The post Taking Out Iran’s Pickaxe Nuclear Site is Key — Here’s How Trump Can Do It appeared first on JINSA.

The post Trump’s Hands Are Tied in Hormuz. Here’s ‘Plan B’ appeared first on JINSA.

The post Winning Before the Battle Ends appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

Svante Cornell

JINSA Scholar; Director, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute

Alan Makovsky

Member, JINSA Benjamin Gettler Project for East Med Security; Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

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 and thank you for joining another JINSA webinar. I’m JINSA’s Vice President for Policy, Blaise Misztal.

I’m here with a great panel to discuss what we saw happen this week at the Ankara NATO summit that President Trump attended. I think the headline coming out of the summit was President Trump’s promise to lift sanctions on Turkey and hint that he’d be willing to sell them the F-35. [This is] something that I think will be even more in the news now that we’re hearing reports that Turkey is preparing to sell its S-400 Russian air defense system, which had been at least one of the obstacles to the F-35 sale. They might finally be getting rid of the S-400 and selling it to a Gulf country—potentially the U.A.E., or Qatar has also been mentioned in some reports. But I also want to discuss the NATO summit itself and Turkey’s role in that alliance, which hasn’t always been an easy one.

To do that, I’m delighted to be joined by two of the greatest Turkey experts on either side of the Atlantic: Alan Makovsky, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and a member of JINSA’s Benjamin Gettler project on the Eastern Mediterranean, and JINSA’s scholar and director of the Central Asia Caucus Institute, Svante Cornell. Thank you both for being with us. Ambassador Eric Edelman was also supposed to join us, but unfortunately, he won’t be able to make it. But I know both of you have more than enough knowledge here to fill the next hour.

Maybe I could start with you, to tell us a little bit about the history of Turkey’s relations with NATO, at least over the last 15 years or so under the reign of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Svante Cornell

Well, thank you, Blaise, and it’s a delight to be with you and with Alan, as always. I’m sure Alan would know better this recent history, but perhaps Alan, you’ll correct me if I’m wrong. I think that in general we can say that on the one hand, Turkey has a foreign policy that is very, should we say, independent and transactional. It doesn’t really get into, or at least follow a consensus, or put following a consensus in NATO at the center of its concerns. On the other hand, NATO is the only formal alliance that Turkey is part of, with the possible exception of the bilateral one with Azerbaijan. This means that when push comes to shove and when Turkey feels insecure about one thing or another, the feeling that NATO is important gets stronger. When Turkey feels more secure and doesn’t feel any threats, they tend to forget a bit about the importance of NATO for Turkey.

That said, I think what we’ve seen over the past 15 years or so is, as always—or I shouldn’t say as always, because during the Cold War the NATO commitment by Turkey was fairly strong because there was consistently the threat to the Soviet Union. But in the past 15 years, there’s been up and down with many different iterations of Turkey shifting its momentary thinking about where NATO fits in its general security. We’ve had situations where Turkey was drifting more into the Middle East with a more Islamist foreign policy. That was in many ways not compatible with many of NATO’s goals. We’ve obviously had times when Turkey has felt more the importance of NATO whenever it’s been threatened by Russia, as it was in 2015, for example; we see that Turkey was more interested in NATO. There have always also been domestic considerations, especially with the 2016 coup that was largely believed to be orchestrated by the Gulen movement, which led to many of the, on paper, most pro-NATO American-linked officers in the Turkish military being purged, with a more nationalist group of officers taking precedence for a while, [who] were more critical of NATO.

At the same time, I think we have to acknowledge that the key thing for Turkey has always been, not NATO as a multilateral alliance, but a bilateral military and security relationship with the United States. And as that relationship goes, Turkey’s commitment to NATO goes. So right now, where we have a very strong personal relationship between Presidents Trump and Erdogan, as you alluded to, Blaise, you will see that many of the controversies are kept under the carpet. [They] are not brought to the forefront, even though they might be simmering under the surface. Whereas, if somebody else might be president, the situation might be different. So, I’ll stop here for now, and I hope Alan can add something that I missed.

Blaise Misztal

Yeah, Alan, feel free to chime in, but I also wanted to ask you about, sort of, what were the optics heading into this summit of NATO convening in Ankara, and what were sort of the expectations maybe heading into the summit?

Alan Makovsky

Well, first of all, let me just say how great it is to be on a panel with you, Blaise and with Svante, and to address your wonderful audience. Okay, this summit was supposed to be very important. We’re describing it as NATO 3.0, sort of the first major summit of a new era for NATO, where Europeans take more responsibility for their own defense, while the United States diminishes its role, and Turkey wants to be at the center of this. Turkey has a growing defense industrial sector. It’s, I believe, last year was the 11th leading exporter of military goods, and it’s climbing. And Turkey wants to be one of the primary centers for European production, physically, of equipment and arms and, strategically, for security overall, and for Turkey hosting this summit was highly symbolic.

It was also a great prestige. It was supposed to be, and I suppose in this regard, it was a great prestige builder for Erdogan. President Trump said, basically, the only reason he was attending was that it was an Erdogan summit. His good friend Erdogan was hosting it, and that was the reason for his attendance. And of course, just for Turkey under any circumstances, hosting such a major event, such a major security event, would be a prestige builder, but for such an important NATO summit, I think it’s particularly so. Maybe by the way, I thought, Svante, you gave a fantastic overview of Turkey and NATO.

I just maybe wanted to add one thought. It has been a source of discord, as you mentioned, between Turkey and its other NATO allies. It was for many years Turkey’s relationship with Russia. I think it’s been a great success for Turkey that it has basically won its alliances’ acceptance of the fact that it is pursuing strategic autonomy. I think this process really started with the Ukraine war, when initially the Allies were very upset that Turkey was sitting on the fence, but then Turkey was able to negotiate a grain export deal between Ukraine and Russia. At least Turkey got credit for negotiating it. The UN was also part of the negotiating team. And ever since then, it seems to me a lot of the criticism of Turkey’s relations with Russia has diminished on the part of the allies. It certainly doesn’t seem to be a problem at all for President Trump, and even under President Biden, his team said, ‘Well, Turkey has an independent foreign policy, but we can cooperate on many issues.’

So, Turkey has managed to pursue this relationship with Russia without upsetting ties with NATO, and also, for all its human rights problems, the alliance is looking the other way these days.

Blaise Misztal

Yeah, I have to say I was surprised that neither of you mentioned, particularly Svante, beaming into us as you are from Sweden, Turkey’s role in delaying, for almost two years, Sweden’s accession into NATO following the war in Ukraine. And then, Alan, to your point, among the NATO members, Turkey is the only one that did not adopt sanctions against Russia following the Ukraine invasion. In fact, it became an important source for Russian money trying to get out and Russian exports trying to get out into the world. But as you said, it seems like that is now water under the bridge, or even something that is seen as maybe a strategic advantage that Ankara has these relations with Moscow.

Alan Makovsky

Yes, yeah, no, I think that’s right. Turkey, of course, always maintained, as it was criticized at the beginning of the war, for not applying Russia sanctions, that it’s important to have somebody who can talk to both sides. And I think they, this is looking at it historically, but they sort of won their spurs in the eyes of many people when they negotiated that grain deal so long ago in 2022. And over time, first the Biden administration, and then it seems the Europeans, don’t raise that issue very much. As you say, it’s seen even as an advantage that Turkey can talk to all sides. It’s certainly seen that way by the current U.S. administration, which, after all, has its own unique relationship with Russia—which is, at a minimum, we could say less hostile than Biden’s relationship with Russia.

Svante Cornell

Yeah. So, I agree fully with what you’re saying, Alan. I think you could add another dimension to it, which is that while Turkey did maintain its relationship with Russia and did not join the sanctions, it also won credibility and was able to counter accusations of being too close to the Russians by its very military support for Ukraine as well, and in other ways. Not least because of, by then, high-standard Bayraktar missiles—I suppose today the Ukrainians are mostly using stuff that they build themselves, which are apparently better than [what] anybody else builds – but not only that they supplied these UAVs to Ukraine, but also had them built under contract in Ukraine. I think [this] complicated the picture that some people saw of a Turkey that was just very, very close to the Russians.

And although that might not be in the newspapers, there is also the fact that it’s a very strange relationship, the one between Turkey and Russia. On the one hand, okay, in a way similar to the way in which Erdogan can talk to Trump, he can also talk to Putin. But Turkey maintains this relationship [as] transactional with Russia, while also, in several different theatres, basically fighting Russia’s proxies in outright wars. This happened in Syria; this happened in Libya. And of course, most famously, this happened in the South Caucasus, where Turkey backed Azerbaijan’s effort to retake its territories that were for 30 years occupied by Armenian forces with Russian support.

And all of these things Turkey has been able to do, taking out Russian proxies; Russia just says, okay, let’s move on, let’s not talk about it. And if you see, look at what happened in the South Caucasus in the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan – actually, in 2023, Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan actually mistakenly killed several Russian peacekeepers in that operation, and they just issued an apology. And the Russians didn’t even do anything. They just moved on. But what this speaks to is how much Russia, how much Turkey means to Russia, and how important maintaining this economic lifeline through Turkey means to the Russians. So, it’s really a very complex story.

Alan Makovsky

And if I could just add on that. The economic dependency goes both ways because Russia is the number one supplier of both gas and oil to Turkey. It’s long been dependent on Russian gas. They’ve tried to wean themselves off, but they still import about 40 percent of their gas, 35 to 40 percent of their gas from Russia, and a significant part of their oil. And Russia is building Turkey’s first nuclear reactor on the Mediterranean. Supposed to be, it’s been delayed many times, but the first reactor is supposed to be completed later this year, and Russia will own and operate that reactor and sell the electricity to Turkey. That’s the arrangement. So, I mean, Turkey remains very reliant on Russia, dependent on Russia, and it’s, as you say, been interesting. They’ve been able to outmaneuver Russia yet in several arenas that you noted—Syria, Libya, the South Caucasus.

Anyway, I just wanted to say, if I could, to bring it up to the back of the summit. The idea that Turkey is exceptional and can get away with things that other allies can’t. I thought it was very striking that President Trump excoriated all the allies for not supporting our effort, our war effort against Iran, and praised Erdogan for not joining the Iranian side. It was really giving it credit, and he said it’s more loyal than most other countries. It’s obviously a different standard [that] applies to Turkey, at least from President Trump’s point of view, than applies to other allies. Actually, I would just add that Turkey was actually the worst ally in terms of the Iran War; Turkey labelled it contrary to international law. [It] closed its airspace to U.S. aircraft and refused to let the U.S. use bases in Turkey. Arguably, Spain was just as bad. I think Turkey was a little louder about it, even than Spain. But yeah, I mean, rather than the best ally, it was the worst ally. But somehow, by not joining the Iranian side of the war, Turkey had done just great.

Blaise Misztal

Yeah, and unlike Spain, Turkey had to rely on NATO protections against Iranian missiles that entered its airspace and had sent a delegation just the day before the NATO summit to attend the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Iran, which other U.S. regional partners like the Emirates refused to do, so certainly set a low bar there.

So, against that backdrop, Alan, and since you mentioned how Turkey seems to keep being viewed as exceptional, can you maybe fill us in on some of the developments during the summit in the U.S. Turkish relationship?

Alan Makovsky

Well, I think the big thing, as you mentioned at the top of the program, was that President Trump said that he plans to get rid of sanctions against Turkey, and he said that he would strongly consider selling the F-35 to Turkey. I think those are really the two big and related developments that came out of the summit in U.S. Turkish relations.

Blaise Misztal

Can you maybe sort of walk us through the significance of those? What are the sanctions he was referring to, and how does that relate to the F-35?

Alan Makovsky

So, the sanctions he’s referring to primarily are the CAATSA Sanctions, Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, often just referred to as CAATSA, were imposed by Congress to prevent significant transactions with Russia’s intelligence and defense agencies. When Turkey bought the S-400 air defense equipment, it was expelled from the F-35 program and sanctions were put on its major arms purchasing agency, a government agency. That has complicated arms sales to Turkey.

Although we managed to find a way around that when we agreed to sell F-16s to Turkey, as a way to persuade Turkey to approve Sweden’s entry into NATO, as you alluded to earlier. The big sanction on Turkey, really, was a law passed by Congress in December 2019, as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. It said very explicitly that Turkey cannot purchase the F-35s unless it gives up possession of this S-400 air defense equipment that it had bought from Russia.

Since that time, that has probably been the number one issue in U.S.-Turkish relations from Turkey’s point of view. Erdogan badly wants the F-35 – its regional rival Greece has contracted to buy F-35s, which will start arriving, I believe, in 2028; Israel has had F-35s for nearly a decade. Israel was the first country, other than the United States, to get F-35s. And number one on Turkey’s shopping list, they’d like to get out of that restriction and buy F-35s. Now, I don’t think Trump can lift sanctions unilaterally. These are congressionally imposed. But the major issue, even if you got rid of CAATSA entirely, the law about restricting F-35 purchases would still be operative. So, that’s really the big issue.

By the way, I would just quickly add: he said you don’t sanction friends, but it so happens in his first term, he sanctioned Turkey on three different occasions. So, he seems not to remember that. He’s changed a few narratives about his relationship with Turkey in his first term.

Blaise Misztal

Yeah, so a couple points. First of all, to fully understand the F-35 issue, I’d recommend the report that Alan, Svante and Ambassador Edelman did last year on the issue called “Flight Risk,” which you can find on our website. But also just yesterday, my colleague Jonah Brody published an analysis of what the various legal barriers to selling the F-35 are, and what President Trump can and can’t do unilaterally.

But I guess in that context, Alan, as you pointed out, it’s that NDAA provision about Turkey possessing the S-400. That’s the real barrier here. In light of that, what’s the significance of the news that we’re hearing this morning that maybe Turkey is actually going to finally sell this thing?

Alan Makovsky

Well, of course, it’s highly significant. Turkey will have then met the standard of this legislation for eligibility for the F-35, so it will no longer possess the S-400, if this report is true; it was a report that came from a Turkish journalist very close to the Turkish government. Does that mean, automatically, that it will get the F-35s? Actually, in my opinion, yes. It probably does mean that.

However, there will be considerable resistance in Congress, and many congressmen have already made clear that they oppose Turkey’s getting the F-35 – for reasons of Turkey not being a good ally, because of its relations with Russia, because of its support for Hamas, because of its growing hostility to Israel, because of its occupation of the northern of Cyprus, and because of its longstanding rivalry with Greece. So, there are a lot of foreign policy arguments that opponents of the F-35 sale make.

That said, it’s very difficult to stop an arms sale that an administration wants to make if there are no legal barriers, like the 2019 law. It’s the only way you can stop an arms sale, really. There are various hurdles. Traditionally, if top congressmen object, the administration won’t put the sale forward. But the Trump administration is not expected to bow to those traditions. Congress’s only means of stopping an arms sale is through a joint resolution of disapproval, which it has to do within 15 days. It is very difficult for Congress to do anything within 15 days.

And even if it were to do such a thing – which has only happened once in history, as far as I know, when Congress did pass a joint resolution of disapproval for a Saudi arms sale that was, I believe, in 2019 – it’s just regular legislation. That means the president can veto it, which is what happened in the Saudi case. And then Congress needs a two-thirds majority of both houses to override the veto.

So I think it’s very unlikely when you have a Republican majority in the House and in the Senate, even though some of them do oppose the F-35 sale on strategic grounds, it’s very unlikely you’re going to get a two-thirds majority opposing it. So, I think if Turkey really is getting rid of the S-400, yeah, that’s probably a good bet that they’re going to actually get it.

Blaise Misztal

So, Svante, curious about whether you’re surprised to hear that Turkey might finally, after six years and all sorts of entreaties from the United States and threats, finally be ready to get rid of the S-400, and if so, why now? Why do you think Erdogan is displaying some flexibility now?

Svante Cornell

So that’s a good question. I’m, if anything, surprised that they didn’t find a way to get rid of the S-400s before. We should remind our audience that these S-400s have remained in boxes, in a warehouse somewhere. Who knows where? I mean, Alan probably knows where it is. But they haven’t been used. They haven’t even been unwrapped, if you will. So, the question is, if you have them in a hangar somewhere, why do you keep them? If this is what’s holding up, as Alan so clearly described, the purchase of the F-35s. So, several reasons.

One, probably the most important, is what it would do to the relationship with Russia. Having purchased these, you know Russia has, whether formally or informally, a say in where they go, and what is done, and whether it’s a loss of face for the Russians, and whether it would somehow affect the Turkish-Russian relationship. Or perhaps even more importantly, [how it would affect] the Putin-Erdogan personal relationship, if Turkey were to get rid of them. So why now?

I mean, you’re seeing all over the neighborhood of Russia how the former empire is cracking, and how states that five-to ten years ago would not have dared to challenge Russian interests are now doing so. You see it in Central Asia, for example; you see it in what happened between Azerbaijan and Armenia – it would have never happened if Russia had been stronger. The elephant in the room, of course, is how badly this war against Ukraine is going for Russia. How this war is, as we’ve seen, is directly affecting Russian cities, Russian energy, security, and the availability of gasoline and so on. So, the threshold, so to speak, for doing something that Mr. Putin might not like is not what it used to be 10 years ago or even several years ago.

I think Turkey feels that it [has] the upside, especially with President Trump in power and a more stable relationship, where they feel that, and I think, I think you just alluded to this, Alan. Or was it you, Blaise, that Erdogan said that President Trump always keeps his promises? This type of rhetoric suggests that there’s a personal trust between the leaders. Because, for Turkey, the worst situation would be you get rid of the S-400s, wherever they go. There are discussions to send them to Azerbaijan or now to a Gulf state, and suddenly then the U.S. wouldn’t deliver.

That would be a nightmare scenario: you end up with egg in your face, and you’ve undermined your relationship with the Russians, and you become kind of a laughingstock. So, I think the Turks are very heavily counting on this being realized; otherwise, they wouldn’t be getting rid of the S-400s.

Blaise Misztal

So, you’re saying that if Erdogan gets the F-35, he’ll have Zelensky to thank for it.

Svante Cornell

Yes.

Blaise Misztal

Alan, is the list of sanctions or legal obstacles to the sale of the F-35 the only considerations that should be going into the sale for the United States?

Alan Makovsky

It should be, yeah. Well, I mentioned to you that there are many voices in Congress, although it’s not clear that it would be a majority, that are objecting on strategic grounds because of the various issues I’ve raised. I think there’s plenty of reason to be concerned.

I share some of the concerns of those congressmen because of the aggressive role Turkey has played in the region, and because of its aggressive rhetoric. It has threatened that it might play a more difficult role, particularly, some of its rhetoric towards Israel. The foreign minister recently said that Israel has become a burden that humanity can no longer bear. Erdogan described Zionism as a genocidal occupying ideology. The Turkish Interior Minister said that he looks forward to Turkey’s return to running Jerusalem, and that he hopes to be the governor of Jerusalem.

These are very disturbing remarks, and I think Turkey’s attitudes towards Israel need to be clarified before any F-35 sale is completed. I think that’s really the most disturbing issue on the horizon, and of course Greece has reason to be concerned too. And Turkey’s attitude about the Aegean, where Turkey makes vast claims, something called the “Blue Homeland.” Now Greece also makes claims that Turkey doesn’t like. But I think it has to be clear that Turkey does not intend to use force on any of these issues, and actually, that Turkey will not interfere with ongoing projects that Greece and Cyprus have in their territorial waters and their EEZs.

So, I think it’s questionable whether we can sell it. Now, at a time when we’re saying that Europe has to get stronger, Turkey is a NATO member; it’s going to be hard to deny Turkey those F-35s. But do I personally have reservations? Yes, I do.

Blaise Misztal

So, Svante, given that you were just laying out some of Turkey’s newfound flexibility on the S-400, do you think that also will apply to some of these other friction areas that Alan laid out? Do you think that this is maybe a new direction for Erdogan, a new more cooperative, less aggressive Erdogan, or what should we expect from him if and when he gets the F-35?

Svante Cornell

Well, the general sense recently has been that Turkey is leaning back towards NATO and the U.S. because the bilateral relationship with the U.S. is better than it has been. I fully agree with everything Alan said.

The question with Turkey and especially with Erdogan and his government is always to what extent Turkish policy and Turkish rhetoric are the same thing. A lot of people that I speak to in Turkey think that a lot of the rhetoric, whether it be on Greece or the Aegean, or especially on Israel, is just that – it’s just theatre. It’s just feeding the base. Now, whether it’s rhetoric or not, it’s still profoundly harmful because it has helped to turn the tide in terms of Turkish society and outlook in Turkish society on issues like this. Because at the end of the day, the fish rots from the head, so to speak, and obviously the situation today is extremely far from what we had a few decades ago, when Turkey and Israel were allied countries for all practical purposes. So that’s the question.

I think even if you’re just feeding the base with rhetoric, sometimes your base becomes a Frankenstein. So, I’m not at all trying to minimize the dangers, or not just the dangers, but also the nature of the rhetoric that President Erdogan and his close advisers are using. But very frequently, we’ve seen that Turkish actions and Turkish rhetoric are very far from each other, whereas the rhetoric has been a lot stronger, and the actions have basically not been there. For many years, Turkey has threatened one of the oil exploration or gas exploration vessels that were in the Aegean or in the Eastern Mediterranean; to what extent is that today preventing the development of these resources? I’m not sure, so it’s a difficult determination to make.

Turkey seems to find its relationship with the West more important than it did. That also has to do with the fact that Western countries are interfering less with Erdogan’s power or aspirations to maintain power and consolidate control. I think that’s probably the main reason Turkey has today a positive relationship with both European countries and with the United States. Whereas in the past, there were a lot of actions taken, even though they were not serious. But it was a constant irritant for Erdogan that Turkey was exposed to Western pressure on human rights and on democracy. Now we see the closure essentially of the main opposition party, and nobody’s even mentioning it.

So, I think that with Erdogan, whatever the rhetoric, yes, he is a deeply ideological person. I don’t think there’s a question about that, and I’ve written about that myself. But I think the older he’s gotten, the more the control, the power, and the control over assets and power has become more central. And as long as that’s not challenged, I think he can be a transactional partner in many ways.

Blaise Misztal

Yeah, to that last point, Alan, the NATO charter describes itself as an organization that’s dedicated to democracy, individual liberty, and the rule of law. Was there any mention of human rights and all of the recent Turkish attempts to shut down opposition that Svante alluded to during the Ankara summit?

Alan Makovsky

Not to my knowledge; there’s been no mention. I think it’s unlikely that Turkey, if it were not in NATO and applying for NATO membership today, and if NATO were taking that part of the charter that you quoted seriously, there’s no way that Turkey could join NATO. But for now, human rights has simply fallen off the table in favor of strategic issues broadly.

But also, Europe is concerned about refugees, and since 2016 it’s basically had an arrangement with Turkey, where Turkey would not allow its refugee population to flow westward towards Europe, and that supersedes concerns about human rights. So, you could chart it: since 2016, Europe talks less about human rights, and of course, for the Biden administration, it’s not an issue. I mean, human rights just simply isn’t on the table. The Biden administration said human rights was going to be at the center of its foreign policy, but that in fact did not happen. And to be fair to Trump, the Biden administration also did not put much emphasis on human rights.

So we’re not hearing the types of criticisms we heard about Turkey, let’s say a decade and more ago, regarding human rights, and we sure didn’t hear it at the NATO summit, and we’re not likely to hear it very much in the near future. The European Parliament will pass a resolution now and then. There are some issues that come up in the Council of Europe, which is a separate organization. But these are like little squeaks compared with the chorus of criticism that used to descend on Turkey, in that regard.

Blaise Misztal

I do want to open it up to questions from the audience. So, if you do have any thoughts, our panelists, please feel free to submit them using the Q and A function in Zoom, and I’ll read them out. But then, yes, Svante, go ahead.

Svante Cornell

I just wanted to mention there is an issue we haven’t discussed in terms of Turkey’s role in NATO, which has to do with the change in the relationship between the United States and Europe.

With the statements that President Trump has made repeatedly about NATO, putting in question America’s commitment to the defense of Europe and even to our NATO Article Five, and the most absolutely central part of this, of course, was the controversy over Greenland. All of these things have meant that for European powers, if it’s a low risk, for the first time people are talking about what would happen if the U.S. was not committed to its role in NATO.

And then you have a reality for the European Union that perhaps the two most central powers in Europe are not EU countries. It’s the United Kingdom and Turkey in terms of military power, and you could add France to that list, perhaps, and increasingly, of course, Poland in the future. So you know, we keep talking about Turkey as the second largest land force in NATO. That means if the Europeans have come to question America’s commitment to Europe, it’s a no-brainer that, for the security and strategic reasons Alan alluded to, you are going to swallow your pride. You will not mention these human rights issues, because now it’s about the security of Europe itself.

We should remember that many of the high defense officials and military officials in Europe have these quotes every week or so about when or if Russia is going to be in a position or have a willingness to threaten Article Five in NATO, by some kind of plausible deniability operation in a Baltic state against Poland.

So, I think we absolutely have to see the status of Turkey for the European members of NATO completely against this background.

Blaise Misztal

I guess on that, Svante and Alan, two things.

One is, in 2015 during the Syrian war, a Turkish jet got shot down by Russian air defenses and Turkey at least made some noises about wanting NATO to invoke Article Five and collective self-defense. Basically, everyone said nothing or laughed them out of the room or turned their backs.

So, given that Turkey’s relationship with Moscow, that we discussed earlier, is the mood, Svante, in Stockholm, really that they expect Turkish troops are going to come to Sweden’s defense if Russian forces come across the border?

Svante Cornell

No, but beggars can’t be choosers.

The level of panic that has seeped through Europe in the last year or two as a result of the perceived threat from Russia, and as a result of the feeling that you cannot trust the United States anymore, and this sense of panic is all the more acute in the two countries that are the most recent to join NATO. You know, Sweden and Finland joined, feeling like, okay, we’re finally secure, and then suddenly, this anchor of NATO that you thought was going to protect you might not do that anymore.

In that situation, you see all kinds of bilateral deals being made with the British, with the French. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if these types of bilateral deals are made with Turkey. Countries in Northern Europe are talking about deals with France to take part in the French nuclear umbrella. I mean, this is what’s happening in Europe these days.

So, to the extent that you can bring the second largest military force in Turkey closer to you, you tip the balance, you increase the deterrence, the deterrence against the Russians to do something that would harm their relationship, not just with NATO, but with Turkey, which is so important to them.

Alan Makovsky

I completely agree with Svante, and I think that was one of the reasons Turkey wanted to have this summit, saying it’s symbolic to have it in Turkey. Because Turkey wants to be integrated into European defense, into the new European defense structure, to be at the center of it.

But we have to remember that most NATO states are also members of the European Union, and as one Turkish diplomat said to me once, that at times these seem like two different organizations, two different mindsets, even though it’s largely the same countries. And any sort of formal integration of Turkey, at least into the EU effort, is going to require approval from Greece and Cyprus, and so far Turkey is being kept out of the program. I’m forgetting what the acronym SAFE stands for, you may remember, but that is the program to plan for European defense integration. Turkey is having some success doing bilateral co-production deals with Italy and with Spain, but I think it makes sense strategically for Turkey to be integrated and to be an important center for producing security for Europe, but it’s by no means a done deal.

I wanted to go back to the Israel discussion for a second, if I could. I just wanted to say I’m not saying that Turkey is about to attack Israel. I agree that most of this is rhetoric, and Turkey has no real interest in attacking Israel, but as the rhetoric gets heated up, one doesn’t know. As we’ve pointed out, despite the rhetoric, Turkey and Israel have great economic relations.

But ultimately, pressure on Erdogan from his right wing led him to end that trade and to boycott Israel. You just never know, particularly with Turkish military and Israeli militaries cheek by jowl in Syria and now in Somalia. You just never know where this heated rhetoric could end, and I certainly hope the U.S., behind the scenes, is working hard to make sure that the rhetoric stays only at the rhetoric level. But sometimes these things get out of control.

So if we’re going to sell them F-35s, I think there has to be some kind of explicit understanding. So that’s all I was trying to say.

Blaise Misztal

Yeah, maybe related to that, Alan, we could end with this question.

There was an interview with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who was asked about whether Turkey was interested in nuclear weapons or pursuing nuclear weapons, and he just sort of smiled and evaded the question. And actually, I was in Israel recently, and officials there told us that it’s their understanding that Fidan had actually specifically asked for that question to be asked of him.

So, what are we to make of his non-answer, and should there be any concern about Turkey’s interest or pursuit of nuclear weapons, given as you said that the Russian-built reactor is already there?

Alan Makovsky

Well, I think we don’t want to see the nuclear club grow at all, and Turkey is under the U.S. umbrella. But I do think there is Turkish interest in it. They see Iran possibly moving towards nuclear status or arguably an already nuclear threshold state. And Israel, of course, has nuclear arms, although it doesn’t acknowledge it. It’s an open secret. It’s not surprising that states like Turkey and Saudi Arabia would also be interested in acquiring nuclear arms. And this sort of budding quartet that Turkey has been talking about with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, I think in the back of Turkey’s mind, it probably has a nuclear dimension because Pakistan is a nuclear state.

Blaise Misztal

Svante, last word goes to you.

Svante Cornell

Well, I mean, I think for the last several years, actually for fairly long now, we’ve been living in a world where collective security is increasingly unreliable. If the Europeans are worried about the American security umbrella, why should Turkey trust the U.S. nuclear security umbrella? So, I think the risk that one other state in this region works towards getting nuclear weapons is fairly high. Whether it’s the Saudis or the Turks who move first, we’ll have to see. But I’m sure that if one moves, the other will too. And at the end of the day, it all depends on Iran.

We have to remember that for the past 50 years or more, almost 50 years, I should say, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been the prime mover for all kinds of security issues in this region and has been the one that everybody else has reacted to. This is true for the Gulf states, this is true for Israel, this is true for Turkey. Now, Iran may be reduced in size, which will reduce the feeling among other states that it may have to acquire nuclear weapons. But that depends on how this war ends and what Iran looks like in a year or two.

Blaise Misztal

And whether or not it has F-35s, perhaps.

So, Svante, Alan, thank you very much for your time and your analysis today. Thank you to the audience who tuned in.

If you want more Turkey analysis, please check out our Benjamin Gettler Center for East Med Security at our website jinsa.org, where the best Turkey analysis to be found in D.C. is available. And very much look forward to seeing you on the next webinar.

Thank you, and have a good afternoon, everyone.

The post Transcript: Webinar – Erdogan’s Turkey: NATO Host or Hazard? appeared first on JINSA.

The post How Trump Can Win Back Allies and Rejuvenate U.S. Diplomacy on Iran appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror

Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former National Security Advisor to Israel’s Prime Minister

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish

Julian (z”l) & Jenny Josephson Senior Vice President for Israeli Affairs, JINSA

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, everyone, and thank you for joining another JINSA webinar. I’m Blaise Misztal. JINSA’s Vice President for Policy. I’m delighted to be joined this afternoon by Major General Yaakov Amidror, JINSA Distinguished Fellow and former National Security Advisor to Prime Minister Netanyahu and Major General Yaacov Ayish, the Julian (z”l) and Jenny Josephson Distinguished Fellow at JINSA and former IDF Director of Operations and Defense attaché here in Washington. Good evening to you both, Generals. It’s only been a couple of days since I saw you in Israel, where we were with our Generals and Admirals delegation for a week of high-level meetings, and one of the things that struck me was that in almost all of those meetings that our IDF interlocutors would mention how long Israel has been at war, I think, at the time they were saying 992 days, 993 days. When I went and did the math, I realized that in fact this weekend here in the United States, we’ll be celebrating our 250th year of independence and it’s going to be a much more somber occasion in Israel. Friday, tomorrow, marks 1,000 days since October 7, and so I thought that was a useful milestone for us to reflect on. My first question, maybe to you, General Amidror, is 1,000 days a long time since October 7, or is it a blink of an eye? Where is October 7 in Israeli public consciousness? Is it still recent, or has it been consigned to the past?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

No, it’s a very long time in Israeli terms. Remember that, unlike America, it’s a compulsory service, and the number of Israelis serving in the army, the regular army and reserve forces together, is huge relative to the number of citizens of Israel. It’s very hard to find a family in Israel without at least one member serving. In many cases, you can see a mother, who has a husband in the army, two children, one grandchild, and so forth. So, the war within Israeli society in 1,000 days is a very long time. There are many serving reserve soldiers who served during the 1,000 days, for between 300 and 500 days. Half the time civilians were serving in the army, not mentioning the regular army, which is almost all the days in a war whether it is in Gaza or in Lebanon, or in the West Bank. And the Air Force is going from all these fronts into Yemen, which is 2,000 kilometers away, and Tehran, which is 1,500 kilometers away. So, the Israeli society is in a war, in spite of the fact that if you look at the numbers of the economy, and so and so forth, the economy is in relatively good shape. The Israeli share market is very high, but within the society we feel it in every corner, because every family has at least one member who is serving somewhere in one of the fronts that I mentioned. So, it’s been a long time, within the society, many people feel it, but there are two significant numbers that should be mentioned. One is what’s happening with the new generation. In 1,000 days, many more graduates of the high school served in the army as new soldiers thanks to the compulsory service. Another thing to mention is the number of young people who are volunteering to serve in the fighting units. The numbers are very, very high, more than before the war. So, during the war, maybe because of the war, the readiness of the young generation to volunteer in fighting units is higher than before. And the second poll is even more interesting. It’s about the number or the percentage of the soldiers who are coming to service when they are called as part of reserve units. At the beginning of the war 120 percent of the old veterans of the units came back and said you are not going to fight without us. Now it is not reaching 100 percent but after three years it is around 75 to 80 percent which do not exist in other countries, and gives you kind of feeling about the resilience of the society, about the reserve forces, which are our more mature people, some of them are 35 or 40 and the poll within the young generation, which is even brighter than that. It is about the number of people who are ready to volunteer to the fighting units. It’s over 100 percent for every slot, which you have to fulfill in the Paratrooper Brigade, in Golani Brigade, and in the Engineering Corps, in the Armor Forces, you have more than what is needed, and I can tell you that we are going now to build two new battalions, one in the Nahal Brigade, one in the Golani Brigade, and this is thanks to the number of volunteers for the fighting units within the young generation, we are building more engineering battalions, which we learned are very needed in the battlefield, both in Gaza and in Lebanon, and the ability to do it is, as I said, is because the new generation is ready to volunteer. So, to your question, yes, it is part of the life, everyday life of Israeli society. It’s been a long, very long time, but up till now, thanks to the clear understanding of the Israelis that there is no real alternative, people are ready to continue to fight because they understand that that is the only way to prevent another seventh of October.

Blaise Misztal:

So General Ayish, General Amidror just said that Israel and Israelis are still ready to fight, but how would you characterize the current situation that Israel finds itself in? 1,000 days after October 7, is Israel still at war? Has the war ended for now? Is it paused? How would you describe where Israel finds itself right now?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Thank you for having me, Blaise. I’d like to try and address it from a bit of a different angle. The war started with the October 7 attack, total intelligence, strategic, operational failure, and immediately after October 7, Hezbollah expanded the war to the Northern front. Just a few months ago, with the strikes on Iran, we killed Khamenei, and if you are looking at this war and asking yourself, what is going on here, I think we should address it from the strategic level as the Israeli strategy was defined. Deterrence was one of the pillars, the second one was an early warning. Both of them collapsed on October 7. The defense posture, that was the third pillar which collapsed as well, and the last element that the Israeli strategy was based on, was a decisive win that had to be achieved by the IDF, should the other pillars collapse. And we are still fighting. We are still fighting on one hand, the system around us that was built by Iran almost totally collapsed. The ring of fire that was built around us in the last 20 years almost shattered. It’s not that we are not facing here and there certain threats, but basically, in military terms, Hamas is shattered, it is no longer a military threat, and I would dare to say that even Hezbollah, with the small capabilities, the 10 percent capabilities that were left over there, still I think was broken and shattered in terms of leadership, military capabilities, infrastructure, and the rest can be achieved should the government instruct the IDF. The [negative] of all of that has to be finished with Iran in terms of either a very solid good agreement with one pillar on the nuclear program, the other one on the ballistic missiles, and the third one on the proxies that Iran is orchestrating or trying to orchestrate again around us. Should those be achieved or finished, I think we will be satisfied that we succeeded to achieve the goals that were defined by the Israeli government. Right now we are not yet there. I’m not sure that the major means should be military means. It seems to me like moral political means that have to be implemented either during the new arrangements in Gaza or in Lebanon with the Lebanese government or with Iran via the U.S., and if not, I’m afraid we will have to be back, and we’ll have to address those threats again, because the major lessons, vis-a-vis strategy, is that we cannot live with imminent threats on our borders, we are not going to allow them to rebuild themselves, and we can see in the last almost three years that the Israeli government has been exercising, together with the IDF, a new strategy, which is a very decisive one, a preemptive strategy, and this is the major takeaway that I’m taking nowadays from what we have seen in the last 1,000 days.

Blaise Misztal:

General Amidror, I would be curious of your assessment of the current situation. Do you agree, as General Ayish just laid out, that sort of the major threats have been degraded through military operations, and now the challenges that remain for Israel are more political and diplomatic?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

First of all, I agree with General Ayish that when it comes to one of the pillars of the Iranian strategy, we need the huge project to destroy the proxies as a ring of fire around Israel. What the King Abdullah of Jordan called the Shiite Crescent does not exist anymore. Yes, we are still fighting in Lebanon. Yes, we still have forces in Gaza, but Hamas is not relevant as a threat. It is relevant to the Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip. It is relevant to anyone who will try to rebuild Gaza. You will have to deal with Hamas one way or another, and in Lebanon you can see the visibility of the organization to defend itself in every square kilometer in Lebanon that we decided that we want to control, we are now controlling with very few casualties. We are destroying infrastructure which was built in the last, I don’t know, 20 to 30 years, and Iran, unlike what was the plan to use the proxies to crumble Israel, and when Iran’s immunity will be kept, because they are 1,500 kilometers away, now Iran has to defend the proxies, kind of the other side of the pendant on which the Iranians have in mind that they will use the proxies now, the proxies in Iran to save them, because they will be distracted either by diplomatic means or by the IDF. Something about the connection between military and diplomacy. I was blamed in one of the newspapers in Israel that I preached to understand that in the modern situation now the international community, Israel and so and so forth, in these circumstances the old notion that at the end of the war what diplomatic means will be the tool to achieve the goal are not relevant anymore, and the success will be determined by the success or the failure of the military forces, whenever they succeed, the line that they will achieve, that will bring the results of this war and not negotiations. Of course, there are areas in which it might go in a different way. If, for example, the Lebanese army will do what is needed, because the Lebanese government will be determined, because they will be convinced by the Americans and understand that this is the only way to save Lebanon. Here the diplomatic tool will be kind of the extension of the military one, and they will achieve the goal. What are the chances that that will happen, probably very, very low, and if I have to put my money there to bet, I think that at the end of the day it will be done more by the Israeli forces than by the government of Lebanon and diplomatic means. So, I think that Ayish is right about the fact that we might find some areas in which the diplomatic tools will do the job. I think that we have to be very connected to the reality in the Middle East, in which I don’t see who will convince Hamas to disarm itself or the Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah. The IDF will have to push in both places, and at the end, the military achievement will be what will be achieved. I always have to remember the decision of the United Nations 1701 after the Second Lebanese War. No one remembers what was in it, and what was not there. The United Nations forces came like no kind of savior, they didn’t do any good, not to the Lebanese, and not for us, maybe for Hezbollah. So, I’m very pessimistic about the ability of diplomatic means to achieve something, but at the same time we have to give the Americans the chance. They say that they will bring the Lebanese army to disarm Hezbollah, we should help them as much as we can, including an agreement in which we will have to move our forces to retreat from some areas. We should give the Americans all the chances in Iran, in Gaza, and in Lebanon. Even if at the end of the day, it will be clear that nothing was achieved, Israel will be in a better position to use its force, and the United Nations will be more ready to support Israel, because they will see that no alternative is a real alternative to fix the problems here. So I think that if you ask me to assess the achievements, it probably will be done by the military forces. What should we do? It’s to give the Americans all the chances to make it by diplomacy.

Blaise Misztal:

So, General Amidror, just staying with you for a second, reading between the lines of what you said, do I understand correctly that Israel has been at war for a long time already, 1,000 days, but you don’t foresee it withdrawing from all the yellow lines that it has established in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, where its troops are forward deployed? You don’t see it pulling back from those yellow lines anytime soon, even if there’s not going to be fighting, that military presence is going to remain?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

It’s a part of the diplomatic tools. If you want to achieve something diplomatically, you need these forces to remain where they are, because this is the only way to put pressure on the Lebanese government and Hezbollah. If you don’t do it, you lose the leverage that you have, and without the leverage, just to think that you can convince these extreme guys to be more flexible, I think it’s a naivety that should not be part of our dialogue, we should understand that naivety is not a good beginning in the Middle East. The question is, what is the difference between a pessimist and optimist in the Middle East, and the answer is that the pessimist is an optimist with a lot of experience.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I’d like to add on about the yellow lines. I think there is another element that I’d like to add to what General Amidror just said, the presence along the yellow lines in Lebanon, in Gaza, and to some extent also in Syria, the buffer zones that were created should be kept until the threat will be removed, either by an agreement or by other means. It means that it’s not only a matter of leverage, it’s a matter of allowing the residents of the North, the South, and the Golan Heights to go back to their houses and be with their families, and I’d like to say another point. General Amidror had rightly mentioned the resilience of the military and the Israeli public. As someone who volunteered for more than six months in the Reconstruction Administration at the South to build the villages and the city of Sderot, the situation right now along those villages, kibbutzim and the city Sderot, is that the population is growing rapidly, and it’s about to double itself in a matter of a decade. Right now, in most kibbutzim and villages and the city of Sderot, the number is higher than it was on October 6. So, in terms of resilience, I think it’s very, very deep in Israeli society, and I think what the government is doing rightly in the South is a very good example. I’m not sure I can quote and say the same about the North, but when you have the right tools, you can see that although we are in a war, a very long war, 1,000 days, the resilience of the public is impressive, and to some extent I think it’s unbelievable.

Blaise Misztal:

Sticking with that theme of resilience, General Ayish, I wonder if you could look not at Israeli society but at the military. What is the ability of the military to sustain this forward posture that it has the much greater tempo of call up of reservists? On the one hand, General Amidror said that this has been a long time to be fighting for the IDF, but on the other hand, Israeli society seems to continue to be ready to serve, but is this sustainable for the idea for the long term?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Well, you know, it’s not a secret that I was the Head of the Operation Director, and in such a job you are really responsible on the force design, and more than that, how this force is activated end to end within the IDF, and I must admit that what we have planned back in the past was not for such a long war. Having said that, when I’m speaking about the ability to adapt, to learn, to implement, to transform, I think what the IDF did is pretty remarkable. Admiral Fox and myself wrote about it, a paper at the Sapir magazine, which I invite everyone to read, how this transformation helped us during the war, not to wait until the end of the war, and then to study the lessons, and then to have a plan to implement them, but doing it during wartime. And to your question, I think this is exactly what the IDF is doing. It’s really a challenge. It’s not only the regular standing military forces, it’s the reserves that are playing here a significant role with a severe impact on the Israeli economy and that’s why you can see that there is an internal serious debate on what extent the service has to be prolonged and the ultra-orthodox Israelis Jews have to join and do their part in terms of either national service or military service or some other solutions. But to your question, there is no question, there is no alternative, and that’s why we will do whatever is needed, it’s everyone, doesn’t matter what age, and General Amidror mentioned when platoons and companies and battalions were called, the old generation that was released came too, no one called them, but they were there, to help, to assist, to bring their shoulder under the stretcher, and this is the resilience that we are talking about. It’s a matter of national need and necessity that is embedded very deep in Israeli society.

Blaise Misztal:

And General Ayish, you just talked about at the beginning of your response there about how the IDF has had to transform itself while in contact with the enemy. Can you talk about some of those transformations and how the IDF has tried to restructure and apply the lessons from October 7?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I want to invite everyone to read Eli David’s paper that is about to be published by JINSA very soon about subterranean warfare. I think the strongest example is that we plan to fight subterranean warfare with mainly technological capabilities, robots, etc. and not go into those tunnels, and ended clearing up above ground and under the ground. And I’ll remind our listeners and participants how many times we spoke about clearing up above ground and under the ground, and that’s exactly what we did. We developed the tactics, we developed technology, we developed the doctrine, we trained the units on it, and we implemented, and are still implementing it, as we did. By the way, last week when we traveled together under the ground into one of these tunnels with our Admirals and Generals inside Gaza, right on the yellow line. So this is one example. You can see some other examples as we did with the way we were fighting in build up areas when you are doing a comparison between where we implemented in Russia or in Khan Yunis, it’s different tactics, different doctrine, that’s what we did and are still doing in terms of drones, and I have many more examples, and you have to nowadays transform very, very fast. Otherwise, take a look at what is going on in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and you will see the results, without adaptations, it won’t work.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you, General Ayish. Let me ask the audience that we do want to make sure that we get to your questions, so if you have anything that you’d like to ask Generals Ayish or Amidror, please feel free to submit those questions using the Q&A function in Zoom, and I’ll be happy to read them out. But first, General Amidror, let me ask you maybe what surprised you the most in the course of the last 1,000 days, since October 7?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

I think that the level of readiness of the ring of fire was the most surprising fact from my point of view, but remember, from when the war was beginning, I was a few years out of the system, so I don’t know what surprised the people inside the system. I was surprised by the level of readiness, which was a very high readiness of both Hamas and Hezbollah relating to the subterranean capabilities and the facilities they prepared because they wanted to launch the attack from within those facilities, mainly in Lebanon. That was the main surprise for me. I was not surprised by the Iranians’ capabilities, not by the ability of Israel to reach the targets in Iran, not even by the very accurate intelligence that we had in both Iran and Lebanon. I know that this is somewhere around where it was. I was not surprised by that, the level of readiness of those two elements of the ring of fire was a surprise for me.

Blaise Misztal:

Given that, were you also surprised that Hezbollah did not join in on October 7, or [that] there wasn’t greater activity from the West Bank?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

No, I think that was the biggest surprise of Sinwar. I thought that the Arab-Israelis and the Palestinians would be very, very careful, because in the time of the war they understood that many constraints that we took upon ourselves were not relevant, and this is why they understood that they should not join. I think Hezbollah not joining after October 7, that was probably the biggest mistake of Nasrallah. The Iranians didn’t push Hezbollah into the war, on the contrary. If you understand that they wanted Hezbollah to be ready to help act later, on behalf of Iran, you can understand why the Iranians were very cautious.

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, how about you?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Well, I have a lot of surprises in this world, but I’d like to point out three elements. The first one is, we had, and I think to some extent we still have a very exquisite and very good intelligence. What I have learned, and I think the whole system has learned, is that it’s not enough to have that. It doesn’t mean that even if you have a very good intimate intelligence that you are doing the right assessment. This is one major flag that I’d like to raise. The second one, I think, to some extent, Iran took the role of Hezbollah, and then Hezbollah was playing the role of Iran instead of Iran activating Hezbollah as they planned, built, paid, trained for 20 years. What they did was a colossal mistake. They started a direct war with Israel. Now there are many explanations for why, and I think they lost a very important train, which was the second train that Nasrallah had missed in this war, and I think the credit has to be given to the leaders in the IDF and at the political level that exploited them, and that opportunity to create the corridor that led later on to Iran from Lebanon, Syria, and so on. To some extent, for so many years, they built that ring of fire to avoid fighting with us directly, they were doing it via proxies, and in one moment they decided to break this principle, and to try to attack us. And I think it led to what we have seen in the last year, specifically, which led to the degradation of their capabilities, on one hand, and to almost the end of Hezbollah, almost, we have to be very humble here. There is still 10 percent that has to be dealt with, but this is the second element. And the last point is a global point. I think the fact that at the beginning Bab el- Mandeb became a very significant element by the Houthis, and then Hormuz Straits by the Iranians, and the war became global, and the economic impact on 20 percent of the global flow, just because of the war that started on October 7, became such an element with so many implications, was also a surprise to me. I thought it would be contained, I thought it would be avoided, and should it be erupted, I expected it to be distinguished very fast, and it wasn’t.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you. Let me turn to some of the questions we got. One from [Questioner] is for you, General Amidror, and asks whether you consider the reports credible that Israel and the United States were planning to support Iranian Kurdish groups, but that the plan was canceled by President Trump following a phone call with Turkish President Erdogan.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

I don’t know how far the Americans and Israel went with the Kurds towards having them be the element which will ignite Iran. I was very pessimistic about the ability of the Kurds to do it, and I think that the fact that the Americans are giving Turkey such an important position is a huge mistake. The Middle East will suffer from it in the future because the Turks dream about renewing the Ottoman Empire and they are. And their attitude towards Greece and Cyprus are promising to broaden the conflict in the Middle East to another area. I think that this is a big problem from the Israeli point of view, and from many leaders in the Middle East point of view, but I don’t know how strong the commitment of the Kurds was, and what their capabilities were to do what the media expected from them.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you, General Ayish, a question for you from [Questioner]. You mentioned the need for the ultra-orthodox to join the military or perform alternative national service. What forms of their national service would actually reduce the burdens on the IDF if they help in hospitals, for example, that doesn’t reduce the burden on IDF combat soldiers?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

Well, there are many options that can relieve the burden, and there are many organizations that can be created, with the right conditions that will be provided for them. When I think about the logistics, the intelligence, the maintenance, and so many other areas that they can cover, obviously they can release the burden. When I think about fire brigade, when I think about medical support, when I think about hospitals, instead of having soldiers over there in wartime or the homefront command, obviously they can do it, but the solution is less complicated than people tend to think. I think we should agree on the principle, and the rest can be tailored, and I’m saying it as someone who was the Chief of Staff of the Ground Forces for three years, and force buildup was my business. It is something doable. We should decide on doing it. Take, as an example, the Hasmonean Brigade that was built lately. It’s a great success. It started with one battalion, and today we already have a brigade. Take a look at the implementation in the Israeli Air Force in terms of intelligence. Take a look at what they did with the ultra-orthodox in terms of maintenance, teaching them a profession, providing them with a respectful environment and income and jobs where they can do the work on one hand and they can study on the other hand. This is something that I’m saying as a Yeshiva student until the age of 14, it’s doable, it’s only a matter of decision, and it seems to me like within the IDF, the climate and the will is there and it’s only about an internal society decision that has to be taken by the different sides. And I’m not talking about the extremists, there’s always a challenge there, but for the majority it’s doable.

Blaise Misztal:

Thank you. Maybe we can finish on an easy question from John Hannah. At a strategic level, the war’s impact on the US-Israel relationship and Israel’s standing in America has been huge, and for the most part not in a good way. People are still trying to understand the long-term implications, but can you discuss how this trend is becoming incorporated, if at all, in Israeli decision making about its war strategy going forward? General Amidror, maybe we can start with you.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

I think that the question should be asked by Americans to Americans, because it is something that is happening in America, and should be dealt most of it in America, but I think in Israel more people understand that we will have to deal with a different America in the future, and this is why we are giving up the idea, which was with us for so many years, that we are getting from Americans every year $4 billion. It is probably the end of this project. The second one is the dependency of Israel on America relating to spare parts, munition, and so on and so forth. Israel will be more independent, but I don’t see any substitute to the F-35, F-15, F-16, Apache, and so on, so forth, that there is a very high probability will continue to be manufactured by the Americans and bought by the Israelis. So, the whole issue of independence should be defined, what kind of independence, in which areas, and everyone in Israel knows that if America declared war on Israel, Israel probably would lose. So, the question is, how far will the Americans change their attitude towards Israel. As an old guy, I still remember that I fought in the Six-Day War without having even one American weapon system from my FN in my hands to the airplanes above in the air, the mirage. So, it very much depends on what will happen in America. It depends less on what will happen in Israel. We understand that we will have to adopt and to mitigate those changes in America, some of them can be done, some of these mitigations I think are a dream, for example, Israel will never be totally independent, it’s impossible, but we can be in some areas less dependent and other issues we have to change. We have to remember all the time to be very humble. There is no substitute to the special relations between Israel and the United States of America from the Israeli point of view.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I’d like to add on that, with your permission.

Blaise Misztal:

Please, General Ayish.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

I think the relations will have to transform, and I’m saying it when I’m looking at the region I see opportunities here. I think when I’m listening to the President saying Israel is a model ally, it means that this model can be expanded, and I think building here in the region the right architecture with the right partners added by the U.S. via the tool of CENTCOM, CENTCOM, the same idea that JINSA came with in 2018 that was implemented since 2021 and proven itself time and time again in the last three years, can help us all to build regional architecture that, in terms of intelligence, space, technology, and the will to defend ourselves by ourselves, will be a key role, and I think at the end by going to that direction, leading to that transformation, it won’t be only moving from an MoU to a partnership, it will be an implementation, the philosophy behind it, and I think it’s doable.

Blaise Misztal

Great. Well, thank you both, General Amidror, General Ayish. Thank you for your time this evening. Thank you to everyone in the audience for tuning in. Please be sure to check out JINSA.org for all of our latest analysis and look forward to seeing you on the next webinar. Have a good day, everyone.

The post Transcript: Webinar – 1,000 Days of War appeared first on JINSA.

The post Ahmed Al-Sharaa Needs a Course Correction appeared first on JINSA.

The post America Has Upended Its Own Order in the Persian Gulf appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

Gen Frank McKenzie, USMC (ret.)

Hertog Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former 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 webinar on U.S.-facing posture in the Middle East in the wake of Operation Epic Fury. I’m Jonathan Ruhe JINSA’s Fellow for American Strategy, and I’m honored and pleased to be joined today by General Frank McKenzie, who is the Hertog Distinguished Fellow here at JINSA. He is also the former commander of U.S. Central Command and currently the president of the Citadel, which is also his alma mater.

In September 2024, General McKenzie authored a JINSA report entitled “U.S. Bases in the Middle East: Overcoming the Tyranny of Geography.” This report has proved to be very forward-looking in that it raised red flags about the inherent risks in America’s basing structure in the Middle East, and it laid out a detailed plan to re-examine and relocate U.S. military assets in order to reduce these risks, from Iran, its proxies, and other threats.

Among its recommendations, the report highlighted Israel’s potential role in this new regional basing structure to build on and expand on Israel’s reassignment to the AOR [Area of Responsibility] for U.S. Central Command in 2021. This occurred when General McKenzie was sent on commander and came after JINSA led the charge to make the case for this shift to CENTCOM.

Then, building on General McKenzie’s paper, in September 2025 a new JINSA task force issued a report called Base for Success that laid out and expanded on U.S. basing options at Israel’s Ovda Air Force Base. This recommendation came to fruition, starting shortly before Operation Epic Fury, when U.S. forces, including what would ultimately become 1000s of personnel and more than 200 aircraft, deployed to Ovda. Recent reports now suggest the U.S. military is looking at Israel and other locations farther west, away from the Gulf and Iran, for repositioning certain regional assets based on lessons from the recent conflict with Iran.

For our audience, welcome you to pose questions in today’s discussion. Please type them into the Q&A box in the bottom of your screen, and we’ll get to them at the time we have.

So, General McKenzie, to start, I just want to start with sort of a table, table setting question before we drill down into the recent war and its implications. I want to go back to your September 2024 report, which we just covered, which I think was very prescient, because you warned that quote the United States will not be able to maintain its bases around the Gulf in a full-throated conflict because they will be rendered unusable by sustained Iranian attack. So, just to start off, so we don’t, we don’t miss the forest for the trees. What is, or was it specifically about America’s basing posture in the Middle East and Iran’s attack capabilities that shaped your analysis here?

General Frank McKenzie:

First, thanks. Always enjoy being with JINSA. It’s always a remarkably well-informed audience with great questions, and as usual, I look forward to the questions. I find that the best part of these sessions, but let me begin by saying, U.S. basing in the Middle East, of course, is a product of many years of development and different priorities when those bases went in.

Let’s remember when CENTCOM first stood up, when Iran turned over and the Shah left, we were faced with a different problem in the region. We were really looking at ways to prevent the Russians from coming South into the oil fields, and so our strategic thinking over that period sort of reflected that an original basing structure was sort of designed to counter that. We fought a major counterinsurgency campaign, military campaign, and then a counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and the bases that we laid out along the Southern edge of the Arabian Gulf, beginning with Ayodhya, which is the CENTCOM forward headquarters, Al Dhafra in the UAE, Manama in Bahrain, which is the Fifth Fleet headquarters, bases in Kuwait, were all sort of built to support those small, not small scale, but relatively low intensity counterinsurgency operations, and what developed over time, of course, is Iran increasingly rose as a regional threat. They began to perfect their abilities, well not perfect, but improved their abilities with missiles, with drones, with other systems that threatened both us and, more significantly, our neighbors in the region.

What you’ve got really is an artifact of earlier posture decisions. No one in their right mind would ever put the CENTCOM forward headquarters, 100 miles away from Iran, yet that’s where it is, because when we put in place many years ago, we were thinking Iraq, we were thinking Afghanistan, we were thinking other things, and not the growing threat from Iran. Anticipation is the heart of wisdom, not a lot of wisdom there. When we chose the location of the CENTCOM Forward headquarters, what we’ve got is a situation where it’s good to be close to your potential enemy, because it’s a short commute to the fight. It’s bad to be close to your potential enemy, because he has the ability to strike you very quickly, a matter of just a couple of minutes is all the warning time you’re going to get for some of these bases, and we’ve seen that borne out here over the previous few months.

So, what happened in 2020 and what really happened in 2020, 2021, and 2022 was that we undertook some studies at U.S. Central Command. We recognized this problem, and we proposed to the Biden administration, Pentagon’s policy shop, that we consider moving bases to the West to include Israel, to include Egypt, as places where we might, we might flush to the West if we get into a fight with Iran. The model is pretty clear, we’re going to have trouble maintaining this forward basis, so we looked at potential bases at Jeddah and along the Western Coast of Saudi Arabia and Red Sea, we looked at potential locations in Eastern Egypt, we looked at locations in Israel, we looked at locations in Oman, of course, we looked at locations in Jordan, all designed to extend the Iranian range to get to us.

Now, unfortunately, and we call this the western basing network, this was allergic to policy in the Pentagon at that period, and they aggressively shut us down as we tried to do this work. Our theory was particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia, would ask the Saudis to pay for these bases, because ultimately we’re talking about defending Saudi Arabia, there would have been very little monetary burden to the United States for these bases, but from a policy point of view, we were never, never able to gain traction within the department to move to the West, and unfortunately that lack of foresight by that administration at that time has hamstrung this administration’s ability to pursue, to put us at risk as we have had to fight Iran here over the last few months.

I don’t blame the Trump administration for this. I think the blame for the current situation falls squarely in a lack of vision in the Biden administration and their inability to see the nature of the threat from Iran, and not only to negate it, but really to, I would say, to have an unhealthy degree of focus on the Pacific and lack of desire to support what goes on in the Middle East during times of stress.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So I want to, in the second follow up on that Iranian threat that you were starting to describe, but if we could, I’d like to explore a little bit more about why, the resistance to pushing basing farther away from the Gulf, this Western basing network, as you discussed, is you said it was a lack of vision or imagination, is part of that the threat was generally abstract in a lot of ways until we saw Iran’s retaliation in Epic Fury, or also I imagine having basing in some of these countries creates an interest in our host nation partners that we not depart those?

General Frank McKenzie:

So, the threat was not abstract to us. The threat was not abstract at the level of military advice. The threat is certainly not abstract to the nations in the region. I think what you had was a situation where, at the policy level, we simply didn’t want to deal with those facts. We preferred to shift forces elsewhere. There’s a great move to minimize our presence in the Middle East. I think it just really was a refusal to examine the reality of the situation on the ground, and the growing trend of Iranianization, which blessed these bases at very close range to Iran under increasing degrees of risk. It’s what’s going to happen when your strategy doesn’t match the reality on the ground, and the strategic approach that they chose was not reflective of the situation in the world as it existed.

Jonathan Ruhe:

The Iranian threat, specifically in terms of how it’s played out in Epic Fury earlier this year. So, I recommend to our audience, go back and read General McKenzie’s report, because it gives use the word prescient, it’s a pretty good insight into how this, how this conflict played out, at least in terms of what Iran did, but, General, let me just ask you, is there anything about the way Iran fought this war, this fires war, that surprised you, or anything good in a positive or negative way? I’ll just keep it broad.

General Frank McKenzie:

No, I think an important thing to understand is bases can be hit and still function. Blown up buildings, while ugly to look at, don’t necessarily mean that a base is not operational, because what makes a base a fighter base operational is runway, is taxiway, it’s the fuel hydrant system, the system that typically runs underground, that allows you to do mass refueling operations of the number of aircraft, or your weapons bunkerage areas safe.

It’s unfortunate if dormitories are hit, you prefer that hangars not be hit, because that affects your ability to work on airplanes in the heat of the region. But let’s just recall that bases can be hit and take what appears to be significant damage, and yet remain operational, to a non-professional view of a base with buildings blown up. Wow, it’s been hit hard, and it’s been hit, but is it still operational? And that’s a very different thing that we look at. However, to go back to your story, your very good question, I think what has surprised me a little bit, and it’s not so much a surprise as a growth, as just the natural evolution of warfare. Iranian drones, I think they’ve been very effective. We knew they were coming when I left active duty, and in ‘22 we certainly saw the threat of drones in the region. I said in testimony before I retired, that I felt we had lost effective air supremacy and even air superiority to some degree in Central Command, because of the ubiquity of drones. So, I think that’s been a factor that has certainly played to an Iranian strength. I think we’ve done some things to compensate for that, but their ability to generate mass drones and employ them. I don’t think it’s a surprise, but I think their missiles have not been as effective as their drones. Let me put it to you like that.

Jonathan Ruhe:

And I guess in terms of what, how Iran, you mentioned your bases can be hit and keep functioning. There was also probably a related problem, and one that your 2024 report sort of picked up on Iran’s interest in targeting radars, satellite communications terminals, things like that. Even if the bases could have still functioned, you mentioned runways and taxiways. Do you see this, Iran’s ability to target those other capabilities as problematic or a key lesson to digest going forward?

General Frank McKenzie:

Absolutely, what we were able to do to a very limited degree under the previous administration, and what this administration has continued, I think, very aggressively, is we’ve moved some of our critical command and control capabilities out of the region, because we have the capability to exercise air command and control, in particular global, we can do it from a global sense, so we can be far away from the region, still maintain a chaotic at Al Udeid where we can do outreach and give confidence to our friends in the region that we’re going to be there with them. But you can carry out those critical command and control functions on the other side of the world, and in fact we do so, and I congratulate the current team for doing that. I think that’s been able to preserve our critical command and control activities while this is going on.

You’re right, we all thought all along what they would try to do is hit our, particularly our ballistic missile defense radars with drones. They’ve had limited success doing that. I’ll be honest with you, though. I’m not read into the BDA [Battle Damage Assessment], so I don’t know how overall successful they’ve been, but I think their inability to launch mass attacks has been significant, a significant achievement that we have made. But remember, that’s a combination not only of defense, which is most inefficient way to stop these systems from attacking, but also our own offensive capabilities, striking into Iran, going after the launch flights, the factories, the production facilities, the transportation network, all of those things are part of the delivery system for both drones and ballistic missiles, and in order to protect in the terminal area where they’re targeted, you need to reach out all the way down that chain to get a very beginning. I think we have some success going ahead,

Jonathan Ruhe:

I’m glad you raised that. I want to jump to that question before we really dive into sort of the implications, take aways where we go from here. So, in your 2024 report, I’ll just quote it. You said, quote, “the central calculus by the war with Iran will be the measurement of how long the Iranians could sustain a drone and missile bombardment in the face of U.S. efforts to strike their launching systems and command and control facilities.”

Assuming that framework still holds, how would you assess this sort of race for it to strike first, to get in, to take out their capabilities before they took out ours. How would you assess that based on the war?

General Frank McKenzie:

We’re executing a long-haul war plan. We’re having good effect now; we’re in a pause while we seek a political solution. I think we would be prepared to pick this back up and go after them very hard if the president chose to do so, and I believe it is still very much within our capability to get on the positive side of this equation, and to go after Iran, and I think we were on the positive side when we halted to try to find a political end to this conflict, and that’s a political decision, not a military decision, but I was not unhappy as an outside observer with where we were in that calculus, and I think if we picked it up this afternoon we would be in a very good place to go forward.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So, speaking of going forward, I want to dive into where we go from here, because I think that’s a key area of interest for our audience. So, I’ll start with based on what you’ve seen from the war. What we’ve discussed so far, are there any ways you would update or even foot stomp and reinforce your recommendations from the report? Are there in ways the war shook out that you would highlight in terms of recommendations for the U.S. to really drill down on in terms of places to shift our forces?

General Frank McKenzie:

Sure, so I think what it does is it validates the work we did in Central Command in 2021-2022 where we looked at you’ve got to go west, you’ve got to be able to get your aircraft out west, but here’s the thing, as people in UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia will tell you, they can’t move. They get worried when we talk about the United States moving, and what we need, but the point is, so you’ve got to do two things.

First of all, let’s take Al Dhafra as an example, in UAE you may wish to move west out of Al Dafra, but you still need to maintain a presence in Al Dhafra in order to show solidarity with your partners in the region who are unable to redeploy, so maybe you move those jets to the West, maybe far to the West, you tank them, you bring them in, you bounce at Al Dhafra, you go fight, you might come back and rearm it, Al Dhafra, go back into the fight, then bounce West and bed down somewhere far to the West.

Which brings me to a point as a CENTCOM commander, Jonathan, the airplane that I was most concerned about were my tankers, not the jets, not the fighters, I can always get more fighters, tankers are a finite quantity, and actually the tanker, whether it’s the KC-135 or the KC-46 whatever platform that’s actually the visible, tangible manifestation of American strategic air power. It’s not the bomber, it’s not the fighter, it’s not those airplanes. What gives us global reach and operational flexibility in the region is our ability to tank, to move globally, and then to move operationally at great depth. No other nation in the world can do that at the scale that we can do it at. That’s why tankers are so very important as we look at them. But yes, we need, as we look as we draw lessons learned from this, we need to look West. We need to look at basing in Israel. I think it’s a great idea. You need to look at basing west along the Red Sea and Saudi Arabia. You might need to look in Oman. You need to continue to look in Jordan. You might talk to Egypt, but of all the countries, one thing that’s significant is that we all these countries will have access, basing, and overflight issues. They’re going to want to have a say in where those jets go when they take off.

We know this is, as the CENTCOM commander. I spent a lot of time on these negotiations. Obviously, probably Israel is the place where you’re going to have the fewest ABO restrictions, access, basing, and overflight restrictions on your airplanes. That’s why Israel is a particularly attractive location. You don’t want to put all your aircraft there, because you never want to put all your aircraft in one country, or in one base, or in several bases in one country, but instead, what you want to do is you want to spread out that necklace of bases far to the west, where you make it harder for the Iranians to see you, you make it harder for the Iranians to range you, although over time we should recognize Iranian missiles are going to increase in range. I’m solving a problem for today, next year, two or three years from now. We can deal with those problems five years down the road from now. In CENTCOM, everything is a less than optimum solution, because nothing’s ever perfect.

Jonathan Ruhe:

You very neatly teed up several follow-on questions, sort of wonder you mentioned aerial refueling tankers, part of also our global reach and a strategic power, but also some of the benefits offered by basing in Israel. As I mentioned at the outset, your report called for this, JINSA had a report that drilled a little bit more specifically on that issue, and then we saw this start come to fruition before and during operation Epic Fury, both with facing aircraft at Ovda, but also we saw aerial refueling tankers at U.S. aerial refueling tankers at Ben Gurion Airport, and then also sort of since the war the Israeli Air Force has taken delivery, I believe, of its first KC-46 aerial refueling tanker.

That’s all by way of asking, General, if you could, I think, particularly for our audience, sort of expand upon you mentioning the access basing overflight issue, where Israel would probably impose, relatively speaking, the fewest constraints. But could you expand for our audience a little bit more about what about Israeli bases makes them appealing from a U.S. perspective?

General Frank McKenzie:

Sure. Well, one of the things that jumps out when you immediately are Israeli bases are going to be very well defended against ballistic missiles and against drone attack, that’s probably the most significant thing. Additionally, these bases are very well developed. Again, I talk about something that is innocuous as a fuel hydrant system, which is a profoundly unsexy thing, except it is what allows you to operate at scale from a fighter base instead of having to fuel Bowsers from trucks bringing fuel out there. If you have a fuel hydrant system, you can fuel it much more quickly. You can do a lot of things quicker than if you’re at a more expeditionary level. Many of the bases we’re looking at in Western Saudi Arabia would be semi-expeditionary in nature, and what you’d call your sortie generation rate, your ability to land an aircraft service, it bomb it, fuel it, get it back in the air, is going to take longer than if you had a base at Israel.

Look, over time, we would look to our Saudi friends, we would look to our other friends in the region to consider investments in those bases that would bring them to that standard, and we had plans to do this, plans that were not supported by the policy shop in the Pentagon during the Biden administration, but I think now is the time to go back and take a look at it, and I think this follows neatly under some of the concepts of defense that we’re seeing in the region, where we want our allies and partners to pick up a larger share of this. Certainly, they should be asked to pick up the share of building these bases, because these bases are there for their use, as well as our use. There’d be dual use bases, but they would provide an enormous buffer for the next five to seven years against growing Iranian capabilities. And remember, we’re not looking to leave our forward bases necessarily, but rather to be able to flush to the west in times of crisis, or maybe even operate a fraction of these jets at the western bases on a continuing basis, just depending on the geopolitical situation,

Jonathan Ruhe:

You mentioned not viewing the Western bases as an alternative to our forward posture along the Gulf, based on the war. Do you see, and it may differ for our various partners in the Gulf. Is the lesson for them completely restricting U.S. access? If only we’ve been able to operate more shoulder to shoulder with the Americans, we could have helped our Arab Gulf countries climb one way or the other in terms of the relationship with the U.S. and this basing posture.

General Frank McKenzie:

Well, the lesson should be, I would think, for our partners if you still want to remain very close to us in the United States because we’re the source of the technology that will allow you to defend yourself against Iranian actions.

Second, I think if you’re the Gulf partners, you want to look at investing in more ballistic missile and drone defense systems, because here’s the thing: you’re not going to be able to move your bases, you don’t have the luxury of strategic choice like we do to flow to the West, at Al Dhafra and Al Udeid, PCB, Prince Sultan Air Base South of Riyadh–those bases are not movable. You can’t slide them to the West. You have to defend them in place. There are things you can do to harden those bases that we should look at.

One is, as I’ve already noted, more defensive systems. Then you need to look at bunkering better, you need to look at a variety of things you can undertake on the ground to make it harder for the Iranians to get at you. Then I would argue you need a very active and aggressive deception program about where your airplanes are, where your Patriot missiles are, and where your radars are. All these things we looked at, we recommended, I believe the current administration has undertaken many of these initiatives now. It is regrettable that we did not do this before.

Jonathan Ruhe:

As you mentioned that the passive defenses, and I remember you talking about the Iranian attack on air bases in Iraq in 2020 in retaliation for the killing of Qasem Soleimani, and correct me if I’m wrong, you mentioned part of it was the passive defenses, you were able to take advantage of the base, but another part was you had some semblance of early warning that this attack was coming, you were able to take those precautionary measures, is, and you mentioned at the outset there’s a five minute warning if you’re something like that along our Gulf bases.

Is that just a static problem? Are there ways to improve early warning, especially I’ve heard you talk about this in past JINSA webinars with some of Iran’s shorter-range capabilities, it’s more of a bolt from the blue strike rather than some of these attacks they’ve prepared on Israel with medium range capabilities.

General Frank McKenzie:

That’s the problem, the shorter-range missiles, less warning time, and less strategic warning time, too. That’s why close-in bases are uniquely vulnerable. The deeper bases, we’re going to in general get some strategic warning if the Iranians are up to something. It may not be long, but we’ll get some warning against a base like Al-Udeid, which has a very short warning time. Same thing with Bahrain to a lesser degree, with Al Dhafra. You’re going to get very short windows of warning, because their systems have much smaller missiles and they’re going to do less damage, but at the same time, they’re easier for the Iranians to prepare and launch in ways that make it more difficult for us to detect through I and W than an attack that is pending, so look, how do you defend against that? Well, I would argue when you have an opportunity, you hit the Iranians very hard, so they know that if you do this, we’re going to hit you far harder in response than any potential damage you can do to us, and that means that you need to be able to protect your bases against these attacks.

That requires again investment in ballistic missile defense capabilities. It also means investment in a ballistic missile defense architecture of warning and tipping across the region that involves all the Gulf partners, the United States, and the State of Israel. Everyone has a role to play here, and by doing that, you can qualitatively improve your ability to defend against these forms of attack, and we’ve made some pretty good progress down that road, and I know that’s only increased in the last few months.

Jonathan Ruhe

So, I’m glad you raised the integrated air defense architecture. I want to come to that a little bit. A new U.S.-based sponsor helped satisfy the US-Iran MOU, stating that the U.S. would be willing to remove its forces from the proximity of Iran within 30 days of a final deal. And do you think lessons from this conflict could apply to U.S. bases and other theaters, such as INDOPACOM?

General Frank McKenzie:

I think we still need to further negotiate what removal from immediate proximity to Iran means. I don’t know what that means. I’m negotiating with that right now. Clearly, it would be easy to say, well, yeah, moving to the West would grant you that visibility. I’m just not sure I’d recommend that, and I’m not sure this administration is going to want to do that.

So, I think that is something that we would still look to negotiate with Iran as to what it means to be proximate to Iran. I don’t know the answer to that. That’s ultimately going to be a policy question, not a military question. But I would not immediately assume that means leaving Al Udeid to satisfy that requirement or leaving Al Dhafra to satisfy that requirement. What it means, I don’t know.

Now, the second part of the question was a very insightful question. I think this has profound relevance for INDOPACOM, and in fact for Europe, because what we see is the rise of hybrid warfare, and I mean it may be in a slightly different context than it has been used. I think what you’re seeing, of course, drones are becoming increasingly important in the airspace: drones for surveillance, drones for strike, even anti-drone drones. I think we’re going to increasingly see, and I think that’s one of the big takeaways from this war. The other thing is, if you can see it, you can strike it. So, things like that beautiful CENTCOM command post at Al Udeid had the same relevance to warfare today that the Maginot Line did to the Second World War. It was a monument to old think you, we need to be able to move, we need to be able to deceive about where our locations are, and that’s going to require not only significant electromagnetic emanation management, it’s going to require an understanding of what’s in what’s in space, looking at us, and how do we deal with that, and that will require a very sophisticated understanding of not only military overhead non-air breathing systems, but also the plethora of commercial overhead imagery systems that are out there. We need to know and understand and master how we use that ability, that capability to help us and to hurt potential foes, and look, those lessons apply everywhere in any conflict, anywhere. So those are things that I would take away from here right now that I think have applicability, certainly in Eastern Europe right now, but also potentially in the Western Pacific.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So I’m at the risk of jumping around a little bit, there’s just so much we would like to get to, but I want to, I want to stay on this issue of integrated air and missile defenses for the, for the region, we’ve heard in past JINSA webinars, partly it’s a problem of collective action, we also saw you mentioned the drone threat in this war some of our Gulf partners have very exquisite and capable U.S. air defenses: Thad and Patriot. As you mentioned, the drone threat is a different sort of issue. Do you see the future of integrated air and missile defense changing to having to address these drone threats in a way that wasn’t there if we were talking, say, in January of this year?

General Frank McKenzie:

Well, I think we’ve always recognized the threat to the sensors associated with you, with your heavier, heavy ballistic missile defense system as being very real. The technology of defense has just been slower to catch up, I think, than the technology of offense, but I believe the technology of defense is improving. We will catch up; it’s not new. We didn’t suddenly discover it when this war kicked off that your radars are where they’re going to go when they’re your most vulnerable part, because a ballistic missile defense system without a radar, nothing but a very expensive piece of iron sitting on the ground.

So, we have always known that, but the technology proved effective and now you’re talking terminal defense close to the sensor. We’ve been working to create systems that can do that. We’ve been slower than offense, I think, not just us, but around the world, everywhere. It’s the natural back and forth of offense and defense, and warfare. I believe a lot of things out there now are actually changing that balance a little bit, everything from kinetic to non-kinetic systems to, as already mentioned, drones that hit drones, and then you also have got to go all the way back in the chain to the drone launching site, you want to make it hard for the drone to launch, you want to make it hard for them to build the drone, transport the drone, get it ready to fly. So, you’ve got to have a comprehensive, holistic view of the threat to be more effective in defending against it.

Jonathan Ruhe:

I want to answer another question from our audience. [Questioner] asked, ‘General, is there any concern that the U.S. basing in Israel could subject Jerusalem to an increased level of Iranian attacks or aggression from Tehran and/or its proxies?

General Frank McKenzie:

Well, I’m not sure how we can get to a higher level, frankly. I mean, so yes, possibly, but on the other hand, what you gain by U.S. basing there is you gain the use of those aircraft against the system that I just described to reduce the frequency, duration, and intensity of those attacks. So, reasonable question, I’d rather have U.S. forces there than not, not only in Israel, but anywhere else. But I’m the former Central Command commander, telling you that.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So, but in your central CENTCOM commander, when Israel was, was reassigned and moved into the AOR of Central Command in 2021 So, looking at, let’s say, the U.S.-Israel operational cooperation in Epic Fury/Rising Lion, what is your assessment?

You mentioned in your report that in 2024 the United States is sort of without peer in terms of its ability to sustain a major campaign going after Iranian capabilities like you’ve discussed. I think we saw an impressive level of operational coordination planning before the operation with the Israelis. What are your takeaways or sort of perspectives on what you saw in terms of that bilateral partnership during the war itself, at least on an offensive level?

General Frank McKenzie:

Let’s remember how it all started. It all started when we moved Israel into CENTCOM back in early 2021 and that’s a President Trump decision. He’s a guy that made that choice. I wrote about it in my book. We had argued for it for a long time. He made the decision about 10 days before he left office in January of 2021. I think it’s one of the most consequential decisions that he’s made regarding the Middle East, because what it has allowed Central Command to do is more directly coordinate with the State of Israel.

Number one, it’s allowed CENTCOM to act as a convening authority to bring other Chiefs of Defenses together with the Chief of Defense of Israel, it’s allowed equal access to the combined air operations center’s capabilities, not only to Israel, but also to other states in the region, and hence ultimately to Israel.

So, I think that action by President Trump in January 2021 is a profound thing that has had a direct effect on our ability to plan coordinate operations with Israel up until this point. Yes, the level of practical coordination has been very high with Israel, and we would not have been able to do it had Israel not been inside Central Command.

Jonathan Ruhe:

To drill down a little bit further, where you mentioned having Israel in CENTCOM creates a sort of a convening capability, it’s not just a bilateral issue, it’s a multilateral one. Where do you see the potential for that cooperation to develop going forward, perhaps at a more multilateral level? And I’ll just put in a shameless plug, JINSA report Base for Success talks about the various ways that Ovda, in particular air base in Israel, could become a, we call it a CENTCOM Center of Excellence sort of as you mentioned, General, not just for us, Israel cooperation, but more regional security cooperation, better burden sharing, things like that. But I’ll put my own commentary aside and ask for your thoughts on where you see that cooperation potentially expanding going forward.

General Frank McKenzie:

Well, I think one of the key tasks for CENTCOM, at the military level, is to remember that we operate at the military level. This is not the political level. This is the military level. One of the key things that CENTCOM always strives to do is to get Israel into the room with all the Arab neighbors. Israel needs to be part of that. You want to do that because Israel has unique and compelling capabilities, and every Arab state in the region is aware of those capabilities. They want exposure to them to defend themselves.

The major threat from Iran remains: its missiles, its drones, cruise missiles, and its proxies, so that remains the major threat. So, all the areas, disciplines for multilateral cooperation, this is the easiest to work in, because you’re not basing forces in another country or having to accept forces based in your country. What you are doing is sharing, tipping, and queuing information about a potential attack, and that’s a unique thing. I think that’s only going to continue as we go forward, because the Iranian threat is out there, they are going to try to rebuild, and we’re going to be ready for that.

Jonathan Ruhe:

Our conversation so far has been salted a lot toward Army and Air Force questions, but since you’re a Marine, I’d like to ask you, are there even looking beyond Epic Fury, are there ways you see U.S.-Israel cooperation in terms of facing posture in expanding to the other services, beyond just beyond just air force or air defense,

General Frank McKenzie:

In 1998-1999 was the time for command training to train in the Negev Desert. I’m very familiar with training on the ground in Israel. I think all those options are there. I think they remain very important to us. Israel is in the Western part of the Central Command AOR, so they’re great opportunities for naval cooperation. They’re great opportunities for cooperation on the ground. So, to me, this is something that’s been continuing for a number of years. It will simply expand given the new relationship with CENTCOM.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So, a quick reminder to our audience at the time we left. If you have questions for General Mckenzie, please just type them in the Q&A box on your screen, and we’ll do our best to address them in the time we have left.

So, one thing that I think became a certain issue during Operation Fury, and in your report, you mentioned the phrase Tyranny of Geographies, so I guess there’s no harm to be using it again. One of the things we saw in terms of the tyranny of geography is Iran’s ability to dominate the Strait of Hormuz, at least, or they have a geographical predisposition where they could, they could certainly pose a real threat to it. What are your takeaways in terms of how you saw the U.S. Navy fight this war, in terms of Iran’s ability to deny us access, potentially to the Gulf and Hormuz? In terms of what sort of, what’s the naval dimension of U.S. force posture coming out of this war?

General Frank McKenzie:

So, right now, I don’t think we have fully exercised naval capabilities to open the Strait of Hormuz because we’re in political negotiations with conflict right now. I think the President’s preference is to solve the problem politically. I hope he does, and if so, our military operations will play an important role in establishing the hammer for him to achieve a political solution. If we can’t achieve a political solution, then I think everything’s back on the table, and you could see the U.S. Navy go back in there in a way we have not yet done today, forcibly, if necessary, opening the Strait of Hormuz, maybe conducting operations up and into the Iranian goal. The U.S. Navy has the capability to do all those things. We have not yet chosen to do that. We could do it in the future if the President directs. The Iranians are very much aware of that.

Jonathan Ruhe:

To focus more nearly on the military issue. So far, we talked a lot about surface-to-surface threats from the Iranians. Could you unpack a little bit more what you see as Iran’s anti-ship threats? I wanted to mention there’s a question about commercial shipping, or just the mere threat of attacks seems to have an outsized effect, but I guess if you’re a U.S. military planner, how do you view those threats?

General Frank McKenzie:

Sure, so I don’t think we were surprised using Iranian drones in the Strait of Hormuz, but it’s proven to be a difficult threat for us to effectively counter. They have a lot of options that are short range, when they fly, they can fly cheap, expendable drones. All those things make it hard to defend against them.

I think we’ve done a pretty good job on mines. I know people say, “CENTCOM focused on the mines to the exclusion of the drones.” I’m not sure if I buy that argument. I would simply say we made the point repeatedly throughout our talk today. The fact of the matter is that I don’t think we were so much surprised by drones as we’ve been limited by the technological capability to defend against them.

So, not necessarily surprising but knowing something is a threat and having the technical ability to defend yourself doesn’t mean you’re surprised by it. There’s a lag, there’s a technological lag there. That technological lag, I believe, is shortening the gap as we have these capabilities in the effect against drones in the kinetic and non-kinetic electromagnetic space. All those things will be, I think, we’re going to see fielded as we go forward. And one thing I would say, too, is I’m not the guy who thought this up, someone much smarter than me did, but I could agree with it.

Iran can play the Hormuz card once. They played it, that card can never be played again, because now we’re going to find workarounds for Strait of Hormuz, whether it’s over land, whether it’s a geographic routing of oil elsewhere, but Iran will never hold that card again. They’re not going to be able to pick that card up off the table and play it. I’m not sure that they played it wisely, because I think we’re going to be able to compensate for it either directly or indirectly in the weeks and months ahead.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So, we have questions from our audience about that sort of details with the first half of your response. Generally, how is the U.S. addressing the risk of cost asymmetry in procurement, given the low-cost drone warfare, increasingly challenges traditional high-cost defense manufacturing. I would just note for our audience, we saw the deployment of the Luca’s drone system by the United States, which I’m going to misuse terms here, but reverse engineering the Shahed Iranian drone essentially in effect to get it somewhere else in this curve. But in general, please.

General Frank McKenzie:

Yes, we’re right now on the wrong side of the cross-imposition curve. It’s much more expensive for us to defend ourselves than it is to attack us. I got to give the department greater credit, though. They know that I believe we are working very aggressively. Luca’s systems, one example, look at low-cost alternatives to the typical exquisite, exquisite production of high-end systems that take a long time to generate, that are often a little bit behind the duck when they’re fielded.

What we need right now is many cheap, low-cost experimental systems. Some of them will work and some of them will fail. Look, from the outside, the department is actively encouraging this, and I applaud this. I think it’s something that will help us greatly as we go forward against these kinds of threats, and you’re right, we have to get to the point where it is cheap to defend and we’re not there yet, but again, I think we know that, and we’re moving that direction.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So, a separate question, but sort of based on the munitions issue, at least, because this was a fires-intensive conflict, and we’ve heard plenty of reports about the replenishment time it’s going to take for some key munitions that the U.S. expended in this conflict.

Did this war tell you anything new, or does it reinforce your existing thinking about repositioning U.S. munitions in the region, the wisdom of that, or how to change it? And I’ll again, I’ll just note for our audience, in JINSA’s report on Ovda, this is a key issue we talk about, which is using Israeli bases, given how well protected they are, relatively speaking, as potential areas for pre-positioning munitions for joint use. JINSA’s commentary aside, General I’d love to get your thoughts on this larger issue.

General Frank McKenzie:

Sure, so I’ll answer in sort of two dimensions. First, the United States is unequal when it comes to shifting munitions worldwide, we’re very good at doing that, the Secretary War is the guy that makes those decisions, advised by the Chairman, so we’re very good at shifting Patriot interceptors from INDOPACOM to CENTCOM, if required, or to and from Europe, if required.

We have very good systems for knowing our stockages of various munitions, and whether to move them. And ultimately, the person who makes those decisions is at the Secretary level, because you’re talking about relationships between co-coms as you seek to move those.

So we’re good at doing that. Prepositioning can be useful, and you should certainly examine all those opportunities. Israel certainly is a possibility. There are other possibilities, but Israel is certainly a possibility that we should look at.

But here’s a larger issue. For many years, our defense industrial base has been undersized for the commitments that we have. I’d say the current situation we’re in, where we’ve shot a lot of high-end weaponry, is not something that we did not foresee. We’ve been looking at it for several years. Again, this administration has done some things to widen this industrial base, but what you got to have, I think, is a long-term commitment. If you want people to build 155-millimeter artillery projectiles, the person who’s making an investment in the private sector needs to know that this is not going to be a three-year project that’ll be overturned by the next administration. He needs to feel that you’ve got 20 years ahead of you building these abilities to build these projectiles.

The capital outlay is going to cost him; guess how long it’s going to take to make a profit on it. This is a capitalist system. He needs to be able to make a profit on it. He needs to not be afraid we’re going to cut it off next year, because now we’re angry at somebody, and we’re not going to sell him munitions anymore. And that’s not a problem, particularly with this administration, as it has been with the predecessor. But you must establish that degree of stability in the industrial base. For me, of all the things we discussed on this issue, that’s the most significant thing.

We really need to re-gear our industrial base to make it more competitive to look at the volume of projections that we produce, to look at how we share those. It’s a huge market for American conditions globally, Patriot Interceptors, and as we go beyond Patriots, and I think more low-cost lines, those systems as well.

Jonathan Ruhe:

So, again, reminders for the audience, if you have any further questions, please feel free to type them into the Q&A box. So, I’d like to, in some of the time we have left, sort of look at maybe where you see Iran going from here on a military level, and with the caveat that this discussion is not read into classified information, but at least on an unclassed level, was there anything you heard about Iran’s potential cooperation with Russia and China, and potentially others that surprised you, or do you see, maybe that cooperation deepening going forward based on what Iran takes away from this war.

General Frank McKenzie:

So, it’ll be more important to Iran than to Russia or China, and Iran will certainly try to make the most of it. They’ll get what they can, they’re going to be looking for air defense systems, the performance of Russian air defense systems around the world should give you pause if you’re buying them. I don’t think Chinese air defense systems are necessarily any better. I think we’ll watch that very closely, and I would think that we would retain the right to remove those capabilities if they’re introduced into Iran. Either we, or the Israelis, would probably look to do that, but the Iranians are certainly going to try to rearm as they go forward again. We need to monitor that very closely.

We can do that. We can see as they make these decisions, as they try to bring a replacement and other systems online, and we could act very aggressively if we needed to stop that.

So, the political question remains open about the Strait of Hormuz again. We’re resolving that at the political level right now. So, I’ll leave that one alone, except to say that the U.S. military is certainly capable of providing pressure on Iran if necessary to steer the negotiations, one way or another.

Jonathan Ruhe:

To jump, jump from that. So, we’ve been talking, obviously, about how U.S. posture in the region changes, and the lessons we learned, given your long history of planning against and studying how the Iranians do things, their concepts of operations.

First, it’s a two-part question. The first part is that you mentioned that the Strait of Hormuz is a card that Iran can play once. In terms of Iran rebuild its missile and drone arsenals more broadly, do you wonder, are you worried that this is a card they’ll want to play more often, and not in Hormuz, but in general, are you worried the Iranians learn missiles and drones, that’s everything that looks like a nail, because it’s just the hammer we have in our hands.

General Frank McKenzie:

So, possibly, but I would tell you, there are ways to defend against missiles and drones, and we’re only going to get better, and we will get better defensively faster than they get better offensively. Of that, I’m sure.

Jonathan Ruhe:

I guess a final question is we’ve heard plenty, and in some of our previous JINSA webinars that you’ve been a part of Iran has missile cities, they have very mobile, or they have some mobile transport record launcher capabilities. Iran has its own way to play cat and mouse against our ability to target them.

Have you seen changes in Iran’s posture, or do you think they may, in terms of their rebuild, might change in terms of moving their own assets deeper into their own country, beyond at least the reach of Israel, redoubling investments in these missile cities, or maybe something completely different.

General Frank McKenzie:

So, look, that’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth, uninformed by any classified information.

First, there’s no place in Iran we can’t reach or we’re Israel can’t reach. Number two, we should encourage Iran, and it is good for Iran to build large, fixed sites. The one thing we know in the entire history of warfare to this point is if it is a fixed location, we can get it. The key to survival is deception, dispersion, and concealment. That’s the key to survival. We should encourage them to build more large, fixed complexes.

Jonathan Ruhe:

We’ll sneak in one more question from our audience before the buzzer. Is there a concern that Iran will develop cruise missiles from its drone program, like how Ukraine evolved its drone missile capabilities to strike Russia, and if so, how will Iran’s defense industrial base adapt if there is an MOU?

General Frank McKenzie:

Sure, I think we need to watch, so yes, I think they will be very innovative. The Iranians have proven to be smart in these, in these technical innovations. We’re going to need to watch that closely. I believe we have the capability to watch that closely and to know what the Iranians are doing, and we need to be ready to act if necessary to prevent it and I believe we can detect it. We can prevent it.

Jonathan Ruhe:

All right. Well, thank you. I’d like to thank General McKenzie for his time and candor this morning. I’d also like to thank our audience for tuning in this Monday morning, the plugs right before we get off General McKenzie’s report, Tyranny of Geography, is available on JINSA’s website. Your book, Melting Point, I highly recommend. General McKenzie also gave a book talk here at JINSA when it was released, and then also JINSA says report, Base for Success, which goes into the U.S. basing options at Ovda Air Base in Israel. I commend all of those to our audience. Thank you again to General McKenzie and thank you all. We look forward to seeing you again soon on the next JINSA webinar.

General Frank McKenzie:

Thank you, Jonathan. Take care. Thank you very much.

The post Transcript: Webinar – U.S. Basing Posture in the Wake of Epic Fury appeared first on JINSA.

The post Trump Went to War to End Iran’s Missile Threat. Now He Endorses It. appeared first on JINSA.