Special Episode - The Battle for the Middle East: Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery

I'm Host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies.

“Today I'm joined by Admiral Markentlet Gumbery, the Senior Direct for the Center on Cyber”

and Technology Innovation, and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, in addition to his 32-year career in the Navy, Admiral Markentlet Gumbery previously served as the Executive Director of the Cyber Space Salarium Commission, and as the Policy Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, when John McCain was Chairman.

Admiral Markentlet Gumbery joins us today for a special episode on the rapidly developing situation in Iran, including the death of the Supreme Leader, and U.S. Israeli strikes over the weekend, and the outlook for the conflict in the coming weeks. Stay with us as we speak with Admiral Markentlet Gumbery. Admiral Markentlet Gumbery, we're really excited to have you explain to us that geopolitical

significance of the United States and Israeli strikes on Iran, so thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Michael. Well this will be great here to get your insights with your story career and your understanding of the military and how we're approaching the target sets. Let's just start there.

I mean, I'd love to hear your view on how we're prosecuting the military campaign, but were you surprised that we went, at least these rallies did, for regime change, so fast and right at the top? Short answer no, but I want to say broadly, I wasn't pressed with the 900 strike first night dimpy.

“That's big time, and this combined force, I think that's a terminology we're using of 150”

or 200 Israeli fighters able to generate each day, you know, 75 to 100 Navy fighters, 75 to 100 Air Force fighters, and long range bombers from the United States coming from the kind on the U.S., and then both the U.S. Army Navy and the Israeli forces able to do ground attack, all of that together was impressive. Now, knowing that, of course, I'm going to hit, I mean, I have two priorities on the absolute

first strikes. One is suppression of enemy air defense that I know is active, in other words, hitting whatever air defense systems have reconstituted, because when these rallies took it out as part of the 12-day war, and many cases, they took out a radar here, a launcher there,

a control system there, and the, you know, the always Magyavarish Iranians were able to

pull some of those back together. So, you know, you want to hit that suppression of air media defense, but simultaneously, not, you know, not later, but right at the same strike, you hit the leadership, because you had a one-time-only chance to catch, you know, four or five guys on your top ten bingo card in a meeting.

I think they, they thought they might even be even more, but they definitely got four or five in one meeting, and that, and that was worth that, that allowed the timing to change. It also demonstrated that while we like to shoot you, you know, we like to hit you at night,

“where more than people have hit you during the day, if that's what's required, because”

it was in the middle of the day. So, you know, I, I was not surprised at the leadership attack, but I was impressed with

the thickness of the first night strike plan, and I think that sets a, if done properly,

if the, this goes to its natural extension, that, that really set the bar high. Yeah. Okay. So, I heard, and talk to somebody within the administration who mentioned that the objectives were, of course, regime change.

A lot of that is Rayleigh, and that the United States was focusing on two things. One, the military infrastructure to completely eradicate the ability of the Iranians to project force and to destroy any, this is the third purpose to destroy any of the vestiges of the Iranian nuclear program that were left over from June, or that have popped back up since then.

Does that sound about right to you? Yeah. So, what I would say, you know, I would kind of categorize it as, you know, leadership, which

is the first one, as you mentioned, the second would be their ability to retaliate or, you

know, to impose cost, and that would include not just the missile storage units and launch sites, but also production. And, you know, this is what the Israelis had started near the end of the 12-day war, but had no way shaped or formed completed when kind of, President Trump out of kind of

So we need to go back and continue to destroy their ability to produce ballistic missiles.

“And then I would say the same thing in cruise missiles, and I'd say the same thing for drones.”

So get that. So that's their ability to impose cost. And then another part of that, imposing cost, is their navy and their mind-lane capacity and their navy and the IRGCN's anti-ship cruise missile programs. So all of that's the imposed cost.

And then, you know, the, and so you'll kind of think, if you do all that, then you're going to be, then you're going to be a much better shape. And we're nowhere near done with that. In my mind, this is, this should be at least another two-week campaign, just to do that kind of really hitting all the production facilities and storage facilities, reassessing them, striking them, reassessing them, striking them.

It doesn't mean you have 900 strikes every night for two weeks, but it means that you're hitting very consistently every two weeks.

And the third one was a suppression of enemy airplanes, which we did on the first night in which

we'll continue to do. In a picture how this is going on a month from now, a hot war, how could it escalate and how could this spiral out of control? I mean, this is a, there's not an easy answer to this, right? Say first one, I mean, in our mind, there's a number of strikes that we wanted to do.

We, in these rallies together, will eat that elephant one day at a time, you know, one airplane at a time, knocking it down over 12 or 14 days. You then, the whole time you're assessing, doing better damage assessment, adding targets back in. And at some point, you're down to, okay, we've serviced every target the number of times

we want to serve as a, now we're just doing air patrol, you know, satellite radar, signals intelligence, some overhead flights, you know, combat patrols, looking for the adversary to hit, but those would be ad hoc, you know, not like a 400 plan nightly strike. So, I mean, at some point, you get to that, now, branches off of that, the people do, there is a popular stop rising.

“Now you have IRGC concentrations that you have to go hit and then it continues, you know,”

extends. You know, they go all out on, you know, they just come out every day trying to launch a cruise missile under the straights or her moves. We got to go hit those and hit those and hit those and hit those. You know what I mean?

I can give you branch plans for all the different Iranian responses, but, you know, our smooth main plan is to run this for several weeks till we've exhausted our target sets. And we've reattacked everything we need to, but the enemy gets a vote and he can take us out a bunch of branch plans that you have to have. And I'm confident Brad, Admiral Cooper, the Central Command Commander, has eight or ten

branch plans that he has, I and W on, multiple ones can go at the same time too. So he's watching for the indications of warning that, hey, we're getting into one of the branch plans. Here's the authorities. I need, or here's the resources I need.

Here's why I need to talk about with his railies execute, you know, and so my gut reaction is he's executing a main plan. He's got eight to ten branches, maybe not that, maybe maybe six to eight, you know, that he's checking on and then ready to execute on those as necessary. This is just a supposition I made, I want you to check it as a senior flag officer.

So I assumed we would do military and maybe the leadership first nuclear vestages, but

that we would do the so-called instruments of regime repression last, because the president said, "Miss Beach, hey, no one go out, please don't go outdoors yet. They're going to be bomb dropping everywhere, but when we're done, you know, he opens the door to them and says this might be your only chance in a generation to overthrow your government."

And so it seems to me if he's going to hit the besiege and IRGC local or whatever local domestic intelligent services there are, he might do those last, because then that sort of opens the door for the people to rush into the streets, but, but maybe not, maybe didn't matter the sequencing, but what's your take on all that? Yeah.

I'm not sure about that.

“I think the important sequencing was senior guys first hit, suppression of enemy air”

defense in that first night, you know, the beginning of the first night, everything after

that. If we somehow knew where nuclear vestages were, they would have been in my first strike as well, because that stuff will start moving right away. And that's harder to track, you know, I mean, it gets small pretty quickly. That's kind of what have been my first night.

You know, this thing on when do I sequence in these, it might be that we're going to get hit. There's so many IRGC facilities, Michael, that we may have to hit them every night. Okay. All right. Well, then that makes sense.

What's your take on regime change? Everyone's scholars have written that's very hard to do from the air, but we're trying

What we don't have right now is an armed insurgency in progress in Iran.

“We have protesters in the streets, but that's not the same as an armed insurgency.”

Now, it can become one. But a lot of things have to happen that if the precursors have been done for that, like the movement of weapons in things like that, the organizational elements, if Mossad or someone has done that, it has an evidence itself yet. Doesn't mean it's not happening, doesn't mean it couldn't happen.

Maybe Mossad has an ace up at sleeve. If it is, I'd start dealing the cards because we're going to start hit, if we're going to hit things hard for a couple of weeks, that's about the time for the political resistance to show itself again. You don't think this is very likely that the political roots, they may come back out on

the streets. By the way, the students came out last week, which was remarkable, but you don't really foresee the students taking over the government by themselves, not just the students. The protesters by themselves, do you believe there has to be a fracture in the regime

“and a lot of people with guns side with the opposition?”

Yes. I mean, I just don't -- it's not enough to just be an unarmed resistance. What he would guns, whether it's the traditional army, you know what I mean? The non-IRG CRME, or someone has to throw in with them, or they have to get access to weapons. Yeah.

Yeah. Gotcha. Let's say, there's a political appointee who looks at a flag officer like you and says, "The president really wants you to think of targets that would directly benefit the people on the streets," and I need you to come up with these, and if they're neighborhood

by neighborhood, maybe we won't do them, but what would your answer be? Would it be just the besiege and the IRGC local, or what would it be? Yes. I think you'd have to do some kind of estimate of the cost benefit on -- eventually on energy. This is a tough one, right, and President Trump is no one going to hit energy because

he possibly thinks it's a future world. Friends of his will be involved in the Iranian energy business, right, and so this might be tough for him personally. But most of us say, "Hey, if you hit energy, two things about that one, later on when there's somehow is a new government, you know, they've got a big bill to fix broken energy."

Or two, you know, if you damage the economic productivity, the people fill it before the elites. I'm not sure.

There's a third answer, which is if you hit the energy, there's no more money coming

in, and at some level, although there's a percentage of the goods force that's ideologically driven. There's a percentage that is salary-driven, you know, and if you can begin to cut off the tools that they have to do things like that, you weaken the government significantly. So you would go for the jugular quickly, which is, you know, how do I -- how do I sponsor

a fracture within the IRGC, but maybe generally, generally, on the assumption that the older ones are already benefiting from the spoils of the system, and if you maybe blip that's up in the younger ones, see there is no future and clip-talkers, they're more likely to skism. That's true.

Again, I'm told, you know, it's been a while since I read the exact intelligence, but, you know, 125 to 150,000 in the IRGC, 25 to 35,000 or truly, or true believers. That's a lot of people, you know, in other words, there's a lot of people that got to throw down their arms and disperse, right? Right.

Right. So we've read this afternoon here that there have been a rainy and ballistic missile shots at our naval ships.

“I think I even saw one -- four were aimed at a carrier, obviously the Ford.”

Now, the whole point of these, right, is to protect the carrier, but how would it work for them to be able to get a shot through and strike one of our Navy ships to be -- could you put a likelihood on that?

Look, we're really excited when our offensive weapons are 90 percent, but like, oh, good.

That's a good day. 90 percent hit their target. That's great. You know, 10 percent got shot down. I can live with that.

We don't feel the same way in defense, right? When you're told, hey, we're 90 percent effective. You might -- most credit officers are like, what? We were 10 percent ineffective. What happened with those 10 percent?

Where did they hit? You know what I mean? So, you know, you don't -- you worry a little bit.

Now, I think the place where we're safest is probably the ships. When it comes to air defense for a lot of reasons, some of which are luck and a lot of

money, we have invested, you know, $40 billion over 50 years in developing ages, just

on research development and testing of ages, the weapons systems that defend our ships. As a result, we actually have good ballistic missile defense, cruise missile defense, and OK drone defense. I mean, by OK, I mean, we can shoot drones down, it's just really expensive.

“So I think that, you know, the likelihood of a strike on a ship is much lower than”

the likelihood of one of our ground, one of our bases getting hit, because there just wasn't enough that and Patriot to spread around, and I'm not -- that doesn't mean that or Patriot aren't good systems. It means that if you have a Navy destroyer, you have an Navy age, a system guaranteed with you.

If you have a air base, you don't have a guaranteed Patriot. OK. We'll zoom back out to this strategic here in a minute, but can you put a percentage on it?

I mean, let's say they -- you said they're not 100 percent, but let's say they shoot

10 ballistic missiles and 100 shed drones at the Gerald R. Ford, I mean, can we protect against that? Or they very likely to get something through. I believe that they're in good shape.

“I don't believe the ships -- you can't say never, but I think that's the least likely”

area for success would be a ballistic, a cruise missile attack on one of the ships in the Arabian Sea with the carrier, to the degree that ships start escorting people through the streets or her moves. If that starts to happen, that's some spicy air defense there, because you're at a very short range, you know, going through a 12 mile wide straight.

So that puts Iran pretty darn close to you in the Iranian missile systems if they -- if they've hidden one and can pop it out real quick. So I know that's not a 100 percent answer, but I would say I feel pretty good about the carrier strike groups. I feel a little spicier about independent destroyers doing convoy duty in the straights

or her moves, and I feel even less comfortable with ground forces at bases that have limited or spread in air defense systems. Yeah. Okay. So before I get to some of the places where we may be additionally vulnerable, someone

in the air force put it to me last night that this is probably the biggest, per US projection of force in the history of the world, and maybe, and obviously in the history of warfare,

“do you sign up to that if you've seen something like this, at least in the last 50 years?”

Not in terms of number of aircraft. I mean, if you think about rolling thunder or, you know, eight-thair force in World War II, they're bigger. And numbers of aircraft. But in terms of, like, ability to operate at will in an enemy's air space, this is unique,

right? I mean, this is the -- this assemblage of air power could defeat any other assemblage of air power ever put together, just because of the modern techniques and weapon systems and all that. The modern technology and weapon systems.

I mean, in terms of pure numbers, I think there's probably been larger groupings of aircraft. But, you know, I take the point there that your Air Force friend said, which is that we've

never had this much kind of fifth generation, fourth generation plus combat air power ever

rolled together, then what you have between the US Air Force, US Navy, and Israeli Air Force. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back with more of our discussion with Admiral Mark Montgomery. Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side by side with leading companies to help them understand national security

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OK, so we covered a little bit about the vulnerability of our ships. Let's talk about what else the Iranians are up to. I would admit that I thought it was unlikely, even though they vowed to quote regional lines to conflict, I thought they probably wouldn't go its outing in the UAE, because

But they did it, and they're going after civilian targets downtown Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Did that surprise you? Do you agree it's a strategic mistake, because it took them off the fence and put them in our camp? And what do you think they're doing? So yes, it surprised me. And yes, for the exact reason you said that it's pushing the Arab states into at least, you know, grudging support if not, you know, and overflight and access guaranteed. And potentially, I would say with the UAE of all states, I could see them,

they have no love for Iran. I mean, they particularly, they might be mad at Saudi Arabia right now in the Arab Emirates. They have a blood grievance with Iran. So I would not put it past them

“saying that was not accidental, because that's what the Iranians have claimed, like we didn't do that.”

Some other owner of she he drones did that. You know, okay, I will say one or two of these,

not the ones where you see the strike into the hotel, but whether one's when you come across a flaming datum of like heap of metal, sometimes that's something I shot down. The Iranians probably did not have tight tactical control. Like people are like, I have a targets at here. I'm going boom. And, you know, they didn't have the, you know, as we would say, the national command authorities approval for everything. But, you know, the fact that they had thought about it, the fact that

they threatened it and the fact that it happened means they owned it. And they are going to regret that because I think at a minimum of the UAE and possibly others are really going to be

hard, hard against Iran over the next couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing I'll even

“request to make a few sorties. But, yeah, no, I think that would be UAE. I'm not sure I'm going to”

put anybody else in that category. Uh-huh. I'm going to put the UAE there. All right, Gotcha. All right, we get so many questions about the streets of Formus. You're the right guy to talk about this. How would it go down? I've heard a red that it would be Iranian submarines putting mines across, right? That right. They still have any ship cruise missiles. And any ship cruise missiles tend to hit merchant ships unless they're being escorted by

Navy ships that protect them. Very closely escorted by the way, you know, so that's not on offer right now. So they have some, you know, that just doing one of them would put the insured, you know, the joint war council and the other people kind of control insurance and movements and listed areas would be on edge immediately and begin to shut things down and and raise insurance premiums to agree that shipping stop. That's number one is those. Number two is mines. We're going to

have to sink a lot of ships and blow up every storage facility. Uh, if we're going to stop the threat of mining, it is they have done it from, you know, I'm kind of joking about a bog hammer, but they've done it from all kinds of non-traditional vessels. And just a couple mines gets, you know, the the herd gets spooked, right? I mean, you know, things very quickly get uncomfortable. I don't know that there's any good mines sweeping nations left, you know what I mean? It would be a rope

pain in the backside and minesweepers move slow and you've got to protect them and it'd be a rope pain in the backside to do it. So mining would go would have a significant impact in my mind. But I've read, but we're here the animal, but I've read the Navy's obviously been preparing for these contingencies for now. So it would be a few days in the mine. I have, let's be clear here. Have we been preparing? I let me, I just real quick that your audience probably doesn't know this,

but we suck at minesweeping. We're the worst. There's a ship called the La Toro combat ship that's like 20 years into its growth, you know, and do its startupness, right? You know, we've had them for about 20 years. We still barely have them functioning as minesweepers and they're vastly under-equipped. So no, and our other minesweepers are like 50 to 60 years old and generally broken. Now, maybe four or five days of strikes and that's the, you know, everything's just smoking ruined at all the

naval bases. They don't have any mines. If that'd be fantastic. I'm not willing to push that button and if I were an insurer or a shipper or the joint work council, I would really be taking a jaundice, I'd be taking a very steady deliberate view of that to make sure that they don't have

“the capacity to mine it. I think the thing stopping them from mining it isn't the U.S. Navy.”

It's the fact that it, you know, is the fuel of the of the Iranian regime, as we said earlier. It's

can do. One was the United States, it could possibly get a lucky shot off and hit a

naval vessel. They're trying to regionalize the conflict by hitting the Gulf Arabs and others and they could mine the streets of Formos. What other cards do they have to play? What else could

“they do other? It is real all the time. Yeah, they're attacking Israel. I think they've come”

to realize that's not a good card, right? I mean, Israelis are probably the most resilient state in the Middle East and, you know, probably next to Ukraine, one of the most resilient ones in the world. So they're probably at this point, you know, the idea that, hey, this is the U.S. and us doing this together. I think there's really people are willing to take the risk that's associated with this. You know, if they could convince one of their proxies to go, I mean,

their proxies got to be like, yeah, this is not a winner, right? I mean, I don't think Hezbollah is like, you know, done to get into those last couple rounds of combat did not go our way. Okay. So let's cover our vulnerabilities, then they've already hit the headquarters of the fifth fleet and by rain of, and that's the quote, easiest target for them to hit. Yeah. And we did naval vessels. And now I'm talking about actual land. What else is, and it's a, it seems like we're more vulnerable.

And I'm not sure whether we've confirmed where these fatalities were. I've heard some suggestion.

“They might be where American soldiers are in Iraq. And I think that's a trained soldier training”

mission. But how do you score where we're vulnerable around the Gulf in terms of our land mass bases? Yeah. So I would score it this way that three things go into it is the U.S. able to get an air defense system there to protect the base. You know, Patriot, something called CRAM, counterrocket rocket and mortar, which is our form of iron dome, um, which is a failing sun when some other things on a truck. Um, and potentially that though, if we have our stuff around

you, that's pretty good. If it's amplified by a partner, you're in Saudi Arabia, you know, Emirates Kuwait, Qatar, countries that have some form of our weapon systems that makes it even better.

And the third things geographic proximity, how far are you from the launch point so that

can our aircraft, like for drones, can our aircraft get their fast enough to shoot down the drones? You know, because our aircraft have to have combat air positions and not every, you know, and when you're only 150 or 200 miles away from the launch point in Iran, that's not a lot of response time. So it's a mix of geography, U.S. capabilities, and the partner host nations capabilities. So the ones that strike U is in the worst condition there are probably the U.S. forces in Iraq,

where there's no host nation capability. And some of the U.S. capabilities are limited by our ability to get the footprint in there. And then, you know, you're reasonably close to, you know, Western Iran. Okay. Russia, China. So, I guess China is the one that's most worried

“here, if they're oil, which I think is, you know, they take a lot from Iran. It's pretty substantial.”

What's the view from Beijing right now? And they're also seeing Donald Trump go wherever he wants all over the world and toppled dictators, give to tell me how it looks from Beijing. Well, I'm sure Beijing is a little worried about, you know, they're most worried about their economy in the oil. I mean, that's got to be number one. Venezuela didn't matter. I know people say, look, they, you know, they gave a big chunk of their stuff to China, but it wasn't much.

From the Chinese perspective, it was a very small percentage of their imports. Iran is different. Iran is a significant part. And, you know, China's been profiteering off the war in Ukraine in the sense that they're able to buy cheap, shadow fleet fuel, you know, fossil fuels. But if the overall prices go up, prices are going to go up. You know, impact the Chinese economy. That's number one for China. Number two,

there is a credibility issue here. You know, countries that they, and, you know, groups they have, you know, that they publicly give support to are challenged by the United States and China is not supportive. You know, China kind of blends into the background. But I think the number one is

just the economy. And she, that's first and foremost. And I don't think that they lose sleep over any

of the other ones. Long term, if we actually are solving the Iran problem, you know, like, which there's a regime change to something that is more hospitable to the United States. And it, you know, it really turns down the rest at the Middle East. Then we could pivot to the

Venezuela is under control. You know, we could make the number one thing, the number one thing.

We could actually concentrate on China. And, you know, I say that that we have been distracted by the Middle East every year since 2012 when President Obama declared we're pivoting to the Pacific. And we over the last 14 years have not had 15 years have not pivoted to the Pacific. And as a result, we're not, you know, we're not doing the proper force posture laid down to turn, you know, all the deterrence building measures you would normally do to check Chinese power.

So it would be that would be the biggest loss for China would be if we actually were successful. Because then I get, like I said, as long as Venezuela is comfortable, then China's going to be

getting all our attention. Now you're right. I mean, we're always pulled away. And so this could be the

the enabler and a year or two to have a crew pivot. So how did this, how does this look from Moscow? Here they are again. They couldn't help a sod. They can't help the Iranians. I mean,

“what's going on? Yeah, of course, but there are two. So how do you think this looks?”

And I'll give you one more. Cuba is slowly being choked to death with no help. I think he's got bigger fish to fry. He's got a bigger problem in Ukraine, which we won't go into here, but I'll just say, you know, he's in the middle of a full scale invasion that's not going well. That's his number one concert. He got what he needed from Iran. He didn't just get five or six thousand she hid drones. He then got the plans for a plant,

several of which he's built. And he's not producing his own drones. If I had to Iran drones are better than she eats. If you're on three and five or rocket-based and go much faster and a bigger problem for the Ukrainian. So I mean, I think, when you say Ukraine's fighting four countries, one, you know, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the Iran one is kind of the work is done. So from Russia's point of view, they're not getting

“much more help from Iran. You know, I think they've got a little bit more advice on a few things,”

but that's about it. For Russia's point of view, it's not a good look to have Iran get beat up like this, but there's really not much they can do about it. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. So talk a little bit about when you talk about how the United States could benefit from the transformation of the Middle

East because we might finally pivot to Asia, but talk about Vision 2030, the UAE and Saudi Arabia

and others trying to deepen their economic, their economies and grow into AI. So I mean, is it fair to say this is sort of a short-term blow regarding investments in business climate, but it could be a medium to long-term win? Yeah, exactly. And the short-term could be pretty short. You know, so I look, I think, well, you know, I think this is what long-term they had to

“result. You have to resolve the Iran issue. You know, there's a benefit that was”

all in the Iran issue for each of these countries. You know, there's other issues that have to be resolved in the Middle East, you know, with Gaza and other things before, you know, you suddenly bring Saudi Arabia into the Arab- the Arab- the Arab Emirates. But in terms of UAE and Saudi Arabia, I kind of step it out with data center production, water. I mean, right now, I mean, these sellingization plants, you know, if Iran really wanted to hurt these countries,

that's where I'd be attacking right now. And that would have an impact, you know, if you were farther along on 2030 and data centers and other things being built, you'd even be in more water extremists and have even more targets to hit. And you know, I'd say the same for power, you know, for power grid is the electrical power grid as well. So, you know, yes, there's some vulnerability in the short-term, but in the very long-term, I think this is this provides a more stable

Middle East potentially. Again, I'm imbuing like a positive end and resolved on this. Yeah, yeah. So, it's dependent upon their being a new regime, more of them. I mean, it's more like in the Deltzi Rodriguez model. Because it's, you know, the IRGC will still maintain under your scenario. And I think mine, too, the IRGC or other regime rallies will stay in control to a great degree, right? Well, as long as they can, as long as they can't.

Well, as we begin to wrap up here, the big question, of course, is we've all all of this

around since 1989. Finally, killed. First, it's reflect on this mark. Is the guy who served as

“country in uniform who knew all about the Middle East? Just sort of reflect on his demise.”

And then let's talk about whether this could usher truly else ran a transformation of the Middle

East. So, first, let's be clear. This is under his leadership. It's our intelligence from

“his estimate that a rod directly contributed to the best of a thousand, almost a thousand,”

American soldiers. And Prince William Rock, but also a little bit Afghanistan. So, no tears.

Bad dude got exactly what he deserved. So, I have no empathy there. He's also contributed to

“Israeli deaths. I mean, there's a lot more on his plate, but just for us, it's enough.”

I would put him as more culpable than Soleimani, General Soleimani, who we killed in the last Trump administration in January 2020. So, for my point of view, I'm comfortable to that happen. Admiral Wargmer, Gumbry, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me, Admiral. That was Admiral Mark Montgomery. 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." [MUSIC PLAYING]