Exclusive - The Iranian End Game: Richard Nephew

what we're trying to achieve.

I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today I'm joined by Mr. Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and former director for Iran at the National Security Council. Mr. Nephew joins us today for a discussion on the rapidly developing conflict in Iran. And the broader implications for the region.

Stay with us as we speak with Richard Nephew. Thanks for joining us. Richard, let me just turn it over to you at the outset. What did you think of the strike and give us your assessment of where you think we are right now?

Yeah, I mean, it's amazing we sit back and think about it.

“We're only talking about what 72, not even 96 hours ago yet, right?”

Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. I mean, one, I had built in a sense that there were going to be strikes again and on Iran targeting its missile program. I thought that was basically inevitable because there was a lot of concern in Israel about Iran's ability to reconstitute and what that actually made.

And so I can't say I was surprised that there were strikes. I can't say I was surprised that the United States participated in those strikes. I think what still is a little bit surprising to me is the ambiguity about our objectives and what we're trying to achieve and you're seeing kind of both things. You're seeing the administration talk about Indian Iran's ability to project power.

And then you're seeing press reports about Army and the Kurds and trying to actually topple the government. But certainly the strike on supremely or how my name was part of that. So, you know, I'm still, as I'm sure everyone is trying to kind of suck out what's the endgame here.

“What do we need to see in order for our hostilities to end?”

What's our objective and how long was to go on because I think there's a very strong possibility that by the end of the week we're in ceasefire, I would not also be surprised at the end of the week that we're seeing a significant escalation as well. Well, you think we could be in ceasefire? It feels like they are really going to prosecute the entire target list this time.

Do you think ceasefire is even on the horizon? I think it is. You know, frankly, as St. Com said yesterday, they're moving through the target list pretty fast. And if you were to get an Iranian government to come forward and say, okay, we're going to give

up our missile program where you give up any possibility of having nuclear weapons we're going to agree to a transition, you know, we're going to set up someone to be the Delsea Rodriguez of Iran and to be clear, I don't think there is a mobiest one of those. Then I could absolutely see the administration saying, good enough, I'm not sure these railways are there.

That might be worth talking through, but I do actually think that this administration given what they have set out as the objectives and the pace through which they're moving through a target list, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't, you know, be willing to entertain, you know, a quicker move to ceasefire. If we see the sorts of impacts on the oil and gas that we've already seen, ramp up.

So I want to get to you on whether and how easy it is to escort tankers to the streets of Formos, but let me press you a little bit more on this potential ceasefire thing. So apparently the former Supreme Leader's son is going to be the new Supreme Leader. And I was thinking that that message was new boss, Sam is the old boss, we're going to be infrigently inflexible.

So then this gets me back to this argument that JCPOA notwithstanding fundamentally at this regime's core is just sort of an uncompromising anti-American assertion of their own rights

“to have missiles in a nuclear program, et cetera, et cetera, I mean, do you read it differently?”

I just feel like they are never going to sign even if they're getting pounded all day long

for a week. It just makes me wonder whether they would just rather have the war and survive standing rather than compromise. Well, I think that's that's the rub, right? You know, would they have the war and survive standing?

Well, that implies that they think they're going to survive, right? And so I mean, I buy into what's been the long standing U.S. intelligence community conclusion, which is the number one objective of the Iranian regime is to be the Iranian regime, right? That at the end of the day, you know, survival of the regime is the number one objective. And that's part of the reason why in the past they have made compromise.

I mean, remember that we all remember that 2007 National Intelligence System had better

The reason for that as the I.C. said was that they were worried about regime stability.

And so they took a chance on suspension because I thought that was going to lead to the regime staying in power. And you can make similar arguments about the J.C.P.U.A. itself and so on and so forth. So they have demonstrated willingness to make tactical compromise. And that's the important nuance of making here tactical compromise if they think that

or preserve the regime for some period of time, I don't think that they would give up having missiles or having an option on nuclear weapons or similar in perpetuity or that they wouldn't cheat on a deal to be clear. But that doesn't mean that there couldn't still be a, okay, let's get a ceasefire for right now, just like we had back in June, right?

It's what I'm putting out. The June ceasefire had no terms, right? It was just we have ceased fire.

“Is there a possibility that we could ceasefire again?”

Sure. And we would potentially be back at it in six weeks, six months. Is it clear? Okay. The supreme leader select successor, is there anything else to read into this?

I mean, I, you know, we're all reading up on him and et cetera, et cetera, but has a long time stayed department, you know, consumer of intelligence. What can you say about this guy or what message does it send?

Well, so look, I think he's always been bandied about it as a possible option, but that

there's been a lot of anxiety inside of Iran about trying to create a hereditary supreme leader position. I mean, that is not what they were aiming at when the regime was set up. I think there's a lot of anxiety about creating a hereditary position there. There's just reasons as I understand for why that would be problematic, but certainly

there's also political reasons for too. So I don't think much to be always, you know, the front runner, one of the factors, frankly, is that a lot of people who might have succeeded on how many they are dead. And not just in this recent era strikes, right? And we're also talking about people like, you know, Racy, who is the president of Iran

died in the helicopter crash, you know, Ross and Johnny have been talked about as being a supreme leader. I mean, there are lots of people who might have been the person, but at this point, they're starting to run through their options.

“I think what this more says to be honest, is that most of us are known quantity to some”

folks. He's pliable to the IRGC. He probably has made some kind of arrangement with the IRGC so that they're comfortable with the kinds of decisions that they potentially would make. I wouldn't surprise me if there's some kind of deal that they've struck that, you know,

most of us will be the supreme leader, but that the IRGC gets a freer hand on things like eventually nuclear weapons, right, or, or their ability to enrich themselves economically. I mean, there's lots of things the IRGC could get from much about that leads him to be potentially the person. I will say, though, what's interesting is while we've all heard it, so far as I am aware,

and I've been distracted a little bit, you know, doing things this morning, but I don't think we've got official confirmation that much about how to actually be named. And I think that's right. That's indicative of the fact that they're still working through some of the process and there might even be objections that are now coming forward, people are saying, yeah,

we don't really like what this says, especially with much of being a relatively man, you know, that making this decision now potentially has to be the supreme leader for another 30 years if this system were to survive. I'm one more on success, sir, and then we're going to go to the news about the Kurds.

“But yeah, all you learn, Johnny, I think you've had dealings with him.”

Do you think he was ever a serious candidate to be supreme leader, or is he going to be like a power behind the throne?

Yeah, a power behind the throne, a power behind the throne, I think he's always been that kind

of guy. And I think, you know, some people have talked about, you know, Rouhani is being that I don't think that that's likely outcome, especially right now. You could have maybe imagined that if the JCPOA had been implemented and if he had some windows sales on that score.

But I think it was always going to be somebody who is got at least minimal religious credentials and has got tight IRG relations. And I think there are definitely other clerics that could potentially fill that role. But I think as part of the reason why they may be focusing on how much the book. So amazing CNN article posted last night, the suggested that the CIA has been transferring

weapons to the Kurds and that we're very interested in them, I'm not sure what, marching on Tehran or otherwise being in a position to if not outright take the regime, which seems unlikely at least to supply an enormous distraction for the regime when it's up to so many other items, so many other things. What's your take on this?

I was kind of surprised, I thought on the side might do it, I was kind of surprised that the CIA allegedly, we're not briefed, is doing it. Yeah, I was surprised too, and I have to say people I know were much, you know, more

they're still pretty skeptical that this is going to be terribly durable and not least

“because, you know, I think the Kurds have got some bad taste in their mouth about how things”

have emerged in Syria, you know, things out there, emerging work out in Iraq too. I think there's also some some reason to be skeptical from a Turkish angle, right, that it's not clear, I think, to anyone that the the Turks are going to be terribly, you know, azim on the idea of army Kurds to go in, you know, break off pieces of territory, up right around the Turkish border, so there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of this.

I think, look, you can make an argument that if they are, if they are willing, army then such that they can cause distraction and difficulty for the Iranian government right now is useful to broader U.S. war aims potentially at diverse resources and forces.

It's worth noting though, right, this is not a ground war right now, right?

This is an era war. So, from the standpoint of whether or not this actually takes away Iranian resources, but it doesn't take away their building, watch missiles that Israel doesn't take away their building, it wants missiles or drones at energy, you know, infrastructure in the Gulf. So, I'm a little skeptical that this is going to even necessarily have the impact that

“it might be build is having, and I think, you know, whether or not it is a durable approach”

to this situation. I think one thing it does signal is that there is a strong willingness to entertain the support regime change in regime collapse, not just the who is in charge of, who is the supreme leader, who's in charge of Tehran, but also potentially trying to fracture the country, and that actually, that worries me pretty much as much as anything else right now.

The idea of trying to create a fractured or fail state in Iran comes a tremendous risk. We've seen it in Syria in other places too. So, I don't know, I mean, I was surprised like you, it wasn't on my, you know, top 10 list of things that would happen, but if it is in fact true, I think it says a lot about what U.S. ambitions might be, and frankly, about our willingness to break them off a lot

in Iran as a means of achieving what we're setting out to do. Well, sometimes I see people that are deeply skeptical of Israel say that that is one of their aims of fractured country, maybe even in civil war could possibly suit them. That's, well, that's cynical, but maybe I mean, I mean, I mean, I'll be honest, I mean, I have heard not necessarily people in government, but I have heard Israeli,

strategic thinkers say a chaotic disorganized dismembered Iran is not one that is able to develop nuclear weapons or want-trained long-range ballistic missiles at Israel. And so I don't think it's necessarily like the main objective of Israeli policy making,

“but I think if they're facing two or three scenarios, and one of them is a IRGC runs state”

that is now furious about everything that's happened over the last couple of years or a chaotic broken apart of Iran. I mean, I don't think it's either crazy from Israeli perspective or unlikely that they may prefer one to the other. And I think, you know, it's, I guess, as we move on to a different topic here, it's worth noting

just how many different ethnic groups there are within Iran. So I just assume there are many more others than the Kurds who were willing maybe to rise up at least to cause distractions.

I mean, it's always assumed that all the agents that these railies recruit are from all

of these disaffected ethnic groups. So I'd be surprised if the Mossad is not also in the game here somewhere. Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, if you were attempting to make problems for, you know, central government to Iran, I think there is a little bit of logic there.

The one thing I'll say though is well, there are a lot of different ethnic groups. I mean, some of them are, you know, poor parts of the Islamic Republic system and people of, you know, pointed out that, you know, the Azari are, you know, an ethnic group, but they're also, you know, built into the fabric of the, of the country as well, right? So, you know, I think one concern I have is making, making a leap of logic that just

because there are different groups within a country that means they're automatically going to be opposed to central government be willing to join in and to collapsing the system. And that, that simply may not be the case. And I think, you know, that the Kurds may be different than the buluch, for instance, in the way in which they're looking at this and what the capabilities are and, you know, what

are what Masad or anybody else's ability is to influence their decision making too. So, I don't think that we should look at around the same way we might have looked at Syria or you might have looked at Iraq and, and I don't think that the fractured lines are nearly

But, you know, again, that, that doesn't mean that, you know, from a, from a certain way of looking at things, even if it's only a small contribution to a good outcome, you know, somebody might think, well, I'll, I'll take that and at least cause more headaches.

Well, small contribution reminds me when I was in the NSC this year, but always say, we're

not the policy, we can support the policy, we'll be part of a larger plan, but don't look at us as the silver bullet to see what everything. Okay.

“So, let's, let me ask you that, we'll get to scenarios, I think, towards the end, but before”

we get to oil, what's your gut tell you on, let's say that we're done with some bombing very, very soon, and we've done all we can do to blow up the, so-called instruments of regime repression, the B.C. and the G.R.G.C. local who does? I don't know. Do you think what's your gut tell you, do you think the Iranians are going to go back

on the streets? I think it's possible, but I'll say, while we're seeing a lot of police stations and our G.C.C. headquarters and similar B, attack destroyed, you know, my understanding is that there are still arm besiege, you know, walking the streets, and I don't get the impression that they have back down in the slide, frankly, you could make an argument that they have

every more incentive to not even tolerate limited protest activity, the way they did

for the first couple of days of January, I mean, it's worth going back, you know, the ultimate

repressive instincts of the Islamic Republic were on full display, right, I mean, they killed tens of thousands of people, they didn't do that on day one though, right, they attempted to give some space for ventilation, and their even statements that affect made by the Iranian President, similar, then when they thought things were getting a little too at a hand day, they responded, my sense is that the Iranian government now responds on

moment one.

“And so I think this goes to a real question of what is the level of U.S. support.”

You and I certainly remember, you know, everything that went on in Iraq, you're after the first call for, you know, there is going to be some skepticism that when the U.S. says where we've got your back, that that's going to be me and fully represented by what we actually do. And I think.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, if you're in Iranian protester, and you're looking over head as the seizures are bearing down on you, you might be a little bit nervous that the U.S. isn't going to be there. Maybe that will all have an impact on what the Iranian population is going to do.

So my guess, you know, if you want my gut reaction, it's that they will be a little bit tentative until they have seen what actually is emerging. If they think they have an opportunity, then yeah, I think there are lots of people in Iran who would take the opportunity to get rid of this system.

“I mean, no doubt about it, but I think that they will want to be sure that they are going”

to at least have a chance to success, and I'm not being attacked in your moment one. Yeah, I mean, we've definitely left the Syrian Kurds holding the bag at least twice and to say nothing of Afghanistan and Iraq. Okay. So we're you now, Iran vowed before the war took what regionalized the conflict if

we're attacked.

But you know what, I thought that ultimately they wouldn't, and if they did it all, it would

just be oil infrastructure because I thought why antagonize other states. But they did it, and they did it boldly, and they went after civilian targets as well. Were you surprised by that, and walk us through the rationale, is it just to sort of, as we, as we breed, they hope to inspire the Gulf Arabs to call up Donald Trump and say, this has gotten too hard, you better stop.

Yeah, I can't say I was surprised. I was maybe surprised a little on the timing, right? I could have imagined that, you know, the first couple of moments that, you know, the Iranian retaliation would be solely aimed at U.S. bases in those places and wouldn't immediately go to civilian infrastructure.

But I can't say that I was shocked by the Iranian response or because look, they're perspective in part because of the nature of the U.S. attack in the first sense, or if U.S. is really attacked in targeting the Supreme Leader, is that the system is under the most serious threat. And so one of the things that I've been thinking for a while is that security people inside Iran probably thought that the previous Supreme Leader left way too much on the table,

and way too much on the field, right? That, you know, think back, you know, back to 2023 when, you know, Hamas unleashed the atrocities, they didn't act over, you know, they were, I'm sure people in Iran who said, well, you know, we didn't necessarily pick the day here, but, you know, we got to do something here in the Supreme Leader didn't.

And then when the Hezbollah was attacked, you know, I'm sure there are people in Iran who said,

And then when they were exchanged between, you know, Israel and Iran, you know, so when you

add all those things up, there's been a lot of, I wouldn't say caution, but a little bit more reserved in the Iranian security response.

“And I think that they have been broadcasting as loudly as possible.”

We are not going to do that this time. And that's part of the reason why they wanted to make sure, from moment one, that everyone understood, this is a, this is a chips to the center of the table kind of moment for us. And it hope, you know, that that is, you know, bearing some sort of influence. And if it doesn't, then they want to try and at least make the pain so broad.

And this is where Straits are Muslim and that, that the U.S. has to take a note of it as opposed to just, you know, having a free hand. So from that perspective, you know, I kind of thought that the Iranians are going to be as aggressive as they were.

I wouldn't necessarily pick, you know, a hotel and, you know, Dubai is the first place.

But from the standpoint of trying to really upset and worry people, you know, I think that they were broadcasting that that was their intention. And that things are going to be different this time. Okay. So the other part of the Iranian response is, of course, to cause disruption and energy

“markets and the oil originally rose, I think it was 8% the Iranians have struck a”

refinery in Saudi Arabia to gas plants and cutter causing cutter to halt LNG production. I think, yeah, what, so this was their plan all along, rocks the boat, cause oil prices to go up to try and get the United States to back down or others to call the United States and back down anything to add to that before we get to Hormes. Well, and to make sure that, you know, gas prices went up in the United States.

Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they are clearly trying to make sure that they get attention in the places

that they curve or vulnerabilities. And yeah, I mean, you named all the main things, I would also say that, you know, there are lots of reports about tankers being attacked, you know, even some, you know, drone activity it may not have sunk ships, but, but I'm sure has had a massive impact on ship captains and whether or not they're willing to transit ship owners, especially now, that they don't

have insurance coverage. All of that is definitely having impact in terms of market dynamics and people's looking down. Yeah. So, of course, Iran has called the straits, quote, effectively closed.

I don't think there's been a traceable passing since Saturday night.

First, can Hapek Lloyd and all these shipping firms are saying we're not letting our ships

go through there. So we've been talking about it being sort of a de facto closure of the straits because insurance won't broker or won't cover you for going through it. And, you know, Trump was tweeting about that yesterday and trying to do terrorism risk insurance. But talk a little bit about this.

We've sunk their navy apparently. I just read that we had a submarine sink, another naval asset of the Iranians. But I've also heard it's pretty easy to mine the straits. You've got fast boats, you've got other smaller craft that could get out there. And the United States doesn't have a great bunch of mine sweepers.

So talk a little bit about this for a minute and let's go from there.

“Yeah, I mean, look, again, you know, as an analyst, you have to look back and you have”

to hand it to your adversary if they do something that is a big clever. If I were six months ago trying to figure out how they would close the straits, I would have probably imagined more direct attacks on shipping, you know, if not actual mining as being necessary. But frankly, even just the threats and the impact that's had on insurance companies and

shipping companies and ship captains, it's been pretty remarkable, actually, and it's preserved options. Now, it is a little funny to me that the Iranian reaction from the naval perspective wasn't at least to put the ships at sea, you know, at the end of the day, I'd offer a lot of their naval resources, you know, where sunk at the dock.

And from a whole in perspective, that is not what I would imagine the Iranian response to be. But look, as you said, they have, at this point now without having to put a single mine in the water, they have managed to have a fairly significant impact. They may be that that's their next step is to try and deploy some mines.

I think that they are pretty sure that doing so will get those ships sunk and so they may be thinking, you know, yeah, we can probably get some mines out there, but they won't survive that long. And so forth. But I think what that more speaks to is the same reason why the Iranians haven't

attacked a lot of oil and gas infrastructure, because they certainly could. They've done all things you mentioned, but you know, we haven't seen the kind of big

So why not? But one on.

“It's because I think they're thinking that they're going to have a future and that they're”

going to have to live in that circumstance. And they know that such a response potentially results in the elimination of their own oil and gas infrastructure. I see. So the Iranian risk here is they take an action.

The United States destroys carguer island and that means the Iranian economy, you know, comes to a crashing halt, you know, in the future. Now, that goes to a real fundamental question of how long to the Iranians in charge of those military sources, think that they have a future. We don't, you know, we don't know that.

And that means that all of these things are still potentially on the table. Gotcha. Smart. We're going to take a quick break and we will be right back with more of our discussion with Richard Nephew.

Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side by side with leading companies to help them understand national security policy, geopolitical risk, global technology policy, and federal procurement trends. Beacon's insight gives business leaders the decision advantage, founded in 2013. Beacon develops and supports the execution of bespoke strategies to mitigate business risk,

drive growth, and navigate a complex geopolitical environment with a bipartisan team and decades of experience, speak and provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. Okay. So the Iranians, or if I have effectively closed the straits and talk a little bit about,

we'll come back in a second to whether the president can escort ships through the straits

if we lose, but I want to go back to the rise in oil prices. People are rightly focused on China. I sounds like anywhere from 90 to 100% of Iran's oil goes to China, and that's something like 9% of their total Iran imports are oil imports. Tell me about the knock-on effects.

What's China going to do?

“Is this going to hurt their economy in the medium term or tell me your take?”

Basically, it all goes to a question of duration. How long is this going on? Right now, there was enough oil on the water, there was enough access supply, there were ships that were already laden with oil off the coast, that we haven't seen dramatic effects right now.

And I think that's reflected in the price. A colleague of mine points to the fact that you would think, given this is the big one

that everyone's been anticipating, you'd see an even higher price impact, but ultimately

the explanation is, people still think this will be over sometimes soon, and that there won't be significant physical damage that's done. All that potentially changes if your physical damage is done, or this is still an issue two weeks or now three weeks from now, or thereafter. If you have ships being sunk, if you have mines in the water, if you have a very long term

campaign, that's where you potentially see those sorts of spikes, and that's especially the case depending on what's actually hit, right? So you're exactly right, the Iranian input to China is pretty high for Iran, but it's not very high for China. They could probably survive Iran going away.

But now if you're going to add to that Saudi going away, right, and you're adding that to the Kuwaiti, et cetera.

“And so that's what we're starting to see.”

We're also starting to see an impact in terms of production sites. So there's reports that we're starting to see shudders, or that we will soon see shudders. Well, that has a longer term impact. If you start cutting off production, that has an impact in terms of the oil fields themselves, it has an impact in terms of how long it takes to bring it on back online, but that's

really happening on the gas side too. So from that's the endpoint, right now people can say, OK, 96 hours in, we can manage a certain thing. But two Easter now, when you had production cuts, when you had a significant impact on the supplies, the reserves, the inventories, the oil that was on the water all going away,

basically take it away all the fat.

And the moment you take it away, the fat that's where you could see much more significant oil price increases, both in terms of oil, and in terms of gas. So when you did the Iran file, of course, one of the things that we all worked on, of course, through different administrations was to warn insurance companies not to get out there and cover Iranian tankers, know your customer or the state sponsors of terrorism in the rest.

I don't know if this gives you, do you have any insight on what the president's trying to do by terrorism risk insurance? Do you think that's going to work through DFC, or is this just some work around that's not really going to succeed? Yeah, I'm a little skeptical until we just start to see some actual practical plans on the

I mean, you know, right now, we effectively have a tweet, you know, I don't know that there

“has been a formal document laying out, you know, who's being covered in for what?”

And frankly, some people have pointed out as they're looking at this. So is the U.S. going to provide essentially risk insurance that's going to have a primary beneficiary being China, is that another thing we're about to do? Yeah. So there's some really interesting questions into actually how that'll be executed,

who will be allowed to be a participant in how that all will work. And, you know, that immediately has an impact on the credibility and the durability of this. Also, you know, what are we talking about in terms of amounts, right? You know, if the amount of money that is going to be put down in terms of insurance is not sufficient to actually make captains being willing to make that risk and shippers to make

that risk, you know, considering all the potential downsides. No, because again, you know, the ship gets hit by a missile starts leaking oil throughout the Persian Gulf. That's a long-term durable problem that has now been created. All that comes back to a question of, you can maybe provide some amount of insurance coverage,

but you can't actually prevent the bad outcomes that insurance would just, you know, help them to accelerate, and so you might still have, you know, ship owners and shipping companies and similar to say, "Pass, you know, I'm not doing this right now, at least at current prices." And that's where we come back to a real fundamental question of, yeah, probably some of would do some of these things at a higher price point, but then that price point gets passed

on the consumers. And all the bads come from that. Yeah, here you go. Okay, so the president says he's going to take a series of actions to make sure oil prices stay low.

Yeah. What does that mean? Does that mean tapping the strategic petroleum reserve, does it mean waving different ethanol standards? That doesn't sound like it's going to be much of a help that we've gotten that question.

Yeah. What can he do? Before we get to escort tankers through the streets of Hormuz, can you think of anything else he can do? He's got to go to Congress for relief on the gas stacks.

What do you think, what do you think he can do? Well, those are all the ones. And I've asked my colleagues. There's nothing else. I've got to admit, every time I ask a colleague about this, they make a kind of hesitant

laugh and go, I don't know.

“I think there's a lot of hedge scratching at this point as to what's available.”

I think tax relief is potentially the one potential option there. I think it's all about trying to keep supply. And it's certainly not going to come from pushing for new investment, new production. What are one of the questions I asked my colleagues a little bit ago was, what would it take for you to see massive new investments and how long would it take those investments to come

online?

And the answer is pretty straightforward.

It would take higher prices over a longer period of time and grassy and new investment or new production for quite some while. So this right now is really much more about probably demand destruction more than anything. And so, I mean, the real question that I think the president's going to have to confront is the tone of Americans not to drive.

Right? Are we back to the kinds of shocks that we've had in the past? So this all feeds back where we started this conversation about why I think there's a possibility of a ceasefire because the longer this language is the longer this is in place. The decision points he's going to come across are much worse.

Well, no, I agree. They'll be a ceasefire. I've just did know it would be soon. I kind of believe they want to. But who knows how far we are down the target list exactly.

All right, so what about the Straits of Hormuz is it, well, first OPEC, sorry.

That's what I was grappling with. They made a modest increase in supply, but is it that Saudi and everyone else is also him done by the Straits of Hormuz? So OPEC increases don't matter? Yeah, well, and also the increase is pretty divinimous.

“So I mean, yeah, all those things go back to, I think if anything, it was an attempt at”

a market signal, but it really, so far as I am aware, it's not really struck anybody as a durable or serious way of actually responding to this problem. No, I know you're not an admiral, but tell me, I'm sure you've studied this issue for years. Tell me a little bit about the practicality of the U.S. Navy escorting tankers through this very narrow 21 mile, but only two miles worth of navigable channel through the Straits

of Hormuz. Is this practical?

Well, so I think, let's start with the base concept, everyone's always going back, well,

we did this in the late 80s and the reason why I couldn't do it now, but as people kind of pointed it out, the U.S. wasn't an active combatant during that time frame, right? And so the nature of our escort duty was, if you hit a U.S. ship, we will be an active combatant and people should avoid that. And then, you know, when eventually we did become an active combatant, you know, we were

able to, you know, destroy us, giving a part of the Iranian Navy and oil refineries or

And so we demonstrated the value of that deterrence, you know, thereafter, but it all started

“with the, we are not a combat, that's a patient, right?”

And so you're basically saying you're going to have U.S. ships escorting while we are potentially

under fire ourselves. So they're already a vulnerability that we potentially have. And as you said, you know, not an admiral here, but my understanding is that one of the reasons why a lot of our ships are right now operating in the Gulf of Maman instead is because of the potential risk of taking, you know, fire from Iranian batteries on the eastern

side of the Gulf. And, you know, whether or not drone attacks, whether or not missile attacks on U.S. ships becomes that much more serious, you know, once they're in the straight. So I mean, could we potentially do this, perhaps, what, what does that actually look like practically one of the risk profile of doing?

So right now, I'm, I'm a little bit more skeptical. And I think I'll say, too, of course, is, you know, look, you can imagine, you know, a week

from it when we believe that we have managed to take out an even larger number of Iranian

missile launchers and similar that we think we've suppressed enough of their ability to fire on us from from the shoreline that we're okay. But there is still going to be significant risk there, and that's part of the reason why you might still see captains, you know, and it turns companies and others saying, yeah, okay, we'll, we'll be interested in this, but let's see you do it a few times before

we can, or if we actually get ourselves the best of them. Yeah, everybody get comfortable at anchor. Why haven't the Iranians this time? I think they didn't tune 2000, 2025. Why haven't they targeted any of these Rayleigh energy facilities?

So it's interesting. And, you know, I think the logic could be the same as why they may not have targeted the Gulf of the Arab State facility, but they were just going to go hit Carguards and that solves that problem. Yeah, I see.

All right, brilliant. Okay.

Let's get a little bit into, first of all, before you mentioned that we're hunting, of course,

launchers, we're hunting ballistic missiles. What other military targets, I mean, it's been described to me that's a, it's a lot of work, but it can be done over time to hunt these targets and then I want to ask you about the nuclear targets. Yeah.

I mean, so, you know, we're hearing that they, in the first instance, we're hitting production sites, which makes sense, and that they've been going after the launchers, and the potential storage locations similar. The problem that we've got is that the Iranians are aware of that, and so a lot of these are in deeply buried bunkers that are really hard to hit.

“And so, you know, I think that doesn't mean that we can't attack entrance points, right?”

I mean, if you can't go back in to go get another missile to drive back out and launch, that makes things harder, right? You can try and close the exits that missiles potentially use from underground missile bases. So you can make it harder for them to engage in launches, even if, you know, they still

have a supply of missiles, and if they, you know, don't have to have the ability to produce more of them. That's, I think, as far as I understand that that has been a major part of the target set, in addition to suppressing air defenses, you know, we, we speaking of cargo that we're reports about, you know, smoke, you know, coming up around cargo, but it sounds

like that that is because the US attacked air defense systems there, you know, allowing us to potentially attack the site itself more freely in the future. And I think that there is also, you know, again, clearly been attacks on the Navy and some of the conventional, you know, army forces as well, you know, might have been, you know, taking place, given the nature of the kinds of airplanes that have been involved in the strikes

thus far. Okay. Great. So your huge next nuclear expert as well. You know, I haven't been as offended by people saying that we were going to prosecute some

more nuclear targets if they were quote obliterated, because I think Trump told these railies in June to stop after 12 days, and I know they had a larger target list. There's so many, there's probably so many different militarization, R&D labs and the rest. So what here's my target list, my target list is finish off any weaponization labs definitely

“go after pickaxe mount and I want to hear what you have to say about that and why I wasn't”

hit last time. I think it's a supposed to be a newly, even more, more deeper centrifugal. And then maybe hit the other sites, which I think we've already done at the tons. I don't know if we're aiming for the missing phantom 400 kilograms of HU. What do you think about the nuclear target set?

Well, look, I mean, as you said, I mean, there are definitely some targets that happen yet. I mean, there's reports that going after some of the facilities that might have been involved with weaponization, you know, that that had been rebuilt in similar, some of those labs

But you put your finger on, I'm part of our problem here, which is the Iranians have some

“facilities that are much more deeply varied and therefore much more difficult for us to hit”

that the mob doesn't solve, right? And pickaxe mount is at the top of that list, but come and potentially, you know, close behind is the tunnel system at Espa, which is where Iran, we believe, is throwing the majority of that 400 odd kilograms to 60%. And they're storing it or is it buried?

Do you have in the now? Well, so this is almost a terminology, we've got, they were, they were storing it there. They then, they, the Iranians then filled in the entrances with their to try and reduce the risk to the material that is stored there. And, you know, possibly also make it harder for, you know, ground incursions in some

similar to trying to deal with it.

And so, is it buried in that it is a resource that they have hidden so that they can retrieve later, or are they doing something with the material inside those tunnels at Espa Hade Pickaxe mount? And this is the problem we have at the IA not have it been, and we're not having any international spectres.

Now, people in the intelligence community might say, we know exactly what's going on in the material, Richard, you're panicking, or nothing, but my literal anxiety, the thing that this keeping me up at night is the idea that the Iranians have got multiple weapons worth of HU that they could potentially use in its current form, and if they don't enrich, but could potentially enrich further, that they could be doing all sorts of stuff, including

turning into uranium at all for, for, you know, fabrication into a crude nuclear device. And, you know, there was all this talk back in June that, you know, we killed all the scientists that are associated weaponizations to everything's fine now. But, you know, that is a much bigger problem if you're talking about sophisticated missile deliverable warhead.

That is not the issue if you're dealing with a crude device. I am pretty confident that the Iranian scientific community still has in place, people who could, you know, create a Trinity or a Hiroshima type weapon system, and that does not require a missile delivery by ball the boat or a truck or something, so there certainly

“could be a demonstration task that they could do, that's what I think could be happening.”

Yeah, yeah, and all that could be happening, you know, at those tunnels that us behind our pickaxe, which we can't, which we can't penetrate, so far as I understand. Oh, God, well, we need to figure out if pickaxe is my proof. Real quick, or this, I've heard, I've read about this. So the crude nuclear device, you would take the 60% HEU, take it out in the desert, figure

out a way to blow it up and declare yourself a nuclear power. Yep. Okay. Let's, as we begin to wrap up here, go through some possible scenarios. I'll name five, and you can edit these as you see fit.

Okay. One is total collapse, we're greeted with flowers and a democracy or something representative breaks out. Gradually collapse, I don't think people think about this enough, as I understand that it took the show more than, you know, it was a year before, between pretheps beginning and his actual

collapse, some sort of civil war, so this is the chaos situation. Then fourth one is we work down the spectrum as regime alteration. So the Venezuela option, there's a new boss, but we can manipulate or they cooperate with this a lot more than they do now, Trump's even said that's a win for him, you know, he's not into democracy.

He's into who can have fun to work with. And finally, is the regime stays the same, old boss, sent new boss, same as the old boss. Why don't you react to that? Yeah, look, if I'm picking what I think are the most likely, I think, you know, your

last one, new boss, old boss still has to be in the running as a most likely scenario.

“I think the only thing I'll say is that could have a sub variant, which is, the RGC is”

just that much more in charge, right?

And this always gets people to say, well, RGC wasn't charged before him.

And the answer is, honestly, no, they weren't. They were a significant power center that has been expanding. It's control over a huge parts of the system over the course last decade. Part, as a reaction to response to sanctions, and some of the damage that's done to the economic class in the country.

But that essentially, you know, doesn't mean that they had their own way, right? They had to do with other political forces. And you could imagine, you know, much to Bahamane, you know, saying basically, yeah, RGC go to your thing, you know, and being a little bit more of a figure head as opposed to, you know, the central control over a whole system.

smoke to. I think that is a very, very real. And you know, it certainly could be even potentially an objective.

“But I think it can also, it's just simply come from the fact that, you know, infrastructure”

collapse is something that's already underway. And in that scenario, you have massive refugee flows. You've got a lot of people starting to run for the border in Turkey. You know, you have got arms potentially coming in. You have IRGC commanders with delegated authority doing their own thing.

There's a greater likelihood of that than I think we thought was really, really serious. And then I think, you know, the last scenario that I think is is more likely than not. I can absolutely see a regime change scenario that's going to posit that you see the system collapse. It's not quite the, you know, total collapse and we're agree with flower six months, you

know, into this, because I think what it still looks like is a city by city territory, by territory, province by province, you know, people are thrown at the IRI and, you know, have declared that they are, you know, no longer being governed by the Islamic Republic. But that doesn't necessarily lend itself to stability. And so what that feels like to me is a positive scenario, but that is still incredibly vulnerable.

And where you've got risk of unrepentant elements still coming in, candidly, very similar to what happened with Iraq. And it's what just sort of kind of, what's stopping this point, you know, it was the IRGC that was in charge of building all those IEDs that were naming our people in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not like they forgot how to do that.

And so the risk even in a positive scenario, even assume your number one is that the flowers eventually give way to IRGC people, you know, engaging in terrorist attacks, you know, in a continued basis. All right.

“So I think even our agreement, the new boss, same as the old boss, is the most likely.”

It's, it's my base case. Yeah. Do you have a percentage you want to put on that? I'm sorry. But I'll give you one.

I'll give you one. So like, if I had to really, you'll be pinned down, I would say 40%, and then I would say civil war chances at this point would be, you know, somewhere in the 25 to 30%. And then the, the positive scenario, but with a real nasty sting in the tail, give me another, you know, 25, 30%.

So I think the old boss, new boss thing though is also predicated on this being the end of a phase in conflict.

Because ultimately, I will say, I think that what the protests in January showed is we are

heading towards regime collapse. Your gradual scenario, you didn't have been my best case before bomb started dropping, you know, over the weekend.

“I think that now with bombs dropping, it just raises the possibilities and these alternative”

ones starting to emerge. Well, that's interesting because they rallied to the, because the security forces get more hardcore because it's existential. Yeah, because they are then in a position where they are not giving the same kinds of pressures on reform and, you know, allow protesters to come back out, they're not

giving the same demands signals from, you know, their, their mom or their grandma about, you know, how can you go out and where that, you know, form when what happened to your sister, what happened to your brother, that sort of thing. All those sorts of regime instabilities that otherwise could have been present in the system. I think get a little occluded by what's happening, and I'll say this in bluntly, if the

president had asked me, on the first of February, what should I do going for?

My recommendation would have been, okay, look, we've now seen that regime collapse and regime change is something that we can potentially envision, it's a possibility now for years it wasn't. So what do we do about that? How do we get that?

And that comes from, in my opinion, more bottom-up pressure than what we're doing right now. So speaking of bottom-up pressure, so when we think about the opposition, people have said, well, on the one hand, it's every class and creed, you need widespread economic dissatisfaction, but what they're missing is an opposition leader, and what they really need is some sort

of schism in the regime. Be it. Here are three cleavage points. I want to see if you agree with them and based on your knowledge of the IRGC and the security state.

I guess one would be the Army versus the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Guardians

of the regime. Maybe it's within the IRGC, those who enjoy the spoils and those are versus the have not. And then maybe there's another one I don't know yet, generational or something like that. Do you have a view on this question?

Yeah, I think, to me, it's a generational one combined with parts of the security services

So it's a combination of your two and three.

But ultimately what it comes down to is the Iranian economy was heading towards some kind

of collapse, right? And not just the economy, but when you add, broaden that out, and you're including the lack of water in Tehran, the governance system was really starting to fray. People had just again had enough of the social controls in the similar. All of that combined with the generational element combined with a breakdown in any of the

“security services ability to explain why this is all for the better good, right?”

Why this is something that they should still continue to have the disproportionate advantages. All of those are cleavages that were certainly present in these on our problem for years.

But then all got magnified when the security people killed 30,000 people.

Okay, last question, let's give, and you we've touched on a couple of these. If you could outline the worst case scenario, so here we are in a huge combat air power situation. We get the questions a lot of what's going to happen. So civil wars on the list, great loss of American life, oil prices, tell me some more, you know, we lose an embassy, there's a terrorist attack, tell me some of your worst case

scenarios were, you know, then have to be the end game per se, but how about bad things that could happen?

“Yeah, I mean, those are definitely on my list, then add some sort of mass drone attack on”

the object, some mass drone attack on, you know, guttery, LNG facilities that, you know,

right now probably had to shut in and shut down because they were starting to, you know, overfilled, right, and you can't fill these things too much. And so that's part of the reason why shut down took place, so, but now add to that physical damage. Right, that actually makes it impossible for those facilities to just come back online when what's going on in the streets has taken place.

You know, nuclear weapon tests, man, I do not think it is implausible that the Iranians would tempt to fabricate those crew devices and test one. And, you know, that doesn't mean that they also didn't have the ability to, you know, attack US forces with it, but, you know, again, in a scenario which they have demonstrated that, that is, that is a capacity that doesn't go away, but related to that, they, we lose control

“of that nuclear material in a civil war in class scenario, right?”

So, you know, we, we have the possibility of onward proliferation coming just as dangerous as what we ever hypothesized with the collapse of the Soviet Union or, you know, collapse of North Korea or similar, so the proliferation fell on as well. And then I think that the last big one you can imagine is, you know, some sort of mass attack on, on US naval forces, you know, attacks on the carriers or something similar, that does

result from significant loss from our life. I think that's plausible. Just as plausible as a massive drone attack, you know, hitting a shopping mall in UAE or something similar, you know, mass loss of life from one of these big fixed, you know, potentially pretty vulnerable targets.

It's a, it's definitely in that way. Well, especially if we're serious. Yeah. We're wasting not wasting, but if we're using too many interceptors on drones, that's so bad strategy for us.

Richard Nephew, that was fantastic, a tour to force. Thank you so much for joining us, and we're going to have you back really soon. That was great. Hey, pleasure. Thanks for having me.

That was Richard Nephew. I'm Michael Allen. Please join us next week for another episode of Natsek Matters. Natsek Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with assistance from Ashley Barry. Natsek Matters is a production of beacon global strategies.