David McCloskey (2:15)

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Gordon Carrera (2:41)

Well, hello everybody and welcome to this Rest is Classified live stream, where me, Gordon CARRERA and David McCloskey we're going to look at the dramatic events in Iran over the last day or two. Thanks to everyone who's joining us live and some of you I know will be listening to us later when this goes up on the podcast feed. There's a lot going on, isn't there, David? And we thought it's time we had a look at it.

David McCloskey (3:04)

There is, Gordon, there is. And I think you and I, like probably many of our listeners have been spending the last day or so trying to sort through what in the world is actually going on, what we can make sense of what sort of questions remain unanswerable. And I think with all that noise out there, we wanted to put out a live stream on this to kind of give our, I guess you could say rest is classified lens on the situation, give our initial take with all the caveats that it's early days in what looks to be a much more prolonged US And Israeli assault on Iran and try to help, I guess maybe frame some of the big questions, Gordon, for how listeners should be thinking about what is going on right now and what might come next.

Gordon Carrera (3:55)

That's right. We've got kind of four big exam questions we're going to try and answer. First of all, just thank you to all those are listening. I can see in the comments we've got people from Melbourne, from Birmingham, from Prague, from New Hampshire, from Greenwich and even from Clapham and Belfast, Scotland, lots of places. So thank you and please do send in your questions. But we've got four questions that we thought we'd use to frame this. One is what's actually going on right now? You know, what do we know? What's the latest on the intelligence side? Two, how did we get here? What led us here? Three, why is this happening? You know, what's the motivation behind these attacks? And four, what's going to happen next? We'll try and kind of whiz through those, but give our take on it. So should we start with the latest what's going on right now? And I guess the top line is Saturday morning it started started mid morning. And we'll come back to why that's interesting and significant with strikes which are I think much bigger than many expected. People thought there might be a kind of initial strike to push Iran back to the negotiating table. But it was something much more significant and directed at the leadership, wasn't it, David?

David McCloskey (5:03)

Well, that's right and I think, you know, we'll, we'll talk about how the intelligence, it does seem drove the timing of the strikes. Because what has now I think become clear in the 24 hours since this barrage began is that the entire thing Kicked off because the US and the Israelis had intelligence on both the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's location at a particular time yesterday Saturday morning. And also it seems the Israelis had a bunch of sort of locational information on, you know, maybe a dozen or more senior Iranian officials who were going to be having a meeting at a location very close to where Ali Khamenei was located. And you know, the timing we talk about that's, it's a bit peculiar because it happened, I think mid morning Iran time, like around 9:30 or 10:00am so broad daylight, which is a bit unusual for these kind of strikes. And again was driven by the fact that this was kind of use it or lose it information that both the US and the Israelis had. And there's some great reporting that has come out, I think from the New York Times, Gordon, that shows or suggests that it was actually CIA information on the Supreme Leader's location that was passed to the Israelis. The Israelis had a bunch of information on other senior Iranian officials, including the head of the irgc, the Defense Minister, a host of others. And the Israelis paired all of that together and struck these compounds mid boarding yesterday, which set the whole thing off.

Gordon Carrera (6:48)

Yeah, that's right. So it was a window of opportunity because they had this intelligence. We'll come back to what it might have been, which gave them just enough advance warning of both where the Supreme Leader would be and at other senior officials to make it worth pulling everything forward, it sounds like, to carry out this strike. Now let's just dig down a little bit into what that intelligence might have been because it does seem to have come from the CIA, according to these reports have been given to the Israelis. I mean it is interesting because the Supreme Leader knew he was a target. He'd have been taking precautions. He might not have thought he'd get hit mid morning. Maybe that was part of his mistake. It's interesting. Donald Trump has actually said in one of his statements he was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems. Now that's a kind of a hint perhaps of what we're talking about. But what do we think it might have been? Because I know when Israel took out some of the scientists last summer in that 12 day war, they had amazingly good intelligence on the location of some of those individuals which they built up over time.

David McCloskey (7:57)

Yeah, you know, it's, it's, this is the question that I think we all, we all want the answer to. And we're very unlikely to get really satisfying granular information on here in the coming Days, because it's very obviously, it's, it's, it's very, it's very classified, Gordon, how this, how this happened. And I think, you know, it is interesting, though, to kind of, if you look back with a lens on how, you know, what do we know about the way these sorts of operations have been enabled in the past, right. And what has kind of trickled out over the past four or five years that has given us some kind of, I guess, information about how the Israelis, how the US have sort of penetrated the upper echelons of Iran's leadership. And it's, it's a pretty fascinating, you know, set of case studies. And we've done some of them on the pod, haven't we, when we talked about, you know, the assassination of the former head of Iran's nuclear program, Mossad Fakhrizade, you know, we have kind of in some of our Iran episodes, talked about the sort of this incredible heist of nuclear information with the Israelis actually broke into an industrial warehouse in south Tehran and carded information on the new program out of the country. But you know what? I find it is striking to me that it took. And again, this is not a perfect comparison, but it took eight or so months, I think, Gordon, after the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, to find Saddam Hussein in his spider hole and Khamenei is killed in the opening salvo of this conflict. Right. So, again, it's not a perfect comparison, but it gives you some sense of just how good the US and its partners have gotten at this kind of manhunting, tactical. How do you go find someone and kill them? I mean, you think about the Maduro raid, which we did that, you know, set of Venezuela EPSOD in January. I mean, the intelligence picture required to kind of do this stuff is really. It's really striking. It's really striking.

Gordon Carrera (10:08)

And I mean, one of the things we've heard from previous hits like this is that often it is using technical intelligence as well as human source. So often it is being inside things like the mobile phone networks and understanding who are, for instance, the bodyguards who are associated with a senior official in the Iranian regime. And then what are their phones and how are their phones moving? Where are they moving it? So it's deep penetration, often of the telecommunications network and building up the kind of pattern of life intelligence around not just the officials themselves, but people around them, people like bodyguards to be able to work out where they are and where they might be. But again, it is interesting, in this case, they had advance notice because You've got to actually send those, you know, the jets with the missiles. And it takes, I think, nearly a couple of hours for to. From a launch in Israel to actually hit the target in Iran. So it's no good knowing he's there now. You need to know he's going to be there in the morning in time to get a whole war plan together and move it forward. So it's advance notice as well as kind of ongoing tactical intelligence, which they must have had in this case in order to be able to do it.

David McCloskey (11:20)

Yeah, and that would, again, I'm speculating here, but that would suggest to me that it is some blend of the sort of human side of things where there's an actual source who has access to sort of, you know, the calendar, I guess, in a way, knowing when there's going to be a group of people meeting and then probably the technical intelligence to confirm that they're actually. That they're actually there or moving there. You know, it's a blend of all of those things, most likely. And, you know, it is interesting, I think, one very kind of voluminous detail about just how I think the assumption or sort of the working belief that the Israelis have. Let me put it this way, I think imagine the worst possible compromise. And that's probably not far off from what happened from an Iranian standpoint. Right. I mean, there's this detail from a few years back where former president. It was former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who actually said, you know, we stood up this counterintelligence unit to actually root out Mossad penetrations around the Iranian government. And then they found out later that the head of the unit was actually a Mossad asset. So the guy who had been. The guy who had been in charge of rooting Mossad out was actually working for Mossad. Right. So that is how thoroughly kind of penetrated the Iranian leadership, you know, apparatus has been in recent years. And I think this is probably what is striking to me. I think maybe most of all is that after the 12 day war in June, there presumably would have been a massive counterintelligence dragnet to root out how they found people. Yeah, how they found people. Because that war began with a similar opening salvo of dozens of senior officials killed. And there were rumors at the time that they're actually. We did have locational information on the Supreme Leader, and it just wasn't. Wasn't acted upon. Yes, but. But how are these. How were these Mossad sort of assets or penetrations not. Or American, for that matter, not rooted out I mean, it's. It's pretty astounding.

Gordon Carrera (13:27)

Yeah. Either it's a big counterintelligence failure. Well, it is a big counterintelligence failure, or the US and Israel have adapted as well and found new ways of tracking these people. But clearly they felt they had this window of opportunity with knowing where the Supreme Leader is and now having the desire to go after him, which you're right, they had. They had eyes on him before and decided not to do anything, but then also knew where some other senior officials were at that same moment, and so then decided to launch that attack. And I think it's around about 9:40am Tehran time, working day on Saturday that the bombs hit, I think 30 bombs on the compound. That's the report I've seen where the Supreme Leader was thought to be, because I think there's some reports he may have been in an underground bunker, but possibly not a really deep underground bunker. So you're using multiple bombs to reach him. And then they also take out a series of other officials. I mean, there's Some talk about 40 senior key military commanders killed. Seven senior officials, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, the Defence Minister. I mean, that's a pretty wide net to have cast. And then they launched the wider campaign because they've seen this opportunity at that moment which is going to hit a series of other targets. And it looks like Israel is hitting the leadership targets and the US Is more focusing on the military targets. In terms of what we've heard so

David McCloskey (14:47)

far, I think that is another important distinction in this round versus June. I think in June, the US And Israeli attacks, you know, I mean, they were. They were coordinated. But the great description I've seen is that in June, it was kind of like a baton handoff in a relay race where, you know, the Israelis did something, we did something. Right. And it was sort of back and forth, but it wasn't tightly integrated this time. It's very tightly integrated. The two. The two militaries are effectively operating as one, and the two intelligence apparatuses are effectively operating as one in this theater. Right. Which. Which makes it, I think, much more. Much more powerful because there can be a very clear and complementary division of labor where the Israelis are hitting these kind of leadership targets. It seems like a lot of the launchers which will come to, you know, these ballistic missile launchers, the U.S. i think, doing a bit of that, but also hitting broader military infrastructure. Yeah, you know, about the launchers paired up that way.

Gordon Carrera (15:51)

Yeah, because the launchers. That seems to be one of the other big targets as well as the individuals, they're seeing the missile launchers because obviously they want to suppress the ability of Iran to retaliate. But also I think they're trying to take out as much of the missile program as they can. And that seems to be a really big part of this, this campaign. And the US Military even using, I think they've said, kamikaze drones, their own version of the Iranian shahid drones which Iran has used and supplied to Russia to use in Ukraine. I mean, that's kind of interesting, isn't it as well.

David McCloskey (16:22)

We don't call them kamikaze drones though, Gordon. I think bad guys, the American military, that kind of has a, they've got

Gordon Carrera (16:29)

some other equity in front of them,

David McCloskey (16:31)

I'm sure a negative connotation. That's right. Well, they're called, they're called Lucas drones, Gordon. Lucas, which are, I think it's low cost unmanned combat attack system. It's a kamikaze drone. And you're right, it is, it is straight up reverse, which is. This is sort of deeply ironic. It is straight up reverse engineered from the shahed, as you said. I mean it is, it is just, it's a, it's a US Shahed drone, essentially. Yeah, but first time those were used in combat. I think the launcher piece though is important because there's some math here that might have an impact on how long this thing goes because the kind of, I don't know, it's not a secret obviously, but the kind of dirty secret here is that we actually don't have in the theater a tremendous number of interceptors, like the interceptor munitions. Right. For Iranian ballistic missiles.

Gordon Carrera (17:28)

And so these are the missiles the problem shot up to intercept other missiles being fired by Iran. And those are vital. What though those are to protect? I mean, it's the air defenses, effectively. That's what we're talking about with these interceptor missiles. And we know actually from the, you know, Ukraine theater as well that these are in short supply, both the missile systems but also the actual interceptor missiles which you fire up. And that's important, isn't it? Because the whole worry is about Iranian retaliation. And so if the US Is going to run low on interceptors, you're going to have a problem. So you want to take out as many of the Iranian missile launchers and missile systems first so you don't have that kind of strain on the system.

David McCloskey (18:10)

Yeah, that's, that's right. And I think. So that math is kind of input. I think listeners should put a pin in that. Because that is something to watch if. If the Iranians continue to have the capability to deliver. And we'll talk in a minute about the numbers on sort of overall Iranian ballistic missiles and things like that. But if the Iranians are able to keep it up for a while and interceptor capacity, just the sheer numbers kind of thin out or diminish, you could be in a situation where more and more of these missiles could get through. And that could, you know, whether that's Israel, whether that's us, you know, bases, whether that's soft targets in the Gulf. And that could. That could change the dynamics of this really quickly if, you know, if you end up, instead of two people dead in Dubai or 10 or in Abu Dhabi, I think it was, or 10 in Israel, it's, you know, well, there's 50 people dead in Israel and 30 people get hit. When the shopping mall gets, you know, bombed in Dubai like that, that could change the calculation here pretty quickly.

Gordon Carrera (19:12)

Yeah.

David McCloskey (19:12)

I mean, the other thing, Gordon, that I do think is interesting to mentioned is when you look at the targets that the US and the Israelis have hit, I really do think that the opening kind of round of this, it was about fracturing the regime's ability to kind of see and do things right. I mean, I think it was an attack on command and control. And when we did the series about the pager attacks in Lebanon against Hezbollah, you know, a big part of the Israeli theory of victory there, or the theory of the case was like, how do you make it so Hezbollah can't actually operate as an organization because you've sapped its morale, you've killed its leadership. Like, you've made it harder for people to actually. Yeah, it feels it's penetrated. It can't do stuff and can't react to what's happening around it. And I think that in this case, when you look at the targets, you know, sort of command and control nodes, air defense sites, the intelligence organs, I mean, there have been some reports about the Israelis hitting some of the units, the intelligence units that would actually be used to suppress internal unrest. Right. That kind of thing as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gordon Carrera (20:29)

Very interesting. I think maybe we'll get back to that, because I think that gets to what might be the US Strategy and what's it's hoping to do in the long term. But I agree that the nature of that, of what they're targeting, it's not as simple as just military sites. It's Iran's ability to operate and even to deal with domestic protest. But Iran we should say has retaliated. It's launched this amazingly broad set of retaliatory strikes across the Middle East. I mean with explosions reported not just in Israel, but uae, Saudi, Qatar, Dubai, Bahrain. We've seen those videos, haven't we? Some of them apparently targeting US bases but also hitting other forms of infrastructure, hitting hotels, urban areas. I think the question is how much of this can Iran do? How long can it go on for? What's its capacity and is it going to use it all up?

David McCloskey (21:20)

Yeah, and I think again this is obviously these numbers are a very moving target, but yesterday and into this morning, the tallies I've seen put the number at Iran having fired a little over 460 missiles and maybe around 350 drones. The estimates that I've seen, Gordon, have the sort of Iranian inventories prior to this at around 2000 long range missiles and 2000 short range. Right. Again, who exactly knows? But those are rough numbers. And I guess the question here then is like, you know, if you've got another, you know, couple thousand in inventory, the sort of math becomes can the US and the Israelis destroy that capability or create a condition where you don't use that capability before you're able to kind of continually, you know, respond. That's, that's which, that's the question there.

Gordon Carrera (22:20)

But the question is are the Iranians now the supreme leaders being killed now they fear that the US is looking and the US is being quite explicit about regime change. Are they going all in? Are they going to fire everything and throw everything they've got in retaliation? Or do you think there is still. Because we've seen performative responses in the past. This is definitely more than that because they're hitting those Gulf states. But is it all in or are they holding back? What do you think?

David McCloskey (22:50)

I think they've held back a bit. I mean what, what is confusing to me, it's not a direct answer to your question, but is like prior to this, were there, were there existing standing directives that had been sent down to these units that are actually doing the launching to say when this happens, do this and it's already sort of pre programmed or is it like, you know, enterprising colonels who were, you know, actually, you know, have command and control over the, some of these launches who have decided who the targets will be and how, how hard they'll go? I mean it seems to me that I guess my take right. And hot take right now, you know, 24 hours into this, is that the Iranians are holding back because they understand that they could run out of this capability relatively quickly and want to retain some measure of it for future rounds. But it's hard to say. What do you think, Gordon?

Gordon Carrera (23:58)

No, from our earlier point about the disruption of Iranian command and control, you go, there is no Supreme Leader or the rest. We're expecting a new one. But to make some of those decisions, your chief of staff of the Army's been taken out, the head of the Revolutionary Guard taken out. So you have got that question is, have they got the capacity to make decisions? I mean, we know that they put plans in place in case there were decapitation strikes of the regime. But you're right. Do those plans include not just people, but how to act in different eventualities, or are they scrambling to respond? I just think we don't know. So I think should we move on to our second question so we don't run out too much time? I think we could deal with this one a bit more briefly, which is the how did we get here? Although.

David McCloskey (24:41)

Well, it is going to be hard to do that quickly because, you know, Donald Trump started in 1979, Gordon, so we should probably start there. Right?

Gordon Carrera (24:48)

Yeah, I know. I was thinking that when he did his, his, his video statement straight after the attack started, he did start in 1979 and with the start of hostilities, and I was like, wow, you know, but I think actually what he was trying to do by saying that was like, this is all part of a long running sense of Iran being an implacable enemy of the United States. And this is all just the latest thing about, let's not go back to 1979. I mean, I think you're right. Let's go back a bit more recently. You know, the 12 Day War last summer, Iran and Israel, America's Operation Midnight Hammer. And that was at the end of that 12 day war when it sent those B2 bombers to hit the Iranian nuclear program with targeted strikes. Those amazing pictures from satellite imagery of those holds, very precise holds, tunnel down into the nuclear program. Now, Donald Trump at the time said the nuclear program had been obliterated, completely obliterated, which then I think led people to go, well, why then are there still negotiations going on over a nuclear program? Why are you still worried about, why

David McCloskey (25:49)

are you negotiating with them over something that's been obliterated? Yeah, well, the actual intelligence, we should clarify the actual intelligence assessments, the findings that have leaked out since basically said that it was something like significantly degraded or something like that. Right. I mean, it. So not, not actually Obliterated. But then, but then, I guess in January, Gordon, we get popular uprising against the regime, which we talked about in a couple eps on the pod, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not more people out of the streets. And then what looks to have been an absolutely savage crackdown in which, you know, I mean, upwards of 30,000 people were killed, although we don't know exactly.

Gordon Carrera (26:36)

Tens of thousands. Yeah. And of course, at that time, Donald Trump made that statement, basically encouraging people, saying help is on its way. But it wasn't because US forces were not in place to do the kind of operation that we've seen in the last day or two, which allowed then the regime to crush those protesters and kill tens of thousands. So that was, if you like, the next phase. And then since then, we've seen these, and I think it's the confusion or the complication between these two different aspects. You've got the negotiations about the military, about the nuclear and the ballistic missile program, which have been going on, and you've got negotiations going on about that and accompanying that. You've had a military build up by the United States and you've had this question about regime change and popular uprising. And it's been very, very unclear. And I think we'll get to that. What the US priority was or what the strategy was or what they were trying to head for, because we've seen these talks and the talks have been going on. I mean, some of the talks just finished. You know, we're still going on on Thursday, Thursday, on Thursday, meeting tab talks. But I think what's interesting about the talks is the US and certainly backed by Israel, had a very maximalist set of demands, which is end the nuclear program, end enrichment, although maybe there might have been some way of allowing some token enrichment, but also give up your ballistic missile program as well. And you can see for the Iranians, I think they're looking at that and going. That basically means disarming. That means getting up our nuclear program, which is our one bit of leverage, and our ballistic missile program, which is our bit of military deterrence, which they're using now to try and have some impact. And you can see why Iran is thinking, is the US bluffing? But also, even if it's not bluffing, do we want to just give up these things and open ourselves up to attack, having given them up? So you could see why negotiations were not really going anywhere.

David McCloskey (28:42)

Right. And at the same time you had. Which I think is why it was somewhat, or could be somewhat confusing to have sort of watched the US and its Iran policy over the last couple months, because you had these indirect talks going on. And then at the same time, you had the largest military buildup that the US has conducted in the region since 2003, prior to invading Iraq. That was happening sort of in real time, kind of slowly, but very much publicly. I mean, it was. I think by late January, the US had moved the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea. And then in mid February, you had the Gerald Ford, which is the largest carrier in the world, at the part of the Caribbean because it had been involved in the operation against Nicolas Maduro. I mean, and by the time the strikes occurred yesterday, there was a massive, massive US Military force in the region. And I guess the question is, which still I'm kind of wrestling with, is, were the negotiations ever serious or was this just a smokescreen to confuse the Iranians? I don't know.

Gordon Carrera (30:08)

No, it's a good question because I think one of the arguments was it was coercive diplomacy. You build up the military to show you're serious in order to get the Iranians to relent and basically give up their program and do the deal that they want that the US Particularly wants. But there is another view, which is, you know, that was never. That was never likely to happen. And I think, I mean, in a way, that does actually kind of bring us on to our. Our third question, which is, you know, why is this happening? You know, what is the strategy? You know, what's behind what the US Is trying to do? I mean, I think, you know, and I think again, here it goes back to that kind of complication, confusion. How much of this is about the narrow issues of nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile programs, which could be dealt with a negotiation. And how far is it really, and has it always been, and is it increasingly about regime change and something completely different? I think that's the, you know, that gets the nub of it really doesn't

David McCloskey (31:14)

does. I think, you know, it is interesting to go and actually, like, listen to Trump's statement that he put out yesterday on. On Truth Social, because he does. I mean, we joked about it at the beginning of this question, but, you know, he does start with this kind of laundry list of Iranian aggression against the US Some of which is very real. Right. And. And historically accurate to the other bits of it are kind of out there, you know, and not. Not historically accurate. But he does paint. He basically paints this, you know, this combat operation almost as a kind of defensive measure against a regime that has, you know, I mean, he basically, I mean, he basically paints the Islamic Republic as having, you know, he goes back to the embassy crisis, Gordon. I mean, it goes back to sort of the inception of the Islamic Republic was, was itself. You know, it's sort of the birth of, it was this kind of, you know, it was already attacking America back then, and it's been attacking America and its friends ever since. And therefore, you know, we are, we are going to. And this is where I think it's interesting though, because a lot of the analysis of the, of his statement yesterday said, okay, Trump's calling for, you know, this, this is regime change. And it's like, not really. I think if you read what he, if you read the statement, you listen to the statement, it seems to me like he's almost saying, we're going to batter these guys for a while and you, the Iranian people should rise up. And, you know, what does he say? Kind of claim your. Claim your government take power. If you don't do it, you'll miss this sort of once in a generation opportunity that I'm creating for you. But he kind of stopped short of saying the policy is regime change.

Gordon Carrera (33:08)

Well, I agree. I think, I think that's a really important distinction. He's kind of, we want regime change and we might create the conditions for regime change to take place, but we are not necessarily going to go all in to do that. And it's interesting because you also see there have been other justifications for the attack. I mean, some of which, you know, I'm not going to convinced stand up. There's been language about imminent threats that the Iranians were about to either develop some kind of missile capacity or strike the US First. There's been talk about, Steve Wycock had some stuff about them being able to develop nuclear enrichment material really fast. All of that to me felt very flimsy. It certainly had echoes of Iraq WMD in 2003, where legally and morally, you are trying to justify a preemptive attack by saying, you know, the legal basis for it is they are about to attack us, so we need to attack them first. And it felt like there was, you know, there were echoes of famously in Britain, you know, Iraq in that case, being able to fire missiles in 45 minutes, you know, which was the source of much controversy in the UK and so, you know, there was a bit of that talk going on which was, I think, to build a kind of legal justification. But fundamentally, it was always pretty, pretty, pretty flimsy. And the regime change part of it was also there. But I think your point is right, is that what's really going on is they saw a weakened Iran at this moment and there is a window of opportunity to do more damage to Iran and perhaps to create the conditions for regime change.

David McCloskey (34:52)

Yeah, I think that's the point. It's the conditions for regime change. I mean, it also just to go back to one point you raised on kind of the Iraq example, what has absolutely not been done in this case is the administration making the public case for war, really. I mean, Donald Trump, we had the State of the Union address, you know, last week, or like Iran was sort of barely mentioned. I mean, he, he did make this claim about Iran, you know, trying to develop the capability kind of imminently to hit the US with an intercontinental ballistic missile, which I think, which we should say, clearly the actual intelligence that has at least, you know, the sort of high level analytic assessments that have come out on that are pretty much in contradiction to what the President said. Like, there's a long. I don't think Iran had even decided to do that. And there's a very long development window.

Gordon Carrera (35:53)

Yeah.

David McCloskey (35:54)

To. To build an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Gordon Carrera (35:56)

Absolutely right. Though there was, yeah, there was none of the kind of build up, the kind of long kind of thought, how do we manage public opinion that you saw in the lead up to Iraq. This feels much more fast and opportunistic. Doesn't.

David McCloskey (36:11)

Does it? Does. And I guess the other thing to note, I think on just Trump's mindset on Iran is that if you look at the way he's dealt with it going back to his first presidency, it's been all upside for him, really. So he withdrew from the Obama Iran nuke deal. We pulled out of that, I think in 2018 or something like that. He assassinated Ghassim Soleimani, former head of the Quds Force, the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force, in 2020. He bombed, as we talked about, he bombed Iran's nuclear program in Operation Midnight Hammer last summer. I don't think Trump has. There's been no domestic consequence for any

Gordon Carrera (36:58)

of this stuff, nor very little retaliation.

David McCloskey (37:01)

Yeah, no retaliation.

Gordon Carrera (37:02)

Iran.

David McCloskey (37:02)

Right, exactly.

Gordon Carrera (37:04)

So.

David McCloskey (37:04)

So you have this kind of like, there's no doubt. I think Trump looks at Iran and says, we've messed with these guys consistently and aggressively and they haven't done anything. And then the other piece to this, which I think is really important for Trump's mindset, is that Iran's weak right now. You know, I mean, we, we, when we did our conversation back in January on this and you look at kind of the pillars of the Iranian regime. It's not good. Right. I mean, the socioeconomic contract between the regime and its population is in absolute tatters. Its legitimacy, narrative is basically gone. There's opposition, obviously, that is still present even after the crackdown. I mean, there have been protests again that popped up in the last week or so. So I think that there's a sense here that he might have the, you know, he might have the regime on, on the ropes. At least that's how he would be thinking about it.

Gordon Carrera (37:59)

Yeah. And it doesn't feel like a part of a strategic master plan. I think it is a moment of opportunity, a moment of weakness. He sees Iran and a tactical moment where you see the Supreme Leader where he is. And you think, I'm going to take advantage of that, you know, and I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to do it. I'm going to, I'm going to go for it and, and see, see where it, where it takes, takes the US And Israel. So I think, I mean, we're starting to get some interesting questions in, so please do keep sending them in. There's one here from Argentum. Do you feel that there's enough of an organized resistance in Iran for regime change? I think we can get to that next because, you know, if we hit our last question, which is what is going to happen next? I mean, there's a few different areas to look at, aren't there? I mean, I guess one of the point is, you know, going back to what, what we were saying earlier, what is the US Going to do? What's its goal? Well, one of the things it's not done. This isn't like Iraq in 2003 in terms of regime change. There is no ground force for an invasion, is there? That is not.

David McCloskey (39:01)

That's actually an important point that we should just clearly state, which is when you look at the US forces that are in the region, I think before Operation Iraqi Freedom In 2003, there were 250,000 plus American soldiers who were in the Persian Gulf. Before Desert Storm, it was even more than that. I believe this is not the case right now. So, yeah, there is not going to be a ground invasion of, of Iran as part of this, which is kind of we should just. That's an important point, just to mention, like, that's not coming.

Gordon Carrera (39:35)

But again, there is this slight confusion then. What are the goals? I think they're multiple goals. I mean, some of them have, you know, damaged the nuclear program, more damage the missile program, destroy the navy. He's mentioned that, which I think is interesting, and then this issue of, of, of hoping to overthrow the regime or create the conditions for overthrowing the regime. But I think one of the questions is, is it's very hard to see how that plays out, isn't it? It's not straightforward.

David McCloskey (40:02)

No, no, it's not. You know, I think one thought, and again, I mean, there's a recency bias at play here, but I think there might be a recency bias at play in our president's mind as well, is what about a kind of Venezuela type operation? Or obviously Iran is more complicated and bigger and all of that. But maybe the fundamental premise here is we hit the Iranians hard for a few days, we kill a lot of their top leaders, including the supreme leader, and then we hope that the regime from within, sort of, not that it changes its fundamental nature, like, and becomes a much, you know, a more open sort of democratic thing that's not suppressing or repressing its people, but that it fundamentally deals with the US on some of these, you know, whether it's ballistic missiles, whether it's the nuclear program, what have you, deals with us in a different way. I think that might be the hope here, is that there would be someone or some group of people in Iran who then say they take power and decide to sort of bargain with the US From a position of weakness so that Trump gets what he wants. I think that could be a viable outcome for him and, and would allow us to use the word. Yeah, no, there's a, There's a lot of hope. Yeah, a lot of hope at play here. I mean, because the other, the other thing to state, I think just, you know, when you look back at the historical kind of, you know, the use of air power in an attempt to change a regime, the track record is not great. Right. It's just, it doesn't. I actually am not sure there is an example of it.

Gordon Carrera (41:49)

No.

David McCloskey (41:49)

I mean, yeah, recent, recent, recent counter examples would be Yemen. Like, I think there were. There's some, something on the order of $7 billion spent on an air war in Yemen that did not fundamentally change the Houthi regime. So, you know, you just, you got to think here that I think it's going to be you. You're not going to like, depose an entire deeply embedded network of financial and political and military elites with air power. Just not going to do it. Right.

Gordon Carrera (42:24)

No. The only parallel, but I don't think it works is you had Libya, where you had the us, uk, France, use air power against Gaddafi. But there you had the conditions already of effectively a civil war and of organized armed groups on the ground. And the US and UK air power supported them and eventually deposed Gaddafi. Although you can see the chaos that there's been in the years afterwards is not necessarily a model of what you want. And this goes back to the. The question we had from Argentum. Do you feel that there's enough of an organized resistance in Iran for regime change? I mean, one of the things we saw in January was, you know, there is not the resistance is just people. It's just ordinary people turned out on the streets, often students, young people. You know, some of them were, you know, chanting the Shah, the name of the former. The son of the former Shah. But there's no sense in which there is an organized armed resistance which is capable of taking on the regime. And the regime is very. It's not just one person, the supreme leader, is it? I think that's the point about Iran. It is a pretty deeply embedded power structure which even if you take out the top leadership, it's not clear, is it, that that is going to be enough for it all to crumble if some people just come out on the streets? You know, I'm just not sure about that.

David McCloskey (43:46)

I think it is important that we not confuse the spectacle of power with the longer term, sort of, I guess, energy required to actually reshape political outcomes in Iran. Right. Those two things can be connected. But the first day or two of a conflict like this, it kind of, especially if the US and the Israelis are doing it, it's always going to look pretty good, right? I mean, because. Because of this mastery that we have developed in being able to kind of target individuals to sustain this kind of camp. Like, to marshal this number of resources in the region and do this to a sovereign state requires real power. But the question, and it's an unanswerable question right now is like, can, like, how resilient is this regime really? Right. I mean, that is a big question. I think we are trying to fracture the regime's coherence, as I said earlier, with the strikes. Like, I think that is part of the design. But you won't really figure out how tough, flexible a kind of network is until you start to attack it. And we're gonna figure that out here in the coming weeks and months. But it's not something we actually. It's an unknowable question.

Gordon Carrera (45:13)

Yeah.

David McCloskey (45:13)

Unanswerable question right now.

Gordon Carrera (45:15)

Yeah. And you were talking, you know, in terms of how the public in Iran reacts. Clearly, a lot of people hate the regime. Not everyone, though.

David McCloskey (45:22)

Right.

Gordon Carrera (45:22)

But you also had. I mean, it's interesting, we talk about the mastery of US And Israel firepower, but there's also been these reports, for instance, of a strike on a girls school in. In Manab, which killed a large number of civilians. Now, I don't know the exact details of that. It was supposedly proximate to a military base, and whether it was a mistake, whether it's not, who knows? But you could also imagine that as things develop on the ground, if there are those kind of incidents, you could also see some people within Iran turning against the attack. So I think it's very hard to judge. And clearly what the US And Israel wants. Want is for them not to have to do the hard work of regime change, but for the Iranian people to do it. And they're basically now saying, now you go do it. But that's a big call to hope that the repressive capability of the regime has been degraded enough for them to not do it. And if you're a protester, to not end up like the tens of thousands of others a few months ago, dead in a morgue. I mean, that's, as you said, it's very hard to judge how that will play out.

David McCloskey (46:27)

Yeah. I mean, the other wildcard here is that I think that Trump's motivations for this or his sort of designs are. That's also a moving target. I mean, even yesterday. Right. I mean, after the strike start, Trump said, I can go long and take over the whole thing or end it in two or three days until the Iranians see you in a few years if you start rebuilding. So I think he's even creating an off ramp. Right.

Gordon Carrera (46:57)

About whether he could see it through.

David McCloskey (46:59)

Yeah, right, Right. Well, that's the question. See what through?

Gordon Carrera (47:03)

Yeah, yeah.

David McCloskey (47:05)

You know, is there a strategy?

Gordon Carrera (47:07)

Yeah.

David McCloskey (47:07)

What's. What's the goal? Because I think when you look at, again, let's just take Venezuela because it's recent, obviously there wasn't really a, like, coherent strategy for what came next. Right. It was. It was about, yeah. Delcey Rodriguez, but it was kind of like, well, someone else inside the regime will take power and we'll be able to deal with them. That was kind of the extent of it. And you might say, hey, that's enough. But I don't think there's much beyond that here. And I mean, going back to that initial question of whether there will actually be more significant unrest as a result of this. If the goal really is. And I think this is a bit contradictory, because I actually don't. I don't. And the impulses. Trump's impulses here are contradictory. Is like, on the one hand, you want to be. You want to decapitate, you know, kill Khamenei, kill a bunch of the top leadership, get someone new that you could kind of deal with. But my sense is that if you get that and you accomplish that in three or four, five, six days, whatever, that runs contradictory to the impulse then to have sort of people rise up against the actual regime itself.

Gordon Carrera (48:27)

I agree.

David McCloskey (48:28)

Because you could end up with a situation where you have the exact same repressive app, which, by the way, my hot take early days. So I will identify this as a hot take as such. My hot take is that's. That is exactly what you get, which is a significantly beaten and degraded Iranian sort of military and security apparatus that is still in control, and that is saying some of the right things about what it intends to do vis a vis the US Whether that's ballistic missiles or nuclear program or what have you, and absolutely no change in that kind of regime's ability and willingness to use its military and security forces against its population. I think that's. That's a pretty. That's my hot take of where we're. Where we're headed.

Gordon Carrera (49:15)

No. And I think that's.

David McCloskey (49:16)

With a lot of chaos along the way.

Gordon Carrera (49:18)

Yeah. Last few things we should just briefly touch on is about some of the wildcards in this, which is about what could happen more widely in the region, particularly. I mean, Iran has already talked about the Straits of Hormuz, which is, of course, this very important shipping lane through which the world's oil and other supplies goes. If they shut that down, who knows what could happen there? I mean, it's a little bit unclear from the language what they're going to do with that. And it would also annoy some of the countries which are loosely allied to Iran like China and others who. Who will use that, who will see the impact on the global economy. That's a wild card, isn't.

David McCloskey (49:55)

Is. But one point on that, though, is it's not just about the sort of, can someone. Is someone mining it or are there, you know, opera. Have there been any sort of operations against shipping? It's. It's the risk premiums on the, on the insurance for the ships that would actually transit the strait. Right. And those have already started to increase very significantly. Unsurprisingly.

Gordon Carrera (50:21)

Yeah.

David McCloskey (50:21)

So I think it's also a, it's a question of like, what's going on in the, what's going on in the Gulf. It's also a question of how are, you know, what does Lloyds of London think about this and are they attaching higher premiums to ensure those, to ensure those hauls? Right, so there's one other point to that. Yeah.

Gordon Carrera (50:37)

And then I guess another wild card is what happens as a result of these other countries we talked about earlier on being hit in the region. You know, the uae, the Saudis, the Qataris. The fact that they're being hit, does that, does that put, lead them to put pressure on the US to, to stop this? Because they've not been that keen on this conflict for precisely that reason. What if there is a big hit on a US military base or on a shopping center in Dubai or something like that? That is certainly a wild card which could change things, couldn't it?

David McCloskey (51:11)

Yeah, I know it absolutely could. And honestly, I think one of the kind of surprising things I think for many observers has been just how broad Iran's retaliation has been. I mean, I think, Gordon, there were reports that the Iranians had actually lobbed ballistic missiles at maybe UK assets on Cyprus. I mean, yeah, it was like, is that, is that right?

Gordon Carrera (51:37)

Well, towards. In the direction of Cyprus is, is what I'd say, which, which, which could be that they were just in that direction or it could be they were targeting Cyprus. But either way, I mean, there's a question here from the Apollo. Seems a French naval base in Abu Dhabi was just struck with Iran also targeting Cyprus due to reckon UK and France will get involved with offensive strikes. Now, I mean, my view is the UK is saying we've got air power in the region being used defensively, effectively to shoot down Iranian missiles and things like that. I don't think they will want to get into offensive strikes on Iran itself. The legality of that I think is we haven't got into that and let's not get into it. But I think in the UK the view is it's not legal. You know, there isn't a kind of justification for it. So, but, but once you get into self defense, because, and this gets back to that wildcard point, if bases do get hit or things do get hit, then suddenly that could change the equation, couldn't it? So that is, that's one of, one of the other kind of wildcards in terms of how far Iran does want to push this and what it does with its missiles. And I guess, sorry, A third one is how else could Iran retaliate? I mean, could it retaliate in Europe? Could it retaliate in different ways through proxies?

David McCloskey (52:54)

Yeah. And I think, you know, Gordon, we were talking about this a little bit yesterday as we were getting our minds around this. It obviously does bear mention, right. Like that there's the possibility for asymmetric retaliation at some point down the line. Terrorist.

Gordon Carrera (53:11)

Terrorist, yeah. Attacks on US embassies, Israeli embassies, things like that in Europe.

David McCloskey (53:15)

Right, right.

Gordon Carrera (53:16)

Yeah.

David McCloskey (53:17)

This gets mentioned, I think, every time one of these conflicts pops up. And maybe these attacks have been. Maybe they're being suppressed, maybe they're being stopped, maybe the Iranians are intending to do them and they're just not able to carry them out. But I don't know, this one seems to me a bit of. I mean, yes, it's possible, but it didn't happen after Midnight hammer or the 12 Day War last year, did it? As far as I know. I mean, so if the Iranians are attempting to do this kind of stuff, it's taking them longer than perhaps I would think it should.

Gordon Carrera (53:57)

I mean, MI5 have said they fooled 20 Iranian plots against individuals in the UK, which tends to be often Iranian dissidents in the UK of harassment, kidnapping, assassination. So there's been activity, but not that kind of large scale attack that we're talking about. Whether they have the capability or not, it's hard to know. But that is, again, if they really do feel on the Iranian side this is regime change that the US is going for, we need to do everything we can to deter them and stop them, them, then maybe you press that button. So it goes back a little bit to this bigger question, which is the US really going to go all out for regime change, or are they trying to put enough pressure and then maybe do a deal with a kind of new type of regime, in which case, if you have uraniums, you don't want to be unleashing all your proxies everywhere in Europe or to do things which could be escalatory, could draw Europe into it in a different way. So there is still that question about how far both sides are calibrating or whether they're all in.

David McCloskey (55:00)

And I guess I should have said, I mean, after, after Trump killed Qassem Soleimani Back in 2020, there was credible intelligence that the Iranians were attempting to kill senior U.S. officials. Right. And there were significant security precautions taken by many of the officials involved in that decision afterwards. So I shouldn't have been, I think I was maybe a little quick to, to downplay that. It is, it is definitely something that the Iranians could do down the line if they, if they felt it was, it was wise. But I mean, I guess, Gordon, maybe, maybe it's worth ending on the ultimate hot take question, which was not part of our four exam questions, which was do you think I'll start, I'll, I'll pose it to you. Do you think that this was a good idea?

Gordon Carrera (55:45)

I think, I think the risks to this are enormous. I think the risks are, although we said that before with things like taking out Soleimani and your point and Midnight Hammer and a lot of the consequences didn't happen, this does feel different. I think there are risks for the Iranian people and I think there's risks for the Gulf which are on a different magnitude to what we've seen before. And I can't quite quite see the strategy to bring about a benefit given those risks. That's, it's not much of a hot take, but it's all I got.

David McCloskey (56:21)

That's a cold take, Gordon. It's a cold take. And I will say, I do think. Well, I'll answer the question here. I was just going to say in general that there are some really big questions that are obviously there at this point, unanswerable. And I would just beseech our listeners that anyone coming to you with simple answers on what's Donald Trump thinking? Is there going to be unrest? How resilient is the regime? How long can the Iranians kind of sustain this back and forth? What will happen in oil markets? I mean, all these kind of really big questions. Like anyone with really simple answers to those is, is conning you and they don't, like just you should not pay attention if anyone has really simple kind of, you know, certain answers to those questions at this point, I think my hot take is I think the return on investment here is likely to be low. I think that, I think that we will not, based on the, the forces that we have positioned in the region, I don't think that this is intended as a regime change operation. I think this is intended as an operation to substantially reduce the regime's internal coherence, roll the dice on spurring protests. And I think it's probably a pretty low chance of that happening. But I love to be proven otherwise and get a different type of regime out of the existing soup of the one that we have now that will do a deal with us or be seen to do a deal with us on some of the bigger ticket items that I think Trump actually cares about, which is the nuke program and maybe ballistic missiles. And I think that that so I think this is a lot of input for maybe not a ton of output and is much more performative than anything else. That's my hot take at this point

Gordon Carrera (58:31)

and I think that is a good place to leave it. Thank you very much for all your questions. We've answered quite a few of them in the discussion, but thank you very much for sending them in. Later today we should say we'll be sending out a newsletter roundup with perspectives from from across all the different goal hanger shows about Iran. I think I'll do some comments. Alistair Campbell, Rory Stewart from the Rest Is Politics Caddy K and Anthony Scaramucci as well from the Rest Is Politics US Becky, our producer, our intrepid producer is there on the line. She's currently in Jordan.

David McCloskey (58:59)

Frontline producer.

Gordon Carrera (59:00)

She's our frontline producer. We're sitting at home. She's the one out in the field. Well done Becky. We're stay safe but we're very proud of you. But we'll be sharing all our perspectives and you can receive those updates by by signing up for the newsletter via the link in YouTube and in the podcast description. But thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for your comments. We may do more of these might we David, depending on what happens.

David McCloskey (59:23)

Because who knows, I think we will almost certainly be doing more of these. And yes, Echo Gordons, thanks to everyone for joining this. As we always say at the end of our episodes we would strongly encourage you to go and join the Declassified Club also@the restisclassified.com if you have enjoyed this. But in any case we hope it's been helpful and we will undoubtedly see you next time.

Gordon Carrera (59:46)

See you next time. Do you want to know what really happens inside MI5 or what we chat

David McCloskey (59:59)

about when the cameras aren't rolling?

Gordon Carrera (60:00)

If you love the show and you want to come behind the scenes with us, who better to join than our producer Becky? From now on she'll be writing a free newsletter every week taking you behind the mic at the Rest Is Classified.

David McCloskey (60:13)

Make sure to subscribe via the link in the episode description to be the first to read the latest Classified Insider or head to thereestisclassified.com to find out more.

Gordon Carrera (60:25)

Hi guys, it's Katie K. And Anthony Scaramucci here from the Rest Is Politics us. We have just recorded a four part series that's all about Donald Trump becoming the global phenomenon. We know him as Today, you know,

David McCloskey (60:39)

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Gordon Carrera (60:50)

Yeah, we're going to take you from his days in military school, what he learned there, how he actually weirdly thrived there, to his father's ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his days as a business mogul in New York, and how that really shaped his worldview and his way of doing business. And we're going to explore parts of the Trump story that you might never have even heard of.

David McCloskey (61:08)

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Gordon Carrera (61:24)

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