Ep 164: Mark Dubowitz on Syria’s Collapse
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.
Aaron MacLean:
A School of War double feature here this week. Yesterday we released a long reported episode on Israel's defeat of Hezbollah and 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.
For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter @AaronBMacLean. Hi, I'm Aaron MacLean, 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.
Mark Dubowitz:
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 Gallagher and Mike Durant. So I'm looking forward to hopefully winning that contest.
Aaron MacLean:
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 Durant, we're going to talk about the role of Turkey in all of 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 as 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 major contributing factor to what's happened in Syria. Help listeners understand what's just happened in Syria. I mean, Assad has been fighting for his life for over a decade now, things settled into a kind of stalemate stasis, and then just like that, it all fell apart. What actually happened, Mark?
Mark Dubowitz:
Yeah, I mean, in some respects it came from nowhere, this breakout by so-called Syrian rebels from their stronghold on 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 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 a plane and went to Moscow to seek refuge in the arms of his patron Vladimir Putin.
So remarkable turn of events to watch the Assad regime go down. And I think, Aaron, you've been covering this on School of War and certainly you were just in Israel, 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 Hezbollah'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, Quds Force, and Hezbollah were really nowhere to be found because they've taken such a beating by the Israelis.
Aaron MacLean:
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 it 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 and all of that.
Mark Dubowitz:
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 Jolani who he was Al-Qaeda, he was then Al-Nusra, he's a hardcore jihadist, and he's fought us in Iraq, and he's certainly been fighting alongside ISIS and Al-Qaeda. So he's gone out on a kind of charm offensive, including on CNN recently to present himself as a moderated rebel, somebody who may have been in his twenties and thirties, a little bit of an upstart, may have caught the jihadist bug, but he's sort of suggesting now that he's become much more pragmatic, much more moderate. And he's gotten significant support from Erdoğan.
And for Erdoğan, as you say, Erdoğan has also neo-imperialist ambitions. One has to remember that Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire, and Erdoğan 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 its military base, its 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 Erdoğan is an Islamist. He's part of the Turkey Muslim Brotherhood, and he and the Qataris, the Qataris 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, 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.
Aaron MacLean:
So help us think through the question of the day then, which I take to be something like this, most Americans are happy to see Assad go, or Americans who follow the issue find too many nostalgics for Assad control and any nostalgics for Iranian power projection in Syria in 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. So 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, 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.
Mark Dubowitz:
Look, I think it's enormous risk, and I think you've just got to look to the Israelis. I mean, the Israelis are not kind of naive Twitterati, right? They don't get to go out on Twitter and make a sort of celebratory noise for one direction or another. They actually have to live with the 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 move and seize more of the high ground in the Golan, right? The Golan, which is bordering Syria. They controlled one of the peaks of Mount Hermon. You may have gone up there, Aaron, in some of your travels. They've moved very quickly to take the Syrian Hermon, 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 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 of days, they've launched massive airstrikes and have taken out 70 to 80% of Syria's military capabilities, Air Force, Navy, surface-to-air missiles, air defenses, as well as the Assad regime's chemical weapons stockpiles.
So Israelis decided not to spend the last three or four days virtue signaling on Twitter, they decided to actually take some serious military steps in case it turns out that these Syrian rebels are actually hardcore Islamists and not Syrian reformers, and in case Erdoğan decides that along with his Qatari friends he's going to turn Syria into a radical Islamist state that threatens Israeli security. So, again, I think while 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.
Aaron MacLean:
What do you think is next for the Russians? What's the actual state of play there? They're kind of clustered out towards the coast so sort of north of Lebanon, the space 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 it, that is the traditional Alawite part of Syria, which is to say the part of Syria that produces the Assads and the minority clique that has 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? Give us a sense of what's going on there.
Mark Dubowitz:
Yeah, it's not clear yet, Aaron, certainly it's state of flux. 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 during the Syrian civil War, when the Russians came with the Iranians and Hezbollah 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 Alawite canton or area there to protect Russian interests.
But, I mean, increasingly it just looks like Syria could be divided into sort of four cantons of four areas, an Alawite, a Sunni, a Kurdish area, maybe a Druze area. And it seems like these areas are going to be fought over potentially for days and months, if not years. So we maybe see the fragmentation of Syria, which really never was a serious unitary state, right? I mean, it was under French rule, French mandate, these different ethnic groups and then it was sort of pushed together under Assad, Hafez Assad, the father's rule, and obviously kept together by brute force. And you may see the unraveling back into these ethnic areas, which 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, Erdoğan is able to flex these muscles.
Aaron MacLean:
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 Alawite Russian axis?
Mark Dubowitz:
Yeah, listen, in terms of American kind of great power competition, and as we confront the axis of aggressors of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, given the Russians the boot and given the Iranians the boot 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 Erdoğan to rearm a Sunni extremist 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 Erdoğan and Qatar and the Sunni extremists. And the second is Ali Khamenei 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've gone down a long time ago but for Israeli and American security and intelligence support. So the whole time I got my eye on Jordan, and I'm very worried about Jordan going down, I think that'd be a huge blow to American national security and 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. The Israelis have started to build a wall on that border, they're starting to move more troops there. But if the Hashemites go down and a radical Islamist state, Sunni or Shiite takes over in Jordan, you've got a major security debacle.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah, you speak of the Twitterati, I saw a sort of DC foreign policy muckety-muck on Twitter comments in the last day or two, something to the effect of, "Look, the HTS group that's playing a leading role in taking over Syria, it's like the Taliban," and he meant this as a good thing, as a positive recommendation that is to say is not Al-Qaeda, it's not ISIS, it does not have transnational international jihadist objectives or terrorist objectives, it is fundamentally nationalist, fundamentally realist in its worldview.
First of all, I'm not sure I accept that as a analysis of 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, the Taliban also hosted Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden in the late nineties, 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, it'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.
Mark Dubowitz:
That's right. And listen, I mean, I don't know if they're the Taliban, more complicated comparison. I think that the more apt comparison is they're Hamas. They're a Sunni extremist group. They may not have transnational international aspirations, but Hamas caused a lot of problems and a lot of pain, and certainly from an Israeli perspective, do they want another Hamas on the northern border? I also heard, I mean, from mostly Americans, but even some Israelis over the years about how Hamas had moderated, had become pragmatic, had nationalist aspirations, not jihadist aspirations. And of course, if 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 hunt down Jews around the world. But yeah, if HDS 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 in Gaza only to have it pop up and become the controlling authority in Syria.
Aaron MacLean:
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. 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 sort of an old college triad on October the 7th, and the naiveté of the international community, and frankly of many Israelis, taking them at their word because they wanted more worker permits, because they wanted to be more economically integrated with Israel to an extent, led to great tragedy.
Mark Dubowitz:
Yep. Listen, it's the Western delusion. I mean, I think what we don't appreciate is that our enemies unabashedly lie to us. They don't play by the old schoolyard rules. And look, there is a fundamental principle in Islam called Taqiyyah, which is you lie, you deceive your enemies for military and other advantage.
So when I see Jolani and the HDS coming out on CNN, I mean, it kind of reminds me too of Javad Zarif, the former Foreign Minister of Iran, current Vice President of Iran, who does the CNN, CFR, Columbia University circuit every so often and gets up on stage and, I mean, he is the most mendacious individual you're ever going to encounter, but with a smile and a charm and a wit and a flair, he makes you think that he's one of you, and 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 is a moderate Western educated individual who really represents the true shades 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 HDS. Remember, Jolani'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, again, I mean they're going to hold onto the heights, they're going to hold onto this DMZ for as long as they need to. But thank God the Israelis never listened to the American intelligentsia, and 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, the Israelis would've 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-Qaeda nuclear reactor, and if they hadn't, Syria would have nuclear weapons, and those nuclear weapons would've fallen into the hands of ISIS, Al-Qaeda and maybe now HTS. So I think at least the sensible Israelis, at least their view prevailed, they hung onto the Golan, they took out the nuclear reactor, and now they've taken out 70/80% of Syria's military capabilities. I think that at least some clear thinking and pragmatism prevailed
Aaron MacLean:
So dangerous or the 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. That's all, 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 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 track it back to last summer, let's pick a time this past summer of 2024 as 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 really a territorial imperial reach in a very old-fashioned 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 of empires in past eras, 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've been if you could just drive the stuff down the highway through Syria and into Lebanon.
The Iranian strategic concept, which had these layers and buffers between it and its main adversary, Israel, its 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? Help us understand the new, and from the Iranian perspective the grim new world, but from our perspective, a world perhaps of opportunities.
Mark Dubowitz:
I think you've done a fabulous job of explaining it. I've been working on the Iran issue for over 20 years. I watched as Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and he sidekick, Qasem Soleimani, who was the head of the IRGC Quds Force, who Donald Trump killed in January 2020, built this ring of fire around Israel and really around America, right? Around American forces and American interests. And not to mention by the way, being responsible for 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 sort of feel like I'm paid to worry and not to get too excited about anything.
Aaron MacLean:
I mean, if there were no democracies left to defend, what would you do with yourself, Mark?
Mark Dubowitz:
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.
Aaron MacLean:
On Mount Herman.
Mark Dubowitz:
Or doing something productive. Exactly. So 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 US 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 Parchin facility inside Iran. What's his play? What's his play?
I mean, the obvious answer is yeah, he'll try to reconstitute. This is a patient man, it's a patient regime. He's 85, so he may not see its reconstitution, but he may pass it off to his son, Mojtaba, or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or some other cleric to reconstitute Hezbollah, reconstitute Hamas, reconstitute some influence in Syria. And also 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's a massive Israeli military presence in the West Bank to counter terrorist organizations, many terrorist organizations operating there, some linked to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, some linked to the Fatah wing of the Palestinians, al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Lions' 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.
You've still got the Houthis in Yemen who just recently again fired a missile at Central Israel. They're building up their capabilities, and Hezbollah had spent a lot of time on the ground with the IRGC Quds Force training Houthis. I mean, Aaron, they've shut down the Red Sea. I mean, since October 7th, I think they've attacked either our Navy and international shipping, I think 180, 185 times. Brad Bowman from our military centers tracks this 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 decide to intervene on Assad's behalf, stayed out of it, but still have capabilities that are of serious concern. 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 is going. He's got enough fissile material for about 16 bombs, he's making probably enough fissile 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 Khamenei understands that maybe the only card that he has to play in the short term is a nuclear weapons breakout.
Aaron MacLean:
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 prior to a test, prior to a test which takes us all by surprise and then we have to deal with a world that is actually a world with the nuclear Iran, what are we looking for? What are the triggers?
Mark Dubowitz:
Well, I would argue we're already there. I mean, this is kind of some complicated physics, I don't claim to be a nuclear physicist, but I do know 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've 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 "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 and producing weapon grade uranium or uranium that is at 90% enrichment in the technical jargon. And two is even if we were to detect it, we would have time to respond to it.
So I think we're playing a dangerous game by letting the Iranians salami slice us, which is what they always do. I mean, they built a nuclear program by effectively incrementally expanding that program and 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 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 3.75% enriched uranium to 20% to 60%. They actually went at some point up to 84%, and they went down just to test us, and they started weaponization work, which according to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which represents the consensus view of the US 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. "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 as America and certainly our friends in Europe and in the "international community" buy 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 have in means that we're really playing with fire. And 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.
Aaron MacLean:
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 got to give up terrorism, you got to do this, you got to do that, and what it really was 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'd be a good question for you to address is why is the Ayatollah and why is this regime, why are they incapable of taking that course of action? But it is formally available. The Iranians could simply moderate and actually do the thing that the Obama administration and then later the Biden administration kept insisting that they were when we could all see with our eyes that they were not. So that's one option.
Another option is we could take action. And it does strike me that first the Obama team and then the Biden team, they won't really say it, but there's basically acceptance on the democratic side of the aisle of a nuclear Iran, and it has been for decades now essentially nearly. There's not unanimity on this question on the Republican side of things. We are not approaching this with one voice, and 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 simply just don't have the resources to deal with Iran, to deal with 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 an entire historical epoch, right? At least post 1945 on the United States essentially inherits from the British Empire the task of keeping this sea 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?
Mark Dubowitz:
Okay. 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, right? I think the North Koreans are having problems from hell, they already have nuclear weapons, ICBMs, 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 not the 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 of 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 offer Putin a deal, if he doesn't take it, punch him in the face and arm the Ukrainians. But I think we're looking there at figuring out a way to continue to weaken the Russians, support the Ukrainians, but I think maybe Trump wants to wind that one down.
China is the big problem, it's a formidable enemy. This is a multi-generational Cold War at least, and you've had some great people on the show 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 axis 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 to help topple this regime." It 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 cause 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 and say, "I'd like your Head of the Israeli Air Force to sit down with the Head of the US Air Force, the IDF chiefs of staff to sit down with our CENTCOM 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 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 ordnance penetrators in order to destroy two of the three core facilities, core nuclear facilities inside Iran, the Fordow 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 these 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 that 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 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 them to Missouri, and now integrate the strategic bombers and mobs into what the IAF, the 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, answer one is, "No, we're not giving strategic bombers to anybody," and maybe there's some legal prohibitions against this, though we've looked into this and we're pretty sure there aren't.
Aaron MacLean:
I'm just wondering what the insurance requirements are. Do you have to click the box and pay an extra 20 bucks to cover, or if the Israelis use an American Express, are they good, they don't have to worry about that?
Mark Dubowitz:
Yeah, no, there is a question of if the Israelis don't return the plane in good form 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. 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 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, about how we do this together."
Or it may be just at some point, "Israel, you've shown us the way you overturned years of military planning and skepticism that the US 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. You know what? Step 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 of the axis of aggressors that the United States will do this alone." So three possibilities, but if I were the Israelis, that's what I'd be asking for.
Aaron MacLean:
Yeah, well, the implication, the key implication of everything you've just outlined, which I think is worth lingering on, is it's not that the Israelis 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 that's a riddle, which is why your loaner idea is kind of fun if challenging in certain respects.
President Trump has run on the platform, and you could see this back in his first administration as well, of no new Middle Eastern wars. We're not going to get America into another war in the Middle East. Mike Waltz 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 since the Iranians have clearly been on the back foot, it really needs to be Israeli-led for it to be practical.
And 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 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, will make nothing easier for a future war with China, nothing at all, 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 Israelis who'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 and acting, why not facilitate it? But it's the strike package itself that needs the key assistance is what you're suggesting.
Mark Dubowitz:
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 Redwan and go after missile launchers. All of these things have been a surprise 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 it, let them do significant damage to this threat and let them reaffirm.
What I always hear, Aaron, from our friends on the Republican side, whether they be, let's call them hawks, people understand that you got to go after the entire axis of aggressors, people who are China-firsters who say, "Listen, we don't have the resources and the time and the space to go after anyone else but the Chinese," and even the isolationists who say, "Listen, we are 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. Whether you're China-first isolationists or you want to go after the entire axis, it's always helpful to have a allies 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 can 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 mops and the support they need to do serious damage? Again, I throw it out as an idea, I'm sure there are 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.
Aaron MacLean:
My main takeaway from my time in Israel and 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 stratagem or series of general tricks, which is the word originally means general's art, and it had the flavor of 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.
Well, I mean, first of all, if you look at 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 master class in strategy in that old-fashioned sense of the term.
And I think Todd maybe reminded everyone of something that we ought to be reminded of when 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, we seem to be in this era where the defense is dominant, 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 piece in an atmosphere of ambiguity, you can set the conditions for successful offensive. And the Israelis demonstrated that with real brilliance in Lebanon. It 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.
Mark Dubowitz:
Yeah, no, listen, I certainly think it'll be studied in war colleges 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 and 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 defense of war talking about the philosophy of war, 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 Khamenei's neck.
I mean, they've been on the streets since 2009 repeatedly, millions of them yelling, "Death to the dictator. President Obama, are you with us or the dictator?" Then they're back on the streets in 2017, '18, '19, '20, '21, '22 Woman, Life, Freedom back on the streets, the woman of Iran, "Death to the dictator. President Biden, are you with us or 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 Qasem 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 nauseum that maximum support for the Iranian people needs to be a fundamental pillar of maximum pressure on the regime.
And what it really means is David Barney of Mossad and John Radcliffe of CIA getting together, getting their teams together, CENTCOM sitting down with the IDF and folks from Israeli governments sitting down with our treasury teams and our 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, delegitimizes the Islamic Republic of Iran?
And I think you and I have 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 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-Islamic Republic of Iran as a bastion of Jihadism or of al-Qaeda or ISIS. I think you've got a serious society there, a well-educated society, a 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 a pro-American Iran would be a game changer for us in terms of Middle East security,
Aaron MacLean:
Marc Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Great to talk to you as always.
Mark Dubowitz:
Aaron, thanks so much for having back.
Aaron MacLean:
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