Lawfare Daily: How Two Intelligence Community Veterans View the Iran Conflict, with Chip Usher and Aaron Faust

And we're fast approaching if we haven't already arrived at the time frame.

“When we will start to run out and our allies will start to run out of interceptors of”

the kinds that can actually stop the Iranian missiles. It's the law fair podcast. I'm Senior Editor Scott R. Anderson. Here with Chip Usher, the Senior Director for Intelligence at the Special Competitiveness Studies Project and a 32 year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Aaron Faust, who has previously

the vision chief for Iran within the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau. If all we did was agree to a cessation of hostilities tonight, the Iran that we would be left with,

yes, seriously degraded, but you know, certainly more, you know, angry and committed to

rearming itself, you know, perhaps taking a fresh look at its nascent nuclear program than ever before. Today, we're talking about the war in Iran, how we got here and where might be going. You can find more of Chip Usher's analysis on his fault lines newsletter via sub-stack, and you can find Aaron Satyrko take on current affairs at Ridiculocracy.com.

So Aaron, I want to start with a little bit of a level set for folks who may not be as deeply immersed in the Iran questions and Iran problems that folks who do with the least policy have been dealing with for decades. Talk to us a little about what the consensus has been around the real threats that Iran does present, or at least challenges Iran presents to U.S. National Security, and has for a while,

and also give us a little bit of sense of what the dominant U.S. strategy has been for the last decade or two.

“Sure, well, I think really, you're seeing a lot of the threats that we've all been concerned”

about right now that we've all been concerned about for a very long time.

So Iran has always had the ability to affect the free flow of oil and energy through the

Persian Gulf and the state of the war moods. We saw that during the Iran-Iraq war, which led to our navy, facilitating tankers through the straight at one particular time, Iran has supported proxy organizations like his Bala and Iraqi militia groups, Humas, etc. I don't know if we call the Houthis Proxies or more partners, and we can get into that later if you're interested, and those proxy organizations

in particular during the Iraq War in Lebanon, etc., have killed Americans, including Marines in 1983 in Lebanon. Obviously, we know about the IEDs during the Iraq War, which Iraqi militia groups and the IRGC directly were responsible for hurting Americans, and so they, in some ways, have a direct threat to the United States. They also sense the killing of Custom Soleimani in 2020. You know, they have directly targeted and claimed that they're going after President Trump

officials at that time that were involved in that assassination, and we've seen extra security being given to and more recently taken away from some of those individuals. So they're targeting in many ways Americans directly. We also have had concerns obviously for a long time about their nuclear program, and their ballistic missile program, and the concern is if their ballistic missile program ever gets to the point, where they can fire a missile that

it can hit the United States, and especially if that missile is nuclear-tipped, that is obviously the biggest threat to the United States homeland that we see in the biggest threat to Americans. So we've been spending a lot of effort for a long time now in making sure they don't get a nuclear weapon and making sure that their ballistic missile program is in a box or no longer for that matter. They're also a huge threat to our allies. Of course Israel, they can hit Israel

with both proxies and missiles, as we've seen in the last couple years. They can hit our Gulf Arab allies with missiles, and they can threaten their energy infrastructure, which they've done during this conflict, and they did previously in 2019 and in other years. So Iran has sort of a multi-faceted array of options to hurt Americans and American interests, both political, economic, and geostrategic.

“To add one more thing, I think they've also been proliferating technology to Russia, for example,”

and to use drones in Ukraine. That's been a big one of late, and we've also seen them proliferate the same kind of drone technology in particular in recent years to other countries around the world. So we saw the Trump administration take military action against Iran last year as well. In the summer, we saw a limited strike following the initiation of a military campaign by Israel against Iran, where the Trump administration opted to make a limited set of strikes against nuclear facilities

and other quarters, and then by my reading, although feel free to disagree with this, as people probably watch this close to the United States, it seems the administration then quickly pivoted to pressure these railways and curses these railways to wind up their military operation to having essentially achieve one of their main objectives of constraining the nuclear program. Chip talked to me a little about the Trump administration's approach there. How consistent was that

with the approach the United States has usually taken towards Iran? And why did it adopt

“that more constrained model that it appears now to have abandoned six to eight months later?”

Well, I think you're referring to Operation Bindai Hammer, which was another combined US Israeli operation, obviously some are that, in the presence where it's a bliver-rated Iran's nuclear capability. And perhaps the reason for restraint at that moment was to arrive maybe two factors, and why do one is the objectives were limited, and they were

narrowly focused on the nuclear weapons program. And then the second, you know, may have been

the analysis or assessment at the time as to how fragile or shaky, internally the Iranian regime was in. And I think that that assessment probably went through a very significant recalibration later in January of this year when Iran saw a very, look, unprecedentedly large display of public protests against the regime that it reacted to quite brutally. Estimates vary, but they killed anywhere from seven to 30,000 of their own citizens, but it

“worked a little bit of a high-water mark for the domestic unrest of that country. And so I think that”

that may be partly why the Trump administration took a different approach with the campaign that it launched in late February. So we see the administration planned to undertake this much more substantial military operation earlier this year. A really, really substantial campaign aimed at substantially, you know, degrading Iranian military capabilities, hitting Iranian military political leadership, although I know there's some Israel being as played a greater role in certain

those strikes in the United States, but certainly part of the broader campaign. This isn't the

first time that this idea has been raised, certainly. We've heard it in public discourse. We've

heard it raised by public allies like Prime Minister Netanyahu in the past. So there's some sense about what we expected that might look like. So in January, before we knew clearly what the administration was headed on, what would you have thought, chip about what an operation like that might present? The challenges in my present risks, it might present a compared to something much more limited constrained like with the administration pursued previously. And how of those predictions

come to pass, which ones have fallen short and which ones maybe have kind of exceeded even the expectations of informed watchers like yourself? Yeah, sure. And just to clarify for the listenership out there, I'm not pretty to what the intelligence community briefed to the White House or the Pentagon prior during or since the kickoff, the conflict. So this is sort of my

“educated testament, if you will. But look, I think the intelligence community more than likely”

sort of presented the straight facts and analysis, sort of derivative of what Aaron and I participated when we were in service. And those themes would probably have been as follows. That Iran is, you know, ideologically committed in that ideology runs deep in the country, despite the wave of protests that we saw in January. You know, yes, people can kind of take

different cuts at this, but I would say maybe 10 to 15 percent of the Iranian population are like

really the base of support for the regime. But when the population of over 90 million people, that's not inconsequential. And they clearly control the military, the security forces, and most importantly, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. So the idea that just a swift decapitation campaign would be enough to change the character and nature of the regime is not likely to have been sampling that the intelligence community put forward to the administration. It may have

been something that policymakers assumed or it hoped for, but I don't think it would have been necessarily, but re-flected in sort of my understanding of how assessments have been compiled in the past. And the other element of this is a broad time, a time, a time, a time again, has demonstrated the willingness and the capability to retaliate. Sometimes to initiate, but in a very

I think what we've seen played out, and there certainly was precedent when prior flare-ups and

prior crises between the United States of Iran, where the response coming from the regime was sometimes covert, hidden, delayed, hitting soft targets, not just punching back at the US military, but sometimes targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure using a variety of means that the response of which Aaron spoke to, including cyber, including proxies and using terrorist tech techniques. So certainly those two elements would have been there. And again, we were not privy

to the dialogue that existed prior to a 28 February between the intelligence community and the White House, but had they sort of presented what is unfolded. More than likely, the intelligence

community, would have pointed to this horizontal escalation risk, and certainly based on every

war game and every scenario that I ever participated in, would have included the warning that the straight-harm moves would be under threat, from drones, from missiles, from fast attack boats, etc. So more than likely, those elements were delivered in the policy community in the military makes, it's all determination based on their assessment of our capabilities and what the political objectives may or may not have been. But probably that was the flavor of what was

provided. So, Aaron, in the lead up to kicking off this military operation, we did see

“some measures that I think have been interpreted at least in hindsight as preparing for some of”

these contingencies. So I'll large military build up, including capacities that could be used to help,

you know, shoot down ICBMs and drones and help defend to some extent defend maritime traffic. At the same time, you saw other measures not pursue. For example, much coordination with allies, at least that as far as we can tell from media reports. I'll unnumber allies and move struck fairly by surprise by this action, at least by my account. So then again, I welcome correction on that. What is your sense about how prepared the administration seemed to be going into this for this whole

range of contingencies and where have they been caught by surprise? And what extent is it surprising where they've been caught by surprise? Where is the delta for the things that we might have expected them prepare for? But they haven't, don't you have had plans or contingencies in place to address those,

“yeah? Sure. Well, I think you see with just sending ground forces now, I think it's the Marines”

and the airborne that are being sent over right now. They clearly did not have with all the military build-up. They did not have the ground forces in place to do any kind of, in this case, probably limited operation to seas, carg Island or to do any kind of boots on the grounds. Mission, I'm also not privy to whether there are any, you know, special forces in the region that could go in and somehow do more battle damage assessments on some of the ballistic missile sites

or some of the nuclear sites to potentially even, you know, Secretary Rubio recently said when asked about, you know, how do we know about the nuclear program and what's going on with all the Iranian that's still in the country? He said, well, we're going to have to go get it. And so, yeah, I'm not sure if we have people in the region right now who could go get it. At the same time, it seems like there wasn't a lot of thought put into exactly what is the strategic

objective that we're here to accomplish, because as Chip mentioned back in June, it was a much more limited objective. It was to degrade the nuclear program, not to eliminate it, but certainly set it back, destroy as much of it as possible, etc. It was not to decapitate the regime, although I think the administration would have been happy if the people had risen off as they would, you know, during this attack and overthurn the regime, but that was, you know, more, it was more of a limited

objective. The objectives that they've stated officially, even on the White House website, and I know there's been a lot of, you know, the administration has gone back and forth as about exactly what they're going for is the total destruction of the nuclear program, so they can't develop a nuclear weapon. The obliteration of their missile program, including all of their production facilities, launchers, etc. They don't really say anything about drones, actually on White House.gov,

but I think that's also a big part of it. The destruction, kind of total destruction of the navy, and then severing their proxy networks. Those are all extremely maximalist goals.

“And to achieve those goals, you either need to, you know, you have to do something extreme. You”

either need to produce regime change so that you have somebody new in power that you can you can talk to, and I'm not advocating that. I'm just, this is just my analysis of what would be required to get there. Or you need to do some kind of round-based invasion with U.S. troops,

You actually know if you blew up a building, if there were things inside of it that were

“destroyed as well, or whether they were moved ahead of time, or, you know, and so those are really”

hard. Iran is four times the size of Iraq. We didn't do so well there. And so, you know, that option doesn't seem like a particularly great one to me. And so, in all of the administration statements, I haven't heard yet exactly how they're going to square this divergence in the means that they're using, which are purely military, with some kind of, if you're not going to overthrow the regime, and you're not going to go in and kind of do these more difficult things

that are going to put the American troops lives at risk. How are you going to square that circle between the political objectives that you're trying to achieve at the end of this thing, and the military means that you're using? Just to amplify something that Aaron pointed to, and that is the drone threat. I'm very certain that the intelligence community included the drone threat, because we've been tracking U.S. ahead for quite some time, being launched against Iraq. They provided

Shaheads, and the production capacity for Shaheads to Russia, so it did very much a central focus for the intelligence picture. But it is, it's a little bewildering and a little frustrating that the United States, which had the perfect opportunity after some years of conflict in Ukraine, which has been just a crucible for the future of conflict involving drones, and they have companies, and they're American companies, and they're providing pretty sophisticated drone versus

drone and other counter drone technologies that could have been pre-positioned, should have been

“pre-positioned to deal with this threat. And I think now there's a rush to get some of these capabilities”

in place, but this was for seeing, and it's a little frustrating that we weren't sort of more quickly at learning the lessons from Ukraine and co-opering that into the strike plan. And the other thing that I'd add, I think, is on interceptors. I think we did plan for interceptors, but only up to a certain timeframe. And we're fast approaching if we haven't already arrived at the timeframe when we will start to run out, and our allies will start to run out of interceptors

of the kinds that can actually stop the Iranian missiles. And so, if Iran had 2,500 missiles, as I think, before the conflict started on February 28, something like that, and these really subsets, they've destroyed 700,000 of those as well. There's still a lot of missiles left, right? And so, if we don't have enough interceptors for those missiles, even if we have degraded Iran's capability to fire missiles and drones by 90% or 95% whatever, the Secretary Hegsev, and

Prime Minister Netanyahu have put out there, it only takes a few well-placed strikes on Israeli nuclear reactor, on golf energy infrastructure to really send the region into chaos. And as Chipis pointed out, actually, in some of his good articles, to get more interceptors, we probably have to take

“them from other parts of the world where we really need them. I think this gets something that”

you've hinted at in somebody writing on fault lines, Chip, which is the little bit of a disconnect between what I think you described, it's fair, I'm paraphrasing you, aggressively, because I can't remember exact phrase, but something like a fairly tactically brilliant campaign, certainly at the coordination level between Israeli and the United States, really impressive what they've been

able to accomplish to some extent cutting it, particularly in those first few days of the campaign.

And then a little bit of strategic drift where we don't have a clear sense about where this is leading, talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, what is your sense about where the administration seems to be going strategically on this? We have these data objectives that are unrealistic, right? What are its actual objectives seem to be based off of its conduct? And in particular, how do they align with Israel? Because we're seeing a little bit of a departure in terms of

targeting Iranian oil facilities or energy facilities, I should say, targeting, you know, there's some points of friction a few other areas of the duration of the campaign. It seems like there's at least reports that these really are more nervous about the Americans wanting to end the campaign sooner. So what does that tell us about how the two partners in this military campaign, who have been really working hand in glove, might have viewed the strategic objectives

perhaps a little differently? Yeah, well, a lot of ground to cover there. So let's sort of take

it, you know, a bit by bit. You know, first of all, let's ground ourselves to end what

chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Cain identified in the first day of the war, are the military objectives, which are clear, even as they are ambitious. So the key line there

early days, when we were witnessing just the massive air campaign with precision guided

munitions, just take apart Iran's conventional military capabilities. So they don't have an air force anymore. They really don't have a navy. They're going now after smaller, smaller boats, the remnants of their, you know, wherever floats, they're trying to chase down. And they've been chasing after the ballistic missile launchers, production and storage facilities. And they've been

“stunningly successful at that. And it's also going after leadership and key infrastructure of the”

regime. And yet, okay, that objective of preventing Iran from projecting force beyond its borders

may not be achieved because of these asymmetric capabilities, because you can knock out all the

ballistic missile launchers that you can find, can you ever be assured you've got all of them. That doesn't account for other brown-launched cruise missiles and it doesn't account for drugs. And it doesn't account for terror attacks and it doesn't account for cyber attacks. So in aggregate, it is a severe degradation of the capabilities of the regime. But even by the more restrained or constrained or tightly defined objective set up by Joe Kane, the maximum

goals for the U.S. may not be achieved. On the political side, this has been tons of commentary of this, which, you know, I share some of the criticism that you see that the strategic goals, the political goals that the administration has articulated have been all over the map. Not just to grade or prevent them from projecting force, but regime change potentially enabling encouraging setting the ground for a popular revolution, ending the threat of Iran,

a very sort of sharp and grandiose words. But, you know, this sort of gets at what we're talking about a minute ago about sort of essentially eliminating an entire regime or changing its character.

“I think there may have been a variant of this where they were hoping that the Venezuelan model”

would hold true and decapitation of the senior leader and those in his close intercircle would give an opportunity for some IRGC kernel or somebody to rise up who was more pragmatic. Maybe, you know, just as devoted to the ideology, but more willing to deal with the United States to remove its nuclear capability and to make nice with Israel and the rest of the rest of the region. Again, I think any student of Iran would have told you that was highly unlikely

that a rather deep ideology and these people are very vested in the system as it exists. So, you know, I think it was probably predicated on some faulty assumptions there. But what it is now, I think is under constant review because of Iran's ability to shut down the

“straight-of-formers and to punish us because it's struck some of our facilities in the region,”

including diplomatic facilities and a small base in Kuwaits and certainly our allies starting with Israel, but now including many of the Gulf Arab states and perhaps even Turkey. So, you know, that's kind of changed the calculus I imagine. Probably something we can talk about later about what does the administration do now, but it's still rather unclear, you know, what is the politically acceptable or perhaps

sellable outcome from this because arguably, if all we did was a greater cessation of hostilities tonight, the Iran that we would be left with, yes, seriously degraded, but, you know, certainly more, you know, angry and committed to rearming itself, you know, perhaps taking a fresh look at its nascent nuclear program that ever before, you know, the previous leaders, Premier Ham and A, had a fought law against developing a nuclear weapon. Now, you could, you know,

Quimple, whether it was believable or not, but, you know, in some ways, he was a big break on that

system from actually developing. They were always, you know, of two weeks, a few months,

they were getting closer and closer, but they hadn't accelerated. Now that they're stockpile of highly enriched uranium is basically entombed at Akash Island there is fawn, you know,

know, they might take a page out of, you know, the Libyan book or, you know, what the Ukrainians

learned years ago are only guarantee of survival is actually to do this thing. And now they've got another haste of what it means for them strategically to close the straight. And, you know, all they have to do is threaten it and, you know, take her stop and insurers pull back contracts.

“So, I think they've sort of, they're full of themselves as of what they might be able to achieve”

and their ability to outlast this onslaught contributes to their victory narrative. I asked about the differences perhaps between the United States and Israeli objectives and, and here what I'll say is, I work very closely with the Israelis about half my career

and I was posted in, in Tel Aviv and, you know, I'm pretty familiar with how they,

they'll view the existential threat from Iran. I think what we have seen since the 7th of October, Hamas's, you know, brutal attack against Israeli civilians is, is a precalibration of of really sort of, it is real strategic calculus. And I think on the, on the table now is a desire to create chaos amongst their enemies, to, to so destruction. I think, on this side of the pond, we, we tend to worry about day after and, you know, even if your, your enemy is unstable,

is that necessarily in your long-term interests? I think the Israelis don't care at the moment. I think they see it, at least in the short term is for us to create disruption in Lebanon and Syria,

you know, as they can, and Yemen, and certainly in Iran. So that's, I think, why you're seeing

this sort of intensification of their strikes against leadership targets and the siege and other security force targets inside of Iran in recent days, because I think they're just trying to race it, race to get as much done before President Trump calls it and, and, and, and this. I think U.S. is in a different position. We have broader responsibilities, broader vulnerabilities and concerns. And so I think we do need to think about reopening that street and we do need to think about

“protecting our both allies from these asymmetric threats. I think that's a key difference.”

It didn't, wasn't so apparent early days, but it's becoming more and more apparent, the deeper we get into this conflict. So, a big variable in all of this has been the regime in terror. There may have been optimistic hopes early on that the decapitation strike that started, this military operation that into some extent the military opportunity had been timed around being able to accomplish. That eliminated

not just, I had told it, how many, but also, you know, a good chunk of the leadership elite in the national security wise politically around him. There's a hope obviously that this might destabilize things. But it hasn't clearly born for yet. The regime still seems to be to some extent at least by my non-expert observation, relatively to some extent in control to extent anyone is. And certainly we're not seeing any sort of uprising or assertion of an alternative

authority. So Aaron talked a little bit about what we know about the regime, how it's structure, chips mentioned the depth of the ideological commitment, the penetration of those sorts of oils, just through regimes like the IRGC. Talk to us about how we, what we knew about the regime, its structure, and its resilience potentially, before this operations started back in January. And what we're learning about it now, that may inform where it may go from here.

“Yeah, I think it's a misconception that you can decapitate the Iranian regime.”

The Iranian regime is not a personalized dictatorship, like we see in some other places, in the Middle East. It's not like Saddam Hussein where the state was very much caught up in his person. And the way that happens in Egypt, for example, and in maybe some other places, where it was in Assad's Syria, for example. The Islamic Republic, even though the Supreme Leader has a lot of power and is the Commander-in-Chief, et cetera, and a lot of

huge national decisions cannot be made without his say so. It's a regime of institutions. So there are a lot of overlapping institutions. They have a parliament, the modulus. They have an executive. They have ministers. They also have several different councils.

the Boniads, or the kind of social service. They've grown over the years and have become a huge

“point of corruption, actually, in the country as well. But there are institutions within the state”

that have produced a lot of leaders. A lot of the people within the military and Iran, within the IRGC, et cetera. Even if we would think of them as slightly lower-level leaders, have been doing their jobs for decades. A lot of them, their bonds, just from a personal perspective, were forged and the crucible of the Iran-Arabour in the war against us in the 2000s, and they've continued to operate together. And so even if you kill the Supreme Leader

and a layer or two down in certain particular organizations, there are people there who will need to find their footing. It's undoubtedly, I'm sure, cause them some consternation. And I'm there are some open source reports suggesting that they are having some difficulty meeting or convening and maybe even making decisions, which may pose as a problem actually even for our

“negotiating with them. But overall, they have a pretty deep bench in terms of leadership. And so”

the notion that you can kind of just cut off the head of the snake or snatch the Supreme Leader, or, you know, like we did with Maduro in Venezuela, doesn't that model does not apply to Iran. At the same time, we've also, you know, talked about how Iran is in anormous country. There's a lot of localized control among the governors. They seem to have pushed down authority and decision making authority to the governorate or the, you know, local level in terms of police

and the military by many accounts. And so the regime can kind of continue to operate. The other thing about the opposition is even though we have seen increasing levels of protest and discontent because of mainly because of the economic situation in Iran, the opposition is relatively leaderless. They're relatively atomized. And so there is not necessarily a leader that can just

“call everybody to the streets. And even if they did, the people with the guns are the besiege”

militias, the IRGC, the police, local police forces. And as we saw in January, the most likely

scenario is that they would get gunned down and massacred. Now, you never know when there's

going to be a revolution until there's going to be a revolution. But even in the case of some kind of revolution where let's say the top layer or two of the regime is overthrown or you do actually get this general somewhere. I don't know where we'd find him. But if you, if you got a general hypothetically who was willing to deal with us like Delcy Rodriguez is dealing with us in Venezuela, there's no guarantee that what would come after would necessarily be, you know, any better given any kind of regime

change or scenario, you know, or revolutionary scenario. Another major dynamic and variable in this comfort that you've already flagged for us, Chep, is the strategy of horizontal escalation. Iran is responded by expanding the theater of hostilities, launching attacks against golf allies as far as Cyprus and a handful of cases, you know, now hitting energy for structure kind of deepening the hisor horizontal escalation in different contexts. And we're also seeing kind of a,

I don't know, I'm pointing a phrase or not, but a kind of secondary horizontal escalation. And now you know, of Israel actively expanding operations in response to the horizontal escalation by his wallet into southern Lebanon. By some accounts by their own accounts that they're showing your officials intending to do what to southern Lebanon, about the southern

third, South of Latani, what they did to Gaza, you know, establishing a buffer zone of some sort

uprooting the infrastructure that has balls of built there. So talk to us about how far this might go from here. What has the Iranian strategy of this horizontal escalation look like and how much further can it go? Both in terms of targets where, you know, hostilities may be brought in what the types of targets are that they may be able to start engaging in. So far at least we haven't seen clearly substantial terrorism but we know that's been a toolkit in the past. I'm wondering

when we might should be worried about anticipating seeing that and what the kind of time horizon in geographic scope of all this might be. Right. So there are two shoes that haven't dropped yet and you mentioned one and that is a Iranian inspired or funded or directed terrorist attacks. And these, you know, they have in the past operated in the United States in Latin America and Europe. So yeah, this could be in the offing. Sometimes these operations take several weeks, months,

responses that is delayed and targeted at a soft target, a civilian gathering or a synagogue or school or something. So we haven't, you know, I'm sure our intelligence services are very, very busy chasing, you know, every threat thread that they have identified and tried to vent something but we've also seen warnings issued already by the, by the FBI domestically to be

on guard for this sort of thing. The second shoe that hasn't dropped yet is a concerted response

“and military response from the Houthis and Yemen. And I honestly can't explain it to you.”

They have the capability to launch not only intermediate range, uh, cruise missile attacks against southern Israel, which they've done repeatedly. But then they also have the ability because of where they're situated geographically to shut down another waterway that I'm not dead, the entrance into the Red Sea, which they have done previously. And I imagine that, you know, my interpretation of some of the statements from Iranians leaders since the killing of Manay

has sort of invited all of their partners and proxies to join in the fight, something that Esbalah did in fact do. And the Houthis haven't yet and they may be just biting their time or waiting for the right moment or maybe there's, you know, they're taking a warning from what, but they've seen to the success of the US's really operation that wanted to sit this one out. I sort of doubt the latter. I think it's, uh, maybe picking the moment of their choosing,

“but that's what I would anticipate next. It's something that has occurred, but we need to keep”

very close eye on is just the other day they launched a minimum range ballistic missile against our facility at Diego Garcia, which is in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They missed two shots, one was intercepted one fell armlessly in the sea, but if you go to the other side of that range ring, it covers about half of Europe. And it's, they've got another couple and they want to get attention from the world and they might change the asthma on some of those launches. And that's

going to rattle people in Europe and shock the world if they do something like that, a real escalation

on their part. So that's the, that's the other thing that I'm looking for and I hope never occurs,

but it's in the, in the, in the kit. And, you know, the other, last thing I'd say is, you know,

“they, they've shut the straight, probably there's a, a plan of the United States to, you know,”

try to forceably reopen it, you know, kind of a combination of a force and maybe negotiation. But down the road, will they have caused to demonstrate, once again, the ability to reach out and touch shipping in that, in that waterway with the drone or, you know, improvised surface vessel bomb. And, you know, that's, that's out there and I do worry about that. And one question I have is whether they will, even if it's in the negotiations, will they allow the straight to open

without some kind of new condition? You know, they've floated the idea of, you know, paying attacks, you know, for boats going by and things like that. So after getting hit so hard, after being able to show that they can close the straight, even without much of a navy, just with, you know, what they have and the fact that they sit right there, you know, the straight was open before we started this. So any kind of agreement that is not just the straight open with any other

kind of costs that are inflicted on the world economy or shipping or whatever it is, that is a strategic, you know, we are worse off than than we were even before we started striking. And that's a question of reopening the straight. Obviously, that's the noob. Now, that's the focus of conversation. We know the pain is building economically for the world, crude oil prices are over $100 by most measures. I'm potentially climbing. We've seen the administration take

somewhat dramatic and politically awkward to be generous about it. Measures like dropping sanctions on Iranian oil at sea to be able to surge oil into the global markets to keep prices low, but there are only so many of those tools in your toolkit that you can deploy in the

short term. It's just buying time at this point. So, Erin, let me come to you first on this.

So, I'd like to welcome you, I thought you have, where do we see this effort to opening the

either as kind of leverage over the Iranian as a means of helping secure merit-time traffic,

energy facilities, variety of things. We know there are U.S. ground troops moving towards the region or least has been reported that that's the case, which would presumably be a necessary component of any operation to take and hold Iranian territory in a meaningful way. What do the different approaches to either opening the straight and nor taking card island look like? And do we have a sense from looking with the administration? It's looking like where it's seeing the risk-caused benefit

of those different options, where it may be leaning? Sure. So, with the caveat that I'm not privy to the current plans about what the, you know, our ground forces are going to do on their

way to the golf. You can see kind of a range of scenarios in there are many, but on one side,

“I think, is the more military scenario where you do actually seize card island. You hold the Iranian”

oil economy hostage and you forceably with, you know, naval capabilities, with air cover, etc. Force open the straight, maybe you shap around the boats, boats through. And in those scenarios, Iran is going to try as much as it can without destroying its own, you know, oil export terminal to pit us as much as possible. And so, we would be, we would need extensive defensive capabilities and any of those cases to accomplish that. A middle ground is kind of, I think what you're seeing

right now is the threat of that, again, without knowing whether they actually plan to do it, the threat of that along with, trying to negotiate with the Iranians to, to open the straight. And on the other side is sort of us, we stop firing, we kind of swallow hard, and we negotiate hard after that. And there's even maybe a fourth option, which is a little bit what we saw in the Babal Mandeb when the Houthis closed that, you know, a couple of years ago, which is

this situation, which we may even be seeing the start of, whereby Iran, because it has the capability to fire on ships. It's letting some boats through, but not others. And what they're doing, then, is there, you know, we are kind of cut out to a certain extent. And maybe the Gulf countries are negotiating directly, or China is negotiating directly, or somebody is negotiating directly, and either making payments, or promises, or whatever it is, so that their ships or ships

that are going to deliver oil to them, or get natural gas to them, are getting through the streets and the Iranians' agree, not to fire on them. That's at least in a chip I'd love your

“take as well. That's how I see, particularly this particular straight-of-form move scenario.”

Chip, I'd be curious about your views on this. And let me add one more variable. The prospect of deploying ground troops, obviously, is a domestically politically, very challenging

proposition. It's something that the administration has all but said, it's never officially

ruled it out, but it's strongly suggested it's not going to happen early on, and now, obviously, maybe walking that back or leaning towards that reserve possibility that this is something we're going to do. But it comes with legal questions, political questions, political rest, legal rest, but then also, foundationally, risks to you as soldiers, what does the risk profile look for these sorts of different options that aren't laid out for U.S. service members and those involved?

Okay, so let me get remind me, if I don't touch on it at the end, but let me kind of get there in a windy way. All right. First, looking at this looming battle for Hormuz, let's compare this strategic importance of restoring, resuming, normal energy and supply chain activity throughout that region. And we had talked a bit earlier about the Iranian regime, it is built for resilience. They are used to being the underdog for them to survive is to win.

So, and my estimation, you know, shared by Danny Citrindowitz and several other servers out there, seizing Harg Island and holding hostage Iran's ability to export oil will obviously devastate their economy, but I don't think it's going to be enough to persuade the regime to

“capitulate. And not in a tight time frame, I think it might eventually, if it were really”

held for an extended period of time, but I think it would take an extended period of time. Meanwhile, okay, the continued closure of the strait that has been a lag, but already and within precinct

remind everybody, you know, that 20% of global oil supplies travel through that region,

account for an significant portion of imports for some of our allies in any stage of precinct Japan, South Korea and China and other states. And those, some of those states are already imposing very tropconey and energy conservation measures because of what has happened and what

“they anticipate at. I think the Philippines is encouraging, you know, their public service”

workers to stay at home and South Koreans are encouraged not to take as many showers. I mean, this is, this is already being felt and it's not just oil, it's LNG, electrified natural gas. And, you know, another product that people don't pay that much attention to, but, you know,

ultra pure helia, which is a critical component in the manufacturers, some of the conductors.

That's a byproduct of the production of LNG and the the straight accounts for about 30% of global supplies there. And so, you know, increasingly, our global economy and our consumer products and manufacturing systems are all critically dependent on semiconductors and already, TSMC and others are making adjustment plans for a loss of helium and digging into their supplies and the coverage getting better. All right, and as fertilizer and aluminum. So, this has been a bit

of a lagging issue, but it's going to accrue more and more and more. And, you know, this is the

mother of all oil shocks and every major recession has been proceeded by some sort of energy shocks.

“I think we can't rule that out. The longer this goes on, the worse and worse, it gets for the”

United States and the global economy. And that is a disparity with what I see the impact that is going to be on the original regime. Okay, so let's talk about the operation and I won't get into, you know, we're not going to set their play toy soldier and, you know, I get into the tactical detail. There's no other podcasts. We'll come out of the podcast, we probably won't believe, but let's return Admiral Mark Montgomery his spoken eloquently, he's with the foundation for the

defensive democracies, you know, he's sort of outlined what it would take and what it would take would be significant. You would need to have a large ISR surge to sort of really monitor, but the ISR on on that straight to, you know, monitor everything that's going on in Iran and in their close waters. It's sort of changed your air posture to put carbon air patrols up on continuous orbits with our drones to strike targets of opportunity when they arrive.

As you'd have to deploy probably several ages, uh, destroyers, so a significant portion of our Navy would have to be deployed there. And this too would take time and people may, three weeks, four weeks, but four weeks, that's doubling the length of this conflict and you're going to be

“deep into that period of economic aim that many foresee. And it may not be enough, okay?”

So chasing ballistic missile launchers is one thing, they tend to be large, you know, overly large trucks, pretty obvious visible signatures, you know, we were precipitated at doing the scutty thing as opposed to the early 90s, these days. But it's a different game when you're trying to track down, you know, short range cruise missiles and drones, drones, you know, you park them in a garage, park them under a tree and they're, and they're very difficult to find them all.

And it doesn't take, but one or two, to strike a civilian, you know, very large group container ship to, to knock it out or it just eliminate whatever confidence you may have infused back into the insurance market into the commercial shipping companies. And they'll, once again, peel back and shut down their activities. And so the Iranians could, you know, we might start operation, we might beat them back, and they might just sit back and watch, we'll let two, three,

four of these tankers go by, but the fourth one, we're going to hit, okay? And that will instantly close the straight again, and it will, you know, put the administration back in the same pickle that it tried to sell. So, you know, it's unpalatable and certainly not what this administration would want to do, but they'll, they'll have to negotiate that somehow with the regime,

and southern Iran to help reopen the straight. You asked about the bristle in the cost.

“A car guy island is one thing. It's 400 miles away from the straight enormous. It's, it's,”

it's not really part of this fight. It, it's about something else. It's about putting something that Iran cares about at threat. To try to sweep clean the, the near coastal regions around the straight. It's about 100 miles of coastline and it's rugged terrain. Okay, it, it, the, the reports that we're seeing of, you know, 4,000 Marines, 2,000 liquid reaction, basic airborne troops. That, that's, a fraction of the, the number of troops it would take to secure and hold

this swath of territory for, for any period of time. And it would be sort of a counterinsurgency

campaign. You know, with IRGC Navy or other forces, you know, running around, trying to, you know,

shoot and scoot with, with drones, taking five shots at whatever troops we put on the ground there. It would be a hard slot. And, you know, that's quite a part from what has also been bandied development, completely separate operation around esfahan to somehow disinterer the remaining stock by all of 60% highly of the uranium that Iran may be holding onto. And that's a, that's an extremely difficult mission of a, of a totally different order, but

would, you know, require troops to secure a, you know, a mountain area and it's meant at the valley entrances and excavate what the US Air Force and the Israeli Air Force had buried under, you know, tons of of hard rock. If we, in the war today, or take the Iranians months to get out, you know,

“we're going to have special forces anywhere for months. I think it's, it's really sort of beyond”

the fail. And I, I think I'd add to that as well on the political side and the negotiation side. So chip is very eloquently explained all of the problems with the scenarios that I laid out earlier and even, you know, going and getting the uranium, et cetera, they're extraordinarily difficult. But also on, on the political front, if you look at the way the Iranians have negotiated in the past with us, even when we've come to limited agreements or understandings with them, it takes a long time.

And that's just the way they negotiate. But also, it, it is totally different from the way the Trump administration so far has negotiated. So far we've had Steve Whitkov and, you know, Jared Kushner go and threw the Amani. So I believe, you know, talk to the Iranians. And we essentially put out our maximal demands. You shall give up the nuclear program and your missile program and you shall, you know, server your support to Prophets, et cetera, et cetera. Our maximal demands that we are

now trying to achieve through, through military means and the Iranians, of course, have never

agreed to those in past diplomatic negotiations. And they're highly unlikely to agree to them in the future, even if you can get somewhere with them, like the Obama administration did on the JCPOA without commenting on either the, whether that was a good or a bad deal, they did eventually get to some kind of understanding. That is a long process, at least in my estimation. My assessment would be that we'll take a long time to negotiate any kind of, I mean, the

straight of our moves is easy compared to those issues. Right. So even on the straight of our moves, you know, they can both from a military sense, from a survival sense, and from the negotiation, you know, perspective, they can just draw this out and as Chip mentioned, you know, most of the costs accrue to the United States. Obviously, we can keep killing them. We can keep blowing up more stuff. But as Chip mentioned, they can rebuild it. How long do we want to continue

to do that while we are suffering the economic costs? As the midterms come, you know, as other deadlines that the administration cares about start to accrue, you know, and at one point do, one of the great things about no longer being in the I.C. I don't know if you feel this also chip, as you can actually assess what the about, make assessments about our own administration, instead of just foreign actors. And so exactly how are we going to deal with these things

is a real huge question that I have. At what point does the president who seems to both not want to back down? He doesn't like this kind of taco talk. On the other hand, he also,

“I think in the past, he has sort of both been on the one hand, you know, very pragmatic on the other”

hand. He will kind of back down when he is pressured, which Trump are we going to get, you know,

Gulf Arabs talking to him. You have a lot of, you know, people within the administration who have

different viewpoints on this talking to him. And how is this all going to shake out? Those are really, you know, I can't predict what's going to happen. But those are really my concerns about the future. Can I add something just real quick, excuse me? You know, people in the administration should take note that they dropped their 15 point plan for ending the war. And we know within 24 hours,

this remnants of the regime had a response out, you know, with their own set of demands,

that matched the maximalist position that the Trump administration had put forward with their own set of maximists. That's, that's very telling. This, this, this is a regime that is with it enough

“to respond and play the diplomatic game coherently. And we should remember, all right,”

they held our hostages for 444 days. They could have released them earlier, but they did it. They didn't to extract a cost for present card. They released them within hours of present rig and taking office. They are not going to just be satisfied with, okay, cessation of hostilities. Let's, let's all go back to our corners. No, they're, they're going to seek to extract a cost from the Trump administration for doing this. And that, that's going to be politically painful.

And it will take time. They earned us absolutely right. Well, I think that is about as good a point as one could ask for to leave us on as we are all looking forward to seeing what exactly happens in the days and weeks to come. Until then, thank you, Aaron. Thank you, Jeff, for joining us here today on the Law Fair podcast. Thanks for having me, so we're a little closer. Thank you, Scott. Really appreciate it. The Law Fair podcast is produced by the Law Fair Institute.

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