think is on interceptors. You know, I think we did plan for interceptors, but only up to a certain timeframe. And we're fast approaching, if we haven't already arrived at the timeframe when we will start to run out and our allies will start to run out of interceptors of the kinds that can actually stop the Iranian missiles. And so If Iran had 2,500 missiles, as I think, you know, before the conflict started on February 28, something like that, and the Israelis have said they've, you know, destroyed 700, a thousand of those, well, there's still a lot of missiles left. Right. And so if we don't have enough interceptors for those missiles, even if we have degraded Iran's capability to fire missiles and drones by 90% or 95%, whatever the Secretary Hegseth and Prime Minister Netanyahu have put out there, it only takes a few well placed strikes on Israeli nuclear reactor on Gulf energy infrastructure to really send the region into chaos. And as Chip has pointed out actually in some of his good articles, to get more interceptors, we probably have to take them from other parts of the world where we really need them.
- [20:01]
Scott R. Anderson
I think this gets at something that you've hinted at in some of your writing on Fault lines, Chip, which is the little bit of a disconnect between what I think you described. It's fair, I'm paraphrasing you aggressively because I can't remember your exact phrase, but something like a fairly tactically brilliant campaign, certainly at the coordination level between Israeli and the United States. Really impressive. What they've been able to accomplish to some extent, cutting edge, particularly in those first few days of the campaign. And then a little bit of strategic drift where we don't have a clear sense about where this is leading. Talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, what is your sense about where the administration seems to be going strategically on this? We have these stated objectives that are unrealistic flat out. What are its actual objectives seem to be based off of its conduct and in particular, how do they align with Israel because we're seeing a little bit of a departure in terms of targeting Iranian oil facilities or energy facilities. I should say targeting. There's some points of friction, a few other areas. The duration of the campaign. It seems like there's at least reports that the Israelis are more nervous about the Americans wanting to end the campaign sooner. So what does that tell us about how the two partners in this military campaign who have been really working hand in glove were, might have viewed the strategic objectives perhaps a little differently?
- [21:22]
Chip Usher
Yeah, well, a lot of ground to cover there. So let's sort of take it, you know, bit by bit. You know, first of all, let's ground ourselves in what Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Kaine identified on the first day of the war are the military objectives, which are clear. Right. Even as they are ambitious. So the key line there is we're going to eliminate Iran's ability to, to project force beyond its territory. And I think early days when we were witnessing the, just the massive air campaign with precision guided munitions just take apart Iran's conventional military capabilities. So they, they, they don't have an air force anymore. They really don't have a navy. They're going now after smaller, smaller boats, the remnants of their, wherever it floats they're trying to chase down. And they've been chasing after the ballistic missile launchers, production and storage facilities, and they've been stunningly successful at that. And also going after leadership and key infrastructure of the regime. And yet, okay, that objective of preventing Iran from projecting force beyond its borders may not be achieved because of these asymmetric capabilities, because you can knock out all the ballistic missile launchers that you can find. But can you ever be assured you've Got all of them. That doesn't account for other ground launch cruise missiles and it doesn't account for drones and it doesn't account for terror attacks and it doesn't account for cyber attacks. So in aggregate, it is a severe degradation of the capabilities of the regime. But even by the more restrained or constrained or tightly defined objectives set up by Joe Kaine, the maximum goals for the US May not be achieved. On the political side, there's been tons of commentary on this, which I share. Some of the criticism that you see that the strategic goals, the political goals that the administration has articulated have been all over the map. Not just to degrade or prevent them from projecting force, but regime change, potentially enabling, encouraging, setting the ground for a popular revolution, ending the threat of Iran. They use very sort of sharp and grandiose words, but this sort of gets at what we were talking about a minute ago about sort of essentially eliminating an entire regime or changing its character. I think there may have been a variant of this where they were hoping that the Venezuela model would hold true and a decapitation of the senior leader and those in his close inner circle would give an opportunity for some IRGC colonel or somebody to rise up who was more pragmatic, maybe just as devoted to the ideology, but more willing to deal with the United States, to remove its nuclear capability and to make nice with Israel and the rest of the region. Again, I think any student of Iran would have told you that was highly unlikely. That's a rather deep ideology and these people are very vested in the system as it exists. So, you know, I think it was probably predicated on some faulty assumptions there. What it is now, I think is under constant review because of Iran's ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and to punish us because it struck some of our facilities in the region, including diplomatic facilities and a small base in Kuwait and certainly our allies, starting with Israel, but now including many of the Gulf Arab states and perhaps even Turkey. So that's kind of changed the calculus, I imagine. Probably something we can talk about later about what does the administration do now. But it's still rather unclear what is the politically acceptable or perhaps sellable outcome from this. Because arguably, if all we did was agree to a cessation of hostilities tonight, the, the Ron that we would be left with, yes, seriously degraded, but, you know, certainly more, you know, angry and committed to rearming itself, you know, perhaps taking a fresh look at its nascent nuclear program than ever before. You know, the, the previous leader, Supreme Leader Khamenei had a fatwa against developing a nuclear weapon. Now you could, you know, quibble whether it was believable or not. But, you know, in some ways he was a, a big break on that system from actually developing.
- [26:33]
Aaron Foust
Right.
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Chip Usher
They were always, you know, two weeks, a few months, they were getting closer and closer, but they hadn't, they hadn't accelerated. Now that their stockpile of highly enriched uranium is basically entombed at Pickaxe island near Isfahan, they don't have that option right away. But if they ever do dig it out, you better believe they might take a page out of the Libyan book or what the Ukrainians learned years ago. Our only guarantee of survival is actually to do this thing. And now they've got another taste of what it means for them strategically to close the strait and all they have to do is threaten it and tankers stop and insurers pull back contracts. So I think they've sort of, they're full of themselves as to what they might be able to achieve and their ability to outlast this onslaught contributes to their victory narrative. I asked about the differences perhaps between the United States and Israeli objectives and here what I'll say is I worked very closely with the Israelis about half my career, and I was posted in Tel Aviv and I'm pretty familiar with how they view the existential threat from Iran. I think what we have seen since 7 October, Hamas's brutal attack against Israeli civilians is a recalibration of really sort of Israel's strategic calculus. And I think on the table now is a desire to create chaos amongst their enemies, to sow destruction. I think on this side of the pond we tend to worry about day after. And even if your enemy is unstable, is that necessarily in your long term interest? I think the Israelis don't care at the moment. I think they see it, at least in their short term interest to create disruption in Lebanon, in Syria, as they can in Yemen and certainly in Iran. So that's, I think, why you're seeing this sort of intensification of their strikes against leadership targets and Basij and other security force targets inside Iran in recent days. Because I think they're just trying to race it, race to get as much done before President Trump calls it and ends this. I think US is in a different position. We have broader responsibilities, broader vulnerabilities and concerns. And so I think we do need to think about reopening that strait and we do need to think about protecting our Gulf allies from these asymmetric threats. I think that's a key difference. It wasn't so apparent early days, but it's becoming more and more apparent the deeper we get into this conflict.
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- [34:09]
Scott R. Anderson
So a big variable in all of this has been the regime in Tehran. There may have been optimistic hopes early on that the decapitation strike that started this military operation, that to some extent the military operation appeared to have been timed around being able to accomplish that, eliminated not just Ayatollah Khamenei, but also a good chunk of the leadership elite, national security wise politically around him. There is a hope obviously that this might destabilize things, but it hasn't clearly borne fruit yet. The regime still seems to be, to some extent, at least by my non expert observation, relatively to some extent in control, to the extent anyone is. And certainly we're not seeing any sort of uprising or assertion of an alternative authority. So Aaron, talk to us a little bit about what we know about the regime, how it's structured. Chips mentioned the depth of the ideological commitment, the penetration of those sorts of loyalists through regimes like the irgc. Talk to us about how we what we knew about the regime, its structure and its resilience potentially before this operation started back in January and what we're learning about it now that may inform where it may go from here.
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Aaron Foust
Yeah, I think it's a misconception that you can decapitate the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime is not a personalized dictatorship like we see in some other places in the Middle East. It's not like Saddam Hussein where the state was very much caught up in his person and the way that happens in Egypt, for example, and in maybe some other places where it was in Assad's Syria, for example, the Islamic Republic, even though the Supreme Leader has a lot of power and is the commander in chief, etc. And a lot of huge national decisions cannot be made without his say so. It's a regime of institutions. So there are a lot of overlapping institutions. They have a parliament, the modulus, they have an executive, they have ministers, they also have several different councils and the Supreme Leader's office itself. They also have a whole group of something called the Bonyads or the kind of social service. They've grown over the years and have become a huge point of corruption actually in the country as well. But there are institutions within the state that have produced a lot of leaders, a lot of the people within the military in Iran, within the irgc, et cetera. Even if they, we would think of them as slightly lower level leaders, have been doing their jobs for decades. A lot of them, you know, their, their bonds, just from a personal perspective, were forged in the crucible of the Iran Iraq war, in the war against us in the 2000s. And they've continued to operate together. And so even if you kill the Supreme Leader and a layer or two down in certain particular organizations, there are people there who will need to find their footing. It's undoubtedly, I'm sure, caused them some consternation. And there are some open source reports suggesting that they are having some, you know, difficulty meeting or convening and maybe even making decisions which may, you know, poses a problem actually, even for our negotiating with them. But overall, they have a pretty deep bench in terms of, of leadership. And so the notion that you can kind of just cut off the head of the snake or snatch the supreme leader or, you know, like we did with Maduro in Venezuela, doesn't that model does not apply to Iran. At the same time, we've also, you know, talked about how Iran is an enormous country. There's a lot of localized control among the governors. They seem to have pushed down authority and decision making authority to the governorate or the, you know, local level in terms of police and the military by, by many accounts. And so the regime can kind of continue to operate. The other thing about the opposition is even though we have seen increasing levels of protest and discontent because of, mainly because of the economic situation in Iran, the opposition is relatively leaderless, they're relatively atomized. And so there is not necessarily a leader that can just call everybody to the streets. And even if they did, the people with the guns are the Basij militias, the irgc, the police, local police forces. And as we saw in January, the most likely scenario is that they would get gunned down and massacred. Now, you never know when there's going to be a revolution until there's going to be a revolution. But even in the case of some kind of revolution where, let's say the top layer or two of the regime is overthrown, or you do actually get this general somewhere, I don't know where we'd find him. But if you, if you got a general hypothetically, who was willing to deal with us, like Del C. Rodriguez is dealing with us in Venezuela, there's no guarantee that what would come after would necessarily be, you know, any better given any kind of regime change or scenario, you know, or revolutionary scenario.
- [39:29]
Scott R. Anderson
And another major dynamic and variable in this conflict that you've already flagged for us, Chip, is the strategy of horizontal escalation. Iran has responded by expanding the theater of hostilities, launching attacks against Gulf allies as far as Cyprus, in a handful of cases, now hitting energy infrastructure, kind of deepening the horizontal escalation in different contexts. And we're also seeing kind of a, I don't know if I'm coining a phrase or not, but a kind of secondary horizontal escalation in that you now have Israel actively expanding operations in response to the horizontal escalation by Hezbollah into southern Lebanon, by some accounts, by their own accounts, that they're SORNI officials intending to do to southern Lebanon, about the southern thirds out the litany, what they did to Gaza, establishing a buffer zone of some sort, uprooting the infrastructure that Hezbollah has built there. So talk to us about how far this might go from here. What has the Iranian strategy of this war zone escalation looked like? And how much further can it go both in terms of targets where hostilities may be brought and what the types of targets are that they may be able to start engaging in. So far, at least, we haven't seen clearly substantial terrorism. But we know that's been a toolkit in the past. I'm wondering when we might should be worried about anticipating, seeing that and what the kind of time horizon and geographic scope of all this might be.
- [40:56]
Aaron Foust
Right.
- [40:57]
Chip Usher
So there are two shoes that haven't dropped yet, and you mentioned one, and that is Iranian inspired or funded or directed terrorist attacks. And these, you know, they have in the past operated in the United States and Latin America and Europe. So, you know, this could be in the offing. Sometimes these operations take several weeks, months, even years before they come to fruition. So again, this, this may be one of those asymmetric responses that, that is delayed and targeted at a soft target, a civilian gathering or a synagogue or a school or something. So we haven't, you know, I'm sure our intelligence services are very, very busy chasing, you know, every threat thread that they've identified and trying to prevent something. But we've also seen warnings issued already by the FBI domestically to be on guard for this sort of thing. The second shoe that hasn't dropped yet is a concerted response, a military response from the Houthis in Yemen. And I honestly can't explain it to you. They have the capability to launch not only intermediate range cruise missile attacks against southern Israel, which they've done repeatedly, but then they also have the ability, because of where they're situated geographically, to shut down another waterway, the ban of Madeb, the entrance into the Red Sea, which they have done previously. And I imagine that, you know, my interpretation of some of the statements from Iranian leaders since the killing of Khamenei has sort of invited all of their partners and proxies to join in the fight, something that Hezbollah did in fact do. And the Houthis haven't yet. And they may be just biding their time or waiting for the right moment or maybe there's, you know, they're taking a warning from what, what they've seen of the success of the US Israeli operation and want to sit this one out. I sort of doubt the latter. I think it's maybe picking the moment of their choosing. But that's what I would anticipate next is something that has occurred, but we need to keep very close eye on is just the other day they launched a medium range ballistic missile against our facility at Diego Garcia, which is in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They missed two shots. One was intercepted, one fell harmlessly in the sea. But if you go to the other side of that range ring, it covers about half of Europe. And if they've got another couple and they want to get attention from the world, they might change the azimuth on some of those launches. And that's going to rattle people in Europe and shock the world if they do something like that. A real escalation on their part. So that's the other thing that I'm looking for and I hope never occurs, but it's in the kit. And the other last thing I'd say is they've shut the strait. Probably there's a plan by the United States to try to forcibly reopen it. A combination of force and maybe Negotiation. But down the road, will they have cause to demonstrate once again the ability to reach out and touch shipping in that waterway with a drone or improvised surface vessel bomb? And that's out there. And I do worry about that.
- [44:54]
Aaron Foust
And one question I have is whether they will, even if it's in negotiations, will they allow the strait to open without some kind of new condition? They floated the idea of, you know, paying a tax, you know, for boats going by and things like that. So after getting hit so hard, after being able to show that they can close the strait even without much of a navy, just with, you know, what they have and the fact that they sit right there, you know, the strait was open before we started this. So any kind of agreement that is not just the strait open with any other kind of costs that are inflicted on the world economy or shipping or whatever it is, that is a strategic. We are worse off then than we were even before we started striking.
- [45:39]
Scott R. Anderson
And this question of reopening the strait, obviously that's the nub now. That's the focus of conversation. We know the pain is building economically for the world. Crude oil prices are over $100 by most measures and potentially climbing. We've seen the administration take somewhat dramatic and politically awkward, to be generous about it, measures like dropping sanctions on Iranian oil at sea to be able to surge oil into the global markets to keep prices low. But there are only so many of those tools in your toolkit that you can deploy in the short term. It's just buying time at this point. So, Aaron, let me come to you first on this. So, Chip, I'd welcome my thoughts you have. Where do we see this effort to opening the strait go next? We hear a lot about Card island potentially seizing it, holding it, either as kind of leverage over the Iranians as a means of helping secure maritime traffic, energy facilities, a variety of things. We know there are US Ground troops moving towards the region, or at least it's been reported that that's the case, which would presumably be a necessary component of any operation to take and hold Iranian territory in a meaningful way. What do the different approaches to either opening the strait and. Or taking Cargillen look like? And do we have a sense from looking at what the administration is looking like, where it's seeing the risk, cost, benefit of those different options, where it may be leaning?
- [47:05]
Aaron Foust
Sure. So with the caveat that I'm not privy to the current plans about what our ground forces are going to do on their way to the Gulf, you can see kind of a range of scenarios and there are many. But on one side, I think, is the more military scenario where you do actually seize Kharg island, you hold the Iranian oil economy hostage, and you forcibly, with, you know, naval capabilities, with air cover, et cetera, force open the strait, maybe you chaperone the boats, boats through. And in those scenarios, Iran is going to try as much as it can without destroying its own, you know, oil export terminal to hit us as much as possible. And so we would be. We would need extensive defensive capabilities in any of those cases to accomplish that. A middle ground is kind of, I think what you're seeing right now is the threat of that, again, without knowing whether they actually plan to do it, the threat of that, along with trying to negotiate with the Iranians to open the strait. And on the other side is sort of us, we stop firing, we kind of swallow hard and we negotiate hard after that. And there's even maybe a fourth option, which is a little bit what we saw in the Bab El Mandeb when the Houthis closed that, you know, a couple years ago, which is this situation which we may even be seeing the start of, whereby Iran, because it has the capability to fire on ships, it's letting some boats through but not others. And the what they're doing then is they're, you know, we are kind of cut out to a certain extent. And maybe the Gulf countries are negotiating directly or China is negotiating directly, or somebody is negotiating directly and either making payments or promises or whatever it is so that their ships or ships that are going to deliver oil to them or get natural gas to them are getting through the straits and the Iranians agree not to fire on them. That's at least. And Chip, I'd love your take as well. That's how I see particularly this particular Strait of Hormuz scenario.
- [49:27]
Scott R. Anderson
Chip, I'd be curious about your views on this. And let me add one more variable. The prospect of deploying ground troops obviously is a domestically, politically very challenging proposition. It's something that the administration has all but said. It's never officially ruled it out, but has strongly suggested it's not going to happen early on. And now obviously, maybe walking that back or leaning towards that reserve possibility that this is something we're going to do. But it comes with legal questions, political questions, political risks, legal risks, but then also foundationally risks to US Soldiers. What does the risk profile look for these sorts of different options that Aaron's laid out for US Service members and those involved?
- [50:06]
Chip Usher
Okay, so let me get. Remind me, if I don't touch on it at the end, but let me kind of get there in a windy way. All right. First, looking at this looming battle for Hormuz, let's compare the strategic importance of restoring, resuming normal energy and supply chain activity throughout that region. And you know, we, we had talked a bit earlier about the Iranian regime. It is built for resilience. They are used to being the underdog. For them to survive is to win. Okay, so in my estimation, you know, shared by Danny Citrinowicz and and several other observers out there, seizing Harg island and holding hostage Iran's ability to export oil will obviously devastate their economy. But I don't think it's going to be enough to persuade the regime to capitulate and not in a tight time frame. I think it might eventually, if it were really held for an extended period of time, but I think it would take an extended period of time. Meanwhile, okay, the continued closure of the strait, there has been a lag, but already and with increasing urgency, the global economy is going to feel the impacts of that closure. You know, just to remind everybody, you know, about 20% of global oil supplies travel through that region, account for a significant portion of imports from or some of our allies in East Asia, particularly Japan, South Korea and China and other states. And some of those states are already imposing very draconian energy conservation measures because of what has happened and what they anticipate happening. I think the Philippines is encouraging their public service workers to stay home and South Koreans are encouraged not to take as many showers. I mean, this is, this is already being felt. And it's not just oil. It's lng, liquefied natural gas. And, you know, another product that people don't pay that much attention to, but, you know, ultra pure helium, which is a critical component in the manufacture of semiconductors. That's a byproduct of the production of LNG. And the, the straight accounts for about 30% of global supplies there. And so, you know, increasingly our global economy and our consumer products and manufacturing systems are all critically dependent on semiconductors. And already TSMC and others are making adjustment plans for loss of helium and are digging into their supplies and the coverage getting bare. All right, and there's fertilizer and aluminum. So this has been a bit of a lagging issue, but it's going to accrue more and more and more. And, you know, this is the mother of all oil shocks. And every major recession has been preceded by some sort of energy shocks. I think we can't rule that out. The longer this goes on, the worse and worse it gets for the United States and the global economy. And that is a disparity with what I see the impact is going to be on the regime. Okay, so let's talk about the operation and I won't get into, you know, we don't have, we're not going to sit there and play toy soldier and you know, get into the tactical details.
- [53:45]
Scott R. Anderson
Another podcast will come.
- [53:46]
Chip Usher
Oh, another podcast probably. But listen, retired Admiral Mark Montgomery has spoken eloquently. He's with the foundation for the Tibet Support Democracies. You know, he's, he sort of outlined what it would take and what it would take would be significant. You would need to have a, a large ISR surge to sort of really monitor, put the ISR on, on that strait to, you know, monitor everything that's going on in Iran and the, in their close waters. Sort of change your air posture to, to put combat air patrols up on continuous orbits with our drones to strike targets of opportunity when they arise. You'd have to deploy probably several Aegis destroyers. So a significant portion of our navy would have to be deployed there. And this too would take time and people. Maybe three weeks, four weeks. Four weeks. That's doubling the length of this conflict. And you're going to be deep into that period of economic pain that many foresee and it may not be enough. Okay, so chasing ballistic missile launchers is one thing. They tend to be large, you know, overly large trucks, pretty obvious visible signatures. You know, we pretty sophisticated at doing the Scud hunting as opposed to the early 90s these days. But it's a different game when you're trying to track down short range cruise missiles and drones. Drones, you park them in a garage, park them under a tree and they're very difficult to find them all. And it doesn't take but one or two to strike a civilian, very large crude container ship to, to knock it out or just eliminate whatever confidence you may have infused back into the insurance market, into the commercial shipping companies and they'll once again peel back and shut down their activities. And so the Iranians could, you know, they, we might start an operation, we might beat them back and they might just sit back and watch. Well, let's 2, 3, 4 these tankers go by. But the fourth one we're going to hit, okay? And that will instantly close the straight again and it will put the administration back in the same pickle that it finds itself. So it's unpalatable and certainly not what this administration would want to do, but they'll have to negotiate that somehow with the regime. I think ultimately, you know, the alternative is, is to, is to go all in, right? Put troops on the ground in southern Iran to help reopen the Strait. You asked about the risks and the costs. Cargill island is one thing. It's 400 miles away from the Strait of Hormuz. It's, it's, it's not really part of this fight. It's about something else. It's about putting something that Iran cares about at threat to try to sweep clean the near coastal regions around the strait. It's about 100 miles of coastline, and it's rugged terrain. Okay. The reports that we're seeing of 4,000 marines, 2,000 quick reaction, 82nd airborne troops, that's a fraction of the number of troops it would take to secure and hold this swath of territory for any period of time. And it would be sort of a counterinsurgency campaign, you know, with irgc, navy or other forces, you know, running around trying to, you know, shoot and scoot with drones, taking pot shots at whatever troops we have put on the ground there. It would be a hard slog. And, you know, that's quite apart from what has also been bandied about as a completely separate operation around Isfahan to somehow disinter the remaining stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium that Iran may be holding onto. And that's a, that's an extremely difficult mission of a, of a totally different order. But would, you know, require troops to secure a, you know, a mountain area? And it's, and at the valley entrances and excavate what the US Air Force and the Israeli Air Force have buried under, you know, tons of, of hard rock. If we end the war today, it would take the Iranians months to get out. You know, are we going to have special forces anywhere for months? I think it's, it's really sort of beyond the veil, and I think I'd
- [58:36]
Aaron Foust
add to that as well on the political side and the negotiation side. So Chip is very eloquently explained. All of the problems with the scenarios that I laid out earlier, and even, you know, going and getting the uranium, etcetera, they're extraordinarily difficult. But also on a, on the political front, if you look at the way the Iranians have negotiated in the past with us, even when we've come to limited agreements or understandings with them, it takes a long time, and that's just the way they negotiate. But also the Iran, and it is totally different from the way the Trump administration so far has negotiated, so far, we've had Steve Witkoff and, you know, Jared Kushner go and through the Omanis, I believe, you know, talk to the Iranians, and we essentially put out our maximal demands. You shall give up your nuclear program and your missile program, and you shall, you know, sever your support. The prospects, et cetera, et cetera, are maximal demands that we are now trying to achieve through military means. And the Iranians, of course, have never agreed to those in past diplomatic negotiations, and they're highly unlikely to agree to them in the future. Even if you can get somewhere with them, like the Obama administration did on the jcpoa, without commenting on either the. Whether that was a good or a bad deal, they did eventually get to some kind of understanding. That is a long process, at least in my estimation. My assessment would be that we'll take a long time to negotiate any kind of. I mean, the Strait of Hormuz is easy compared to those issues, right? So even on the Strait of Hormuz, you know, they can both, from a military sense, from a survival sense, and from negotiation, you know, perspective, they can just draw this out. And as Chip mentioned, you know, most of the costs accrue to the United States. Obviously, we can keep killing them, we can keep blowing up more stuff, but as Chip mentioned, they can rebuild it. How long do we want to continue to do that while we are suffering the economic costs as the midterms come, as other deadlines that the administration cares about start to accrue? And at one point, one of the great things about no longer being in the ic, I don't know if you feel this also, Chip, is you can actually assess what the about make assessments about our own administration instead of just foreign actors. And so exactly how are we going to deal with these things is a real huge question that I have. At what point does the president, who seems to both not want to back down, he doesn't like this kind of taco talk. On the other hand, he also, I think in the past, he, he has sort of both been on. On the one hand, you know, very pragmatic. On the other hand, he will kind of back down when he is. He is pressured. Which, which Trump are we going to get, you know, in this situation? And then, of course, you have the Israelis talking to him, you have the Gulf Arabs talking to him. You have a lot of, you know, people within the administration who have different viewpoints on this talking to him. And how is this all going to shake out? That's those are really, you know, I can't predict what's going to happen, but that's, those are really my concerns about the future.
- [61:52]
Chip Usher
Can I add something just real quick, Scott? You know, people in the administration should take note that they dropped their 15 point plan for ending the war. And within 24 hours, this remnant of the regime had a response out, you know, with their own set of demands that matched the maximalist position that the Trump administration had put forward with their own set of maximum demands. That's very telling. This is a regime that is with it enough to respond and play the diplomatic game coherently. And we should remember, all right, they held our hostages for 444 days. They could have released him earlier, but they didn't. They didn't to extract a cost from President Carter. They released him within hours of President Reagan taking office. They are not going to just be satisfied with, okay, cessation of hostilities. Let's, let's all go back to our corners. No, they're, they're going to seek to extract a cost from the Trump administration for doing this and that's going to be politically painful and it will take time. Aaron is absolutely right.
- [63:11]
Scott R. Anderson
Well, I think that is about as good a point as one could ask for to leave us on, as we are all looking forward to seeing what exactly happens in the days and weeks to come. Until then, thank you, Aaron. Thank you, Chip, for joining us here today on the Lawfare podcast.
- [63:27]
Chip Usher
Thanks for having me. It's a real pleasure.
- [63:29]
Aaron Foust
Thank you, Scott. Really appreciate it.
- [63:34]
Scott R. Anderson
The Lawfare podcast is produced by the Lawfare Institute. If you want to support the show and listen ad free, you can become a Lawfare material supporter@lawfaremedia.org support supporters also get access to special events and other bonus content we don't share anywhere else. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review us wherever you listen. It really does help. And be sure to check out our other shows including Rational Security, Allies, the Aftermath and Escalation. Our latest Lawfare Presents podcast series about the war in Ukraine. You can also find all of our written work@lawfirmedia.org the podcast is edited by Jen Patchett with audio engineering by Hazel Hoffman of Goat Rodeo. Our theme song is from Alibi Music and as always, thank you for listening.
- [64:16]
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