School of War - Ep 164: Mark Dubowitz on Syria’s Collapse

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive officer of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to break down the collapse of the Assad regime and the implications for Israel, Turkey, and Iran. ▪️ Times      •      01:23 Introduction     •      02:49 What happened?       •      05:04 Rebels      •     08:17 Risk assessment       •      11:30 Factions     •      17:10 Extremists and radicals      •      19:15 “Our enemies lie to us…”       •      24:19 Defensive reshuffle     •      29:11 Nuclear Iran     •      34:59 A powerful message     •      42:40 Striking power       •      47:27 A new “Ring of Fire” Follow along on Instagram or YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

A school of war double feature here this week. Yesterday, we released a long reported episode on Israel's defeat of Hezbollah in Lebanon and went deep on how that defeat was brought about at the level of war fighting. Today, I've got Mark Dubowitz on the show to explain the consequences of those events in real time, specifically the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, the rising star of Turkey and Sunni Islamism, and the extreme vulnerability of Iran. Let's get into it. It is a perspective for war, just to walk the invasion of the way.

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And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome back to the show today. Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mark, thank you so much for coming back. Aaron, thank you so much for having me. I think you know that it's a personal ambition of mine to be on the show more often than Mike Gallagher.

and also to have more downloads, at least in an individual episode, than Mike Dahliger and Mike Duran. So I'm looking forward to hopefully winning that contest. Well, we'll see. The prize, as always, will be a set of customized School of War Steak Knives, which will be available in the swag store when eventually I get a swag store, which is an ongoing campaign I have with my masters at Nebulous Media. So we are going to talk about mostly Syria today, but also the Israeli response to the collapse of the Assad regime. and talk about what's next in Iran, and you invoked Mike Duran. We're going to talk about the role of Turkey and all this. We just did a big episode on Israel's war in Lebanon, and its defeat of Hezbollah on the ground.

And so this serves in a way as a kind of nice epilogue. So we'll pick up the plot where that episode left it off and talk about the consequences, the consequences of Israel's victory, such as it has been over Hezbollah in the north, which, as I see it, is a, is a, a major contributing factor to what's happened in Syria. Help us, help listeners understand what's just happened in Syria. I mean, Assad has been fighting for his life, but over, for over a decade now, things that settled into a kind of stalemate stasis. And then just like that, it all fell apart. What, what actually happened, Mark?

So, and yeah, I mean, in some respects, it came from nowhere, this breakout by, you know, so-called Syrian rebels from their stronghold on the Turkish border. And just in a matter of days, literally, they began an assault, taking major Syrian cities, eventually taking Damascus. And Bashar Assad, the Syrian dictator, you know, whose family, his father, Hafez, they've ruled Syria for almost half a century. He high-tailed out of Dodge, or in this case out of Damascus, jumped the plane and went to to Moscow to seek refuge in the arms of his patron Vladimir Putin. So a remarkable turn of events to watch the Assad regime go down. And I think it's, Aaron, I mean, you've been covering this school of war. And certainly you were just in Israel and alluded to the episode that you just did,

a remarkable chain of events that I think is directly connected to the Israeli victory in Gaza against Hamas's military capabilities and their severe degrading of his Bala's capabilities, as well as the strikes in October against the Islamic Republic of Iran. In other words, the patrons of Assad who had kept the murderous dictator in power for years, the IRGC, could's force and Hezbollah, were really nowhere to be found because they've taken such a beating by the Israelis. So Assad survives for years because he allows himself, this is oversimplifying, but kind of how I look at it.

He's allowed himself to become a proxy and an element, really, of kind of neo-imperial strategy or two overlapping neo-imperial strategies, Iranian neo-imperial strategy and Russian neo-imperial strategy, and he becomes a way for both countries to project power and pursue their interests. There's a way to look at what's happened as actually a huge win for a third neo-imperial power, Turkey. Tell us about that part of the story and about who these guys are. Tell us about HTS, which is a major part of the conglomeration of rebels who have just succeeded finally in ridding themselves of Assad. But help us understand the scene in Syria and amongst the rebels better in Turkey's role in all of that. Yeah.

So the rebels are kind of a motley crew of various groups. And HTS, as you mentioned, is really at the vanguard. And this is a group led by an individual named Jalani who was, he was al-Qaeda, he was then Al-Lustra. He's a hardcore jihadist, and he's, you know, he's fought us in Iraq, and he's certainly been fighting alongside, you know, ISIS and al-Qaeda. So he's gone out on a kind of charm offensive, including on CNN recently, to present himself as a moderate, a moderated rebel, somebody who is, you know, may have been in his 20s and 30s, a little bit of an upstart, may have caught the jihadist bog, but he's sort of suggesting now that. he's become much more pragmatic, much more moderate. And, you know, he's gotten significant support from Erdogan. And for Erdogan, as you say, Erdogan has also neo-imperalist ambitions. One has to remember that Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire. And Erdogan sees himself as a neo-Ottoman.

So he really now wants to be the major dome of Middle East power politics. And he sees a weakened Iran. He sees Russia having to potentially withdraw. from Syria, it's military base, it's air base, it's a naval port, and now he can step into the void and he can be the major player. And one has to always remember that Erdogan is an Islamist. He's part of the Turkey Muslim Brotherhood. And he and the Qatari's, the Qatari's who also are Muslim brothers, really see an opportunity to now support these Sunni fighters, these Sunni Islamists and really take over Syria. thanks to the void that was created with, as I said, with Israel's destruction of Hezbollah and Iranian capabilities, as well as the fact that Vladimir Putin has been pinned down by the Ukrainians and just didn't have the men and the air power to defeat this rebel invasion.

So help us think through the question of the day then, which I take to be something like this. Most people are happy to see, most Americans are happy to see Assad go, or Americans who follow the issue. you know, find too many nostalgics for Assad control and any nostalgics for Iranian power projection in Syria and the Biden or former Obama establishments or at least kind of hiding it out of a bit of a sense of shame at the moment. That's so, so there's sort of general, I mean, people are generally pleased that the Iranians have taken this punch in the face and Assad is gone. On the other hand, it doesn't really seem occasion for a ticker tape parade for all involved because no one quite knows what to make of Jolani and HTS.

There's one read, which you seem to be sort of pointing to the way you outlined it. Like, these guys are potentially very bad news. And they could be bad news for the American interest in the region. They could be bad news for our partners, the non-radical Arab states, and then, of course, Israel. But it's just sort of hard to read it because Jolani is playing this reasonably sophisticated press game. It's just not clear how these things are going to break. How do you think about it? How do you assess risk here?

help us understand that piece of it. Look, I think it's an enormous risk. And, you know, I think you've just got to look to the Israelis. I mean, the Israelis, you know, are not kind of naive Twitterati, right? They don't get to go out on Twitter and make this sort of celebratory noise for one direction or another. They actually have to live with a hard reality and the harsh reality of bordering these people. And so what was the Israeli response? I think that's really telling.

The Israeli response was, first of all, to... to move and seize more of the high ground in the Golan, right? The Golan, which is bordering Syria. They control one of the peaks of Mount Khrman. You may have gone up there in some of your travels. They've moved very quickly to take the Syrian Kermon. So now they control all of the high ground with visibility into Damascus and, by the way, into Beirut, which is very important for them from an Intel collection perspective.

They also then move their troops into the DMZ, which which was sort of the no man's land between Syria and Israel, which was established in 1974 after the 73-Yom Kippur War. So they moved their troops in there to secure that border. And then over the past couple days, they've launched massive airstrikes and have taken out 70 to 80 percent of Syria's military capabilities, Air Force, Navy, you know, surface-to-air missiles, air defenses, as well as the Assad regime's chemical weapon stockpiles. So, the Israelis decided not to spend the last three or four days virtue signaling on Twitter. They decided to actually

take some serious military stacks in case, it turns out that these Syrian rebels are actually hardcore Islamists and not Syrian reformers. And in case, Erdogan decides, along with his Qatari friends, he's going to turn Syria into a radical Islamist state that that's, that's a, threatens Israeli security. So again, I think why Washington dithers and everybody else maybe celebrates on Twitter, the Israelis took some hard, serious military action to secure their border and to eliminate some very dangerous capabilities. What do you think is next for the Russians? Like, what's the actual state of play there? They're kind of clustered out towards the coast, right? So sort of north of Lebanon, the space of where Syria has a Mediterranean coast between Lebanon and Turkey,

which is also, as I understand it, not that I'm an expert in Syrian ethnography, but as I understand that is the traditional al-Alawite part of Syria, which is to say the part of Syria that produces the Assad's and the sort of minority clique that is ruled Syria for generations now. So the Russians have been there. They seem to be pulling some assets out while the rebels were securing Aleppo and then the cities to the south of Aleppo and then Damascus. What's the actual state of play there?

Is there some sort of arrangement that the Russians can come to with the new Syrian regime? Does that seem to be happening? Like, give us a sense of what's going on there. Yeah, it's not clear yet, Aaron. It certainly, it's state of flocks. I mean, as you said, the Russians have a very important air base there, but most importantly, they have a very important naval base that gives them power projection into the Mediterranean.

And, you know, this during the Syrian Civil War, when the Russians came with the Iranians and Islam to rescue the Assad regime, this was their first foray back into the Eastern Med, certainly since the Cold War when they were ejected. So this is a really important area of power projection for Putin. I think he's going to fight to keep it. And it really matters that he can sort of preserve an al-a-white canton or area there to protect Russian interests. But I mean, increasingly, it just looks like, you know, Syria could be divided into sort of four cantons or four areas. An al-a-white, a Sunni a Kurdish area, maybe a Drews area.

And it seems like these areas are going to be fought over for potentially for days and months, if not years. So we maybe see the fragmentation of Syria, which really never was a serious unitary state. I mean, it was under French rule, French mandate, these different ethnic groups. And then it was sort of kind of pushed together under Assad, Hafez Assad, the father. there's rule and obviously kept together by brute force. And you may see the unraveling back into these ethnic areas, which is probably arguably that might be the best case scenario for the United States and Israel, as opposed to a unitary state under any kind of Islamist rule

where once again, Erdogan is able to flex these muscles. Well, it's interesting. And I want to make sure I understand exactly what you're saying. I mean, I would be for no Russian presence as a kind of condition for ideal outcome. And you're sort of making the case, if I understand you correctly, that a divided Syria might be worth it, even if that means that there's a continuing kind of alloyite Russian axis. Yeah, listen, I, you know, in terms of American kind of great power competition, and as we confront the access of aggressors of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, you know, giving the Russians the boot and given the Iranians the boot is, is a good option, is in some respects a preferable option.

But I think we also have to really worry about what I affectionately call the Sunni side of the street, which isn't sunny. And that's Sunni radicals in charge of Damascus, maybe in charge of the entire country, and then developing their own military capabilities because if Israel has destroyed 70 to 80% of Assad's capabilities in recent days, how long will it take Erdogan to rearm a Sunni extreme a state based in Damascus with control over the entire country, threatening, again, not only Israel, but threatening Jordan. I mean, I'd say, Aaron, the country I'm most worried about is not Israel. Israel's got the capabilities to defend themselves. They've proven

to be remarkably successful over recent months. I'm worried about the Hashemites in Jordan. I mean, I think you've got two outside forces who want to see the king go down. One, the Muslim Brotherhood, and that's Erdogan and Qatar and the Sunni extremists. And the second is Ali Hamenei in Iran, who's been flooding weapons into Jordan. Some of those weapons go into the West Bank to be used against Israelis, but some of those weapons are to be used to arm radicals inside Jordan. And so I think the man who is most concerned who should be losing the most sleep right now is the King of Jordan. I think he's facing a serious security predicament. And even though the King of Jordan and his lovely wife, Queen Rania, like to go on CNN and bash the Israelis repeatedly and occasionally

the Americans. The reality that they know only too well is that the Hashemites are going down and would have gone down a long time ago, but for Israeli and American security and intelligence support. So a whole time I got my eye on Jordan, and I'm very worried about Jordan going down. I think that would be a huge blow to American national security in a nightmare for the Israelis because that Jordanian border is the longest border that Israel has. It's been so far lightly defended and very difficult to defend. Israelis have started to build a wall on that border. They started to move more troops there.

But if the Kashamites go down in a radical Islamist state, Sunni or Shiite, takes over in Jordan, you've got a major security debacle. Yeah, you speak of the Twitterati. I saw a sort of DC foreign policy muckety-muck on Twitter. in the last day or two, something to the effect of, look, the HTS, you know, this group that's playing a leading role in taking over Syria, it's really, it's like the Taliban, like, and he meant this as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a, as a positive recommendation that is say, it's not al-Qaeda. It's not ISIS. It does not have transnational, international,

jihadist objectives or terrorist objectives. It is fundamentally nationalist, fundamentally realist, uh, in its, um, worldview. First of all, I'm not sure I accept that as an analysis of the Taliban. I think that's a little too forgiving of Taliban. Second of all, even if you accept it as somewhat true as a distinction between the Taliban and, say, ISIS, well, you know, the Taliban also hosted al-Qaeda in Osama bin Laden in the late 90s. It didn't work out great for anyone, at least of all Americans and Afghans. And so I don't know how you feel about that comparison.

But I take your point. There's a long-winded way of saying I take your point that even the relatively realist, relatively nationalistic, relatively non-fire-breathing Islamic radicals who have just taken over Syria. Well, they're still Islamic radicals. And they have real pedigrees. That's right. And listen, I mean, I don't know if they're the Taliban, you know, more complicated comparison. I think that the more apt comparison is they're Hamas. Yeah. You know, they're a Shudi extremist group. They may not have, you know, transnational, international, international aspirations, but Hamas caused a lot of problems and a lot of

And certainly from an Israeli perspective, do they want another Hamas on their northern border? I also heard, I mean, from mostly Americans, but even some Israelis over the years about how Amas had moderated, it had become pragmatic, had, you know, nationalist aspirations, not jihadist aspirations. I mean, of course, if you, you know, you read their founding documents, Hamas was never shy about who they were and what they aspired to do, which was to destroy Israel and, you know, hunt down Jews around the world. Yeah, if HTS ends up being Hamas, I mean, that's a security nightmare for the Jordanians, for the Israelis, certainly for our allies throughout the Middle East. And for us, I mean, again, we don't want to bring down Hamas and Gaza only to have it pop up and become the controlling authority in Syria. Yeah. Well, it was a big theme of the episode I just put out, which was that Hamas was able to engage in this very sophisticated multi-year deception plan of Israel. to achieve the strategic surprise that it did on October 7th. And really, when I say Hamas, I mean, Sinwar and the senior leadership,

like very system, in retrospect, it's very clear to see it was a systematic, intentional multi-year deception to lean into this impression that they were moderating, all while planning to do what they founded themselves saying they were going to do, which was to kill all the Jews and drive Israel into the sea, which they then actually made it, you know, sort of an old college triad on October the 7th. And, you know, the naivete of the international community, and frankly, of many Israelis, taking them at their word because they wanted more worker permits, you know, because they wanted sort of to be more economically integrated with Israel to an extent. Yeah. It led to great tragedy.

Yeah. Listen, it's the, it's the Western delusion. I mean, I think we don't appreciate is that our enemies unabashedly lie to us. You know, they don't play by the old schoolyard rules. And there is a, looks on there, fundamental principle in Islam called Pachia. which is, you know, you lie, you deceive your enemies from military and other advantage. So, you know, when I see Jalani and the HDS coming out on CNN, I mean, it kind of reminds me, too, of, you know, Javad Zarif, the foreign minister, former foreign minister of Iran, current

vice president of Iran, who does the CNN, CFR, Columbia University circuit every so often, and it gets up on stage. And, I mean, it's the most mendacious individual you're ever going to encounter. But with a smile and a charm and a wit and a flare, you know, he makes you think that he's one of you. And he's, you know, really, I mean, yes, the Islamic Republic has done some maybe bad things, but they were provoked into that. And really now you're dealing with Zarif who, you know, is a moderate, Western educated individual who really represents the true chase of the Islamic Republic. I mean, nonsense, right? He doesn't.

He holds very little power. but he's sort of sent out there to lie to naive Westerners. And I worry about that with HTS. Remember, Jalani's name actually means of the Golan. So I think his family is originally from the Golanites. So it does suggest that he may have some strong ancestral roots and may want to reconquer the Golan. I think the Israelis will, again, I mean,

they're going to hold on to the heights. They're going to hold on to this DMZ for as long as they need to. But thank God the Israelis never listened to the American intelligentsia. And, you know, to be fair, to some Israeli officials who wanted to give Assad back the Golan. I mean, it's kind of remarkable, Aaron, if we think about some of the history, right, the Israelis would have given back the Golan to Assad. First, the Syrians and the IRGC would be commanding the heights overlooking Israel. Then when the Civil War break broke out, Al-Qaeda and ISIS would then be taking over those heights.

And one should always remember that in 2007, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Assad's nuclear weapons program, took out the al-Qaibar nuclear reactor. And if they hadn't, Syria would have nuclear weapons, and those nuclear weapons would have fallen into the hands of ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and maybe now HTS. So I think the Israelis, or at least the sensible Israelis, at least their view prevailed. They hung on to a Golan. they took out the nuclear reactor and and now they've taken out 70% of Syria's military capabilities. I think that at least in clear thinking and

pragmatism prevailed. So dangerous or at the very least tense at best tense road ahead in terms of how to deal with the new powers that be in Syria, how to think about the future of the Russian presence aggregation or disaggregation of the country as it has existed for decades and decades. decades. That's all the, if not the bad news, at least the troubling news. Let's linger on the good news for a few minutes, if we may, Mark Dubowitz. Because there is some, and it's worth, and it's worth in the Israelis, frankly, with very little help and a lot of hindrance from the Biden administration deserve to take a victory lap here. The Iranian situation, if you, if you track it back to last summer, let's, you know, pick, pick a time this past summer of 2024 is our starting point. If you go back to then and you compare then and now, or maybe before their first. ballistic missile strike in April. Maybe that's the time to start. The Iranian position in the Middle East is absolutely grievously damaged compared to their starting point some, let's say, eight months ago. They had a network of proxies and a really a territorial, imperial reach in a very old, in a very

old fashion sense, where they could project military power, come and go as they pleased. It was complicated. They had to work with a lot of proxies, but so have empires in past years. And, It has now collapsed in Syria to the point of being essentially gone. The Israelis have savaged their main proxy in Lebanon, which now with the Israelis standing on the high ground between Syria and Lebanon, it's going to be very, very hard for that force to reconstitute. I wouldn't go as far as to say impossible, but very, very hard. And it's going to be a slow and difficult process compared to how it would have been

if you could just drive the stuff down the highway through Syria and into Lebanon. on the Iranian strategic concept, which had these layers and buffers between it and its main adversary, Israel, main regional adversary, has got to be completely revised. So that's going to be my question to you, Mark, is how are they revising their defensive concept? It's got to be a defensive concept now because they're on the back foot and they're in a period of real danger, as they truly understand. How are they thinking about defending themselves?

What role does their nuclear weapons program play in that defensive concept? us understand the new and from the Iranian perspective, the grim new world, but from our perspective, a world perhaps of opportunities. Yeah, I think he's done a fabulous job of explaining it. I mean, I think, you know, I've been working on the Iran issue for over 20 years. I watched as Khomeiné, the Supreme Leader and he's sidekick, Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the IRGC Kuds Force, who, you know, Donald Trump killed in January 2020, this ring of fire around Israel and really around America, right, around American forces

and American interests. And not to mention, by the way, you know, being responsible, we're killing and maiming thousands of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. So this has been a potent enemy, a very effective enemy of ours and of the Israelis and of our allies in the Middle East. And you're right. I mean, that ring of fire has been, I don't know what the metaphor is doused. It's no longer flaming in the way that it had. But I, you know, I'm sort of feel like I'm paid to worry and not to get too excited about anything. I mean, if there were no democracies left to defend, what would you do with yourself? Well, this is it.

I always say that when we bring down the Islamic Republic of Iran, I'm going to retire and spend my last remaining years, maybe skiing or something productive. Exactly. So I, yeah, I feel like I'm paid to worry and I'm really worried. I'm really worried that as the Ayatollah sees himself effectively naked, I apologize for the imagery for your listeners, but as he said, his entire defensive concept of proxy warfare has been severely degraded. And his skies are vulnerable to U.S. and Israeli fighter jets.

His strategic air defenses have been destroyed. His ballistic missile production capability has been severely degraded. The Israelis took out some key equipment and components of his weaponization program at Parchan facility inside Iran. What's his play? What's his play? I mean, the obvious answer is, yeah, you know, he'll try to reconstitute. You know, this is a patient man.

It's a patient regime. I mean, he's 85, so he may not see its reconstitution, but he may pass it off to a Sanamorhtaba or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or some other cleric to reconstitute his Bala, reconstitute Hamas, reconstitute some influenced Syria. And also, he still has other, he has other arenas that he can light up on fire, right? We talked about Jordan. I think that's a major one for him. Another one is the West Bank, Judea and Samaria.

Today there are, there's a massive Israeli military presence on the West Bank to counter terrorist organizations, many terrorist organizations operating there. Some link to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic jihad, some link to the, the Fatah wing of the Palestinians, Al-Axamarters Brigade, Lines Brigade. I mean, there's really an alphabet soup of terror organizations operating in the West Bank. So he's definitely looking to light that up and flooding weapons into the West Bank to create a huge security challenge for the Israelis. He's still got the hoofies in Yemen, who just recently, you know, again, fired a missile

at Central Israel. They're building up their capabilities. and he's, you know, his ball had spent a lot of time on the ground with the IRGC quits force training the Uthys. I mean, Aaron, they've shot down the Red Sea. I mean, you know, since October 7th, I think they've attacked either our Navy and international shipping, I think, like, 180, 185 times. Brad Bowman from our military center tracks us closely.

Maybe we've responded 12, 13 times. But they've effectively shut down the Red Sea. I mean, that's quite extraordinary that we've been unable to stop the Houthis. And then they've got the Iraqi Shiite militias who didn't disqual, who didn't decide to intervene on Assad's behalf, stayed out of it, but still have capabilities that are of serious concerns. So he'll try to rebuild the ring of fire. But what he really will do is he will move towards a nuclear weapon. I'm increasingly convinced that that's where he's going. He's got enough to sell material for about 16 bombs. He's making probably enough

on material at 60% enriched uranium for a bomb a month. And he's got the missiles to deliver it, and he started early weaponization work in terms of developing a warhead. So I think the Trump administration is going to be faced with a severe nuclear crisis with respect to the Islamic Republic. As Khomeini understands that maybe the only car that he has to play in the short term is a nuclear weapons breakout. And based on your knowledge of what we can track in Iran and in the nuclear program or perhaps what allies like Israel can track, what are we looking for? How will we know, you know, prior to a test, prior to a test, which takes us all by surprise, and then we have to deal with the world that is actually

a world with the nuclear Iran. What are we looking for? What are the triggers? Well, I would argue already there. I mean, you know, this is kind of some complicated physics. I don't claim to be a nuclear physicist, but I do know why. One thing is that 60% enriched uranium, which is the fissile material you need to develop a nuclear warhead, is 97% of what you need to get to weapons-grade uranium. So if we were actually serious, we would have already bombed Iran's nuclear weapons program because the notion that somehow we're going to wait for them to go the extra 3% to, quote, weapon grade before we actually move on this means that, one, we're relying on our capabilities

to detect and that there isn't some covert enrichment facility where the Iranians are hard at work in producing weapon-grade uranium or uranium that is at 90% enrichment in the technical jargon. And two is, even if we were to detected, we would have time to respond to it. So I think we're playing a dangerous game by letting the Iranian salami slice us, which is what they always do. I mean, they've built a nuclear program by effectively incrementally expanding that program. in getting us along the way to accept a new nuclear normal. And the Biden administration has been the masters of this. I mean, Biden comes in, wins in November.

And from the time that he gets elected, the Iranians massively escalate their nuclear program. And all the while along, the Biden administration gives them billions of dollars in the sanctions relief to beg them not to go the next step. Of course, the regime pockets the money and goes the next step and goes from, you know, 3.7, percent of risked uranium to 20 percent to 60 percent. They actually went at some point up to 84 percent

and they went down just to test us. And they started weaponization work, which according to the 2007 national intelligence estimate, which represented the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community, Iran had not engaged in weaponization work since 2003. Well, they are now. Now, how much, how serious? Do the Iranians have an excuse for it? Of course they do. You know, This is dual use. This is civilian. We're doing computer modeling, not on nuclear weapons, but on a potential invasion of Iran by Martians. So that's really why we're working on this stuff. I mean, there's always an excuse, Aaron. And we, we as America, and certainly our friends in Europe and in the quote, international community by this nonsense hook line and sinker,

while Iran is now at the precipice of a nuclear weapon. So that's where we are. We should have already bombed those facilities. The fact that we haven't means that we're really playing with fire. And, you know, we can talk about what we're still capable of doing and what our Israeli friends are capable of doing because I think we still can do it. But 2025 is going to be the year where all of this goes down. Yeah. Well, let's talk about that then. Let's talk about options. I mean, one option, of course, and I think back to then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's big address on, I can't remember if it was 12 requirements. I think there were 12 requirements for Iran, which, you know, you got to give up terrorism. You got to do this. You got to do that. And

What it really was, can you just become a normal country? And if you become a normal country, the maximum pressure will cease. And I took that to be clever because, on the one hand, it's totally reasonable. Why can't you just be a normal country that respects international boundaries and just tries to make better life for the Iranian people? But of course, they can't. I mean, you're welcome to muse on that as to why not. Maybe that would be a good question for you to address is why is the Ayatollah and why is his regime? Why are they incapable of taking that course of action?

But it is formally available. The Iranians could simply moderate and actually do. do the thing that the Obama administration and then after later the the the Biden administration kept insisting that they were when we could all see with our eyes that they were not. That's one option. Another option is we could take action. And, you know, it does strike me that first the Obama team and then the Biden team, there's basically, they won't really say it, but there's basically acceptance on the Democratic side of the aisle of a nuclear Iran and has been for decades now, essentially, nearly. There's not unanimity on this question on the Republican side of things.

You know, we are not approaching this with one voice. And, you know, there is an argument which in certain respects is compelling, or at least has compelling aspects to it, that China is such a big threat to American security. And we are so close to a potential conflict in the Western Pacific with China that we simply just, we just don't have the resources to deal with Iran, to deal with, you know, even like even the Red Sea is scandalous is what you lay out is. and it is scandalous. I mean, this major artery of international commerce patrolled by the United States Navy for, you know, an entire historical epoch, right? At least, you know, post-1945 on the United States essentially inherits from the British Empire the task of keeping this sea laying clear for our own prosperity, first and foremost.

That's closed now. I could make the opposite case, though. I could make the case that the incoming Trump administration should look at a very tough program for Iran, which would involve facilitating Israeli action, should involve aggressive action regarding the Houthis. I don't know. That's an interesting question to think through in the design of this scheme. If you're hard enough on the Iranians, do you actually have to be that hard on the Houthis? Or will your toughness on the Iranians actually take care of the Houthi problem? I don't know. That's an interesting, I think, discussion that would require access to detailed

regime level intelligence. But I could make the case that putting that at the top of the agenda for action in early 2025, maybe Israeli led action, would send a powerful message to the rest of the world and send a powerful message to the Chinese that Donald Trump is back, knock off your BS, this kind of stuff isn't going to fly anymore. What are your thoughts, Mark? I think if you look at the axis of aggressors, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, I think that the Iranians are the weakest element of that axis. I think, you know, the North Koreans, I mean, problems from hell. They already have nuclear weapons. ICBMs, right? They could destroy Seoul in a matter of days. We have a serious North Korea problem.

I am not a North Korea expert. I have a foggiest idea how to solve that one. Look, Russia, obviously in a hot war with Ukraine, you've talked a lot about it on school war. Maybe it's a stalemate. Maybe the Ukrainians are losing. I think Trump administration is coming in there with some plans to try to figure out some negotiated agreement. I mean, maybe it's offered Putin a deal. If he doesn't take it punch them in the face and arm the Ukrainians. But I think we're looking there at figuring out our way to continue to weaken the Russians, support the Ukrainians. But I think that is maybe Trump wants to wind that one down. China is the big problem and formidable enemy. This is a multi-generational Cold War, at least. And you've had some great people on the show of talking about that.

But if you look at Iran and the Islamic Republic, I think they're the weakest enemy. And I think it's very meaningful if we help our Israeli friends destroy the weakest enemy. I think that sends a profound message to the other three members of the access of aggressors, all of whom are working very closely with Iran, in terms of military support, economic support, sanctions, busting, political cover. That says you're right. America's back. Donald Trump is commander in chief, and we just destroyed Iran's nuclear weapons program.

And now we're going to also impose maximum pressure on the regime. and we're going to provide maximum support to the Iranian people, help topple this regime. That seems to me the outlines of that strategy are clear. Now, what can we practically do? I mean, Aaron, I know a lot of your listeners are serious military experts, and this idea might call some heartburn in some quarters. But here's what I would do if I was sitting in the White House. I would give the Israelis access to our strategic bombers. I would call up the prime minister, said, like your head of the Israeli Air Force, to sit down with the head of the U.S. Air Force, the IDF chiefs of staff to sit down with our SENTCOM commander.

And we'd like to get some Israeli pilots to Missouri and train the pilots and navigators on our B-2 bomber. We're going to give you a bomber. We're not going to sell it to you. We're not going to lease it to you. We're going to give it to you for a one-time mission. And we're going to do some operational research to figure out how many bombers you need and how many massive ordnance penetrators are required.

because the Israelis need massive ordinance penetrators in order to destroy two of the three core facilities, core nuclear facilities inside Iran. The Fordo Enrichment Facility, which is buried underground, goes hundreds of feet, fortified in concrete, buried under a mountain, and the Isfahan conversion facility where Iran stores its enriched uranium. So that's also a very, very difficult mission for the Israelis to hit from the air, given their current capabilities. Now, Israelis have other capabilities. The one thing about Israel that we've learned over recent months is if they're not surprising you, they're losing.

And that the Israelis, when they actually work at something and they devote significant resources and time and focus, they can be quite surprising. Yeah. As Hezbollah and Hamas learned to their everlasting pain. But this is a serious technical challenge. So, okay, send your pilots, send your navigators, send in Missouri, and now integrate the strategic bombers and mobs into what the IAF, Israeli Air Force, has already developed as its attack plan. And now the Israelis are ready to go.

And they can now do serious damage to this program. Now, the three answers to that Israeli request if it was made. one is no. We're not giving strategic bombers to anybody, right? And, you know, maybe there's some legal prohibitions against us, though we've looked into this and we're pretty sure there aren't. I'm just wondering what the insurance requirements are. Like, do you have to click the box and pay an extra 20 bucks to, like, cover, you know, or if the Israelis use an American Express, are they good? They don't have to worry about that. Yeah, no, there is a question of if the Israelis don't return the play in good form. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

take it through a car wash, unlike most rental cars. So there is that question. So there are lots of reasons we might say no. The second response might be yes. That's a very good idea. Let the Israelis do this, but let them do it properly and effectively, because we don't want the Israelis to fail. The third answer might be, wow, you Israelis are actually really serious. You know, Prime Minister Netanyahu, we've been skeptical that you were really serious about making the hard decision to actually blow up Iran's nuclear facilities. You know, you threatened to do that for many years. We didn't think you were serious.

Well, now we know you're serious. And so let's get everybody together and start thinking of a joint strike plan, but how we do this together. Or maybe just at some point, you know, Israel, you've shown us the way you overturned years of military planning and skepticism that the U.S. Air Force was capable of penetrating Iran's air defenses, that we were going to lose many planes and many pilots. and you Israelis demonstrated in the course of a few hours in October that you can command the skies.

Well, certainly we can command the skies. So, you know what, stepped aside, we got this. And President Trump is going to do this on his own. And he's going to send a message to the other members, the axis of aggressors, that the United States will do this alone. So, you know, three possibilities. But if I were the Israelis, that's what I'd be asking for. Yeah.

Well, the implication, the key implication of everything you just outlined, which I think is worth lingering on is it's not that the Israeli. need intelligence support or logistical support for this operation, though maybe they would benefit from some. But that they actually need strike support, that they don't have the striking power, the punching power required for some of these targets. And, you know, that's a riddle because which is why your loner idea is kind of fun if challenging in certain respects. You know, the president, President Trump has run on the platform. And you could see this back in his first administration as well. You know, no new, no new Middle Eastern wars. We're not going to

get America into another war in the Middle East. Mike Walts has been on TV just in the last 24, 48 hours, making that point about Syria. And you can see why. No one wants another Middle Eastern war. So I've thought since I've started thinking about this, that, you know, since the Iranians have clearly been on the back foot, it really needs to be Israeli led for it to be practical. And, you know, that's just the, that's just the riddle we're going to have to work through because I'm fundamentally in agreement with you that Iran is the low-hanging fruit here of the axis and is presenting a cassis belly in the form of its nuclear program, that a nuclear Iran changes the face of the region in a way that is fundamentally detrimental to the American interest and will make nothing easier.

We'll make nothing easier for a future war with China, nothing or long competition with China. Everything will become harder. So why not deal with it when you can if you have a willing partner like the Israeli, who it's deeply in their interest to deal with it, if they show themselves, as you point out, because they've waffled in the past, if they show themselves serious about taking this moment, taking the opportunity that's available to them in acting, why not facilitate it? But it's the strike package itself that needs the key assistance is what you're suggesting. That's right. Listen, again, we don't know what the Israelis have.

I mean, I think those who say don't know, those who know don't say. And we certainly learned about extraordinary Israeli capabilities in October and against Iran, their ability to strike even from Iraqi airspace using ballistic missiles fired from aircraft. That was something that was a surprise. And that certainly did some serious damage to Iranian capabilities. We saw the pagers. We saw the walkie-talkies. We've seen their exquisite intelligence to kill Nasrallah and destroy Aradwan and go after missile

launch, so I mean, all of these things have been surprised in terms of both capabilities and competence. So there may be things there that we don't know about, but I do think that Israel has the ability to do damage to these key facilities, but do we really want them just to do damage, or do we really want them to hit these facilities in such a destructive way that they're set back for not weeks or months, but years? And we, the United States, have those capabilities. So why not provide those capabilities to the Israelis? Let them use that. Let them do significant damage to this threat. And let them reaffirm what I, you know, what I always hear, Aaron from our friends on the Republican side, whether they be, you know, let's call them hawks,

or people who understand that you've got to go after the entire access of aggressors, people who believe who are China firsters, who say, listen, we don't have the resources and the time in the space to go after anyone else but Chinese. And even the isolationists who say, listen, we, you know, we're just going to deal with our problems at home and not assert American power abroad. All of them agree on one fundamental principle, and that is we wish we had more allies like the Israelis. Yeah. What are in China first are isolationists or you want to go after the entire axis. It's always helpful to have a ally who's willing to fight and die in their own defense and do so in a way that is where they demonstrate extraordinary courage and competence.

I don't think we have another ally like that. I mean, you could argue the Ukrainians are like that, and they've fought bravely against the formidable enemy. But the level of competence and effectiveness and intelligence, I mean, sort of hard intelligence is, I think, unique in the world. So why not give the Israelis the strategic bombers and the mocks and the support they need to do serious damage? Again, I thought it out as an idea.

I'm sure there lots of people out there are going to tell us the 50 reasons why we can't do that. But I think President Trump may be courageous enough and out-of-the-box thinker enough to actually contemplate that. My main takeaway from my time in Israel and the sort of the thesis of the show I just did is that what's happened in Israel in the last year shows just how important strategy is. and strategy in the very old-fashioned sense of the term as a strategum or series of general's tricks, which is the word originally means general's art. And it had the flavor of, you know, the tricks you play before the battle begins to put your opponent in a disadvantageous position. The word has accrued other layers of meaning and sort of means everything and nothing today. But that's the original sense.

And if you, well, I mean, first of all, if you look, I mean, it's both Israel's failures and its successes. If you look at what Hamas did to Israel on October 7th, that deception plan was a very classic strategic move in the old sense. And then, I mean, most spectacularly of all, which has now led to these dominoes dropping in Syria because Hezbollah, of course, helped the Iranians maintain their control and maintain the Assad regime in Syria. But the campaign in Lebanon from the middle of September on was just a masterclass in strategy in that old-fashioned sense of the term. And I think taught or maybe reminded everyone of something that we ought to. be reminded of and we need to be reminded of, which is that for all of the dominant role of technology on the battlefield, which makes the battlefield so much more visible and thus makes maneuver and offense more difficult.

And that's why you see Ukraine looks a lot like World War I with drones. You know, we seem to be in this era where the defense is dominant. You know, if you take a really careful look at the enemy order of battle and their decision-making processes and how their system works, and then you are able to start to dismantle at piece by peace in an atmosphere of ambiguity, you can set the conditions for a successful offensive. And the Israelis demonstrated that with real brilliance in Lebanon, it was, is one of the most impressive things I've seen in my lifetime, if not the most impressive feat of arms, just as a pure formal matter in my lifetime.

Yeah. Listen, I certainly think it'll be studying war colleges for decades as the six-day war was studied for decades in war colleges where I think that was another really impressive Israeli victory, I would say that the one area we haven't talked about, and I really do think this is an area where we can do severe damage to the Islamic Republic. And that is, and you and I have talked about this before, is to finally get our act together and support millions of Iranians on the streets who want to bring down the Islamic Republic. I mean, we have this really bizarre situation where Khamenei creates this ring of fire over decades, right? And the

this kind of noose around Israel's neck threatens not only Israelis, but Americans too, right? Certainly bled us in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And we sort of fight this defensive war, you know, talking about the philosophy of war or the school of war. And yet we do nothing to support the millions of Iranians inside Iran, who are really like a noose of liberation around Khamene's neck. I mean, they've been on the streets since 2009 repeatedly. of them, yelling death to the dictator.

President Obama, are you with us or the dictator? You know, then they're back on the streets in 2017, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, women like freedom, back on the streets, like the woman of Iran. Death to the dictator. President Biden, are you with us, are you with a dictator? And I would argue in both cases, Obama and Biden chose to engage with the dictator, abandon the people. I think President Trump provided some support during his maximum pressure campaign, but maximum

pressure was really about serious economic sanctions against the regime and the killing of a custom Soleimani. Beginning of a good strategy. But if he's going back to maximum pressure in 2025, I would argue, I have argued repeatedly at nauseam that maximum support for the Iranian people needs to be a fundamental pillar, maximum pressure on the regime. And what it really means is, you know, David Barnayev Mossad and John Ratcliffe with CIA getting together, getting their teams together, sent.

coming down with the IDFs and, you know, folks from Israeli governments sitting down with our Treasury teams and a State Department teams and really designing a strategy of how do we actually provide meaningful, operational, actionable, damaging support to the Iranian people that really undermines, degrades, de-legitomizes the Islamic Republic of Iran. And I think you and I've talked about this in the past, right? Reagan designed the strategy against the Soviet Union. And I don't think Reagan thought the Soviet Union was going to collapse on his watch. I think he thought Marxism, Leninism, would inevitably end up in the ash heap of history because of its internal contradictions.

But he designed a strategy of maximum pressure and maximum support. And he brought down the Soviet Union as a result. I think we can do the same. I want to see the Islamic Republic of Iran follow the same fate of Assad in Syria. And I think, unlike Syria, I don't think you're going to see a post-enic. Islamic Republic of Iran as a bastion of jihadism or of, you know, Al-Qaeda or ISIS. I think you've got a serious society there, a well-educated society, great civilization of people who can take back their country. And I'm not suggesting it's going to be Jeffersonian democracy, but I am suggesting

it could become a far less dangerous, maybe even far more helpful country and to have. as a pro-American Iran would be a game changer for us in terms of Middle East security. Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, great to talk to you as always. Aaron, thanks so much for having back. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.