The post Iran’s Other Nuclear Weapons Option: Plutonium Bombs appeared first on JINSA.

The post The Commercial Satellite Revolution is Changing Warfare — Here’s How America Can Stay Ahead appeared first on JINSA.

The Iranian regime is reportedly nearing an interim deal with Oman and the United States for a new security model in the Strait of Hormuz. History—including recent events—shows that the Iranian regime will almost certainly attempt to violate this proposed deal, as well as any future ones. However, that’s just one part of the problem, JINSA President & CEO Michael Makovsky, PhD argued in an August 6 interview with Fox News Radio.

Dr. Makovsky stressed that, in his view, constantly seeking negotiations with Iran “comes with a cost” of its own, including repercussions reaching far beyond the Middle East. The indefinite U.S. pursuit of diplomacy, not military pressure, has “weakened our credibility,” including in the eyes of “the Chinese and the Russians,” Dr. Makovsky stated.

Therefore, Washington needs an Iran policy reset, according to Dr. Makovsky. That should involve America conducting large-scale military operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities, anti-ship capabilities, internal energy sites, and other high-value targets to threaten the Iranian regime’s existence.

The post JINSA President & CEO Michael Makovsky: Fruitless Iran Talks Hurt U.S. Deterrence Against China and Russia appeared first on JINSA.

Click here to read transcript.

Almost three years after the devastating October 7, 2023, attack, the Board of Peace announced that Hamas had agreed to give up its weapons and relinquish any role in Gaza’s governance and security. The achievement of a deal with Hamas was shared by President Donald Trump on July 30, who wrote that “the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza.” 

Yet the Board of Peace’s Roadmap for moving to Phase II of Trump’s Comprehensive Plan for Gaza also calls for Israel’s eventual full military withdrawal from the territory. Its text is at best ambiguous as to whether Israel’s phased withdrawals should begin before or after Hamas is completely disarmed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s top spokesman said on August 3 that Israel has shared a number of “serious security concerns” with the White House over the agreement. In addition, how the deal will be implemented is far from clear. Hamas under stress has long dangled cooperation in a bid to relieve pressure and gain time, only to breach its commitments. It almost certainly will seek to do so again.

To assess the deal, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead, JINSA hosted a webinar featuring JINSA Distinguished Fellow IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Ahmed Alkhatib, and JINSA Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow John Hannah.

JINSA Research Associate, Rena Gabber, moderated the discussion.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror IDF Major General (ret.) Yaakov Amidror is a Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy Distinguished Fellow. General Amidror was formerly the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, as well as the head of the National Security Council, from 2011-2013. Click here to read full bio

Ahmed Alkhatib Ahmed Alkhatib is a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs and leads Realign for Palestine, an Atlantic Council project that challenges entrenched narratives in the Israel and Palestine discourse and develops a new policy framework for rejuvenated pro-Palestine advocacy. Click here to read full bio

John Hannah John Hannah is JINSA’s Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow. He served as former Vice President Dick Cheney’s National Security Advisor from 2005-2009 and as Vice President Cheney’s Deputy National Security Advisor for the Middle East from 2001-2005. Click here to read full bio

Rena Gabber Rena Gabber is a Research Associate for JINSA Senior Fellow John Hannah. She formerly worked as a Research Assistant at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, focusing on Arab-Israel relations. Click here to read full bio

The post Watch Webinar – A Better Future for Gaza? Challenges, Risks, and Opportunities for the Gaza Roadmap appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror

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

Ahmed Alkhatib

Atlantic Council Senior Fellow; Realign for Palestine Director

John Hannah

JINSA Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow; Former National Security Advisor to VP Dick Cheney

The discussion was moderated by JINSA Research Associate Rena Gabber.

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Rena Gabber

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for joining us for today’s webinar with JINSA. We will be talking about Gaza and the roadmap for implementing the comprehensive plan that was agreed to last week.

On July 30^th, the Board of Peace announced that Hamas had agreed to give up its weapons and relinquish any role in Gaza’s governance and security. President [Donald] Trump described this as a historic agreement for the complete disarmament of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza. This agreement called a roadmap for completing the implementation of President Trump’s comprehensive peace plan for Gaza, true to its name, is aimed at facilitating Phase Two of the comprehensive plan agreed to in October 2025.

As such, the roadmap establishes a framework for Hamas to decommission its weapons and transfer all governance and security functions to Gaza’s interim technocratic committee, called the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, or NCAG. It also called for complete IDF [Israel Defense Forces] withdrawal in phases. Per the roadmap, the International Stabilization Force, or ISF, a multinational force authorized by the United Nations, will be deployed to Gaza as a peacekeeping buffer force between the IDF and NCAG-held areas.

In today’s webinar, we’ll be addressing where we’re with the roadmap, looking at challenges to implementation, as well as risks and opportunities, trying to discuss whether the roadmap poses a credible path forward for Gaza.

I am extremely honored to be joined by our three expert panelists today. First, we are joined by IDF Major General Yaakov Amidror, who is JINSA’s Gemunder Center Distinguished Fellow, he was formerly the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel. We are also joined by John Hannah, JINSA’s Randi and Charles Wax Senior Fellow, the former National Security Advisor to former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. John headed JINSA’s, [Gaza] Day After work, which published a major report on Gaza’s Day After [the War] in February 2024 as a joint project between JINSA and the Vandenberg Coalition.

Lastly, we are joined by Ahmed Alkhatib, who is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and founder and director of the Realign for Palestine program. He is also the author of the recently published book Hamas and Its Two Million Hostages. Before we dive into the discussion, I would like to remind our audience that I will be opening the conversation for audience questions at the end. So, throughout the discussion, please do feel free to send me any questions you have for our speakers using the Q and A function over Zoom, and I will do my best to address them near the end of the conversation.

So, with that, let’s dive right in. Ahmed, I would like to start with you. I wanted us to break Hamas’s decision to agree to any voluntary disarmament. What is going on? How should we understand why Hamas felt it needed to agree, and why now?

Ahmed Alkhatib

Well, good to be with you. I think Hamas is facing an existential crisis of epic proportions. If you step back and look regionally, the Islamic Republic of Iran, its chief backer, is facing crises of its own. It’s unable to support it at levels like pre-October 7^th.

If you look at the state of Qatar, unable to send its LNG shipments, liquefied natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz. The Turks are seeking the F-35s. The Egyptians are tired of having the instability on their eastern flank. Then you have the group itself with just the population turning against it in mass due to the consequences of October 7^th, due to the totality of 20 years of Hamas’s failed rule in Gaza. You have no horizon for a political resolution, no idea of withdrawal. Most of Gaza now, about a third, are squeezed into a third of the territory. The arsenal that Hamas has of its weaponry is very finite. It is unable to replenish it through smuggling or through domestic industries. They were able to remanufacture some IEDs from unexploded Israeli munitions using some wires and pipes from destroyed buildings, but beyond that, they don’t really have the capability that they once had to challenge Israel militarily or to hold on for very long.

Then, financially speaking, they’re in dire straits. We keep hearing about their ability to recruit these boys, these teenagers, to refill their ranks, but they’re unable to train these young soldiers. They can’t even train them on how to shoot AK-47s because they’re worried about depleting their rounds, and the Israelis would target them.

Whether at the at the military front, strategically in the region, geostrategically, whether it be with a population, whether it be internally, there’s actually a lot of internal fissures within Hamas that they’re being coerced into having to take a decision that would have seemed unimaginable just 10 months ago when the ceasefire was signed in October 2025. I believe that although Hamas may have started this pathway toward disarmament, thinking they’re going to play games, thinking they’re going to potentially pull a fast one on the international stabilization force or the board of peace. What we saw the board of peace come out with a few days ago, and Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu affirming that there will be no withdrawal beyond the yellow line until the process is complete, shows that the world is not going to play any games with the disarmament plan that Hamas agreed to already. I believe that they’re actually committed to this process, and that there is no turning back at this point.

Rena Gabber

Great, thank you so much for those insights. General Amidror, I would like to turn to you next. I’d like to get your perspective on Israel’s reaction.

How surprised was Israel by the announcement that an agreement had been reached, and what are Israel’s primary concerns and reservations?

General Amidror

It’s an agreement between Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt, and the new administration. Israel does not have any obligation for this agreement. We are committed to the 20-point plan of President Trump, as was declared by the Government of Israel, and after the meeting between Mr. Mladenov and the Prime Minister of Israel is not retreating from the obligation. But we want it to be as promised in the 20 points.

For example, the agreement between the mediators and Hamas speaks about the light weapon. Guys, the atrocities from October 7^th were made by Hamas with light weapons. They didn’t use any guns. No big guns. It’s Kalashnikovs and from time-to-time RPG. But most of the atrocities were done by people with Kalashnikovs. Kalashnikovs are a light weapon in every definition that I know.

So, that will remain with Hamas and Israel cannot agree with that. Who is killing the Palestinians in Gaza today? If someone is courageous enough to say something against Hamas behavior in Gaza, Hamas is killing them with knives and Kalashnikovs, not heavy guns. The whole story about not giving back the heavy gun is a joke. It’s not serious and Israel will not accept it.

About the retreat of the IDF from the Gaza Strip. That will happen when Hamas is totally dismantled. We are not going to give Hamas more area to control with the light weapon by taking the IDF here close to our borders.

I know that some people around the world think that after the elections, if Bibi is not winning it will be easier. I have a big surprise for you; there is a huge consensus within Israel and I think that all the candidates agree that Israel should not give Hamas the ability to survive with weapon light or heavy, and that the IDF will not be taken out of the Gaza Strip without totally dismantling Hamas from all its capabilities. It’s very nice that there is an agreement with the Qataris, the Turks, and Hamas. Israel is not a part of it and is not making any moves to implement it.

Rena Gabber

Great. Well, thank you, General Amidror, for helping to set the stage on how Israel is viewing it and their stance. John, I’d like to turn to you as well, with your experience in U.S. policymaking and national security, what do you think the surprise announcement of the deal, particularly in the middle of the Iran War, says about U.S. policy toward Gaza and the Palestinian issue more broadly?

John Hannah

Thank you, Rena. Listen, I have to admit, I was astonished that this agreement came. I mean, this is nine months after the initial announcement of President Trump’s peace plan. Nine months in which nothing seemed to happen. I was entirely convinced that Hamas would never even agree, much less implement, but even agree that it would effectively surrender any security and political role in Gaza, and agree to a process for decommissioning its weapons, its weapons depots, its production facilities for weapons, its plants on the tunnels, so they can be destroyed.

As well as making reference, obviously, to Hamas police handing their weapons over to a new non-Hamas civil administration, and to some process for handling light weapons, licensing, registering light weapons, taking, prohibiting light weapons in the hands of certain people, the decommissioning of militias-not just Hamas, but all other armed factions in Gaza.

Let’s face it, if you had asked me to bet $1,000, would Hamas ever agree to the terms that are in this roadmap? I’d say no way; they won’t even agree with it, much less ever implementing it. So, I’m surprised, I’m pleasantly surprised, and I think it does suggest both what Ahmed said about the dire straits Hamas finds itself in, the tremendous military pressure it’s under has remained under in Gaza. The fact that its main international sponsors are fed up and want a different way forward and are applying pressure. But also, to the effect that despite people believing the Trump administration has no capacity for follow through on its big announcements that the United States, through various emissaries and the president’s authority, has stayed engaged on this and has pushed it forward. Lo and behold, we got this surprise announcement last Friday. I’m of course like everybody, unbelievably skeptical that this can be implemented and as I was last October when the President was able to get that deal in which Hamas surrendered all of the hostages, which I didn’t think they would ever surrender that piece of leverage, but the factors came together. The United States pushed, and we got that first phase of this agreement.

Now we have Hamas signing on to this potential for a second phase implementation, voluntarily disarming and agreeing to give up its weapons and to give up any kind of role politically or security-wise in Gaza. I think it’s very cautiously optimistic that the stars are aligning in a way that we are going to continue to further weaken Hamas, whether that’s 50 percent of its weapons and tunnels and production facilities, 50 percent of its light weapons getting handed over, some new Palestinian administration beginning to establish itself as an alternative to Hamas governance, or whether it’s 100 percent I don’t know. I’m optimistic we can continue to make progress to hopefully undermine and weaken Hamas and other terrorist factions inside of Gaza.

I guess that’s how I would start with this. I wouldn’t have predicted eight or nine days ago before this announcement that we would have such an announcement, and now we do. While being cautious, I think it’s in a landscape where there’s lots of very bad news. This was a welcome development that I hope everybody can continue to try and push forward on and get agreement on.

Rena Gabber

Great, thank you so much. John, I’d actually like to stick with you on my next question here. Just fleshing out something that you had mentioned. Could you talk about the key challenges or obstacles you foresee in implementing the roadmap? All those bumps that will need to be overcome to make some progress or completely implement them.

John Hannah

Well, I mean, there’s so many of them. First, I know it would be interesting to get General Amidror’s view on this, but at least as presented, it does require that Israel and Hamas both to agree to this roadmap for it to begin moving forward. Obviously, the initial phase calls for a complete cessation of offensive military operations and preparations by both sides. As we saw in the immediate days after this announcement, where there were clashes, that’s going to be very difficult to get everybody to stand down in an environment where there’s so little trust and Hamas is one has to believe that the only incentive Hamas has here is to play for time. They’re under pressure. They want to deflect that pressure in hopes that attention will move elsewhere, and they won’t be required to eventually implement this deal, and that they’ll be able to get a breathing space and reconstitute.

The immediate issue, once people agree, is that we get 14 days or perhaps a little longer. We’re already a week past this announcement of the deal to have developed a timetable and implementation mechanism for how the roadmap is going to proceed forward, so how long will that take? What will that involve? We don’t know.

Obviously, then once that timetable and implementation mechanism is developed, there’s going to be the emergence of some kind of verification committee made up of people from the Board of Peace, from the International Stabilization Force, and from the guarantors, the mediators, the Qataris, Turks, Egyptians, and Emiratis maybe, would all be part of this verification committee. That’s going to have an enormously important role in determining that people are beginning to implement their obligations under this timetable and mechanism before we can move on to any additional phases of the roadmap.

You’ve got to get the NCAG, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, which for nine months has been sitting in Cairo, unable to even get into Gaza. They then have to deploy into Gaza and start exerting some kind of administrative authority, and then eventually become with the new Palestinian police, who have to be cleansed of the any existing Hamas police that can’t pass a vetting process, they have to establish some authority, and then eventually, I don’t know if it’s three, six, or nine months to a year from now, somebody’s got to start collecting weapons. Beginning to implement this disarmament demilitarization phase in which Hamas, other factions, and other militias inside of Gaza begin to hand over first heavy weapons, the weapons depots, production facilities, the tunnel plants for the tunnels that can be destroyed, and then eventually moving on to what General Amidror cited as perhaps one of the main obstacles, the ultimate disposition of light weapons.

We don’t have a timetable for any of these. It could be years. Northern Ireland took absolutely years to get the IRA [Irish Republican Army] to eventually hand over all its weapons. So, this is only the very beginning of a very long process, and in so many different places it can go wrong. Obviously, issues of how the Israeli withdrawal will proceed in phases. What its real relationship to the decommissioning of the militias will be. I’ve got to say, throughout this process, I think it’s been quite unclear. Is this going to be a step-by-step reciprocal process in which there’s some decommissioning and then some Israeli withdrawals that occur with that? As General Amidror said this week after a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Head of the Board of Peace Gaza Committee, Nickolay Mladenov, said, “No, Israeli withdrawal will only happen once all of the decommissioning process, light weapons, heavy weapons, tunnels, etc. Once that’s completed, that’s when the IDF begins to move back from the original yellow line toward green line Israel.” There are so many places where this cannot proceed, where it can break down, and where it can’t be delayed. Too numerous to mention even.

Rena Gabber

Well, certainly a lot of challenges, but John, thank you for that great overview, General Amidror. I’d like to turn to you and give you a chance to respond to what John was saying. I know he brought up many challenges, but what you see as the primary obstacles, and specifically this issue of sequencing Israeli withdrawal and Hamas disarmament-if you do see some way to overcome this dilemma, a way forward, kind of breaking down Israel’s perspective on some of the issues John had mentioned.

General Amidror

In Israel, there is at the end of the day one demand—that an organization like Hamas will not exist in the Gaza Strip. We don’t want to face threats from organizations like Hamas in the future. It’s very simple, and this is why for us, the decommissioning of Hamas is so critical and Islamic Jihad or any other organization that exists in Gaza. From our point of view, we cannot ease the security arrangements that we have after the war inside Gaza Strip, before the decommissioning of Hamas, and when we can be sure and we can guarantee our people around the Gaza Strip, what we are calling the envelope of Gaza, that they are not facing threat in the future, they will not remain there if there is a threat.

So, handling and storing and blah blah. Who will have the key for the stores in which the weapon is? Can we trust Hamas? No. Can we trust Qatar? No. Can we trust Turkey? No. Two countries which are now hosting the leadership of Hamas, helping Hamas, financing Hamas, advising Hamas, letting Hamas to act from Turkey to organize terrorist operations in the West Bank can we trust Turkey? No. With all respect to the relations between Turkey and America as well as Turkey as a member of NATO. Turkey today, is the biggest supporter of the terrorist organization called Hamas. From our point of view, it cannot be part of this. Turkey cannot be part of the new arrangements in Gaza, because they are supporting Hamas, and we don’t want a country which is the biggest supporter of Hamas today, with Qatar, to be one of the guarantors for the next situation in Gaza, in which we don’t want to face the same threats that thanks to the Turkey and other countries we had in Gaza. So, it is more complicated.

It’s not just between Hamas and the new administration, Palestinian administration, and Nickolay Mladenov, organization. It is about who is in Gaza in a situation that can control the whole decommissioning of Hamas and the next phase in which the weapon of Hamas will be neutralized, technically or by putting it in places in which Hamas cannot get it.

There is one big question for the for the future: What happens if Israel identifies preparations to re-establish Hamas an organization like Hamas in Gaza? What can Israel do when we identify a factory in which they are producing weapon systems? What can we do when we identify the meeting of the next leadership of Hamas inside Gaza? All these arrangements should be within the framework of the new agreement, which the mediators didn’t have with Hamas or with the United States of America, and our obligation is to the 20-point plan from President Trump, not to the agreement, which was reached between the mediators and Hamas, with all due respect to the mediators. And I do not have respect for Hamas.

Rena Gabber

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for that, General Amidror. Ahmed, I would like to turn to you now. General Amidror had mentioned this issue of a lack of trust in Hamas. Hamas, under stress, has long dangled cooperation in a bid to relieve pressure and gain time, only to breach its commitments. In addition, it sees as its raison d’être being the armed resistance to Israel. So, I’d like to kind of take your thoughts on this. Do you see a way in which Hamas would cooperate with its disarmament? Is there any reason to expect Hamas would comply?

Ahmed Alkhatib

In addition to them being coerced, one incentive that they have right now is that there might be elements of Hamas thinking that they are going to evolve to become a political entity. I’ve seen reports from journalists close to Hamas in Arabic and Palestinian media that suggest something akin to, we’ve done what we can with armed resistance. We’ve hit the ceiling. This is all we can do for now. Armed resistance is something that future generations are going to have to contend with. So, what we will continue [to do] as Hamas to operate in the scene and to be relevant and without giving details on what that looks like.

My thing is that I’ve been using the metaphor of there is no olive oil without olives. I believe that there is no Hamas without arms, without the armed resistance narrative. Otherwise, they just become another Fatah or PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] 2.0, or they become like the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and all those Soviet-sponsored organizations that ultimately faded into irrelevance, despite them hijacking airplanes and taking Israeli hostages.

But so, could we see a splintering of Hamas in Gaza, where like what happens if a terror attack happens inside Israel or in the West Bank? Is Hamas going to endorse that armed attack in the West Bank, even though it’s disarmed in Gaza? So, what’s the relationship going to be between Hamas in Gaza versus Hamas in the West Bank? I believe strongly that Hamas is viewing this as an attempt to reinvent itself, but what I don’t actually, but I think they’re overplaying, they’re overstating the possibility that they could be relevant as an organization that is despised by the majority of the population in Gaza that has shown the failure of armed resistance that has wasted Gaza’s potential.

I don’t think anybody in their right mind in the Palestinian territories is going to elect Hamas again after 20 years of failures. I don’t believe that Hamas without armed resistance has anything. At least the PA, however much the Palestinian Authority, however much they’re promoted as being sellouts, as being treacherous, as being cooperators with the Israeli occupation, etc. At least they bring international aid, salary, stability, law and order to the best of their ability. What does Hamas have? Its Islamist narrative has failed. Its allies, Iran, are on their back feet. It’s part of the Muslim Brotherhood that is widely rejected in the region, except for Turkey and Qatar. It has shown that armed resistance is going to get Gaza destroyed.

Going back to the question of sequencing, I actually think this is really important. One of the reports I’ve been seeing, for example, and this concerns me. Hamas is buying time and thinking that okay, we’re going to be looking at elections in not just Israel, but they’re looking at the midterm in the United States. They’re looking at some of the candidates that are coming up in the U.S. Senate and U.S. Congress, thinking this could generate greater pressure on Israel to acquiesce to withdraw if Israel wants to maintain foreign aid. But one of the other things that they’re looking at too is that because this process is going to take a long time, they could sit this out until 2028 when there could be an incoming Democratic administration that would be seen as much more likely to be hostile toward Israel and force a withdrawal out of Gaza even before the process of disarmament is complete. That’s what concerns me is that in an effort to preempt Hamas’s gains, there must be pressure by the United States, by the allies, by the global community to accelerate the timeline, to actually allocate the resources.

Who’s going to pay for the international stabilization force? Who’s going to pay for the Palestinian police force that needs to be trained? The United Arab Emirates just allocated $100 million about a month and a half ago, or almost two months ago, to the new Palestinian police force to be trained by NCAG. My understanding is that none of that money has been disbursed. My understanding is that none of the Palestinian candidates, there were the police force, the new police force from Gaza. They wanted to hire 50,00 officers. There were 78,000 applicants from Gaza, and I know a ton of those applicants myself. I have an army of contacts in Gaza. My brother is in there.

No one has been contacted by NCAG for vetting, for processing, for training to be sent to Jordan or to Egypt for training. Why hasn’t that been done already? Why are we announcing all of these ambitious plans and we haven’t enacted anything? We haven’t even started training the cadre of Palestinians who are supposed to replace Hamas as the policing force. We haven’t started actually talking about the rules of engagement. I’ve talked to the Board of Peace officials. I’m in touch with elements of the Trump Administration. This is very frustrating for me because we’ve spent the last nine months basically waiting for a miracle. There were efforts here and there to stabilize Gaza with let’s flood it with commercial trucks, let’s flood it with humanitarian aid, but also the commercial trucks. Surprise, surprise, Hamas was taxing each truck from 30 to 50 percent per truckload and I worry that I haven’t seen any major announcements since last week, or any even indications of a serious timeline for bringing in anything beyond the troops from Kosovo or beyond the few troops from Morocco that are going to be part of the international stabilization force.

I haven’t seen anything beyond that logistical Humvee vehicle that is going to be deployed into Gaza. So that I would argue, to me honestly, is a much bigger concern because for the time being, Hamas is saying yes, but are we going to inadvertently enable the success of Hamas’s original strategy, which is to buy time, by being delayed due to financial, logistical, and training hurdles?

Rena Gabber

Great, thank you so much for sharing. That’s a great segue into what I was hoping to talk about next, which is, I mean, disarmament is obviously one of the major elements of the roadmap, along with Israeli withdrawal. But it also says that Hamas will transfer all civilian governance and security functions to Gaza’s interim technocratic committee. Talks about this newly trained Palestinian peace force, as well as the ISF. So, Ahmed, I’d actually like to stick with you for another question before I turn to General Amidror and John.

I’d like to talk a little bit more about transferring power to the NCAG. How do you assess the NCAG’s ability to, again, this is the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza, the interim technocratic committee. How do you assess the NCAG’s ability to provide civilian administration for Gazans? What are the main obstacles standing in the way of the NCAG operating effectively? And is there any reason to worry of a Hezbollah in Lebanon-like situation where Hamas retains significant influence behind the scenes?

Ahmed Alkhatib

Precisely that where Hamas can reign, it doesn’t rule, but it reigns. I know a lot of folks in NCAG. I know personally Dr. Ali Shah, the head of NCAG. I think he’s an honorable, kind, incredible man. I think the model of NCAG is very compelling in principle to try to bring to the surface compelling, professional, nonpartisan Palestinians who could have a role in creating a new political culture that’s non-factional.

In Palestinian life and political life, if you want to exercise politics or to even be an administrator, you have to be a part of Fatah, you must be a part of Hamas, or you have to have an affiliation with Islamic Jihad or the PLO or this group or that group. There’s very little in the form of truly professional, independent Palestinian political life, and this is where I hope that the transformation in Gaza beyond just rebuilding Gaza, that Gaza becomes the fulcrum for the transformation of Palestinian society, Palestinian identity, the Palestinian national project to actually create something new other than the last 80 years of failures of repeating the same mistakes, the same narratives over and over.

In theory, NCAG is a good vehicle for that because I believe when people ask me all the time, “Well, Ahmed, where are the Palestinian leaders? Where are the non-radical Palestinians?” I believe they are in massive numbers. The problem is they haven’t been given the safety, the support, the opportunity to rise and govern, deliver, and even engage Israel at a professional, nonpartisan level. Beyond that, a lot of Palestinians want good relations with Israel. They want to have functional governance that’s about integrating Gaza with the Arabs and with Israel-that’s about turning Gaza into the crown jewel for the Palestinian people. That makes up for 20 years of wasted time since the 2005 disengagement of Israeli settlements. I left Gaza one month before the withdrawal of Israeli settlements, a time of immense hope and optimism, and we saw basically degradation, Hamas’s rise to power, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, and the blockade. The very day of my asylum interview in the United States was June 14, 2007, which is the very day that Hamas took over the Gaza Strip. I was the first Palestinian to get asylum here because of Hamas’s control.

I’m using my personal story simply to signal that there are many Palestinians ready to work and do wonders. The problem with NCAG is that they’ve been locked into a hotel. They cannot speak to the media, they cannot speak to the Arab or international committees without the presence of an embassy staff from the United States Embassy. They haven’t been able to speak to the people of Gaza to just message to say this is what we want to do, this is our vision, this is how we’re going to be different from Hamas, different from the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and unfortunately, a lot of the Europeans and a lot of the Arabs-they’re still talking about let’s bring in the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority. No one wants to seize NCAG as a new opportunity for something different. Even elements of the Trump administration-they want NCAG to be a transitional body for the eventual return of the Palestinian Authority. So, that’s on the end.

Why does that matter? For the other end, it means that I’m sorry, but Hamas has been in control of Gaza for 20 years. They know every corner, every inch, every tunnel, every hole, and I just worry that having very tightly controlled technocrats that don’t have the money, they don’t have the executive force, the police force that they’ve been promised hasn’t been trained. They don’t have an international stabilization force, an international force that they can basically use for their own protection, it’s going to be really difficult for them to go in, disarm Hamas that carried out October 7^th, that kicked out the Palestinian Authority, and then for them to actually say we are now the only sole power, and it sounds like a far-fetched dream to expect the NCAG to quickly and credibly be able to assert control. It is possible. It is doable. But there is an immense amount of work that I just don’t see any infrastructure going in.

I don’t see any work, and I see President Trump. I see some of the Boards of Peace. I see some of the Arabs talking about okay, we got the technocrats; they’re ready to go. But it almost feels like a joke, and I’m like, any basic student in organizational behavior and leadership, international relations, security, intelligence, national security will tell you this is what you need to empower NCAG.

I’m very nervous because we have a unique window, and I’ll stop here. But we have a short window in which the population has turned against Hamas. Most of the people of Gaza, they’re against Hamas. They’re against the armed resistance narrative, and they want lasting peace. It doesn’t mean they’re pro-Israel. It doesn’t mean they’re Zionist. It doesn’t mean they think of peace and relations with Israel in the way that all of us here on this call think of it. But it means there’s a window to take the people on a journey away from the armed resistance narrative that has dominated Gaza toward the nation-building agenda in pursuit of the coexistence narrative. Then we have this short window where, for this now, Hamas has said yes to disarmament, and we have to grab that opportunity quickly. Lest we waste it on just many more months of essentially going in circles, only for conditions to change come midterm elections, come Israeli elections, and come in 2027, and who knows where things will be then.

Rena Gabber

Thank you so much for that. It certainly looks like we have a really unique opportunity here to take advantage of. When I was looking at the roadmap, I also noted that it really puts immense pressure on the NCAG to immediately assume major responsibilities. So, great to hear your thoughts on that.

I have a question next for General Amidror but before I get into it, I just would like to remind our audience that I will be asking another question or two, and I hope to get some of your questions in and ask them to our esteemed panel. So again, there’s a Q and A feature, the bottom bar of your Zoom screen. Please do feel free to send me any questions there.

General Amidror, I wanted to turn to you to talk specifically about these Palestinian police force operating under the NCAG, which the roadmap says will be responsible for internal security in Gaza, but as you had pointed out, Israel may need to also re-enter Gaza to take out terrorist threats. So, I was hoping you could talk with us more about this Palestinian Police Force, what you see as potentially some of the risks or limitations, and are there any lessons learned from PASP, the Palestinian Authority Security Force operating in the West Bank that could be applicable to how we’re conceiving of the role of the NCAG police force in Gaza?

General Amidror

In the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority is too weak to deal with the real problem of Hamas in the West Bank, a few months ago they tried to enter into one of the refugee camps near Jenin, and after four days they called the IDF to come to help them because they couldn’t deal with Hamas.

There is a very strong connection between the capabilities of Hamas and the ability of the police to implement its job. The weaker Hamas is, the easier it will be for the police to put law and order on the streets of Gaza Strip. This is the main job of these police. There is no one who expects these police to deal with a terror organization like Hamas in the future. This is why for their success it is so important to dismantle Hamas before the new Palestinian police is taking responsibility for the streets of Gaza.

People have to understand that there is a connection between the decommissioning of Hamas and the commissioning of the police, and if that will be ignored, and someone will say, “Okay, we are sending the new police officers after training in Cairo or in Amman it doesn’t matter to deal with the problems in Gaza, they’re doom to fail, and we want them to succeed, and their success to put law and order in a place in which there was not law and no order. It was run by a terror organization, which the population was afraid of, corruption from A to Z. Nothing was in order according to any law.

This is why it is so important from the Palestinian point of view from those who want the new police forces to succeed to dismantle Hamas, and those who do not understand the connection between the two sides of the equation are not giving any chance for the police to succeed in the future.

At the end of the day, we know that no one will fight Hamas. If Hamas will try to rebuild itself in Gaza, we will have to intervene. If there is any chance that the Palestinians will gain life like ordinary people in ordinary places, in countries just like other countries in the Middle East, let alone the United States of America or Israel, it’s that Hamas will not be the obstacle. The only way that Hamas will not be the obstacle is to dismantle Hamas.

Rena Gabber

Great, thank you so much for that. John, my next question is for you. But before I get into that, I see that we have a comment from [audience member]. I just like to share conversations. Highlights that it took seven years to decommission the IRA in Ireland and Protestant military groups, and notes that these armed elements were offered a role in governance. Hamas is essentially being offered a kick to the exit. John, I would like to pivot to talk about the international stabilization force. I know we already talked about the NCAG and NCAG police. This is another force that talked about.

General Amidror

If I can say something, this remark of mine.

Rena Gabber

Please, we are quite welcome.

General Amidror

Yes, he’s right, but the IRA didn’t go to destroy Britain, and Hamas now is promised to destroy Israel. So, to compare between what happened with Hamas and what happened with the IRA operatives, and I think it’s a huge mistake because you cannot bring into the system people that really believe that Israel should be destroyed.

Ahmed Alkhatib

If I may just add also to that comment, like is Hamas’s interest in is it just to have jobs for its people so that they can have salaries to provide they’re to their families. Or is it so that, which is what I believe their ultimate goal is, to basically become an obstacle, kind of like become the plaque in the artery of the system and cause a heart attack, essentially, that can shock the system into, we can’t have normalization with Israel, we can’t have a demilitarized Gaza future. We can’t walk away from the armed resistance narrative.

So, I strongly believe that even people in Israel itself would support an off-ramp for Hamas members to be integrated as part of the society and to have amnesty. The Trump administration repeated that offer, and I’ve spoken to Senior Trump Administration officials who described even frameworks for how that could be implemented. But that’s not really what Hamas wants. They want to be part of the system as another way to stop. Now they’re just going to go from within and sabotage it. That’s not acceptable, especially for Palestinians, let alone the Arabs or the international community.

Rena Gabber

Thank you so much. John, I don’t know if you would also like to respond to the [audience members] comment. If not, I’ll proceed with my question for you.

John Hannah

No, I think it’s been handled. Thank you.

Rena Gabber

Right, of course. So, Ahmed had talked a little bit before about the status of the ISF, the International Stabilization Force. John, I’d like your thoughts. Essentially, is there today an ISF to speak of? How do you understand its role per roadmap? Is the ISF the right force for the job that the roadmap gives left.

John Hannah

I think we’ve had indications that there have been a number of countries that would be willing to deploy under the right, most favorable circumstances. As General Amidror says, they don’t have to be responsible for fighting Hamas, that we’ve seen some Moroccan forces. I think I have begun to deploy. There have been some commitments from countries like Kosovo, Albania, Uganda in the discussion of participating. In terms of exact numbers and capabilities, and under what exact rules of engagement, we don’t know.

This roadmap sets out that the ISF would have no policing function and no peace enforcement function. Once it deploys, it would, as you said, I think, be more of a buffer force deploying in between Israel and the new Palestinian Administration. It would do what it could to support the new administration in non-policing functions. It would train the police, it would help ensure the delivery and security of humanitarian supplies into Gaza, and that they reach the Gazan civilians free of the kind of Hamas interference that Ahmed talked about.

I’m sure there are issues with the border connection between Egypt and Gaza. Working with the IDF and others to ensure smuggling of weapons into terrorist forces was not occurring, so a range of things that they could do, but very much in a classical, I suppose, peacekeeping kind of function, rather than actually any role in enforcing the peace and keeping the terrorists at bay.

I’ve always been long worried, and our task force that we had in 2023 and 2024 worried greatly about inserting any kind of sovereign forces, much less sovereign Muslim or Arab forces, in between the IDF and a new Palestinian Administration. For fear that at some point, like a UNIFIL [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon], they become more of a cover and protective force for the reconstitution and rebuilding of the terrorists, as Hezbollah was able to manipulate and use UNIFIL for.

It becomes a force that constrains the IDF’s freedom of action, if need be, to go back in and handle something that a Palestinian police force either can’t handle or refuses to handle. That it becomes more a constraint on Israel in providing for its security than it becomes a constraint on the Terrorists themselves, and once, you worry about the first time that there’s evidence in some Palestinian camp of Hamas reconstituting itself and planning new operations against Israel. The IDF tells the International Stabilization Force, “Hey guys we have this intelligence. Stand down, stand aside. Tell the Palestinian police to do the same.” Either they can take care of this problem, or if not, they stand aside, and we’re going to take care of this problem in this Palestinian camp.

You can see the international stabilization force or Palestinian police saying this is unacceptable. We are not going to do it, and suddenly you have a clash between the IDF and some sovereign international force that is there, and you’ve got an international incident or something worse or some kind of miscalculation. I do worry significantly about that, Rena. You obviously hope for the best, but you’ve got to believe incidents are going to occur, and we have to figure out how we handle that.

There was something hopeful I think in an explanation that the board of peace put out after unveiling the roadmap in which they talked about yes, the Palestinian administration would have responsible for internal security matters strictly but not for external security issues, which you imagine is a way to acknowledge without explicitly acknowledging that Israel might have a role in external threats that it sees emerging from Gaza and would retain some freedom of action.

That’s got to be explicitly worked out at least behind the scenes between Israel, the Board of Peace, the United States, and the guarantors. So, there’s no misunderstanding about what Israel’s ultimate authorities would be, if in fact, new security threats emerge. Because, as General Amidror says, it’s hard to imagine any other force being willing to confront some kind of new emerging threat from Hamas or other terror organizations inside of Gaza.

Rena Gabber

Great, thank you so much, John. In the last few minutes, I have had one more closing question. But before that, General Amidror, I just wanted to give you a chance, if you did want to respond to John’s thoughts and some of the concerns he raised on deploying a multinational force like the ISF to Gaza, where it would be a buffer between the NCAG and the IDF?

General Amidror

We have a lot of experience, most of the time we have very bad ones with the international forces. I can begin with the story; I was a young soldier in the Six-Day War when we moved slowly into Gaza. After crossing the border, we got an order to stop moving and to seize our fire because the United Nations forces were moving out. Within 15-20 minutes, we saw Indian forces with the guns down to show they do not have any bad intention, marching within the railroad coming from Gaza out to the North toward Israel. They had been evacuated when they needed it. They were not there.

For three years, I was the Intelligence Commander of the Israeli Intelligence in Northern Command. UNIFIL was very good for Hezbollah and very bad for the IDF. They were afraid of Hezbollah, and they did not report about Hezbollah. They helped Hezbollah and we were very cautious not to hit any member of UNIFIL. For us, UNIFIL was an obstacle, not the force which helped us to keep peace in the North. This is why it is so important, and this is why we are insisting that the dismantling of Hamas will be prior to any retreat of the IDF. If Hamas does not exist as a military force inside the Gaza Strip that is another story. If Hamas still exists as a military force, as a terror organization within the Palestinian society in Gaza, that will be something that we will have to deal with from time to time, and the international forces will be an obstacle. If Hamas was dismantled and did not exist as a terror organization, there are people who believe in Hamas ideas, Muslim Brotherhood, and so on and so forth, but they don’t have the ability to harm Israel. They don’t have any weapons. They don’t have an organization. They don’t have a command-and-control system. We are not collecting intelligence. All of that does not exist.

It’s easier to deal with the problems when they emerge, and in this situation, I believe that this part can be solved by international forces. But if Hamas still exists and still has the weapon in his hand, and so on and so forth. The international forces will not fight us, and the IDF will have to go in and do the job in this case. The international forces are a huge obstacle for the future of peace in Gaza.

Rena Gabber

Thank you so much for that. John, I had one last quick question for you. I’d like your 30 second top line. What should policymakers and regional experts look for as a sign that the roadmap is moving forward, or alternatively that it’s at the verge of collapse?

John Hannah

It’s a good question. I suppose we’ll know if we get to a point where the NCAG is in place, about some new Palestinian police forces there. They’ve been allowed to deploy, assert some kind of administrative control and authority, and start actually receiving and collecting the initial heavy weapons tunnel plans, decommissioning weapons depots and production facilities. I mean, that’ll be the ultimate test, I guess, of whether this can go forward and whether it’s serious.

I think it’s kind of a process as much as we’d like it to go very fast. It took nine months to get to this point, so I think it’s going to take some time. Reena, one idea that I did want to introduce though very quickly is just that even if as we try to pursue this process, there was a parallel process in which, in Israel’s part of Gaza, the 70 percent controls that is really clean of Hamas, that you could even begin there a process by which the NCAG would deploy, you would create some kind of initial new communities, even small ones-20,000 Palestinians moving from Hamas Gaza into a free Gaza.

Let’s say, to set up an example, a magnet for a functioning free of Hamas, with the International Stabilization Force helping to ensure security there. That process is an alternative kind of parallel process that might create these islands of success that would become magnets and a sign of momentum in this process, even if this disarmament process in Hamas portions of Gaza doesn’t proceed as quickly as we would like, and I think there’s still some idea that that process in parts of Rafa maybe can go forward very slowly, very incrementally, but hopefully with some signs of success. Even as we try to pursue this other much more ambitious process of Hamas disarmament. I think that’s also something we ought to keep and keep an eye out for.

General Amidror

If I may, one remark about the fact on the ground. There is a tender which was published by the new administration, which is calling for building a camp for 150 Moroccan soldiers inside the Gaza Strip. This is the beginning of something; the soldiers are not here, but at least the tender is here, and this is a signal to everyone that yes, we are continuing. I think that this is an important step.

Of course, the key for everything this is the process of dismantling Hamas. But I think that other events around it might help convince the people in Gaza, which are the customers of the process, that something new is emerging. I hope that they will be convinced that then Hamas will be forced to be dismantled.

Ahmed Alkhatib

One thing that I have heard from Palestinian reporting from a journalist whose very close to Hamas is that according to Hamas itself, most of the remaining tunnels that are of concern to Israel are in that 70 percent that Israel controls. Even though on the surface the area is clear of Israel of Hamas, supposedly beneath the surface, there remains a significant number of tunnels because the soil there is very conducive to the type of tunnels, and it’s closer to the borders with Israel. It’s closer to the areas where Hamas anticipated in the past confrontations with an incoming Israeli onslaught. So, that’ll be very interesting to watch for. I know that the Israeli military is regularly daily uncovering new tunnels in the parts that it controls. But supposedly Hamas alleges most of the remaining tunnels are in those areas.

Rena Gabber

Great. Well, on that, I’d like to bring the conversation to a close. Apologies to our viewers that we went over a few minutes, but I really think this was an insightful discussion worth everyone’s while. I’d like to thank our panel of esteemed experts on the issue. We have General Yaakov Amidror, John Hannah, and Ahmed Alkhatib.

Thank you again to everyone who wanted to join, and please do stay engaged with JINSA. Keep your eye out for more insights on these important issues. All right. With that, have a good rest of your day and good evening, General and Israel. We’ll see you soon.

John Hannah

Thank you.

The post Transcript: Webinar – A Better Future for Gaza? Challenges, Risks, and Opportunities for the Gaza Roadmap appeared first on JINSA.

The post How to Combine Ukraine’s and Israel’s Drone Skills appeared first on JINSA.

Click here to read transcript.

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are converging. Iran has supplied Russia with drone technology battering Ukrainian cities while threatening U.S. forces and partners across the Middle East—and the connection runs deeper: Russia has provided Iran with satellite imagery and targeting intelligence, including the locations of U.S. warships and aircraft, enabling more precise Iranian strikes against American forces in the region.

Ukraine has begun striking back, hitting Iranian and Russian cargo vessels in the Caspian Sea on July 25 to disrupt Iran-Russia supply lines. Days later, both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were in Washington for separate meetings with President Donald Trump—and the two spoke in person with one another for the first time in three years. Separately, Ukraine has emerged as the world’s leading laboratory for drone warfare and countermeasures—experience increasingly relevant to Israel, which has struggled to adapt to the fiber-optic drone threat now deployed by Hezbollah in Lebanon that was first pioneered on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The convergence raises urgent questions for U.S. strategy: how should Washington coordinate across two theaters increasingly shaped by the same adversary network? Can Ukraine and Israel translate their shared interest in countering Iran into meaningful coordination? And what does effective deterrence look like when the Iranian threat spans both fronts simultaneously?

To discuss the growing links between the Middle East and Ukraine wars and the implications for U.S. policy, JINSA hosted an exclusive webinar featuring JINSA Generals & Admirals Program Participants Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.), former Commander, U.S. European Command, and Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.), former Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command.

JINSA Associate Director of Foreign Policy Ari Cicurel moderated the webinar.

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.) Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.) is the former Commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe. He participated in JINSA’s Generals and Admirals program in 2018. Click here to read full bio

Lt Gen Thomas W. Bergeson, USAF (ret.) Lt Gen Thomas W. Bergeson is the former Deputy Commander, U.S. Central Command. He participated in JINSA’s Generals and Admirals program in 2023. Click here to read full bio

Ari Cicurel

Ari Cicurel has been Associate Director of Foreign Policy at JINSA since January 2025.

Click here to read full bio

The post Watch Webinar – Iran’s Two Fronts: Growing Links Between the Middle East and Ukraine Wars appeared first on JINSA.

PANELISTS

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

Former Commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe; JINSA Generals and Admirals Program Participant 

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.) 

Former Deputy Commander of U.S. Central Command; JINSA Generals and Admirals Program Participant

The discussion was moderated by JINSA Associate Director of Foreign Policy Ari Cicurel.

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Ari Cicurel

I’m joined by General Philip Breedlove, the former commander of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and Lieutenant General Thomas Bergerson, former deputy commander of U.S. Central Command. Both generals participated in JINSA’s Generals and Admirals program. If you have questions for the panel, as always, please submit them through Zoom. General Breedlove, I’ll start with you.

Ukraine recently struck Iranian and Russian cargo vessels in the Caspian Sea to disrupt the supply line between the two countries. How significant was that operation and is that something Ukraine can sustain to disrupt Iranian logistics over time?

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

Well, first, thanks for having me on, and it’s a pleasure to be on with my friend Tom. This started not as a part of any sort of a contra-Iran cooperation, but what you have seen in the beginning was that Ukraine essentially has now taken the Black Sea from Russia, and Russia’s fleet has had to go to the extreme eastern edge, and even there, Ukraine is hitting their ships and things that are there. Recently, you saw them hit a submarine, which is a big deal.

The next extension is this new growth in Ukraine’s ability to precisely target and to reach out and touch with indigenously built equipment as well as some equipment acquired from the Europeans.

Russia has now moved its smuggling and shipping of banned items into the Caspian Sea and the corridor that comes down out of Russia. So, now it’s a natural extension, Ukraine is reaching out and touching those military items that are traveling on those two bodies of water, and it so happened that some of those shipments were Iranian and Ukraine is not shy to hit, no matter who sends it.

So, I think that Iran is taking umbrage, and now we see that this is probably going to grow into a wider part of both the Ukraine and the U.S.-Iran conflict.

Ari Cicurel

General Bergeson, from the U.S. Central Command perspective, how is Iranian drone technology transferred to Russia and their growing weapons production cooperation looped back to threaten American forces and partners across the Middle East?

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

Well, Ari, thank you for the opportunity to be on this panel with my good friend General Breedlove. Let me just do a quick background scene setter, if you will, and then we’ll get into your specific question, if that’s okay with you.

Ari Cicurel

Absolutely.

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

Iran and Russia, post-Soviet Union, have had mutual interest and alignment. In contemporary times, when I was at Central Command, I saw a lot of cooperation between those two nations, specifically in Syria, in support of the Assad regime. The Russians had interest in maintaining an airbase at a port on the Mediterranean, principally fighting in support of Assad. Taking on ISIS and other those actors there, while Iran really had the interest in maintaining an open corridor through Syria to supply Lebanese Hezbollah.

Although they did align on counter ISIS activities a little bit. We came up against Russian forces; U.S. forces did on a couple of occasions. The Wagner Group, when they tried to cross the river and kind of affect our forces operating in northeast Syria, so there was some contact there. Most of the time we agreed to kind of go along and get along. We deconflicted more than we cooperated on missions, but there was a nascent capability for the one-way attack drones that the Iranians had developed that they started to use in northeast Syria.

These drones sometimes threatened U.S. forces but mostly went after other kinds of targeting. We saw the development then and the cooperation between the Russians and the Iranians at that time. Fast forward to today, their technology has advanced quite considerably, and I would say there’s a lot of learning that’s been occurring both the Russian and Ukraine side, as far as the building of these types of one-way attack drones, their ability to survive heavy electronic jamming environments, satellite jamming environments, and still be effective for navigating and striking the targets, the distances, the altitudes they’re able to achieve now. I think they’ve come a long way, and so we can see that technology sharing has been occurring.

The Russians and the Iranians signed a Comprehensive Strategic Security Agreement in January 2025. It’s not a mutual defense treaty per se, but it did expand the scale of the sharing that was happening from a technology perspective. What we’ve seen today is clearly the Iranians and the Russians are supplying each other with various technologies that are being used on the battlefield against Ukraine. I think Ukraine is in their interest to try to interdict that to the extent they’re able to.

So, and what we’ve seen the Russians provide is the quid pro quo here is I think superb intelligence that the Iranians don’t possess on the location and disposition of U.S. forces and other forces in the region. Specifically, attacks like Prince Sultan Air Base were very precise and methodical. Maybe even more concerning the recent attack on the airbase in Jordan, which went after our air defense artillery sites, again requires a lot of knowledge of those systems’ capabilities, how to avoid them, and then hit them with a lot of accuracy.

So, that’s where we stand now, as I see it. I’ll turn it back over to you, Ari, for any follow-up questions.

Ari Cicurel

Thank you. My next follow up question was going to be on the satellite intelligence and the aid that Russia provides, which clearly seems to be something Iran would not have to be able to do on its own.

General Breedlove, Ukraine has struck Russian defense industrial facilities. The U.S. and Israel have done the same in Iran. What effect do those campaigns had on Russians and Iranians’ ability to produce weapons, and what effects will that have? Not just amid the current war and the current fight, but their abilities are going forward.

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

Well, this is a wide-ranging question, and I’ll start first with Russia, and then move to Iran. Russia has a plethora of missiles, and so they are firing rather indiscriminately into target sets in Ukraine that we would describe as counter value, not counterforce. Meaning, the counter value gets after many civilian interests, civilians, and the things that support the industry and civilian support of the war. Most believe that Russia’s goal is not so much to defeat their military because they’ve run slam into a wall trying to do that, but they’re now trying to separate the Ukrainian people from the Ukrainian leadership and get them to try to rise up against their government.

What we see now is Ukraine starting a campaign that is very similar to that, with one major exception, we do not see Ukraine purposely targeting civilians, but they are targeting civilian institutions to create unrest.

For instance, this whole wild berry campaign. Wildberries, which is the Amazon of Russia, has had some impact and handled some movement of goods to support the war, but the attack on the wild berries, most of us believe, is really about taking that away from the Russian people. This gets after the Russian population without killing people, they’re taking away these goods, services and capabilities. Wildberries are a weird thing where individual investors have their goods in the system, and when those goods are destroyed, there is no recompense to the investors and so forth. These campaigns are creating a lot of problems for Putin in the rear and all of us understand that the campaign against the petrochemical industry in Russia is significantly affecting the Russian population but it is also extremely infecting Russia’s ability to push force forward and sustain that force.

I think that what we see out of Russia is a I hate to call it strategic, but a fairly wanton attack on the people of Ukraine, trying to separate them from their government and Ukraine out of a lesser number of weapons is being very tactically targeting against two chains that are having a great effect in Russia.

Now going over to Iran, I think I do not have any special insight, Tom may. I believe that we have done a pretty good job of getting after the industrial capacity to rebuild. I don’t think we have done as well on getting after the stored missiles that are in hand in Iran, and we probably are learning that we didn’t have a good count on how many they had before because we have been striking hard, precisely, and with good effect on that target set. But they still have the capability to reach out and strike, and I believe that Iran right now, specifically the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], their mantra is we don’t have to win this war; we just have to survive to perpetuate the war. The Lloyds of London and the voters will win the war for us. I think we have got to consider: Are we using our ways and means in the appropriate manner to get to the ends that we want?

Ari Cicurel

General Bergeson, I’ll turn over to you as just a follow-up on that. When you look at the lessons from Ukraine and Iran, what are your takeaways for how we should be thinking about preparations for offensive operations, and I guess the utility of how we consider whether our strikes will be successful.

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

I agree with General Breedlove in that going into the conflict with Iran, you know what you know, but you also know you don’t know everything. So, we have very good intelligence to be able to locate missile launchers, which for ballistic missiles is key. I think the Israelis did a super job of targeting those because you have far fewer launchers than you have missiles. If you can take those out, you can really get a number of effects by doing that. But these one-way attack drones, which are relatively small and storable in any number of warehouses or caves, I think we had some idea about where they were, what their numbers were.

But the war actually starts to reveal where they may be emanating from. You learn while you’re fighting. I think that during the first three weeks, we’re really focused on hitting some strategic targets, but also just gaining and maintaining a level of air superiority, so we have more unfettered access to that region. That was our principal targeting effort and going after the known storage locations and manufacturing facilities. I think we stopped a little bit soon because I think we probably have learned more and were ready to kind of continue on to the next phase of the campaign and start targeting some of the other storage sites that we weren’t aware of, and we still probably don’t know where they all are. But we are learning more everyday as we watch their operations. But they had quite an extensive capacity, as we’re seeing. I think they’re being resupplied, and also, they’re also supplying Russia, which is really if they’ve got enough to supply Russia during this fight, then they’ve got plenty built to impose the kinds of costs that they’re trying to do throughout the region. I guess it’s an age-old lesson, which is you go into war with what, but you’re going to learn and adapt because the enemy has a vote, and you have to be willing to adjust your campaign based on the realities on the ground and what you see.

Ari Cicurel

Similarly, on lessons learned, General Bergeson, Iran dispersed its missile and storage sites through dozens of underground sites that are harder to hit. Russia has tried hardening some of its plants, and Ukraine has done some redistribution. You both mentioned the hits that the U.S. faced on sites in the Gulf.

As you look at our posture and our force protection in the region, what lessons do you take from these wars and how we should be posturing ourselves in the Middle East going forward?

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

When I was at CENTCOM, we had and the commanders that I served, were advocating with the U.S. government for building out a Western defense network, right? We knew that we were perfectly postured to fight Desert Storm, but we were not postured to fight Iran in any way, shape, or form.

There was a real effort to try to gain advocacy for building some air bases, ports on the Red Sea, and kind of shift things to make it less vulnerable. That didn’t happen, and it wasn’t just one administration that didn’t do it. There were multiple administrations from both parties. We recognized that it would be hard, and I think that proved to be true to some extent. Now, I think masterfully working basing in places like Israel has been very effective in creating a little bit of defense in depth there. But we went into this not postured well to fight, and it’s only a lesson if you change your behavior, otherwise it’s just an observation, as one wise general once told me. As we’re looking forward to things like the Pacific or North Korea, for example. Are we postured if we had to go fight tonight in those areas?

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

Let me just jump on that because there is a tough problem to consider and learn from and move forward from here. Russia and we have long thought the idea of a wide distribution of fighting assets was going to be what we needed to protect them in a war. Especially in Russia, their military capabilities, storage sites, command and control, are widely dispersed. In this age of these ballistic missiles and long-range drones, that becomes a problem and not a solution in that now you don’t have enough air defense capability to defend them all. If your opponent understands how to figure that out, they know where the unprotected sites are and guess where the targeting is going to focus. We in the Middle East, for all the right reasons, have a wide distribution of places that we are and capabilities, and we’re learning that can be a hindrance. Russia is learning in a big way that they don’t have enough capability to defend all the sites they have. I’m not saying that the answer is to cluster, but I think we’re going to have to think a little more seriously in the future about what is our capability to defend and how do we distribute our forces and capabilities into areas that we know we can defend. As opposed to thinking that by scattering them all over, we’ve done the right thing. We’re learning that can be a problem.

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

That’s a fantastic point, and I’ll add about another lesson learned. The enemy also has been learning lessons, and I think that we haven’t mentioned North Korea, which is also a party in all this conflict, with forces actually fighting against Ukraine, and they’re developing and learning new technologies that they’ll bring back to North Korea to put more costs potentially on the South. The military training and sharing between North Korea and Iran were apparent in the dispersal and the use of tunneling. I don’t think there’s probably not a country in the world that’s better at concealment, deception, and protection than North Korea, and so I think a lot of that sort of thing that the Iranians have done, they’ve learned from the North Korean playbook.

Ari Cicurel

I wanted to recommend two reports to the audience based on these points. One on the Western basing network concept, former CENTCOM General Frank McKenzie wrote a report for JINSA, U.S. bases in the Middle East Overcoming the Tyranny of Geography, that pointed out a lot of the problems we’ve seen with the Iran war on the vulnerability of our basing and also recommending basing in Israel. The second, Base for Success, U.S. Basing Options in Israel, was co-authored by General Berguson, recommending U.S. deploy aircraft to Israel shortly before, of course, the U.S. did that for this war.

General Breedlove on the lessons learned from these wars, by all reported accounts, the U.S. has used a large number of its both offensive and defensive munitions in the Iran war, alongside sending munitions to Ukraine, and that taking up a lot of the defense industrial base, which is already overtaxed.

What are your takeaways from the rate of munition use in a fight against a country like Iran and where our current defense industrial base is to put out the level of munitions that we need?

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

I’m going to answer the second part because this is something I’m engaging in as I’m a local part-time professor at Georgia Tech. The response of the American industrial base, we have spent a period in the 1980s, 1990s, early 2000s, where we were very much acting like a nation at peace, trying to find relationships with former enemies or oppressors, and during that time, our contracting and our acquisition models changed immensely.

During that time, not only were we buying less and living off the fat of the Reagan years and things, but we were beginning to limit the way that contractors could act. Most of the time because there had been bad behavior somewhere where somebody was abusing a contract. We have a lot of laws that literally restrict building excess capacity into a contract. You can’t buy 100 widgets and build on the same contract to build a line that could build 200 widgets. You will be taken down legally for something like that. What we have done across the past several decades is creating an acquisition model and a relationship with the primes and industry. Whereby we do not invest in excess capacity. Now we get to a point where, as you set it up, Ari. We need some excess capacity, and we need to start doubling, tripling, and quadrupling in some cases prime end items, and the excess capacity is not there.

The first statement I would like to make about this is: we, meaning DOW, Congress, and the executive branch, have got to figure out how we incentivize but retain oversight of industry such that they can invest in excess capacity. If we just sit here buying 25 packs a year, don’t build capability to go well beyond that. That number is a foolish number. I’m just throwing it out there. The fact of the matter is that we have got to figure out how we permanently incentivize the major primes or industries such that we can surge.

The days of Rosie the River Riveter are long gone. These end items are not built like that. The way the supply chains are built is not like that, and we’ve got to develop capability and capacity. We learn that lesson every single day.

Okay, now Ari, remind me of the first part of the question.

Ari Cicurel

Yeah, thank you. You answered most of it. As a reply, the rate of fires that have occurred in these wars, does that surprise you? Is that what you would expect from these kinds of conflicts, and I guess that probably affects the production levels that you talked about.

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

Well, it goes back to what we were answering a minute ago, and Lieutenant General Bergeson hit it right on the head when he said we’re perfectly prepared to execute Desert Storm, but we’re not perfectly prepared to fight the fight we see in front of us today.

We have second-tier militaries with thousands and thousands of drones. They are uninhibited. We have lost deterrence. They are uninhibited from firing those things at an opponent, and we’re not prepared for that. We still have, I’m sure, quite a few weapons because we still have to remember there’s a couple of war plans out there that we still have to answer to if called, but the fact of the matter is, our magazines are thin because I do not believe we prepared for what we’re seeing. Widely dispersed U.S. and other allied forces and limited air defense domes to cover them. We have to think through both sides of this problem.

I would also offer that one thing that hurts us in this fight is our country, and probably rightfully so, but just call me a fighter pilot and get over it. Our country thinks of defense. We think of defense. A good fighter pilot will tell you that the best defense is a missile in the air headed at the bad guy. He’s not focused on you when he’s dodging your missile, and so we need to be thinking about our ability to shoot the archers rather than focus on shooting down the arrows. We need to get after them early in a conflict, and we need to make sure we’re not limiting ourselves.

How many years? The Ukraine-Russia war. People keep talking about it as it has only lasted nearly five years. It’s 14 years old. It started when I was the saucer and so how many years have, we told Ukraine they cannot fire into Russia while Russia was firing hundreds, 1,000s, and now 10,000s of missiles in Ukraine? We should have been attriting Russian forces in the spring of 2014, and what we would be facing now would be very different.

Ari Cicurel

General Breedlove, on that point. Ukraine has become the world’s laboratory for drone warfare as well as counter-drone defense. What lessons from that battlefield do you think are most applicable to how the U.S. forces should be either equipping themselves or engaging in combat?

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

I heard one of my fellow SACEURs reporting on TV the other day reporting after he had just come out of Ukraine. Last time I was over there, the numbers were less, but he said that now the drone kill zone is 70 kilometers deep. It’s 35 kilometers either side of the line of contact is what they’re calling the drone kill zone, and the whole concept of how a land force fights in that drone kill zone has changed.

Here’s something we need to do. I believe we need to swallow our pride and adopt a lot of things that Ukraine can teach us about how we fight in that zone. I’m going to sound like I’m speaking out of both sides of my mouth, but I also think that there are some bad lessons being learned. I think that part of why drones have grown so fast in the Ukraine-Russia conflict is because both air forces, both have failed.

The Ukrainian air force was small, and we had diminished it as a part of the agreement in 1994, where we took their forces away from them, but their air force was small and old and fought valiantly, but could not hold air superiority over it, even their own forces. Russia’s air force, which we thought was maybe third or fourth best in the world, still can’t hold air superiority over their forces in the theater. Both air forces have failed some of the basic tasks.

Compare that to what we saw in both incursions into Iran by Israel and the United States. Israel and the United States, went in and very rapidly created air superiority over more than half of the nation, air supremacy over about a third of the nation, and what that gave us was an immediate ability of freedom of action to attack, and that incursions both were a drone, which is not talked about much, and a fixed wing set of attacks. Drones had a big role in taking down the defenses of Iran, and of course our fixed wing speed capabilities, both in the form of F-35s and then the block 50 F-16s, they rapidly accomplished. You saw how much easier it was for us to do what we needed to do. If we had chosen to put boots on the ground in Iran, we had set the stage for that in what we did with the air forces of Israel and the United States.

We need to not learn the lesson that drones are the only air force of the future. We have demonstrated in Iran what happens when drones are used well and fixed wings are used well, and we have seen what freedom of maneuver we gain by getting air superiority, which once again I’ll stomp my foot. Russia has not established it in Ukraine and Ukraine sadly cannot yet establish it.

Ari Cicurel

General Bergeson, when you look at the air domain and the acute problem that drones do cause in the ways they’re hitting targets, Hezbollah has deployed first-person view FPV drones and fiber optic drones, just as being used in the battlefield of Ukraine. What would it take to close the gaps against those kinds of threats? Is the U.S. doing enough to work on those kinds of problems?

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

First, I agree with everything General Breedlove just said about munitions capacity and then the lessons to learn and to not learn in the Ukraine Russia conflict. I think you can’t defend everything. You can’t defend every square inch of your territory. There’s just not enough to go around.

When you start a conflict, we build a list of the priority locations that we want to make sure we can defend. General Breedloves points out what is opposed to dispersing widely, maybe aggregating to make sure you can defend a certain area if is a better way to go. So, you can have volumes of fire in defense. But that said, these are the new weapons that are out there that are effective to some extent. They don’t have a ton of kinetic kill power, but they still can pose a problem.

I think the Ukrainians have developed some interesting drone intercepting capabilities, et cetera. It’s all about detecting, identifying, and then intercepting, and it’s a very complicated little busy airspace to be able to do those three things effectively. There’s a lot I think we can learn from the Ukrainians in that regard. Look at the Israelis who have learned a lot of these lessons. There’s a lot the U.S. and other nations can learn from the way that the entire iron dome and multi-layer defense of that nation has been very effective. Now you can’t use that same paradigm over the United States, for example, but you get the idea.

I also think that we completely agree with General Breedlove that we can’t mistakenly believe that this is the new way of fighting wars. It’s the “better way of fighting wars.” We’re back in World War I with fancier artillery. That’s really what it is. Most of these drones are short range, low kinetic kill power, killing a troop or a tank or something like that, very accurately and in large numbers, and that has set up the 70-kilometer-wide World War I trench. We’re just a meat grinder. That’s not a better way of fighting because neither nation really has true superiority, the ability to do an interdiction campaign and prevent the enemy from bringing forces forward. So, that’s where you really win in the deep fight.

When it gets to the closed fight, that’s what you must deal with. But you don’t want to go there as you’re opening your position, and I think that’s what we’re seeing to play out. The army would tell you, “Well, it’s bad armies fighting.” I think if Ukraine possessed the kind of air power the United States did, just hypothesize that this would have been over in the first week when you saw that line of armor stalled due to bad logistics by the Russians. I mean it’s an A-10 pilot’s dream, right? Highway of death.

We’ve seen this movie before, but they had no way of being able to deal with that as an example. So, let’s not learn the wrong lessons here as well.

Ari Cicurel

General Bergeson, Zelensky and Netanyahu briefly spoke in person for the first time in three years. I think they spoke in January 2025, but the first time in person was in quite a few years. Is the United States doing enough to bring together these partners for shared lessons learned? Considering these are a lot of similar platforms that Iranian drones that are being used, and two of its closest partners are engaging in high-intensity warfare. Are there things we’d be doing to kind of convene these partners together better?

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

I missed the first part. You said with Zelensky, and I missed who I met with?

Ari Cicurel

Netanyahu, yes.

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

I guarantee you that there are discussions going on at a lower level. These nations are smarter and they have ways of being able to share information. So, I’m confident that there has been some of this information exchange that’s occurred. Maybe not at the highest levels like that, but at more tactical levels. But yeah, I think we absolutely should encourage this kind of sharing of intelligence, tactics, techniques, procedures among like-minded nations that are both in existential fights against enemies that are similar. Why not courage that kind of sharing.

Ari Cicurel

General Breedlove, deterrence is a buzzword used a lot in D.C. But when we talk about threats that are cross feeders, cross regions, Iranian drones being used in Ukraine. What exactly does deterrence look like against that kind of threat against Iran? How should we be thinking about deterrence?

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

I don’t want to get to a high level here. I’ve started thinking about deterrence now in four buckets.

The strategic bucket. I think that there is still a good regime of deterrence that the folks involved in the ability to throw strategic weights at strategic distances understand that there’s not a lot of good purchase in moving towards that. I think that our ability to deter there is still pretty good.

Where I differ from many people, I believe that the tactical and sub-tactical level of nuclear exchange has lowered a lot. In Russia, every time things go bad on the battlefield, there’s a new story about a new weapon, the Sarmod, or this, or that, or new submarine torpedo that goes across the ocean. There’s always something that Russia is threatening in the nuclear realm to keep the West at bay, and it works.

The last two administrations have been completely deterred by Russia’s threats of involvement, and so I think that the bar and the use of the threat of tactical nuclear deterrence have been lowered and we are at more risk than before. The next thing is conventional deterrence. I think conventional deterrence inside of NATO is still pretty good, but the conventional deterrence around the rest of the world is, I think, really not good right now.

Russia is undeterred outside of NATO, and you’ve seen that Iran is not deterred at all for taking on two of the best militaries in the world, Israel and the United States. In a conventional sense, we are losing deterrence there, and a big part of that is that my kids wear the clothes of this country, I’m not advocating for war. But if you watch America for the last 10 years, the first thing out of an American mouth when there’s a possibility of a conflict is no boots on the ground, we’re not going to have any boots on the ground.

I think right now the IRGC sees that and says, “we can survive, and all we have to do is survive to win this war.” I think our conventional deterrence is drifting.

The last thing I would say, if you talk about deterrence in the gray zone or below the line of conflict, or as NATO likes to say, hybrid deterrence. I would offer to you that there has literally never been any deterrence in that field. We are all getting attacked all the time, occasionally by our own friends. We get attacked, and so we must work as a framework of establishing deterrence in those areas.

Ari Cicurel

As a reminder to everyone, if you have questions for the panelists, please submit them through Zoom. General Bergeson, the U.S. has organized its combat commands in these separate spheres. Do the Iran-Russia relationship, the throw in North Korea, and crucially China as well, do those growing partnerships argue for either a different approach, or could you explain how the combatant commands work together?

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

I think they work very well together in my experience, and you’re never going to get the lines. In the U.S. hegemonic ways of dividing the world up into geographic regions which is what you do in your superpower, you’re going to have seams. But I think we work very collaboratively to fix those things. When it does become kind of problematic, then you can change the unified command plan, and you can readjust. We saw that happen with Israel moving from General Breedlove’s AOR down to Central Command. The time was right for that to happen. I mean they were EUCOM was rightly so very focused on the Russia problem set, and at CENTCOM we were dealing with the Israelis on a daily basis.

It just made sense for that shift to happen. I think there’s still nimbleness in the system that allows us to be able to change when needed but also collaborate on an almost daily basis with some of these combatant commands. We have other non-geographic commands that are supportive, and those are incredibly important. From Cyber Command or Transportation Command, they’re incredibly into all of these combatant commands around the world. I’m not sure if it’s broken.

Interestingly, the State Department alignment is broken up slightly differently. You don’t have perfect alignment between the diplomatic corps and the military. I just want to go back on my pitch quick about the importance of air power and for people not to understand that I’m advocating as like U.S. Air Force air power. When I talk about air power, what America does uniquely is integrating joint fires, so we can integrate into one plan, one attack plan a Navy T-LAM launched from a submarine or a ship 1000 miles away, and an Army ATACAM launched from a closer range, and a JDAM or other error-delivered weapons to create these effects while we have cyber-attacks occurring simultaneously. No one else does that. That’s the difference; it’s the integrating of the joint fires that provides us with the ability to strike deep and hard.

Ari Cicurel

We have a question from [Questioner]. Last week, a video of soldiers wearing what appeared to be Ukrainian insignia and threatening to strike or Iranian targets spread on social media. Some have said it’s a Russian fake. I think, regardless, though, how can exploiting Iran-Ukraine tensions benefit the Kremlin? General Breedlove, I’ll ask you first.

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

Anything that Russia can do to distract U.S. attention and Ukrainian attention away from them, they’re going to try it because let’s just be straightforward. Russia is losing soldiers. Years ago, we said they can’t keep doing this at the rate they were losing soldiers then, and they have more than quadrupled those loss rates in the current days and they seem to be just continuing to throw men at the problem.

The fact of the matter is Ukraine’s ability to retake land and now to strike in depth, precisely the supply chains and the formations that support the front is really changing the nature of the war, and Russia needs Ukraine to be distracted. It does not surprise me in the least; that may be an absolutely correct film, but it would fit very nicely into their disinformation campaign.

Ari Cicurel

General Breedlove does the Iran-Russia relationship—I’ll add Iran’s missile fire at Diego Garcia showing what appeared to be longer than expected, changing how NATO should be looking at its Eastern flank over the long term.

Gen Philip Breedlove, USAF (ret.)

Well, I think the answer is pretty simple, yes. Let me just say that occurred a long time ago. You may remember that in the early part of the problems we were having in Syria, Russia fired from the Caspian Sea off ships into Syrian targets. If you just take your string and a compass, and you swing that around, that was a demonstration not of our ability or Russia’s ability to really change the Syrian campaign.

In fact, Tom will probably tell us that the tactical value of those strikes was low. But here’s the message that Europe got: the Russians could sit in the Caspian Sea and range all our capitals. So yes, the ability of Russia and Russia sharing with Iran to the point where Iran can reach and touch European capitals or Diego Garcia or at some point sometime the West Coast of the United States. These are all messages we have to consider in our future job jar.

Ari Cicurel

Thank you. General Bergeson Russia and Iran are not the only two players here. North Korea was mentioned earlier and I just mentioned China. So, where does China fit in with this budding relationship with Iran and Russia going forward?

Lt Gen Thomas Bergeson, USAF (ret.)

When it comes to Iran, China is perhaps their most important strategic partner in many respects. There’s clearly been a deepening of the relationship between Russia or China. We’ll find out at some point whether that was a bad deal that Putin made. Did he sell his soul or not?

They are clearly key players and are experiencing a little bit of Schadenfreude right now. Just to enjoy the suffering of others as they see the U.S. again look like we’re sort of strategically trapped to some extent, with the Strait of Hormuz, but China at this point needs oil to be flowing again from Iran. They built a tremendous oil reserve, but that’s not unlimited, and so they need to get that energy back. That also helps us because it’ll hopefully push a little more pressure on Iran circuitously through China, which is probably in some ways a more effective diplomatic actor than are we right now in that region. China is very important in all this.

Ari Cicurel

Thank you. I will leave it there. Thank you to the audience, General Breedlove and General Bergeson, for joining us. You can find all JINSA’s work on our website, jinsa.org. Please check your email inboxes for our next webinar, we have one tomorrow on Gaza. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day.

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