For almost half a century, the Islamic Republic of Iran has fused revolutionary ideology, clerical authority, and modern statecraft into a system that reshaped the Middle East. With the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the severe damage the Islamic Republic has taken, is the regime’s long shadow finally fading away? In Mosaic‘s April essay, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour argues that it is.

On March 31, Mansour was joined by the Israeli scholar of national security Dan Schueftan and Mosaic‘s editor Jonathan Silver to discuss his thesis.

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour is a Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). 

Dan Schueftan is an Israeli scholar of national security. 

Jonathan Silver is an editor for Mosaic.

…

Originally published in Mosaic.

The post After the Ayatollah: Is This the End of Political Islam? appeared first on JINSA.

As the United States and Israel continue to decimate Iran’s conventional capabilities, it becomes clearer that their campaign cannot stop until at least one of two objectives is achieved: the collapse of the Tehran regime, or the end of its nuclear program. If the regime survives, it will be even more determined and desperate to go nuclear.

The Tehran regime already understood that giving up on a nuclear program is a recipe for being invaded, as happened with Ukraine; toppled like Bashar al-Assad; or invaded, toppled, and killed like Moamar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, North Korea achieved nuclear weapons and its impoverished hermit regime remains safely in power. This history lesson is even clearer now that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other top officials have been eliminated. Assuming it survives in some form, the regime will have every incentive to secure the ultimate deterrent against another such war.

Michael Makovsky, a former Pentagon official, is President and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA)

Jonathan Ruhe is Fellow for American Strategy at JINSA.

Originally published in RealClearDefense.

The post Iran’s Next Move Is the Bomb—If the Regime Survives appeared first on JINSA.

Just over a month ago, in the opening hours of Operation Epic Fury, President Donald Trump offered a theory of victory premised on ending Iran’s military and nuclear threats and enabling the Iranian people to rise up.  For all the U.S.-Israeli battlefield success since then, his first prime-time address last week gave the American people, the Iranian regime, and the wider world no idea how this war is actually supposed to end. Regime change is not the goal, but it’s been achieved anyway, he claimed. The war will soon be over because Iran’s capabilities are destroyed, yet still it must be hit extremely hard. Others should deal with the Strait of Hormuz, but it will reopen on its own.

Jonathan Ruhe is Fellow for American Strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA).

Originally published in The Dispatch.

The post Trump Risks Losing the Plot—and the War—in Iran appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

Lt Gen Thomas Trask, USAF (ret.)
Hybrid Warfare Advisor, JINSA; Former Vice Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin
Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former Commander, Israeli Air Force

The discussion was moderated by JINSA Fellow for American Strategy Jonathan Ruhe.

—

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Hello everyone. Welcome to today’s webinar on the U.S.-Israel air campaign against Iran. I’m Jonathan Ruhe, JINSA’s Fellow for American Strategy. I am thrilled to be joined by today’s panelists. Today’s discussion is taking place in the context of an open-source and unclassified environment. So anything we discuss here today will be within those bounds. Also, for our audience, if you have any questions for our panelists, please type them into the Q&A box on the bottom of the screen. We’ll do our best to address them in the time we have today.

So I want to start off with what I think is perhaps the most timely and immediate burning issue for a lot of our audience, which is the daring and headline-grabbing rescue of a downed U.S. airman inside Iran over the weekend. We’ll start by discussing that, and then from there, build out our discussion into some of the larger issues surrounding the air war itself.

General Trask, I’ll start with you, especially given your past experience as Vice Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command. We’ve read the headlines in all the big papers, heard some of the descriptions on social media. But if you could give us a sense of this operation in terms of the scale that was involved, everything that has to go into the complex operation to try to rescue a downed airman in hostile territory, including the coordination that involves between Special Forces and Air Force units.

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

Yeah, thanks, Jonathan. Appreciate you having me on today. It’s been really interesting reading over the weekend about the two rescue missions that went on, and they’re the two classic types of combat rescue operations that go on the front seater, DUDE 44 Alpha, when punched out on Friday. He was picked up in a classic service internal seesaw operation. The Air Force CSAR forces are on a very rapid alert. I don’t know exactly what their posture was in this case.

It can actually be airborne during a large package strike, where you have airborne rescue forces, meaning helicopters and HC-130 refuelers. Or more likely, most of the time, they’re on a very short string, either sitting in a cockpit on a 5-minute alert, or maybe inside the building on a 15-minute alert. But those forces, whenever there’s an air campaign like this. So it’s possible the Air Force will have deployed those rescue forces in a way to respond.

For the highest likelihood of success, you have to pick up a downed pilot in the first hour or so. So that’s why you want to try to get there before the adversary has time to react and to bring force to bear on a down pilot, and there is a much higher success rate if you can get there immediately.

If you aren’t able to get there immediately, and what happened to the back seater, it becomes more of a pre-planned operation. In that case, it may still be done by the Air Force component by themselves, if it’s simple enough. An example would be your second down pilot might have been in an area where the adversary doesn’t know where he is. He’s in a safe area, but he’s not in an area where the helicopters can go directly to him and pick him up. So there may be an offset mission that’s planned for the next night, where the Air Force would put a small team of PJs or combat rescue officers on the ground, and they go pick him up, move him into a suitable area for extraction.

Then there’s the case where it’s even a larger requirement, which is apparently what happened over the weekend, where the location of that downed pilot or downed WSO, in this case, was in an area that you’re going to have to fight your way in and fight your way out. The fact that they put that together in 48 hours is remarkable. Usually, something of that scale of that second pickup, is something that you may take a few more days to do, particularly with the idea of taking MC-130s and landing a large ground force in Iran somewhere. Very reminiscent of 1980 in the hostage rescue mission, when we landed C-130s. They were the earlier versions of the same squadrons that did this mission this week. They did that mission in 1980, so it’s very reminiscent of that.

That really ramps up the scale of the operation. What happens is, if possible, when an aviator goes down, there’s a pilot on the ground, the hardest part is usually locating them. But once you have a location, everything that’s flying that day may be turned to support that operation. So immediately, even with just the air refuelers and the command and control aircraft, the close air support aircraft, the combat air patrols, all of them may immediately support that very rapid version of the rescue. You still may have dozens of aircraft involved, all put together in a very short time.

Typically, Sandy aircraft, historically have been A-10s for many, many years. They have crews that are specially trained to do combat-rescue. They may be doing other missions. For example, the mission that I flew in the Gulf War where we picked up an F-14 pilot when I was flying H-53s there. The A-10s that we flew with and in our pickup were Sandy qualified, they were killing Iraqi tanks that day. That was their mission, and they were on the on the task list to divert to a rescue mission if that happens.

So it very well could be the similar case in this situation. As the A-10s are retired out, F-16s have become primarily the platform that we’re doing that mission with. But there are close air support aircraft and crews who are specially trained for CSAR, that work with the helicopters, they work on the techniques, the radio procedures, all of that, so that they can know exactly what the situation is.

So that appears to be what happened on Friday with the pickup of the pilot. And then, of course, it reverted to the other type of pickup, which is a pickup in a third party or a noncombatant area. So, the A-10 that was shot down on Friday was able to limp back to friendly space. The same force followed him [and] probably knew where he was going, knew what his intentions were, [and] were able to pick him up safely and rapidly after his aircraft was shot down.

So, in that case, my assumption is that part of the rescue force was the second shootdown on the A-10 that happened on Friday. But to plan the large mission with the special operations teams that involve putting ground forces in, evidently, involve putting Little Bird helicopters taken in the back of those C-130s, which is a common thing that we train to do with the MC-130 using the Army Little Birds to transport them in, because of their short range capability.

The ability to plan that mission and execute in two days really is remarkable. Obviously, something in the landing zone, they weren’t expecting the ground to be as soft, either damage the landing gear, or something that prevented them from taking off again. Typically, you would have tried to take more time to do more analysis of the potential landing zone to know more likely whether or not the C-130s could land and take off there. But they planned it on very short notice, then reacted to the contingency when the C-130s were not able to take off, and executed the mission on the ground.

Still waiting to hear more details, but that’s a fairly common version of the different types of rescue missions that can happen. There is a Joint Rescue Coordination Center that operates under the Joint Force Commander that can bring to bear forces from the Special Operations component, the Air component, even the Army or Marine components or Navy components. If they have forces that can aid in the CSAR. Every service doctrinally is responsible for trying to rescue their own first. If you’re in an Army Airborne operation, there are aircraft that are designated to pick up aircraft in case an aircraft goes down. The Navy have rescued helicopters on the carriers that are designated to be the immediate response for a naval aircraft that goes down.

As soon as it becomes a need for more than just what that particular component has the capability for, it will go up to the Joint Commander, to the Joint Rescue Coordination Center, who then can reach out to any other forces in any of the components that are needed. Reaching the Special Operations Component for that is pretty normal. If it’s too big for one of the components, that is typically where they will go first to see what Special Operations capability is in theater that could be brought to bear.

Usually in a more pre-planned mission, like this one appeared to be, where two days later you’ve located where your survivor is on the ground, what his condition is, and then plan the operation for the next night, or two nights later, or whenever you can bring it all together. But I’m sure there will be some amazing stories to be told from that. I’m looking forward to getting more of the details, but that kind of gives you the layout of how the typical CSAR effort might come together.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you very much, General Trask.

General Norkin, we’ve heard in reports that Israel played a role in helping with the rescue. Again I realize we’re in an open source, unclassified environment here. Israel also has a unique perspective on the risks of Airmen being downed over hostile territory. Could you give us [a] sort of fill in with an Israeli perspective. Maybe how Israel helped in this operation, and also how these operations look from the Israeli perspective?

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:

Well, first of all, the most important thing is that both airmen are alive and secure now. I hope that they are going to be well in a short time. Second, we must speak about that the American military demonstrate the value that you’re never left behind by anyone. So, I think it’s a very important demonstration, not just for the American military, but also for all the partners.

Third, I am saluting to my friends from the American military that bring both warriors back home. I think that they use all the American Force capabilities, unique capabilities. Of course, they can do it with no Israeli support. But once we are partners and we are fighting the same war, we are there to support in many ways and many aspects.

I cannot speak about the specific activities, intelligence, and other activities that we did, but they’re all being behind the stage, not in front of the stage, because there was no need. The American forces did it all by themselves. But to understand the size of the territory that the aerial platform needs to close and to avoid any ground enemy ground forces to get into this specific area, and by attacking the roads and many other specific points that there are like a circle around the area that the pilot or the WSO is supposed to be and by that means secure the area from the air, and then the special forces can get in and bring him back home.

So in that case, the main issue is the distance. Usually, the Israel Air Force is fighting in Lebanon, in Syria, and other areas which are a 10-minute flight. Now, those missions there are 2,000 kilometers from the Israeli border, but also from the American carriers and the American bases around the Gulf.

Sometimes you need to fly there for more than one hour, one hour and a half. So, you need to plan the mission that is supposed to be in a long-distance mission. As General Trask mentioned, you need to support them with tankers and control platforms and others.

So, just to summarize my comments, I’m very happy that they are both alive. Once the enemy takes one of the American pilots or the Israeli pilots as a prisoner, it might become a strategic issue. We cannot give the enemy such an advantage to have someone like an American pilot or Israeli pilot in his hands, and I’m crossing my fingers that until the end of the war, it won’t happen.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, General Norkin. If I could follow up, you know raise the issue of, as you mentioned, some of the risks that come with operating as a pilot over Iran, as opposed to Lebanon, which is much closer. I don’t know if it’s the case in Israel, but I get a sense here in America, we’ve been hearing a lot about how the United States and Israel have achieved air superiority over at least big parts of Iran’s skies.

So maybe the shootdown, as General Trask mentioned, not only the shootdown of the F-15, but also of some of the aircraft that came to perform search and rescue mission, they may come as a surprise that the Iranians are able to target aircraft like this. Could you explain to our audience what air security means and what it does not mean?

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:

Yeah. Once we are speaking about air superiority, it means that you can fly and do your mission about the enemy territory, but it does not mean that it’s 100% safe. There are still air defense systems. They’re all spread around the bases. It’s very hard to find them. So, we must take an assumption that there is a threat. There is not zero threat. The threat went from 100 percent to 20 or 25 percent but it is still there.

We are intercepting 90 percent of the missiles, but still 10 percent of the missiles are still penetrating to the Israeli territory and we need to get into the shelter to secure ourselves. So, once you fly above the enemy territory, it can be about Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, of course, Iran. You must understand that there is still a threat, and you must be ready to act once your system might give you an alert, or you can designate the missile by your eyes, and you can use your EW system, but the threat is there.

It’s not the same thread for the aerial platform that comes to the search and rescue mission. At the search and rescue mission, you are flying at a low altitude, and by that, you get into an even higher layer of threats, because people can shoot you by with rifle, with MANPADS and other systems.

The risk that those A-10 pilots, Blackhawk pilots, took in those missions is a very high risk because of the mission. You cannot compare it to the F-15 risk and the high-altitude flying above the targets. It is a completely different risk. I think that to be part of a search and rescue mission is the highest threat level for a pilot. The C-130 or the Blackhawk, or any other helicopter, A-10 or F-15. From time to time, as we already saw in those missions, we are losing platforms because of the risk. Once you fly low altitude close to the ground, most of the mission you are flying low speed because you are looking for the pilots or the WSOs, you would like to get more intelligence.

Low altitude, low speed, very high risk. But back to the air superiority. Yes, we have air superiority above Tehran, above Iran, but it’s not equal to zero threat. There is still an air defense system, and our pilots, both the American and the Israeli pilots, must be aware of those threats.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you very much for clarifying. General Trask, I jump back to you. Given what we’ve discussed so far, I want to bring this into the context of, we’ve heard a lot about potential U.S. ground operations inside Iran, whether it’s to secure nuclear material, to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, various other scenarios. Could you give us a sense, does this search and rescue operation, all the things we’ve discussed, does that give you any insight or foresight about what it might say about ground operations inside Iran more generally? I think for our audience it may be more helpful not to think of those potential ground operations in terms of the raid where Osama bin Laden was killed, or things like that. So if you could put some light there—or if it doesn’t tell us anything, why not?

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

Thank you. No, I think it’s pretty illustrative. If I could, real quick, make a comment on General Norkin, where he talked about air superiority. As a helicopter guy used to operating down in the dirt like that, air superiority to us meant that we have our good guys over top of us. It didn’t mean we didn’t have a threat. It means we had lots of help. And primarily it means, as General Norkin laid out very well, it means you can operate over that space with your Air Force, pretty much accomplish any mission you want to, but not necessarily without risk.

One of the things that struck me looking at the videos that are coming out of Iran, there was the HH-60 videos with an HC-130 flying with them in daytime. That obviously tells you that there’s a belief that almost all of the threat has been knocked down. But it’s impossible to eliminate completely the MANPAD threat. You can put a MANPAD in the truck of your car and drive around. You can have a high-powered rifle in the truck of your car and drive around. That’s almost impossible, to eliminate that.

If there was no missile threat at all, you would see the helicopters flying higher. In Vietnam when we did rescue before the surface air missiles really came into being, the typical tactic was to fly at 7,000 or 8,000 feet in the helicopter and only drop down to do the pickup, because the primary threat was small arms on the ground.

So the fact that you’re still seeing them flying low level means they know that there’s still a MANPAD threat out there that’s greater than the small arms threat. But that threat obviously exists, as General Norkin laid out very well.

But to answer your question, I think it’s very illustrative of the fact that you can go in and control a small amount of territory for a short period of time with a relatively small force in a relatively quick and efficient manner, the way that we did for this rescue mission. If there were other objectives that you could accomplish by doing that in parts of the country, that would be very achievable for us to do, and think of it as a raid versus an invasion.

Permanent forces you know, suppose we decide to go in, and one of the things that’s being considered is to take control of parts of Iran that are near the strait in order to reopen the strait. That would take a permanent presence. That would be a lot more difficult. It would take a lot more logistics. It would involve much heavier forces with the ability to supply them by air, routinely.

To do a raid for one night, where you basically take control of a tactical area for one day or one night, takes much less. You don’t have to do any resupply. You don’t have to plan on a logistical tail. The force can go in quickly, accomplish their mission and then extract quickly. In terms of putting troops on the ground, we’ve now broken that barrier. There have been troops on the ground in Iran as part of this thing, in a more raid type of operation. There may have been others that we just don’t know about at this point. Because if there were specific missions that could be accomplished, or objectives that could be accomplished more easily by a small team on the ground that could be infiltrated, supported just for a few hours, accomplish a mission and then be extracted and brought back, that’s certainly doable probably in most parts of Iran that are not urban.

Obviously, it becomes much more difficult to do that in an urban environment, although not impossible. It just takes longer. It probably wouldn’t involve air support. It would be all on the ground support. But those types of missions are certainly achievable if there is an objective that matches up to it, like a personnel recovery mission that we just saw.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you. So continuing to sort of take a wider look over the course of this hour about the Iran war, General Trask, I’d like to ask you a different question. You had some familiarity with how to plan for a conflict with Iran.

You know, we’re a little more than a month in now. Could you give us sort of your top-line assessment, maybe just narrow it to the air campaign, but go as wide as you’d like, as to where you see the current state of, the successes, the operational achievements of the air war so far, and also sort of trying peer ahead at the challenges that remain.

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

Yeah, sure. It’s been a long time since I’ve been involved in the planning for Iran. But when I worked at CENTCOM under General Petraeus and General Mattis, I was part of the team that worked on that.

Without talking about any of the classified elements of the plan, I can say generally that everything I’m seeing looks pretty familiar, and it started really last summer. So there were options that were just intended to go in and disable the nuclear program. There were options that went further than that, to attack and destroy the support mechanisms for the nuclear programs.

And then you can imagine what the scales of different options are up to, and including support of a full out invasion and takeover of Iran. There are several levels of gradations in between. The option that we seem to have been executing involve first focusing on the strikes against the nuclear program last summer, then we went back and got the rest of those targets in this. The second most important targets seem to be the missile capability, the missile fields, the missile infrastructure. Then it went more into destruction of military capability. And that seems to be the kind of a second level of targets that we’ve been focused on.

Now we’ve moved into more infrastructure and industry related to the defense capability. Everything that I’ve seen seems to still be focused on military capability. That includes just this weekend, Israeli Air Force strikes against the biochemical capability in Iran, which is directly related to supporting the development of weapons that have been used to support Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, the rest of the proxies that the Iranians have been supporting for years.

So, it looks like an industrial target, but it’s directly related to military capability that these Iranians have had for years. So you think about the tiered target set that start with the nuclear program, spread out to more direct military targets that include forces, barracks, training facilities, equipment, vehicles, all of those things are in that target set that would be to destroy a military capability that would make Iran less of a threat to its neighbors afterward.

Then, to take a step further, the ability to build weapons, the ability to support them by attacking the infrastructure. So that seems to be where we are in that kind of hierarchy of options that the National Command Authority has to work with.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, General Norkin, because I just asked General Trask such a big question, but also because maybe there’s a different Israeli perspective in terms of the planning and the targeting. Could you give us your assessment from the Israeli view of basically what I just asked General Trask from the American perspective.

What do you see as the successes so far and the challenges that remain for Israel to achieve its goals?

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin

I think that in the current war, there is no difference between Israel and the United States. Why?

Because the planners, they are sitting together. The commanders talk to each other every day, maybe more than once a day. So we are on the same page, the same plan. We support each other.

Of course, Israel is a very small nation and quite small air force, but we are doing both together, both air forces act together, both militaries. We share intelligence, and there is no American perspective at the tactical level. There is no American perspective or Israel’s perspective. We’re on the same page.

I think that as General Trask already answered, we are not just acting at the nuclear reactor. We act against the entire chain of the ballistic missiles and other military capabilities. Now we are getting to the semi-military targets, the petrochemical infrastructure industry, and the trains, and the bridges that support the military to transfer capabilities from one part of Iran to another. As the American President already declared, the next step might be the electricity and energy capabilities.

So, the current war, we can see much deeper and more precisely, [the] military activities inside the Iranian system. By that, we are pushing the Iranian capabilities and the Iranian regime back and back to the point that we are going to achieve our goals for the war.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you. If I just follow up very quickly. You mentioned at the start there how unified the U.S. and Israeli planning and operational perspective is in this operation. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about that. I mean, for our audience, there’s the Israeli Air Force, because the Israeli Air Force controls everything that applies in the Israeli military.

But the United States has an Air Force and a Navy that are each operating in the skies above the country. And so I want to, in this discussion, be sure we talk about the impressive nature of that tactical coordination. And if you could, please expand on that a little bit?

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:

Maybe I’m wrong, General Trask will correct me, but the commander that coordinates all the American forces is the CENTCOM. Under Central Command there is a Central Command Air Force. And so we are speaking to the Central Command planning team and to the Central Command Air Force and all the aerial components that are acting under the Central Command.

So, there is no need for the Israeli planning team to speak to more than one American team, because of the structure of the organization on the American side, which it’s much bigger, with more components. There is a carrier, there is a Space Force, and there are other forces. In Israel, everything is under the Air Force auspices. So it might not be easy, but still, the Central Command are doing very well. The relations between CENTCOM and the Israel Defense Forces, they are very close. They know each other. They can do the missions in a very intimate coordination.

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

General Norkin has it exactly right. Even though there’s not a ton of history of the U.S. military working with the Israeli Air Force, there is a ton of experience of the U.S. military working with coalition air forces that fit into this coordinated effort. Lieutenant General France is the Air Component Commander under Admiral Cooper at CENTCOM. So, he is the airman that is the chief coordinator of all of that, whether it’s Marine Corps, Air Navy, Air Coalition, in this case, Israeli Air Forces.

That machine comes together very well, it has decades of experience operating, and it makes it very easy for another Air Force to join in. It just becomes part of that coordination so that everybody knows what targets everybody’s hitting, the command and control apparatus there is going well, and everyone understands where it all fits together to make sure there are no conflicts.

Going back to the discussion we had on the personnel recovery operation this weekend, had that been an integrated Israeli Air Force plane that had gone down, it would have operated exactly the same way for any airplane that’s in the coalition operating under that big umbrella. And so there truly is one coordination point for all of the air that’s working underneath the CENTCOM commander.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, General. So to follow on to that, but also to fold in questions we’re starting to get from the audience. We’ve seen reports that in targeting some of Iran’s missile capabilities, there’s one thing to take out, the mobile above ground launchers. We especially saw a lot of that in the 12-day war last summer. There’s also Iran’s underground missile cities.

We’ve also seen various ideas of just how much of Iran’s missile firing capability launchers and stockpiles have been reduced. Is there anything you could tell our audience, how to think about this problem and Iran’s expected resilience on this front as they continue to fire a dozen, maybe more, missiles every day? General Trask, please.

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

Yes, certainly part of the effort is to identify where those underground areas are, where they’re continuing to protect those missile forces and that capability. But I can only imagine that the intelligence on that is growing daily, so that we understand every day when if they’re only launching 8 or 10 or 12, there’s probably a good chance that we’re getting a better feel for where they’re coming from, where they’re being hidden, where they’re being supported from, where they’re getting fuel from.

That intelligence picture grows every day. It does demonstrate their resilience, that they’re still able to operate at the level that they are with ballistic missiles, particularly targeted at Israel right now. I would have bet that we would have been down to maybe one or two a day by this point. So, they are being more resilient than I think probably we imagined. But it doesn’t mean that degradation isn’t truly happening and then underway, and we will get better intelligence every day.

The trick is finding the intelligence. Getting to them, even if they’re underground, is not that difficult anymore. As long as we know where they are, we’ve got ways to go there. There may be the occasion where using forces on the ground to do a raid may be worth an objective like that at some point. As I insinuated, it may have already happened as far as we know. But that’s just an intelligence picture that continues to grow, in my opinion.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you General Trask. A follow-on question from our listeners: is the United States able to use our airbases in and near the Gulf to attack Iran?

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

My understanding is yes. The only bases we’ve not been able to use are in Spain, based on the restrictions of the Spanish government. Everywhere else we’ve had bases, even though some of those nations may not have agreed, and NATO necessarily has not agreed, none of them have precluded us from using our American bases, except for Spain right now.

So, certainly in the Gulf region, those appear to be no issues at all. In fact, it seems to be all of those nations that host our forces have been very supportive of the operation and allowed us to do what we need to do.

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:

Jonathan, as you know, JINSA did a project about American bases in Israel. I think that what we are learning now, the cooperation and amount of U.S. platforms that deployed every day from the Israeli bases and other air defense systems we can use to protect the American forces in the Israeli bases.

The technology is shared, the ammunition is shared, the shared platforms that we are using the F-35, F-15, F-16. So I think that now, compared to the time that we published the paper about the American bases in Israel. Today, I have a much more positive parameter to get such a project.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, General Norkin. For our audience, he’s mentioning JINSA’s report from last November called Base for Success in which we recommended U.S. basing options, specifically at Ovda Air Base in southern Israel.

But General Norkin, since you thankfully raised that topic, we’ve seen reports, Ibelieve it was last week, that Israel is potentially offering the United States to relocate more of its forces to Israel after the war. Beyond just what’s there currently. Is this something you can discuss for our audience?

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:

Well, it has just been published in the Israeli media also, but I have no formal sources. So this is part of just a media article. But yes, I think that both for the Iranian threat and also to complete the mission in Gaza and the place that the American government and the American military is going to take to control the forces that might come to the international force to Gaza, so that is more than one reason to have more American capabilities in Israel.

Jonathan Ruhe:

I want to follow up with another question from our audience. I realize the numbers for the munitions I’m about to reference are closely guarded secrets for a lot of good reasons, but General Norkin, I’ll start with you, and then I’ll ask General Trask if he has follow-on thoughts. At what point do American and Israeli weapons stockpiles become a strategic factor? I think specifically there are concerns about running low on maybe air to ground munitions or various other offensive capabilities. General Norkin, can you comment on that first?

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:

Well, at the broad level, we are not going to get to that point because the Iranians have much less missiles than the amount of bombs. So if we would like to continue to attack Iran, we can reduce the number of targets per day and other parameters, but Israel and America can keep attacking Iran for a long time. But I’m not sure that this is the right thing to do. Not because of the amount of bombs, but because of other aspects like the Israeli economy or the oil price or other parameters. It’s better for us to achieve our goals in a short time. But the bombs, the amount of bombs, it won’t be the limiting factor.

Jonathan Ruhe:

General Trask, is there anything you’d like to add?

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

No, I agree with General Norkin. I think, you know, there are certainly strategic questions that have to be continually evaluated on ramping back up weapons production in the United States. I think that’s part of the President’s budget request that certainly is going to be a large part of making sure that we keep stockpiles robust.

The strategic concern for the United States is, do we get so low to the point where we might be taken advantage of somewhere else in the world, like in the Pacific?

As far as continuing this mission, and at the rate that we have, and even at increased rates, I don’t think there’s a significant concern that we’re going to be in any kind of contingency operations because of lack of munitions.

It’s certainly something that needs to be addressed, the replacement of everything that’s going on here, and obviously that’s part of the budget discussions that are about to start in Washington.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you. With a little bit of time we have left, I’m jumping around a little bit here, but I want to be sure to address a bunch of different things.

General Trask, I’ll ask you this first. We’ve heard, in the context of President Trump’s efforts to get a cease fire, threatening things like power plants, bridges, various other targets in Iran that haven’t been hit, at least not intensively yet. From a military perspective, could you tell us what considerations might go into targeting things like that?

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

I think it’s obviously a sensitive question, but it’s not necessarily always a legal matter. Most often it’s easy to make the legal case of why you’re striking a power plant. Think of an example, if there’s a power plant in war with the United States, and the same power plant supplies power to North Carolina, but also to Fort Bragg, that becomes pretty easy to make the case that that’s a legal military target.

Now the question becomes more in the gray area is if it is a smart target. What’s the situation that you want to leave afterwards? Do you want to have a situation where you’re creating another generation that may be against you for the small military gain that’s gone by knocking out certain civilian infrastructure targets?

It’s probably going to be pretty easy to link a lot of those targets to military capability. So the legality of it isn’t necessarily in question. It’s whether each one of those creates enough military advantage in the conflict to outweigh what it may mean after the conflict is over with the relationship in this case, you know, we would like to see, obviously, at some point, the people in Iran to rise up and to throw off this regime. So we don’t want to make enemies of those people who have already demonstrated a capability to risk their lives to try to overthrow their own government.

So a lot of that has to come into play. But there may be targets. The one I mentioned earlier about the petrochemical plants that the Israeli Air Force knocked out. I read an article yesterday that said it knocked out 85 percent of their capability. There’s probably civilian uses for that as well, but it has a huge impact on their ability to build weapons to spread to their proxies in the region afterwards. So that one’s a very easy one, and obviously the military objective of attacking a target like that probably easily outweighs any risk that it might have against effects on civilians.

But the other thing to remember is that using classic logic of an adversary government that cares what happens to its people doesn’t apply here. Because we care more about what happens to the Iranian people than the Iranian regime cares about what happens to the Iranian people. So using that logic of ‘we’re going to put this pressure on it, because it will hurt your people and you’ll care about that’ doesn’t apply here because they don’t care about that.

So it just changes the rationale as they weigh those advantages versus disadvantages for each of those targets. And I’m sure you know that’s something, as I mentioned, we’ve been starting with a very small pinpoint strike to a full invasion of Iran, we’re somewhere in between. So whether that next step up accomplishes objectives, that’s got to be part of the work that’s being done in the Pentagon, and the decision makers and the policymakers in the government that are giving recommendations to the President for how this can work out.

That said, we may know sooner than we realize in a few hours when we understand what’s going to happen next. But I’m confident that the smart career policymakers are providing those options right now for the government.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you very much. That’s incredibly illuminating, clarifying. To attempt to peer ahead just a little bit more before we close today’s webinar, General Norkin, I’ll ask this question to you. But of course, General Trask, please feel free to add anything you like.

General Norkin, how do you view the possibility that Iran may get military resupplies from Russia or China or any other of our shared adversaries? Maybe for air defenses, but also potentially even more broadly than that, how do you how do you assess that scenario?

MajGen (ret.) Amikam Norkin:

Well, I think that there is no major option for the Russians to support them. The situation in Russia is quite complicated, and they need their systems in their war, and there are no extra capabilities.

As you all know, the Iranians support Russia with the Shahed technology, the war between Russia and Ukraine. Russia can support Iran with intelligence or other capabilities.

About Chinese technology, or maybe other nations. Yes, there is an option, but we can monitor that with the American and the Israeli intelligence, and we can reduce the amount of support that Iran can get from the external nations.

Jonathan Ruhe:

General Trask, any final thoughts?

Lt Gen (ret.) Thomas Trask:

It’s been striking to me how the few friends that Iran had going into this have been largely quiet and hands off at this point. So the issue that General Norkin mentioned about providing Shahed drones for the Russians, I would bet that’s going to be less likely to happen, should this regime survive this, going forward.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Wonderful. Well, I’d like to join our audience in thanking General Trask and General Norkin for joining us. Particularly thank you General Norkin for joining us at night in Israel as you begin to celebrate Passover. And to our audience, Happy Passover, to those who celebrate. Thanks again for tuning in.

The post Transcript: Webinar – The U.S.-Israel Air Campaign Against Iran appeared first on JINSA.

For weeks, Operation Epic Fury showcased the breathtaking reach, precision, and persistence of American air and space power: more than 13,000 combat sorties and more than 12,300 targets struck by April 1. The striking figures speak to extraordinary military capability, global reach, relentless operational tempo, and the unmatched technical excellence that defines the United States Air Force and United States Space Force.

But numbers do not tell the most important story.

What is truly important is what happened on April 3, when an F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down over Iran. After weeks of combat and thousands upon thousands of sorties, the enemy destroyed a U.S. fighter aircraft for the first time in this conflict. In an instant, this war was no longer just about sorties, targets, and battle damage assessments, but about the survival and rescue of two American Airmen on the ground in hostile territory, separated, exposed, and in mortal danger.

What followed was a rebuttal to one of the criticisms often aimed at the Air Force and Space Force.

Both crew members ejected safely, but they landed in different locations in rough and hostile terrain. One was recovered within hours, but the other—a wounded weapons systems officer—spent more than 24 hours in evading capture in the mountains while enemy forces hunted him. Every minute increased the danger and raised the stakes. Somewhere in that unforgiving terrain was an American service member who knew the enemy was looking for him, knew capture or death was a real possibility, and yet fought for his survival.

And somewhere above him, around him, and far beyond his line of sight, hundreds of fellow Americans were rallying to his cause, doing what Americans in uniform have always done: refusing to leave one of their own behind.

This is more than a rescue mission; it is a declaration of values.

U.S. helicopters took enemy fire and crew members were wounded. An A-10 supporting the operation was dealt a deadly blow, but its pilot successfully made it to friendly airspace. The effort to save the second Airman required capabilities no other country posesses: extraordinary intelligence, deception, special operations forces, air cover, strike coordination, not to mention uncommon courage. It was an enormous effort, involving far more aircraft—both in number and variety—than one might assume. But those details, while fascinating and surely the subject of future films, are not the point. It required Americans in the air and on the ground risking their lives for one reason above all others: One of their own was still out there.

And they were going to get him home.

Too often the simplistic charge that the Air Force and Space Force are too enamored with technology, too centered on their platforms, too focused on hardware over humanity, simply misses the mark completely.

As important as technology is—aircraft, satellites, secure communications, precision navigation, resilient networks, and intelligence fusion are all indispensable to modern warfare—the Air Force and Space Force have never been about technology for its own sake. These services are about people empowered by technology, people sustained by trust, people bound by duty, and people willing to risk everything for one another.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, the Air Force and Space Force do not worship machines. They do not elevate platforms over people or technology over the human dimension. On the contrary, they see technology and the human dimension as complementary and inseparable, not competing priorities. The machine extends the reach of the warrior, and the warrior gives the machine purpose.

And when one of our own is down, every Airman, every Guardian, every aircraft, satellite, sensor, and network matters for only one reason: because a fellow American is in danger.

That is what made this mission so powerful. It was not just a feat of operational integration. It was the visible expression of loyalty, duty, and the sacred promise that binds those in uniform together: If you go down, we will come for you.

That promise is not sentimental. It is not ceremonial. It is not something recited on special occasions and forgotten in battle. It is real, imposing obligations and demanding action in the face of danger. It demands that others climb into cockpits, helicopters, command centers, and travel into kill zones not to destroy but to rescue, for the sake of a fellow servicemember in peril. Here, courage is no abstraction; it is a choice.

Space Force Guardians may not fly into danger in the same way, but they are no less woven into the campaign, providing critical communications, navigation, targeting support, and warning functions. Those contributions, while technical, are deeply human in purpose. They are protecting lives. They are helping find the isolated. They are helping bring warriors home. Behind every signal, every warning, every transmission, every coordinate, and every operational decision is an Airman or Guardian whose work can mean the difference between rescue and loss.

This is the human dimension of air and space power.

War is never remote and antiseptic. It involves real people risking their lives for missions in the face of true danger. Even after thousands of sorties and weeks of successful combat operations, danger endures. The enemy always gets a vote.

What Americans should recognize in the wake of this weekend is not that a U.S. jet was shot down but that the character of our American military is unparalleled.

Under pressure, under fire, and against the clock, Airmen and Guardians, Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, performed exceptionally: They focused on the mission, trusted one another, accepted the risk, and refused to leave their comrades behind.

We saw Airmen and Guardians prove that the soul of these services is not cold machinery, but human devotion. We saw the professionalism that prepares people to perform under the harshest conditions. We saw the discipline that enables clarity amid chaos. And above all, we saw the love of comrades that compels men and women in uniform to risk everything to save one of their own.

That is the promise our Airmen and Guardians make to each other. And that is why this mission should be remembered: Not simply as a successful combat rescue, but as a living testament to the heart, character, and humanity of American air and space power.

Lt Gen Dave Deptula, USAF (ret.) is the Former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, U.S Air Force Headquarters and a 2013 JINSA Generals & Admirals Program participant.

Originally published in Air and Space Forces Magazine.

The post The Soul of Aerospace Power: It’s the People, Not the Machines appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

Elliott Abrams
Iran Policy Project Member, JINSA; Former U.S. Special Representative for Iran

Amb. Eric Edelman
Distinguished Scholar, JINSA; Former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Stephen Rademaker
Senior Advisor, JINSA; Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security & Nonproliferation

The discussion was moderated by JINSA Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal.

—

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Blaise Misztal:

Good afternoon. Today, we’re talking about the prospect for negotiations and diplomacy ending this conflict, or whether greater escalation lies ahead. I’m Blaise Misztal, JINSA’s Vice President for Policy. I’m delighted to be joined by an all-star panel of diplomats and defense professionals.

We have Ambassador Eric Edelman. He’s a JINSA Distinguished Scholar and the former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Elliott Abrams is former U.S. Special Representative for Iran and Venezuela, and a member of JINSA’s Iran Policy Project. And Steve Rademaker, JINSA Senior Advisor and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation.

Let me just start by trying to figure out where we are based on comments from President Trump, who yesterday said ‘We had very good negotiations with Iran. I do see a deal with Iran, and it could be soon, but at the same time, it’s possible we won’t see it, and then we negotiate with them, and then we always have to blow them up.’

Today in a Truth Social post, he said the U.S. is in serious discussions with a new, more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran, and that great progress has been made, but also, if for any reason, a deal is not shortly reached, ‘the U.S. will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants.’

So, let me start with Elliott Abrams. Is there negotiating happening with Iran, is there a diplomatic channel open, what’s going on?

Elliott Abrams:

Thank you, Blaise. Let me start by saying I’m not speaking here on the basis of secret information that I have. It seems that there is a channel, in that the Pakistanis are able to pass messages back and forth. We haven’t even gotten to proximity talks, where two parties are in the same hotel, but not in the same room. And if you look at the American conditions and the Iranian conditions, boy, are we far apart. I think one of three things is going to happen. I think there will be a deal reached soon, within the next let’s say within this week, or there will be some kind of escalation by the United States, or there will be a cessation of the war without a deal. And look, the war is going to end. Whether it ends in three days or two weeks, it is going to end. It actually seems to be, to me, more likely that it ends with each side agreeing to stop the use of force rather than the negotiation of an actual one or two or 10 page agreement, because I don’t think we really are close enough to have such an agreement.

Blaise Misztal:

Let me ask you, Ambassador Edelman. President Trump has presented his 15 point plan to the Iranians. He said yesterday that the Iranians have given us most of them, referring to those points, but publicly, at least the Iranians are rejecting all 15 as best as I can tell. What is the divide here between what President Trump is asking and the Iranians are asking, and is it possible that we might find them coming to some sort of agreement?

Amb. Eric Edelman:

Well, I largely agree with what Elliot just said. I do think it’s extremely difficult to parse what’s going on in the sense that both sides are prevaricating. To Elliott’s point, President Trump said that we’ve had both direct and indirect talks. There may have been some communication directly between Iranian foreign minister Aragchi and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, but I don’t think there have been any other real direct communications between the two sides. And the Iranians have an interest in also downplaying the fact that there’s been discussions between two sides. So it’s a little difficult to actually, you know, get a sense of how much has been conceded by the Iranians and how much room there is for actual agreement.

You know, the President said that as a sign of respect and as part of a test that he set out for the new rulers of Iran that they had given him a great gift of allowing 10, or now maybe 20, Pakistani tankers to transit the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. I don’t doubt that the Iranians tried to dress this up as a gift to the president, but it’s a funny kind of gift, because it’s mostly a gift to themselves. Since, you know, these tankers were moved to safe passes through a channel created by the Iranians through the strategic deployment of a handful of mines, 10 to 12, in the strait, and may have paid as much as a $2 million toll and maybe perhaps per container in order to transit this strait. I mean, the total result, when you add in the lessening or loosening of sanctions on Iranian oil by the Trump Administration, is an effort to keep the price down.

The last time I looked, Brent had hit $113 a barrel. You know, the Iranians are now making twice as much revenue from oil sales as they were before this conflict started. So from their point of view, this is not a terrible kind of outcome, the one that Elliot just outlined, in which everything just stops and we go back to the status quo ante. And I say that because, if that were to be the case, Iran will have demonstrated that they can close the Gulf at will and therefore, from their point of view, they will have survived. They will have established their ability to close, at will, the strait. And therefore, in a perverse way, they will say, we won.

Blaise Misztal:

And do we have any idea, when President Trump says he’s negotiating with this new, more reasonable regime in Iran, who he has in mind?

Elliott Abrams:

You know, just one word about that, if I could. Whether it’s [speaker of Iran’s parliament] Mohamed Galibaf or a ground around him, these are the new guys in power. I think one of the reasons it’s very tough to get a deal is that a deal means compromise. It means concessions. And who wants to come into power and have to make concessions immediately, concessions that will be, within the regime, extremely unpopular? Who has the power to make those concessions? What’s the mechanism by which it will be agreed upon within the regime, and with the Supreme Leader, who is apparently out of action? So, I think that question pushes me in the direction of saying there’ll be a kind of ceasefire, rather than a deal.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

If I could just add one thing. By all accounts, the balance of political forces inside the regime, since this started, has moved in the direction of domination by the IRGC. The regime was already heading in that direction before this started. But the various decapitation strikes that have been a part of this military campaign, I think, have accelerated that process. And one reads that there are some kinds of fissures between President Pezeshkian and Ahmed Vahidi, the newly ensconced commander of the IRGC, over the resilience of the Iranian economy, and if they need to keep fighting or not fight. At the end of the day the IRGC calls the shots. And for that reason, I very much agree with Elliott. It’s hard to see how a compromise could be accomplished here. I could be wrong, but that’s how I see it as well.

Blaise Misztal:

Steve, wanted to get you in here. What is your take on the feasibility of diplomacy? Do we think that President Trump really wants a diplomatic agreement? Is that his preferred way out of this war, and is he serious about it? What’s your take?

Stephen Rademaker:

Well, first of all, I agree with my two colleagues about the immediate challenges of trying to negotiate. You know, the strategy pursued by the U.S. and the Israelis was to decapitate the regime, and so the first tier of leadership has been removed, and we’re now dealing with the second and third tiers. And it’s quite predictable that in a scenario like that, that there will be a struggle for power among those who have survived. And probably the thing that could be most fatal to anyone competing for power in the current environment is to be seen as prepared to accede to the demands of the Israelis and the Americans.

Finding a negotiating partner who’s in a position, and willing and able, to agree to the fairly maximalist demands that the Trump administration has made diplomatically will be very difficult. I think we see that reflected in the fact that Qalibaf has been identified by the president as his interlocutor, but then Qalibaf immediately denied that. And, the Iranians, in fact, deny that they’re negotiating at all. I think the reason for that is the first Iranian who says, ‘Yes, I’m negotiating with President Trump,’ he may not end up with a bullet in his head, but he’d be out of contention for power, in the current context.

So I find it very hard to imagine someone on the Iranian side signing a piece of paper. Or, you know, entering any sort of commitments right now with the Trump administration. But you asked separately, does Trump want a negotiated settlement. I think obviously he’d love to be able to use force, as he has done, and have that result in reluctant acceptance by Iran of the demands that he has been making of the Iranians all along. That would be a huge victory for him and to get the Iranians to agree to all the things that Trump wants would be, basically, capitulation by Iran. Particularly on all the issues that have been points of contention: the nuclear program, the missile program, their human rights policies, their support for proxies throughout the region. That would be a wonderful victory, if we could get them to agree on those things. We could hold them to that going forward. But the likelihood of that is slim.

I think among the options that Elliot identified at the outset, we’re likely looking at just a decision by Trump at some point to declare victory. Iran has certainly put the pieces in place to declare that merely by surviving they have emerged victorious. Short of that decision by Trump, we’ll see escalation, and we don’t know where that would lead. It looks like Trump is putting the pieces in place to do that. Of course, the skeptics are saying that’s his real plan all along. He knows diplomacy is not going to go anywhere, and he is just using diplomacy as a fig-leaf to buy time in order to take the next step militarily. I doubt that’s his preferred option. I mean, Donald Trump was not elected to involve the United States in ground wars in the Middle East, so I think he will only do that very reluctantly, but he may be forced to do that.

Blaise Misztal:

All three of you have highlighted that it seems that Washington and Tehran are pretty far apart, and so the 15 point plan that President Trump has proposed is probably a non-starter. But is it? Is it the right deal? Should the U.S. demand more? Could it accept less than what’s in that 15 point plan? Steve, what do you think?

Stephen Rademaker:

The 15 point plan has not been publicly revealed, so I can’t tell you with certainty that it covers all issues of concern to me, but from the descriptions I’ve seen of it, the only thing that could take the plan further would be a demand the Islamic Republic leaders step aside and turn over power to some new government. Those are pretty maximalist demands, well beyond anything that would have seemed realistic before the use of force.

Blaise Misztal:

Elliot Abrams, should we take a deal that’s less than those 15 points?

Elliott Abrams:

Well, as you said, it’s maximalist. I would assume that there is some room for negotiation on those 15 points if we get into a serious negotiation. But as I said, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I don’t think you’re going to see the two teams, you know, sitting there in Islamabad, exchanging papers and having weeks of detailed negotiation as if it were the JCPOA. I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Blaise Misztal:

Let me stick with you, Elliott, and ask you about some of the international players that are involved or could be involved in negotiations, starting with our coalition partner in this war, Israel. What’s your sense of Israel’s position on these negotiations and its desire for a diplomatic deal?

Elliott Abrams:

Well, I think the Israelis have a target list, and it seems that they’re getting to the end of it, as we are. The nuclear sites, the missile sites, the drone sites, etc. So what remains is the 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and the Strait of Hormuz. Now, the strait, presumably, if you get a ceasefire deal, would be open. And the question there is, yes, but, but can ships freely go through it? Does it hold? Does Iran, in essence, set up a toll booth there? That’s not an Israeli issue. That’s an American issue and a Gulf Arab issue.

From the Israeli point of view, I think there’s one big thing left by this weekend, say, and that’s the 440 kilograms, which they would presumably like to see taken or bombed sufficiently that it is completely unreachable and unusable. But I think they’re getting to the end of their lists, and they have reason to turn to Lebanon. Hezbollah has really jumped into this war needlessly and fully, and the Israelis now have significant numbers of troops on the ground, and they need to deal with that. If tomorrow, the President said it’s over, I think the Israelis would go along. I don’t think that they’d do so with regrets. The Arabs are a different story, because they need the Strait of Hormuz to be open. It’s critical for all of their economies.

Blaise Misztal:

Ambassador Edelman, about a year ago, President Trump initiated Operation Rough Rider against the Houthis in Yemen, which lasted for about a month before President Trump announced that it was over and there was some sort of a ceasefire agreement with the Houthis. That applied to American naval vessels but did not mention Israel at all.

Is it possible that we end up with sort of a similar scenario this time around, that there’s a deal with the Iranians that sort of is about the war between the U.S. and Iran, but doesn’t include Israel?

Amb. Eric Edelman:

It would be hard for me to see how the President could say the war is over, if the Iranians were continuing to strike Arab allies. A couple of points I think are germane here. One is, first of all, in the last two days, the Houthis have twice weighed in and fired at Israel. Up until then, they had been the dog that didn’t bark. One might have assumed that they were staying out of the war because they thought that Iran was no longer the strong horse in the region, and therefore they couldn’t be protected from strikes by either Israel and or the United States. They’ve chosen to get involved in a way which, I would suggest, is meant to signal that they can do more.

The Houthis could create a second front, as it were, at another critical maritime chokepoint in the region. And so I think that’s been concerted between Tehran and the Houthis as a warning shot across President Trump’s bow. I think it’s notable that since that ceasefire deal with the Houthis, the bulk of commercial traffic, as I understand it, has decided not to try and transit the Red Sea and go through the Suez Canal, but it’s taking the long route around the Cape in Africa.

If we don’t get a clear resolution, to Elliot’s point of what the status of the Gulf is, that is a huge problem for our Arab partners and the region, but also for the United States, which has traditionally maintained the right to freedom of navigation around the world and access to the global commons. So I do think that if the Iranians thought they could get a deal where we just everybody walks away, and there’s no specificity about what comes next with regard to the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, that would be very problematic for our for our Arab allies—who, by the way, are also to some degree involved in this mediation effort. The Qataris were involved at the outset. They’ve now stepped back and sort of yielded pride of place to the Pakistanis, who have some direct connections to the IRGC, and the Egyptians, the Turks, and over the weekend in meetings in Islamabad, the Saudis as well.

I’m not sure the President understands exactly all of the ramifications of everything he put in his recent post. The threat to attack desalination plants is potentially, I think, a precursor to a kind of no-holds-barred escalation where we see both sides trying to destroy all the infrastructure on both sides of the Gulf. The Iranians, of course, are suffering from a huge water emergency right now, but our Arab partners could as well. If the Saudi desalination salination plants were taken out, they’d have to evacuate Riyadh within 72 hours.

We saw an attack today against a Kuwaiti desalination plant by the Iranians, which was a response, they said, to a reservoir in Khuzestan that was hit again. I think this was meant as a signal about what could come next if we get another round of escalation. I think the escalation could start moving in a direction that could be quite catastrophic for that part of the world.

Blaise Misztal:

I did want to get to some of the countries involved in mediating these talks. First, though, Ambassador Edelman, since you brought this up: What would a workable arrangement for the Gulf, for the Strait of Hormuz, look like?

Amb. Eric Edelman:

Well, I think there’d have to be some renunciation by the Iranians of, first of all, any intent to collect tolls. They have publicly suggested that with respect to the Strait of Hormuz, which they regard as entirely in their possession. I mean, it’s contested, right? Because some of the islands in the head of the strait traditionally have been claimed by the UAE but have been occupied by Iran since 1971.

You’d have to have Iran not seeking to make any comparison, for instance, to the Suez Canal, where tolling is a function of an international treaty agreement from the 19th century. You would need to ensure Iran is not going to try and use their ability to close the strait, to mine it, to attack shipping in the strait as a way of impeding traffic at their whim. So there’s a need for a formal understanding about all those things.

Blaise Misztal:

Steve, the usual culprits that the U.S. has turned to negotiate with Iran—the Qataris and the Omanis—are not present in whatever communications are happening between Washington and Tehran. Do you have a sense of why that is, and why we’ve had these other intermediaries, the Pakistanis and the Egyptians and the Turks?

Stephen Rademaker:

Pakistan seems to be in the lead now as the new mediator that’s stepping forward and offering to try and broker a deal. One interesting dimension with Pakistan is that within the last year, they entered a mutual defense pact with Saudi Arabia, and they probably thought at the time this was a good deal—that, basically, the Saudis would subsidize them and come to their aid if they had any problems.

At the moment, with Saudi Arabia under attack from Iran, it’s possible that Pakistan will be called on under this mutual defense agreement to come to Saudi Arabia. Of course, Pakistan borders Iran, so that would be quite a complicated situation. So I do think Pakistan is highly motivated to resolve this, and that may account for their desire to be involved.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

I agree with that. I think the problem here, though, is that not just the Pakistanis, but the Egyptians and others, all are incentivized to want to see this come to as rapid a conclusion as possible. They are going to be refracting whatever messages are being passed through the prism of their own interests.

My own experience in diplomacy tells me something about this kind of thing. In the leadup to the war in 2003 with Iraq, we had a lot of helpful intermediaries trying to pass messages back and forth between the Turkish Government and ours about what it would take to get the 4^th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army into Turkey as part of a military plan to degrade Iraq militarily. Very quickly, it all went bad. Because when you’ve got a lot of cooks in the kitchen passing messages back and forth, trying to shade things to their own interest, it’s just a recipe for miscommunication and miscalculation in my view.

Elliott Abrams:

The question is, what are we hearing from Gulf Arabs? The news reports indicate that the Gulf Arabs have—this isn’t quite the right term—been radicalized. That is, they did not want this war because they feared that the Strait of Hormuz might be closed and or that Iran would attack them. Both have happened. But it does not appear that their messaging to Washington is, ‘End the war today. Please stop it now.’ Rather, they have moved, if you will, to the Israeli point of view: that this is such a dangerous regime, either it should be changed, or if that is not possible, it needs to be attacked and attacked and attacked so that its ability to do this again is greatly diminished and pushed far into the future.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

Just to add to what Elliot just said, the UAE has been disproportionately attacked. And what’s come under attack have been all of the things they’ve invested in over the last 40 years. The tourist infrastructure in Dubai, economic sites. All these things are now at risk, and so it’s not surprising to see their position on this.

The Omanis, I believe, have sort of blotted their copybook with the administration, because they kept insisting that there was some kind of nuclear deal in the works that was sabotaged by the President launching this war. I mean, I’ve got my own criticisms of how this was done, but even [International Atomic Energy Agency head] Rafael Grossi has said there was no nuclear deal on the table.

I think the Omanis are no longer seen as a reliable intermediary. And the Qataris were quite active up until Ras Laffan [Qatar’s main energy terminal] was hit by the Iranians, and then I think they voluntarily stepped back [from mediating negotiations] because of the kind of radicalization effect that Elliott was talking about.

Blaise Misztal:

Well, we’ve described two groups. There’s one group more eager to see this war end quickly and helping mediate talks, and pass messages back and forth. Then there’s one group that’s been eager to see the war through to its end, so that the Iranian threat is severely degraded.

But there’s a Venn diagram there. The Saudis seem to fit into both sides of those two groups. They’re part of the Pakistani-Egyptian-Turkish cabal there on the talks, but there have also been media reports that [Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman] is, together with the Emiratis, pushing President Trump to finish this war. So which side do they really fall on? What do they really want?

Elliott Abrams:

Well, I think they all want this regime dead, but they recognize that that is very unlikely to happen now. I mean, the truth is, we have no idea whether it happens in six months or six years, or, you know, 20 years. But short of that, it’s a real enemy, not an imaginary enemy. It’s not a potential enemy. It is an enemy that decided to attack them. So I would put the Saudis in the extremely hostile to Iran camp.

That does raise some interesting questions. You know, therefore, what? Therefore, is Saudi Arabia in a closer alliance with the United States than they were one year ago? What about their relationship with Israel? What about their relationship with the United Arab Emirates, which has been touchy in the last year?

Amb. Eric Edelman:

Those are great questions, and I don’t know the answers to them. I do think, though, as well, that the Saudis, who are masters at hedging, can look down the road a little bit, and they look at some of the President’s posts, for instance, suggesting that he might be ready to wrap up the war. They know there is a possibility that the United States will declare victory, as Steve and Elliott said earlier, and then walk away and leave them facing a wounded but very dangerous Iran—as Elliot said, a clearly avowed enemy.

I think if that were to come to pass, what I would predict you would see from at least the Saudis, I’m not sure about the Emiratis, is both an effort to tie themselves closer to the United States, but also to China. I also think they’d try to play nice doggy with the rabid dog to their north, Iran, in the hope that it would keep things calm. I think that’s what you would see, but that’s speculation on my part.

Elliott Abrams:

Why China, if I may ask? The Chinese have been a useless ally for Iran. What are they going to do for Saudi Arabia? I mean, they have not been useful either in helping Iran nor in influencing Iran to not attack Saudi Arabia.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

China has been cultivating the Gulf states for a number of years. They were the ones who arranged the Saudi-Iranian detente a few years ago. I would just note that the outcome of the weekend’s meeting in Islamabad among Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia was that the Pakistani foreign ministers are going off to Beijing to try and see if they can get the Chinese to be quote-on-quote guarantors of whatever agreement might be reached in this diplomatic process, of which all three of us, I think, are very rightly skeptical.

Stephen Rademaker:

About the Chinese—you know, if you look at the list of who’s most harmed by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, China is pretty high up on the list. A very large proportion of their energy comes through the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s now cut off. So it’s quite a rational calculation by the Saudis and others that China is motivated to reopen the Strait and probably has more leverage over Iran than most other outside parties, apart from the Russians. But of course, the Russians are incentivized to keep the strait closed because it increases the price of their oil. But for China, that’s not a good outcome. China wants the strait reopened, as far as I can tell.

Elliott Abrams:

For Iran, when the war ends, they will have a terrible problem. Their economy was in very bad shape before the war and it’s much worse now, particularly if we and the Israelis spend the week hitting some more economic targets, like steel mills. As they look around for investment, what are the options? The United States, Europe, China, and the Gulf Arab nations. It’s hard for me to see the Saudis, who were trying to make nice with Iran, it is now hard to see them after this war and these attacks, saying, ‘Well, you know, we’ll help you, we’ll invest $50 billion.’ So China may be a better bet for Iran when it is seeking investments.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

It’s hard to imagine the Emiratis also allowing Dubai to be used for dual-use goods going to Iran to help rebuild its ballistic missile and drone programs, I think they’ll be much more cooperative with various efforts to crack down on that.

Blaise Misztal:

Today there was an announcement from the UAE barring all Iranian citizens from entering the Emirates, which I think goes to Elliott’s point.

Steve, I wanted to come back to you because you mentioned Russia, and I believe the Iranians have also requested that Russia be part of any potential negotiations. Should the U.S. accede to that? What role could Russia play in negotiations, and why would Iran want them there?

Stephen Rademaker:

Well, I guess if you’re the Iranians, you don’t have that many friends. So if you could find a friend and get them at the table, that would be to your advantage. I don’t see any advantage to the United States for Russia to be at the table. There’s been press reporting that the Russians are, at a minimum, providing intelligence support to the Iranians, helping them target American military forces in the region, and potentially helping them target the Arab countries as well. You’d think that would be of concern to President Trump, who’s had to go to Dover to receive the remains of the Americans who’ve already perished. And I think Russia has their blood on their hands.

The Trump administration has other levers it could use against Russia to try and dissuade them from continuing to support Iran in this conflict. I don’t know whether they’re thinking about using them, but my advice to Trump would be to keep the Russians out of the diplomacy and try to get them out of the war in general.

Blaise Misztal:

I wanted to delve a little deeper into nuclear issues with you, Steve. One of the major concerns now is the around 450 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium that’s still in Iran. Presumably, it is buried under rubble, since Operation Midnight Hammer. I’m not sure if we’ve verified its location.

Is there a diplomatic agreement possible that would provide for the safety of that material without it leaving Iran? Would that have to be part of any deal to terminate the war? Is there a way to safeguard it, if it were to stay?

Stephen Rademaker:

We haven’t seen the details of the 15 point proposal from the Trump administration, but I would expect one point would deal with the enriched material and hopefully provide for its removal from Iran, which is really the only safe thing to do. If it’s retained in Iran under international protection and subject to international inspections, I would take very limited comfort from that. The Iranians would have the ability to reclaim that material anytime they wanted. And we’ve already discussed the improbability of a diplomatic settlement in the near term, so I don’t think the odds of that are very high.

You know, the other, the other option that’s been talked about is sending in the U.S. military to remove the material. And you know, of all the military options on the table for the U.S., that one, to me, seems the most risky. I mean, I certainly understand why it’s of great importance to us to obtain that material and remove it from Iran, if we can. However, so far as we know, most of that material is buried at sites that were attacked back in June. And if it were easy to access those sites, the Iranians would already have done that. And if they’ve already done it, then we’ve got to go somewhere else to get the material. I don’t know where that would be. Maybe some agencies of the U.S. government know something about that, but I’ve seen no press reporting to suggest that the material is anywhere except where it was when Operation Midnight hammer took place.

A military operation to go in there seems quite complex to me. I mean, we would have to insert forces in locations in central Iran where they’d have to defend a perimeter and be subject to not just drone attacks, but artillery and infantry attacks. We’d also have to maintain that perimeter long enough for them to dig down to where the material is, extract it, and then somehow, I guess, airlift it out of there.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

Steve, you forgot that they’ve got to get the heavy equipment in, along with the troops. They need excavators to be able to do that.

Stephen Rademaker:

Like I said, if it were easy to do this, you’d think the Iranians would have already done it. And hopefully the Iranians haven’t done it, and the idea that we can do it under fire seems like quite an ambitious military undertaking, if we’re going to do that.

Blaise Misztal:

So let me push you a little more on this, Steve, and welcome others to chime in. You just said that a deal in which Iran hands over the nuclear material is unlikely. A military operation comes with a lot of risks. So are we going to end up with an outcome where this war ends and the material stays there and hasn’t been handed over, and hasn’t been safeguarded? What’s going to happen to it?

Stephen Rademaker:

Well, if we’re in a scenario where Trump declares victory and says our military objections have been accomplished and the conflict is over, yeah, I think so. I always believed that once we undertook to bomb the Iranian nuclear sites, that basically put us in the mode that the Israelis have long talked about, of having to periodically mow the grass.

I would say what’s going on right now is the first instance in which we mowed the grass. But there certainly would have to be a declaratory policy that while the conflict has ended, here are our red lines. And if Iran steps across any of these red lines, we will have to renew the use of force. And one of the red lines, I think, would have to do with Iran trying to access the buried nuclear material. I think behind this operation was the hope that it would contribute to the demise of the Islamic Republic, and it may yet do that. We just don’t know what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen during the conflict.

If the Islamic Republic survives, and the IRGC is in charge, I believe that when they do their sort of post-mortem among the survivors, they’ll say ‘What did we do wrong? What should we have done differently? How could we have avoided this?’ There will be loud voices saying ‘Our critical mistake was not being like North Korea—we had the wherewithal to produce a nuclear weapon, and we chose to move slowly, and we chose to sign the JCPOA.’ They’ll say, ‘We put the brakes on the program, and that was our mistake. We should have made a mad dash covertly to produce a nuclear weapon. If we had nuclear weapons, the Americans and the Israelis would never have done this to us, and our highest priority going forward has to be to produce a nuclear weapon.’

I don’t know if that will be the prevailing view, but I think certainly that view will be expressed, and it will be seriously considered. And I think there’s a strong chance it’ll become policy, and therefore, knowing what has become of the 440 kilograms that could quickly be turned into a weapon, that has to be one of our top priorities following a cessation of hostilities.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

I agree with that. When you start toning up the risks of a military operation, that highly enriched uranium is in gaseous form and metal cylinders, so while it’s being extracted under fire, the danger of these things being hit by fire and rupturing is real. It wouldn’t give you a nuclear yield, but it would expose the troops involved to very serious levels of noxious gas and radiation.

Elliott Abrams:

It’s interesting that one of the interveners here is Pakistan, which made a decision, keeping in mind India and its own permanent conventional inferiority, that it needed a nuclear weapon. And I guess what we’re saying is Iran, or this regime, will come to the same conclusion. They will never be as conventionally strong as the United States, and obviously not the combination of the United States and Israel. But that may lead them to wait until Trump is gone, under the assumption that if he saw them going for it, he wouldn’t hesitate to hit them again. Iran may wait and see who’s the next president. If there is any evidence that they’re trying to pursue nuclear weapons again, and there will be evidence detected—because Israeli intelligence is good, and there are other sources of intelligence, including our own—they are going to hit during this three year period and after it, under a new President. Maybe not by us, but by the Israelis.

Blaise Misztal:

I guess in that context it’s interesting to note that after the 12-Day War, after Operation Rising Lion and Operation Midnight Hammer, it seems that the Iranians made the choice that they would reconstitute their missile program and not their nuclear program. On the one hand, they have certainly demonstrated that investment in drones and missiles has paid off, and shown the ability to hold that risk much of the Middle East, but maybe not sufficiently. But on the other hand, it seems like it’s much cheaper and easier to pursue missile advances than the nuclear program, and ultimately, you might need the missiles in order to deliver the nuclear warhead. Would they push that missile program aside and go all in on the nuclear program?

Elliott Abrams:

Remember, people always said Israel would never attack their nuclear program, the deterrent being Hezbollah’s rockets and missiles. And it is, in fact, only after the Israelis decimated Hezbollah they were willing to attack Iran. So the logic of it suggests that, once again, they would try to rebuild the missile and drone program and go slower on the nuclear program.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

One of the salient features of the conflict so far, and following along with JINSA’s very, very useful, in fact sort of essential, daily update, is that although both we and the Israelis have claimed to have destroyed 75 percent of their launchers, the number of launchers has stayed relatively stable for the last two weeks or so at around 120 and most recently, I saw the IDF said, 170 launchers. The Iranians continue to launch. So while we have inflicted enormous damage, we and the Israelis, to the ballistic missile production facilities, launch points, and launch facilities, they still have residual capability to do this. If the war ends, they will try to rebuild.

On the drones, what we’ve been hitting are drone assembly plants, but the drone assembly plants have a deeply rooted substructure of component part manufacturers. I don’t know about the damage we’ve done to those. So how quickly they’ll be able to reconstitute the drone capability is another question. And those are the weapons that have done a lot of damage. In terms of physical damage to energy infrastructure, to our bases, et cetera, it has been the drones that have done the most damage.

Elliott Abrams:

I think if we look back at this war, in as little as five years, there’ll be another kind of revolution in military affairs, in the sense that the Russian attacks on Ukraine, and the Iranian attacks on their neighbors, are the height of drone warfare. The history of warfare is that new weapons are developed, and counter-weapons or defenses are developed. And we are beginning to see that now, with the Ukrainian counter-drone drones, and the Israeli efforts to develop laser defenses. I mean, it’s obvious now that the Gulf states are now going to invest very heavily, not just in the extremely expensive Patriots and so on, but in Ukrainian style drone defenses—and so will we.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

The Saudis, the Emiratis and the Qataris have all signed defense cooperation agreements with the Ukrainians. And precisely to Elliot’s point, President Zelensky was, I believe, doing a tour of the region recently. I expect serious Gulf investment in the Ukrainian defense industry, which will not be happy news to President Putin.

Blaise Misztal:

Let me pivot really quickly with the couple minutes we have remaining and ask at least one question from our audience. How does Israel factor into the negotiations? Is it expected that the U.S. will pressure Israel to end attacks if it reaches a deal? Or are U.S. and Israeli objectives diverging greatly? Ambassador Edelman, let me start with you.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

Look, there’s been enormous overlap in U.S. and Israeli objectives here, but not 100 percent. There’s also been, you know, a division of labor. One thing I don’t think gets sufficient attention is that, for all the strikes that we’ve carried out, the Israelis have carried out more. That being said, you know, there is a potential for a divergence at the end of this, as there was at the end of the 12 Day War in June, when the President insisted, even though I think the Israelis would have—if they’d had their druthers—continued the war, he was adamant that the conflict had to come to a halt. I think that the Israelis, to Elliot’s earlier point, would probably say ‘Good enough,’ even though they might not be happy about it.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you. Anything else on that point?

Elliott Abrams:

I agree with that, and I think that, in a certain sense, they have no role in negotiating with Iran. They’ll make their views known to us. When the President says stop, they’ll stop.

Stephen Rademaker:

Yeah, I don’t think the Israelis are nervous about the 15 point plan. I mean, if that were the deal. I think what they’re worried about is that there may be a negotiation, and only some of the points are agreed to, and the U.S. side agrees to end the war without restrictions on the missile program, without restrictions on support to other groups in the region. That’s the Israeli fear. But, you know, I think we’ve already, at length, discussed the low likelihood of a diplomatic agreement, including any of the 15 points, so I don’t think a huge risk of disagreement between us and the Israelis.

Amb. Eric Edelman:

I think the biggest fear would be that the two sides agree to some very vague framework about what issues are to be negotiated between the two sides in exchange for a ceasefire, either of some duration or of unlimited duration, because the Iranians are masters at turning these negotiations into sort of an endless loop of just endless hair-splitting and we, unfortunately, fall into that trap all too easily.

Blaise Misztal:

Well, thank you all for your expertise and insights today. Wishing those who celebrate a sweet and joyous Passover. Please stay tuned to jinsa.org for all the latest updates, and we look forward to seeing you on the next webinar. Thank you, everyone.

The post Transcript: Webinar – Iran at the Endgame appeared first on JINSA.

JINSA Distinguished Fellow Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, former Head of Israel’s National Security Council, participated in a substantive—and at times contentious—panel discussion about the Iran war, hosted by Al Arabiya on March 26.

The panelists, including Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amidror, former Pakistani Defense Committee Chairman Mushahid Hussain, and U.S. political commentator Brandon Weichert, exchanged their views about the Iran war and its causes.

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amidror pushed back on some misconceptions about the lead-up to the war, including the far-fetched assertion, made by Mr. Hussain, that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons.

Pointing out that Israel possesses “the whole plan” of the Iranian nuclear program, which Israel obtained through covert operations in 2018, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amidror said denying that the Iranian regime wanted nuclear weapons is like denying “the reality of the world.”

Maj. Gen. (ret.) Amidror further stated, “to say that what they did—building all the centrifuges, enriching uranium—was just for fun and not for a nuclear military capability, at the end of the day, it’s not a serious argument.”

The post JINSA’s Maj. Gen. (ret.) Yaakov Amidror Challenges Pakistani Official: “Iran Built Thousands of Centrifuges Just For Fun?” appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish
Julian (z”l) and Jenny Josephson Senior Vice President for Israeli Affairs, JINSA; Former Israeli Defense Attache to the United States

Gen Frank McKenzie, USMC (ret.)
Hertog Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former Commander, United States Central Command; Former Director for Strategic Planning and Policy (J-5), United States Joint Staff

The discussion was moderated by JINSA Vice President for Policy Blaise Misztal.

—

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Blaise Misztal:

Good morning and welcome to this JINSA webinar, an update on the latest in Operations Epic Fury and Roaring Lion, and the war with Iran. I’m Blaise Misztal, JINSA’s Vice President for Policy. I’m honored to be joined by two of my esteemed colleagues.

General Frank McKenzie is the former Commander of CENTCOM and JINSA Hertog Distinguished Fellow. General McKenzie, thank you for joining us. We also have Major General Yaakov Ayish, JINSA’s Jenny and Julian Josephson Senior Vice President for Israeli Affairs, and former Israeli Defense Attache here in Washington. General Ayish, thank you for being here with us.

In the past couple of days, we’ve seen a lot of developments in the war, with a lot of it centered on the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, and attempts to make sure that commercial shipping can get through. We’ve seen President Trump’s ultimatum, that he gave on Saturday to Iran, to the postponement of that ultimatum. Most recently, President Trump said yesterday that the war is already won.

General McKenzie, I wanted to start with you and get your assessment of how the war is progressing and how operations are going, whether the U.S. is achieving its objectives. But first I want to congratulate you. You were appointed yesterday as the next Commandant of the Citadel, and I think that is a terrific honor and a great privilege for all those that will now be under your tutelage.

Eager to get your thoughts on where we are in this war, which is now in its fourth week.

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

Blaise, thank you for your kind words. Always happy to join and offer my thoughts. The JINSA audience is always very well-informed.

We’re pushing four weeks into the war. I think we’re accomplishing the objectives that we set out. CENTCOM is executing a long-prepared campaign plan. This is not something that we’ve drawn up on the back of the envelope day-to-day. These are things that have been studied for many years, refined for many years, simulated in wargames every way that you can. We’ve examined this problem. I have some responsibility for this plan. As has my predecessor, as has my successor. We’ve been working on this for a long time.

I think if you’re sitting down at CENTCOM right now, you are satisfied with where you are. Let me sort of break it down a little bit and look at they might be looking at it. One of the key things you look at if you’re at CENTCOM is, is Iran able to generate significant volleys of ballistic missiles—either against Israel, or against our bases in the region, or against our friends in the region and their cities and infrastructure. Largely, we have denied Iran the ability to do that.

You know, I used to worry, as the CENTCOM Commander, about a volley of 200 or 250 missiles against Al Udeid Air Base, or Al Dhafra. That has not materialized. And I’ll talk about why it has not materialized in just a minute. But the fact of the matter is that fact has allowed us to continue to use, in some modified fashion, our forward bases against Iran.

Though I don’t know the mechanics of the actual execution of what we’re doing, and it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to talk about it if I did, I think we’re still getting a lot of use out of those bases. I worried that those bases would be knocked out early in a potential conflict with Iran. That has not happened, and Iran has not been able to mount massive volleys against Israel.

Have they been able to fire some number of missiles against all these targets? Yes, but not the massive volleys that would make it hard for us to defend those installations. And I don’t mean to say those installations haven’t been hit. Some of them have been hit. Some damage has been done. But, largely, we’re able to continue our operations. That’s very important.

So, why have we been able to have this success against Iran? First of all, I think the decapitation strike at the very beginning of this war was effective in reducing Iranian command and control. It made it hard for them to develop how they wanted to actually execute the plan. The fact that they were able to respond very quickly, albeit in an uncoordinated manner, speaks to the decentralization of Iranian command and control—Iran was able to respond quickly, but really not in a coherent manner.

Additionally, we’ve been able to take out Iranian air defenses to the degree that, I would argue, we have effective air supremacy over most of Iran. And what does that do? What that has given us is the opportunity to go hunt for ballistic missiles, and that means you look for where they’re stored, you look for where they’re fired. You look at the vehicles that transport them to the firing point.

You do all of those things, and when you have the level of air supremacy that we do now, you’re not limited to fifth-generation aircraft up there, by which I mean the F-35 and F-22. There’s the B-2. Now you can go north with the F-15, F-16, F-18, A-10, to some degree, and, of course, the B-1. You can use these large bomb trucks now. You’re not necessarily limited to standoff conditions. So you can use shorter range conditions to engage the targets. I think what we’ve been able to do is really effectively knock out a significant fraction, perhaps the vast majority, of Iranian ballistic missiles.

And also, frankly, the Iranians made a mistake in designing their ballistic missile force. They mistook hardening and burying for security. And the truth of warfare today is this, if you can see it, you can hit it. If you can hit it, you can kill it.

And even if you dig yourself deep underground with these beautiful missile cities, or whatever they call them, you know, with beautiful pictures of missiles stacked up, going way into the background—that just makes it easier for us to strike and destroy these missiles wholesale rather than retail. Because what you want to do is you want to get the missile before it launches. You want to get it in the storage area. And I think this has proven to be a major mistake by Iran. The way they’ve chosen to array their ballistic missile force, it’s going to aid us, actually, as we effect suppression going forward.

I think CENTCOM’s got to be pretty happy with where we are in terms of the ballistic missile exchange, where we are continuing to dominate their ability to fire those missiles.

The second category is drones. Look, over the last 10 years, there’s been an explosion in drone technology. We are still absorbing how to employ and defend against drones, as is really everybody else. And the Iranians have flown a lot of cheap, easily manufactured, low-cost drones against us. We’re getting better at stopping them.

The same rules apply to drones as ballistic missiles. You want to get drones before they launch. You want to get them in the supply chain. You want to get them where they’re stored. You want to get them where they’re built. You want to do all those things. And that’s very important. We’re having success doing that. I’m very pleased with where we are right now.

Look, I think every day that passes, Iran is going to have fewer drone options going forward. That doesn’t mean they’re going to go to zero. I wish we could say that. It doesn’t mean we’re going to get to zero, but it does mean we’re going to reduce their opportunity to do this. And again, the best way to do that is going to be by striking where the drones are manufactured, where they’re launched. The worst way to do it is to defend them in the terminal area. So we’re working all these things right now. I’m satisfied with where we are.

The next thing I’ll speak to is where we are concerning the Strait of Hormuz, and the Iranian Navy. And as you know, there are actually two Iranian navies—the IRN and the IRGCN, and I think both those navies, in terms of large combatant ships, are largely gone. We struck them all. So what we’re doing now is focusing on preparatory steps in order to clear the Strait of Hormuz.

What that means is first, working to get rid of Iranian submarines. Then, looking at the fast attack craft—the small cigarette boat type vessels that can swarm out from the southern coast of Iran, the northern edge of the littoral there, to affect shipping in the region. You go after those with slow moving aircraft, perhaps A-10s, perhaps attack helicopters. Perhaps we attack them from across the Gulf. There are a variety of weapon systems that we can employ to get after those targets.

Other targets include the short-range Iranian anti-ship cruise missiles that have been built, targeted and dug in on the northern edge of the littoral. For the Iranians, again, digging them underground is a mistake. We can see where you did it. We can strike it. We can get to you. CENTCOM is busy on a program of doing that. I think there’s probably some days’ worth of work left to finish that. But it’s progressing.

That leaves us with mines. The Iranians have a large and capable stack of mines. I’m sure CENTCOM, over the last few days, has been going after where they’re stored, how they get to the pier, and the ships that take them out. I know we sank a lot of minelayers here in recent days, and so I think all that is very positive. Now, what that’s going to lead to, at some point, is you can go up close if you think there are mines in the water. And I’ve heard assessments that they have not actually done any kind of serious minelaying. So, that’s good.

But if they choose to mine it, we do have the ability to clear the mines. Before you send your Mine Countermeasures vessels up there, though, you want to make sure that there’s no way for those Mine Countermeasures vessels to be hit, which is what CENTCOM is doing right now, removing the Iranian ability to go after those Minesweepers as they go into the Gulf. Eventually, you’ll be able to clear a route.

Remember, you don’t have to clear the whole Strait of Hormuz. You’ve got to clear a route that you’re going to bring vessels through. So you’re not clearing every bit of water up there. You’re clearing the bit of water that you’re going to use for your high value units.

Marines have entered the region. All of those capabilities give additional options to the CENTCOM Commander. We could use those Marines in raids up and down the Iranian littoral. We could use those Marines, potentially, to seize Kharg Island. I don’t know if we’re going to do that. I have no idea, but I can tell you, again, these are not back of the envelope plans that we thought up in the last week or two.

We’ve considered all these options for many years. We’ve wargamed them. We’ve looked at contingencies, and the 82nd Airborne will certainly have a role to play if we choose either to seize ground or to provide security for other installations in the region. What you’re seeing is [CENTCOM Commander Admiral] Brad Cooper getting more capabilities, and more capabilities that he can use.

Let me talk about Kharg island for just a minute to close out. If you control Kharg Island, you effectively control the Iranian ability to export oil. You can control cargo, in a couple of ways. You can destroy their capability, their oil transfer capability, on that island—which will shut the Iranian economy down but also have a pernicious effect on the global economy. Or you can seize Kharg Island, which also shuts the Iranian economy down, but keeps open the option of opening it in the future, and also gives you the opportunity to actually hold Iranian soil—which could be a key negotiating point of leverage for something going forward.

In closing, a lot of things are beginning to come together. This isn’t a plan that takes one or two days to execute, or takes a few weeks to execute. We’re now in the heart of the plan, and generally, I’m satisfied with where we are right now.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you for that great overview, General McKenzie. Quickly, before pivoting to General Ayish: You said this is not a plan that unfolds overnight—to the best of your sense, given that you were involved in some of the planning that has contributed to the operation we’re now in. How far along are we and how much more time would you expect is needed to achieve U.S. operational objectives?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

Look, I think we’re closing on a lot of these objectives right now. What has emerged as a current priority, of course, is the Strait of Hormuz. But we haven’t talked about the nuclear program, and that’s always a contingency that we can hold and go after, should we choose to do that. I think we’re still a little way away from being ready to declare the Strait of Hormuz ready to accept Minesweepers. I’m not read in to as much operational detail as I would like. But I would say we’re in a pretty good place right now. Probably, there’s a little work left to do, but we’re in a pretty good place right now.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you. General Ayish, I’ll ask you the same question, focusing on just the Iranian front for now. What is your assessment of Israel’s Operating Roaring Lion—how far along is it, and in terms of achieving its objectives, how is it progressing?

Major General (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Well, you know, listening to General McKenzie is quite amazing. I’m going back in my thoughts 10 or 12 years to the days that I was in Washington [as Defense Attache]. I’m thinking about the strategic goals of the U.S. and Israel, and I’m listening carefully to the list that General McKenzie gave, and I’m identifying the level of coordination and similarity between those strategic goals. It’s quite amazing.

In terms of those, I’m watching carefully what has happened to the nuclear program of the Iranians so far. I’m thinking about [Operation] Rising Lion in June and now. I’m thinking about the achievements in that area, together with the [Iranian] ballistic missile capabilities, i.e., stockpiles, launchers, and the production capabilities. It’s pretty amazing. And I’m starting with those two strategic goals, because they were very important for both of us, for Israel and the U.S., in this war, and in terms of achieving it, it seems like, together, we made significant progress.

I don’t want to dive into percentages, but when I’m examining the number of ballistic missiles that the Iranians have been launching in the last week, or two weeks, towards Israel, the average is around 10 ballistic missiles. When I’m thinking about the potential that they had—Blaise, you know it very well—at the end of Operation Rising Lion, they had the potential to launch a significant amount of missiles. Due to what the U.S. military and the Israel Defense Force have done since the beginning of this campaign, we degraded significantly their capabilities, both in terms of ballistic missiles and in terms of their nuclear problem.

I’m starting with that, because at the end of the day, these are the two major capabilities that we wanted to either eliminate or degrade significantly. And through that, and some other elements that were described by General McKenzie, we wanted to bring about a situation that will allow for regime change in the future in Iran. And I think we are on that track, if you will. If you were to tell me 10 years ago that this will be the situation after less than a month into such a campaign, I would tell you that you are dreaming. I think it’s pretty amazing—in terms of decapitation, in terms of air supremacy, in terms of the ballistic missiles, in terms of the nuclear program, the maritime capabilities that were eliminated, and so on and so forth.

Now, we are entering a strategic phase that was described already—the oil, Kharg Island, the Hormuz Strait. There are two ways to solve it. One is the diplomatic channel. There are discussions between the U.S. and the Iranians via certain mediators. The second there is the military one. And when you are analyzing the achievements that have been achieved until now, it seems like both options are viable. And I think the major reason for the Iranians to go into this negotiation is because they know the military escalation option, it’s very imminent. Both options are seriously on the table.

Our success, I think, serves us well in Iran but it serves us also—and maybe we’ll talk about it later—in Lebanon, and elsewhere. Israel is facing the Iranian front and some others. And wherever you see a terror proxy somewhere, you will find the Iranians behind it. So in that sense, it serves us well in both arenas, in the eastern one and in the north. And I assume that we’ll talk about it later on.

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, thank you for that overview.

General McKenzie, I think I’ll use your checklist as sort of an organizational tool here. So let me start with ballistic missiles. Yes, we’re not seeing the launches of 250 missiles per salvo. We’re not seeing, as we know the Iranians were preparing back in June, a mass launch of 700 to 1,000 ballistic missiles in retaliation for Israel’s attack. But we saw yesterday, according to JINSA data, 55 missiles launched, which is more missiles than Iran was able to launch on the fifth day of the war.

So, the Iranians are still launching quite a bit, despite the fact that we’ve had thousands of strikes by the U.S. Air Force, by the Israeli Air Force, and both are hunting these capabilities. Are you surprised that they still retain as much launch capability as they do?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

No, I’m not. Look, this is war. It’s not a business deal, and it’s not a train schedule. It’s the conflict of naked human will, and sometimes the bad guy has a good day. What you can’t do in a campaign like this is look at it day to day.

You can’t say, ‘well, you know, they had a good day today and therefore our plan is bad.’ We have a good plan. I’m confident the plan will be executed. I’m confident we’ll be able to reduce whatever means the Iranians used to get a lot of missiles in the air yesterday. Let’s see what they do today. Let’s see what they do tomorrow. Let’s see if they can sustain it. That will be the test.

You have to take a longer view. When you examine these problems, you can’t look at them through a slice of time where they had a good event happen for them. They’re going to have good things happen occasionally. Every day, though, I think the opportunity for good things to happen for Iran narrows as we continue to press our attack.

So, am I surprised Iran can still mount missile strikes? No. Am I worried? Not particularly. At CENTCOM, and I’m sure in Israel, they’re looking at—how did this happen? What can we do to prevent it today? What can we do about it going forward?

Blaise Misztal:

Along the same lines, but on the defensive side, let me ask—are you concerned about our interceptor stockpiles running out before we can complete operations? How much of a stress are we under, on the defensive side of operations?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

Well, as the CENTCOM Commander, you’re always worried about the interceptors. I was worried about it, and I’m sure Admiral Cooper’s worried about it. The best way, though, to stop this threat is to not have to fire the interceptors at all—to go up and get the missiles before they can launch. The least efficient, and most costly, way to stop them is by using your interceptors. So, I think everybody that’s addressing this problem is keenly aware of that concept, from CENTCOM to the Pentagon to everyone else.

We’re working very hard to make it impossible or difficult for Iran to launch those missiles. You know, you’re a lot better off with fewer missiles in the air than you are with a lot of missiles in the air. That allows you to husband your stock of interceptors. I’m sure that we’re looking at it. We have ways to cross balance globally. We practice that. We track it. But again, I come back to the point I made earlier: the best way to keep your stocks high is to prevent launches.

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I’d like to add on to that a few things. You know, there are the strategic, operational, and technological dimensions to the defensive capabilities. I’ll start with the strategic dimension. When I’m thinking about the amount of ballistic missiles launched by the Iranians compared to what they have planned, I think they are in a very, very bad place. This is due to the fact that not only their command and control capabilities were shattered on day one of this war, but also because we are, together with the U.S. air force, hunting. That means launching at their missiles capabilities, or sealing the tunnels where missiles are, or delaying their capabilities to launch. That is just on the strategic level.

On the technological level, a lot has happened in the last year. And I’m not sure that I can elaborate on all of that. Let’s look at two things. One, is in terms of Israel being able to be fully coordinated with CENTCOM capabilities—and I’ll leave it there. And the second element is upgrading the technological capabilities—the players that are intercepting incoming threats towards Israel and other places are totally different, and we took them to the next level together, with the United States. So it gives us, at the end of the day, greater capacity, better capabilities, and at different altitudes.

Having said that, I agree with General McKenzie. This is something that you have to calculate very carefully, together with the whole concept of how you are managing the campaign on the offensive side, not only on the defensive side.

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, I think we’ve seen the videos emerge from this war of Iron Dome intercepting ballistic missiles, which is not something it was designed for, but is really just due to incredible development and innovation that Israel’s been able to bring to bear—at the speed of war. But let me ask you—given the two strikes that we saw in recent days near Dimona, more specifically—your sense of Israel’s defenses and whether they’re in fact holding strong.

Why did these two missiles slip through? Was it because of an Israeli decision not to fire on them because of interceptor concerns that they got through? Did they somehow evade Israeli detection—should we be concerned?

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Well, our system, as you know, is not 100 percent accurate. We maintain a very, very good percentage when it comes to intercepting incoming threats. But it’s not 100 percent. We have some other capabilities in terms of how to complement the defensive capabilities, and as I mentioned, offensive capabilities are part of it.

Regarding Iran’s strikes on Dimona and Arad. These are two unfortunate incidents. Both of them, by the way, were debriefed by the Israeli Air Force, and we didn’t find any systematic failure or anything like that. This is part of the statistics, and we are not intercepting 100 percent. Going back again to my argument, though, when you are thinking about what they have achieved since day one, until now, in terms of Iran’s launching capability, it is low. Think about the neighborhood. The region is watching them. For years, they were a very formidable threat for the region, in terms of their offensive ballistic missile capabilities—what is their performance like now?

You can add to it what has happened to Hezbollah, and is still happening. I think they are losing that strategic deterrence that they have cultivated, quite successfully, for many years. So when I’m looking at the events, how they are unfolding, in the last month—on the ground, together with the strategic posture of the Iranians—I think it’s now very clear exactly why they are aiming to negotiate and to achieve as much as they can via negotiations. They are in very, very bad shape.

Blaise Misztal:

One last set of questions on the missile issue, because this was such a critical threat, and a driver of both Operation Rising Lion and the current operations. As we think about how and when the war concludes, what is an acceptable level of remaining missile capability that the U.S. and/or Israel would be willing to leave Iran with? If they’re still firing 50 missiles a day, is that okay? If they’re still capable of firing 20 missiles a day, is that okay? Do we have to get them to zero missiles left in order to achieve our strategic objectives? Is it possible to put a number or an approximation on it?

General McKenzie, what are your thoughts?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

I think what you want to see is something different in terms of missile production facilities. And we’re going to have the ability, given the air supremacy we have over Iran now and will have for the foreseeable future, to put a pretty restrictive monitoring regime in place, should we choose to do that. So I think I would look less at the number of missiles remaining than I would look at the whole chain of building missiles and particularly the types of missiles that we’re going to be interested in. I would look for something there.

I think we’ve reduced a vast amount of missiles. Though, you’re never going to eliminate all—there are always going to be one or two missiles launched and maybe more than that. But they’re not going to be able to sustain that, certainly not the way they thought.

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, anything on how Israel thinks about that?

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

What we can see, by the way, is that in the last 10 days, the IDF is very much focusing on Iranian production capabilities. It’s not only their stockpiles, as the U.S. has focused on since the early days of the war, and the tunnels, and the launchers, but also their production capabilities. Iran is a very, very vast area, and for this, we need time, and that’s why we are investing quite a lot of resources in going after their production capacity.

Having said that, at the end of the day, unless we assume that everything is eliminated, something is left, so they will have a capability in place. That’s why the diplomatic measures and negotiations and the type of inspection, very intrusive inspections, in any agreement that will be achieved is a vital element to complete the successful efforts by the U.S. and by Israel. Without that, I don’t think it will be enough.

Back to the position of Iran that I described five minutes ago. I think it’s part of the deal. That’s why that arrangement at the end, and, I would say, Iran’s strategic posture in the region at the point after the war ends is a vital element.

The ballistic missile stockpile deterred the region—specifically the Gulf countries, and to some extent, Israel. That is an important element. And it is far more than numbers—it’s production capability, its technical know-how, and it’s also the range. What we have seen launched towards Diego Garcia is a threat for Europe. It’s only a matter of time that something like that will be implemented for export.

We can see it already happening. The strategy, and these elements, are things that the Iranians can use in the future elsewhere. That’s why I think it should be a vital element as part of any future agreement, together with the nuclear program.

It seems like the U.S. is offering Iran a civilian nuclear program under an American umbrella, and it would be accompanied by intrusive inspections, obviously. So, I assume what Iran is offered, in any reasonable agreement, will cover Iranian ballistic missiles and other types of threats as part of it.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you.

General McKenzie, next on your list was the drone threat, then the maritime threat. Let me combine those. As you said, Iran has not actually mined the whole Strait of Hormuz—at least in any significant quantities, compared to what we saw in the 1980s, for example. And the ships that have been hit were hit by missiles or drones, and that seems to be the prominent way in which the Iranians are able to hold shipping at risk.

What is our ability—given, as you said, that counter-drone efforts remain a challenge at the fixed installations that we have around the Gulf—to protect ships in the Gulf from the Iranian drone threat?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

Well, Blaise, you begin with the same principle as with ballistic missiles—you want to go after where they launch from. You want to go after where they’re built, where they’re stored. The worst way to shoot down a drone, to destroy a drone, is in the air. You want to get it before it launches. Left of launch, if you will. You want to do all that before the drone actually gets airborne.

I think what CENTCOM is doing right now is a very aggressive program of sweeping the northern littoral, around the northern edge of the Strait of Hormuz, going into the Arabian Gulf, to get rid of those drones and get rid of the launching sites. It’s going after command and control nodes, and facilities associated with that. That’s ongoing. I’m not able to tell you what kind of progress they made. I just don’t have access to that information. But I would expect, given the fact we’re able to put A-10s, probably rotary-wing attack aviation up there, and other slow-moving, highly-discriminatory platforms, we’re probably having a good deal of success with that.

The other thing is, if you’re going to send ships through, if you’re going to escort the ships with U.S. warships—and hopefully coalition warship—that would accompany those ships, in terms of working to get after the drones, the defensive system those ships have is not the preferred way to do it. You’d much rather get the drone before it launches. A manned platform, a fighter aircraft, going after it is not the most efficient way to do it, either. But there are also some promising magnetic technologies and other things that are entering the inventory now that will help us against drones. All of those things create a universe designed to make it hard for the Iranians to effectively fly drones down there to strike tankers and our warships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I agree. I prefer the approach of drying the swamp instead of, you know, following mosquitoes. And in that sense, I think whatever will be achieved, it should be part of the inspection regime imposed on the Iranians. That’s why. And I’m not sure that we are discussing it enough. That is why it’s very important with whom you are negotiating in Iran. I don’t know if it’s [Parliament Speaker] Mohamed Qalibaf, or the generals that are left in the IRGC. But whoever leads Iran will have to decide its path. The best thing is to reach an agreement where it’s very clear to them that it’s better for them to chart a different path instead of threatening the region, as they have done for decades.

Blaise Misztal:

Thanks, General Ayish.

General McKenzie, you mentioned in introductory remarks that we’re deploying a Marine Expeditionary Unit and now the 82nd Airborne to the region. Can you talk a little bit about the capabilities they bring to bear, and what sort of operational options they give the president in terms of trying to protect the Arabian Gulf and secure the Strait of Hormuz?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

Sure. Let me begin with the Marines. They’ll come on U.S. Navy warships. They’re already, I believe, inside the theater. Now, I’m not sure exactly where they are, but I’m sure they’re close. They give you many abilities for a strike. For one, you can go amphibiously. You can go a variety of ways, to either execute amphibious raids against islands, against onshore targets, or against oil platforms, which has been done before—with great success—back in the 1980s.

What it does is it gives options to the theater commander. Those are options that you can exercise outside the Arabian Gulf or inside the Arabian Gulf, depending on if you want to bring those ships in. You can also base the Marines ashore under certain conditions, and Marines bring heavy equipment with them. You can repair runways. You can dig yourself in. You can do limited localized air defense. You can do all sorts of things with the Marines.

The Marines are kind of a Swiss Army Knife with capabilities that allow you to do a variety of things. On the airborne element—I was a big fan of the airborne element when I was CENTCOM Commander, because it allows you to strike directly from North Carolina, if you choose to do so. And very quickly. With infantry, you can bring them in. The problem with just airborne alone is they don’t have the equipment to sustain themselves for an extended period of time, so you got to have a plan to relieve them, to supply them, and all that.

Again, these plans aren’t being made day to day. These are things we thought about, and did with wargames, and trained for—for a long time.

So the combination of Marines with the 82^nd Airborne, it gives Admiral Cooper options—and options he can exercise anywhere along the Iranian littoral. He can also use them to further protect defense sites on the southern end of the Arabian Gulf littoral, if they’re threatened by proxies or something like that.

Really, in every way, this is just providing him new capabilities that he can use to threaten Iran. So I think it’s very timely. Both capabilities, as well, are very good at working together. A lot of options are there for the CENTCOM Commander right now.

Blaise Misztal:

Is there an option, or perhaps even a strategic requirement, to put boots on the ground along the Iranian coast as a means of securing shipping? Is that something the President might be considering?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

I think it’s certainly something we want the Iranians to worry about. I think we want them to be very worried about that. I would certainly leave that on the table, and then, if I were President, I wouldn’t share what I was actually going to do.

We’ve talked about a lot of things, including Kharg island. There are other islands up there that we can look at. The Iranians have got to be worried about all those locales. Marines are very good at doing raids from the sea. I’m sure there are forces in the region that can do that. We can deploy the 82nd Airborne for some of those missions.

We have a lot of capabilities there now that the Iranians have to worry about. You want your foe to be worried about what you might do to them, particularly, I would say, on mainland Iran. I would go a step further and say that’s something that the personality of President Trump has brought to the fight that was absent under previous presidents, and that’s the willingness to entertain these possibilities.

The Iranians are very scared about what President Trump might choose to do. That’s good. That’s where we want them to be. They’re scared because of the audit trail. Going back to the strike on [IRGC Quds Force Commander] Qassem Soleimani, to the strike on the Iranian nuclear program last June, and the war now, President Trump has proven he’s willing to do certain things, whereas other American presidents have been significantly deterred by Iran. He is not deterred by Iran, and that’s given him remarkable flexibility, and really helps the military campaign that we’re running right now.

Blaise Misztal:

While we’re talking about these forces, let me ask you: we’ve talked about the maritime threat. Another part of the Iranian threat, as General Ayish referred to earlier, is the nuclear program. In particular, over 400 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent—almost weapons grade—we believe, is buried under rubble after Operation Midnight Hammer last year. Is either the Marine Expeditionary Unit or the 82nd Airborne being sent to the region units that might be used to go in and secure that nuclear material? Is that something the U.S. would be considering now?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

Well, Blaise, we certainly want the Iranians to be very worried about that possibility.

Blaise Misztal:

All right. We have a long list of questions already from the audience, so let me just ask some.

General Ayish, if you could, please briefly tell us about the Lebanese front and Israeli operations there. It seems like there are unfolding preparations for perhaps a bigger operation inside Lebanon.

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

In terms of what we have seen in Lebanon until now, whatever’s left of Hezbollah is trying to show solidarity with the Iranians. Iran dragged them into this war.

Hezbollah, they opened the northern front, violating the ceasefire that was in place because of this show of solidarity. It created a very unique situation in Lebanon, where we saw the Lebanese Armed Forces arresting Hezbollah terrorists, and we saw the government in Lebanon for the first time expelling the Iranian Ambassador. But this is on the very-high political level.

I want to discuss three possible options that we can identify for Israel in Lebanon, and then to take it one step down—to connect it to what we see happening in Lebanon nowadays.

The first option for Israel and for the state of Lebanon is total disarmament of Hezbollah, to really put that focus and that pressure on Hezbollah, and to dissolve its capabilities. The second option is to renew the famous security zone that Israel left in May 2000. We were deployed in Lebanon at the security zone, basically between the Litani River and the international border with Lebanon for more than 19 years, until May 2000, when we withdrew from Lebanon.

By doing so, we will be able to remove the imminent threat facing the Israeli villages and the communities along the Israeli-Lebanese border, and to prevent Hezbollah from redeploying in that area. The third option, which I think is the best option, is for the Lebanese Government to exercise its sovereignty and really to take responsibility for what is happening in Lebanon as a whole—and, specifically, in the southern part of Lebanon.

In the meantime, until one of these will be implemented, what we are doing is forming a very strong defensive posture, which is in front of the Israeli communities and along the border with Lebanon. Through that, we are providing security to the Israelis in the area, and allowing them to stay in their villages without having to leave them as happened after October 7, 2023. And the other element is that we are degrading significantly the capabilities of Hezbollah all over Lebanon, not only securing the southern part.

We are targeting their capabilities in terms of command and control, launching capabilities, UAVs capabilities, and many others. And by doing so, we are advancing, or cultivating, the conditions for one of those strategies.

Meanwhile, there is also a diplomatic channel headed by Ron Dermer. He was appointed by the Israeli prime minister for the task. On the Israeli side, this is being mediated again by the U.S., with Lebanon and some other players that are trying to play a role over here. But so far, the IDF deployment is more than enough.

Having said that, the Israeli government has confirmed the recruiting of 400,000 Israeli reserve troops. This means that the IDF will be on full readiness should the Israeli government decide either to take the southern part of Lebanon, or to gain control in other areas in Lebanon, in order to prevent Hezbollah from threatening the northern sector of Israel.

This is, at a basic level, the situation without going into the tactics and all the other constraints and elements that are highly relevant when you are talking about Lebanon.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you for that overview, General. Let me stick with you, because our first question from the audience is for you. What do we know about how Israel is coordinating the air campaign with the U.S.? Are they using liaison officers in their respective command centers?

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Well, I think in terms of coordination, if we judge it according to the results, it’s unbelievable. In that sense, it seems like what many others have built in the last, I would say, decade, or even more, created the conditions for very close coordination. A few of these levels we talked about already—about the air and missile defense, which is fully coordinated, and fully orchestrated, by CENTCOM, and we are playing a part in that puzzle as well.

And in terms of the offensive part, there are the elements of intelligence and other types of operational coordination. I’ll say it like this: it’s full coordination. Think about Israeli aircraft being refueled by American aircraft, and at the end of the refueling, the American pilot is wishing them success in their mission.

It’s unbelievable when I’m thinking back just a few years, back to our discussions in the past about how to coordinate this type of operation. It was unbelievable when I’m thinking about that today and the level that it’s done. It’s far more than just liaison officers. I think it’s a very close, well-coordinated mechanism that was built for many years, which involved training, and then wargaming, and other tools that were implemented in order to achieve it.

Blaise Misztal:

General McKenzie, any insights from you, given that you started as a CENTCOM Commander without Israel in your AOR [area of responsibility], and you ended with it in your AOR?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

I would just note that all of this proceeded ultimately from the decision of President Trump to bring Israel into Central Command [AOR] from European Command. He signed that in January 2021, and that’s proven to be a very consequential thing. We thought it was important at the time. It looks increasingly important with the virtue of hindsight, and what’s happened since, particularly in the last 18 months.

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I’ll add only one comment. In 2018, when JINSA first wrote about the need for Israel to move to CENTCOM, I was discussing the subject with a very high-ranking general in the IDF. He said, ‘I’m agnostic about it. It’s America’s business.’ Nowadays, when I’m speaking with the generals, they can’t even believe how effective it has been. It started with JINSA’s recommendation in 2018 and we developed it until, as General McKenzie said, President Trump approved it in 2021.

Blaise Misztal:

All right, our next question comes from an audience member who says, ‘Incredible briefing. But let me ask you, if things are so great, why do I feel so bad? Quagmire. No strategy. The regime survives.’ What is he missing?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

I wouldn’t say things are going great, I would say things we’re executing the campaign plan and getting good results. It’s not a football game. You can’t let your emotions get the better of you. It’s a grind. Every day is a grind. You’re sending young people out to fight, and hopefully all of them are going to come back, but that isn’t always the case. The bad guy occasionally has something go well for him. But you cannot grade it every day. You can’t get up and down. You’ve got to believe we have a good plan that’s been worked on for a long time.

I think the plan will bear fruit. Time will tell. It’ll be very clear empirically whether this works or not. So I’m not prepared to get emotionally up or down about it one way or another. I know they don’t have time for emotion in Central Command right now.

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I think in terms of the operational plans and the strategic goals, it seems like we are making significant progress in the right direction. Though, as I mentioned during the briefing, it has to be completed with the diplomatic effort, and it seems that it is going exactly in that direction, that the military’s role is really to create those conditions. It seems like the objectives being achieved so far, but we have to judge it once the agreement will be reached and implemented.

In this region, it’s not enough to just reach a diplomatic agreement. Just take a look at Gaza. Take a look at Lebanon. Take a look at other areas. But it seems to me, in terms of making progress, it’s going very, very well. It’s going faster than I would have expected—it is a vast challenge, and Iran is a huge country.

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, another question from the audience: Any update on Iron Beam? Is it having an impact on the rate of drone attacks?

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Okay, so it is effective, and it’s active, and it is deployed in the north. We don’t have it yet in full capacity, in terms of quantities, in terms of systems, at the end of the day, you need to make sure that you are fully deployed. And we have to keep in mind that this is a complementary capability. It’s not there by itself doing everything.

It’s not a silver bullet. It is something that we have developed, together with the U.S. in order to complement our other air and missile defense capabilities. It’s highly effective against drones and at the end of the day, everything starts with the ability, really to identify and to classify and then to designate these capabilities towards the target.

But yes, in terms of systems, we don’t have yet enough of the systems, but we are working on it as we are working in so many other areas to expand our capabilities.

Blaise Misztal:

General McKenzie, an audience member is asking why it seems like CENTCOM wasn’t prepared to deal immediately or swiftly with the blockade of Hormuz, especially since this seems so far like Iran’s major silver bullet.

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

Well, I’m not sure I’d agree with that assertion. I think you build your plan off the forces that you have. We’re not going to station a number of destroyers in the Middle East, in perpetuity. You’re not going to keep 10 or 15 destroyers there. You’re not going to be able to maintain the forces that are necessary to immediately reopen it if something like this happens.

We’ve always thought there’d be a struggle over this. I’m not sure that this is not in the CENTCOM plan. Is it frustrating? Would you like for it to be open? Certainly. But, you know, the nature of warfare is you can’t get everything you want.

Sometimes it takes a little while to get what you want. And I think we’re working toward that end right now. I go back to a point I made earlier. This is a clash of wills. The other side gets info. They have good ideas within their framework, and they’re going to exercise those good ideas. It’s up to us to work and prevent them from implementing them, and I think we’re doing a pretty good job of that,

Blaise Misztal:

Our next question from the audience is as follows. President Trump said we need to continue until the work is completed, since we don’t want to come back every two years. If the hostilities ended today, assuming we can’t trust the regime, would we be in a predicament of potentially having to keep coming back every couple of years? The military operation you’re seeing, is it designed with an option for regime change?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

The United States is not pursuing regime change directly. It may be a product of what we’re doing, and of course, the leadership of the regime has changed pretty significantly over the last few weeks.

I think we’d like to get to a point where there’s going to be some entity in Tehran that will negotiate over the objectives we want for this campaign, whether it’s a completely new regime or a version of this regime that is so affected by pressure that they’re willing to make these concessions. I don’t think it matters.

Going forward, look, we’re always going to have to have something in the theater to look at these guys. It’s difficult for me to conceive that Iran is going to go completely away. But it could be a much smaller force than what we have now, since we’ve demonstrated pretty clearly our ability to flex forces back in, should it be necessary to do. Also, that fact’s not lost on the Iranian regime.

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I don’t think we would have to go back. It’s really a function of what type of agreement will be reached and who will be in power in Iran.

In that sense, I’d like to say two sensitive things. One, there are visible actions that we are discussing, and maybe the world can see. There are also invisible capabilities implemented in this war and not everything is immediately effective. We have to be very patient in certain areas.

We are planting seeds and we are waiting for them to grow. And in that sense, I think we are creating new circumstances that will allow a significant change in Iran, and this, by itself, will be the answer of whether we will have to go back or not. I’m not sure it’s totally aligned with the kinetic capabilities that are implemented.

And, keep in mind, that there are areas that are not implemented yet. Think about infrastructure paralysis that can be achieved via kinetic or cyber capabilities. These tools were not used yet, and they can influence the Iranian population in a certain direction, and then those in power may shift actions and decisions in a different direction.

So, I’m not sure that everything is visible, and I’m not sure that everything is totally synchronized with what the international community can see. We have to understand that there are some residual effects and ongoing impacts that we’ll be seeing in the near-future, and far-future.

Blaise Misztal:

All right. What are you going to be looking for in the coming days or weeks to determine if the plan is still unfolding as it should, General McKenzie?

General (ret.) Frank McKenzie:

I’ll be looking at the Strait of Hormuz. That’ll all become apparent over the next few days. I’m watching for how we get the success we want and what decisions we’re making about creating a path through for ships—either warships that might bring Marines into the Arabian Gulf, or other ships that will come through. I think that’s going to be very important in the next few days. And the second thing I’m looking for is a continued decline in Iranian ballistic missile activity.

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, what are you looking for?

Maj Gen (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I’ll be focusing on the production capabilities, particularly regarding missiles, and making sure that we degrade them to the lowest level that we can. Obviously it goes to the second level, too, in terms of the nuclear program—I’m watching to see if it is going to be shattered as much as we can shatter it. The rest will be achieved, I assume, by either diplomatic or massive kinetic means that will be implemented in the future.

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, General McKenzie, thank you very much for your insights today. Thank you to everyone who tuned in, and please visit jinsa.org for all our latest updates and analysis as these operations continue. Thank you.

The post Transcript: Webinar – Trump’s Postponed Ultimatum appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror
JINSA Distinguished Fellow; Former National Security Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister

VADM Mark Fox, USN (ret.)
JINSA Generals and Admirals Program Participant; Former Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command

The discussion was moderated by JINSA Fellow for American Strategy Jonathan Ruhe.

—

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Hello everyone. Welcome to today’s JINSA webinar on Washington and Jerusalem’s next moves in the war with Iran. I’m Jonathan Ruhe, JINSA’s Fellow for American Strategy.

We’ll discuss a range of timely issues today, including what’s going on around the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s nuclear sites, and Hezbollah’s decision to enter the war against Israel. I’m delighted to be joined by two distinguished panelists today.

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox is former Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command and former Commander of U.S. Fifth Fleet, among many other past positions. Currently, he is a member of JINSA’s Abraham Accords Policy Project and JINSA’s Eastern Mediterranean Policy Project, as well as a JINSA Generals and Admirals Program participant.

IDF Major General Yaakov Amidror is the former National Security Advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister and a JINSA Distinguished Fellow.

Admiral Fox, I’d like to start with you. The naval standoff around the Arabian Gulf is the most pressing issue, certainly here in the United States. Before we start discussing what some of the options might be on the U.S. side, could you please just start by giving our audience a sense of what is going on? Could you set the scene for our audience? What are Iran’s naval capabilities, as we understand them, in terms of what remains? What is Iran’s ability to threaten these vital shipping lanes?

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox:

Thanks, Jonathan. I’m glad to be with you, and Yaakov, thank you for joining us.

The Strait of Hormuz is only, at its narrowest point, less than 20 nautical miles wide. One interesting thing is the Strait of Hormuz itself is really deep, so it’s not very easily mined, at least not with the classic moored mines or that sort of thing. But during the 1980s conflicts, Iran actually mined over in Kuwait, and they went into the other Arabian Peninsula waters to mine, away from their own shores. So it’s not like they only mine in their own territorial waters.

You know, [Central Command Commander] Admiral Brad Cooper was a former Fifth Fleet Commander and he was also a former Deputy Commander of Central Command. So he’s eminently qualified, to those of us who have had those responsibilities. I haven’t been the CENTCOM Commander, but I was the Deputy Commander.

The one thing that I hope has been done is CENTCOM undertaking a really disciplined and thorough approach to destroying known sites of mine magazines and the places where they would be assembled. And we are well over a week into this conflict. You hear all of the stories of how many Iranian warships and craft have been sunk, I would really expect that this campaign has been focused on really blunting their ability to put mines in the water.

The way that the Iranians have been squeezing the economies of all of their neighbors has been by hitting tankers there. Well over a dozen tankers have been hit. And it’s one of those cases where there are incredible numbers of places for them to launch these drones and coastal defense cruise missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles. And so that’s one that’s part of this air campaign, I think: finding a way to thoroughly create a disinfectant, if you will, a corridor where Iran is incapable of launching and hitting merchant ships.

There’s another thing that I think is worth mentioning. Imagine if Iran had a nuclear weapon, what they would be doing. There’s a good reason why this conflict is going on, and it’s to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And it’s just a good, sobering reminder.

The Iranians don’t quit. They issued keys to children in the Iran-Iraq War to clear minefields, and they suffered probably half a million casualties. They are tenacious. I see it in a similar way to the end of World War II. It was the [Japanese] Emperor’s edict that Japan surrender that created the conditions for a peaceful end of that war.

Iran’s new Ayatollah is in that same kind of position. Only the Ayatollah is able to make those kinds of decisions. Look at Ayatollah Khomeini, back in 1988. If you remember, on July 3, 1988, the U.S. Navy’s USS Vincennes, in a horrible miscalculation of war, shot down an Iranian airliner with 274 people on it. And it was that, coupled with the Iraqi attack with chemical weapons that summer of 1988, that made the Ayatollah Khomenei come up and say, ‘you know what, this is a chalice of poison I’ll have to drink.’ He thought that we had finally taken the gloves off. But it’s only the Ayatollah that, as best I can understand, can make those kinds of decisions.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, Admiral Fox, and that raises a good question. This issue about the Iranian regime’s posture and attitude toward the war – we have heard defiant statements from Ali Larijani, one of the de facto major players in the Iranian regime, even if the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is officially a new head. General Amidror, what is your understanding of the appointment of the new Supreme Leader, the previous Supreme Leader’s son? Does that signify anything to you about the regime’s willingness or ability to continue prosecuting this war externally?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

It’s a continuation of the same regime. I don’t see any change.

The inauguration was done, not with the guy who was nominated, but his picture. His picture was inaugurated. It tells you something about the situation in Iran today. He didn’t appear in public. He sent someone on television to read his declaration.

It’s probably the same regime, without the authority of the father. What it means for the future, I don’t know. Let’s see.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, General Amidror.

Admiral Fox, so far, we’ve heard President Trump publicly entertain the idea of the U.S. Navy potentially escorting naval vessels through the Strait of Hormuz. There’s obviously a precedent for that, which you hinted at, in the 1980s. Could you give us a sense of what that operation might look like and the challenges it might face, especially in the context of all the ships that we understand now are bottled up on the Arabian Gulf side of the Strait of Hormuz?

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox:

Well, there are a couple of things. Back in 1988 we had a close to 600-ship Navy. Today we have a less than 300-ship Navy. Our Navy has a bigger mission than it has resources to meet the mission. And so the ships that would be engaged in this are either doing ballistic missile defense, or they’re protecting the aircraft carriers and the strike groups, or they’re launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, or they’re in certain positions for Tomahawk launches. Our naval surface warfare assets are extremely busy right now.

If there is tasking from President Trump to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, then that’s certainly what the Navy will do. But that’s not, right now, where the Navy’s focus is. We’re focused right now on ballistic missile defense, defending the carriers and preparing for Tomahawk launches, to ensure that we’re capable of servicing the targets that we’re tasked with.

I think that there are ships that are going through the Strait of Hormuz. They turn off their Automatic Identification System, the AIS. I think they’re Iranian shadow tankers trying to smuggle oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. But what they do is turn off the AIS and go in and go out. So, it’s really a difficult thing to truly know how many ships are coming and going.

I do think that the Iranians have capabilities still that represent a significant threat. These little drones that they’re launching, and the cruise missiles, and so forth. Until we’ve beat that down and created a condition where merchant mariners are capable of operating in international waters safely, for some amount of time, we’re going to have to deal with this.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you. Just one quick follow-up question that’s come up from our audience. We’ve talked about the threats that Iran can pose to the Gulf nations here. What is your understanding of the extent to which the U.S. has targeted Iran’s own ability to export energy, either through the Gulf or from its shores more generally? I’ve seen reports in recent days that Iran is still getting its own energy exports out.

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox:

Now, I’m on the outside looking in, so I can’t speak with authority about this. However, I do think that this has been a focused campaign on military capabilities. We haven’t taken down the electrical grid. We haven’t taken down their oil production facilities. There’s certainly more pressure that’s available to ratchet up in this kind of situation. We’ve been focused on military capabilities rather than trying to just or take out their infrastructure. And it’s clear to me that’s been a conscious decision.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, Admiral.

General Amidror, I’d like to turn to you. Admiral Fox mentioned how different this situation would be if the Iranian regime had a nuclear weapon. And obviously it’s been a explicit goal of both the United States and Israel in this operation to degrade or eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons capability. Then there’s the uncertainty that attends military operations, and the fog of war.

Could you give us your sense of what the main remaining risks are from Iran’s nuclear capability? What are things that we need to know, but that we don’t know?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

By definition, the thing that we don’t know, we don’t know. So I don’t know to speak about something that I don’t know.

I mean, we have a list of all the facilities which are important in the nuclear project, and we are, with our partners the Americans, destroying almost all of them. If they have something that we don’t know about, it will not be destroyed. But if there is a site we find out about, the minute that we find about it, we will move and do what is needed.

I believe, based on our very deep knowledge of the system and what was built by the Iranians in the past, that most of the nuclear project was destroyed. The question that I don’t have an answer to, and this is a question of battle damage assessment, is how long it will take the Iranians to rebuild it if they decide to do so.

I think that in the future, if needed, both Israel and the Americans know how to get back to Iran and do what is needed to destroy any attempt by the Iranians to rebuild their capabilities.

What is very important is Iran’s project to make long-range missiles. What we are doing now is we are destroying the industrial base of the Iranians. It’s not just focused on the missiles and the nuclear programs. It is wider than that. I mean, we are trying to destroy everything which is related to the missiles and to the nuclear projects, but it is broader than that. We are destroying facilities which are part of the industrial base of the Iranians, because we want to be in a position after the war, that even if the regime stays as it is today, the ability to threaten Israel will be minimal—really, close to zero.

Though no less important is Iran’s ability to renew it. That would be very problematic. Due to that, we are broadening the list of facilities that we are destroying, so that we speak now not just about those two projects, but about the industrial base of the Iranian regime.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you. In terms of Iran’s nuclear program—and we’ve heard this concern voiced by the head of the IAEA recently—there may be some uncertainty about where Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is. Also, we know Iran has a new facility at Isfahan, and also at what’s called Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply-buried facility under hard rock near Natanz.

We’ve heard in the press there may be considerations to go in there, and that requires a ground operation, because it’s beyond the reach of U.S. and Israeli air-to-ground munitions. Is that something you think is part of this assessment, in terms of how far back you can set Iran’s nuclear program?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

This was one of the reasons for taking all the measures and beginning the operations two weeks ago. There was the notion that if we did not do it, the Iranians probably would successfully bring more facilities underground, in places that, as you said, cannot be reached by the Israeli Air Force or the American Air Force. We want to destroy these facilities before they will be moved underground by the Iranians.

The main issue that we don’t know how to resolve is the 440 kilograms [of highly enriched uranium] which the Iranians have, according to the IAEA. Part of it is in Isfahan, and the other half, it is not known where it is. People are speaking about Natanz. Maybe. I don’t know.

This is something that we, in the present situation, don’t know how to remove from Iran. That probably will wait for the negotiations in a ceasefire after, or towards the end, of the war. If the Iranians will be ready to negotiate, I’m not sure that they will be ready to negotiate.

This is something that is a weak point in the whole thing: the fact that this 400, more than 400, kilograms of enriched uranium remain in the hands of the Iranians. It’s 60 percent enriched uranium.

They need two facilities to make it good enough for a warhead. First of all, they have to enrich it to 90 percent purity. Second, convert it to metal. Lastly, chemical processes. As far as we know, they don’t have enriching places which have not been destroyed by us or the Americans. But the truth is that even if they have the ability to reach the uranium, the weaponization project is a situation where they do not have the same capabilities they had before the war.

The Iranians had an explosive laboratory in Parchin, which was a very important part of the weaponization efforts of the Iranians. Without it, you cannot organize the enriched uranium, even if you enrich it to 90 percent purity and even if you convert it into metal. You need the explosive system. Without it, you don’t have a warhead.

That facility was destroyed in the last few days, according to the intelligence. Totally destroyed. So, I think, just about the nuclear project, I think the achievements are very high. As I said, the one weak point in the whole picture is the 400 kilograms of enriched uranium. With that material, for the Iranians, it’s much easier for them to go to the next stages. They don’t have the capabilities now. And as I said, we succeeded at destroying most of the facilities which are needed for these steps ahead. But this is something that we should resolve.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you. I have a question for Admiral Fox from the audience. Why have the Iranians’ small fast boats, that could potentially be used for mining operations, not been taken out yet?

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox:

Well, you know, Iran’s got an enormously long coastline. Think of the United States, let’s say, from New York to Charleston. So it’s an enormous task now to ensure that no boats come out. I have no doubt whatsoever that it’s somewhere in the target priority list, and especially as they represent a threat, I think they will be eliminated, but I don’t have a specific answer there. It’s a hard problem.

Remember, over on the Red Sea side, the difficulties of being able to handle the Houthis, who are less sophisticated in many ways than the Iranians. It’s a hard problem in terms of just geography and numbers.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, Admiral Fox.

Zooming out a little bit from that last question, are you surprised by Iran’s ability to continue projecting force across the region so successfully now, almost two weeks into the war?

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox:

Well, I think I would probably turn that on its head. I had every expectation that the Iranians would be as destructive and recalcitrant as they are now. They’re a pariah nation, and they are a state sponsor of terror, and they weren’t bothered by killing 32,000 of their own people in January. So why are we surprised that they’re doing what they’re doing now?

You do a military campaign, and you set priorities, and you go after the things that are really important early. We’re flying B-52s now over land. That’s incredible. We have air supremacy over Iran.

I’m not that surprised the Iranians haven’t changed their stripes. Somebody that has a rational mind would go, ‘Well, you know what? Maybe we ought to change their mind about this.’ No, they’re absolutely committed to this track. And it’s not the Iranian people necessarily, it’s the regime, and the Iranian people have not been well served by their leadership – by this regime.

It’s a lot more difficult to solve some military problems than you think, and this is probably not.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, Admiral.

General Amidror, turning to you. What is your assessment of Iran’s ability to continue projecting power now, two weeks into the war?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

I’ll give you some numbers.

After 12 days of the previous operation in June, the number of claims submitted by Israelis who had damage to their property reached the amount of 5.5 billion shekels after 13 days. The number of the damage which was claimed by Israeli citizens after 13 days of this war is 400 million shekels. I mean, less than 10 percent compared to last June’s war. It says something about the ability of the Iranians to launch missiles that we cannot intercept. And this gives you the ratio between the capabilities of Iran in June and its capabilities today. More than anything, it’s the most objective judgment of the situation.

Iran didn’t succeed at firing even one real salvo. It is launching into Israel here and there, hours between the missiles—and from our point of view, for the defensive systems, it is much easier to deal with the threats that way. The successes of the systems—it is the American system and the Israeli system, totally integrated: the THAAD, and the Arrow 3—that is why the damage in Israel is so low.

So, yes, the Iranians still have capabilities to launch into Israel and to destroy facilities in the Gulf. Remember, in some cases, it is less than 100 kilometers away. It’s very close. It’s systems that can be used in America at the level of a division, and they are using it from their side to launch into the countries.

Overall, though, we are succeeding. When I’m saying we, I mean Israel and America. We succeeded at reducing the capabilities of the Iranians every day. Every day. It will take time, because the mistakes that we made were to let them build so many launchers and missiles and so on. So that was a mistake. Today we are—I’m not saying slowly, but surely—making them less and less capable of attacking Israel, their neighbors, and to defend themselves. I don’t know if you heard about the fact that we made a whole operation against Basij checkpoints into Iran, more than 100. How many Basij members have been killed? I don’t know, but the fact is, we could do that operation.

Because of the overall superiority that we have over Iran, we are flying over Iran today. We: the Americans, and the Israelis. We are flying over Iran like we are flying over Gaza. I mean, there are no anti-aircraft positions around all of Iran. The Americans are bringing in the B-52s and the B-1Bs.

You understand, Jonathan. The image in Iran will be much, much more intensive. Yes, it’s going to take time. And people think that military operations are like what they see in the movies. They are not. Operations need time. They need the persistent resilience of the decisionmakers to continue. We are making mistakes, but we should continue.

Yesterday, here in my house, the BBC came to hear my views about the situation. The lady asked, ‘what do you need to finish the job?’ I answered with one word: time. After what we achieved in the skies of Iran, what we need—both America and Israel—is only time, and when it will end, if we have enough time, the Iranians will be set back many years. They will lose the ability to rebuild what they had before the war, and it will be a totally different Iran. You know, people don’t understand—at the end of the war, it will be a totally different Iran, without the capacity to produce and to launch missiles, and to use force.

We need time. If the Americans will be patient enough, and we give the guys in uniform on both sides, in America and in Israel, we will succeed. Today I spoke with the father of an Israeli Air Force F-16 pilot, and he told me that the F-16 pilots feel, after around 10 days, that the integration with the U.S. pilots is like being part of the same Air Force. The direction is clear. The momentum is clear. The Iranians don’t have any secret card that they can use to change the situation. They don’t have any secret that tomorrow they will reveal, and it will be problematic for Israel.

Any target that the intelligence gives to either the American Air Force or the Israeli Air Force, will be destroyed within a few hours. It’s an unbelievable situation.

Think: we are 1,500 kilometers away from the target. Some pilots are flying four hours in and four hours back. And in the middle, they get the fuel from the system of the United States of America. It’s a kind of gas station in the middle of the skies. And by the way, all the airplanes are American made. And the common language is English. The pilots speak the same language, use the same intelligence. They share the same way of thinking.

We didn’t change your system, and you didn’t change our system. But the combination is unbelievable, and the result, at least for today, is that we have total superiority over Iran, and they don’t have any way to stop us or to prevent us from destroying something, should it need to be destroyed.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, General Amidror, and that perfectly tees up my next question.

Admiral Fox, could you give us your American perspective on how you assess this joint U.S.-Israeli operation? It’s not the first time that American and Israeli pilots have cooperated, but I’d love to get your sense of how you see that currently.

Also, this is the first time I’ve had a chance to ask this of a naval aviator since the conflict started: what is your perspective on what naval aviation has been accomplishing so far in the conflict?

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox:

Well, first of all, in one word, the air campaign has been remarkable. There’s never, ever been an air campaign as effective as what we’ve seen over the last 13 days. I was the strike leader and mission commander for the first strike of U.S. Operation Iraqi Freedom in March of 2003, and what this team has put together is orders of magnitude greater. We hit hundreds of targets with hundreds of airplanes. This time they’ve hit thousands of targets. It’s just been unbelievable, really remarkable. I can’t overstate it.

The effectiveness of the tactics and the way that we’ve employed our forces has been remarkable. There’s just no other way to put it. I’m glad we’re on the same side. I’ll put it that way. I would not want to face the problem that we’re giving Iran right now.

As far as naval aviation is concerned, we’ve got stealth airplanes. We have the F-35 off of the USS Lincoln [aircraft carrier]. The F-35 is, as you recall from the 12-Day War last year, a game changer for Israel, and it’s one of those capabilities that gives you real-time information that’s usable in the cockpit. It’s not something that’s got to go back to get intel. The F-35 and the ability to communicate amongst the airplanes and share information is at an entirely new level. The quality, and the accuracy, of the intelligence that we have is unprecedented. It’s at a whole new level.

I flew in U.S. Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and I only dropped dumb bombs, except for some anti-radiation missiles, in that conflict. And then we went into Iraqi Freedom in 2003, and we had precision weapons. And now it’s at a higher level. My hat’s off to a bunch of very, very disciplined and capable young warriors, young males and females on both the Israeli and the U.S. side.

On the Navy side, we bring in the [Boeing EA-18G] Growler in particular. It’s an electronic attack airplane, effective for blinding radars, for collecting electromagnetic signals, and so forth. But we’re a joint team. We all come together. And as was just said before, it’s like now we’re operating together at a Red Flag Exercise. I mean, this is high-end operations at its finest.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, Admiral. And I would just note, Admiral Fox was a member of a JINSA task force that went over to Israel after the 12-Day War and did an assessment of Israel’s Operation Rising Lion and U.S. operations. And I would note for everyone, that November 2025 report is available on our website.

General Amidror, I want to switch gears a little bit. I want to discuss what’s going on in Lebanon. Could you give our audience a sense of why Hezbollah is joining the war?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

Yeah. Hezbollah was under pressure from Iran. I was the chief intelligence officer of the IDF Northern Command in 1986, when Hezbollah was being built up. So for more than 40 years, Hezbollah has been built up by the Iranians in Lebanon. And when I say built up by Iran, I mean they invested huge sums of money. I don’t know how many billions of dollars. They gave them the best weapons system that could be provided by Iran and by Syria. They trained them and made efforts so Hezbollah would be ready for war with Israel: Special forces, missile launchers, anti tank missiles, anti air-missiles, and so on. And, at the end of the day, everything collapsed.

Towards the end of 2024, with American intervention, the organization agreed to a ceasefire in which it knew Israel would have the ability to react to any attempt by Hezbollah to rebuild itself. The strategic difference between the past and today is there is no land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah. Syria is out of the land bridge. And without Syria, there is no bridge. And because of that, the ability of Hezbollah to regain its capabilities after the end of 2024 was very limited, very, very, very limited. And we, according to the side letter which we signed with the United States of America as part of the ceasefire agreement, intercepted any attempt of Hezbollah to rebuild its capabilities or to come back to South Lebanon. But we couldn’t act, because of the ceasefire, with a high amount of forces, as it should be.

Now, Hezbollah gave us an excuse. We had to make a decision, how many resources to take from the Air Force operations in Iran and allocate to the effort in Lebanon. This regards mainly the Air Force, because the ground forces, anyhow, are not involved in Iran. I think that after the first 12 days, the Iranians’ pressure on Hezbollah was unbearable, and Hezbollah decided that it should demonstrate its capabilities. We destroyed, probably, between 75 to 80 percent of its launching capabilities in 2024, but the 20 to 25 percent which remain, means it’s more than 20,000 [projectiles] left.

Yesterday, they decided to launch 200, and we intercepted, as far as I know, more than 190 of these 200. They didn’t cause any damage inside Israel from these 200 missiles, and we successfully destroyed two-thirds of the launchers that they used or prepared to use—some of them immediately after they were used, and some of them before they were used. The plan was to launch three times, around 500 to 600 they launched 200.

Today they don’t have any substitute for what they launched. As I said, they lost Syria, which was the place from which they got all these capabilities. We are preparing the ground forces to advance our forces in South Lebanon, more to the north, and more forces, and in accordance with the demand from the civilian population to leave the area. I don’t know where the ground forces will arrive, but slowly, they are moving ahead, pushing the civilians to leave the area. We don’t want them in the battlefield. We don’t want it to be a situation where Hezbollah, like Hamas, can stand and stop them. Hezbollah is too weak to stop the civilian population. They are leaving, going towards the north.

We are acting very aggressively in the south of Beirut, what we call the Dahiyeh, which is the headquarters, and then the storage areas of Hezbollah. And from time to time, we are bombing in the north part, in the Beqaa Valley. Today there was an interesting report that the Syrian President called the Lebanese President, and the two presidents spoke about cooperation between Syria and Lebanon, to deal with Hezbollah. If that is going to happen—I am not sure that it is not fake news; these days, every other fact is fake news—for Hezbollah, it is a disaster. Let’s see what will happen.

We are very active, but very slow. We don’t want to go too fast when we know that the air support which is needed for the ground forces is coming from the same forces that are very active in Iran. So how to manage between two fronts is something that the headquarters in Tel Aviv should take into consideration. And this is why we are not running into a big operation. It might happen within a few days when we feel better about operations in Iran, about the list of targets we prioritize.

As the Admiral said, at the beginning, you go to the most important targets and you go down the ladder. Once we are far enough down the ladder, more forces will be moved to Lebanon—for the Air Force, it is much easier. It’s very close. Instead of flying 1,500 kilometers, they have to fly only 100 kilometers, which means you can bomb more targets in one sortie.

So, Lebanon is boiling. We are preparing ourselves, but it’s clear that this time we have to go all the way. And the whole way means that many areas in Lebanon will be destroyed. We will bring ground forces into not only the first 10 kilometers from the Israeli border—they will be going deeper than that. We want to deny Hezbollah the ability to launch anti-tank missiles into our communities. For that, we have to push Hezbollah to the north. It is going to be a long war, and not an easy one, because it’s very problematic terrain for the ground forces. Yet they’re very determined this time to make it to the end.

Israel doesn’t have any experience of wars of elimination. We always said, ‘Okay, we will do something. The situation will be better. And maybe in 10 years from now, we will act again.’ Now, all that we have in mind is to eliminate them, eliminate Hezbollah as a military organization.

I spoke with someone who is living in Beirut last week. He told me that the situation of Hezbollah is very problematic. Hezbollah does not have the money to pay their people and the people who lost their houses in the south. The situation within Lebanon, the legitimacy of Hezbollah in Lebanon, is in a very low point. If they will be pushed more by us, it will be clear in Lebanon that Lebanon is paying the price for Iran, and that might lead to a new situation in Lebanon.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you, General.

Admiral Fox, we heard General Amidror talk about this idea of working your way down the ladder of targets in terms of priority. We have also seen reports that potentially a third U.S. Navy carrier strike group may be headed toward the Middle East, the USS George Bush.

Does this signal anything in particular to you? We’ve constantly heard in the American press about concerns that the United States is running low on munitions of all types. Do you think that’s related to moving a third carrier strike group into the region? How do you read that?

Vice Admiral (ret.) Mark Fox:

You can replenish an aircraft carrier at sea with ordinance and with food and with fuel. You know, the great strength that naval aviation brings to this fight is that you don’t have to have the permission of host nations to operate.

So that always is a wedge that you can use to open the door, because once you’ve now said, ‘Well, we’re going to be able to operate, whether you want us to or not,’ then that typically will open the door to ‘If you’re going to operate regardless, we’ll just go ahead and let in your ground force or your land-based aircraft.’ So naval aviation creates a unique entry point in terms of the basing and access piece of it, because you don’t have to ask for permission from anybody to operate in international waters.

We had six aircraft carriers in Desert Storm in 1991. In Iraqi Freedom. 2003, somewhere around five. We had some in the Mediterranean. We had them in the Gulf. The capability of the air wing from 1991 to 2003 to 2026 has evolved: three aircraft carriers are capable, more than capable, of doing what six aircraft carriers did before, in terms of servicing, targeting, delivering ordinance.

You’ve got the USS Gerald Ford in the area, which was designed to generate sorties, and they’ve completely redesigned the ship with new elevators and new ordinance handling. It’s so much better than the Nimitz class, and the Nimitz class is the best that there was.

We do have high end ordinance that we keep an eye on in terms of THAAD and the Aegis Weapon Systems on our ballistic missile ships. That’s a manageable problem. I mean, it’s something that we’ve figured out: you don’t use the high-end hammer to squat a fly.

So there are a number of different ways that we’ve now figured out how to handle the low, slow flyers or and it’s just one of those cases where a new adversary capability is introduced, we adapt, and they adapt, and we’re in that cycle right now. But, you know, the way that you keep it relevant is with new airplanes or new weapons. And the aircraft carrier remains viable because it’s always got the latest and greatest weapons and it moves. It gives the President all kinds of options.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Thank you. I want to thank both Admiral Fox and General Amidror, as always, for joining us and sharing their thoughts and time today, and to our audience. Stay tuned for further JINSA webinars as the conflict goes on, and keep an eye out for JINSA materials related to a lot of the topics we discussed here today.

The post Transcript: Webinar – Middle East War: Washington and Jerusalem’s Next Moves appeared first on JINSA.

The Air Force’s fighter inventory has shrunk over 60 percent since the end of the Cold War and has been flown relentlessly in combat ever since. Today those aircraft—and their crews—are worn hard. Yet missions such as air superiority and strike remain central to deterrence and warfighting as evidenced by recent results over Iran. If the United States intends to maintain military primacy, the Trump administration and Congress must accelerate procurement of modern fighters. The warning lights are already flashing that it is time to accelerate investment in these forces.

At the center of that effort is the F-35A, which the Air Force itself describes as “the foundation of the USAF fighter force structure.” Delivering on that promise requires four things: expanding fighter capacity, stabilizing procurement, continuing modernization, and improving readiness.

Capacity Matters

The Air Force that won the Cold War fielded more than 4,000 fighters, most less than a decade old. Today the service operates roughly 1,100 fighters in its primary mission aircraft inventory—the aircraft available for real-world operations—and their average age is around 30 years.

Air Force analysis identifies a requirement for more than 1,500 fighters. When accounting for growing homeland defense demands, missile defense requirements, and the attrition expected in a peer conflict, that number may prove to be much higher.

During the Cold War, the fighter force focused primarily on one adversary: the Soviet Union. Today the United States faces a far broader set of challenges—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and persistent homeland defense requirements.

Aircraft—and their pilots—cannot be in two places at once. Capacity matters.

Without sufficient numbers, the existing force is stretched thin. Fighters and crews deploy repeatedly, disrupting training cycles, delaying major maintenance, and eroding readiness.

Recent operations illustrate the strain. F-35As that participated in the removal of Maduro from Venezuela were quickly redeployed to the Middle East during rising tensions with Iran. Some did not even make it back to the U.S. to reset. The reality is that demand is particularly high for stealth fighters that can leverage sensor fusion and networking capabilities—attributes that allow them to support operations far beyond traditional strike missions. If a concurrent fight were to erupt while Operation Epic Fury was underway, demand for U.S. fighters—especially the F-35A—would rapidly exceed supply.

China’s Airpower Is Expanding Faster

For decades many Americans viewed major war as theoretical. That complacency was, and remains, dangerous.

China is rapidly expanding and modernizing its airpower. Since 2021, Beijing has added more than eight million square feet of aircraft manufacturing capacity—larger than the F-35 production facility in Fort Worth. The reason is straightforward: China is in the middle of a massive combat aviation buildup reminiscent of the U.S. modernization surge during the Reagan administration.

China’s J-20 stealth fighter fleet already exceeds the size of the Air Force’s F-22 inventory. Analysts estimate China could produce as many as 300 fighters annually by 2028. Current projections suggest the PLAAF is on track to surpass the United States in both combat aircraft size and modernization by the end of the decade.

The contrast with U.S. procurement trends is stark. In its FY2026 budget request, the Air Force proposed retiring 258 fighters, while purchasing just 45 new aircraft.

For years, Air Force leaders have said they must procure at least 72 fighters annually simply to prevent the fleet from shrinking. Prior to the FY2024 budget request, the last time the Air Force purchased 72 or more fighters in a single year was 1998—more than a quarter century ago. Buying fewer than that causes the fighter inventory to shrink, which is exactly what has happened since the end of the Cold War. After decades of deferred modernization, the necessary procurement rate is now significantly higher.

The consequences are already visible. Okinawa—one of America’s most strategically important locations in the Pacific no longer has permanently assigned fighters. The Maryland Air National Guard lost its flying mission in 2025 when its A-10s were retired without replacement. In both cases, insufficient procurement forced capacity reductions.

The Air Force’s fighter force structure assessment acknowledges the problem and recommends maximizing production of aircraft already in production. For the F-35A that would mean roughly 72 aircraft annually. Additional procurement of aircraft such as the F-15EX and the emerging F-47 will also be necessary.

During the Reagan buildup, the Air Force purchased nearly 200 fighters per year. Given today’s aging fleet, those numbers represent replacement—not expansion.

Procurement Stability Matters

Expanding production requires predictable demand.

Pentagon plans in the early 2000s projected the Air Force buying roughly 80 F-35s annually beginning in the mid-2010s. Reality has been far different. Procurement has ranged from more than 60 aircraft in some years to as few as 24 in FY2026.

This volatility makes it extremely difficult for industry to invest in additional production capacity, particularly among smaller suppliers deeper in the supply chain.

Workforces, specialized equipment, and production space cannot expand and contract with yearly budget swings. Businesses simply cannot operate effectively under those conditions.

Lockheed Martin has attempted to stabilize production by using international orders as a buffer against fluctuating U.S. demand. But that approach has limits.

A multi-year procurement contract would provide the stability necessary for the industrial base to expand production and lower costs through economies of scale. These agreements typically deliver savings of roughly ten percent—stretching both U.S. and allied defense budgets further.

Expanded production is also necessary to meet growing international demand. Many allied nations delayed airpower modernization and now urgently require new aircraft. If the United States cannot meet that demand, partners will inevitably seek alternatives—undermining both U.S. economic interests and the operational advantages of allied interoperability.

Modernization Cannot Slow

The F-35 is not simply another fighter aircraft. It is an information-age combat system whose low-observability, sensors, computing power, electronic warfare capabilities, and connectivity are as important as its weapons.

Operation Epic Fury over Iran illustrates this evolution. In these missions stealth aircraft act as airborne data nodes—collecting intelligence inside contested airspace and distributing it across the entire military force in real time. In such operations, the aircraft’s ability to fuse information and direct other aircraft can be as decisive as its ability to deliver weapons.

Maintaining that advantage requires continued modernization. Major upgrades like technical refresh (TR) 3 and block 4 have dominated news headlines in recent years and significant progress has been made with both. However, modernization is a continual effort that demands sustained investment given the evolution of threats.

One of the biggest examples in this regard ties to generating additional power and cooling for a combat aircraft that is a flying supercomputer. Early F-35 variants required roughly 15 kilowatts of electrical power. Current mission systems require more than 30 kilowatts, and future upgrades could push demand toward 80 kilowatts. This is a good news story because it means the F-35 has growing capability. However, investments must be made to support that growth.

Meeting those requirements will require upgrades to both the aircraft’s engine core and its power-thermal management systems (PTMS). Pratt and Whitney is progressing on the engine front and there are options for the PTMS, including a program known as enhanced power and cooling system (EPACS). These foundational improvements rarely attract headlines, but they are essential to enabling future capability growth.

Readiness Matters

Even the most advanced aircraft is only useful if it is ready to fly.

Improving F-35 readiness requires progress on two fronts. First, sustainment costs must continue to decline. Encouraging progress has already been made: the cost per flying hour dropped dramatically between 2014 and 2022. Further progress must continue as the Air Force must be able to afford to operate the aircraft it acquires.

Second, the services must adequately fund operations and maintenance accounts—particularly spare parts.

When supplied with sufficient parts, F-35 mission capable rates can exceed 90 percent in operational deployments. At home stations, however, aircraft sometimes sit idle waiting for components to be repaired or replaced. That is a major reason why Air Force leaders are making such a big push to boost readiness.

Because the F-35 operates through a shared global sustainment enterprise across the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, all services must contribute adequately to sustain readiness. This is an area in major need of a funding boost. The FY26 defense budget made an important downpayment in that regard, but the investment must continue.

The Strategic Choice

Current headlines demonstrate what modern airpower can achieve. The striking military success of Operation Epic Fury rests on a campaign built around airpower. Aircrews are accomplishing what many once considered impossible, building on gains achieved less than a year ago when Israeli and U.S. aircraft struck critical targets deep inside Iran. Those operations reshaped the strategic balance in the Middle East—within some of the most heavily defended airspace in the world—and the F-35 was central to that success.

Just a few hundred miles away, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine offers a stark contrast. There, the conflict has devolved into grinding attrition reminiscent of World War I trench warfare. The difference is clear: over Iran, we see the decisive effects of effectively employed modern airpower. Over Russia and Ukraine, by contrast, neither side has achieved air superiority—leaving the battlefield contested and the war locked in costly stalemate.

The F-35 is the cornerstone of America’s future air dominance, providing the asymmetric advantage needed to deter adversaries and prevail in conflict. But that advantage exists only if the United States fields the aircraft in meaningful numbers.

China is producing fighters at scale. To meet that challenge the United States must double down on the F-35—expand production capacity, continue its modernization, and stabilize procurement at 72 F-35As annually for the U.S. Air Force.

Lt Gen David Deptula, USAF (ret.) is the former Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance for the U.S. Air Force and JINSA Senior Advisor.

The post China Is Building Fighters At Scale: Time To Step Up F-35 Procurement appeared first on JINSA.