School of War - Ep 261: Behnam Ben Taleblu on the (Next!) Iran-Israel War

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Behnam Ben Taleblu, Senior Director (Iran Program) and Senior Fellow at FDD, joins the show to talk about how Iran has worked to reconstitute its missile program since the summer, and what the U.S. and Israel might do to stop it. ▪️ Times 01:43 Vessel Seizure  05:45 Making a Ballistic Missile  13:06 What Modern War Looks Like 17:19 Iran’s Missile Program 21:42 Evolving Assessment 26:24 Relevance for U.S. Defense Planning 30:00 Disconnected Victories   35:04 Lessons from the 10/07 War 39:31 Bad Choices for Iran Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find more content on our School of War Substack

As I record this introduction here on Monday, December the 29th, 2025, Benjamin Netanyahu is in Florida to meet with Donald Trump. High on their agenda is a potential new round of Israel-Iran military action, likely to be initiated by Israel, targeting the Iranian missile program, which the Islamic Republic has been working hard since the summer to rebuild. Add to this looming possibility reports that the U.S. military has interdicted at least one shipment of missile parts imbound from China to Iran

in the Indian Ocean earlier this fall, and it's clear that this is an issue to monitor. What is the nature and status of Iran's post-12-day war missile capabilities? And what does this tell us about the nature of war fighting in the modern Middle East? And what might happen next?

Let's get into it. It is for war. It's a rocky invasion of the way. December 7, 19, what we will live In him, a bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the rain situation in Iran. We'll fight on the beaches. There's a fight on the landing ground.

We'll fight in the fields and in the streets, which will never surrender. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Ben Talibu. He's the senior director of FD's Iran program where he oversees the breadth and depth of FD's work on Iran. Benham, thank you so much for joining School of War. Aaron, pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me. I want to start with this incident that got reported out in the press not long

ago, even though it actually seems to have occurred a few weeks ago, which is this boarding and seizure of materials bound from China to Iran, apparently related to its missile program. Tell us what happened. Sure. So, you know, first and foremost, I was a little bit shocked because the story itself dropped on a Friday almost near the evening. And the administration gave it no coverage, and the administration didn't come out to footstomp, what I believe is a really a major victory when it comes to the counterproliferation campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran. These are things that only add value to the impact of its strike against the nuclear program during the 12-day war and add value in staying power to Israel strikes against Iran's missile

program during the 12-day war. And so essentially what happened here is that the U.S. command. Indo-Pacom actually intercepted this vessel between China and Iran that had these dual-use items. The press, unfortunately, didn't get to report exactly as to what some of them were, but we can only guess, given the pattern of illicit procurement from the Islamic Republic, both with the PRC and with Hong Kong when it comes to the tech and the dual-use items they've got in the past and the commercially available material for their drone program as well as their missile program. This is largely, almost assumedly the stuff that goes into the section between the warhead of a ballistic missile and between the body. And this is the guidance and the control and the stuff that actually takes a quantitative

threat, which is Iran's ballistic missile, which before 12-day war was the largest in the region, to turning it into a qualitative threat, then being able to concentrate fire at an airbase as they did in October, 2024 when they fired at Israel, or be able to make things like they've done much more recently, like they used cluster munitions, unfortunately to have that beam. more successful, or to really be able to shave off sides of buildings or target civilian population centers or even a specific laboratory as they did when they targeted the Whiteman Institute during the 12-day War. So while the main story and the Wall Street Journal, which is the story that the entity, the outlet that broke this, that they've been covering all year has been Iran getting

precursors that are unsanctioned for sanctioned missile fuel. And the U.S. government has sanctioned some of these entities. What it's doing in terms of the investigation and in the interceptions world, actually seems to have much more to do with the things that make Iran's missile threat that much more lethal. And that is, assumedly, guidance and control. So there is significantly an attempt by Iran to build back better. If we can take a phrase from the Biden campaign, it's ballistic missile program. That was really the only leg of the deterrent triad that worked against the Israelis during the 12-day war. And it looks like Uncle Sam is interested in stopping Iran from building back better.

And that's a good thing. I want to, I mean, there's a couple different directions we could go from here. I want to get into the question about U.S. policy and how this fits into a broader American strategy, whether for Iran or China or both. And obviously we have the NSS out recently, and I want to get your take on that. But before that, you know, I think it was earlier this year. I had your colleague Mark Dubowitz on the show talking about the Iranian nuclear program as opposed to its missile program. And I think I hit him with a question along the lines of how do you make a nuclear bomb, which was a little bit unfair because I don't think Mark claims to be an expert in the actual physics and engineering of construction. But it was enjoyable to watch him take a swing of the question.

You did a great job. I'm actually kind of inclined to ask you, you know, what goes into making a ballistic missile, just sort of explain to listeners who have a general sense of what they are in a little bit more detailed terms, you know, what they are and how they work. And then, you know, for purposes of the incident we're talking about, what do the Iranians need to get from China that they can't produce at home? How is China central to this Iranian missile program? Well, those are all excellent questions. Let's start backwards because Iran can produce a lot of the stuff that it needs for its ballistic missile program at home. But just like military planning anywhere, redundancy is a good thing and cost efficiency will drive how you build a military program.

So you can invest a lot of money in some things that you can produce at home. Or sometimes even when it's illicit and you have to circumvent sanctions and engage in a whole host of economic funny business, sometimes even that, despite being, you know, you could say a little bit more burdensome, is still more cost-effective when it comes down to dollar value. And certainly, the regime, as has been reported several times this year, has been getting precursors, particularly this thing called sodium perchlorate, which is a precursor for ammonium chlorate, and in the kind of missile world, it's, you know, known by the acronym AP, you know, not to be confused with Associated Press. And in Iran's solid-propellant ballistic missiles, and solid-propellant is basically like,

like a way that ballistic missiles are fueled, they're really propelled with a solid mass. So rather than what you may have seen with some other missiles, which are called liquid propellant systems, which have engines, and then the liquid kind of flows through and fuels this and it kind of combusts. And then you can kind of throttle using a liquid engine, the fuel flow to change your trajectory or the speed of the missile or any of this other stuff. With a solid fuel ballistic missile. These you pre-fuel. You basically take these chemicals, you bake them together, you get fuel plus oxidizer, and that AP, that ammonium-proclorite, is critical for the solid propellant oxidizer. You kind of make it like a Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker or whatever else,

kind of those pre-made cake mixes. You put them all together. You mix them in these things called mixers, which is why some of our listeners who know about planetary mixers know that the Israelis He's bombed a lot of those that were in Iran back in October of 2024. So they're trying to go after some of the bottlenecks in this program. And then once you mix it, you kind of, you make sure it's even, there's no cracks, and then you can put it into the body. You know, high strength steals constitute missile bodies. On the edges of missile bodies usually have a whole series of fins or finlets that can

aid with guidance. You know, the big difference, after all, between a rocket and a missile is guidance in control. otherwise they're both armed projectiles and what makes a ballistic missile different from other projectiles or other missiles that your viewers and Nistlers know about stuff like cruise missiles, you know, Tomahawk cruise missile

people are paying attention to the Ukrainian land attack cruise missile capability these days. Cruise missiles fly low and slow. They have either subsonic or supersonic speeds. They hug the contours of the earth. Ballistic missiles are the opposite. They have a parabolic trajectory and they fly high and fast.

And they fly high and fast carrying the things in the nose cone, the front end, the pointy end of that projectile. And in that pointy end, you have basically the explosive material encased in some kind of a shell that has ablative material that can kind of be, you know, not explosive point. It's kind of reentering the atmosphere at very high speeds because it burns very, very fast. So you don't want the warheads explosive weight, explosive material to explode before it actually comes anywhere near the target. And then there's this really critical computer section, motherboard, chips, guidance, and control stuff, and you have spectrometers, gyroscopes,

what have you, basically doing all this kind of in-flight measurement that takes these weapons and makes them precise. So you can land a missile in a certain place and a certain time. So that's the rough and tumble of ballistic missiles. And the precursor fuel that Iran has been getting from China, although it was reported back in 2023, Iran sought the actual oxidizer itself from both Russia and China, but China has been the one that's been consistently reported in 2025 of giving this stuff, is that sodium perchlorate, which is much, much less controlled. But my fear here is now that the Iranians are looking to the Chinese, not just for these precursor chemicals to help build up the quantity. My fear is the other kind of electronics, the less sexy stuff that actually makes

their missiles more lethal, the qualitative side. And to be honest, if Uncle Sam has limited resources, limited time, limited tension, if you have to decide what to intercept, what to interdict, do you interdict or intercept the fuel, or do you interdict or intercept some of these stuff that's critical for the missile and military industries, the electronics, I would with respect, say, the electronics. So that story that we had by the Wall Street Journal is a good story. It's a good sign. I would hope it only continues into 2026 if this behavior from Iran and China continues.

And my one great fear tying this into the NSS is that, you know, Trump's first NSS back in 2017 went to great lengths to talk about strategic competition, great power competition. You know, NSS number two in 2025 is still talking about China as a major threat, but there's no reference to China or Russia in the Middle East section. And Iran really is the junior partner in this larger constellation of state threats that we're going to have to face in 2026 and in the future, which is largely coming from Russia and China.

So I don't think we can afford to disconnect the dots when the Chinese are at. actually the ones connecting the dots against us. Well, I'll come back to that. It's a real privilege to have you on the show to kind of get into the nuts and bolts of how these weapons actually work. So just a few more questions about the weapons themselves and their use and then we'll come back to strategy. So I guess everything's solid fuel now, right, because solid fuel is just better for tactical and logistic reasons than liquid fuel, right? I remember like old Cold War movies where the president is informed that they're fueling the missiles, Mr. President, you know, which obviously adds time and complexity. And if it's

solid fuel, you can kind of move it around much more flexibly for launch. Is that basically correct? Precisely. But that doesn't mean they're giving up on liquid fuel. In fact, there was an Israeli report that says in the absence of some of these big mixers to mix those components, the regime is going to have to rely on liquid propellant systems. And you saw in every single operation against Israel, April, 24, October, 24, and June 2025, the Iranians layered in lots of liquid propellant medium-range ballistic missiles with their solid propellant systems as well. Got it. And then in terms of the warheads, you know, I've seen some stuff in my time. I've never actually seen anything like the videos of ballistic missiles hitting targets.

I mean, I've seen some from Ukraine as well, but the videos of missiles hitting targets in Tel Aviv and Haifa and elsewhere back during the 12-day war. I mean, these are obviously very simple elementary thoughts, but, you know, this is kind of where my head operates. But, you know, just the velocity of the impact itself. I'm wondering, I'm kind of curious how big the warhead actually has. to be when the projectile is hitting the ground at that speed, even if there were no warhead, the damage would already be quite substantial. I mean, really, if listeners haven't seen these videos, I'm sure given the kind of people who listen to a school of war that most of you probably have. But I mean, it is worth just going back and watching this thing and getting a sense of what war actually looks like in 2025. It was stunning.

Yeah, it was stunning, but also, not going to lie, it was kind of terrifying. I was actually supposed to fly to Israel that Monday once the war started. I was supposed to be there for an academic a conference that obviously got delayed due the war. But we had a team of, you know, a lot of our mutual friends there actually in, you know, sub-level three bunkers. And I actually, I remember one ballistic missile actually made it through a tier two bunker and three people died in that blast. So you're absolutely right that the kinetic impact of these things is just, you know, pretty, pretty damning and pretty worrisome enough, given the, you know, high and fast speed of these projectiles. But then you layer on, you know, a pretty high explosive charge. Some of the things

about 500 plus kilograms. Iranian press says that they fired this large liquid propellant, almost intermediate range ballistic missile, but not quite, at Israel called the Hohram Shara 4. This is actually a model or an augmented North Korean BM-25 Musudan. This is actually the biggest and most heaviest warhead that Iran has. It can go up to one ton, if not a little bit over. If I'm not mistaken, it claims to have used that.

Before that claim actually happened, And there were one or two strikes near Tel Aviv where I just saw a gigantic blast. And the second I saw that gigantic blast, I was like, there's no way these guys would use the Horemshar. And they alleged that they did. I don't think they weighted it fully as much as the actual projectile can handle, which is, you know, a little over 1,000 KG. Everything that's been reported is like in the 500 to 800 range could be a little bit more, could be a little bit less. But, yeah, once you layer on the speed and the weights they can carry, you are talking about some pretty, high explosive stuff.

Yeah, well, 500 kilograms is already, I mean, it's a thousand pound bomb, and then it's coming in at Mock whatever it's coming. I mean, that's the crazy thing to me is to watch the multiple times the speed of sound nature of the final, you know, second or so that you can see of the projectile coming in, and then you've got a thousand pounds of explosives on the tip of that thing. It's just, even at that low level, it's pretty massive. I mean, let me ask you this. Let me just, sorry, small, small nerd note, because I know you and your listeners would love it,

But if you're talking about those videos of the Iranian projectiles coming in, obviously the missile defense videos, the layered air and missile defense system that Israel has is exceptionally impressive. You know, before this war, Iran never fired at a country or at a place that had such layered air and missile defenses before. Yes, it was firing missiles, but essentially an undefended targets. And that's akin to like, you know, being able to play basketball in elementary school thinking you can dribble and shoot and then thinking you can go into the NBA and get surprised. How come all of the free throws you're throwing, all the throws you're throwing, keep getting. intercepted and especially the videos of the Arrow 3 doing some of these exo atmospheric interceptions that really amazing videos coming out of the 12-day war so you know i'm sure your your your listeners and friends and fans have dug through this material already but if they haven't i would highly

recommend go to social media check out these videos totally and and yeah to be clear being the impacts we're talking about are a fraction of what was actually fired and it's a testament to you know what the Israelis have built you know our own participation in israel's defense the participation of American companies, the kind of software end of it, the AI end of it that was helping with the targeting of these things at speed. I mean, the whole thing is, you know, the future is now, basically. Let me ask, this is a big question, but I think you're the perfect person to ask it to. So let's pretend we're Iran some years ago and we're going to build our modern ballistic missile program. Or maybe that is generic. We're going to build a missile program. How do we actually

conceptualize it? What different kinds of things do we want to do different kinds of things? to do different kinds of jobs. Of course, we know the Israelis and other potential enemies are going to have air defense. So how do we conceptualize it? Like, what is our vision of a missile program, both internally to the program itself,

but then more broadly, how does it fit into Iranian strategy and policy writ large? Well, fortunately, the Iranians have kind of given us this blueprint because their missile program didn't grow out of a vacuum, it really grew out of the need

to respond to Saddam's gut attacks during the Iran-Iraq war. So this imperative of deterrence by punishment and responding in kind and being able to engage in graduated escalation using these high and flying systems. So that is, you know, main ordering principle number one. You know, the Iranians are obsessed with deterrence. The legacy of the Iran-Iraq war is deterrence. You could say, you know, that same drive is what's pushing their nuclear program as much it is what's pushing their missile program. And had October 7 not happened and the different,

you know, fires being exchanged between Israel and Iran, between 19. 1988 when the war entered in 2003 when this crisis began, we could have said, unfortunately, that this Iranian way of war, this model for deterrence, was successful because they were able to shield their homeland from attack. And what I'm getting at here is you want to have systems, you want to have capabilities, you want to invest both in the full spectrum of unmanned aerial threats, which they have done on the lower tier mortars. Then you move up a little bit further rockets than somewhat higher tier drones, both UCAVs as well as one-way attack drones, then cruise missiles, and then obviously ballistic missiles. And then you want to diversify ballistic missiles based on range,

based on target, based on fuel type, liquid propellant they have, solid propellant. They have close range under 300 to 100 kilometers, medium range, just under 2,000 kilometers. And they have some borderline threshold stuff. And then just like their nuclear program does, they use a civilian veneer to advance something. They have a space program, and they're using this civilian veneer of a space program to be able to threaten to develop, you know, longer range strike systems that could threaten, you know, God forbid the European homeland or, God forbid, the American homeland. And in this sense, the regime is able to have its capabilities evolve without necessarily saying we're engaging in targeting beyond 2,000 kilometers.

And that also have a chilling or a deterrent effect on our willingness, or as that's traditionally been the case, Europe's willingness to push back meaningfully against Iran's missile program. What I guess I'm getting at here is one of the heavy things I would want as an Iranian security planner to do is to have my military tool, which I know is exceptionally military limited, given the conventional advantages and all my adversaries have, I would want that tool to achieve political things for me. And the political icing out effect, the taking off of the table of a military option, which so successfully they were able to do, through terrorism, through long-range strike, through a very kind of hedging slash nuclear program built towards latency

after it was discovered in 2002, 2003, using deals to kind of inch along, I would basically want to be able to deny my adversary's greatest tool against me while enabling for me a limited war option against them. And that's basically been how they fought wars in the Middle East for so long. But the cycle of violence that led them to break out, that led them to move from the shadow war into the Overn war, that's now happened. And so now it's simply a measure of scale and scope of the kind of conflict, in my view, that Israel is going to be having with the Islamic Republic. Yeah.

You know, my not particularly unconventional take on the events of this year for Iran is that this long in the making defense strategy of investing heavily in the missile program and heavily in terror proxies in the end just didn't work out, that the sort of uncondent, it was a kind of unconventional approach, considering how states normally go about pursuing their regional interests, even if they're aggressive regional interests. And it turns out that when push came to shove, the Israeli model was superior. But let me ask you about the details of that. And we can stay in the context of the missile program. You've already alluded to this to some extent in terms of the strikes on the mixers and things like that. But how badly did Israel degrade, I mean, the United

States played a role with the nuclear program, but how badly did Israel degrade Iran's capabilities, in particular, it's missile program capabilities, and how is that assessment evolving as we move on from the summer? You know, obviously, I don't work for the government or the IC, and I don't have access to, you know, this kind of information. But I would even say with respect, the information that they have is a series of snapshots. And I think the art here is to be able to answer your question honestly and thoughtfully is to be able to string the snapshots together to tell us a video. For example, you know, the Israelis went after what they believed to be were bottlenecks in the Iranian missile program back in their response in October.

Then they, you know, targeted more broadly the actual systems. They defended against the systems. We defended against the systems. But then they also went after the launchers. So, you know, Iran could have quantitatively the biggest missile program in the region. But if every time they launch, they expose their position, they risk losing a tell, a transport or erecto launcher, then it didn't matter if they had, as the regime said, jungles of missiles because they wouldn't have the capability or the wherewithal to launch.

So we've seen Israel's strategy targeting this kind of stuff evolve significantly as the fighting has evolved. I think that's an important point to make. And I think I would also say here is that we have to be humble because the Israelis are reversing views about how effective some of their strikes are. Just recently, I think there was a piece published in Al Monitor, you know, based on a Mike Walts and in a senior Israeli national security official meeting that took place recently, where the Israelis said, yeah, it turns out that we did less damage than we expected. And I think we have to be exceptionally humble here because despite the level of penetration, which is huge of the Iranian national security apparatus by the Israelis, you know, these are long-term interests. So just like the regime is kind of locked in into this kind of less than ideal deterrence model, drones, missiles, terrorism, A2AD in the maritime domain, cyber, and this weird kind of hedging late nuclear program, just as like they're locked into that because of path dependency. that means that they're going to continue because of political reasons, economic reasons, ideational and ideological reasons, and strategic reasons,

to continue to invest in these even as the pie shrinks and even as things get tough. So it's totally possible that, and this is my great fear for 2026, 27, is that as the regime entertains living with semi-failed state, if not over-failed state status, it could still be lethal in this regard. So certainly these Israelis have targeted key things, like tells in the 12-day war, like planetary mixers back in October 2024. But I personally do not feel comfortable giving a rate. You've seen Iranians respond to the rate that the Israelis gave, the Israelis believe that they cut about 50% of Iran's tails, so about 400 to 200. So that means

that limits the number or the size of the initial wallies. But if the regime actually kind of couple some of these things back together or is able to build them back faster, and again, and the kind of the chassis for these things is just a simply very, very, very large truck, well, then it's going to mean that it's going to be able to pose a different kind of threat moving down the line. And I think the more time between each round of fighting, we're going to be seeing how both actors, both Israel and Iran, adjust to each other's way of war and what each one learns in each round.

And my fear here is that the Iranians are going to be more and more and more prioritizing the missile program and all the industries associated with it as the fighting, I think, is set to continue. And I say as it's set to continue, regardless of the vision projected for the region in the newest NSS. You obviously, you know, see plenty of people here in Washington eyeing the Western Pacific warily. The national security strategy was actually pretty clear that this administration is not going to abandon Taiwan, that it sees the defense of Taiwan as an interest of the United States. We have these two live wars. Things are a little quieter now in Israel than they have been, but not exactly, totally quiet.

And, of course, Ukraine is raging. And you see people trying to infer or learn lessons from what's going on these wars. You also see a lot of people, I think, with varying degrees of reasonability saying, look, whatever happens in the Western Pacific, it's going to be so different from this stuff that we have to be very careful what we're trying to learn here. Given your expertise on the missile program and the way in which it seems to me that, you know, short, medium range missile strikes are going to matter in any kind of Western Pacific scenario. What could be learned from, whether it's the 12-day war or the two 2024 rounds of

missile attacks from Iran on Israel, what can we learn from the Israel-Iran ongoing conflict that's relevant to American defense planning? Well, you know, the major takeaway, first thing I would say that, again, this is not to make it political, is that intelligence matters. You know, the kind of political capital, the investments in intelligence that the Israelis made in theaters that you could see, like Lebanon with respect to Hezbollah, like Iran with respect to the IRGC, gave them a huge comparative advantage once the actual fighting started. And with immense respect, in the places where they did not make that immense intelligence investment, places like Hamas in Gaza, post-2014 or much more recently post-2020 war, or more distantly

the Yemen theater simply because it's a newer element of the axis of resistance. The efficacy of Israel's military performance is augmented by that lack of investment in the intelligence, which again doesn't give the military win that the Israelis achieved in those areas sufficient political staying power or another road back in. So, you know, first thing I would say to Uncle Sam is make sure, you know, whatever, you know, domain we're looking at, make sure that you know before the shooting starts that this is a conflict that you would win. You know, you opt into conflicts that you win. And how do you opt into conflicts that you win that publicly, you shape the information space for it?

You know, economically you make sure the industries can support it, but perhaps most intelligently, you have the intelligence networks ready to go, able to kind of penetrate the way the adversary is thinking. You know their options, most likely, least likely. You have offsets for them. You are able to lead them, get them to fight by leading with their chin. and I'll put you in the best possible position to respond. So that's the first big thing I would say. The next big thing is obviously understand your adversary's way of war,

know their doctrines, know their weapons, look at their methods of force employments. You know, obviously we're not going to be able to transpose a lot from the Iranians and Hamas and the Russians onto the PLA, but certainly the PLA is looking at the Iranians and the Russians and at Hamas, particularly when it comes to a precision fires war, particularly when it looks like you can do combined operations across domains, you know, cyber, started in cyber, ended in kinetic.

And I would say we should be prepared for those kind of double whamies as well. I'm sure there's a lot more analogies. A lot of our mutual friends and colleagues in D.C. can draw, but those others are two that are very front of mind for me. So let's come back to American strategy with regard to Iran specifically. I mean, a lot of people who were excited about some of the president's staffing decisions for this second term and thought this second term was going to herald a new era of American restraint.

I think I've been pretty disappointed by the president. President's Iran policy, which while restraint has not been its most noticeable quality, at least in terms of the way that the self-described restrains,ers want to use the term. And this boarding at sea recently, and I guess it was in the Indian Ocean, seems to be more evidence of the president's hostility to Iran. How would you characterize his attitude to Iran sitting here post-12-day war? We're in December of 2025. What does the American approach to Iran as of today seem to be?

and how would you advise that the administration shape its Iran policy, specifically with regard to these issues, like the hard power threats posed by Iran in the future going forward? Well, I say this with a match respect, and I say this is a big, big, big fan, and I'll stress big, of both President Trump's political investment in this issue in term one, as well as the wins he's had in term one. And my concerns throughout the first year of 2025 is that there's lots of wins, but they're immensely disconnected wins. You know, to me it's very clear, even from not so much a distance, you know, I have the luxury and the privilege of working in downtown D.C. And I think, thank that I love and respect, 13 years now, FDD. So we've seen, you know, all the scars from all the fights about the Iran policy from the left.

I didn't realize it had been 13 years. Do you get, like, stripes on your sleeve or? We got to think of something. That's a long time for any D.C. job. You know, they say, love what you do and ever work a day in your life. So it's 13 years of not working, I guess. But it's a pretty full-time not-working schedule. I've got to say the Iranians keep you on your toes. So let me get to this element of it for the administration,

which is it's done all the right things, but it's done them in an exceptionally disconnected fashion. It's restored max pressure, but, you know, Secretary of the Treasury has said we want 100,000 barrels per day. Iranian oil. Iran is between 1.5 and 2 million barrels per day for the past three months. That does not look like with immense respect, max pressure to me. You know, Treasury is doing all it can,

but there's so many sanctions programs around the world. China stuff, Russia stuff, Venezuela stuff, Cuba stuff that Iran is unfortunately atrophying and falling by the wayside. Like this year, there hasn't been a single sanction pursuant to human rights authorities by Uncle Sam at all. It's a gross mistake. Our Canadian allies, our Australian allies, or European or UK allies are beating us in this space. So some significant room for improvement there. Elsewhere, I would say, despite the strikes against Iran's nuclear program, my fear is that we might win all the battles and lose the war. Absolutely what President Trump did was historic. You know, for two decades, we've been talking about, you know, these sites. And now simply they're gone from the public

national security discourse. And we've been living through everything where people have tried deals, diplomacy, sanctions, covert activity to stop Iran from enriching uranium. But Iran did not stop enriching uranium for a single day since the spring of 2006 until we got to President Trump strikes against the Iranians. So the win he has exceptionally impressive. What I'm worried about is there hasn't been the political work after to build a long shelf life for that win. And the scenario I worry about, and, you know, this isn't to say that, you know, both internationalists and isolationists have qualms with the president's foreign policy, but the president himself is very artfully balancing these two different domestic constituencies that are not just part of the Republican Party, but are that part of the larger American electorate given our experiences in the Middle East.

So, again, despite having done all the right things, it's about creating this strategy for it to remain. there. And my fear is, and I had a small event on this at FD a little while back by some people who live through the Iraq experience, is that this is not like Iraq 2003. This is like Iraq 91, where you have a limited battlefield defeat by an aggressive authoritarian, anti-American, anti-Israel regime that is pursuing WMD, that has just fired ballistic missiles at Israel, that is repressing its own people, that is subject to UN sanctions, and that actually also can't control its own airspace. And yet, you know, containment can atrophy. and they can actually expedite the one thing that you don't want.

So my concern here is that I don't see enough yet with respect to the administration of the kind of transatlantic cooperation with the cooperation across the aisle from Congress to stop Iran from building back better. What he did throughout 2021, whether that was diplomacy, whether that was snapback, whether that was Max Pressure 2.0, or whether that was Operation Midnight Hammer.

All of that was immensely impressive and immensely successful. But it will risk going by the way, side if he doesn't build the constituency for this to remain. Because if the Iranians just think that they can wait him out and they'll have a much softer, more palatable American president and potentially before that, a different Israeli prime minister, well, then Operation Midnight Hammer is not going to have the staying power that it needs. Based on everything you've just said, I feel like I could make a prediction about how you're going to swing at this next question, but I really want to get your take.

So one way to look at the events of the last year plus is we are looking at a Middle East, where this is the biggest of pictures israeli power is waxing iranian power is waning and turkish power and again these are of course all relative is waxing and so the future of the middle east looks like a place where israeli turkish tension is quite likely and the iranian role is less prominent now i'm curious your take on that general theory is it overstate the case understate the case is it just too simplistic in reality is just a much more complicated, like fundamental balance of power, what did the post-107 wars mean for the future of the region? I think it is an absolute, what you just said, these different relative

factors is an absolutely accurate snapshot. But again, you know, what changes in the Middle East is very much like medieval European principalities war and with another. They're both ideological, but they're also very cunning and things can shift quite quickly. And I think, you know, One tough role for Washington, regardless of administration, will be how do you balance the potential likelihood of a growing, you know, potential Turkish-Israeli confrontation over Syria, be it directly or indirectly, with your other interests in the region? How do you develop a framework with which to see the fact that the Gulf Cooperation Council states are an increasingly important geosrategic player, not just a geo-economic player?

And how do you have a framework that makes sense of the region that involves these guys, that is simply more than Abraham Accords extension. And then finally, with respect to Iran, how do you create a policy? How do you effectuate a change that allows you to disconnect the dots between the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism and the acts as of aggressors or the acts of authoritarian? How can you take advantage of the most pro-American, the most pro-Israel population in the heartland of the Muslim Middle East, and use that to foster, to rebalance to pivot to Asia. And those are the things that are not represented by that very important snapshot, nor do I believe, with immense respect, are appropriately dealt with in the NSS.

But I do think we have a lot of military wins in the region, both us and the Israelis, but the Middle East, when you look at it, has always been a place where military wins are not necessarily translated into political wins. And I think for too long the debate, both in Israel and America has been about stymying or preventing the use of force such that everything, you know, was seen as like, oh, you're framing everything as having a military solution. That's incorrect. I think both what Israel showed and what America showed is that in many of these cases, there is a military option. But that still doesn't like necessitate getting away with or turning our eyes toward eating a political solution to the political crises. We simply have

vindicated the theory or the use of military force in places where us and our partners and allies have significant military power. So I would just say it's a question of tradeoffs, framing, and timing. But otherwise what you said is accurate. I just sort of want to undersell the rest of the challenges and the rest of the opportunities that we have. Yeah, all great points. So let me ask you about the Iranian regime itself. It obviously remains in power and has for some time, maybe maybe since the beginning at the point of a gun. It's an awkward place to be. It's hard to get a good night's sleep,

but that's why you're still in power or not in exile or even alive. Now, compounding that, I guess you could argue that, you know, the Iran-Iraq war wasn't also a great run, but, you know, compounding that, you have since 2023, October 20203,

pretty unambiguous defeat. You know, actually I'm curious your take on how much the regime has internalized that, how much they would agree that it is. Because from where I said, it seems fairly objective in a way that by the way in the middle of 2024 i don't think it was so clearly the case there were there were moments in 2024 when i actually really worried about who had the upper hand here same where you know if tactically and operationally the israelis were

generally doing pretty well in terms of the long run prospects of zionism versus the Islamic revolution i don't know it was there were there were moments where i was where i was worried by 2025 i mean i think sitting where we're here today like there's a clear winner and a clear loser What does this all mean for the future of the regime, which has proved thus far to be surprisingly resilient in the face of numerous rounds of popular uprisings? I could ask you, you know, I do want to ask you what, you know, what's the future here, though it's kind of an impossible question to answer. Maybe another way of framing is, as somebody who multiple points in this conversation reminds us that you have to have political objectives married to any consideration of military force, like, how should we think about the politics of Iran in ways and ways in which. which our policy, Israeli policy, whatever, can be sophisticated in dealing with it and accounting for it. Well, we should be in the business of forcing the Islamic Republic of Iran's governing

political and military elite to consistently choose from a narrowing field of bad options. That's really, I think, the art of the strategy here. And so whether or not it does or doesn't dawn on certain religious or political elites in Tehran that they lost or are losing or the trend lines indicate loss is to me somewhat slightly less relevant than you want to put them in the position to keep making mistakes. And so if we're looking at, you know, constituencies within the country, it's no secret. You mentioned the multiple iterations of nationwide anti-regime protest that this country has been going through for many, many years. Now you just had a smaller demonstration in the holy city of Mashat and northeast Iran just a little while ago. You know, the population has essentially

divorce itself from the state a long, long time ago. It's not about. one faction or another. It's about the state versus the street. And so the regime is simply trying to add on shelf life via physical force, what had long lost a long time ago, which was that kind of social, ideological, legitimacy-based tie between state and the street. And force, unfortunately, has thus far allowed them to be able to do this. But I think part of their changing strategy now, and one of the things that they have learned, both given the fact that this kind of cycle of violence erupted after the 2022-2003 women-life freedom protest, which was the biggest nationwide uprising against the regime since the 1979 revolution. And then, of course, the October 7,

you know, terror attack by Hamas, and then the April, October and June, kind of shooting wars with the Israelis. And in between this period, I think, and I fear that the regime is embracing a strategy with, you know, who it fears most, which despite losing against America, despite losing against Israel. And on the geo-economic front, absolutely, despite losing against the Arabs of the GCC, the Islamic Republic still believes that the number one threat to its existence is from within. And there is absolutely a world in which Hamid, you know, the country's supreme leader, who is actually right now the longest serving kind of contemporary autocrat in the Middle East today, there is absolutely a world in which he would prefer to die in an Israeli or an American air strike

rather than go into exile like the late Shah or, you know, hand himself. into the population like even some inside the country are publicly calling for. And so my fear is that his strategy is to render the population partially apathetic through a couple of these very light, soft openings that are selective and stylistic and controlled, some less than, you know, preferred hijab enforcement in some places. Yes, it gets his hard right flank going, but, you know, he's trying to create, or the regime itself, I would say, is trying to create the impression of a social opening such that people are apathetic about political activity, and then those who do engage in political activity

are crushed. And I'm talking about the execution spree that we've seen almost 1,000, if not a little over 1,000 this year. This breaks their record from 2015, which was around there. The same thing, of course, for arrests, over 21,000 arrests since the 12-day war, simply for things like liking a pro-Israel post or even being alleged to have liked a pro-Israel post on social media, for example. So while they're creating the impression of this opening socially, they are doing the most massive political crackdown. And with respect to American Israel, I think they understand that they are outgunned. Different factions are trying to make different things of it. Some of them are trying to come up publicly in a tone. Other folks

are trying to have simply an elite conversation and say, hey, people stay out of it. But others, and here I mean the Supreme Leader, are still trying to fight the narrative war. And they actually believe the narrative war is the main war. They believe the fact that they've landed blows against Israel and are still standing is the main war. They believe the fact that Senior Ayatollahs have given Fafas that believe even the confiscation of the president's wife and his daughters and his property are permissible and halal under Islamic law

and that the Trump administration has not done anything about it is a sign that they're winning. So they are trying very, very, very hard to win what is in their mind in the most important war, which is the narrative war. It's really interesting. Also sort of confusing, because I have it on good authority

that states act in the foreign policy space with great rationality and that it's a fool's errand to draw connections between foreign policy decision-making and domestic politics. So in a way, very confusing what you said, but also quite persuasive to my common sense understanding of things. I'm here to confuse, but, you know, all of this stuff is very kaleidoscopic. I'm learning new things every day. It has been great having you on the show. I have learned a lot talking to you. I hope you will come back as things develop in the ongoing range of competitions with Iran. Ben Talibu, Senior Director of FD's Iran program. Thank you for joining School of War.

Great to be with you. Thank you.