Up Close and Personal with the Qiam

Scott LaFoy 0:02

Invite us to the missile viewing next time, guys. Come on.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:09

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:25

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Kariri Center for the Middle East.

Jeffrey 0:30

Hey, Aaron. Yes.

[Sponsor message]

Yeah, Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, gave a dog and pony show at Bowling Air Force Base in which she showed off debris from a pair of Burkan-2 missile strikes carried out by the Houthis in Yemen against Saudi Arabia. It was something.

Aaron 1:32

Yeah. I mean, there's two things to talk about here. I mean, one is the content of the speech. But I think just a preview to the listeners, then the wonky details about high res photos of the Burkan.

Jeffrey 1:45

Yeah, I mean, it was really incredible. I mean, I have to say, I was really lucky. The New York Times was there, and I was able to communicate with them and actually even got a FaceTime tour of the thing. And I could be like, oh, take a picture of that. And I have to tell you, I mean, we'll talk about all the debris, but I...

Squealed when I saw one particular piece that sound you hear is Scott and I's like hearts being crushed because we were not on the Facetime video, we just heard about it afterwards. And I think both of our reaction was, you must be effing kidding me. It was incredible. It was incredible. I mean, I literally, we're going through the video and I start screaming, there, there, right there. And and and there's something slightly erotic about that.

So the thing is, the reporter wasn't allowed to touch it.

Aaron 2:45

Well, so it's really just like a peep show.

Jeffrey 2:47

No, no. Well, sort of. Yeah. He had to direct the, it was a military officer. I think it was a major, you know, so he had to sort of say like, you know, major, could you pick up that piece? And I'm like, no, no, the one next to it. And he would pick up one of them. No, not that one, not that one.

Aaron 3:10

And then finally picks it up and I'm like, yes, yes. And he flips it over and I'm like, no, flip it back over.

Jeffrey 3:19

Because we'll talk about it in due course, but that particular piece of debris that made me so excited actually confirms some research we'd done earlier. But, you know, the big takeaway here is that Nikki Haley gave a dog and pony show with debris on loan from Saudi Arabia from two different missile strikes into Saudi Arabia, which demonstrates that, you know, it's very likely...

That these are Iranian missiles that are being fired into Saudi Arabia, which is, you know, like a big deal. Although not a big deal in the way she said, but we can talk about that.

Aaron 4:00

Yeah, let's say put a pin in the debris because we'll get back to why we know it's an Iranian missile. We're going to come to that. But what she said in the speech, I think, is driving a lot of the headlines because she's linked it to the Iran nuclear deal.

Jeffrey 4:14

Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of bummed because actually I think that DIA did a good job of persuading me that these are probably Iranian missiles. And so the Saudis and DIA gave Nikki Haley a really good hand to play. And I think she overplayed it because she didn't just... She didn't stop with the obvious big deal, which is Iranian proxy forces are firing missiles at civilian airports, which should be a big deal.

Yeah. You know, like if the North Koreans were to fire a missile at a South Korean airport, like we'd have a crisis on our hands. And so that should have been a big deal. But she then went ahead and then made the additional case that in some way this violates the UN Security Council resolution implementing the Iran nuclear deal, which it does not.

And as a consequence, I think it's actually going to get swept under the rug because it's just going to go into the bin of... Crazy things the Trump people say to kill the Iran nuclear deal. And instead of being treated on its own, like evidence of, you know what should be a really serious political crisis.

Aaron 5:36

Yeah, exactly. I mean, and this often gets lost is that, you know, ballistic missiles as part of the, we're not explicitly included in the JCPOA and are including the separate UN security council resolution. And they sort of fudge the language in it. And, and it, I mean, they fudge the language inside the UN Security Council because they use the term missiles capable of carrying a nuclear weapon.

Jeffrey 6:00

So I don't know how interested listeners really are to wade through the legal piece of this. You know, I would say a couple of things. I mean, one is that. The State Department at the moment has a terrible problem of crying wolf. The State Department has accused Iran of acting, normally they're pretty careful with statements, they say inconsistently with 2231, but they have literally said that for every Iranian missile test.

Aaron 6:36

Yeah.

Jeffrey 6:37

For the Iranian missile launches into Syria against ISIS targets. They set it for the space launch, and they're saying it for this. And so the problem is, having consistently asserted that things violate 2231 when they don't, You know, I think the big, I actually think the media takeaway from this is going to be Nikki Haley makes a bunch of unfounded accusations, which is kind of not true in the sense that, like, I do think that they proved at least, I think, you know, I think my, on balance, I think it's more likely than not that these are Iranian missiles.

But the problem is over claiming it. I mean, you know, the thing I've been saying to reporters is when the Iran nuclear deal was signed, Iran had a pretty aggressive program of aiding Syria's ballistic missile program. Nobody at the time thought that signing the JCPOA was going to prohibit the assistance that the Iranians were giving in Syria, because it's the Iran nuclear deal, not the Iran nuclear and missile deal.

And so this is a lousy, awful, nasty thing for them to do, and it should trigger a political confrontation. But this is one of those problems that the Iran nuclear deal didn't address. And now we have to address it. And turning this into a referendum on the Iran nuclear deal seems really dumb to me. I mean, not least because if Iran had nuclear weapons like North Korea does, they would do this kind of stuff a lot more often.

Aaron 8:13

Yeah, I think that's right. And to put a fine point on it, I mean, there is... A way to have dealt with this where you focused exclusively on the fact that it looks an awful lot like an Iranian missile was fired at a civilian airport and that's an entirely separate political issue that would have to be addressed than The nuclear deal that doesn't actually have anything to do with ballistic missiles.

And so they're actually two separate issues, even though they both are addressing policy problems. Iran's behavior in the region. I hate that word. Iran's policies in the region pose to U.S. interests.

Jeffrey 8:56

Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I think this is, this is the kind of thing that when the Iran nuclear deal was signed, I got asked by, I think it was tablet to write something like what I'd like to hear the president say. And at the time I said, I'd like to hear the president say how the Iran nuclear deal fits in with a broader strategy to deal with Iran's other, I know you hate it, behaviors.

Aaron 9:19

Yeah. Let's say policies.

Jeffrey 9:21

Yeah. Well, but they're not, you know, yeah. Okay. So I thought the Iran nuclear deal is great in that it put this verifiable gap between Iran's nuclear energy program and Iran having a nuclear weapon in place. And that's great because I don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon because I think Iran engages in a lot of destabilizing regional behaviors.

But now we are left to confront those destabilizing regional behaviors. It's both proxy wars and missiles. And in this case, they've come together.

Aaron 9:54

Right. But now I think with that out of the way, I mean, let's go to the full Monty here. Oh, my God. It's incredible. Because that's the political question, you know, is how you deal with this. And I think what we're both saying is that they're trying too hard to wedge this back into the JCPOA, whereas the Obama administration, you know, was.

Siloed the JCPOA and there's reconciling these two things still hasn't happened even though it probably should. But we got wonk porn. I mean, we got full frontal wonk porn, high definition. Oh my god, oh my lord. Play about politics. Let's start talking about this thing. All right, what was that line in in, was it in The Loop? it's too obscene, I can't even repeat it..

Jeffrey 10:47

It's incredible. Holy crap.

Aaron 10:49

It is incredible. So the DIA told us that it's a Kion.

Jeffrey 10:57

Yes. At the presentation. Here I think we should be clear about something as we examine it. So Nikki Haley gave the speech in front of a full missile in its destroyed state, having been launched and then fallen to the ground. Yeah. It is actually two missiles. It is most of the debris from the strike against the Riyadh airport in early November.

But it also includes debris from an earlier Burkhan II strike this summer. And so this missile is like a dinosaur skeleton, a dinosaur fossil. It's not necessarily all one animal. Right. And so one concern or caution that we have to note is, you know, whatever, you want a complete skeleton because you want to understand this thing, but you have to remember that it's two individuals that are on display together, and you do have to be worried about the brontosaurus problem.

Aaron 12:06

Which is?

Jeffrey 12:07

Oh, you know, when you were a kid and you had to learn about dinosaurs, you learned about the brontosaurus, didn't you? Yeah, of course. But, you know, is no such thing. Oh, that's right. That's right.

Aaron 12:18

Of course.

Jeffrey 12:19

Yeah. And in fact, there was this idea that there was a single thing called a brontosaurus, but actually it's apparently a genus that had three different species. Yeah. So, you know, the idea is that, you know, because you're getting these incomplete fossils, or in this case, incomplete debris, you're putting it together, you're thinking... That it's one thing, but it actually might be two things.

Most of the debris is actually from the strike against the Riyadh airport, but the lower tank, which I'm pretty sure is the fuel tank, that's actually from the summer strike, and you can see that it is painted differently. You know, the strike on Riyadh used a missile that was painted to look like a Burkhan. The other debris that was provided, you know, was painted sort of desert-y gray, brown, taupe.

Aaron 13:19

Right. And I think, just to go back to that, why that matters is because the Qiyam is basically a scud. And so... How do we differentiate, I think, between the QIOM and then it's, I guess it's sibling, the SCUD-B or SCUD-C?

Jeffrey 13:45

Yeah, so the really important difference between a SCUD-C and a QIOM is that the QIOM does not have the large planar fins that you see on SCUD missiles that are used to stabilize the missile. And that means that you're going to need a better guidance system And a better ability to steer because you're not going to have those fins providing that additional stability.

And there's really only one version of the Scud family that's like that. That's the Kiam. And that's an Iranian missile.

Aaron 14:21

Right. And the Qiyam, I think, started to come out in around 2010, and we saw pictures in Iran. And the nose cone is slightly different. It uses that triconic, baby bottle-looking nose cone. And as you said, if you look at it, it just doesn't have the big planar fins. And one thing that they showed you nicely in these pictures is the guidance system.

Jeffrey 14:42

Yeah, and so I think the big takeaway for a lot of this is that there are components, there are two components that have markings of Iranian manufacturers in them, and not just any manufacturers. The guidance system is the Shig. It's made by dudes in the Shig. Yeah, the Shahid Hamad Industrial Group, which makes Iran's liquid-fueled missiles. And the actuators that control the jet vanes to steer the missile, those are marked with Shahid Bagari Industrial Group.

Which is another Iranian firm that's under sanctions for participating in the missile program. And so, you know, that's a sort of, that's consistent with the idea that this would be a Qiam. Because if you don't have the planar fins, you're going to need a better guidance system. And so, you know, if this were like a North Korean missile, you couldn't just pop off the fins.

You would lose a lot. You would need to then replace the guidance system. And at that point, you know, that seems less likely that they would have done that and more likely that it's just an Iranian missile from the get-go.

Aaron 16:03

Yeah, and I think... Going back to one of our older pods, is the Kion supposed to have a separating warhead?

Jeffrey 16:11

Yes, and I think very much that it's very likely that the warhead separated. Certainly for the strike on the Riyadh airport. Because that's actually why I was screaming like an excited child. Because, you know, we had conjectured... Based on the fundamental reality of, you know, how mass and drag and ballistic coefficient work, that for the missile to have fallen in Riyadh and for fragments to have fallen at the airport, you know, some, I think, you know, I think they maybe do it in miles and now I'm all turned up and it's like 12, 14 miles apart.

It had to be the warhead that nearly hit the airport. And so that would be a sign that the missile defense system had not actually defended the airport. Well, so one of the things the Saudis did is they released an image of the debris at the airport. And at the time, we thought maybe it looked like it was a piece of the warhead, but we didn't know for sure because, you know, if a warhead explodes, you're just going to get this like really fragmented debris.

And it's not really going to look like anything. But I had in my mind that image of that piece of debris. And as the... As John Ismay from the New York Times is going through the debris, I actually see it. I see that piece and I start screaming because there's a table with all the warhead fragments and in that pile of fragments, Is that exact piece of debris.

And it's, you know, it's a very unusual shape and it's got coloration differences and it is absolutely the debris. And it is confirmation that that warhead fell at the airport, which means we were right.

Aaron 18:11

Right. It validates that. A lot of the analysis that we did when we walked through the Patriot Intercept, depending on when this was released, either one or two podcasts ago. And... I mean, that's just interesting because, you know, in a lot of the scuds, they don't separate. And so this shows design evolution, both on the planar fins, the guidance, and then the separating warhead.

Jeffrey 18:38

Yes. And then I should say... There's one additional bit of evidence on the planar fins, which I'm prepared to accept, but I can't actually say that I'm sure about. When we looked at the videos of the launches, we could not see planar fins. And so we had Nate, Taylor, and I... Had a big discussion about this where I said, I don't see any planar fins.

The Houthis may have shown us in the sort of like the promo videos for the Burkhan too. They may have shown us missiles with fins because they didn't want us to know they were Kiams. But when I see them out in the desert, I don't see any fins. And Nate, I think correctly said, this is a terrible video.

It is blurry. It is shot at night. The planar fins are not that large. You may just not be seeing them. They may be there and we just can't see them. So we had had a really energetic discussion about whether or not we thought there were fins on these missiles or not. And the DIA presentation includes an image that allegedly shows the mounts for where the fins are.

Fins would be located and the mounts that they show are for something on the Kihom, not for a big planar fin. The problem is I can't see it. Like when I look at that piece of debris, I just see a mangled piece of debris. I can't really myself make it out. And the New York Times people asked about it and they got kind of a like not great answer, which I don't think was them blowing it off.

But I think it was just like a super highly specific question that was hard, hard to hard to make out. But that leads me to think that, you know, I mean, my guess is, on balance, there probably were no planar fins, which means these are chiams. One of which, by the way, wasn't even, you know, repainted. Right.

If you look at the piece of missile debris... It's the bottom half. From the bottom half, yeah, it's Desert Brown, and it's only the one fired at the airport, which has that nice blue Burr campaign job.

Aaron 21:06

Right. I mean, we should say it is Desert Brown, but it has like a stripe that goes down it with the Burr campaign job. Yeah, that's right. I mean, you can also tell. So, I mean, it also looks like the back end came from the Riyadh strike as well. I mean, what do you think about that?

Jeffrey 21:22

I do. You know, SCUD engines all look the same, but there was a SCUD engine that had been recovered from the Riyadh strike, and it looks pretty similar to me. You know, there are a lot of pieces of debris in this display that I identified from the Saudi display that they did. You know they're broken in the same way so you know i think really it's only the lower tank is from this other strike i think everything else is from my guess is they had a nearly complete missile from the riad strike but because they're missing that lower tank and they wanted people to be able to visualize it because you know nikki nikki needs a pretty drop backdrop for her audition as secretary of state yeah or president i mean yeah it's coming that's coming Yeah.

I think Secretary of State first, once people realize that Tillerson's actually dead and that this is a weekend at Bernie's reboot.

Aaron 22:27

That could be it, too. But in the earlier analysis, OK, so one thing that you also see is whoever welded some certain things in here doesn't know how to weld. This is a question I have. The question I think that we were debating when we first learned about this is, when did the Iranians export this? We don't have an answer to that.

This is something Scott and I were debating. How could you modify a Scud C to a Qiyam in Yemen? And then with imported Iranian parts. And who actually did the modifications? Probably Iranians, but did they have Yemeni help? And can you sort of infer that from maybe some of the janky welds that you can see?

Jeffrey 23:16

Yeah, you know, we were really puzzled by this, and I think to their credit, DIA kind of shrugged their shoulders too, like, I don't know. The missile was cut up and re-welded back together, and the new welds are not as good as the old welds. They are sloppy. Like, you don't have to be a welder To see the difference.

Aaron 23:40

I used to work on Volkswagens, and you would cut the pans out because on the old Volkswagen chassis, the pans would collect water and they would rust, and you would cut them out. Welding should look a certain way if it's done right, and these don't look like that. They look really sloppy. Good weld should look like quarters stacked on top of each other.

Jeffrey 24:03

Yeah, and I think... I initially wondered if what was happening was the Yemenis, the Houthis were taking scud bees, cutting them up, adding fuel tank segments and re-welding them back together, basically to create something that was like a Qiyam, but the cuts aren't in the right place for that. I mean, the working hypothesis seems to be that the Kiams were cut up into smaller bits so that they were easier to smuggle and then re-welded in the field by the Houthis.

That makes sense. I guess. See, I feel like that's... I don't understand. You know, like, just... Okay, the boxes will be smaller... But like, I guess maybe that's the answer is that, you know, if there's like a 40 foot shipping container, the Saudis immediately and the UAE immediately assume it's a missile and they blow it up. Whereas if it's smaller, maybe it gets a pass.

So I guess that's what happened. That seems weird to me. And I would have thought that these welds would compromise the integrity of the missile. But having said that, the warhead basically nearly hit the airport. So what the hell do I know?

Aaron 25:26

Could it also be that they were bringing them in on larger ships and then transporting to smaller ships to avoid the blockade?

Jeffrey 25:34

I was told DIA said overland transport. Wait, what? From Iran to Yemen? Well, no, I think they came in on ships, but then they had to transport them by land.

Scott 25:50

Oh.

Jeffrey 25:51

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Scott 25:52

That's a different game there.

Aaron 25:54

Yeah, no, that would be a really long journey. I thought you meant that they were literally driving them, and I was getting the map open to get to my Google Earth.

Jeffrey 26:01

No, no, no, no. No, I mean, I think I was told that it was the overland transport part that was risky. And I guess that makes sense. If you see a 40-foot shipping container on its way to SADA, you're going to, like, knock the f*** out of it. Yeah. It's like, oh, that's gun-sized. Let's blow that up.

Aaron 26:21

And this is another sort of debate Scott and I were having is about those fins itself. I mean, Scott, maybe you want to add, like what we were talking about without Jeffrey before he jumped on, is can you remove the planar fins in the field? And would you?

Scott 26:41

Yeah, I don't know if I actually have anything to add onto that because I'm still so not sure about that. Because I know there are modifications. There are like other short-range ballistic missiles that are built with that in mind. Like we know the Chinese do that on their SRBMs. But I mean, the normal scuds are not... That's not the typical behavior for a scud.

It's just whether or not... Is there essentially a field mod for a Kiam that is throwing some crappy fins on it at the last minute? Just like, is that literally a possibility? I'm not sure how I fall on that. I'm very skeptical of that, just because that seems...

Jeffrey 27:27

So, let me say one thing about this, because I want to say I am persuaded that these are Iranian missiles that are being fired at Saudi Arabia. But I do want to introduce a note of caution, and that caution is because I'm pissed about being lied to. You know, the Saudis were not honest about intercepting that missile.

And so I guess we do have to consider the possibility that some of the components were just thrown into the mix. Right. So, you know, the Iranians have fired missiles into Syria, including one liquid fuel missile. And so I think we have to hold open the, I think, small possibility, you know, that maybe that guidance set and those actuators were recovered and maybe they were then thrown into this debris.

But having said that, like, that's why I was so... Having said that, that's why I was so focused on the mounts on the body of the missile. Because then that would sort of help us narrow down a little bit what's going on. But, you know, that's like a caution. I don't think that's likely. I mean, the other thing which I forgot to mention is the body's aluminum.

Aaron 29:05

Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, tell people why that matters.

Jeffrey 29:08

Well, the North Korean scuds that were sold, including, I believe, the North Korean scuds on the Sosan to Yemen, were steel. Exactly. It was the Iranians who pioneered shifting the Scuds and Nodongs over to aluminum, which, you know, the North Koreans can do and I think probably have done. So by no means is this like a fingerprint or anything.

But again, you know, it's it's I would have expected the Scuds out of the Yemeni stockpile to be to be steel.

Aaron 29:46

And maybe we should discuss why the Iranians would remove planar fins from their Scud C, and what advantages that do, and maybe how to conceptualize this missile.

Jeffrey 29:57

You know, actually, I don't fully understand. I mean, it must just be reducing drag. But nobody else has ever bothered to do this.

Aaron 30:08

Well, Scott and I were talking about it again off-pod, is that it looks like it's to reduce drag, and I can also see that with how the Qiyam's warhead is...

Jeffrey 30:18

Yeah. I mean, it's just weird. I think one of the interesting things I don't fully understand about the Iranians is they have this solid fuel missile program going. It's pretty advanced. Solid fuel is really preferable to liquid fuel. So, like, what is with the incredible effort to keep the Scud family going? I suspect it's bureaucratic. It's that, you know, like, the dudes from the Shig are not giving up that easily.

But even so, like, I just, I mean, the Kiam is... You know, like world's greatest scud is like world's greatest Yugo. Yeah.

Aaron 31:08

That's right. That's funny. But, you know, Nikki Haley, you know, just to look back to her, you know, mentioned that this was the only one without planar fins.

Jeffrey 31:19

Yeah, I mean, it's a very technical point to see a UN ambassador making. I think she did it reasonably well. I don't hate Nikki Haley. I think in the carnival of incompetence that is the Trump administration, she's just a sort of... Fairly normal Republican doing a fairly normal job as a former politician, you know, who's got, like, a big gig.

Like, she's fine. She's, like, she's remarkable for being unremarkable, right? But yeah, it's a really technical point for her to make, right?

Aaron 31:53

Yeah. Well, just to bring this thing full circle back to her speech, you know, she referenced the planar fins, and she said something along the lines that, you know, this is the only missile that doesn't have planar fins, but We were talking about it. That's not quite how we see it. I mean, so it is the world's greatest scud, and so therefore it's like driving a Yugo.

But maybe it's not good to think about it like that.

Jeffrey 32:18

Yeah, I think this is one of those things where I complain about all the time where everything you say is false because there's an exception to everything. I mean, she's right that it's unusual for short-range ballistic missiles not to have these fins. But this is a really long range, short range ballistic missile. It's right at the edge.

You know, and when you start to see solid fueled missiles with this kind of range, sometimes you don't see sometimes you don't see fins. And so, you know, I mean, I think her point is. From an attribution perspective is probably right. That if you're looking at a scud that has no planar fins, then there's a very good chance it's Iranian in origin.

I don't think that's wrong.

Aaron 33:08

No. It's just to conceptualize maybe how they think about their missile program. I mean, what if it's just almost like when they built it, it was a technology demonstrator to step up beyond the Scud family. And now they feel comfortable enough to send some components off to the Houthis because maybe they move beyond it.

Jeffrey 33:30

Yeah, it's possible. I mean, I really, I confess, I am surprised that the Iranians left those components in that missile. You know, why bother to give the Houthis a kiam? Like, really, you don't have some old North Korean, like, you can't. I am surprised that they would have so openly supported an attack on a civilian target in a neighboring state.

Scott 34:04

You mentioned being a little suspicious of there being a case where some other earlier Iranian debris got mixed in. But speaking to that and to age, don't forget we got that part with a little bit of Cyrillic still on it. Which is a little confusing to me. Oh yeah, that's another thing. Yeah, like that one piece of debris that has a Cyrillic letter in it.

Like, why? Are they reusing old parts? Yeah.

Jeffrey 34:29

I think it is probably the case it's just easier to source a bunch of stuff. I mean, many of these things will fall below the level of export controls. And they're probably things the Iranians could make, but why bother? So, you know, I don't... I don't know. I mean, there definitely are components in there that still have Cyrillic markings on them.

I don't... I wouldn't go from that to concluding that, you know, for example, as some people do, that, you know, these are just all Russian missiles that are being covertly supplied all around the world.

Scott 35:00

I know, but, you know, you gotta... No, that's probably a really important thing to note, is that was not the conclusion I was pulling out of this.

Jeffrey 35:06

Yeah, no, I know, but, you know, it comes up now and again. I mean, I think that it's just... You know, I think... Didn't somebody mention there might have been an American component in there, too? Colm Lynch with Foreign Policy said that there was an American... that the UN panel had found an American component, too.

Scott 35:22

In the ballistics? Uh-huh.

Jeffrey 35:24

Okay. It's an unnamed American manufacturer, so it doesn't say what it was. You know, what is really important to say about that story is that there are two things. One is we live in an era of globalization, and so... A lot of missiles, which if you think about it, are World War II era technologies. A lot of that equipment that, you know, Wernher von Braun would have killed to get his hands on is now commercially available by lots of manufacturers all around the world.

You know, because these are like electronics and things like that. And so, you know, it was probably a totally legal and legitimate export. And that's probably the same thing for the Russian components. That's different than the Iranian components. I mean, the Iranian components are the guidance system. And the actuators that control the jet vanes. Those are integral to the missile in a way that, you know, some other things might not be.

Aaron 36:22

Yeah, I think that's important.

Jeffrey 36:24

I got a happy note. What is it? My happy note is we are not going to war with North Korea. Do you know why? No, and I wasn't expecting this. Because Iran launched a f***ing missile. At an allies airport and nearly hit it. And our response is? A press conference. So, you know, I mean, the president and, you know, you know, McMaster with his shaved head, they can do their macho man impersonation all they want.

But the Iranians are rocketing civilian airports today. To an ally that Trump went and they touched that orb together. He talked about how much he loved Saudi Arabia. They did the sword dance. They did the sword dance. And the Iranians fired a missile at the airport in the capital. It fell within a kilometer. And our answer is to scold the Iranians.

Scott 37:34

The Iranians don't even have nuclear weapons.

Jeffrey 37:39

So people are like, oh my God. I mean, if you literally transpose this conversation to Northeast Asia and you were like, okay, let's imagine that North Korea took a Nodong missile and fired it at Narita Airport. You'd be like, oh, there'd be a war. We would attack them. We would totally destroy North Korea. Ron just did it, and, you know, Nikki Haley is like, imagine if it was JFK Airport.

Like, I, you know, I imagine we would do exactly the same thing, which is apparently nothing.

Aaron 38:10

Well, I'm going to challenge you there a little bit. They did get explicit and full frontal and allowed us to just talk about missile components for 30 minutes.

Jeffrey 38:19

Look, I'm not going to complain about any display of Wonkborn like this. It was absolutely incredible, and I'm super excited about it, but, like... They're bluffing. I mean, they can talk tough all they want about North Korea. But if Iran, a country that does not have nuclear weapons, can give the Houthis a missile, they can leave the little Iranian markings all over the missile, and the Houthis can fire it at one of our allies' airports, and we don't do anything about it other than have a press conference?

Draw your own conclusions. Not that I think we should necessarily do anything about it. I understand why we are constrained. I don't want anybody to think I'm making the case that we should attack them. But I just mean that our rhetoric and our actions are very different.

Scott 39:16

That's a happy note. You're not going to f***ing die. Scott, were people talking about this in the Slack channel? Yes, and I imagine they will for the next week. These are some sweet pictures. And if you would like to talk about this in the Slack channel, you can join the Arms Control Wonk Slack channel by heading over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast and giving $3 a month if you are a student or $5 a month if you are not a student.

And next week, we're doing another happy hour for a sort of a holiday happy hour. And we're going to announce the location and time in the Slack channel.

[Sponsor message]

Jeffrey 40:16

Hey, Aaron. Yes? Thanks for joining me. Always a pleasure. And thank you for listening.

Scott 40:23

Invite us to the missile viewing next time, guys. Come on.