Blockade Brinkmanship: Richard Fontaine

going to be achieved in a matter of days or a couple of weeks.

“I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies.”

Today I'm joined by Mr. Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Security. He also serves as a member of anthropics, long-term benefit trust, and his executive director of the trilateral commissions North America group. Mr. Fontaine joins us today to discuss the most recent developments out of Iran and potential scenarios going forward.

Stay with us as we speak with Richard Fontaine. Richard Fontaine, welcome to "NATSEC" matters. Thank you for having me. Jay Mike Lallon. It's good to be with you.

That's right. Well, this will be fun.

“You and I go back away, you're in the beginning of the Bush administration.”

I knew you when you worked for Senator McCain, and we've been in touch ever since, and so I'm really grateful that you would be on this, and let's get into it on Iran. So here we are, it seems to me that the United States is putting a lot on this economic blockade of Iranian ports. For a while there, it seemed like the President was impatient, seeming to declare victory

one day and ask for help on others, but I've noticed in the last three or four days he's saying to the effect of, "We got all the time in the world. We can fit here and wait, and that's presumably wait until the Iranian regime has been strangled more economically than they already are.

“And in theory, would come back to us with meaningful concessions on the nuclear file, certainly”

straight of our moves needs to be solved. Is that where you see things? Yeah, it's blockade versus blockade right now, and so this was a war of drones and missiles and bombs that was conducted in the land and the air in Iran and in parts of the rest of the Middle East, against energy infrastructure and civilian targets on that.

That's moved to a sea-based contest where both sides have a clock and think that the other one's going to cave before they do, so we're blockading the Iranian ports and Iran is essentially blockading the rest of the world by not letting energy travel through the straight of our moves, Iran calculates that the pressure on the United States to come to some sort of deal, it would be favorable to them, will be greater than the pressure that

is on Iran by blockading their ports and that they can withstand whatever pressure the US puts on them at the administration seems to think the opposite, so we will see who caves if either

first, but that's where the action is at the moment.

So let's go over this a little bit, anecdotally I've talked to some people who I more or less would qualify as economists and people that study how much of Iran's economy is wrapped up in seaborn trade, and they insist that Iran may be hurting itself as much as tens of millions of dollars, maybe higher per day, and that if we could just stick to it for a little while longer, that that would really begin to bite, but that's against the usual assessment of the

form of policy community, which is Iran cannot only take a punch, they are resilient, they're not a democracy, so they're not as in tune with their people's needs, certainly not economic needs, and so that means they're going to hang in for longer. So we'll assess that and where do you come down? I mean, big picture I come down on the defaulting to the hang in a little bit longer, one for historical reasons because they have hung in, I mean, you go all the way back to the

Iran Iraq War where the Iranians could have had a settlement three years into that war, but the war

went eight years, not three, and until they, you know, drunk from the poison palace and finally

made a piece of agreement with Saddam Hussein at extraordinarily high cost in every way shape and form. So that's one, the other is if I had told you a few months ago, well, the Iranian negotiation, the negotiating position is pretty intransigent, so U.S. is going to kill the supreme leader

to destroy its power plants and its bridges, it's people won't be able to make decisions, they'll be a new supreme leader, but he'll be disfigured from some strike, and they will have shot off a large portion or had destroyed a large portion of their missiles and drones. What do you think they're negotiating positions would be like after that? Yeah, probably would say, well, that'll soften them up, but here we are today,

where we're saying, well, you know, now we've got to find something else in addition to that.

So yeah, some, you know, tomorrow could always be different, they could say the economic pain is

gotten too high, it hits the IRG, see just proportionally, all these things.

“But I think the bottom line assumption you have to go into this is that they are pretty dug in,”

and they have something they didn't have before. I mean, they didn't have a stranglehold over the straight of her moves before the war, and they do now, and that's a major advantage to them and it's a major disadvantage to us. So let's score then, let's get an intermediate grade, midterm grade for the United States on this. On the one hand, I think it's a great thing that they're defensive industrial basins, ballistic missiles, and nuclear capabilities have all been

degraded. But it's obviously not a strategic win for the United States, if the Iranians have everything, you just described leverage over the world community. So, you know, what do we call this? And incomplete? Or, uh, it's worse than incomplete. I mean, it's still incomplete, but it's hard to see how, I don't know, you go back to, I don't know, I'm a think tanker these days so you go back to

classwits, right? Who basically was saying, so many years ago, that war has rarely resolved everything

with some group degree of finality. You look at who's got an advantage afterwards compared to before, and who's got a disadvantage afterwards compared to before. Well, the Iranians clearly have both, but they have a major advantage. Uh, yes, it's good that Iran doesn't have the industrial basit, defense industrial basit didn't have before, it has fewer drones and missiles. But to be able to put your hands on the jugular of the global economies, a major advantage that it has now that

it didn't have before. And of course, you know, anybody goes and fills up with a pump can see the disadvantage that the United States and everybody else has that they didn't have before. Um, and so, you know, I think that's, that's the assessment as Iran has come out of this with more advantages

“and add in the U.S. board disadvantages. Then of course, you have to factor in two other things,”

one is the opportunity cost, right? So, I mean, we now very soon, we'll have a third aircraft carrier

task force that is arriving in the Middle East. We have not a single carrier strike group in the Indo-Pacific. We used to tell ourselves that the greatest long-term strategic challenge the United States was China and that the theater where that will play out most acutely is an Indo-Pacific with a major diversion of resources, including from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. And probably we'll still linger because we'll be in a containment posture and all the other stuff. And then the

final thing is, what is it that we were really trying to avoid or accomplish in this? The administration said, we had to go to war because it was an imminent threat of nuclear attack against the United States, but Iran didn't have a nuclear weapon before the war. It wasn't enriching uranium. It wasn't spinning such a few inches and it didn't have an ICBM that could reach the United States. Well, they said, well, yeah, but they're working on all of them. They'd like to have them and things

like that. Well, yeah, that's true. But was that an imminent threat worth paying these other prices for? Especially given that the Supreme Leader was 86 years old and could have died of natural causes the next year or so and could have seen what happened domestically given how fragile that terrible political system is? So I think the great that you would have to give it now is worse than incomplete. There's been costs both to us and the region. Obviously, economic costs and

then opportunity costs in other parts of the world. And I don't think that we'll be able to keep for that on the other side of the balance as high. All right. Well, let's assume that you're back in the national security council and you're in charge of developing an options memo for the president about what to do now. Do you just recommend just sticking to where we are and letting it bite?

“And maybe that's you have to admit a month away. Do you seek more leverage by going on an”

escort mission? In other words, US naval ships leading and protecting a convoy as it transits the straight-of-war moves intercepting any boats or drones that are aimed at those commercial vessels by the Iranians and or do you resume hostilities again, which the president seems to favor economic targets, energy targets, if he goes there at all, but he's of course

you do if you were the guy in the seat with the dilemma and what would you tell the president to do?

I almost had a hard computation when you said, imagine you're back at the NSC. So put that out there.

“So you know what that was? Jobs? Oh, yeah, I was there. Remember, you remember that you remember those?”

I love options papers that like nine o'clock. I was going to say things that can't froze around in the weekend or the middle of the night. Yeah, you can't reconcile the views between the vice president. All your friends are going out to have the hour. That's right. That's what you did wrong. Anyway, back to the top of the weekend. Yeah, I think the continuing the blockade is probably the best option right now. The blockading of a reading important to me,

the worst situation was when Ron was able to export oil through the straight and no one else could

write that the price of oil stays high. The revenue goes to no one but the Iranians at a higher level.

Right. Okay. So we identified the worst case in area. We've taken steps to modify where we are from that. So the blockade makes sense to me. The escorting ships through using the U.S. Navy also makes sense to me the question then is can you do that immediately? Or do you need an additional set of military steps to clear the straight or her moves? I mean, a full military clearing of the straight or her moves with everything that that would entail? I mean, St. Com could do that but it's probably

a months long military operation and that's you can you can understand why the administration would prefer to have the straight open by agreement rather than a months long military operation.

“I think probably the least attractive of the options would be to blow up the power plants and”

the bridges. I mean, one you've got all of the, you know, you certainly have the ethical and collateral

damage things to imagine when it comes to that and the suffering of the Iranian people and all that. But you have the other more practical thing is it's just not clear that the IRGC cares about that stuff very much. I mean, they care, the IRGC, which is in charge right now as far as we can tell. I mean, they care about whether they get their oil revenue or not. They care about whether energy can be exported from Iranian ports. Do they care about whether the Iranian people suffer even

more because they don't have bridges and power plants not clear that that's the kind of leverage that we imagine it would be in a more reasonably run kind of place and so. And then there's these other kind of ideas, you know, do you take Cargile Ender, you know, something like that, hold Iranian territory and say we're not going to give it back until you do what we want, and things like that pretty dangerous operation to be perfect like that for all the obvious reasons.

So I put that kind of at the lower, I put that at the bottom of the options.

“And the other reason is that I think it would definitely invite Iranian retaliation on”

our Gulf Arab friends, energy facilities, which probably wouldn't do too much for the worldwide energy prices. Right, exactly. All right, so now we're in the hard part. I mean, how long do you, how long do you give it? And do you think President Trump is capable of this kind of strategic patience? I mean, the terms Donald Trump's strategic patience don't get other like peanut butter and jelly.

Most of the time in sort of my Israel reaction to what you just asked. Though that said, I mean, you know, reportedly the President thought this was going to be a three or four day operation. And here we are weeks and weeks and weeks in, with a very different outcome than anticipated. And, you know, we're still there. So, you know, history is filled with leaders who thought their wars would be quick and easy. And when they turned out not to be, some of them stick in there and see it

through despite enormous costs and others don't where Trump will come down hard to say. But so far, he's kind of stuck in there. Whether that's a good or a bad thing. But I think it's probably worth. And I think we may well see disaggregating the things we want out of all of this. I mean, there's a lot that we want. We want Iran not to have an nuclear weapon. We want Iran not to have lots of drones and missiles. We want Iran not to fund has blot Hamas. And, you know, all this and we

want Iran not to, you know, abuse its own people and not to block the straight of her moves. But I think the thing we want most is Iran not to block the straight of her moves. They got a grant. This is a problem that didn't exist before the war that we entered into. But nevertheless, we are where we are. And so I think a narrow deal sometime in the next few weeks where we stop blockading the Iranian ports and Iran opens up the straight of her moves pursuant to some details. So it would have to be

worked out. And then leaves the nuclear file for a later set of negotiations is probably in the near term the most realistic thing that can be achieved. It's just very hard

in a matter of days or a couple of weeks or something like that where, you know, the vice president

“and goes and meets with, you know, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, they come out and,”

I don't know, you know, have some, some do a agreement other than an agreement to try to get an agreement in the future. And then I, the other thing would be all the other stuff we care about, which is, you know, the proxies and, you know, everything else. Yeah, I see. That's just too hard to get to now. But, but I agree with you, the most narrow swap would be the relaxation of all the blockades and that, that's the way out of this in the, not too distant future. But let's assume that the White

House wants to go big. Let's assume for a second. Well, first, let me just get your, before we move on

from the straight away, let me get your final assessment. Of course, now Iran can always go back

to this. And so that's not good, but on the other hand, what do you think we could accept? We're not going to accept tolls. We're not going to accept call the Iranian navy and coordinate with them on your route before they go. Is, is there anything we can do? Or is it just, by God, it is the internet, it is an international waterway that should be restored to the status quo, anti. That should be our position. Okay. I mean, it, it should be unacceptable to us. And frankly,

it should be unacceptable to the most of the world for Iran to be in control of one of the major energy choke points on which the global economy depends. If for no other reason, then that gives

them a dial. They can always turn up or turn down and respond to any perceived grievance into the

indefinite future. And that does not a world that any of us should want to live in, given, especially the nature of the Iranian regime. So, I think our goal should be to return things to the status quo, anti. That's where, you know, the participation of other countries in a coalition that would, you know, take place in terms of monitoring and keeping the streets open post-tostilities.

“I think could be particularly important. Whether you can get all the way back to the status”

quo, anti. Some people say you can. Some people say you can't. You just have to test the hypothesis. I mean, my understanding is that a lot of, at least, you know, the sort of nascent back and forth. Some of it has been focused on whether Iran has a right to enrich. And if so, to what level, it's going to have the disposition of the Iranian and Iran also. It's not all very important things. But if you are trying to put first things first and get that straight away, it's open again.

Then that's where you would press as hard as you can to try to return things to the way they were. Okay. And I think I heard you earlier say you'd continue on this blockade rather than immediately go to an escort mission, but you didn't rule it out later. Okay. So let's assume they want to go big and they want something on uranium enrichment. To me, the biggest hurdle for the Trump administration is just that they're the ones that got out of the Obama nuclear deal said it was the horrible

deal ever negotiated. But the rumors coming out after the first beatings in Islamabad were United States has proposed Iran only ban enrichment for the next some say 20 others were saying it was 10 years. A time limit seems awfully a lot like what President Trump had against the Obama era agreement. The second thing is the idea that we would unfreeze Iranian money. And send them as much as 20 billion dollars. Now it's their own money. President Trump would

argue. But on the other hand, his favorite point on lampooning the Obama era agreement was that we sent over plain loads full of cash that every bank in the Washington DC area was cleared out for $100 bill. No one could get cash for that. We were cashed, desert. So if he charged around and does that, I mean, not only will the history books crush them, but it feels like that would be

a political loss. So jump in there. Yeah. I mean, so those who were critical of the Obama era,

“the GCPOA, I think has some genuine grounds for criticism. I mean, you mentioned a couple of them,”

but the rather things too. I mean, there was a relaxation on the prohibitions on long-range missiles and other stuff like that. But behind all that was this idea that if the Obama people had only negotiated better, only been a little bit tougher, it'd only be a little bit more clear. They could have gotten a better deal than the one they got. Like there wasn't between that deal and no deal. It was between that deal and a better deal, and they just didn't get the better deal. Well,

you got to think that we've used a mass amount of coercion given the war in a way that they

Obama administration certainly never did. But it is striking to see some of these exact same kind of

“provisions, you know, be floated, right? 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, how about forever, right?”

Yeah. Yeah. And that doesn't seem to be there. You know, the pal at the cash were supposedly Iranian money that was in banks and it was unfrozen. It was their money with appropriate interests. And so we're not paying them anything, blah, blah, blah, you hear now the kind of the same thing, but even in larger numbers. So, you know, I think that sounds like that's the kind of diplomatic reality for right now. I will say a couple things though. One, I think the vice president,

he made a comment before he went to Pakistan that I think was actually nailed a little piece of this in the right way. And in the sense that he's trying to distinguish between Iran's right quote right to enriched Iranian and it's actually enriching Iranian. I mean, he had this sort of thing, you know, he said, I think something like, you know, my wife has a right to jump out of a plane and a parachute, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea for her to do it or something like that.

And of course, that's been true all along, right? Iran, you know, has gone, you can no one can take away our right to enrichment. Well, you have a right to do a lot of things and you can test what you maybe have a right to do, but doesn't mean it's in your interest. And our goal is to try to make it not in their interest, to rather than to get them to not to agree that they just

have never possessed a right to do it. And so if the Trump administration can get to what has been

floated, which is not 3.67% Iranian enrichment, which was a deal under the Obama accord, but rather zero enrichment for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years. That's a better outcome than the EPA. Now, is that

“outcome so meaningful that people would see it as a major success where Obama was a failure?”

Well, I mean President Trump has almost unique ability to create his own reality and perception, so maybe he can describe it that way. But the idea, which, you know, the Trump administration is gone into, which I think multiple administrations gone into, which is that you just sort of put an end once and for all to the Iranian nuclear program. They give up all of their uranium inside the

country, all the enriched stuff and everything else. They never spent another centrifuge again.

They agree that they'll never do any of this stuff. There's an intrusive monitoring to make sure they don't do any of this stuff. That doesn't seem to be on the table even after this war. So it is a little bit of back to the future when it comes to that. Yeah, it would be really, really tough. But you're right on the vice president on the right to enrich. I mean, maybe you to it like the arrangement with China over Taiwan, we acknowledge that you think that you

have the right to have it. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, if we, but we don't agree. If they're right, so if there was something acknowledging that they, you know, assert this right to uranium to enrichment, but if we also acknowledge that they're not going to exercise that right for 20 years, that's such a bad outcome. Yeah. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more of our discussion with Richard Fontaine. Beacon Global Strategies is the premier

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team and decades of experience. Beacon provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. All right. Well, let's talk about regime change. So,

“by the way, the way I think we got into this was the president understandably excited as we all”

were about the protests on the streets. It seemed more broad-based than ever before. We had always heard that, oh, well, if it's just students, their parents let me know when their parents join and then it'll be real. And then once the parents were involved, someone said, well, late, wait till the bizarries, wait till the conservative small businessmen get involved. And that will talk to a broad-based thing. So, I think everyone got excited there. I did about, wow,

is this the end? Is this 1989 for a run? But it didn't really work out that way in the sense that the president wasn't able to immediately help the protesters on the streets, either because we had our aircraft carrier way over in the Caribbean or because even if it wasn't, it would have been

here we are, the president felt like he needed to make good on this invasion because, otherwise,

it might be considered the president not making good on a red line like Barack Obama. So,

“is that too cynical of a view of how you think we got into this in the first place?”

No, it's not. And I think there were a couple other factors. I mean, one, you know, have Maduro not gone well, then who knows whether this would have happened. I mean, the president had, you know, a sample size of at least three with the killing of Cossam Soleimani. People said bad things would happen instead that relatively good thing, you know, the destruction of the Iranian nuclear sites. And then the capture of Maduro.

And so, I mean, you and I worked in the Bush administration. That's a little bit of this. When I was over at the State Department around the invasion of the war in Iraq, I mean, it's hard to remember now. But, I mean, Kabul fell pretty quickly to the northern alliance with a small American footprint. People started shaving their beards and terrorists were going to go away. It looked like a big success.

We go to Iraq, even harder to remember there, but Baghdad fell in three weeks. And, you know,

“you know, that looked like it was a success. What's the first thing administration started doing?”

It started threatening Syria publicly and privately and saying you're going to be next. And then some people say, "Well, real man, go to Tehran." You know, once a quagmire started, nobody was talking about going to Damascus or Tehran or anything else, they were just trying to figure out how we, you know, salvage something in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the idea that this stuff works. And, you know, it's sort of, there's momentum behind it. That sort of builds on itself.

It's not unique to Trump. And I think Trump probably saw success in these military operations, and thought the next ones likely to be successful as well. Now, the scale of the ambition of this one was wildly different than the ones before. And then, I think, you know, there was this assessment that there was an opportunity that didn't exist before in part because the regime was uniquely weak after the protests. Apparently, you know, the Israeli intelligence service believed that, you know,

pushed might knock the whole thing over. The U.S. intelligence community apparently believed the opposite. I wanted to ask you, I mean, what you make of those sort of doing assessments. You're in tall background because, you know, the stakes of the conclusions are turned out to be pretty significant, but you believe the one or the other. But you sort of put these things together, the momentum, the idea of this stuff works, uniquely, you know, weekend. I've got a chance to do

something that other presidents have only talked about, and never actually brought to resolution.

And by the way, I said, help was on the way. And I don't want this to be a Obama-like

“Syria red line. I think we put all that together. And that probably was the catalyst for doing this.”

But I mean, how do you see the intel side of this? Well, so, you know, I do have a lot of confidence that in the United States, our intelligence community, maybe they've been pressured in the past, but doesn't really shade its analytical conclusions to tailor political outcomes. But, you know, I assume they don't in Israel, but I don't know they don't. Is, I guess, point number one. I mean, point number two is that although they have great intelligence, probably better intelligence,

especially on the ground, I don't know. Maybe our analytic community, post-deroctwMD,

really requires a lot more evidence. I've always heard they needed broader factors to be met

before they were willing to put this into a regime-change situation. So it wasn't just protesters on the streets. They acknowledged that there was no leader among the protesters. They acknowledged that finally the economic conditions were broad, but no part of society with guns was now on the protesters side. And so, I heard that from experts, I think I heard that from intelligence community people. So I thought that was the more sober analysis of it all, but you're right.

It's especially that New York Times article from a few weeks ago where it basically suggests that the Netanyahu came over and did a song in dance for the president and the White House situation room and convinced him the regime-charing was near is an narrative that was out there of old Netanyahuhood-winged old Trump. Yeah, and who knows? I mean, but, you know, given how terrible this regime is, how it's treated some people and then, of course, how it's dealt with Americans and

how many Americans have died at the hands of Iranian depredations and all of this. I mean, it's damn tempting to think that, you know, the slightest push and you can produce a happy

since 1979, but then a lot rock, rather than that's actually the right assessment of the facts.

“I mean, strikes me that, in some ways, it's a lot, if not easier, it's more straightforward”

to sort of build the tactical level information of, you know, this guy is staying in this room and this hotel, you know, at this time, and we got this information as opposed to try to diagnose the stored strategic level health of an entire regime and what it would take to toplet or not, I'm given how opaque some of this is. Well, I mean, last little thing on these railies was, I thought it was fascinating, you know, let's call it a month ago when they started hitting

not just IRGC headquarters and the besieged headquarters, but if there were, you know, thugs on motorcycles that were manning checkpoints across the country, they were beginning to hit those, they were hitting local police stations. So for some time, they felt like they were running some plays along the ones and please people, we invite you back on on the streets, but it either didn't work or they felt like they had more important targets to hit on the way out the door.

Well, I mean, the thing that I would maybe so skeptical about a regime change from the air point of view before the war is one, I really tried to think about whether we or anybody else has ever actually successfully achieved regime change without anybody on the ground, only by bombing

“lots and lots of places and I couldn't think of one, and I think this is not an exception to that.”

And the other is, I mean, Iran has well over a million people and its security forces of all kinds,

if you add up, you know, besieged and army and IRGC and everybody else. So, you know, you could take out lots of installations and even lots of people, but the guys who are left in the security service are still going to have the guns and the protesters still aren't going to have the guns. And that counts for a lot if you have a regime that is willing to use any level of force against the so-and-people to try to keep a lid on things which it clearly is.

Yeah, for sure. All right, let me try you one more thing on regime change. So, at this gets back to when I earlier said that the bombing campaign is at least in incomplete. I mean, I agree we got to solve for moves in order for this to be, you know, considered a

good grade ultimately for the president. But I wonder if you would grant me or grant this argument

some generosity, which is that let's say we just don't of course know when the regime is going to collapse, but we're more confident now than ever based on the protests that their days are numbered, whether it's six months or two years. And we will look back on this Israeli U.S. campaign as a huge strategic and tactical weakening for the Iranians, not just because, of course, we exacerbated their economic problems, but because also we have as everyone likes to say,

curved their ability to project military and, you know, terrorist power by way of their proxies around the region. Did critique that? Well, you asked me to be generous to you, which

I always say critique. I always am. And now you're asking for critique, which you slightly different

things, but maybe I'll steal the middle course here. I mean, look that the real thing is I don't think we know what the long run implications of this are going to be. I mean, you look at some other cases, which are only crude analogies. But, you know, Russia is less able to project power that used to be Russia's economy is worse than it used to be. Putin doesn't seem to be less in power

“than it used to be because of those factors. And that's what you just cited to say that the”

regime's days were numbered in Iran. I mean, the guy had a coup that marched on Moscow and he came out, you know, after the pregosion incident stronger, not weaker. On the other hand, you go back to somebody like Malosevic. I mean, we did the bombing campaign to get Serbia and Malosevic was still in charge at the end. But he wasn't in charge of your later because your later, you know, under aerial bombardment in the middle of a war, there's all kinds of reasons why people are not

going to go into the streets. A year later, the dust starts to settle and people start to take the measure of the future of their country and all of that. Does that change things, maybe? Yeah, I wouldn't bet on regime change in Iran at any time soon. And if anything, the guys who are in charge now seem to be as as sort of hard line, if not more than the crew

stay in charge. But I think that it would be wrong to say that there's no chance that this is weakened the regime in some way that doesn't materialize for six months, a year, 18 months, 24 months, or something like that. But I just don't think we can say for sure. Yeah, it's too hard to do it, sick, but at least something optimistic. All right, well, let's talk a little bit about the

standing of the United States around the world first. And we'll get to the Europeans in a minute and

whether we should reasonably expect them to help us. But let's talk about the Gulf Arabs. I keep hearing some variation of we didn't love this idea, but we told you you better succeed because it's our neighborhood, you just started a brawl and we're going to absorb the brunt of it. So you better achieve something mean, meaning full by force or by diplomacy. But expand

“upon that and let me know whether that's on base. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean,”

I was at the meaning security. Were you at the meaning security company? But not this year, no. Yeah, so this year, I mean, not this year, not this year. I had, you know, I was, I was, I was, I was buffing my belly in the garage. Yeah, that's right, that's right. That's right, that's right. Had other things to do. But, you know, the officials who were in from the Gulf Arab states were grabbing me in almost anybody they could find to say, don't do this war

because what's going to happen. Basically, their argument at the time was Iran is weak

certainly weaker than it was a year before the 12 day war and all, so they're kind of stuff. And if they retaliate, they're going to retaliate in the region, which is to say on them,

“on the Gulf Arab states, and not on you, which is say the Americans. And so, you know, you're”

taking on risk that is unnecessary for a possible war and disproportionately by us. Okay, fine. Well, we did it anyway. Whether that was right or whether it was wrong, we did it anyway. And then the message seemed to be, well, don't leave a wounded, a wounded animal, an angry, wounded animal on the, on the, that is capable still of a very significant violence on the battlefield. Here, you know, either, you know, don't stop halfway, don't stop after two weeks and say,

well, you know, this, we didn't get regime change, okay, I guess we're sort of done here now or whatever. But rather, go all the way and execute the full Iran war plan, which Sincam essentially has done. I mean, you know, they seem to have worked through most of the, if not all of the sites on their checklist, which is, you know, projected to take five or six weeks to do. And I think that's basically what happened. Now, as it's turned out, that some of the Iranian stockpiles of drones and missiles

are probably more numerous than people thought before. Certainly, they're appetite to shoot them

and their ability to steer them at critical infrastructure as greater than a lot of people thought before.

So, you know, I mean, yeah, the worst of all worlds with the Gulf Arab states would be to be left with an even harder line Iran that is learned the lesson that the way to get out of jams is to attack the infrastructure in your neighboring Arab states and be capable of doing that

“in the future. So that's what they're worried about. And yeah, I so I think that's, I think that's”

where they are. Okay. So we'll get to China in a minute as we begin to wrap up because we want to talk about the upcoming Xi Jinping summit. But for now, let's talk about the Europeans. So I think the United States has been quite comfortable and justified in criticizing Europe for some time for the free rider syndrome that's broken out where we take care of their security and they spend their money on their economies. But it seems to me they're finally doing what President

Trump asked them to do. And so, you know, rebuild yourselves and focus on Ukraine. And so I can't decide, is it justifiable for us to expect them to do more to get us out of this pickle on the straight of Hormuz? Or, you know, we should expect them to do it because it's your economies that are actually more dependent on this waterway than ours. So help us through this. Some of both, I mean, you know, the UK and France are putting together this 45-country coalition that's not going to

clear the straight of Hormuz by force. And of course, the US Navy doesn't really appear to be doing that either at the moment. But nevertheless, would have a mission to keep it open after

one because if you put 45 countries together in their naval capabilities, that's the kind of

stuff that we would need on an enduring basis to keep that open for a long time. And two, you know, these countries have, you know, skin in the game. This is not the kind of resources that would otherwise be, you know, distributed to the Ukrainians, the fend off the Russians, or something

“like that. So, you know, quite have the kind of Rob Peter to pay Paul aspect of it. So, I think”

what we should want in which we can recently expect from the Europeans is, if and when we actually get to some sort of deal or we can't get to a deal and the US ends up taking the leading clearing those straight to her moves by force, then after that, the Europeans come in in a significant

way for the enduring presence. It can be necessary to keep that thing open. And that is something

that the Europeans can do. I think that they are likely to do it. And as long as we don't, you know, continue to scream at them publicly at everything that they do do. I think we could count on it and that would be valuable. Okay, so that's a sensible explanation on what they're getting made fun of, which is that they'll begin to help us, quote, once the hostilities are over. You're saying that, well, are they also lacking in some capability to where it makes more

sense for them to do the sustainment mission? Well, I mean, you could ask them to go clear the straight to her moves tomorrow. But again, the US is not doing that. So, you would be asking them to sign up to a mission that the US itself is not engaged in. And there's a reason why we haven't engaged in it because it would be a months-long military operation and probably need to take care of, you know, coastal batteries within Iran. And maybe put boots on the ground

“for a while in order to make sure that drones and missiles are not being shot. You have to go”

after all the IRGC fastboats, the mind-links. You know, so it's a pretty big operation. And so one, I mean, they probably have the capabilities to a lot of that stuff. They have more mine demanding capabilities or mindsweeping capabilities that we have because we did decommission some ships and stuff like that. But yeah, you're right. Like the funny, you know, sort of dismissive comment is, well, isn't that funny? You guys really want to help in the straight to her moves.

Once there's nothing to help with, right? You want to get your military's involved. Once there's an agreement, not to fight there anymore. But that's not, it's actually not nothing to do that. Because assuming we don't want to leave the straight to her moves vulnerable to Iran changing its mind and shutting it down again into the indefinite future, then you have to have somebody who is

“patrolling and keeping that straight open. And if the Europeans are going to sign up to do it,”

that's great. It's not your way. Yeah, okay. All right, China, there are a couple of things here. First, I want to get to their economic position and whether they would help us, but then maybe we begin to close out on similarities and dissimilarities or how this might impact their decision to go after Taiwan. But there's a narrative out there that preceded Trump by holding Iranian ships from leaving. And indeed, maybe even because the Iranians themselves were having a

hard time getting some Chinese chips through that the Chinese will suffer the most in their economy in particular because they're the most dependent upon oil and gas coming through the straight. To me, that was a little bit too simplistic because I keep hearing that they've got enormous

tank farms and amazing resilience because they store their strategic stockpile, if you will.

But I mean, tell us about this. Can we expect China to be helping us because this is actually hurting the economically? Well, I mean, the higher price hurts China economically, but it hurts everybody economically. China has usually about eight months of stockpiles at any one time, which is lot more than any country that at least I can think of this out itself, a big oil producer. And of course, one of the reasons why they're suspected to have such huge stockpiles is because

not because they thought Iran would block the straight of her moves, but if they ever gotten a dust up at the United States, the United States could block aid the shipments of energy from the Middle East to China and they wanted to have enough to keep going for quite a long time. Looks like it's been a prudent plan on their part now. So I guess if this goes on long enough, then the Chinese could run out and all of that, but that would be after many other countries do.

The Chinese economy wasn't doing great to begin with. This won't help. It probably harms the

shortages and places like the Philippines and even in Australia and stuff like that, a particular

“fuel and everything. But I think from the Chinese perspective, the idea that the United States”

could get kind of tied down in the Middle East once again and not be able to focus its time and attention and military resources as much in the end of Pacific is a pretty nice possibility to contemplate. So I would look for China, especially after the shooting stops definitively, to have every incentive to try to get the Iranian economy and military backup on its feet. Because this turns in from a hot war, which has been recently back into a cold war between the

United States and Iran and our containment strategy, I don't know, looks something like 1990s Iraq, where there's a lot of military resources tied up, not in an active war, but in trying to make sure they don't kind of get out of their box. That's a situation that's favourable to China.

I mean, right now we've got our third aircraft carrier steaming its way to the Sankham, AOR,

and not a single aircraft carrier in the Indo-Pacific, the repositioning of fat and patriots and lots of other things from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. I mean, this is the kind of thing that China would like to see more of rather than less and so they'll have an interest along those lines. So UC China is an interested party, of course. Yeah. They love the soil and they want everything to come back to normal, but they don't feel

strongly enough to really go try and exercise any geopolitical muscle on Iran or even us when we

“meet on May 15th. Well, I mean, I think none is a little overstage, just because if you look at”

what they did previously, they encourage the Iranians to take the ceasefire deal.

And they did so in a way that was fairly uncharacteristic of Chinese diplomacy and the Chinese normally would be kind of just a kind of stay out of this and let things happen, but they really did push the Iranians. I think for two reasons, one, you know, this does have a cost to their economy, the longer this goes on. And two, I think they, you know, they see an opportunity to be seen as a responsible party in the world when they think the US has an opportunity to be seen as an irresponsible

party. Now, when they'll succeed and that's a whole separate question within that narrative, but I think that's kind of how they kind of how they see it. Now, they're not going to solve all our problems for us in the Middle East for sure, but I think they have pushed the Iranians to try to take a deal that the Iranians otherwise were less inclined to take. Got it. You know, the other thing that

“I think this war brings up, which is relevant to China in a very speculative way, is that, you know,”

for somebody like you who was in school in the 1800s learning, you know, about the fonts of geopolitics and all of that back before there was anything like technology or anything like that. I mean, a lot of it was about choke points, right? Geographic choke points. You got the straight of hormones and the bubbleman dev and the straight on Malakha and the Taiwan straight whoever controls those has disproportion influence over the way everybody else behaves, etc. And, you know,

and then we sort of told ourselves, yeah, but it's really about kind of remote control war and cyber attacks and all the other stuff that you spent like the last how many years of your life focused on. But now we're kind of going back to the JMA, the Michael Allen childhood learning to wear. These choke points matter a hell of a lot, right? If you can control the waterway with 20% of the world's oil flow, you don't need a nuclear program to get leverage. You know, we

got that, right? And so if you're China, now who knows what Xi Jinping is taking away from all this? But if you're China, you got to think about, well, if I want to coerce Taiwan, I could invade the island, I could bomb the island, I could surround the island, I could blockade the island or I could just try to prevent the export of semi-conductors from TSMC to the rest of the world. And, you know, if that has an effect kind of like the effect on blockading the straight-of-arms,

well, I'll just wait for the world to economically start to grind to a halt and come to terms. So, who knows? But I think you can see a revival among lots of people including military planners of this, you know, focus on geographic choke points and the kind of stuff that seems like a little bit of a okay boomer. All right, so speaking of choke points, I want to give you two points of view. One, shutting down the hormones, according to one columnist, has demonstrated that

it is a quite replicable playbook for China to use its military to blackmail the ships and commercial vessels of the world from going to Taiwan. So, they're calling that a, uh, own goal that we've taught that lesson here. But a more hopeful view, and maybe these can both be right,

has left or proven the idea that determined defenders, arms with the right mix of asymmetric

capabilities and resilient command structures can do powerful damage to their adversaries.

“You're, you're one of the leading strategies in Washington. That's why I think of myself.”

Go ahead. Tell us. Tell us. What do you think of these two things? Well, when you're coming, when it's coming to just a blockade of Taiwan, it's not like that Chinese needed to watch the war in Iran to come up with this. I mean, you know, the idea of a blockade of Taiwan pre-exes out there. That's by a very long time. So, when I was talking about it, it's efficacy has been demonstrated.

Yeah. Well, that's why I was saying that the, you know, the blockade or the prevention of export of a key input into the global economy, like semi-conductors, I think that, you know, at least a case has been established for that kind of approach, as opposed to, you know, just an overall blockade of Taiwan. But I mean, yeah, China has had, I mean, his practice blockades of Taiwan. So, I didn't need the Iran war to figure out how to do that. And there's plenty of options available

to it should it seek to do that. The downside for the Chinese would be it's not clear that necessarily solves their problem, depending on what their problem is perceived to be. I mean, you blockade the

“island and then what exactly? You know, what do you, what do you sort of get on the back end of that?”

On the, the other side, you know, on this, on the second part that you mentioned, I think there's

sort of two sides of the story. I mean, yes, there's the demonstration that a country like Iran, especially if they're not going to be troops on the ground, through, you know, relentless air power can survive as a regime, a very hostile regime, but it survived. It can exact significant damage on its neighbors through drones of missile strikes, you know, it can, you can do all this things. But Iran is not in good shape right now. So we shouldn't, I mean, there is another side of the story,

which is the unique military capabilities of the United States. I mean, the United States sailed into the region and spent weeks. I mean, destroying Iran's defense industrial base after last year, destroying its nuclear sites and killing a lot of its, you know, leadership. And it's been challenging for sure. And Iran's come out of this with some of the advantages that didn't have before and so on, but the kind of things that the U.S. military has

been able to accomplish in Iran within the borders of Iran, in a way, have been remarkably successful as contrasted to some of the stuff's happened outside the borders of Iran. And is the kind of thing that only the U.S. military could accomplish. And so if you're a China or anybody else,

“I think you have to look at what Iran is being able to do, but I think you'd be really unwise”

not to look at the United States. It's been able to accomplish because that is pretty eye-watering and daunting. Well, that's why I was trying to get to you to give the United States better than an incomplete grade earlier. Well, I mean, but here I would distinguish between the political objectives of the war and the military objectives of the war. I mean, you don't go to war just because you want to blow things up and kill people go because you have

some political objectives or TJ King. Yeah. And if the political objective was regime change,

okay, that failed. Now the administration first said it was, and then kind of said it wasn't,

if the political objective was to, you know, to prevent Iran from being the imminent nuclear threat to the United States. And it was, well, it wasn't really an imminent nuclear threat to the United States. And for, so you can sort of go on and say, well, do we achieve our political objectives pretty hard to see as of right now that, you know, we came out of this, having achieved a political objective and they came out of this huge loss. On the military side, it's a very different story. I mean,

the execution of effectively the on the shelf Iran war plan in, you know, went very, very well inside the borders of Iran. I mean, air superiority effectively, you know, yes, to two planes went down in Iran, which is terrible and tragic. But I mean, you look at what went down over Iraq in 2003, and it was a significant multiple of that against a smaller country and a smaller military and a smaller force. I mean, you look at the intelligence that we had to be able to operate on on in terms

of leadership targets in terms of everything else. You know, you look at all that and the capabilities of the U.S. military were exercised in a way that we really haven't seen before at this level and it had effects that were, you know, very dramatic. So there's, yes, there's this Junction that's there can be between political objectives and military objectives. But if anybody drew the wrong one from this and discounted the military efficacy of this operation, then they would be deeply

For forgetting what you would do or what the right thing to do is what do you think

is going to happen? Do you, did you say earlier the economic blockade of Iranian ports

will likely eventually lead to a narrow agreement between the United States and Iran

“to lift our blockade and exchange for lifting their blockade? That is what I think. I think that at”

some point in the coming weeks, you'll see a narrow deal to lift blockade for lifting blockade.

Now there'll be other things and other forms of pressure that we're bringing to bear and all of that.

“And then there will be an agreement to have nuclear talks. The fundamental bargain of the nuclear”

talks will be some cessation in uranium enrichment in Iran in some disposition of the Iranian of the uranium that's in Iran. You can exchange for some measure of sanctions relief. That's just

“sound pretty familiar. And then we'll be left with all the other problems that we started with.”

Yep. And that's where presumably we're in this negotiating a framework of three to four page doc. And certainly nothing like the actual JCPOA of the Obama years. Richard Fontaine, thank you so much. You were absolutely terrific. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate you having me. That was Richard Fontaine. I'm Michael Allen. Please join us next week for another episode of NatSec Matters. NatSec Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with Assistance from Ashley Berry.

NatSec Matters is a production of Beacon Global Strategies.