School of War - Ep 207: Mark Dubowitz on the Israel-Iran War and American Intervention

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of FDD, joins the show to bring us up to speed on the Israel-Iran conflict, and the possibility of America’s intervention. ▪️ Times      •      01:00 Achievements     •      05:00 Retaliation       •      09:00 Hard math       •      16:00 Intervention     •      24:00 Outcomes           •      30:00 Ground operations     •      32:00 Another Iraq?           •      38:00 Resolve and stability      •      42:00 “Iraq Syndrome”          Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

We are one week in to Israel's campaign against Iran's nuclear program and possibly its pursuit of broader objectives. It's an open question whether or not the United States is going to become offensively involved. We welcome back Mark Dubowitz to the show to break it all down for us. Let's get into it. It is a perspective for war. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infantry. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the grave situation in Iran.

We shall fight on the beaches. We should fight on the land in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome back to the show today, Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Mark, you were here last week just after Israel kicked off its campaign in Iran. A lot has happened since then. So we're going to give listeners an update. Why don't we start with the Israeli Air campaign itself and, you know, special operations campaign, intelligence campaign as well? What have its goals been this past week and what does it achieve so far? Thanks for having me back, Aaron. Yeah, it's been a remarkable week since we were together, and the Israelis have really achieved aerial dominance. I mean, the purpose of the campaign

is essentially to go out there, take out air defenses, take out any Iranian jets, either in the skies or on the runway, and be able to basically hunt at will. And that's what the Israeli Air Force is doing. They are going out and taking out the major targets in their target bank. And they had a full target bank of military, security and nuclear sites. And they've been hunting missile launchers and going after Iran's large missile inventory, which numbered about 3,000 ballistic missiles before the start of this war. And so every night, every day they're in the skies. By the way, every day, which shows you the extent to which they have taken out these strategic air defences, these mobile launchers,

and feel safe flying in the day going after Iranian target. So that's the Israeli Air Force. Mossade has been on the ground, both with operatives and Iranian agents, and incredible intelligence and covert action campaign. With commercial trucks that have been sitting in Iran for years, hatches opening, drones coming out of them, flying, taking out targets, killing nuclear weapons scientists. We think they're about 14 nuclear weapons scientists have been killed. I think that's 14 out of 15 on the initial Mossad target list. They may have just gotten a 15th one. We're waiting for reports. And the Israeli military intelligence, including their unit A200, which is like our NSA,

I mean, gathering this intelligence over years, just incredible, detailed intelligence, being able to go after senior commanders. I mean, there was one story, and I saw where they managed to get false messages into Iranian communication channels and get all of the senior commanders of the, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Air Force have been responsible for firing these missiles into the same meeting and they killed them all. That was in the opening days of this war, which obviously disrupted the command and control of the aerospace and their ability to coordinate a response to Israel. So remarkable activities by Israeli Air Force, by Morsad, by military intelligence,

and I think the Israelis have performed beyond even their expectations. So my question will naturally lead us into what the Iranian response has been. I mean, the optimist in me looks at what the Israelis have done over the last week and wants to argue that what we are seeing is a demonstration of how precision and a kind of excellence and intelligence and operational activities can generate really, really impressive effects on the battlefield. The most immediate and obvious of which is this creation of air superiority, arguably air dominance that allows them to just act with impunity and go after other targets at, you know, times of their choosing. And I mean, just to agree with you for a second, I mean, the, the precision driven by

intelligence has just been remarkable. There was this ridiculous statement in the first day or two of the shooting where this New York Times reporter was talking about how awful it was of these indiscriminate Israeli strikes in civilian areas of Tehran, you know what I'm referring to. And I remember looking, I'm looking at the pictures of the strikes and there's like a hole in the wall in the side of an apartment building that's clearly, you know, targeting at a particular room, you know, I can picture, I don't know if the IDF relies on PowerPoint. I hope they don't. But whatever the IDF equivalent of PowerPoint is, I can imagine the deck. And I can imagine how the decks, well, is the bed in the southwest corner of the room or the northeast corner of the room? So, you know,

do we want the thing to impact five feet to the left or to the right? I mean, it really is quite remarkable and again the optimist to me wants to believe that what we are seeing here is is a campaign that's going to achieve it's it's you know certainly one of its most important goals which is the the destruction of the nuclear program or at least its substantial degradation and perhaps some other goals as well the pessimist in me worries about a couple things it worries about the ferocity of the Iranian response both what we've already seen and what we might yet see and it worries about the math of Israeli interceptors versus Iranian ballistic missile launchers. So if you wouldn't mind, give us an overview of that issue. Yeah. And we're going to talk about the nuclear targets as well,

because I think that's going to be obviously a very important part of the conversation. But let's begin with the Iranian retaliation. So as I said, they started with about 3,000 ballistic missiles. About 2,000 of those have a range that can reach Israel. Again, I haven't seen probably most up to-date numbers, but they fired about 5,600 of those ballistic missiles. The most important constraint on Iran's ability to fire ballistic missiles are the launches, and it seems that they've gone after and taken out about 50% of Iranian missile launches, and they've been hunting missile launching teams from the air and from the ground. The Iranians have been able to kill dozens of Israelis and wound 600. Now, I just want to tell you that the Israeli Defense Force estimates,

before this war is that hundreds and hundreds of Israelis would be killed, not dozens. So certainly compared to what the IDF was estimating, they are still below that. Thank God. And obviously, one of praise that that will continue. But the Khamene ordered his military to fire indiscriminately, to intentionally murder Israeli civilians. And there was this incident the other day where they fired on a hospital. and hundreds of patients were wounded.

Now, thank God, the Israelis have planned for this. They've got deep bunkers under these hospitals, and many patients were under there. But there have been casualties, but as I said, hundreds of injuries. So you're right. The Iranian response, and the Iranian response to come,

could still be deadly. And the ability of the Israeli defense forces to intercept these missiles, either through the arrow interceptor, or through Israeli and American planes that are in the skies as well as planes and other allies that have been shooting them down has been extraordinary. But, you know, if you're at a 90% success rate and 10% are getting through, 10% are getting through.

And I think even that interception rate is starting to decrease as the Iranians are using more sophisticated missiles. They're now using missiles with cluster warheads in order to inflict maximum damage. and they still haven't fired their most potent missiles, my understanding that the two-ton warheads, but also missiles that have certain maneuverability and are able to, in some cases, evade these arrow interceptions and these attempts to shoot them down.

So, again, ballistic missile capabilities that are still very deadly, and I know the Israelis are obviously doing everything they can to prevent this, but it's something to really be. anxious about. One thing that would worry me if I were, you know, in a position of responsibility for all this in Israel, is that, you know, whatever the number is, there is a finite number of the high end interceptors, you know, the exo atmospheric stuff, arrow, you know, the stuff that

you really need for the big Iranian assets. And okay, so there's 50% of launchers gone. You say, that's great. That still leaves 50 other percent. And I have to worry, are the Iranians playing this out for time to degrade my interceptor stocks, maybe see if they can degrade the diplomatic will of the United States and others to assist in defense. And then that's when they're going to fire the big stuff. And I'll tell you, Mark, I worry when I see these missiles landing, you know, in population centers, you know, hospitals, places, you know, in the middle of Tel Aviv, stuff like that. Obviously, you know, it seems to me rationally you would want to intercept anything like that if you could. I worry, is it, and you may not know the answer to this, is it that

it's one of the 10% failure, or are we starting to ration interceptors? I think it's both. I mean, I think, you know, the Israelis always have to ration interceptors throughout all their wars, including their wars with Hamas and Hisbalah. I mean, that's sort of Iron Dome and David's sling levels, but they, there's a finite number, you're right. And so they're rationing, they're intercepting what they can, they're letting drop. Those they believe are not going to hit population centers.

I'm going to land in empty fields. That's always been part of the calculation. Right. But that's my point is that these are not, some of these spectacular impacts, unfortunately, are not empty fields. No, absolutely. These are getting through. And they're getting through, I don't know, because of rationing or because this is not

just, these are not foolproof systems. You know, if you're getting 90%, it's pretty extraordinary for an aerial defense system. But you're right. And I worry exactly what you worry about, that the regime is keeping the most potent ballistic missiles in reserve and we'll use that once they've worn down, as you say, and degraded both the aerial defense systems and American diplomatic will, which we can talk about that, whether that's being degraded. I want to say one other thing about the nuclear because I think it's really important to talk

about what the battle damage assessment is on the nuclear side. So if you look at Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure, it's been pretty successful campaign by Israel. they've taken out the Natanz enrichment facility, which has above ground and also below ground. They've taken out Isfahan's two conversion facilities. And Aaron, this is really important because it's gotten very little attention, but there's two conversion facilities. One which takes yellow cake, turns it into uranium hexafluoride that gets pumped into centrifuges for the enrichment of uranium to higher levels, including weapons grade.

That's gone. More important conversion facility takes the, 90% enriched uranium, and then it converts it into uranium metal. And you need uranium metal to create a nuclear warhead or a nuclear device. And that's been taken out. Now, the best of my knowledge, and it surprises me, which war is me, Iranians only had one and was above ground. Now, I don't know why in this elaborate nuclear weapons program, you spent billions of

dollars in multiple years that you would actually take the risk of having a critical element of a nuclear warhead development process in an above-ground facility and you only built one. But according to sources, that's what they've done and there is only one. Now, it's six to 12 months to rebuild, but that actually, what that does is it blocks the possibility of Iran developing the nuclear device. And that's obviously very, very important. I mentioned earlier, they've taken out of 14, maybe 15 of their target list of nuclear weapons scientists. This is like taking out, you know, Oppenheimer and 14 of his key nuclear weapon scientists in Las almost in January, February 1945, a few months before the Trinity test. Now, you could have replaced

them, we could have replaced them, but that was, you know, a key team. And it's not just people with technical skills, it's people with the ability to run large-scale weaponization programs. So, you know, they took out Mosunfakrasade a number of years ago, who was the, Oppenheimer of the program. They just took out Fakhrazade's replacement and his replacements. And that actually has been a consistent theme throughout this campaign. They're going after the commander. The commander gets replaced four days later. Next commander gets killed. The next few days later, the next one gets killed. And that's happened across the military and security infrastructure and establishment. Right. So that's IRC,

the intel guys. It's in the nuclear. So hitting those scientists really is a, blow, but one must be careful in overstating that because they have developed a whole system of a nuclear weapon scientists who've been trained in this. But it sounds like the most senior have been taken out. Now, what does that leave? It leaves the most dangerous element of the nuclear weapons program, which is Fordo, and I'm sure we're going to talk about Fordo. But this is an enrichment facility on a revolutionary guard base buried under a mountain that goes 80, 90, 100 meters, fortified of concrete. And it's in that facility. They've got advanced centrifuges.

The Iranians also have a large stockpile of enriched material, enough 60% for 17 bombs worth. And that's sitting in tunnels somewhere, probably in Fordot, and they're probably material in Natanz, in Isfahan. But those in deep tunnels that can't be destroyed from the air. So what remains is Fordo, the enriched material, the advanced centrifuges, whatever remaining nuclear weapon scientists, are still alive. And then Iran has the ability to take all of that and take that underneath the

mountain in Fordo, rebuild a metal, uranium metal conversion facility underground, if they don't have one there already, and then emerge with a nuclear weapon. So that remains the most dangerous element of what's left. Well, let's talk about that because that also gets us into the American role in all this. I mean, be it resolved, if the war were to stop this moment, Israel would have a pretty significant failure on its hands. The job is not done. And that's even setting aside more grandiose objectives like, you know, the fall of the regime. That's just the nuclear program. There's the conventional wisdom is that one country does have conventional weapons that from the air could disable Fordo. And that's the United States. As listeners will know, we spent,

I spent the last several days thinking that the United States was essentially on the verge of an American air strike that probably would have that as its objective. It wasn't explicitly stated, I think, but that's sort of the logical objective of American intervention in the conflict, because it's the one thing the Israelis clearly can't do from the air themselves. I think there's other options that we could talk about. Bring us up to date on where that stands. That has been, there was this sort of multi-day period of intensity with the White House and with President Trump. President Trump called for unconventional, or sorry, not unconventional, unconditional, which decided I'm teaching a class this week about the Second World War,

so I felt a resonance. And then as of yesterday afternoon, we actually learned we were on a two-week pause to allow time for diplomacy. How do you read these tea leaves? What do you think is going on? Well, first I want to say that. I don't agree, actually.

I think if the war to end today and Fordo is still standing, I think it would still be remarkable Israeli success because I think even with Fordo standing, they have set the nuclear weapons program back considerably. And, you know, if you had told me a week ago that there would be an entire campaign, Israel would sustain a couple dozen casualties, not hundreds, would emerge with most of its civilian infrastructure intact. You would take out the majority of Iran's ballistic missile capability, and you're taken out

all of the nuclear sites that I've described. Ford O would still be standing, but Iran's nuclear weapons. weapons program would be set back considerably many, many months, maybe even years, I think that's quite a, that's quite a success. And I think that was for many people, that was kind of the best case scenario of an Israeli strike. I mean, the notion that Israelis were going to actually destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program entirely and permanently and set it back by decades, I think most people thought that that was impossible. So I think would still be a success. I agree with you. The ultimate success here is you have to fully dismantle the program. You have to destroy it

and you have to take away all its capabilities and that means destroying Fordow. Well, that gets to the American role. So on the American role, clearly the United States can do so with one B2, one bomb on one site. I'm exaggerating. It might be multiple B2s with multiple bombs hitting Ford O. But the United States military has assured President Trump, according to public reporting, that they have the capabilities to do it. They beat these B-2 pilots. This is what they've been training on, Aaron, for many years. This is the mission.

And the Israelis have done them as service by reducing the risk of that mission, by taking out all of these strategic air defenses and mobile air defenses that ring Ford-O. And so I think with President Trump, I think what he is waiting for as this campaign unfolds is reducing the risk to America, and American pilots and the American military, as, you know, as long as the Israelis can do that, and they've done that quite successfully, then he's reduced the risk, and then what he has is now in a calculation, how can I permanently dismantle this program? Now, I could do it in Oman or I could do it in Fordo, or I could do it in Fordo and then Oman.

So what I mean? I could do it if the Iranians finally say, you know what, we got the message president of Trump. We thought you were a paper tiger. We thought you'd block an Israeli strike. We've now had to come to Muhammad moment, and we've, will meet you in Oman and we will agree to peacefully dismantle our program. Remember, President Trump had said two months ago, Aaron, you remember this, he had said to the Iranians, you can either blow up your own program under U.S. supervision or someone will blow it up for you. Well, we will blow it up

under American supervision is the deal. So we do a deal. We go in under U.S. supervision. We blow up fordo. We destroy it. We take out the material. We destroy all the centrifuges. And we leave the Iranians with essentially nothing. That would be a deal of fully dismantling under U.S. supervision and obviously with the role of the International Atomic Energy Agency assisting us in doing so. So that, I think, is what Trump is giving them, that option. Now, if the Iranians play to type, which unfortunately, which fortunately they've been playing to, and that is continued recalcogens at the negotiating table, well, that's where President Trump orders the bombers. And I think the other aspect, which you mentioned World War II, I've been saying, I think you'll find this somewhat humorous, that the President of the States has run the greatest deception operations since Operation Overlord when we fooled the Nazis into believing that we were going to invade at Calais and that we actually invade it at Normandy.

Now, is it the greatest deception operation in American history? Hard to say. Was it a pretty good deception operation if President Trump was involved in it? Aaron, you know this, right? They literally and figuratively caught the Iranians in their beds on Thursday night because the Iranians were assuming that there was going to be another round of negotiations on the Sunday. They had gotten an offer, a really good offer for them, by the way, a really terrible offer for us.

And there's going to be another round on Sunday. And at worst, the Israelis would launch strikes the following week, but actually more realistically, there's no way they would because President Trump had made it really clear. He preferred a peaceful option. and there were lots of news reports about how BB and Trump were divided and how Trump had given a red light to Netanyahu on any strike. So there was some deception operation involved. Maybe there's one going on right now and we may wake up tomorrow morning or Sunday and there are B2 bombers over Fordo. Or maybe we get into this protracted diplomatic process, which I'm concerned about and the Iranians end up emerging from this with a deal and their regime intact.

Yeah, that thought that the president's statement yesterday could also itself be part of some effort to deceive the Iranians occurred to me as well. Though here we are 18 hours on and nothing has happened so far. Look, just back on the point of objectives and success and failure, the only thing I would say is here's the problem. I think you would agree with this. But here's the problem with, as it were, stopping things now but without a, a, a, a, a, a, a, diplomatic ending of the nuclear program. The nuclear program has to end, and it has to end, not in the sense that it could be rebuilt in a few months. It has to be taken down to the point where we'd have to be rebuilt from scratch. Maybe there's a diplomatic path to that. I agree with

you. The Iranians seem to be playing to type. The foreign minister just said this morning, just as we were about to start this interview, I saw him on the record. He's talking to the Europeans today. They're not going to meet with the Americans. They're not going to meet with the Americans while the Israeli campaign is still ongoing. Well, that seems to me to be a poor decision on their part. But nevertheless, if there were some sort of diplomatic way to actually end the nuclear program, actually end enrichment, actually dismantle the facilities that exist, that's one potential outcome that I think would be positive. Or through military means, Israeli or American, the program is reduced such that it has to be rebuilt from scratch. Because here's the problem if it's not reduced

that far, if it's only reduced sort of to where it is now where the damage is bad, but there are a past to reconstitution that are, you know, potentially measured in months or low number of years, a high number of years. If you add to that, Chaminet survives, the regime remains in power. They are emboldened by their survival. They are, if possible, even more full of hatred and rage for Israel, America, the West. I mean, it hardly seems possible to be further radicalized, but it seems to be possible that they are further radicalized. They have remaining to them some tools in the nuclear toolkit. And at that point, I think Israel runs the real risk, not just of a nuclear Iran, but even a nuclear attack, I would argue, like a genuinely terroristic, suicidal gambit, which would be a bit

out of character for the Iranians, but again, in the circumstances I'm describing, I would, you would have to consider it as a real possibility. Now, just to argue with myself, you could say that with the air superiority that's been generated, maybe actually the case I just laid out is too black and white. Maybe we are just entering into a world where Iran is kind of like Lebanon and Syria have been for Israel. And they're just in two or three months or whatever to their liking. They're going to conduct further operations. Obviously, I don't know. But that's my response to your case. Exactly. Well, thank you for making my argument, which is exactly that. I love coming on your show because you're thinking three steps ahead of me, which is always good. That's exactly right.

They can act at will. They can return at will. And I also want to make it very clear. I mean, Israel has options on Fordo. I don't want to leave your listeners with the impression that this has got to be a U.S. operation, and that's it. I mean, you know, I often would say when people would ask me, does Israel have the capabilities to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program? Can they really take out his Bala? Can they really do significant damage to Hamas?

I mean, these are really, really difficult targets and their talitary capability of Hamas. Asz, Bala, and especially Iran, are extraordinary. Can Israel do it? And I would often say, it's a good question. I think those who know don't say and those who say don't know. And it was a way for me to actually get out of the question because I didn't necessarily know. But it was nice to imply that you did.

It was nice to imply I did. I mean, I knew certain things, but not. I didn't know what I didn't know was the extraordinary capabilities that Israel has demonstrated since October 7th. And particularly since September, where they took out Hezbollah, leadership, special forces, precision-guided missiles, significant reductions to missile and rocket inventories. I mean, extraordinary operation against Islam, I think your listeners have followed it. The beeper attacks. Not only did I not know about the beeper attacks, most people in the Israeli security systems don't know about the beeper attacks.

This operation against Iran, I mean, extraordinary capabilities have been demonstrated. We talked about some of them, what Mossad did, what Israeli Air Force did, the unit 8200 is done. I mean, extraordinary capabilities. So is it possible the Israelis have some surprises up their sleeve for Fordo? I don't think it's even possible. I think it's probable. Now, what are those surprises? We can speculate on an open podcast.

But I think the Israelis can do damage to Fordo, and they can do it from the air. There are vulnerabilities within the Fordo system. I think David Albright actually has done a really remarkable work describing this. I think it's really worth your listeners looking at the Institute for Science and International Security and David Albright, a top nuclear expert who has gone through a detailed description of what are the vulnerabilities, where you could hit it, the electricity, the air shafts, you know, possibility of Israeli special forces operations, maybe on the ground. Risky, they could be captured, God forbid, paraded in Tehran Square, taken hostage, executed, very risky mission. but options on the ground, options from the air. The Israelis are not going to let Fordo emerge unscate. There's just no way, regardless of what the Americans decide to do.

So one has to keep that in mind, and I agree with you. You know, there's still much more to do, much more to accomplish. But today, even in the seven, eight days, Israelis have exceeded all expectations, not only ours, but I know they've exceeded their expectations, given what the damage they've done in such a short period of time. Well, from your lips to God's ears on Fordo, I mean, I have no special or inside knowledge whatsoever about any of this planning. I have made the same assumption you have that the Israelis cannot possibly have been sitting around for the last 10 plus years thinking, well, gosh, we got to get the Americans because they're the only ones that have the bomb and

someone pipes up and says, well, but what if we can't? And then for 10 years, no one's come up with an answer. There have to be answers. My instinct is that a ground operation would have to be bigger than what people are probably picturing. That is to say, given the distance to the target, the complexity of the target, probably the time you need on the ground, or not people want to picture zero dark 30 and stuff like that. My instinct is it would have to be larger, and it could turn into quite the knockdown dragout, for which, by the way, air superiority or dominance and regime instability are both very helpful things, right? Because you want to do everything you can to both interdict from the overhead threats on the ground,

and then ideally it's helpful if the Iranians have trouble organizing a response on the ground. So that's why, you know, time is probably on the Israeli side, arguably on that front. Yeah. I mean, if your listeners are interested in a kind of recent parallel, the Israelis last year ran a really remarkable operation inside Syria. They went after a deeply buried precision-guided munitions factory that the Iranians were building in order to provide greater precision-guided. capability to his ball up. Shaldag, the Air Force Special Forces, landed there, and they went deep

into the tunnels and rigged explosives, came out, blew the whole thing up, and it's considerable damage. But you're right. I mean, the tons, which they destroyed is big, but Fordot is huge. It's a massive facility. You can see the satellite photos of how big and vast it is. This isn't just, you know, a unit of Sheldon coming in, bringing it up with explosives and getting out. This is a significant ground operation. You're going to have to have the layers of people coming in who are going to defend the actual special forces that are going into Fordow, assuming that it's even an option.

I don't know what that number is, but it's not an insignificant number, and it's a much larger number than in the Syria operation. And there are obviously great risks to this. So again, without getting into even more detail about what's possible, I think there are clearly plans. Aaron, you're exactly right. The Israelis have not spent the past 10 years meticulously planning an operation with exquisite intelligence, getting trucks in there with drones, and with all the while thinking, well, for sure, get an American president who'll be dropping massive orders penetrators on Ford O.

So they've got options. The best option, obviously, is the United States because with those 30,000 pound bombs, according to the U.S. military, that's briefing Trump, we can destroy Fordo. Yeah, that all said, I mean, obviously it's bad. for Israel's objectives for the United States to be involved. I'd argue it's better for the United States to be involved. I think we have an interest in the destruction of the Iranian nuclear program. I also think that if regional stability is our goal, the closer we are to the Israelis, the better, because the greater deterrent effect that provides for further Iranian misadventures after this. That's a case I've been making over and over again. The debate sort of on the American

right about this perplexes me. I genuinely don't. don't understand the claim that this is going to be another Iraq. I don't mean to sound like Tucker Carlson. That's the move. What I just said is always the move that Tucker Carlson pulls. I don't understand. But I don't, I actually don't understand how, you know, at most a handful of sorties from our bombers with very clear objectives.

My impression is this administration is agnostic at best to the question of regime change in Iran. the very specific objective of the destruction of the nuclear program, as President Trump has said repeatedly. And I think he's right about this. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. They're going to dismantle their enrichment facilities or we are. How that amounts to sending multiple divisions up the highway to Baghdad is just completely unclear to me. Like an utter apples and orange. I don't know. It's like an it's an apples and mountain comparison. Yeah, I agree with that. Look, I think, I mean, Yeah, one always has to think of worst-case scenarios, but not be paralyzed by them.

I think that is a very big difference between Israel after October 7th and Israel before October 7th. I think it's a difference between Israel today and maybe even the United States. Is Israelis think of worst-case scenarios, they try to mitigate them, but they're not paralyzed by them. And this kind of operation, the Hizbala operation demonstrates. They're willing to take these risks because the enemy is so dangerous. and they also believe in the escalate to de-escalate doctrine,

which is we are going to pound the enemy. We are going to show the enemy our capabilities. We're going to force the enemy to de-escalate. And by the way, that's exactly what Hisbalah has done. They've de-escalated as a result of Israeli escalation dominance. The Israelis continue to enforce the ceasefire in Lebanon, to your earlier point. I mean, their ability to come back in at will

and keep striking His Bala targets if the Lebanese are forces in Lebanese government or not. So I think that is the Israeli doctrine. I think the United States could truly benefit from eliminating Iran's nuclear weapons program. And not for all the obvious reasons, which is get rid of nuclear weapons in the hands of a genocidal America-hating regime that's building intercontinental ballistic missiles that are nuclear-tipped aimed in the American homeland. That's a good thing.

Get rid of the risk of nuclear proliferation, not only in the Middle East, where multiple countries will develop nuclear weapons if Iran goes nuclear. But in Indo-Pacific, where multiple countries will no longer trust an American pledge to defend them, our nuclear umbrella, and the Japanese, the Taiwanese, the South Koreans, all of whom have had nuclear programs or currently have nuclear programs and have the scientific capability to build nuclear weapons, there's a risk of nuclear proliferation and cascade in the Indo-Pacific. But also because if we think about it today, Aaron, and you've been doing this on your podcast and really describing this and explaining this in detail, this kind of axis of aggressors that's aligned against the United States and our interests is China, it's Iran, it's Russia, it's North Korea. And Iran is, even before last week, was the weakest

element of the axis of aggressors. If we were to, through Israel, eliminate their nuclear weapons program, severely weaken them. I think that's a message to the Chinese, to the Russians and the North Koreans. And particularly what we all worry about, Aaron, is the Chinese, right? And how do we deter them from invading Taiwan because that is the scenario where American troops are going to have to go fight. And so how do we avoid that or how do we deter that or how do we limit the risk of that? Well, maybe the message to Xi is we just drop massive ordinance penetrators and destroyed Ford-O, right? And we just fought with an incredibly reliable and effective and potent ally. And we just destroyed the major security nodes of the Islamic Republic.

Maybe you should be thinking twice about Taiwan. Again, you know more about Taiwan. this than I do. But I think go after the weakest element of the axis, it's Iran, deter the Chinese, send a message to Putin. Maybe it's time to actually deal over Ukraine, send a message to the North Koreans. You may have nuclear weapons and ICBMs, but at the end of the day, right, America is back and we are there showing power and deterrence. I don't want to overstate all of this, but I do think it's important for American national security globally to weaken, undermine, and defeat a key pillar of the access of aggressors. Well, the argument against what you just laid out is that our continued engagement in the

Middle East is costly, you know, specifically and concretely in military terms, you know, we're either using our equipment or supporting allies like Israel with our equipment, costs a lot of money. Meanwhile, we've got this big threat building in the Pacific that everyone agrees. China is the preeminent threat to American security in the coming years. I certainly agree. My response to that argument, which I've been making to anyone who would listen for the last several years, is actually our effort to extricate ourselves from these other theaters, whether it's the Middle East or Europe, is increasing, demonstrably increasing the instability in these theaters. There's more war.

There's more violence. And if we think we are just going to be able to sit on the sidelines of that and not have any involvement, well, events repeatedly prove that that is not the case. for one reason or another, and the story is always a little bit different every time, eventually we get sucked back in, and we get sucked back in into situations that are materially worse than the ones we left behind when we first tried to wash our hands of things. So, you know, my view mark is we probably shouldn't overthink this stuff, rather than the sort of 3D chess somehow being weak in one theater actually makes us stronger in another theater.

I'm kind of of the view that if you say that an Iranian nuclear weapon is unacceptable, which is a very legitimate goal for American policy, and then the Iranians are recalcitrant about that, and then you smush their nuclear program, that that is actually probably helpful, that that is helpful and sends the correct kind of message of resolve. I think that's exactly right. And by the way, by the way, contributes in time

to greater stability in a region, which is relevant to the conflict in the Pacific. In America, we have increasing energy independence, but you know who doesn't have energy independence? are allies in the Pacific, China. They all need what comes out of the Persian Gulf. So the notion that the two are somehow divorceable has always been mysterious to me,

as has been the notion that somehow a nuclear Iran changes the calculus of international politics and the balance of power in a way that's helpful to our goals in the Pacific. I just don't get it. Well, I think the other model is, you know, if we can find allies who are highly competent, who are going to fight and die in their own defense

against our enemies, that seems to me a pretty good model. model rather than sending hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops into these theaters in the Middle East. And we found one. They've demonstrated over the past week. I mean, it's a country of 10 million people with a tiny Air Force and a tiny intelligence service going 14, 15, in some cases, 2,000 kilometers, right, reaching out across into Iran, a country that's two and a half times the size of Texas with about 92 million people. Ted Cruz, I think, has learned doing his interview with Tucker, There are 92 million people.

Of course, Tucker made a very big point of that because he has to know it's 92, not 85 or 96, because otherwise Ted Cruz doesn't have the expertise to be weighing in on these issues. But anyway, this is where the American political dialogue is. This country is vast. It's enormous. And all of the assessments through military planners and think tankers and academics over the years is formidable, brutal, potent, competent military. Well, the Israelis have demonstrated in a week

their ability to eviscerate key nodes of that military. They've deeply penetrated the security establishment and gained credible intelligence. And they're not getting that intelligence by having just Mossad operatives on the ground air. And as you know, I mean, they've recruited thousands of Iranian agents from a population where there's a vast pool of recruits because most Iranians, 70, 80 percent of Iranians despise this regime, right?

So, wow, you have that kind of ally fighting against our enemy. That seems to be a model worth supporting. Certainly, we're supporting with some B2 bombers and some massive ordinance penetrators that actually were developed for this purpose. You know, and I think one of the reasons why there's a kind of panic in parts of the American right about the possibility of American intervention, you know, people who call themselves restrains. There's, there's, you know, or anti-interventionists is, is not only a kind of horror they have of

America helping Israel or being involved in the Middle East or whatever, though that's part of it. But I also think an intuition of theirs that if there is an American intervention and it's not Iraq and, you know, let's allow for the possibility that things go bad, that there's a chance, but there's also, I think, a pretty substantial chance that the B-2 and the massive ordinance penetrator does exactly what it was billed to do and accomplishes its goal at relatively low cost. Well, then that has a chance of, I thought the journal had a good editorial this morning on this, of breaking what does seem to have become a kind of Iraq syndrome that is reminiscent of the Vietnam syndrome, where everything is Iraq, everything, any American military involvement anywhere is Iraq. And so therefore, American military power as a tool of policy is no longer legitimate. And they're desperately trying to push the president into a place where he doesn't intervene because I think they're worried about the breaking of that syndrome.

I also don't think that the record shows that President Trump is all that pushable. Yeah, I think that's right. Look, I also don't want to be Polyanish, right? I think Chaminet, and we talked about this, he's 86 years old. He's in a bunker. He's lost a, or certainly his command structure and elements of his security forces have been degraded, but they're still there. There's still people.

They're still commanders. They have, you know, people who are experienced and training. who are replacing those who Israel has killed. They still have formidable ballistic missile capabilities. We haven't even talked about this, but they have sleeper cells in Europe across the United States. They haven't been activated yet, but it would be surprising if they're not. I think the FBI just sounded a warning the other day about the potential of sleeper cells targeting Jewish-Israeli and, well, if they were really crazy, going after American military sites.

but the risk of terrorist attacks, of assassinations of key people that have been opposed to the regime, going after U.S. military bases, going trying to close the Strait of Hormuz, there are ways that Chaminé can lash out that will potentially create the need to escalate against him. And I think that's the scenario that people are concerned about that that will pull in more U.S. forces and resources in handling that escalation. think that escalation across a certain threshold is suicidal Khamenei because the Israelis are itching to kill him. They claim to know where he is. And the only thing that has been so far blocking that is President Trump's directive to them, not yet. But not yet doesn't mean no. And at some point,

Israelis can move across that threshold, take out Khamenei and eliminate the rest of his top echelon of the regime. So he has to be careful in making those calculations, but he's a desperate man in desperate times, and, you know, wounded animals are the most dangerous. Mark Dubowitz, CEO of FDD. It's always fascinating to talk to you. Thanks for taking the time to walk us through what's going on. Thanks so much, Aaron.

Really appreciate it. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.