Angry Planet - Iran and America’s Complicated Recent History

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

On June 13, explosions—probably from Limpet Mines—hit two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The United States has blamed Iran. On June 20, Iran shot down one of the United States’ Navy RQ-4 Global Hawk drones, basically a fancy unmanned spy plane.In the aftermath, US President Donald Trump considered a retaliatory action, then pulled back. I’m recording this at 5pm on Friday, June 21. It’s possible between then and the time you hear this, the situation will have changed again.Iran is complicated. In the American imagination, it’s become a stand in for a power in direct opposition to the United States. It’s famously part of George W Bush’s Axis of evil and, it often feels, Washington’s Hawks have long wanted an excuse to go to war there.So. Today. Three shows from War College’s past that, strung together, represent a closer and more nuanced look at Iran. All with remastered audio.The first is a look at the strength of the Iranian military during the end of the Obama presidency, and before the signing of the Nuclear Deal. The second is an interview with New York Times journalist Ben Hubbard about Iran’s use of Hezbollah. The third is deep dive into Iranian domestic politics and its role in Syria circa 2018.I present all of it in an attempt to paint a picture of how we got where we are today. America’s relationship with Iran is deeper, bigger, and more complicated than one President in one moment.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.

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I had an episode all recorded and set together about the great power competition between China and the United States, that can sit for a week. Iran is more important. On June 13th, explosions, probably from Limpant mines, hit two oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The United States has blamed Iran. On June 20th, Iran shot down one of the United States Navy's RQ4 global hawk drones, basically a fancy unmanned spy plane. In the aftermath, the U.S. President Donald Trump considered retaliatory action, then pulled back. I'm recording this at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 21st. It's possible between then and the time you hear this, the situation will have completely changed. Iran is complicated.

America's relationship with Iran is complicated. In the recent American imagination, Iran has become this country that stands in direct opposition to all of everything it's trying to accomplish in the Middle East. It's famously part of George W. Bush's Axis of Evil. And it often feels Washington's Hawks have long wanted to go to war there. So, today, three shows from more colleges passed. Most of them led by our long-gone host, Jason Fields. Strung together, they represent a closer and more nuanced look at Iran, all of it with remastered audio.

The first is a look at the strength of the Iranian military during the end of the Obama presidency and before the signing of the nuclear deal. The second is an interview with a New York Times journalist about Iran's use of Hezbollah, The third is a deep dive into Iranian domestic politics in its role in Syria, circa 2018. I present all of these disparate parts in attempt to paint a picture of how we got where we are today. America's relationship with Iran is deeper, bigger, and much more complicated than one president in one moment. Can you tell us a little bit about what Iran's military looks like now and what it could look like in the future? We're talking about this because of the Iran nuclear deal, right?

It's caused a lot of furor. There's a diplomatic agreement that's going to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, but it will also end years of sanctions and most controversially longstanding trade embargoes, which prevented Iran from buying and selling weapons on the global market. So, you know, in the past few weeks, after the deal was announced, you've seen all a lot of news outlets, headlines such as nuclear deals end to Iran embargo worries Pentagon over at military.com. L.A. Times ran an op-ed titled The Consequences of a Bad Deal with Iran, and you even see clickbait headlines such as five Iranian weapons of war America should fear.

But there's scary sounding, but there's a lot of questions. What is, who exactly is going to sell Iran the weapons? Obviously, the answer is Russia and China. But Russia only stopped selling to Iran in 2010. So for Moscow, it's going to be kind of a return to business as usual. It's not like Iran is this huge growth market for their weapons. There's also the question of how Iran will pay for the weapons. You know, they will, of course, get their oil industry back up to speed, but the energy's market now is not what it was even just five years ago. So the better and more interesting questions, I think, are what is the current state of Iranian's military? What are they looking at? to buy. How do Iran's leaders want to use the military, especially in the region? And how does

the, how does that military stack up against Iran's rivals in the region? So I will kind of turn that over to Robert for the, for the big picture of you. War and conflict by nature is unpredictable. So a military is designed to do specific things depending on countries' own perceptions of what the threats are. And for Iran, those threats are principally the United States and its immediate regional rivals. So Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates, you know, and, you know, Bahrain and others. So when we're talking about, you know, the Iranian military, we need to put it in that context. So that being said, Iran has the largest military in the Persian Gulf region. It's about a half a million troops. I mean, the numbers vary because

there's the regular army, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and there's also the besieged paramilitary force. So full-time war strength is actually more than one million soldiers under arms. But it's heavily defensive oriented. So what that means is that they practice what's called a defense in depth in which you attempt to lure an invader in to the country and then slow them down over the length of the country. So almost like if you think of Soviet Union during World War II or Russia and Napoleon, it's this large military cannot project power abroad very effectively, but it's very good at repelling an invader, which Iran did in the 1980s, in a war with Iraq. And many of Iran's senior military commanders are veterans of that war. So they're

very experienced and they know how to fight a conflict like that. But again, when we're talking about projecting power abroad, it's a totally different story. Also, Iran lacks a lot of technology and equipment to maintain a military beyond its borders. Its military hardware is very old. It's antiquated. Much of it dates the time of the Shah, actually, which makes a lot of it American. But sanctions and inability to buy hardware abroad, with the exception of few clients like Russia and China, has made the Iranian military's just hardware a little rickety. So, okay, so the United States used to be the biggest supporter of the Shah of Iran, which actually now it's been so long. people may not, a lot of people may not actually know that.

That up until 1979, we were military allies. We actually helped prop up his regime. We supported them in foreign endeavors, whatever they might have been. And as a matter of fact, it's because we sort of supported this very, very brutal regime that the Iranians dislike us so much now, right? So when you're talking about equipment that's left over, you're talking about stuff from the 70s or even the 60s. Is that, is that right, Robert? The 70s was, there was a big surge of hardware into Iran. The United States sold a lot of, a lot of hardware in the 70s. So we're talking F-14 fighter jets, F-4 fighters, tanks, you know, helicopters. And, you know, Iran is a big, well-educated country.

I mean, and the military has done some pretty remarkable stuff to keep this stuff flying. So I think the total numbers of F-14s, which the United States no longer uses, I mean, this is the famous plane from Top Gun. Has around 43, but about half of them are probably serviceable or, you know, capable of flying. But, you know, it's pretty remarkable. I mean, but some of it's also kind of for show. So they have hundreds of Bell helicopter. I mean, these are air ambulances that you might see flying over your city. But there they've camouflaged them and added rockets.

They call them attack helicopters. You see the Forest News Agency, state-run news agency, promote these as a new attack helicopter, but it's pretty much a refurbished air ambulance in the United States in the 1970s. So, I mean, some of this is for show. You don't want to overstate the utility of some of it. I'd say the Navy is sort of in a similar situation. I mean, it's large. It's the largest Navy in the Persian Gulf,

but it relies heavily on small boats, submarines, and small craft missile boats that can effectively practice swarming tactics. And essentially, it's like a lot of insects all buzzing around you. And you might be able to swat, you know, most of them, but all it takes is a few to get through and they could, you know, sink your ship. So totally different than what, you know, when if you're talking about a Navy, most people in the United States, we're thinking about ships that are, I mean, huge and hundreds of people are on them. And it just doesn't look anything like that, right? I mean, we wouldn't think of it necessarily as a Navy at all. It's a, it's a raiding force is what it is, principally. I mean, it's designed to engage in a war of attrition in the Persian Gulf with its rivals shipping and could pose a threat to the U.S. Navy. But in terms of a conventional threat, I mean, that could project power. beyond the Persian Gulf or even move troops across the Persian Gulf is very limited.

Right. Okay. And I just say, though, that of course when you say shipping, you mean oil. Oil ships, container ships. I mean, this was not unprecedented. I mean, in the 1980s, Iran and Iraq fought. It's called the so-called tanker war in which both Iraq and Iran targeted shipping in the Persian Gulf that was real or perceived belongs to. their enemy. And so, I mean, and the U.S. Navy, I mean, this is something that the U.S. Navy's trained for four years and actually engaged in, you know, in the war. So there was skirmishes between the U.S. Navy and Iran at the time. So you've been talking a lot about that they had, it's a very defensive military, that they don't have the kind of military you would use to project power in the region. But that doesn't mean that they don't.

militarily project power, right? They have, they just kind of do it with commandos. Right. So, I mean, one of the principal like forces, we've seen in Iraq in Syria is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force. I mean, and the way to think about the Kud's Force is like a, like American special forces. And what they do is they go in and it's very subtle. It's covert. And they train, advise and equip local indigenous forces to fight better. And the Iranians are very good at this. This is, in the Middle East, the Quds Force is probably the best force for doing this. But that is a reflection of Iran's conventional weakness in terms of power projection. So let's just talk for a second about, you know, I probably should have laid this out earlier.

but I mean, there are fronts on which Iran is actually fighting right now, right? I mean, they're Iranians inside Iraq and inside Syria, and they're playing a support role like you were just talking about training troops. They're actively fighting as well. Is that right? That's unclear to me. Okay. I mean, we see, I mean, we know that, I mean, it's pretty clear that there are Iranian advisors and even unmanned. drones, but these are like reconnaissance drones. They're small, sort of Iranian-produced reconnaissance aircraft. Again, I mean, the point is sort of make, sort of bolster the fighting strength of the local

forces. Okay, so does this, is there any chance that this deal changes things? Does this change things for the Iranian military so that they would be able to bolster their military and become more a force in the region? Or do they even want that? Is the methods that they're using do they work? Are they happy with the way that their military functions? Do they project power in the region? Well, Iran, Iran lacks a lot of

really key hardware to project power into the Persian Gulf. Iran relies heavily on anti-ship missiles. It's not clear if Beijing or Kremlin would be willing to sell them, but these are the kinds of weapons that Iran wants.

But I think I have to put it in perspective. I mean, okay, so I think you're right that if Iran is able to buy hardware overseas or on the international market, the Iranian military will benefit. But we have to put it in perspective. So the Iranian military spends about upper limit about $14, $15 billion a year on its military. Saudi Arabia has been $67 billion. When you combine Saudi Arabia with the Gulf states, it bumps up to about $90 billion, but six times as much. And so Iran is still going to be at $6 billion. a serious disadvantage compared to its main rivals in the most advanced hardware, which these

countries are buying from the United States and from Europe. Yeah, they'll just be playing catch-up. And there's another interesting thing I saw as I was researching this, that the release of the embargo and the sanctions because of this deal are going to allow Iran to access assets that they had in foreign banks that have been frozen for years. And depending on where you read the information, you get different numbers, you know, about what that's going to be, somewhere around $100 billion. Even with that amount of money, it still would be hard for them. And that's just a one-time, you know, draw if they were crazy and withdrew it all.

But even with that source of income coming in, it would still be hard for them to outspend their rivals in the region, such as Saudi Arabia. Right. I mean, and in a way, Saudi Arabia might spend too much. I mean, there was a report, it was Anthony Cordsman in the Center for Strategic International Studies. And he had a note where Saudi Arabia is buying so much advanced equipment, fighter jets, missile defense systems, command and control systems that Saudi Arabia's military is rather small. And they don't have enough soldiers to field all of this equipment. And so, you know, that kind of puts it in perspective a little bit. That's kind of fantastic.

Yeah, it's not the only country in the region that has that problem. Qatar also is this is a similar story. They buy way more than they can use. Wow, that's a problem I think a lot of militaries would like to have. So, okay, so Iran, do you have any idea to give us some sense? I know that there are some things that they are really good at, right? I mean, they're really good at building missiles, for example. Right.

So, I mean, Iran does have hundreds of ballistic missiles domestically produced, the exact numbers, but it's several hundred. And, I mean, this is one of the really controversial aspects of the P5 plus one deal. Israel in particular, you know, is terrified of Iranian, even conventionally armed ballistic missiles, non-nuclear, just regular conventional explosives. The military utility of these is, I wouldn't overstated, but politically these weapons are very, are, again, terrifying. I mean, the idea of these, not saying Iran would, but could target Israel with conventional ballistic missiles. And that would be, you know, almost like Iraq during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. We saw Iraq target Israel with scud missiles. And it caused relatively few casualties.

But again, it's a terrifying weapon to have these things coming down. It disrupts everyday life. And so this would, so, yeah, so Israel is, you know, being able to, to, purchase missile components, even precision, more precision guided systems for the missiles, something where Iran lags behind, its rivals, is one of the more, I can say, I'm trying to think of the right word to use, not problematic, but they're definitely controversial. Yeah, it's one of the reasons why Israel is so against the deal, I guess, or that's one of the reasons. The idea that Iran will, you know, be able to buy new equipment that will make

their missiles more accurate, they're, of course, then also saying that Iran will be able to build a bomb, then they'll have the guidance system, and they'll be able to pull it all together, right, and attack Israel. I mean, that's, that's at least one of Netanyahu, the way Netanyahu paints the picture. But it's a reasonable concern. I mean, I think that, but I think we need to remember to think about ballistic missiles as less of a military. as having less military utility and more political influence. It provides a sense of leverage. And it's not just Israel, but also the Gulf states.

Now, the trick is that this isn't happening in a vacuum. So Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and the United States are spending a lot of money on deploying missile defense systems. Israel also, you know, has missile defense systems. And so I think that the concern is that you would have a, you could have a, you could have a conventional arms race as opposed to a nuclear arms race, which is progress of a kind, I suppose. You mean you're better off everybody just gets more tanks rather than more nukes? Yeah, okay, I guess so fair enough. Could Saudi Arabia legitimately fear Iran as an existential threat?

I don't know the answer to that question. The question is, in terms of a military threat, you have to ask whether or not Iran could invade Saudi Arabia. And I don't know if Iran could. It may be able to, if the situation in Iraq deteriorated, far worse than it already has. Iran could, in theory, send conventional forces into Iraq and Kuwait, but whether or not they would be able to maintain the supply lines and the logistics. An army has to eat. It has to have ammunition, has to have fuel. And whether or not Iran has that logistical backbone to support something like that is, I'm not sure. It would probably, it would take them at this point several years to build up that infrastructure now,

if they really wanted to project power in the region. Iran can, yeah, Iran cannot move conventional forces across the Persian Gulf without, I mean, in a contested environment, I suppose as the military lingo, in the sense of anybody's shooting back. They don't have enough, they don't have enough transport ships to do that. They have something, but they would need,

so in Iraq, for instance, they would need a government that is amenable, most likely amenable to an Iranian intervention to allow that, similar to, say, the Kud's force, operating in Iraq, you know, whether or not, whether, if a country didn't want the Iranians to be there, it would make it very difficult for, for, for Tehran to pull something like that off. And so, I mean, again, so I think the longer term, in a military conflict with Iran,

I think the longer term threat would be, with a country like Saudi Arabia, would be the threat to their shipping and a threat to their oil, which overture. time could present a real serious problem for the Saudi economy. It kind of brings up another thing, like as I'm thinking about the way that kind of war would be fought. Another thing Iran is good at, along with the commandos, is drones, right? They have a fairly robust drone fleet, not in the same way that we think of in America with reapers and predators, these armed drones, but for surveillance purposes, they make extensive use. Well, I wouldn't overstate it. So, well, the way I would say it would be that,

so Iran has used drones since the 1980s. They have, Tehran has more than a dozen different types, mostly used for ISR, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. There's one called the, there's a very, I'll say a variant of a drone called the Swallow, which is actually a suicide drone. It's effectively a suicide bomb. Now, and, you know, they're used, they've crashed in Syria. So they're getting experience using them. To put it in perspective, the United States has about 300 combat drones, reapers and predators. In Pakistan alone, the U.S. has killed, spent nearly 4,000 people since 9-11.

So the United States has learned that even those best drones have a lot of problems, seeing things on the ground. They're not very good spotters. The images are relatively grainy. It's hard to determine if you've struck a target, what damage you've caused. You really need people on the ground who can coordinate either between the drone or between a drone and a manned strike aircraft. Doing it from the air alone is really difficult. And so Iran has drones, but again, I don't want to overstate the threat from Iranian drones or something like that. In a more conventional war, they would have the same problems they have now, which, you know, coordinating the ground in the sky.

I see what you're saying. Right. And that's a big unknown, I think. I mean, just getting information from the drone to the ground is a huge challenge on its own. And there's a lot of unknowns here regarding Iran's capabilities in this area. Right. And they don't have their own satellites, do they? Although I know they've been attempting to actually launch.

didn't they claim it a couple of years ago that they'd actually sent the monkey into space? I'm pretty sure they did. Iran has satellites, yeah. They did claim two years ago, Jason, that they sent a monkey into space. And it was the second time. They said they had done so.

I wonder if the monkey had such a good time the first time. What kind of, do we have any idea what kind of weapons Iran would want to buy? or that Russia would be willing to sell to them or China would be willing to sell to them. With Russia, the big sort of delayed purchaser S300 anti-aircraft missiles, it's an export variant from Russia. But some of the defense analysts say they're some of the best air defense missiles in the world.

I mean, and that's something Iran can't produce the best stuff domestically there. So they have to import it. And this is principally to deter an air attack from, the United States or Israel. So again, again, defensive. The Gulf states and Israel, they're not just worried about direct attack. There's, you know, when we talked earlier about the training of insurgent groups and helping those insurgent groups inside of other countries carry out the Iranian agenda. I think one way of putting it is that Iran practices what you call asymmetric warfare. So, I mean, the idea is that you use if your, if your, if your opponent has

think of a conventional military, it's like an army and navy and an air force. If you're outgunned by your enemy, then an asymmetric strategy uses your enemy's strength against it. And tries to find weaknesses, which you can exploit either through insurgency as an example of asymmetric warfare, swarming small boats in the Persian Gulf toward larger big conventional warships is an asymmetric strategy. So I think the way to looking at the threat from Iran to its rivals is to look at ways in which it can practice that sort of asymmetric warfare. So supporting Shia activists groups in Bahrain, for instance, were the Bahraini government toppled, then Iran could move conventional forces into Bahrain. but again, it has to rely on the asymmetric stuff before it can really

before it can rely on its conventional forces. It does sound that, you know, there's an awful lot of alarmism out there as much as there are real threats. Or, again, you know, maybe it's just that we think of these things as World War II movies with lots of tanks sweeping across the desert,

and it's just, I mean, that's not, that's really not the threat. I mean, that's... Well, I think you want to look at something like Hezbollah, right? That's more in line with the way the Iranian military's asymmetric warfare works. Yeah, right. Hesbala is very interesting because it blends sort of a combination. And so it's able to use really sophisticated anti-tank guided missiles, which are, you know, most likely come from Iran, present an asymmetric threat to conventional Israeli forces, large numbers of tanks, for instance.

But again, I have to think about this instead of World War II. In the modern era, we often see militaries finding themselves in circumstances which they didn't anticipate or didn't prepare for. The Iranian conventional army is designed to fight a layered sort of defense in depth of the Iranian. homeland. If Iran was, that conventional army was found itself in an environment which very different from that, we may see weaknesses that we're not aware of. Weaknesses in logistics, the backbone, the supply, their officer corps, how is the military led, how are Iranian officers promoted? Does that have an effect on the fighting strength of Iranian units? So there's, there's a lot of unanswered questions. And again, we wouldn't see.

unless hopefully not there was a there was a conflict yeah okay that that makes a lot of sense and it does show you though i mean hasbolat that's an example of the way things are being fought now they they're very effective i mean at least uh they they were against israel what was that about five years ago or so 2006 2006 wow i i'm dating myself so nine years ago but still right i mean and that was a situation you have a you have a uh a small number of very professional insurgents in a way, but they're, you know, supplied with really sophisticated guided weapons. And so when Israel came across the border with tank columns, they found themselves, you know, actually is taking pretty serious losses. And you can't

necessarily fight a dispersed enemy like that with a conventional force. Hesbollah's strength is amplified by these weapons, and their weaknesses are reduced by being able to disperse their forces. Like every encounter you ever read about, it's the light mobile force, right, that can scatter into the wind gives the centralized and heavy force a really hard time. And note that Iran is not the only country in the region that is practicing this form of warfare or this form of power projection. So if Iran's conventional forces were to say hypothetically, in theory, move into Iraq, they would find themselves fighting an enemy that

fights a very different kind of style of war than they're accustomed to. Right, gotcha. Yeah, okay. So, I mean, in a way, I mean, there's a, I mean, ISIS at one point was, you might have started as somewhat of a proxy force and may have gotten a bit out of hand. Just a touch out of hand. ISIS practices, yeah, I'd say ISIS practices a kind of warfare that they're very unpredictable. They have some pretty heavy duty hardware. ISIS is a whole other beast, right?

It's a whole other different kind of thing. All right, well, so, all right, well, back on track with Iran, I would just say, the long and the short of the Iran story seems to be that it's just not, a really simple equation. It's not a matter of turning the money taps back on, and all of a sudden they become a massive power with thousands and thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of migs that'll fly across the skies and conquer the Middle East, right? Right. There's this fear right now that that's exactly what's going to happen, that this Iranian nuclear deal has unleashed something horrifying in the Middle East, and that's just not that's overblown. and doesn't look at what's actually going on in the region and what the people, the different powers in the region want. Okay. Well, thank you very much, both of you for joining me for this. I think it's really interesting topic, and it sounds like there's definitely a lot of misinformation.

Ben Hubbard from the New York Times is here to talk with us today about the party of God, Hezbollah. They've been a force in the Middle East for decades, but their role is changing. The group's mission is no longer solely focused on destroying Israel. Instead, they're working with and for Iran becoming a regional force. Thanks for joining us, Ben. Thank you. Do you mind starting with the basics? You know, what is Hezbollah?

What and what's their goal? Well, Hezbollah, I mean, I think their goals have changed over time. Hezbollah has started out as a Lebanese militant group in the 80s, founded sort of with Iranian guidance during the Lebanese Civil War. But it was, you know, when you had a very messy civil war going on, many of the different fighting groups who had different sort of disparate Shiite religious militias that were involved in war and Iran got

involved and gave them some sort of advice and guidance and eventually Hezbollah emerged sometime in the mid-80s. There were differences on exactly when it happened, I believe they announced themselves publicly in 1985 although they've been around for a few years before that and since then they've just

kind of grown and changed in different ways for a long time they were I mean at that time Israel was still occupying a good chunk of South Lebanon. And so their first mission was to be a resistance force against the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon, which they did through classic insurgency tactics, you know, attacking convoys, roadside bombs, things like that, very effective, also worked a lot with, you know, many other different groups that were involved in the same kinds of resistance activities.

And so they did that up until Israel withdrew in 2000. And then since 2000, they've kind of evolved in various ways. In certain point, they decided that they were, in addition to being a militant group, we're going to be a political party, so they join the Lebanese political system. So now they have a number of ministries that they, you know, they have ministers in the cabinet, they have a number of people in the parliament, they have political allies, and they're very active publicly in the Lebanese political system, then they still have their military activities.

So they're a group that's been around, you know, they've been around 30, 35 years now, depending on when exactly you mark their beginning. They've been around for a very long time. And what really struck me when I started looking at them, I mean, I've been covering the Syrian Civil War since early on. and, you know, Hezbollah has really used this as, you know, or the changes that Hezbollah is going through as an organization have really come out in its involvement in Syria. And then when I started digging into it, I sort of realized, wow, this is an organization that has changed in ways that I don't think a lot of people have recognized. I mean, everybody sort of always thinks of Hezbollah as this group that is there exclusively to fight against Israel.

And that's what a lot of their rhetoric revolves around. and, you know, Big War in 2006, that was the last time they really went head to head with Israel. And then, you know, what we've seen in the last few years and sort of what I came across when I was doing reporting for this recent article was just really how much they're involved in things that aren't directly related to Israel or things, you know, they've very much gone from being a Lebanese force, a political force and a military force inside of Lebanon to being a regional force. And they're just involved in so many different places now and in so many different ways. Obviously, their role in Lebanon is quite clear. Their role in Syria has become quite clear. You know, we learned a lot about their involvement in Iraq. They have a lot of old relationships that have been rekindled with different fighting groups in Iraq

and Shiite militias in Iraq that have, you know, they've sort of revived these with the help of Iran. And now these groups are, they're sort of working together to fight the Islamic State, to push for Iranian interests in Iraq. They've gotten much more interested in the conflict in Yemen. I don't think they're as involved there as they are in other places, but it's definitely something that they consider one of their interests and something that they consider part of their regional project, even if they don't have as much kind of on the ground military and political support as they would have elsewhere. So that's what really struck me is that,

you know, wow, we have this group that was really a big factor in Lebanon and now it's very much a regional force that's operating in a number of different places and has moved away in certain ways from its key mission. I should say that Hasbala very much denies that it's gotten away from its key mission. I mean, in terms of its own messaging and its own, you know, speeches by its leaders and the way that it talks about the state of the region in its own media, it very much sees all of this is connected. I mean, it will say that everybody fighting to get rid of Bashar al-Assad in Syria is connected to Israel and the Saudis and the Americans who are working together to support the terrorists who are trying to get. So, you know, they sort of,

in their view of the region, this is all connected. It's all part of resistance against what they see as the American-Israeli project in the region. It's kind of like the speech, Cato, the elder, I think used to give speeches during, I'm going back to the Roman Senate. Matt, you can laugh at me. But at the end of every speech, even if it was on some kind of spending bill, he would say Cartago Delenda est, which means Carthids must be destroyed, right? So anything that Hezbollah says, they always end it with, and Israel must go. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's still a very, very key part of their rhetoric. And I do think that it is still, I mean, I don't want to make it.

sound in any way like they've given up on the fight against Israel, that they've decided that, you know, they've sort of dropped that as one of their priorities. No, I still think it's something that's very important for them. And we don't have any reason to believe that they're not still investing lots and lots of resources in preparing for the next battle, whether it's training fighters, whether it's, you know, setting up new rockets and various other weapons that they can use against Israel should there be another war.

It's just that in addition to that, they're involved in another things that in my reading are not directly related to the fight against Israel. They have much more to do with supporting their Shiite brethren in the region, working very much hand in glove with Iran to try to advance that alliance's interests in the region. All right. Explain this connection to Iran. Does Hezbollah exist and become a regional power as it has without Iran? Hezbollah would not be what it is today without Iran. I mean, I don't know if I can quite say that it wouldn't exist.

I mean, it is definitely true that in the 80s, there were officers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who came to Lebanon and who helped form what became Hezbollah. So Iran has been involved in Hezbollah since the very, very early days, and it's been involved throughout. If we fast forward to this point, I mean, we know that Hezbollah gets the vast bulk of its financing directly from Iran to run everything from its political activities to its media activities to its social services. You know, here in Lebanon, it runs a whole school system. It runs social services. It has its own hospitals or hospitals that are affiliated with it. It has scout troops. It has, you know, lots and lots of activities and all these things.

You know, it's like running kind of a mini state within the state, and it takes a lot of money. And, you know, as well, as well, most of the money comes from Iran. I mean, they do have other sources of income, but pretty much everybody agrees that the vast, vast majority of their budget comes from Iran. You also just have ideological ties. I mean, on the religious level, I mean, as well as obviously. a Shiite movement. Iran is, you know, the, you know, the sort of plays itself in the region as being the leader of the Shiite world. And, you know, many of Hasbalah's leaders except, you know, the Iranian supreme leader as there, you know, they endorse William Fakhia. This idea from the Iranian revolution that you should have, you know, the rule by the by the top jurist. So, you know, you have, and then you also have sort of political alliances. I mean, these are people that don't like Saudi Arabia. They don't like the United States. They hate Israel. So, you know, you know, there's, it's all kind of mixed up, but all of this, you know,

all of this ideology and all of these operational ties bring together, bring them together in a very, very close operational relationship. And I think we've very much seen this in Syria, you know, in Syria, when you look at some of the major battles that have happened, if you want to look at Aleppo, or at least the end of

Eastern Aleppo, the rebel enclave and Eastern Aleppo at the end of last year, it was very clear that you had, you know, Iranian military officials, you know, IRAC officials who were on the ground, you had lots and lots of Hezbollah fighters, you had Hezbollah commanders, and they were sort of working together to run this large military operation that coordinated airstrikes with the Russians, coordinated with the Syrian military, and also coordinated, you know, what some people say was up to 20,

you know, thousands and thousands of other Shiite fighters from Iraq, from Afghanistan, from Pakistan, from other places who had come to sort of join this big battle. You know, and that's what we're seeing more is that, you know, Iran is, is, you know, is, using Hezbollah in different ways in the region to try to bring about changes that it would like to see. What's the advantage for Iran? I think a lot of it is operational. I mean, some of it is geographic. I mean, if you look at Iran, you know, Iran is quite far away from Israel.

And so if it really wants to threaten Israel, what's the better way to do it then to help build a strong military force directly on Israel's border? And so I think in the early days of the creation of Hezbollah, that was very much the idea. you know, okay, well, if Iran wants to strike Israel, it has to fly its jets over a certain number of countries to get there. Many of those countries probably wouldn't be very happy about it. But instead, they basically helped create a military force smack on the border that can attack Israel when, you know, whenever there's a new, whenever there are new hostilities. So there's that. And then I think as they branched up into more regional activities, a lot of it is operational. I mean, now Hasbola has a very large number of very well-trained fighters.

They have very, you know, skilled operatives in various ways. And they're also Arabs. I mean, even Shiite Arabs, you know, a lot of them are not entirely comfortable with Iran. There's sort of, you know, distrust sometimes between Arabs and Persians. There's also linguistic difficulties. You know, most of the, a lot of the Iranian officials don't speak Arabic, and so it's hard for them to communicate with these Arabic populations. So, well, if they were through Hezbollah, I mean, Hasbola, because of its many, many years fighting against Israel, you know, it seemed very, very, positively in many parts of the Arab world.

And so when its guys show up, you know, to do any kind of activity, they're usually well-received. You know, people figure, okay, these guys are good fighters. They're good military. They're Arabs like us. And we can understand them because they speak Arabic. So, you know, they're allowed to, or they're able just because of their Arabic background to, you know, to kind of be an Arabic, an Arabic face for many of the things that Iran wants to do in the region. And I don't mean this to that, you know, as well as some sort of puppet of Iran.

And I think these are also things that Hasbalah very much wants to do. I mean, I do very much see it as an alliance. I think that they work very much in tandem on a lot of shared, you know, their shared vision for the region. I had a question from, you're talking about the infrastructure that Hezbollah has and the way that they work with Iran. They sound more like an army to me than a militia, but they're always referred to as a militia. do you have an idea of is there a difference is it some just semantic well i don't know i'm sure if you were to talk to military specialists they would have you know exactly what the definition is you know what exactly is the difference between a militia and an army i usually call the militia just

because they're not they're not they're not a state force i mean i usually consider you know an army is very much the armed you know the armed force of a given state or a given government and hesbalah is still remains a sub-state actor. So that's why I refer to them as a militia. But, you know, there are certainly debates about, you know, do they now have the power of an army or are they now operating in ways that make them more like an army than like a militia? You know, I'm different sort of experts interested in Hezbo.

That debate that in different ways. And you've written that the core force that Hezbollah has is something in the order of 50,000 men. And I assume they're mostly men in this case. No, I don't think the core force is 50,000 men. I mean, anything that has to do with numbers of Hezbollah, it's very, very, it's all murky partly mostly because they don't want people to know how many fighters they have. So, you know, various experts who study them will give various assessments.

Sometimes as well, if you sort of tell them, when we heard this, they'll say, oh, that's too high. Oh, that's too low. You know, and there are also, you know, in Lebanon, there are a lot of, you know, political analysts and other people who are very close to the movement. And so, you know, you can talk to all these different kinds of people. And, you know, I mean, I think that the realistic estimates are in the low tens of thousands, you know, perhaps 20,000, you know, experienced trained fighters and then certain other numbers of, you know, people that are considered more reservists. I think it's gotten more complicated in Syria because there's been some wider recruitment that's gone on.

There have been a lot of people who were probably not fighters before, but just because of the size of the battles in Syria, there have been people who have gone with as well into Syria to serve various, you know, to do various things there. I think an article, and I mentioned the 50,000, I think just demographically, 50,000 is about the max that they could possibly ever turn out. I mean, if you look at just the demographics of Lebanon, I mean, unless they're going to start recruiting foreigners,

which they've never done overtly, I think 50,000 would be the max, but I don't think there's any reason to think they actually right now have that many, you know, train has bullfighters. I think it's probably, you know, more in the 20,000 range. And then with, with, with others who can chip in in various ways. Just another question along the same vein.

What kind of equipment do they use? I guess it goes along the whole, are they a military versus, you know, a militia? Is this a group that has tanks and, you know, really high-level equipment? Do they have an Air Force? I know that you've written that they have tens of thousands of rockets, many of which are aimed at Israel. but beyond that, what do they look like when they're fighting? And that's a good question. I mean, I'm not actually military or munitions experts,

so I'm sure there are certainly other people who can give you better information on that. I mean, I think when it comes to, you know, when it comes to the battle against Israel, you know, now that they're not directly resisting Israeli presidents in Lebanon, I mean, you know, I think that they've certainly in Lebanon, there's no need for them to use the old roadside bombs and those kind of close insurgency tactics. I think for the fight against Israel, it's a combination of, you know, small arms and, you know, small arms, RPGs, things like that. They definitely blew up tanks that tried to come into Israel, tried to come into Lebanon in 2006. And then they have their, you know, rockets, which some of them are sort of short range and can, you know, they fire in large numbers to hit near the border.

Others are much more precision. And, you know, there's a lot of fear in, you know, there's certainly fear in Israel that they can hit lots of sensitive locations inside of Israel, should there be another war. In Syria, I mean, there's not great visibility on it. They do have some, you know, they do certainly have armored vehicles and things like that. I mean, I don't think they have huge groups of tanks that they can deploy. I mean, huge tank columns and things like that. But, you know, they do have some, you know, they do have some of this stuff. One thing that they don't have is an Air Force.

You know, in Syria, they sort of work with the, you know, they coordinate with the Russians and they work directly with the Syrian military. But none of these guys, I think, they do very, very. much remain malicious. You know, they might get an armored vehicle here and there. And, you know, I'm sure they have mortars and they have advanced RPGs and certain kinds of advanced, you know, guided missiles and anti-take weapons and things like that. But they don't have an air force.

And, you know, in the past, when Hezbollah has gone up against Israel, at least in the most recent wars, it's really been Israel's Air Force that's caused the most destruction to the other side. So, anyway, that's just sort of something to keep in mind that, you know, even if they can rally tens and tens of thousands of militiamen to sort of storm the Golan Heights or whatever, Israel still does have a very powerful Air Force that it can use. I mean, what other kind of weapons these guys have gotten in the meantime that might threaten that air force?

I don't think anybody knows and we probably won't know until unless there's a war. And then it's kind of like a game of poker that everybody has things in their hands and we don't really know what's there until the hand is called and everybody lays their cards on the table. So that's a bit the way that it is with trying to guess what kind of munitions everybody has these days. But I mean, I think in Syria, you know, in Syria they've also kind of acted as like a force multiplier just because their fighters are reputed to be better, you know, much more experience, much more courageous. And so they sort of have fought a lot alongside the Syrian military, which has all the trappings of a traditional military, you know, tanks and, you know, all the various other heavy weaponry that a, you know, militia might not have.

By the way, people should actually read Ben's article. We're going to post links to it, both in the episode show notes on Facebook. And of course, I'm sure Ben would want to add he's not the only person who worked on this article. It looked like it was a large team across the Middle East. Right. That's true. Matt, I know you had a question about the other conflicts that Hezbollah's fighting now. Yeah, where can you give us, I know we've kind of touched on it and some of the other answers, but where exactly are all? of places that they are fighting right now? Well, I think the main places outside of Lebanon, I think probably an order of importance. Number one would be Syria. Number two would be Iraq and number three would be Yemen.

And I think they have presence in, you know, a number of other places, but it's much, much smaller and I think we know very much about exactly what they're up to there. I mean, Syria, they've deployed thousands and thousands of fighters who have been on the front lines and also played kind of a coordinating role with a lot of the other Shiite militias who have come in from different countries. while also coordinating with the Russians, coordinating with the Syrian military. And so that's very much been the place where they made their largest investment in kind of foreign military endeavors. And where they probably gained the most.

I mean, I think for Hezbollah, it's been an incredible kind of confidence boost. And it's, you know, so far, at least it's come away as looking like a great success, even though they have, you know, suffered substantial casualties. And I'm sure it's also cost them a lot of money, although we know less about that. All right. So in both Iraq and Syria, they are fighting Islamic State, correct? Well, in Syria, it's more complicated because I think in some places they are. I think in other places they're fighting people, fighting basically government opponents.

They're fighting members of the Syrian opposition who are not Islamic states, some of whom are Islamists and some of whom are not. I mean, in Syria, the trick is we have this whole range. In the opponents of the Syrian government, we have sort of, you know, people from some of the original rebel groups that started or off in 2011 that they really just want to overthrow the government and set up something. And then from there you have kind of a whole Islamist spectrum. You have some people who sort of use Islamist language but don't necessarily want to set up an Islamic state. You've got, you know, and then sort of goes, then you've got Jabot al-Nusra, the, you know,

the Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, which is, you know, obviously following a more kind of classic jihadi model. And then you've got the Islamic State, which is kind of its own thing because it doesn't, it's really kind of off doing its own thing with the caliphate. So anyway, the bulk of what they've been fighting would be the first group, you know, the sort of anti-Assad rebels. That's where their major investments have been. I think more recently you've seen them kind of intervene in the fight against ISIS,

which is much further east closer to Iraq. And then once you get into Iraq, their rule does really change. I mean, one thing that was quite striking for me while we were reporting this article, we were able to do an interview with Sheikh Naim Khashem Khashim, who was basically the number two official in Hezbollah. And he was very frank about all this. I mean, we went in and said, hey, we talked to people here. We talked to people in Iraq.

We did this. We did that. And he just kind of said, yeah. And he kept using the phrase transferring expertise. He said, you know, our job was to transfer expertise. And he was very much, you know, he was very much just saying, you know, we've been at this for 30, 35 years. We've got a lot of great experience in militancy and fighting and

various other things. And now we consider it our job to pass along that experience to all of our, you know, all of our allies in the region. And so I think Iraq is one place where you see that happening much more clearly, where you've got sort of, you know, Hezbollah operatives going there and working with Iraqi militias who are, who there, they're definitely fighting the Islamic State, you know, and teaching them how to use missiles that they didn't know how to use beforehand and, you know, teaching them other kinds of tactics and things like that. So does that mean that there are places in Iraq where Hezbollah and the U.S. military are fighting the same enemy? Yeah, technically, yeah.

I mean, I wouldn't, you know, I don't imagine they're like sharing the same bases and whatever, but, you know, the U.S. is working with, you know, the official Iraqi military and with the Kurds to fight ISIS. Meanwhile, the Iraqi, you know, Shiite militias are fighting ISIS in other way areas and basically coordinating with the Iraqi military. And as well as they're, you know, basically acting as advisors and trainers mostly for for those militias. So, you know, yeah, I mean, they're, you know, if you, they do definitely share a common enemy in Iraq. So it's kind of like when you say transferring expertise, it's kind of an attempt in Iraq for them to project influence rather than direct power. Yeah, I don't think that there's, I haven't seen a whole lot of, you know, I don't think there's much to support that they want to actually. exercise. Power in Iraq. I mean, you know, maybe influence because they want, I think it's much more of a case of they, they consider themselves part of this international alliance, which they,

you know, the quote unquote resistance access. And so they really want to use their experience to boost their allies, you know, so they go and they help them up and they teach them how to do things, and then those guys get more power in their country. And that's kind of good for everybody. I mean, it's good for Iran, because a lot of those groups are also supported by Iran. It's good for Hezbollah because they're, you know, when they look at the region, they see, they see themselves as all on the same team. But I don't think, you know, you don't have Hezbollah going and trying to recruit Iraqis to join. You know, it still remains a Lebanese organization with Lebanese leadership, Lebanese members, even though it's kind of taken on these new regional roles. So I think it's

much more about boosting its allies and boosting the, you know, the resistance access as it, as it were across the region. There was one other aspect that, to me, was tied right into this that really struck me from the article, the militants that they're training, I think you said they get only 15 days worth of training. Is that making these guys, these volunteers essentially just cannon fodder? I think there's a whole bunch of different kinds of training going on. I mean, I think there's definitely long-term advanced training that happens in Iran, people that get flown to Iran, and they do these long courses on, you know, various military technologies, activities, things like that. there's you know we believe there's training that happens here in lebanon some people get brought here for sort of specialized sniper training or other kinds of explosive training things like that

um i mean i think that those fighters that i talked to in iraq that very much got these crash courses yeah you could probably say that they were a type of cannon fodder i mean these were mainly poor shiayay and iraqi's from the south uh that don't have a lot you know probably don't have great employment opportunities not particularly well educated a lot of them signed up for this because you know part of it is ideological part of it is that they were angry that the Islamic State had taken over a large part of their country and they were worried that this was going to pose some kind of a threat. So they go to sign up with these local militias. There's also, you know, always an economic motive as well. Some of these guys earn more money with these militias than they would probably earn, you know, working as day laborers or what their other possibilities were. You know, I think that at certain points, yeah, they definitely just brought in huge numbers of guys. They needed to get them on the front lines to sort of hold the front line or to make some kind of advance. And the best they could do was give them kind of a two-week crash. course and like here's how you use a Kalashnikov and here's how you change the clip and here's how you take cover here's how you advance here's that you know those kinds of sort of basic

infantry training and then you put them on the front line because you need to you know you need to reinforce it so I think that you know there's a range of training I don't think everybody's getting two weeks but I think in certain places certain parts of the war in Syria there was just such a need that they had to you know they had to deploy people very quickly and they probably didn't have time to do more than that all right I think we got one last question for you So what happens to these tens of thousands of troops when these conflicts start winding down? It's a very good question. And I don't think anybody really knows.

I mean, it's something that makes lots of other people in the region nervous. I think it makes the United States nervous. It certainly makes the Israelis nervous. I think it makes the Saudis and the Saudi allies nervous. The United Arab Emirates, I think, are very nervous. You know, because they sort of see, you know, this standing army or these very flexible militias that, you know, along with their military training, We'll get a lot of ideological training as well and sort of Shiite-themed jihad. And so I think that for the people that don't like Iran's influence in the region, this is a very scary thing.

Because then you now have these very flexible, deployable forces that you can send various places. You know, that could mean that in Iraq, you know, the stronger these guys get, the easier it is for them to advocate inside of Iraq for things that are good for Iran. I mean, I think in Syria they definitely, you know, they're going to have a foothold. There's, you know, when all these militias get involved, they're going to want something in the end. I think it's probably too early for us to know how it's all going to shake out. You know, what Nassuala said in a recent speech, Nassuala, the Secretary General of Hezbollah basically threatened Israel and said, you know what, the next time there's a war with Israel, it's not just going to be us,

but we're going to bring all these other guys with us. So that's certainly a possibility as well. You know, instead of having however many tens of thousands of fighters you have from Hasbola, they can also call on the Iraqis and the Syrians and the, you know, Afghans and the other people who have kind of been brought into this Iranian military operation and use them to bolster whatever fight they have with Israel. Ben, thanks so much for joining us today. Today, we're focusing on Iran.

Amir Hanjani is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center and an expert on Iran. He also wrote some fantastic op-eds for me when I was an editor at Reuters. Thanks for joining us. A pleasure to be with you, and I hope I'm still writing fantastic op-eds for winter since you've left. You still are. I just don't have the pleasure of editing them anymore.

So it's my loss, but no, Reuters is still doing fine. Right. So can we just start off with sort of a bit of a primer? Whose side is Iran on in the Syrian conflict? Well, first of all, it's great to do with you. That's a really important topic, and I think it's very timely. I think it can be very confusing to people who are. part like you and I,

fervent Middle East Watchers, to disentangle, you know, a lot of the facts from fiction and see the, you know, hear the, get rid of all the noise, background noise.

I don't think that they're, ostensibly Iran says they're on the side of the Syrian government, and that government is the Assad regime. They were technically asked by the Assad regime to come in and support them in their fight against the rebels. But as you know, you and I know, and as your listeners know, you know, states don't act benevolently. They have they act because of their self-interest. And Iran has very real interests in Syria. And it would not be there just because Assad asked them to if they did not

feel those interests were threatened by his downfall. Now, you say that. And another justification that's been cited for the alliance is, and I think, and please help me with this, I think it seems like it's widely misunderstood. There's been talk that Assad's regime and Iran are co-religionists, but they're not exactly the same, right? I mean, no, they're not all. That's kind of a bullshit answer, isn't it? Or maybe you can explain that. It is. It is.

I mean, you know, there's the Iranian, the majority. Iran follows the 12-verse sect of Shia Islam, which really means that they go by 12 of al-aams, and then the last one is an occultation. He sort of comes back in a time the way Christ does. And it's an Islamic Republic. You know, those who have traveled Tehran have been to Iran, you know, while it's open in many ways, you know,

there's still closed in a lot of other ways too. You know, there's alcohol is not freely available. You know, there's no such thing as nightclubs. and so forth. Syria is a secular regime and the minority regime, which actually rules Syria, the minority religion of the Assad regime,

is the al-white sect, which is a sect of Shia Islam, but it's not as, it just follows different precepts than the, than the 12th sect of Shiasim that Iran follows. So are they loosely in the same family?

Yes, but are, is there, does their religion, permeate their government and their domestic policies the way it does in Iran? Absolutely not. Syria was a very open society. Had scarfs are not mandatory. There was alcohol flowing at all hotels. It's a very different country, a very different flavor of religion than that of Iran. These states are bound together by common interests. They're not bound together by ethnicity. Iranians are Persian, Syrians or Arab. They're not really bound together by religion either. Can you talk a little bit about what those common interests are? Certainly.

I mean, you have to go back to the time of the Iran-Iraq war. Most all regimes in the region supported Saddam Hussein. The Gulf states did. Jordan did. Syria was the outlier. It did not. Actually supported Iran. And the Iranian Islamic Republic, the political elite, the establishment, never forgot that.

When Israel invaded Lebanon and went through the south of Lebanon, It was, and Iran helped the Shia in Lebanon organize and founded Hezbollah. It was through Syria where the arms and the training and the sort of the flow of people would go through to get to southern Syria. Sorry, it's a southern Lebanon. So for Iran, Syria was always a gateway to Hezbollah, but also was a place where it had. a forward position vis-a-vis Israel and it was a way for them to deter an Israeli strike by, you know, being in southern Lebanon by having a presence or a footprint in Syria, although the footprint was very light. Now it's quite heavy. That's really the tie that binds Syria and Iran.

It's this, from the Iranian side, it's, you know, we have to, we have to be there because we have to deter Israel from coming in, striking us, we have to be there because we have to support Hezbollah. The way we can only support Hezbollah is by having that corridor to get manpower and weapons into southern Lebanon from Syria. From the Syrian perspective, it's they don't really have friends in the region. And the only friends that they have, the Assad regime have, has been Iran. And they saw that when the Arab Spring happened and people took this route to Damascus. One by one, the Arab countries in the region started supporting the rebels. The only country in the region that supported the Assad regime was Iran.

So it is a mutually strategic relationship, if you will. It's one that is in place because of what each side views is essential from the other. And that's what's caused this relationship to grow over the last 40 years. Do you have any idea what the... people ruling Iran actually think of Bashar al-Assad. Is there any talk that people might have heard? They're not, they're certainly not happy with how he's prosecuted this war. And, you know, that they, I think that they wish he had some different policies in place in the beginning.

That being said, you know, they support him, as I said, not because out of love and affection for him or his family or his tribe or his religion. or his ethnicity, they support him because they know if Assad falls, then a major chess piece of Iran and the region has fallen. And Syria goes into the Saudi Jordanian U.S. camp, and Iran loses a very powerful and strategic country. It doesn't have many friends in the region. So their ties to Assad are ties because of their interest to Assad. They're not ties because they think, you know, unlike, let's say, Iraq and southern Iraq, where there's a lot of ties that bind the Iranians and the southern Iraq use, their religion, their border, cultural ties, with the Kurds in the north of Iraq, linguistic ties, ethnic ties.

With Syria, it's a, it's purely a relationship of interest, of mutual interest. In order to understand this a little bit better, I was thinking you might be able to help explain a little bit of, about what the situation, what life right now is like in Iran itself. So it's enmeshed in a war beyond its borders. So can we talk a little bit about what's going on inside and how that might be investing it? Can we start off purely with the economics? What kind of shape is Iran's economy in? It's in very bad shape. Years of mismanagement, corruption, sanctions have really made Iran into an economic basket case. Its economy is predominantly state run.

It's ossified, if you will. It's not able to meet the needs of its people. And you saw that in the protests of last month, took place in cities that I hadn't even heard of. I'd look for on the map. But these cities are cities that have the profile of cities of cities and villages that the regime draws upon for their support.

It would be, I compare it to, it would be like a red state revolt of Donald Trump in the United States. If all of a sudden states like Mississippi and Alabama and Arkansas and Georgia started protesting to the streets against Donald Trump's policies. Right. That's what it was like in these cities where the regime draws on support from these sort of rural, not as economically prosperous cities that have very religious communities.

Those are bastions in the regime that they draw. But yet, it was those cities that actually took the streets and those villagers and those townsmen that took to the streets. Because the economy is just not in the needs of its people. It's quite sad because Iran's a

very rich country. It's a large country. It has quite a dynamic population. But they've really mismanaged that economy since the revolution and the chickens are coming home to Rus now. When you say a rich country, part of it, would that include the money that was supposedly unfrozen in the wake of the Iran nuclear deal, or at least that's how the U.S. thinks of it,

the Iran nuclear deal. I'm sure the Iranians call it something else. But not just, I don't just mean the cash that they might have gotten access to, but it's also supposed to be that they can now sell more oil in more places. So nothing's improved? I think that the nuclear deal, we keep saying in the election campaign here, they say, you know, we gave them $150 billion. Well, it's important that we get. That was their money to begin with.

It was because of the sanctions, it was really blocked and frozen. It wasn't $150 million. It was closer to $100 billion. No, since the sanctions have been lifted, the nuclear-related sanctions Iran has been slowly and surely being able to access that. money, been able to sell its oil and gas and petrochemicals back into the international market, and it's fully recouping its market share in those international markets. But that's not enough. It's not enough.

It's 80 million people. Iran has production about 4 million barrels a day, and it uses about 1.8 million domestically. So it really, you know, it sells about 2.2 million barrels of oil a day. Saudi Arabia, you know, it's rival to the south, you know, has a population of about 30, 35 million people and sells 14 million barrels. Now, it produces 14 million barrels of oil a day, I think, consumes about 3 to 4 million and then sells about 10 million.

So, you know, just to give you some idea of scale, it needs much more. Just having the sanctions lifted to sell its oil and gas and unblocking $100 billion dollars is not enough. The sanctions that are still there, the secondary sanctions, and this perception that the U.S. could pull out of the nuclear deal and the old sanctions would come back on has not really allowed for foreign investments and for trade to pick up with Iran. In many ways, it's still in the penalty box economically. So where does that leave it with in terms of, you know, when the leadership is,

looking out into the world, what sort of lens does their economic straits put on them? Does it have a big impact on why they're in Syria? Does it have? No, I think we have to disentangle those two things. And I'm not sure, you know, yes, many of the people that were protesting were unhappy with Iran's foreign policy. But there's no, you know, there's no poll that I could look to that says the majority of the, Iranian people are not supportive of Iran's foreign policy. Because point of fact, they are supportive of Iran fighting ISIS. They are supportive of Iran being fighting wars against Sunni extremism outside of Iran's borders.

Because they know that if they're not fighting those wars outside of Iran's borders, the chance of fighting those wars inside Iran's borders increase. So I think it's, you know, there's these snapshots, these protesters saying, you know, we want to make sure that, you know, the money shouldn't be spent in Syria. Yes, I'm sure there are many people that feel that way. I'm just not sure that's how the majority that people feel. You know, we don't know. We don't have an independent poll to assess that.

At least I haven't seen one done. But what we do know is that these two things are separate in terms of what Iran spends in foreign affairs in these wars is a pittance to what it has and it has mismanaged over the last 40 years. So, you know, this economy has been state run. It's 40% of it is now controlled by the, or maybe some people say 60%. I've seen some experts 60% is controlled by the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards. There's a lot of nepotism. There's a lot of corruption.

Its banking sector is, for all intensive purposes, bankrupt. Most of its banks are holding a lot of. at bad debt. Their currency has been devalued. Yet, the currency is devalued, but inflation is quite strong and prices have risen. So people's purchasing power, over the last 10 years, have gotten less and less. And add to that sanctions that have been really, really onerous. It's really a panoply of things that have come together to a perfect storm, you know, through a perfect storm that have put them where they are. But they only have, they'll leadership only has itself to blame for that.

And I think the nuclear deal, having the nuclear deal and having those sanctions removed, actually brought more of these things to the surface. You mean because they weren't able to directly just blame sanctions for the economic problem? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. You brought up the Revolutionary Guard as an economic entity. Yes. So we hear about them all the time as a military force, I mean, parts of it at least are called elite military force.

Maybe you could explain a little bit more about what they mean, who they are inside the country then. Yeah, the Revolutionary Guard, you know, the number between 250 and 400,000. They are, since the revolution happened, because when the revolution happened, the clerical regime was quite distrustful of the traditional army and the traditional Navy of Iran. they viewed those entities as being very nationalistic and very pro the previous regime, the Shah's regime. So they set up the Revolutionary Guard and they are protectors of the Islamic Republic. And they have expeditionary forces, such as the Quds Force, that go outside the country and conduct operations. Inside the country, though, they over the last, since really, really the last 15, 16 years, but accelerated during the Ahmadinejad presidency, they have started to give a lot of economic influence.

They have corporations. They have front companies. They're in oil and gas. They're in construction. They're in telecoms. They're in insurance. They're in banking. They're in everything.

And they operate ports. They operate the airports in Iran. So they are in everything. And they have real economic interests. And because, they were, it was seen at the time, they were the ones during the Iran-Iraq war that were fighting the war and took heavy casualties, heavy losses. When those people came back, they wanted jobs and they wanted their share of the cake.

And that has only increased over time. And the sanctions that the U.S. and its allies have placed on Iran really target them and have really sort of hampered their interests. That being said, within the country, they're being now challenged by President Rouhani to divest themselves of corporate interests. And clearly they don't want to because they make a lot of money doing what they're doing. And no one likes to, once you have money, you don't want to give it up, right? What do they do with their money?

I mean, is it that they're buying weapons? Is it just that there are some very, very rich revolutionary. guards? It's a whole infrastructure. It's an infrastructure. They make money. Guards, when you're in the guards and you retire, you join one of these companies. Or if you are a family of a guardsman who's been martyred during the Iran-Iraq War, you know, these companies are essentially that your family are pensioners, these companies, that they give a slice of some proceeds to you. So they are, if you will, Iran's version of the military industrial complex. Are they buying missiles and weapons? No, that's the state. The state does that. The government

does that. They are conducting economic, you know, they have banks, they have construction companies that get contracts from the government or from private parties, but mostly from the government, from the Supreme Leader's office or from the elected government, to build things and do things. What percentage of this vast beast is still a military force at all? I mean, what percentage of them are, you know, actively take up arms to defend the regime or to fight outside its borders? Well, and I can sense that you're struggling with it because it's kind of kind of foreign concept versus Americans. Absolutely. Yes. The Marine Corps and the Air Force don't have a business empire. In Iran, it's quite perverse that way, I guess.

I've heard it's the same in Egypt also, that the Egyptian army makes refrigerators. I remember reading that. Yeah, and in China, too. Now you see Xi Jinping wants to sort of reign in the People's Republic Army because they have business interests. No, they have anywhere between, as I said, 250 to 400,000 active guards. Those are active. Okay, those are active. Got it.

those are active, but the ones who are, they have an equal number who have been retired. And generally, when you retire from being an active duty, you go into the guards business empire. And you fit somewhere in there, whether it's in oil and gas or construction or banking or insurance, there's a job for you. So actually, it is, and many of these companies employ Iranians who are not in the guards, right? They employ, you know, they control anywhere between 40 to 60% of the economy. So a lot of people work in these companies, the guards run. To say that they're an integral part of the state doesn't even begin to describe it, right? No, so it's very hard.

Here in the U.S., we target the guards a lot. But in Iran, there are many people that they may not be happy with what the guards are doing or their policies, but are actually working for the guards in some of these companies. And it's very hard. And Rohani is trying to do this. He's trying to have them get out of the economy and stick to being a military force. It's very hard to do, though, when they control so much of it. And you're going to see in Iran, you're going to see that the guards pushing back and saying,

no, we're not, we don't want to stop our business interests because, you know, this business interest sustains those people who have served us. and families of those who have, who are, their sons have been, you know, have been killed during the war. I was wondering if you could also talk about, very briefly, where else Iran is fighting. I was really caught by what you said about, you know, the sense that if we don't fight them there, they will fight us here, which, of course, is a military doctrine that's very familiar to people in the United States. We're not talking about the same us, them necessarily. But the whole idea of having expeditionary forces so that you don't have to defend your borders from the inside. So where else is Iran fighting?

Well, they were very active in Iraq. Yeah, I think Iran has great influence in Iraq. And they help train and mobilize these popular fronts, the different Shia militia there. They're very active in Lebanon, in southern Lebanon, as you know, with Hezbollah. They're active in parts of Afghanistan recruiting Shia militia. And I think that Iran does this because it feels very insecure in this region. We look at Iran a lot and they can be such a malign force in the region, a malevolent force. But the way they see it is that they're surrounded by countries that don't like them

and that have a very powerful ally in the United States that has far greater capabilities than Iran does. So how they try and match that force structure that's against them is by tying themselves up with these militias and getting into countries and fomenting unrest and their minds level the playing field a bit. Just one last question. Far as Syria goes, what would we? winning look like for Iran? Well, I think there are no winners in Syria. It's like in the old days of the Roman Empire when they would go and if they couldn't

really, the war wasn't going their way and they wanted to conquer people, they would just burn the city down, the town down and they would say, you know, they'd call it peace and they call victory. Who is going to rebuild Syria? Iran doesn't have the capabilities or the money to rebuild Syria. Syria is now a divided country with all different parts of the country occupied by different forces claiming sovereignty over it. I think for them, for Iran, for them, victory looks like being there and having a military footprint there that enables them to deter an Israeli strike.

Also gives them connectivity to Hezbollah, being able to arm and resupply Hezbollah. As long as they can do that, they would call it victory. I don't think they have any, they have any intention of rebuilding Syria and making it a, you know, a prospering. country, although they wouldn't mind it be that, but they don't have those capabilities to do that. Amir, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. It was great to be with you, and I enjoyed it. That's all for this week, War College listeners.

Thank you for indulging a little history. I hope we all came away a little bit wiser or at least a little bit more informed. War College is me, Matthew Galt, Kevin O'Dell, and Derek Gannon. It was created by myself and Jason Fields. hear a lot of this week. You can find us wherever fine pods are casted and on Twitter at war underscore college. We'll be back next week for that China chat and after that a conversation with the elusive Belling Cat. Stay safe until then.