Angry Planet - Houthi Drones in Saudia Arabia Prove Pseudowar Has Come to the Middle East

Episode Date: October 1, 2019

On September 14, explosions rocked oil infrastructure in Saudia Arabia. Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack and the early headlines stated that the rebel group had attacked the Kingdom with drones. As always, the truth of the attack is a little more complicated. It’s a story of cruise missiles, Iran, and open source intelligence. It’s also a story where how we know what we know is just as interesting as the story itself.With us today is to help untangle this is Fabian Hinz. Hinz is a Research Associate at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey, CA. Hinz is also the author of an excellent post at Arms Control Wonk You can listen to War College on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is warcollegepodcast.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/warcollegepodcast/; and on Twitter: @War_College.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. From what I've seen, I get the impression more and more that the actual aim of deniability is not to stage an attack that cannot be traced back, but just saw enough confusion to achieve different aims. It's like, you're listening to War College, a weekly podcast that brings you the stories from behind the front lines.

Here are your hosts. Hello, welcome to War College. I am your host, Matthew Galt. On September 14th, explosions rocked oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack, and the early headlines stated that the rebel group had attacked the kingdom with drones. As always, the truth is more complicated. It's a story of cruise missiles, Iran, and open source intelligence. And it's also a story where how we know what we know is just as interesting as the story itself.

With us today to help untangle all of this is Fabian Hens. Hens is a research associate at the James Martin Center for Non-Proliferation Studies in Monterey, California. He is also the author of an excellent post at Arms Control Wank that really breaks down what we know about what happened and what weapons were used. We're going to get into some of that now. Sir, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here. All right, so let's get the basics out of the way. It's been two weeks since the attack.

The dust is kind of settled, so to speak. What do we know about what actually happened? So that kind of depends on who you believe and how do you rate the credibility of various actors, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Houthis. But I would say what we know by now is that a fairly large and sophisticated attack took place against two Aramco facilities in Reyes and Atreik. And that these facilities use the combination of suicide UAVs, suicide drones, and cruise missiles. All right, when you say suicide UAVs, are we talking about like off-the-shelf drones with some munitions attached to them, or do we not know? So now it already gets quite tricky. So what we've seen are quite sophisticated UAVs, and they do resemble one UAV model that the Iranians once presented to the public about five years ago.

Okay, so then these are not just like something that you could buy off of Amazon.com. These are designed to be suicide drones. Yeah, these are quite sophisticated drones. So we've also seen like in various conflicts in the Middle East off-the-shelf drones, especially when it comes to non-says. actors like ISIS. The Houthis also have used some off-the-shelf drones. Some state actors have done so, but what we saw being used during the attack against the Aramco facilities, those were quite sophisticated UAVs that you couldn't just buy off-the-shelf. Well, let me ask you, okay, so there was the suicide drones and also the cruise missiles, correct? Tell me about the

cruise missiles. What do we know about those? So the cruise missiles are quite interesting because we first, when the attack happened, saw several pictures in Saudi social media emerge that showed wreckage, like the wreckages of cruise missiles in the desert. Because when you use cruise missiles, some of them tend to fail and just crash into the ground. And back at that point, we couldn't really be sure whether these pictures were connected to the attack. We could say with quite a high degree of certainty that they hadn't been posted before, but there was just a way of verifying they were actually connected to the attack. But then saw the array. We had this huge press briefing where they presented the debris and presented photos of the degree of various systems.

And at that point, we could really be sure that the cruise missiles we saw back then were the same, that these pictures of debris in the solid desert were actually connected to the attack. The cruise missile used itself as a very, very interesting system. We actually saw it for the first time not so long ago. in, let me think it was July, during a Houthi exhibition, where they presented their new cruise missile. The first time we heard about the system was in June, when a cruise missile hit Upper Airport in Saudi Arabia, like injuring 26 people went at the terminal. And then a few weeks later, the Houthis had a large exhibition of their UAV and missile force,

and they displayed and unveiled this new cruise missile, which they called Kuzh 1, so Jerusalem 1. If you compare the pieces of the wreckage, the Saudis presented, the pieces of wreckage in the photos, with this missile, you can be fairly, fairly certain. It's the same. Where did these come from? I believe they're supposed to be reverse-engineered Russian missiles, correct? Not really. So when you ask the question where this come from, it's a bit mysterious, or perhaps not mysterious, but interesting. let's put it like this. So when the war in Yemen started, many of the elements of the army that were loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh joined with the forces with the Houthis because of this weird kind of alliance which they had, I mean the Houthis fought Sala for like almost a decade and then in the end after the revolution, they joined forces again to overthrow the

government, at least for some time until fell apart. And the missile forces of the Yemeni army, which always were quite strong, tended to be loyal to Saleh. So the Houthis managed to acquire large stocks of Yemeni army missiles through that alliance. And then we saw them beginning to use these forces. So in the beginning of the Yemeni war, you had the Houthis using all Yemeni systems from Yemeni army stocks, like the Tocca, like the Ska, these kind of things. Then a little bit later, you saw them starting to use Iranian. made systems. Systems that were clearly

Iranian made, like the Afayon missile, which the Huthi is called Burkhan 2 H, and they used this one to stride Riyadh. And, of course, the wreckage was recovered, and there was this famous presentation when Nikki Haley showed it was actually an Iranian missile, but if you look into the panel

of expert reports, it's really quite clear it's this Iranian system that was simply cut into pieces and shipped to Yemen. But then, and I would say this started like last year, we saw a few systems emerge, in Yemen, which are really interesting because they're new missile systems, and they look kind of Iranian, but we haven't really seen them in Iran.

So, with other missiles like the Féon, we know that missile from Iranian maneuvers, from parades, the Iranians have shown it like a dozen, dozens of times. But now we have missiles like the Badr, 1P or the Badr F, and also the Kurds, which we have seen in Yemen, and they kind of look like Iranian systems. And if you look at the balance of probability and the capabilities of the Houthis, it's very unlike the Behutsis just developed them themselves, but we really haven't seen them being paraded around in Iran. And that's a bit of a mystery. It's, or at least an interesting story. When you say they look similar, what exactly do you mean? This is like a fresh paint job or,

you know, changes to the Finns? Like, what's going on there? So you mentioned the Ukrainian missile, the Ukrainian cruise missile. Iran's cruise missile program is quite interesting. So in 2001, They managed to smuggle several KH55 missiles into Iran from Ukraine. These are like long-range cruise missiles built by the Soviet Union, which primarily were intended for a nuclear delivery role. And the Iranians somehow managed to smuggle using criminal networks, a few of them into Iran. And then they worked on reverse engineering that thing. And it took them a long, long time. So it took them a decade and a half until they presented that first reverse engineered copy of it, which they called the Sumar.

and they had quite a lot of probing the range right. So earlier this year in January, they presented a new version called Hovese, which now has like an acceptable range. And the Quds missile looks a lot like the Sumar. So the design philosophy is very similar. If you look at the shape of the wings, it's similar.

If you look at the configuration of the fins, it's similar. If you look at the position of the engine, it's similar. But it's not the same. It's actually much, much smaller. But the overall design philosophy is the one of the sumar. And if you look at other details of the missile, you can see some sort of like Iranian-style handwriting on it. For example, the booster design. So the cruise missile, when it gets launched from the ground, needs a small salt fuel rocket booster to bring it up to altitude and speed.

And the way this design looks very much like a booster of another Iranian cruise missile, the Iranians presented in 2014. And another thing that is interesting is, The Iranians have this very particular way of marking the fins of missiles, because when you have missiles with detachable fins, you have to attach them before you launch them, and you have to attach them in the right order. So you have to mark them. And the Iranians always use Latin numerals for doing so, which is something they themselves have copied from the Chinese when starting to build, license-built Chinese anti-ship missiles. So it's a lot of these kind of small details, as well as the overall picture of the design. philosophy that very much looks erroneous. And you touched on something I kind of I want to dig into.

I've heard these described as anti-attribution weapons. From what's left, it's hard to tell where they came from and who fired them. Is that true? Is that by design? That is a very good question. I would say that's a hypothesis that sounds very reasonable because there is no reason for Iran if they have developed this cruise missile and there are some indications they have. to not show it in the public.

So it's not a very provocative system compared to what the Uyriens are having. So the Urein's having, for example, the Khoram Shachan missile, and then never showed it for like more than a decade. But, you know, it was because that missile's range is quite large, potentially beyond 2,000 kilometers. So it's a quite provocative system. And then keeping its secret makes sense. But with, like, the goods,

they could just show it if they wanted to. So there must be a reason for them not doing it because the Iranians are usually quite keen on showing up their missile capabilities. And I would say that having a weapon with some sort of deniability is the most likely explanation, especially if you look at the kind of heat Iran took

after the Pryom's fired against Riyadh where there were just reports, yeah, it's an Iranian missile that got fired against Riyadh, and it resulted in, quite some pressure on Iran. So I think it's the most likely explanation for this peculiar non-appearance of these kind of missiles in Iran. Let's back up and go to the big picture for a minute. We've kind of got these three players, right? Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Houthi rebels.

I would add another one. I would add Iraqi Shia militias as well, especially Katahibizab. Okay. Well, perfect. Let's, what are all four groups saying about this attack right now? The Saudis are basically saying this attack did not originate from Yemen. The Iranians support the Houthi claims, and the Houthi claims are that they have launched an attack using drones, and using a few new kinds of systems, it's a bit vague to attack these facilities. The Houthi claims are particularly interesting because they're not very credible. So when the Houthis first talked about this attack, they talked about 10 drones, which is way to be. too little for the number of impacts you can see on satellite pictures. Then they had another press conference where they said, where they kind of tried to talk about

some of the doubts that had emerged after the attack where they said, yeah, we have this new room with this incredible range and we haven't shown to the public yet and that's what we used. They didn't really specifically mention cruise missiles. They showed some fake pictures, which allegedly were taken by their intelligence agents inside the facility as a preparation and alleged UAV reconnaissance. since picture, which also was alleged pre-attack recon. So the Houthi claims don't really live up to scrutiny.

The Saudi claims kind of do, but there are also some inconsistencies. So the Saudis misidentified the cruise missile use. They said it's actually another Iranian system, which it probably is not. But in general, I would say that from what we can corroborate, the Saudi claims look quite authentic. From the side of Iraq, we haven't really heard that much. There were denials that the attacks had originated in Iraq. And currently, from what you can understand, from media leaks, the Americans, the U.S. intelligence community is tending towards the explanation that they came from Iran proper and not from Iraq. It's previously also discussed as a possibility.

What's the evidence either way that they originated in Iran versus they originated in Iran? Now that's really, really difficult because I would say we don't have hard evidence where they originated from the form of like a smoking gun. When it comes to the range of the drones and the cruise missiles, it's difficult to calculate. But it seems more likely it came from that direction. There are other data points which indicate it's more likely they came from there. But we haven't seen a publicly released smoking gun evidence yet. There's a large balance of probability pointing us towards that. direction. But in the end, as I said, there is no smoking gun in the public yet.

Well, there's been, it's been, this is one of those things where it's kind of down to, like, grainy videos posted on Twitter, right? And Kuwait was investigating. And then there was, I believe, some footage of something leaving, uh, the area of Iraq in the middle of the night at the time of the attack, correct? Yeah. So this, this is actually a very interesting videos. So you can see someone standing in the westernmost part of Kuwait, close to the border with Iraq and Saudi Arabia. And there are these things flying overhead and he's saying like, oh, what's this? It's almost like a plane, but it's not like a plane. It's like rockets or something. And you can hear what sounds like a jet engine. And the problem is, so when you, let's assume

this attack, attack was launched from either Iraq or Iran. There's a high probability that some of the systems might fail. So you really wouldn't want them to overfly heavily populated territory, and you really wouldn't want to have them fly over airspace that is also quite well guarded, at least in some parts when it comes to Kuwait. So if the attack originated from either Iraq or Iran, it would make quite a lot of sense to actually try to avoid as much Kuwaiting airspace as possible. I mean you can fly a little bit over the desert. That's okay, I suppose, but just not fly over Kuwait City and your cruise missile crashing in there. So this video would make a lot of sense, but still it's very, very difficult to just verify actually when the video was taken, what it is showing, whether it has been manipulated.

So again, it's something that contributes to the balance of probability, but it's just very hard to verify. All right, war college listeners, we're going to pause right there for an ad break. We'll be right back after these words from our sponsor. Thank you so much for listening War College. Listeners, welcome back. We are here with Fabian Hens talking about all that stuff that's been happening in Saudi Arabia recently.

It feels like, and I think that this is something that is kind of a recurring theme on this show and something we've talked about, there is a point at which the confusing nature of the attack is the point, not being able to quite pin down where it came from and who it came from

is part of the point. Yeah. Yeah. So this is really, really difficult, especially as a researcher, because let's say you're having this attack. And there are people saying, yeah, it originated in Iran or Iraq, not Yemen. And you have a horrible press statement by the Houthis, including fake pictures. You have images of this debris emerging in Saudi Arabia. You have this video over Kuwait.

You have the Saudi saying, yeah, if you put the debris of the FedExmail cells and the line is all points towards. the north, the impacts are pointing towards northwest, which would be the direction of you invade to weight. So you have all of these data points which on themselves, like by themselves, are no smoking gun and it's incredibly difficult to verify some of them. But when you put them all together, it kind of makes a lot of sense that they came from this direction. And when, what he said, I think is true. I think it's very interesting in this regard to think about deniability. Because when we think about deniability, we usually think like

deniability, like, deniability when comes to a murder, you're going to court and you cannot be convicted. But that's not how deniability works in politics, especially in the Middle East. From what I've seen, I get the impression more and more that the actual aim of

deniability is not to stage an attack that cannot be traced back, but just saw enough confusion to achieve different aims. Like, you might be able to conclusively prove the attack came from Iran, but it might take an investigation that takes like a month, and then the pressure is already gone, the new cycle has moved on, and these kind of things. Then you have a lot of people in Western countries who feel they need to act,

if that's really what happened, that Iran launched a direct attack on Saudi Arabia, but really don't want to, and this gives them breathing space, this idea of, let's say, instead of having to come up with a response, they can say, well, let's first have an investigation. and then things move on. And you have a lot of people who are just very, very skeptical of whatever the intelligence community and the US government is saying, for whom the Iraq War 2003 is still the main reference point. So when you give them a little bit of material to work with to have doubts, it also works.

So this kind of very, very inept deniability can still be incredibly useful politically. It almost seems, and I know we're kind of in speculation territory now, it almost seems as if actually you know what let's back away from speculation territory let me ask this question what is or what do we know about the connections between Iran and the Houthi rebels

so again this is a very very complicated topic so when you look at the Houthis how they emerged they emerged in the 1990s basically some sort of Zaydi identity politics so Zaid Islam and northern Yemen

is a branch of Shia Islam but it's quite distinct from the 12 Shia Islam that you have in Iran and southern Iraq and Lebanon. And in the beginning, there were connections to Iran. So people would go to Iran for studying and these kind of things, which is also quite normal because Iran is a huge center for Shia teaching and Shia learning. And there apparently also was some material support, but it was quite limited. And then in the 2000s, when the Houthis transformed from, let's say, grassroots political identity, the politics movement, into an armed faction fighting the Yemeni government,

apparently this support became more and more. And both Saudi Arabia, which already was very afraid of Iranian influence at that time, and the Yemeni government under Alia Dala Saleh, were very, very keen on exaggerating this Iranian influence. And this situation in the 2000s is still the reference point for many, analysts today. So they say, yeah, the Saudis tend to exaggerate Iranian support. The Yemenis government used to do that. So let's be careful and look at the facts. The problem is that the Houthi leadership by now is a bit of a black box. It's very, very difficult to know what's going on, but I would argue that Iranian influence over the

Houthis has just increased dramatically over the last years. And if you look at it, kind of makes sense, because the Houthis are facing a quite existential challenge. in the form of the coalition that by Saudi Arabia attacking their forces and they don't really have a lot of allies to turn to. They basically have no one except Iran and the proxy is supported by Iran.

So if you look at this kind of situation, it makes sense that Iran would be able to greatly increase its influence with them and you can kind of see it in the way in many small detail. So, for example, if you look at the speeches of the Houthi leader, they have turned into carbon copies of Hezbollah speeches like Nazrallah speeches, exactly, down to the gestures, down to the single phrases. The Houthi TV channel is actually broadcasting from Beirut. I mean, that's quite something.

Then a few weeks ago, the Houthis were giving out a statement where they kind of accepted the Iranian leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, as their own religious. source of guidance, which is quite something. So to me, all the indication point towards the fact that Iran has been able to greatly, greatly increase its influence. And I think the Houthis themselves are quite decentralized movement. So they're also allied with different tribes, former Yemeni army formations and these kind of things. So Iran, of course, is utterly incapable of micromanaging them. But in the past, Iran has shown that they actually not keen on micromanaging their proxies.

have this idea, the proxy is no better. I mean, like, Iran doesn't have lots of information what's happening in one tribal territory in Yemen, if they try to impose this world there, it just probably would fail. But when it comes to the big strategic decisions, I would say that Iran probably has an insane amount of influence. And the kind of strategic weapon systems, the Houthis use for striking the depth of Saudi Arabia, for threatening the UAE, which, have done quite successfully recently, these are all relying on Iranian support. If Iran would withdraw support in these kind of strategic units, the Houthis wouldn't be capital anymore of staging any serious attack against strategic attack against the death of Saudi Arabia. So I think

the Iranians have a really, really high degree of leverage over these units. Whether they actually intend and want to use that leverage is a different question. But I would say when it comes to attacks like that have the potential or that have grave security implications for Iran itself, there is no way these attacks happen without Iranian either consent or actual orders from Iran. This opens up a couple avenues of questions for me. One being Saudi Arabia hasn't responded to this attack, correct? Other than to change, other than to change like security procedures, they have not retaliated. Correct. So there were, like, reports about some airstrikes against pre-Iranian military in the Syrian-Iraqi border.

And there were rumors that it might have been Saudi planes, but again, it could have been part of the ongoing Israeli campaign. We don't really know that. But, well, they haven't had, like, a major retaliatory attack by themselves, no. Why did this attack happen? What was it in response to? Or was it just if we accept that it was possibly? at least carried out with Iran's knowledge. Why did it happen?

So I think the attack itself is not really connected to the war in Yemen. It's not very, like, now that's the kind of spin. Some people give it to the attack, but I would say it's more connected to the Iranian efforts to reply to the U.S. maximum pressure campaign against Iran. And if we look at the kind of attacks that have happened, we can see a clear escalatory letter. So it started with the tankers that got damaged by limpid mines, very minor damage in the beginning. Then you had the tankers that got quite severely damaged by limpid mines.

Then you had attacks against a pumping station of a very important pipeline in Saudi Arabia, which Behoothi's claim credited for, but apparently was done by Kathaaha-Pasbullah using UAVs. And now you have this. So, in my opinion, the Iranians are not in a really difficult situation. So their economy is in free fall because of American sanctions, which have proven to be quite effective at hurting the Iranian economy, but not necessarily quite effective when it comes to achieving political goals. Whatever these political goals might be in the current US administration, there's also lots of confusion about that. and Iran is really in a position where it's very difficult to reply to these kind of measures. There are some stuff you can do with the JCPOA, like reverse some of the limitations of the JCPOA,

when it comes to enrichment and quantities in these kind of things. But, and that's, in my opinion, very clear from the speeches Iranian leaders give. They are very sure that Donald Trump and his administration, don't want to go to war with Iran. They're really, really sure they don't want to do that. And this reluctance, in my opinion, in their view, opens up the avenue to stage limited military attacks as a form of responding to the pressure and gaining leverage again.

Okay, so it's them, it kind of, that makes sense to me. It kind of makes sense with everything else we've been seeing over the past year or so, that Iran is flexing to make sure everyone still understands that they are a power in the region and that they can reach out and they can hurt American allies. Yeah. The other thing that I find quite interesting is when you listen to the speeches by Iranian leaders, they seem to have this impression, and they're probably not wrong about this, that Donald Trump is not a traditional politician, but he's more of a businessman.

He thinks the way he sees the world is less in terms of strategy, geopolitics or something, but in a very, his analytical framework is very, very much the one of a businessman. And they have this idea that if oil prices rise high enough, that might threaten his reelection. And I have a feeling they really think that this is the way, this is the threat they can also use to really gain leverage over Trump and scare him to some degree. And all of the attacks that happen follow a certain strategic logic. So when you had the tankers attack of Fujeda, okay, let's first look at like how does Saudi Arabia export oil? Like, they can export it through the Persian Gulf,

and Iran can cause havoc in the Persian Gulf. That's using its asymmetric naval capabilities, anti-ship missiles and stuff like that, naval mines, mini submarines. That's quite clear to everyone. But they have a few other options. They can use this pipeline, which got attacked. They could use the port of Fujaira and the attacks against the tankers happened there. And all of these attacks seem to follow the logic that Iran wants to demonstrate that it can

really, really mess with Saudi oil exports if it wants to and really damage them. And the latest attack went a little bit further probably. It did not only show that Iran could do it, but Iran already did it to some degree. So I would say it's trying to gain leverage. through limited military measures, but also trying to leverage Iran's capability to disrupt oil flows by showing they could do it on a much larger scale on the history. And it also shows, and this is maybe a question I should have asked earlier, but we can jump into it now. it also shows the weakness of Americans Patriot missile defense systems, right?

Because what were they doing when these attacks happened? So there are a few issues to that. So the first is that they were not really expecting an attack coming from the north, at least not one that is so massive. So they were not really defending against that. The other thing is it's very, very difficult to defend against a combined cruise missile and UV strike. I mean, these systems can just change course. Unlike most ballistic missiles, they can just

change course very easily. They can evade lots of defense systems. And in a country, as large as Saudi Arabia, it's just very, very difficult to defend against this kind of threat. You basically need some sort of point defense with low-flying cruise missiles and UAVs, and putting that all over Saudi Arabia is basically impossible. So you have to concentrate it on on vital facilities, which the facility in uptake pretty much was. So it's still a failure. But we also shouldn't underestimate how difficult it is to defend against these kind of attacks. Speaks to another question.

This is like betraying my ignorance of weapon systems. When we talk about suicide UAVs and cruise missiles, what's really the difference between them? they're both basically remote controlled munitions, right? Yeah. That is actually a very, very difficult question because these people would always say like suicide drones are a poor man's cruise missile and that's true to some degree.

In the end, the boundaries are really, really blurry. Like in general, people would say the cruise missile is more sophisticated. It might have like terrain falling capabilities, is using a jet engine or, Turbofentgen, and as soon as well, suicide drones usually tend to use simple piston engines and these kind of things. But it's not really clear anymore. So it's basically a blurred bomb in the rebad now. You know, we were talking about like how hard it is to attribute certain attacks in the fuzzy nature of these things.

What do you think that this attack and the response to it says about the nature of war? now. Has it changed? Yeah, definitely. Okay. So no longer seems like it's about taking and holding territory anymore. I would say, what I find really interesting about this attack is

the role of cruise missiles and UAVs. So I mean, I'm from Germany. It might be different in the US, but when drones first came up, people had lots of discussions about drones, but in the end, it was basically a camouflage discussion about the US

policy of targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders anywhere. It wasn't really about drones. And now we're seeing the actual changes brought by drones. And I would say the actual changes brought by drones is first that you have like a suddenly organizations and armed actors that possess some sort of capability to strike from the air that they would never have if they weren't drones. It's like they would never be able to assemble an Air Force, capable enough to conduct strikes the way they do now.

Of course, like this attack wasn't conducted by the Houthis, but the Houthis have done drone attacks themselves before. And if it wasn't for drones, there was no way the Houthis would be able to establish an Air Force to attack Saudi Arabia. So we're seeing a broadening of aerial strike capabilities that introduced by drones and by ballistic missiles and by cruise missiles. And we're seeing these capabilities that are very, very difficult to stop. And I think that really challenges basic assumptions we had about aerial supremacy before.

Because we always thought that whenever the West gets involved in the war, it will have air supremacy. And there is no threat from the air whatsoever. And that also extends to allies of the West quite a lot. Like if you look at the Allies of the Western countries, they usually tend to have. of really good air forces while countries like Iran, like Iraq and Saddam Hussein and Syrian, these kind of places, Libya and the Gaddafi that did not. So we always operate under the assumption that we're kind of immune to these kind of attacks. And that is changing.

That is changing quite rapidly. And that's something I find quite interesting. Sir, thank you so much for coming on to War College and walking us through all of this. It's a very complicated topic that you handle deftly and really drill down on. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. That's it for this week War College listeners. War College is myself, Matthew Galt and Kevin Nodell, was created by me and Jason Fields.

If you like the show, please subscribe to us on iTunes. We are available just everywhere, Spotify, Stitcher, every single platform you could possibly imagine. leave a comment wherever. It helps other people find the show, and we do like hearing from the audience. We are on Twitter at War underscore College. Coming up, many interesting conversations, Marty Scoveland Jr. is coming back to the show.

He's just back from Europe, where he's been talking to American Special Operations Forces as they train for a very different kind of threat. Next week on War College. Stay safe. Until then.