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PANELISTS

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish

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

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

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

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

Blaise Misztal:

General Ayish, how about you?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal:

Please, General Ayish.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish:

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

Blaise Misztal

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

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

Click here to read transcript.

This week marks a gruesome milestone: 1,000 days will have passed since Hamas infiltrated southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking over 250 mostly civilian hostages. It also marks 1,000 days of war for Israel, on seven fronts, its longest war. In that time, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has dismantled Hamas’ control of Gaza, returned the hostages home, severely degraded Hezbollah, contributed to the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, and taken the fight, alongside the United States, directly to the regime in Iran. While Israel’s military maintains buffer zones in Gaza, southern Lebanon, and Syria, Iran and its proxy network remain poised to rebuild themselves and resume their aggression.

To discuss the dramatic changes in Israel and the rest of the Middle East over the 1,000 days since October 7, 2023, JINSA hosted a webinar featuring JINSA Distinguished Fellow and former National Security Advisor to Israel’s Prime Minister, IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror, and JINSA’s Julian (z”l) and Jenny Josephson Senior Vice President for Israeli Affairs, IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish.

The discussion was moderated by JINSA VP for Policy Blaise Misztal.

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

IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish IDF MG (ret.) Yaacov Ayish is the Julian and Jenny Josephson Senior Vice President for Israeli Affairs at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA). MG Ayish served in the IDF for 36 years and retired in 2016, concluding an accomplished career during which he attained the rank of Major General. In his last position, MG Ayish served for four years as Israel’s Defense and Armed Forces Attaché to the United States in Washington, D.C. Click here to read full bio

Blaise Misztal Blaise Misztal is the Vice President for Policy at JINSA. Misztal previously was a Fellow at the Hudson Institute, and has held roles as the Executive Director of the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States and Director of the National Security Program at the Bipartisan Policy Center. Click here to read full bio

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

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PANELISTS

Gen Frank McKenzie, USMC (ret.)

Hertog Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former Commander, U.S. Central Command

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

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

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

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

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

Jonathan Ruhe:

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

General Frank McKenzie:

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

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PANELISTS

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror

Distinguished Fellow, JINSA; Former Head, Israel’s National Security Council

Elliot Abrams

Iran Policy Project Member, JINSA; Former U.S. Special Representative to Iran

Blaise Misztal

JINSA Vice President for Policy

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:

Thank you for joining us today, I’m Ari Cicurel, JINSA’s Associate Director for Foreign Policy. Today, we’ll be discussing what we know and what we still do not know about the deal between the United States and Iran that President Trump announced on Sunday. According to Vice President Vance, the deal has already been electronically signed, and there is a signing ceremony scheduled for Friday, although the text of the deal hasn’t been formally released yet. I’m joined by Ambassador Elliott Abrams, the former Special Representative to Iran and a member of JINSA’s Iran Policy Project, Blaise Misztal, JINSA’s Vice President for Policy, and we hope to be joined later on by IDF Major General Yaakov Amidror (ret.), a JINSA Distinguished Fellow and the former National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel. If you have questions for the panel, please submit them through Zoom. We’ll dig into each of the issues that the deal covers or avoids addressing. But, Blaise, I’ll start with you. For several days, U.S. and Iranian officials have been contradicting each other on sanctions relief, the nuclear file, the Strait of Hormuz, and Lebanon, and as I said, the text of this deal is still not released. How is each side spinning what is in the deal so far, and what’s your assessment of what has been discussed?

Blaise Misztal:

Yeah, thanks, Ari. First of all, I recommend to everyone watching the great infographic that JINSA put out, thanks to the hard work of Ari and the rest of the policy team. It tries to capture some of the different spins on what is in the deal that we started hearing, I think, as early as Friday of last week, with different reporting from Iranian sources and Israeli sources and U.S. sources on what was potentially in the deal. And I think it’s not surprising that each side tried to spin up the things that were most important to them, with Iranian sources focusing on the extent of sanctions relief that Iran was expected to get under the deal, including, I think, most importantly $300 billion in reconstruction assistance coming potentially from the United States or some coalition of the United States and its partners, in addition to the unfreezing of assets and the ceasing of the war entirely, and the withdrawing of U.S. forces from the region. Meanwhile, U.S. officials who were speaking on background or as anonymous sources to outlets were stressing more what it would force Iran to do, which is reopen the Strait and pledge to have no nuclear weapon. I think even though we still don’t know what’s in the deal, even though it technically has been signed, according to Vice President Vance, as you said, Ari, we’ve seen leaked text of the deal, and it seems like both sides were largely accurate, according to what we’ve seen. The deal, in fact, says that there will be $300 billion given to Iran for reconstruction. Iranian assets will be unfrozen at the same, as well as that within 30 days, U.S. forces will begin withdrawing from the area. The area is not well defined. We don’t know if that’s sort of the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, merely the forces that are enforcing the naval blockade, and that all hostilities will cease, including in Lebanon. And in return, Iran pledges to allow shipping to resume through the Strait of Hormuz. It pledges not to have a nuclear weapon, and it agrees to a set of further talks that are supposed to lead to an agreement in the next 60 days on nuclear issues. In the meantime, while those talks are going on, Iran pledges to maintain the status quo of its nuclear program, which this is interpreted to mean make no further advances on the nuclear front. So, in fact, both sides, based on the reporting that we had as of last Friday, seem to have been giving accurate details, just more focusing on the things that were more important to each of them.

Ari Cicurel:

Thanks, Blaise. I would recommend two JINSA products to the audience. As you mentioned, JINSA released an infographic detailing those contradictory statements. JINSA CEO and President Mike Makovsky also released an analysis that you can find on JINSA’s website about how we arrived at this place with what appears to be a misguided deal after joint U.S. and Israeli military achievements during the war. General Amidror, thank you for joining us. I’ll move over to you. What’s the view from Israel about what has been reported in this deal so far?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

First of all, we don’t know, and we have to be very cautious when we say something about an agreement that each side leaked the details, which is important for it to be leaked and we don’t know what the text is exactly. It is clear that whatever the details are, the Americans are giving up the leverage that they had in the economic side, allowing money to come to Iran that way, another way. The details are not important. Nothing was given by the Iranians relating to the nuclear issue, and the negotiations will begin immediately, and theoretically, they will take 60 days. Don’t be surprised if, after 60 days, they will ask for another 60 days, and so on. From the Israeli point of view, it’s a bad agreement and we should not be misunderstood. Because whatever the details will be, the Americans are losing the leverage that they have. And during the 60 days, they will not have new leverage, and at the end of the 60 days, if they don’t achieve an agreement, Iran will be stronger, and another 60 days it will be even stronger. So, the process is clear. America is losing its leverage, the Iranians are becoming stronger and they negotiate. And from judging both teams of negotiators, it will not surprise you that I think that the Iranian team is not less competent than the American one. I speak very mildly. So, from the Israeli point of view, it’s a bad agreement. There is another element, which is very bad, and we begin to see it now. The Americans gave the Iranians the impression, and I don’t know what is in the agreement, and what was said between them, that the Iranians have a say in Lebanon, and this is against the American interest. The Americans, the Lebanese government, and Israel discussed the future of Lebanon under the American umbrella. What the Americans did is to tell the Lebanese and the Iranians, guys, Iran has a say in Lebanon. You think that you are the government of Lebanon. Very nice but take into account what the Iranians have to say. And they gave the Iranians the impression that they can say if Israel continues to wage a war in South Lebanon, the Iranian army will retaliate. So, it is leading to a totally different situation in which the Iranians lost the proxy leg of their strategy, and now they’re ready to commit themselves to defend the proxies. They believed that the proxies would do the war for them. They lost it. This is no question a huge, devastating situation for the Iranians. They lost the ability to have a ring of fire around Israel. And now they’re committing themselves to defend the proxies, and it might lead to war between Israel and Iran. And I hope that Americans will intervene immediately in telling the Iranians, guys, you’re not the sovereign in Lebanon. The Lebanese will have to take care of it. I don’t know what will happen. I think there is a lot of ambiguity around the region, but perhaps to assess with all the ambiguity the basis of the agreement, the structure of the agreement is a very bad one because the Iranians are getting a lot of economic support. It will allow them to be stronger in every field, and the Americans are going to begin the negotiations without the leverage. What will happen in the negotiations? I don’t know. There is one theoretical leverage that the President said. We have an alternative, meaning using force. You know better than me that it is not going to be easy after 60 days or 120 days to resume the war. It will be closer to the midterm elections in America, and I don’t see America resuming wars. It’s not going to be easy because theoretically, the alternative exists, and it might be used in the future, and maybe the Iranians will be stubborn enough to make the Americans understand, as the assessment of the CIA, that the Iranians are not going to fulfill the agreement. And remember, at the beginning of everything, this war was a result of the decision of the Iranians to destroy Israel. That was the mother and the father of the old strategy of the Iranians.

This is why they built Hamas, and they built Hezbollah, and they launched the war against Israel. It’s not Israel that initiated the war. It was initiated by Hamas, and then by Hezbollah, and of course, Iran twice. So, this is the beginning of the whole story, and something should be clear. The Iranians are now very strong in their words that they are committed to the destruction of the state of Israel. So, the basis of the whole situation in the Middle East, the aggressiveness of the Iranians was the basis, and now they’re saying our commitment to [destroy] Israel is still there. So, I don’t know what the Americans have in mind, how they’re going to change it or not going to change it, or are going to accept it. I don’t understand, and I don’t pretend that I understand. I’m not sure that Americans understand. But let’s see what will happen. From our point of view, Israel will have to keep the ability to defend itself. First of all, the highest priority in Lebanon is to continue the war against Hezbollah. We should not allow Hezbollah to rebuild itself near the borders of Israel, and if what I see is what is going to be agreed between America and Iran, Israel will have to make all the preparations for another war in 10 years.

Ari Cicurel:

I want to come back to Lebanon because we saw some critical developments there over the weekend, but Ambassador Abrams, President Trump carved out a strong anti-Iranian regime policy across both his terms in office. He made leaving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] and trying to get a better deal a feature of his election campaigns. Of course, you had a role in shaping that Iran policy in the first Trump administration. So, to the extent you can take us inside Trump’s thinking, how did we arrive at the Trump administration putting forward this deal? And based on what has been revealed so far, do you think we’re headed towards a good deal?

Elliott Abrams:

I generally agree with what General Amidror has just said. I think one can envision one better turn, which I’ll come to in a minute, but I think basically the president had another option, which was to increase the military pressure on Iran, and he did not want to take that option for a variety of reasons. I suppose he wants to be essentially a peace president. He wants to make deals like this. He’d like to make one in Ukraine. He does not like the idea of exposing American troops to fatal injuries and death. He does have an election coming in November, and he does have, I think, pressure from a number of Arab countries, not all, but a number of Arab countries, certainly from Oman and Qatar, to bring this to a close so that they are not hit again by Iran. The positions of others, particularly the Emiratis, may be a bit different. So, looking at all of this, at all these pressures, he decided he did not want to continue with the conflict, and was looking for a way out of it, if a good one could be found. Now, the one way that I can see that this arrangement isn’t so terrible, and I think it is pretty terrible, but I had been arguing, starting around May 1, that there was no good outcome here, and that what the president should try to do is go for a Hormuz deal only. We will end the blockade on Iran’s ports, Iran will open the Strait of Hormuz, and that’s all. And if he would announce, you know, we’ve obliterated their nuclear program again. If they start to rebuild it, we’ll hit it, but he didn’t do that. He kept talking about how we can’t stop unless we get that HEU [highly-enriched uranium]. The one thing that has occurred to me here is, I agree with the general, there’s no 60-day negotiation with the Iranians. If it’s 160 days, that would be short. So maybe the president figures, you know, I’ve got my Hormuz deal, we’re going to end our blockade, they’re going to open the straight, and we’ll start negotiating. After 60 days, we’ll continue to negotiate. Meanwhile, gas prices go down for the summer, and through the election, low gas prices, peace. Okay, then we get through the election, and then I’ll take another look at it. And if there’s no deal, or if they’re cheating on the deal, I can hit him. First of all, it’s probably not his view. It’s conceivably his view. I don’t think it works in part because the history of this is, in a sense, an arms control negotiation. This is what’s supposed to be about the nuclear program. The history of arms control agreements is that people who enter into them defend them, and defend them, and defend them. I go back to the arms control agreements we had with the Soviet Union, which they violated all the time. When they violated the agreement, there was a huge temptation in Washington to say that’s not really a violation, it’s not an important violation. The president today referred to a minor little drone attack by Hezbollah. That’s the temptation not to want to face up to what you will have to do if the agreement is violated and killed there by the other side. So, I don’t think my other idea here is going to work. I think what, in fact, is going to happen is the Iranians will use whatever monies they get out of this to rebuild everything. Now, some of it is to rebuild their economy, because significant damage has been done to their economy, to their defense industrial base. Some of it, obviously, as happened under the Obama deal, will go to the Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas and Shia militias in Iraq. I think one question we don’t know is how much money they’re going to get. The $300 billion in my view, is an illusion. Whose $300 billion is this? In 2021, we heard about $400 billion that China was going to invest in Iran. It did not happen. How about all the money that’s being invested in Gaza? It’s an illusion.

I think that you can put out of mind. Where they will make money is number one, if the United States unfreezes billions and billions of dollars, and number two, oil revenue. Oil is now going for about $80 a barrel, roughly. Their first tanker passed through the Strait of Hormuz this week. They can now sell oil without a discount if there are no sanctions, so they will make tens of billions of dollars over the course of the next year. They produce 3 million barrels a day. 3 million barrels a day times $80 a barrel, add that up, multiply by 365. It’s an enormous amount of money that they would be getting. Forget the investment. I think the question here is partly, what are the exact terms of the deal, the way the general began, what we still don’t know, which is alarming in itself. The terms are apparently only a page and a half. Why haven’t we seen them? And then, secondly, will the United States be willing to enforce the deal? For example, no tolls in the Strait of Hormuz. For example, complete, I gather, access to all the nuclear sites, and no reconstitution of the nuclear program. I would end just by saying that two of the main criticisms of Obama’s deal were it didn’t cover missiles and it didn’t cover Iran’s support for its terrorist proxies, and apparently neither does this agreement.

Ari Cicurel:

That’s exactly where I wanted to take things next. So, thank you for that, that lead in. Blaise, even without seeing the final text, there have been a lot of comparisons made between this deal and the JCPOA. Based on what you’ve read about it, but also in the way the process is playing out with an initial agreement followed by later negotiations. Do you see those claims as valid?

Blaise Misztal:

Yeah, again with the caveat made by General Amidror and Ambassador Abrams that we haven’t seen the text of the deal, we don’t know what’s in it. I think that it certainly shapes up to be putting the United States on the path to negotiate something that is like, or perhaps even weaker, than the JCPOA. You know, before the JCPOA was struck in 2015 that was the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. We actually had the Joint Plan of Action in 2014, which sort of put a temporary freeze on Iran’s nuclear program and sort of allowed for some sanctions relief and set the stage for both more time for negotiations, which ultimately took a year, as well as perhaps confidence building by both sides that they could trust each other. I think there’s a lot of parallels in what is happening with this MOU to that earlier deal, in that apparently, at least in the text that we’ve seen online, it does have sort of a freeze, and maintains the status quo of Iran’s nuclear program. It does, as Ambassador Abrams said, give Iran some immediate sanctions relief by pledging the U.S. to put waivers on Iran’s sanctions on oil exports, meaning that it can start selling oil on the global market immediately, lifting all of those sanctions. But then there’s other things that suggest that if there is a final deal reached, whether it’s 60 days from now, 120 days or a year from now, that deal might actually be worse than the JCPOA in a couple of ways. Two that I’ll mention is, well, first of all, there’s a similarity. Yes, there’s no mention of missiles, there’s no mention of proxies, there’s no limitation, no suggestion that there’s going to be anything discussed beyond the nuclear program in the next round of negotiations. But then there are suggestions in the text that we’ve seen, if it is indeed the final and right text, that the U.S. is already giving up some concessions, greater concessions than it did in the JCPOA. The first of those is a pledge that the United States will not interfere in Iranian internal politics and activities. So, you know, this goes above and beyond saying, okay, we’re striking a deal with you, we may have our disagreements, but we have a nuclear deal that’s narrowly focused on the nuclear issue. This is in fact pledging that the United States is going to give up any hope of affecting support for human rights or internet freedom or support for protesters if there is another uprising in Iran like we saw in January. And so, this is really a stark turnaround from President Trump in January, saying ‘help is coming’, telling the Iranians ‘don’t kill protesters’, saying on February 28 when he launched this war that ‘this is your time’ to the Iranian people. He has basically done a complete 180, and this deal certainly suggests that the phrase that he’s used at various points over the last year and a half in office of “Make Iran Great Again” is really the operative idea behind this deal. But it gets worse, at least according to the text we’ve seen. If it is accurate, the United States pledges to lift all the sanctions on Iran. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action at least maintained the fiction that there were sanctions for nuclear issues and for terrorism and other issues, and that the JCPOA was only based on nuclear-related sanctions. That is, that the United States was lifting sanctions that were put in place as a result of Iran’s nuclear program, that other sanctions could stay in place, and other new sanctions for non-nuclear-related Iranian activities could be put in place.

This is getting rid of that entirely. If the text is accurate, it puts the United States in a place where it’s pledging to eliminate all U.S. sanctions of any kind and all multilateral sanctions at the International Atomic Energy Agency for Iran’s nuclear program at the United Nations and other international bodies. So, this goes much further in terms of getting rid of sanctions than the JCPOA did, and then there’s the matter of the frozen assets, as Ambassador Abrams alluded to. The deal, the text that we’ve seen, if it’s accurate, is not entirely very clear on what is at play, but it certainly suggests that all Iranian frozen assets are going to be given back to Iran, or Iran’s going to be given access to them, which would again be a step further than the JCPOA went, which only gave Iran access to about half of its frozen assets at the time. So, in a number of areas, particularly as it relates to sanctions relief, but also in this pledge not to meddle in Iranian internal affairs, to give up the idea of supporting the Iranian people. This could be setting up a final agreement, if it’s ever reached, that could be much worse.

Elliott Abrams:

Can I just jump in on that? I think the point about interfering in their internal affairs is important, and it’s important to remember there’s a long history here going back to the Cold War. The Russians, the Soviet Union at that time, were always complaining about American intervention in their internal affairs, and the American response all week was, wait a minute, you’re a member of the United Nations, you’ve signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, you’ve pledged all these things. All we’re doing is holding you to these standards. As the way it works now, I mean, the only people who are not able to interfere in their internal affairs are Iranians, who have no control of their own internal affairs. In the Soviet case, you all know we supported, for example, Andrei Sakharov, and the Committee on Human Rights in the Soviet Union. We supported the then Anatoly Sharansky and the movement for Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. So, again we’ll see if the United States takes the position that we are simply abandoning the people of Iran, which is the way it looks today, that we’ll have nothing to say about Iranian internal affairs. It is, first of all, in my view, a deeply moral position for the United States. Secondly, it’s very stupid, because in the long run, the only solution to the problem of the Islamic Republic and its aggression and repression is the end of the Islamic Republic, and you know this was Ronald Reagan’s view. It was not that he had to have a war with the Soviet Union, but it was that ultimately the Soviet Union would fall, and meanwhile we would do what we could peacefully to bring that day about. Remember, Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. So, if this is the new position of the United States, it’s pretty amazing.

Blaise Misztal:

If I could jump in on that. Sorry to keep interrupting you, Ari, but just one quick point. You know, Ambassador Abrams raised one possible better path that this deal could put us on in his previous comments. Which is to say, all right, we sort of open up the strait, we push the economic pain away, get through the elections, and then evaluate where we are. There was perhaps another potentially available path to the United States, which is to say, okay, we open up the strait, we get past this conflict, but we learned the lesson that the past several administrations haven’t learned, which is the problem that we have is the regime of the Islamic Republic. And even if we can’t solve that problem or kick the can too far down the road today, then this is the point at which we invest in a long-term strategy to bring down the Islamic Republic, like we did in the 1980s and earlier against the Soviet Union, as Ambassador Abrams just said. Right, so we think back in 2009, Iran had the Green Movement, and President Obama basically ignored it because he wanted to negotiate the JCPOA. In 2017 and 2018, there were uprisings in Iran for economic reasons, and President Trump didn’t do much, although there was actually some reportable support coming from Secretary Pompeo and others in the administration, like Ambassador Abrams. At that time, there was a lot of pro-Iranian messaging coming from U.S. public diplomacy, but there wasn’t a lot of support or long-term strategy. In 2022, we had the death of Mahsa Amini and the massive women life freedom movement that was birthed in Iran, and President Biden did nothing because he was trying to negotiate JCPOA 2.0. So this time around, especially after President Trump pledged to come to the aid of Iranians after what happened in January, even if we couldn’t do it during this war, even if we had to accept this deal, we could say all right, let’s invest in the long-term strategy, so the next time the Iranians rise up, we actually have a plan. We’ve actually trained the opposition, we’ve given them the tools, and we’ve found the leaders, we’ve put them in a position to which they can actually execute and bring down this regime that would be our most potent weapon. In fact, as I’ve written with our President and CEO Mike Makovsky, the Iranians are our most potent weapon, and we’ve been ignoring them, and this just pledges that we’ll ignore them further, and I think that is really one of the weakest points of this deal.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

Yes, but all your history of briefing and all of that is not connected at all, to disagree. It is going totally against the spirit of disagreement, so what are the chances that it will be changed? I don’t know, maybe you know better than me, but from what I see, the Americans are not doing what you are telling yourself that America should be.

Elliott Abrams:

No, I think that’s right, and if you look at the case of Venezuela, it suggests that the President is uninterested in this kind of approach. What he did in Venezuela was to decapitate the regime and then call it regime change. He never talks about actual democratization of Venezuela, real regime change. And we see that, I think, also in the case of Iran, so you know we’re trying to find here and there, a ray of light that suggests maybe things aren’t as bad as they probably are, and we won’t know for sure until Friday, I guess, But what we do know so far suggests a deal that is quite disadvantageous to the United States, I would argue to all our friends, partners, allies in the region, Arab and Israeli.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

I think that what you’ve just said about the lesson in the Middle East now of all the leaders is that they cannot trust America, and you will see all the Gulf countries slowly, slowly will go to Iran to pay protection money and to buy the relations between those countries and Iran. Because if this is America, we have to [have] better relations with Iran, and if there is a need, we are ready to pay [for] the protection. It will make a totally different Middle East in the future, if that could be the result of the agreement. I am very pessimistic.

Elliott Abrams:

We saw at least two countries try to do this in a way, Oman and Qatar. Over the last 5 or 10 years, they were the ones who wanted to be the most friendly to Iran. Nevertheless, they were hit badly. I mean, the greatest single piece of damage was Qatar, with the Ras Laffan LNG.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

This is why the Qataris are now going to connect the electricity grid to the Iranian grid. That will guarantee a kind of reliance that no one can disconnect, and you will see it all over the Gulf and maybe the Middle East. The countries are going to buy the protection by paying the Iranians with something.

Elliott Abrams:

Well, I think there they will do more than that—that is, I think you’ll also see an effort to diminish the importance of the Strait of over the next 5 or 10 years.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

Yes, that’s for sure. But they want to bypass Hormuz because they don’t want someone else to control their ability to export oil. You are right about it, but it’s not just oil. It’s the many productions which are connected to oil, and so on and so forth. It is not just oil, and it is not so easy to move all these productions and to bypass the Hormuz Strait. But it is two different issues. One, they will do whatever is needed to invest in a project that will bypass the Hormuz Strait, either to the Red Sea or even to Jordan and then to Syria and to the Mediterranean or Israel and the Mediterranean. But at the same time, and without any connection to that, they will try to edge and to buy protection because they understand that Iran is the strongest force, and the Iranians don’t hesitate, and America cannot be trusted

Ari Cicurel:

On the issue of regime repression, I would recommend another piece out from JINSA today by JINSA’s Sarah Havdala, documenting all the ways that Iran has continued to oppress the Iranian people, even as it faced fire throughout the war. Unfortunately, as it’s been mentioned many times, the Iranian people are not mentioned anywhere in what’s reported on these deals. As a reminder, if you have questions for the panelists, please submit them through Zoom. General Amidror, I’ll come back to you.

Elliott Abrams:

Before you do that, Ari, you just asked for questions. I have a question for General Amidror, and it’s about Lebanon. I mean, the President made a completely ridiculous statement today in France, saying that you know who would really handle Hezbollah correctly, Syria.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

Yes, of course. If you bring these Syrians into Lebanon, what you see is kind of devastating pushing. I mean rape and killing, and between them, these Sunnis, which had been oppressed by Hezbollah for so many years, and Hezbollah, that will be done, no one in Israel will protest. But if you want to see a real genocide, give the Sunnis of Syria the ability to go into Lebanon.

Elliott Abrams:

It’s crazy, and obviously the president is unaware that the Syrians were in Lebanon from 1976 to 2005 occupying and murdering, we think, 60,000 Lebanese over that 29-year period.

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

This time it will be even worse because now they have to make some revenge on the war, which was waged by Hezbollah against them during the West. The war in Syria, it’s another toxic situation. They will kill them all.

Elliott Abrams:

Here is my question: there’s wall to wall support in Israel for continuing the fight against Hezbollah, for preventing Hezbollah from reestablishing itself, for example, in the south of Lebanon. That would suggest that the kinds of conflict we’ve seen in the last few weeks will continue, whatever I think, whatever President Trump says. What is going to happen here? Do you think Hezbollah is likely to escalate the fight, drone attacks, or to simply try in a more stealthy manner to move south toward the border?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

I don’t know. The interest of Hezbollah now is to gain time because they understand that the more the IDF is pushing, they are losing. By the way, in most of the cases they don’t fight. In most of the cases they are retreating, and what we found before is something huge that they are losing. We are going to take all of that and to neutralize these facilities. And geographically we are now in a much better position to go down towards the Mediterranean, and I don’t see how Hezbollah can stop us meaningfully. And this is why the Iranians are so alarmed by this situation, and they are saying today, if you continue to [wage] war in South Lebanon, we will attack Israel directly. Because they understand that it is a battle about the existence of Hezbollah as a military organization. The more that we are pushing, the less they have alternatives regarding only the military. And on speaking about dismantling Hezbollah and all the political issues, which we are negotiating with the government of Lebanon, does it have any ability to do something against Hezbollah? And for sure now, when the Americans make the big mistake, the huge mistake, giving the Iranians the impression that they have a say in the future of Lebanon, I don’t understand, let alone the Iranian issue. Here, you have something that you are promoting. You brought us and the Lebanese to Washington, and said, guys, sit together and find a solution to Lebanon. What do you do, you bring the Iranians in. Which government in Lebanon will be ready to do something in this situation? Who in Lebanon will be ready to put pressure on Hezbollah when the Americans are bringing Hezbollah and Iran in? I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the logic. From our point of view, this is the area in which we should say to the Americans, no, it is our interest, and we’ll continue to degrade the ability of Hezbollah to attack Israel. I understand Iran is big. Your interest is in Iran and the Hormuz Strait. In Lebanon, you don’t have any interest. It is the interest of Israel. We thought that you are with us because you brought the Lebanese government. The Lebanese government wants Hezbollah to be disarmed, not us. What we are doing is the policy of the government of Lebanon, and you brought in again Iran, and you give Iran the position in the future of Lebanon. I really don’t understand it. It’s totally misunderstood. I mean, for all the mistakes that you can say, I don’t agree, but I understand. In Lebanon, I don’t understand Lebanon, let alone I don’t agree, and I think that this is the area in which is very high priority for us. And the reason which concerns us in Israel is that we should continue to degrade the ability of Hezbollah to Turkey, and I think this is the area in which the government should say to the administration, guys, enough is enough. Here is our interest, and we will continue if we have to disagree. This is the area in which we disagree.

Ari Cicurel:

Ambassador Abrams. You took the conversation exactly where I wanted to go back to Lebanon. So, I’ll prompt you with a question on the topic. As you mentioned, the President broke with Prime Minister Netanyahu publicly and in personal terms over the Israeli strike on Beirut. What do you think went into Trump’s decision? Of course, he has criticized Israeli strikes before, but this seemed to be on a different level. Is this a discrete issue, or does it potentially bode potential problems going forward?

Elliott Abrams:

I think it is not a discrete issue in the sense that it’s in the context of the Iran deal, and he wants the signing to happen on Friday. He wants the negotiations to begin, and he wants the conflict to end. So, he is saying to the Israelis, stop. No Israeli government, and I think I’m right in this that if Israel has a new prime minister after the elections this fall that policy toward Hezbollah will not change. And I think actually General Amidror is giving very good advice in the sense that what the Prime Minister and others in the Israeli government should now be saying quietly is we cannot do that, cannot do that. We cannot allow Hezbollah to operate freely in Lebanon, and we will never do that again. And so, if you continue to link this to the Iran deal, then you are creating, you Americans are creating excuses for Iran to get out of the deal, or break the deal, or, for example, to reimpose some kind of constraint on the Strait of Hormuz. So it is in the American interest, if you want that deal to survive to break the connection with Lebanon. Just say what happens in Lebanon will not stop us from the deal that is about the Strait of Hormuz, that is about the Iranian nuclear program, above all. I agree with the General, but I think from the president’s point of view, the linkage to Lebanon is not in his interest, and he does not seem, I think, to understand that if he wants this Iran deal to survive, he’s got to break that linkage.

Ari Cicurel:

We have a question in from [questioner] to both General Amidror and Ambassador Abrams. How damaging is the deal and the president’s rhetoric against Netanyahu for Abraham Accords, given that those countries won’t see an alliance with Israel benefiting them, and how should an Israeli leader who worked closely on the military campaign feel about this humiliation?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

I don’t want to speak about humiliation. It’s not a story between, you know, friends in school. It’s two countries with different interests at the moment. We have to deal with it. About the Abraham Accords, I think it’s the end of the Abraham Accords. No leader in the Middle East will join the Abraham Accords when America is so weak, when the Iranians are so strong. So, if the Americans want to extend the Abraham Accords they have to negotiate in another way, during this 60 days, and to show that America is ready to put pressure on the Iranians, and to show the Iranians that America is strong. I mean, weak America, no one is doing an Abraham Accords extension. It’s a La La Land dream.

Elliott Abrams:

I would say I think that is correct with respect to the extension to additional countries. Now, I think the Accords will survive in the sense that the Arab countries that are in them, will not renounce them or pull out. I think from the point of view of the Emirates, in particular, the cooperation, the military, the high tech, the economic cooperation with Israel is valuable to them. So, the Abraham Accords, as we know them now, will survive, but if we’re talking essentially, I guess, about the Saudis, I don’t see why Mohammad bin Salman would want to join the Abraham Accords now.

Ari Cicurel:

General Amidror, Israel came out very strongly against the 2015 JCPOA with Prime Minister Netanyahu traveling to Washington, speaking in front of Congress against the deal. A very assertive diplomatic campaign against the agreement. Where do you see Israel going, both diplomatically, as well as militarily, going forward as the Trump administration pushes forward with this deal?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

Israel didn’t make anything militarily after the agreement of President Obama. Probably will not do anything militarily now. Israel, diplomatically, the security is totally different because there is not any other alternative within the American Congress that will support Israel. So in this case, it’s a waste of time to speak in the Congress. Israel will have to learn how to secure its interests when the administration in America judges the situation in a different way. We had many years during which Israel didn’t see the situation as it was understood in Washington. We have to learn again to review this situation. How far the disagreement will go, and the steps would be done by the Americans, I don’t know. But at least two areas are very clear. We think that the issue of the missiles should be there, and if it is not in the agreement, it’s clear that the Iranians will produce all missiles, and we’ll have to stop it. I don’t know what will happen regarding the nuclear project. Americans are promising everything, but I don’t know what will happen after we [see] the shift in the position about the negotiation with Iran, and so and so forth. I don’t know what will happen about the negotiation regarding the nuclear issue, and about Lebanon. I don’t know what the Americans promised the Iranians, what the Iranians understood for what was said or was not said by the Americans. Israel should be very clear. There is no connection between the ceasefire in Iran and the situation in Lebanon, and if we have to retaliate, it will be attacked by the Iranians. We will do it with the Americans or without Americans,

Ari Cicurel:

Ambassador Abrams, how do you read the politics of the deal? Both in terms of domestic politics, and there appear to be divisions within the Trump administration, at least reportedly, about who is in favor and pushing the deal.

Elliott Abrams:

Well, there are different opinions within the administration. It’s not a surprise, and everyone obviously wants the president. I mean, he gets advice, and then he makes up his mind, and then people within the administration support the decision. I mean, it’s interesting that Secretary Rubio has been pretty quiet in the last few days about all of this, and the person who we associate with this is the Vice President. It is a bit odd, actually, that the Vice President was in Islamabad, you know. Normally, it would be the Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense, and it’s a little bit odd for the Vice President to be in Geneva, I guess, Friday to sign this. Odd, in part, because it’s not the traditional role of any Vice President, and because there is no equivalent person coming from Iran. I mean the equivalent representative would be Pezeshkian, the president, not the speaker of the National Assembly. So, this agreement is more associated with the Vice President, and, you know, you have to think about that in terms of how does the agreement roll out and what is the impact on American domestic politics and 2028? I do think the president is trying to get this whole subject off the table for our domestic politics. You know, you sign Friday, and then negotiations begin, not in the press. Secret negotiations, I assume, that will go on theoretically until the middle of July, but in reality, can extend well into the fall and past our elections. So, I think one of the things the president is going to try to do here is just get this off the center stage. It would help if he would stop talking about it, which he may or may not do, because as we have seen in this discussion today, and any website you look at, there are a lot of quotations from the president about it, about Iran, about Lebanon. And if he wants less attention to this during our summer and campaign season, he’s got to stop talking about it.

Ari Cicurel:

General Amidror, this is a question from [questioner]. Do you see a reconstitution of the Iranian missile inventory and air defense systems in the near future?

IDF MG (ret.) Yaakov Amidror:

No question. This is the first step that they will do. They promise not to change anything in the nuclear project. There is not any commitment regarding the anti-air systems and the production of the missiles. I’m sure that other countries, including China, will be more than happy to help them, and this is why I said that the negotiations will be done under different circumstances. Because Iran will be stronger every day, and the Americans are losing leverage every day. So, it is the interest of the Iranians that it will be a very long process. That even if the end would be a crisis in which the Americans, say, you know what, we are using the alternative, we will face much stronger Iran, because those, the missiles and the anti-air system will be there. I don’t know how long it will take the Iranians to rebuild the ability to produce missiles and what will be the number of anti-air missiles, which will be brought in from other countries, and will produce inside Iran. But no question every day Iran will be stronger and the Americans weaken.

Ari Cicurel:

Blaise, will President Trump need to submit this agreement to Congress under the terms of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, and how will that shape the politics and policy of the deal?

Blaise Misztal:

Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I want to weigh in on Lebanon really quickly, just because General Amidror says we don’t know what’s in the deal. We don’t, but I’ve seen the same texts now leaked from multiple different sources, some U.S., some Arab. So I think what we’re seeing is probably right, and the very first paragraph says Iran in the U.S., together with their allies in the current war, declare upon signing an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake that from now on they will not launch any hostile action against each other and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. I mean, there’s various ways to parse that legalistically, but if you read that in the broadest sense possible, the United States is committing Israel not to engage in any hostile activities, or even the threat or use of force against Iran, or any of its proxies. Perhaps that’s a permanent end to war. Perhaps that is not a problem while President Trump is in office. Perhaps that will give Israel the wiggle room it needs to beat back threats in Lebanon, or continue operations in Gaza as needed, or do what it needs to do. But if this agreement remains in force and there is a democratic president, this will be used to constrain any and all Israeli action. And I think this is going to put Israel in a really tough spot in its relations with the United States. If, in fact, this language of their allies declares a permanent end to the war on all fronts is in the deal. Now, really quickly, to your question about congressional review. It’s complicated and legalistic. I think, in short, the answer is yes. In 2015, Congress passed a law called the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act [INARA], because they were so mad that President Obama negotiated the JCPOA and did not submit it as a treaty to Congress that required Senate ratification. And so they passed a law saying anything that is an agreement between the United States and Iran, no matter what form it takes, if it’s signed, if it’s unsigned, if it’s political, if it’s a handshake in the back room, any agreement that’s related to Iran’s nuclear program has to come up before a vote in Congress. By my reading, if this is in fact the text of the deal, as it’s been leaked, since it says that Iran pledges to maintain the status quo of its nuclear program. This is both an agreement, it’s related to its nuclear program, and the United States is a party to it. Therefore, it meets the very broad criteria of the INARA Act, which means that under the terms of that law, the president is required within five days of reaching, the text says reaching a deal, to submit it to Congress. I assume that that clock started when he sent his Truth Social post right after the UFC fight on Sunday night, which means about the time that it’s being signed in Geneva, it should be being transmitted to Congress. It has not yet. I think it’s telling not only that Israel hasn’t seen the text of this deal, members of Congress haven’t seen the text of this deal, but they’re, I would say, legally required to get it by Friday. President Trump said today he hadn’t thought of sending it to Congress, but he’s not opposed to it. So perhaps we will, in fact, see that happen. But I will also point out that the law is actually very weak, and maybe Congress can vote against the bill against the deal, but the president can veto it, so the chances of Congress stopping the deal are basically nonexistent. What will be interesting is the conundrum that this puts Democrats in. Do they vote for something that President Trump did, which they’ve refused to do on basically anything so far, or do they vote to bring an end to the war, which was presumably what they’re in favor of? So, it’ll be interesting to see how Democrats treat this, and how some of the Republicans who’ve been outspoken against a deal treat this. So, it’ll be politically interesting, but I don’t think it will change anything in terms of how we deal with Iran, or whether this deal goes through or not.

Ari Cicurel:

Well, we’ve run up against our time, we could talk about this much longer, and I’m sure there will be more coming out from JINSA on this as we do find out more what is actually in the deal. But thank you to our audience, to Blaise, Ambassador Abrams, and General Amidror for joining us. You can find all of JINSA’s work on our website jinsa.org. Please check your email inboxes for our next webinar and future publications, especially as we learn more about the details of this deal. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their day.

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John Hannah, the Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, served as national security advisor to former Vice President Dick Cheney. 

Originally published in the Washington Examiner.

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