An Iranian Missile Attack on Saudi Arabia?

Aaron Stein 0:05

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I am Aaron Stein, the director of the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:16

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Anne Pellegrino 0:28

And I'm Anne Pellegrino, a project manager and research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Studies MRA.

Aaron 0:36

We have a special guest, Aaron. Well, he's very special in my heart because I've been bombarding him with WhatsApp messages all weekend, so it's nice to have him on the podcast.

Jeffrey 0:45

Yeah, we have new CNS employee Fabian Hinz joining us. Hi, everyone.

Anne 0:52

We decided that instead of talking about Fabian, we would just have him on the pod.

Jeffrey 0:58

It's harder to steal his work when he's actually here. Yeah. I noticed that.

Anne 1:04

We give you due credit.

Jeffrey 1:07

We should also say that the, I don't know what you call it, the sound quality of this episode is not going to be so great because we are doing an emergency podcast and Anne, Fabian, and I are all piled into Anne's clean, tidy, and echoey office.

Anne 1:22

It's not my fault.

Aaron 1:23

Yeah, I think the circumstances dictate a quasi-emergency pod, and therefore we are not, say, have the infrastructure set up yet for a podcast like this. 100% emergency pod! I promise you we're working on it.

Anne 1:33

Does this qualify as a launch a missile, get a pod, or... What's this category?

Jeffrey 1:43

Yeah, the offer is not necessarily one missile per pod, right? Because it seems like Iran launched a bunch of missiles.

Aaron 1:53

We have a cruise missile salvo, wouldn't you say? Fired, not lobbed. We have cruise missiles fired, purportedly from Iran. I just said Iran. From Iran purportedly hitting oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. It's go time. We're locked and loaded.

Jeffrey 2:06

Yeah. According to the president, we are locked and loaded. Yeah. So for the listeners, we are at a point where – There have been a series of... Wow, shit, I'm going to have to say that again. Okay, so, listeners, obviously, we know that there has been a strike against Saudi Aramco facilities in Karais and Boukeg. Hey, Fabian, can you go ahead and pronounce those correctly in contravention of our typical Arms Control 1 podcast policy of mispronouncing everything?

Fabian Hinz 2:36

So, the thing is, I really don't know that much about Saudi dialect. I would pronounce it...

Jeffrey 2:46

Yeah, those two places.

Fabian 2:47

Yeah.

Jeffrey 2:48

Anyway, so there were cruise missiles against Quraish, which I'm not going to pronounce with the sound that I don't know how to make.

Anne 2:58

You're gargling.

Jeffrey 2:59

Yeah. And you speak Arabic, too.

Anne 3:01

Yes.

Jeffrey 3:02

Can you do the Saudi dialect?

Anne 3:05

My teachers were Egyptian and Jordanian and Algerian.

Jeffrey 3:12

Right. So cruise missiles against the place that started with a K and drones against the place that starts with either an A or a B. Yeah. And according to the Saudis, it was 18 drones and seven cruise missiles, only four of which got to their target.

Other voice 3:32

Sad.

Jeffrey 3:33

Were you rooting for them all the way through their destiny?

Aaron 3:37

I mean, obviously it matters because... The attack on basically the oil facility challenges a key premise of American foreign policy, which is ensuring the free freedom and movement of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, and clearly seems to me like Iran's signal that they can hold global energy supplies at risk. And so the concern obviously is that what to do after this strike, but I think we should talk about Maybe the open source characteristics that we can learn about the strike and perhaps, you know, expand the conversation out into maybe a talk about the salience of cruise missiles, you know, moving forward.

Anne 4:19

We should also probably start with a little overview of what actually happened. I think in the early stages of reporting on this, the information wasn't so good, kind of like any Any episode like this. So if either Fabian or Jeffrey wants to just give a little overview.

Jeffrey 4:42

Well, I mean, I think the big issue is we don't know where the cruise missiles and drones originated from. I mean, it seems... Likely that they came from Iran, but the Houthis in Yemen are claiming responsibility. we have some doubts about whether the drone could get where it ended up, but they have, they gave a press conference which Fabian, you listened to this morning, and, and in that they said that later today they're going to show off their drone. Yeah.

There's also the cruise missile, which sort of maybe could have gotten to where it got from Yemen, but again, seems more likely to have come from Iran. Obviously, the U.S. government has said it has imagery showing preparations for the attack and that the attack originated from Iran. There is a report of probably a drone that was filmed crossing the border from Kuwait to Saudi Arabia.

Fabian 5:40

So the Kuwait video is interesting because it's very much in western Kuwait, so almost close to the border area between Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. And I would say the sound corresponds a little more to a jet engine. So it could be a jet-powered drone. If it's a propeller drone, probably not. It's difficult to say.

Jeffrey 5:59

Yeah. But... The point there is that looking at the types of munitions that were used and the observation of where at least one of them looks like it was kind of en route, And presumably where the crashed cruise missiles were found, which the Saudis haven't been super clear about, I mean, it really does seem like the United States and Saudi Arabia should know where the attack originated from.

It's a little hard on the open source to fully verify that. But I think at this point, based on the information we have, which is not conclusive, it really does look like this was not an attack from Yemen, but more likely from Iran. Although, we'll see. I mean, the other thing I guess I should say is the U.S. said at the very beginning that the strikes on the facilities looked like they damaged the northwest quadrants of the facilities, but actually it's not true, right?

The holes in the oil tanks were just on the western side, which is ambiguous.

Fabian 7:01

On the northwest.

Jeffrey 7:02

Yeah, but only kind of, right? I mean, pretty westerly. And then the strike on Carais, I mean, that was a big tower that was standing up, so it really could have been hit from any angle.

Anne 7:13

So I want to ask about if we are pretty sure where the attack may have, at least the direction of where it may have come from, why is the United States hedging on all of its statements about, you know, they come out guns a-blazing, like this was Iran, and then they've kind of started to walk back and are saying that, like, they'll let Saudi Arabia lead kind of their assessment.

But I...

Aaron 7:42

I don't know. Cause they're not going to do. Well, I, I, I mean, I, I think is from the outset, the United States, I believe the first indications was, was this was Mike Pompeo on his Twitter feed, you know, either hinting or, or indicating quite strongly that the attack came from the North. And I think that the the evidence for that was the, the battle damage or the destructive damage that Jeffrey, you just mentioned on some of the oil tanks and some of the Some of the infrastructure at the oil refinery, and the range issue in that as the Houthis claimed originally, so the morning of it was the Houthis that claimed it was a drone strike, is that it seemed too far, or at least it seemed to be out of range from the potential launch points in Yemen, which turned attention towards either southern Iraq,

You know, where Iran has a sort of indirect proxy presence, or southern Iran. And I think the intelligence leaks that have come from the U.S. has hinted that it comes from, or have been overt, in that it comes from a missile base or a base, they say, at the northern end of the Persian Gulf area.

Fabian 9:00

Down sort of right where iran and iraq touch as they they it feeds out into the into the most northern part of the persian gulf would you say that's a fair assessment fabian so for me what it really is is a combination of range and quantity because and quality because before we had lots of hoothy drone strikes against all facilities electrical plants and usually was always the same pattern so i You would try to look it up on satellite pictures, you would see minimal damage or no damage at all.

There might have been one drone used, three drones and stuff like that. And suddenly we see this major attack with probably around 20 drones used at a really really long distance. So if you put that together it's very very unusual and speaks for something that might have been launched outside of Yemen. Because I have no doubts the Houthis could hit that facility with, let's say, a single drone.

They have, like, the Samar 3, which should kind of have the range. But, like, having this kind of coordinated major attack, which also results in, like, unprecedented damage, that's something quite unique for me that speaks for a different kind of attack.

Jeffrey 9:59

Well, and I would add that the drone that we see is new.

Fabian 10:02

Yeah.

Jeffrey 10:02

You know, it's not a drone we've seen before. And typically the Houthis have shown us the things that they're about to use, and then they go ahead and use them. Yeah. This is an inversion of that traditional pattern where the drones appear and they don't look like anything we've seen. And now the Houthis are like, oh, we do have those.

We're going to show you them later today. Which I think is... Iran buses to ship the Houthis. Some hardware. Yeah, so I mean, I think that when we put all the evidence together, I think Fabian's right. This just doesn't look like

Other voice 10:41

A typical Houthi strike.

Jeffrey 10:42

And, you know, it still could be. You know, but there would have to be a lot of things that turn out to be either not true or surprising or mistaken in order for that to happen. So I'd say it's unlikely to be Yemen and more likely to be Iran.

Fabian 10:58

So the other thing is when you... When you go back to the original statement by the Houthis, they said it was like 10 drones which they use. And the Houthis most of the time use kamikaze drones, loitering munitions, whatever you would like to call them, poor man's cruise missiles. And there were more impacts than that. You could like count 17 impacts on the satellite pictures.

And the Houthis didn't mention cruise missiles at all. So there's like a huge discrepancy between what we know happened in terms of impact and what the Houthis originally stated.

Jeffrey 11:25

And there is one more thing, which Fabian, that's your work. The Houthis lied through their teeth in that press conference, right?

Fabian 11:35

Oh, yeah. So the Houthis were like, oh, yeah, we have these exclusive images which we've taken, our agents took inside the facility. And if you just do like a quick Yandex reverse image search, like two of them are just taken from the Internet. And the thing is, they also look like they were taken from the Internet and not by an agent.

They're like kind of wallpaper style. So, yeah, that's pretty bad.

Anne 11:55

They know we can do this stuff.

Jeffrey 11:57

I love that you're offended, Anne. I know. I was about to say, I don't think you're in the audience. You know I'm not an idiot, right, Houthis?

Aaron 12:07

I will also say, just to cap this section off, is that it's consistent with what's been going on. So since the American withdrawal from the JCPOA and sort of the real hard re-imposition of secondary sanctions to drive down Iranian oil exports, We've had attacks on oil tankers near Fujairah, you know, outside the United Arab Emirates. You had the downing of the American Global Hawk.

You've had reports of a similar type attack, albeit much smaller, with much cruder munitions from southern Iraq into Saudi Arabia. And so for me, this is sort of the icing on the cake. This is the next Move, if you are the Iranians, either working directly or through a client, to inflict damage on your main regional rivals' energy exports, their most important thing, as a consequence, or punishing them, both for their policies in Yemen, but also their broader policies of opposing the regime.

Jeffrey 13:11

Yeah, also, did you see Vladimir troll... Vladimir troll, Jesus. Vladimir Putin trolling The Saudis at his meeting with Rouhani and Erdogan?

Aaron 13:27

You know, that took place in Ankara. So not only did I see it, I watched it live and my blood boiled. And I wanted to tweet sort of ingress tracks for Jassim as we slammed into Syria. But then I said, you know what? I'm an adult. I'm not going to do that. I won't fall for Putin's trolling.

Jeffrey 13:42

Yeah. But, you know, like what was notable about it was that Rouhani and Zarif were like cracking up. You know, I mean, it was like the most schoolboy, like, of course you did it.

Aaron 13:57

Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, for listeners, Putin said, you know, if you really want to protect yourself, buy S-400 and S-300 like Turkey and Iran, not these stupid patriots, because you can't protect yourself. And cuts to Zarif just giggling in the crowd. Should we talk about the imagery that we have seen in Fabian's work on the open source about trying to...

You know, some of the early days of what we think this thing is.

Anne 14:24

Sure. I'd love to let him loose on that.

Aaron 14:26

Earlier, I can't remember if it was Sunday or Monday, is that there was two things on Twitter. There was the aforementioned grainy cell phone video from Kuwait showing things flying over. And two, there seems to have been some crash landings of missiles in the Saudi desert somewhere. And I think that set you loose, Fabian, on trying to figure out what it is.

Fabian 14:48

Yeah. So the images of the wreckage in the desert were pretty interesting. So we could figure out that they were not doctored, that they were original images. We, at that point of time, couldn't really figure out whether they belonged to that attack or not. Now with the new... Images the Saudis have shown, it's pretty clear they're the same thing.

Of course, the Saudis could be lying about it, but it seems pretty clear they were connected to the attack. So what can you see in those images? It's basically the rear part of something that looks a lot like a cruise missile. And many people were commenting, oh, it's probably an Iranian Sumer, or it's the Yemeni Quds one, which they say is a copied Sumer.

And if you look closely at the missile, it's really a Houthi, not necessarily a Houthi Quds, we've only seen it with Houthis so far, it's quite likely it also exists in Iran. But it's very, very clear, it's a Quds one, which is smaller than the Sumer, The Iranian copy of the KH-55. And yeah.

Jeffrey 15:45

It's a pound shop KH-55.

Fabian 15:47

Yeah, it's a poor man's KH-55.

Anne 15:49

So would they... Okay, I'm thinking through something right now. If this is a missile that has been shown by the Houthis, have we seen video of it in Iran?

Other voice 16:07

No.

Anne 16:08

Okay, so to me... That signifies that they have kind of kept this... I don't know where I'm going. You guys are staring at me like I'm crazy. No, no. What you're saying is something that... Okay, so they're trying to claim that the Houthis did it, but it wasn't the Houthis.

Other voice 16:30

Probably.

Anne 16:32

But they're using a system that has been seen in Yemen, but not in Iran. Jeffrey is badly shaking his head.

Other voice 16:41

Because you're right. Oh, sorry about the table. So the thing is with the

Fabian 16:48

The thing is with like these missiles in Yemen, we've seen like these new systems emerge, like you have the Badr-F, the Badr-1P, and now you have the Quds, and they're like missiles that kind of look Iranian in style, but they don't really have a close Iranian equivalent, because whenever you have like these amazing infographics of like what kind of groups Iran supports, you always have like this idea, this is a Fajr-5 and it's exported to Palestine, and there it gets this and this name.

And this is quite a deviation from that behavior. So we don't really know what's the reason for that, whether Iran is actively developing systems to keep deniability, whether these systems are just kind of specialized proxy systems because you would have different needs as a proxy. It should be easier to operate, perhaps easier to partially manufacture, or whether it's just deniability after the Rayon thing blew up in their face when the Houthis rocketed Riyadh.

Jeffrey 17:46

Yeah, so to follow up on what Fabian said, you know, the cruise missile that we see, which we had seen in Yemen before, it has this engine on it which is commercially available, right? Which is a Czech engine that you identified as the... TJ-100.

Fabian 18:05

TJ-100. TBS Aerospace.

Jeffrey 18:08

Right, so... You know, there are a variety of things. I think what Anne was getting at, which Fabian just mentioned, which I think is right, is one possibility is that this is a system that can be given to proxies, which is deniable. But there is an Iranian connection in the sense that we've seen that engine in Iran.

You know, it's a commercially available system that we know that they've purchased for some drones, right?

Fabian 18:32

Yeah. So there were, like, two engines of that type exhibited at a drone exhibition. It probably powers the Zmorg drone, the Iranian one, because they call everything Zmorg. And it might be possible that they're actually license-producing them, or probably not license-producing them, doing, like, pirated copies of it.

Jeffrey 18:49

Yeah, so, I mean, this is a perfect system for a proxy, because it's commercially available, it's easily deniable. ... It's presumably fairly inexpensive. And so, you know, it doesn't have a huge range, we don't think. But maybe, you know, we'll have to go ahead and model it. But I mean, it strikes me as a really plausible system for the Iranians to develop to give to the Houthis.

Fabian 19:17

So the engine should be like 50,000 euros a piece. So it's really cheap.

Aaron 19:24

And a buddy of mine who I pinged about the engine called it – he used a phrase I like. He calls it an anti-attribution weapon. And I think what you're getting at, Anne, is something that Adam Rawnsley, friend of the podcast, I think either said in a WhatsApp chat or said on Twitter. I can't remember. It's been the past couple of days.

Or it's like Iran building stuff up. And not showing it off as part of their strategy of using deniability and working through clients to control escalation? And is this one of those answers? Because if you look at this thing, it's like a mini KH-55. And I think it's worth for listeners to describe the lineage of the KH-55 in Iran.

I mean, just cliff notes. When was it, Fabian? It was like 2000, 2001? 2001, I think, yeah. Ukraine... They said to have got a dozen, a little more than a dozen from Ukraine. This is a Soviet legacy cruise missile with considerable range. Then they begin to show them off relatively recently as the Sumar. Sorry, not pronouncing that right.

And then They showed this thing off the goods, which is like in miniature. Is that like a good sort of cliff note summary of what this thing is?

Fabian 20:41

Yeah, I would say so.

Aaron 20:42

I would say so.

Jeffrey 20:43

I'm also really proud of Fabian because he measured the cruise missile at 32 centimeters? 34. 34? And it is 32, right?

Fabian 20:52

It's 32, yeah. We have pretty good pictures.

Jeffrey 20:55

Fabian did a great job of measuring this thing. And identifying the engine. And so now we have a pretty good idea what the cruise missile part of the strike was. Seems to fit in with certain ideas about Iranian behavior. And I actually really like your point about escalation control and attribution, because it seems to me, you know, to pick up the point earlier, like, why is the U.S. hedging?

I think Trump doesn't want to do a strike. And so even though we... And that, like, expert community are like, we're pretty sure this is Iranian. You know, even the Saudis in their presentation were hedging a bit. And it kind of serves everyone's interest if they end up deciding that they just want to do sanctions or something.

For everybody to, like, pretend that this, you know, was the Houthis. Or my favorite bad hypothesis is a rogue IRGC. Which I think is an absurd hypothesis. Yeah, it's absolutely absurd. If you don't want to do anything about this, there's enough uncertainty for you to tendentiously interpret to give yourself permission to not do anything about it.

Fabian 22:11

One thing I would really add here, what strikes me is like, we talk about like, Where it comes from, whether it comes from Yemen, Iraq, or Iran, and talking away about it as if it were like a really, really big deal. But in the end, no matter where it came from, the order for this attack directly came from the Supreme Leader.

There's no way either Iran's proxies or the IHCC would have done it without the explicit order of the Supreme Leader. So it's just a question of, yeah, where it came from.

Anne 22:40

That's a good point. Yeah, because I've always been just totally...

Jeffrey 22:47

Shocked by the fact that the Iranians had let the Houthis fire Iranian-made missiles at airports, including the Riyadh airport. And, like, the Saudis didn't do anything about it. They just took it like chumps.

Anne 23:00

Their Patriot batteries protected them.

Aaron 23:05

I think it's important because the American debate is sort of flipped into either Saudi is not really an ally, they're not worth fighting a war for, or we got to go reestablish deterrence. But I think what gets lost in that is that my reading of the Saudi statements thus far has been one of caution, one of hedging.

And what happens when your partner or ally, depending on whatever word you want to associate with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its relationship with the United States, Also wants to control escalation. Because if we're really thinking about this, like, okay, let's take the U.S. at their word. I actually think it did come from Iran, but like, you know, who knows?

But if it came from the north, and I think it did, and they're being rocketed every day from the south, you are f***ed. I mean, like, I don't know how else to put it. It's like, you know, you could have the best missile defense systems in the world. They could be 75%, 97%, and you still have to make choices about where you put your Patriot radars.

And so you've got to give Iran, like, credit's not the right word, but they have played this to their advantage in ways that make escalation unwise if you're the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And we all know Donald Trump doesn't really want to strike anyways because he tells us every single day on his Twitter feed that he doesn't want to do it.

You don't even have to be like Israel and trap his phone. We just can follow him. So we know he doesn't really want to do this. But, like, these missiles... And my point is, is if you can strike targets from both sides, you know, in quotes, you really have an escalation advantage to the point where you force your adversary to hedge.

I think that's what we're seeing.

Jeffrey 24:48

Yeah, well, I actually think that this is the big problem with the absurd bellicosity of the foreign policy community, which is everybody likes to talk super tough. But in fact, the Iranians have a ton of leverage. And in a sense, they have what you would conceive of as kind of an escalation dominance in the situation. And they can go ahead and just slug the Saudis over and over and over again.

And the Saudis aren't going to do anything about it because they would get their clocks clean. Right. If this escalates, they are not going to come out of it well. And so they really have only us to count on. And if we're hesitant or unwilling, and frankly, we don't just want to deal with what would be, you know, I don't have this like Brett Stevens idea that we're going to like sweep the street, the straight of their Navy because we did it 32 years ago.

Aaron 25:39

Which, by the way, wasn't quite as clean as he remembered. No, it wasn't.

Jeffrey 25:45

Yeah. So I just I think that, you know, we have this idea that we're kind of invincible and that's the thing we keep imagining about ourselves. And the consequence of that is it really blinds us to situations when we don't have leverage because nobody can be honest about the fact that we're in this situation where the Iranians can get away with this because it's really not in our interest to escalate the situation to stop them.

Aaron 26:09

I'm going to go back to 1987 and pick up on your Brett Stevens because I think it's a good anecdote to explain exactly what you just said.

Jeffrey 26:15

Oh, to cut you off just for one second, let me call him a bed bug and remind you that my provost's name is Jeff Kaysen. C-A-S-O-N. Direct all correspondence to Jeff. You should send him a really angry email. He just got back from vacation, so I'm pretty sure he'll be very excited.

Aaron 26:37

As we thought about that, you know, sort of the Bret Stephens, we sink the Navy, rah, rah, go red, white, and blue, is that the initial assumptions about sending military forces to escort, re-flag Kuwaiti takers, the Navy thought just flying the Stars and Stripes would deter Iran until they ran over a mine. And so this idea that the stars and stripes will scare Iran into doing things because Trump hits send on an all caps tweet just doesn't hold water.

And we have to think more creatively, especially when they have Consistently develop the tools you know the kutz is a good i is a good example of that the kiam is a good example of that and cultivating clients who can then use these things in effective ways that they have leverage too so we can fire 60 70 t lambs all we want but the supreme leader is still going to wake up the next day and send his own tweet right back at donald trump wow that was good Sorry.

I don't mean to get up on my soapbox here, but I'm following the American political debate. It's almost as if Iran doesn't exist.

Fabian 27:49

But I mean, isn't that the type of debate we're having all the time about US foreign policy? People talk about whether they like or they hate Trump, but they don't really talk about the issues anymore.

Aaron 27:57

And I think the Quds one is a wonderful example of this, just to bring it back to the podcast and get off my soapbox. You know, they have made a very hard to attribute weapon. I mean, I'm sure once we pull it apart and as we learn more, there'll be all sorts of Iranian components in there. But we aren't the audience.

You know, the audience is people who don't want to believe that Iran is behind this and who want to believe that Saudi is ultimately the root cause of the problem because they intervened in Yemen. You know, and so they just have to convince those people. They don't have to convince the arms control community, because I'm pretty sure that we all agree that this thing has Iranian fingerprints all over it, and this thing was made somewhere in an IRGC weapons lab, you know, probably fired, you know, from the north of the Persian Gulf.

Jeffrey 28:39

I think Vipin Narang calls this implausible deniability, right? The idea is that, I mean, Fabian's right, that our domestic political debate is just completely partisan, and As a consequence of that, facts are like really only approximately needed. And so like if you don't want to strike Iran,

Anne 29:06

There's enough information here for you to pretend that they didn't do this, right?

Jeffrey 29:10

Which is a lot easier, like, I don't want to strike Iran either, but I think we should just be honest about saying, it's not in our interest to strike Iran, even if they did do this. But that's not how these debates work. If you don't want to strike Iran, you have to then pretend that they're innocent, and this is some kind of bizarre Saudi false flag, and then you can, you know, go vote for Tulsi Gabbard.

Ugh. Because then the other side is, like, if they did this, then, you know, we pretend that you have to strike them for these absurd credibility reasons, which make no sense whatsoever. So, like, I think that it's implausible deniability. You're not really trying to persuade anybody that you didn't do it. You're just trying to have kind of a story that allows people to run home to the positions that they had prior to and they're going to have after.

Aaron 29:59

Can I ask a general question of you three? Because it's something I'm curious about. So let's assume that the U.S. doesn't strike. Or if it does strike, it's sort of like, to use the John Kerry phrase, it's a pinprick. The Iranians... Where do they go next? And that's ultimately where I'm concerned. So I've been thinking a lot about, like, the escalation ladder, largely because of the misuse of the word deterrence.

I've gone back and reread sections of Schelling. And, you know, the Iranians have gotten away with so much, and our options are so bad. You know, it's really hard to fathom, you know, where you can go. I mean, well, I mean... Where do you go after you've rocketed downtown Riyadh? We all got lucky. And then they fire cruise missiles, kind of dinky little cruise missiles but nevertheless effective, into their number one national strategic asset.

And we literally have no idea what to do other than sanctions or maybe we'll do some pinpricks.

Anne 31:14

It's funny because – What would Iran do? Well, so I was thinking about this question actually this morning, but not with Iran, with North Korea. I was just like, one day I'm going to wake up and there's going to be another North Korean nuclear test simply because they have not gotten the response out of the United States that they desire.

And so I was like, that wouldn't surprise me just to wake up to another ICBM test, a nuclear test. I don't know. So I haven't really thought about it in terms of Iran, but I agree that that's a curious question. I don't know.

Fabian 31:54

You could escalate when it comes to choosing facilities, but you could try to do something more militarily and strike that. But I think they really want to stay with the oil facilities because they have this idea that the oil price and all is something Trump understands and this is something A way in which they can gain leverage over Trump, which I think the Iranians don't see as a conventional politician, but more as like some sort of businessman who thinks in business terms and oil terms.

I think what it really established is now that you can strike Saudi Arabia from Iranian soil, so that this might be something they might try to build up on and launch more drone attacks against perhaps smaller facilities or other facilities from Iranian soil, because it would tremendously make things easier than shipping the stuff to Yemen, smuggling it there and firing it from there.

Anne 32:39

What happens if we get further escalation to like ballistic missiles and then we finally get to see the Chinese ballistic missiles in Saudi Arabia?

Jeffrey 32:46

Oh, the Saudis actually retaliate?

Fabian 32:49

So actually, I was joking with a friend yesterday that if I was Saudi Arabia, I would just fire like DF-21s at Abadan and then take some crappy Baloch insurgent group from the border with Pakistan to claim credits and to troll them.

Jeffrey 33:02

Look, I think the Iranians have escalation dominance. I mean, there is all kinds of stuff they can do to make shipping in the Gulf more difficult. They can continue to hit facilities in Saudi Arabia, and if we don't want to invade them, and, you know, you splash, I don't want to invade them. You know, I was not for invading Iraq, and that turns out to have been the right decision to not invade, and I would like to get out of Afghanistan, and so, like, we don't want to occupy Iran, like, Like this ends in like a, what, a war of the cities where we're just rocketing each other all the time, and like that's, but with complete inability on both sides. Yeah, I mean, I just, I think that that favors Iran, you know. It, I don't know that we're going to do enough damage to the Iranians and really make them change course, and I think the Saudis are going to scream, you know, and so like

I think the Iranians are in a really strong position and we would be better off if we recognize the leverage that they have and stop just screaming maximum pressure anytime somebody asks a hard question about like what the strategy is. And like, I mean, like the Saudis have to make peace with the Iranians. Like they just have to do it.

Like they don't want to do it, but they're the weaker party. Are they not the weaker party?

Aaron 34:25

I couldn't agree more, although I know that's controversial. I have a rather radical proposal because I also believe that the Iranians have escalation dominance. And I believe this. Obviously, they are the weaker of the two parties if you compare them to the U.S. But that would be like thinking of blue on red, right? We're going to line up forces and we're going to go kick the shit out of them like in 1991, right?

But like We refuse to even entertain that, whether you're Donald Trump or whether you are Joe Biden. You know, like there is not a single politician in the United States who will say we're going to invade Iran because we're going to remove their missile arsenal. So if you take that off the table and then you have to assume that no politician will put boots on the ground.

So you are left in a situation where the most forceful American response would be joint airstrikes with the Saudi Arabia, with Saudi Arabian Air Force, i.e. We give them sort of things to hit out in the desert and we do the dirty work. But I don't even think we would risk a pilot. So you would go down further.

And so you're looking at Desert Fox, right? If not Desert Fox, then the sort of little thing we did in Syria, a couple of TLEMs. The Iranians must know this because they are not stupid. And so when they factor in their own risk analysis, they have to understand that the regime will not be toppled. In fact, the main problem for the regime is the sanctions.

And so if you come in with that, And their effort is trying to compel changes in American policy by exacting a cost for disrupting their energy flow by f***ing with global energy flow. Sorry, I'm swearing. But if you do that, then you have to tell yourself, how do we stop? Because for compelling leads to escalation. It's not deterrence.

And therefore, so how do you stop? I have this radical proposal that we bribe them. Please stop shooting and we will give you sanctions relief. This is the root thing of the JCPOA, and it worked before. You co-op them rather than coerce them because it is a political decision to fire missiles into Saudi Arabia. It's exacting, and you can only get it by trying to buy them off.

So what's wrong with the bribery approach? And why can't we give sanctions relief to stop this?

Jeffrey 36:39

Oh, I'll let Fabian answer in a second, but I would just say – We have lived through this exact scenario with North Korea. We are not going to bribe them. We refuse to bribe them. We're going to put pressure on them. They're absolutely not allowed to have nuclear weapons. We're outraged at the times that they sink ships and shell islands and stage provocations.

And so we're going to be tough, not going to talk to them. We're not going to recognize them. We're going to isolate them. And it just ends with them having a nuclear weapon. It doesn't end with us getting our way. It ends with us saying this is unacceptable while we accept it.

Fabian 37:23

Yeah, I just had to think of that amazing thing Grace retweeted. I don't know who retweeted it in the first place. It was a guy complaining about how we always see the loss of faith as something specifically cultural or Asian. Well, we are doing this all the time. We fear we lose faith if we like... Except certain conditions.

And I think it boils down to that, because if under fire, the West would agree to lifting sanctions, the Iranians would have won with this strategy. So I have the feeling both sides kind of have boxed each other into a corner where they can't really escape without losing face. I mean, Donald Trump, because he's so erratic, and he's so kind of in control of his base, he might be capable of doing that.

But I'm very pessimistic at this point of time.

Jeffrey 38:07

Where's our happy note, Aaron?

Aaron 38:08

I'm sighing.

Jeffrey 38:09

I'm sighing. Oh, I know what the happy note is. Wreckage of a cool new drone.

Other voice 38:16

A little longboard? Yeah.

Fabian 38:21

Another happy note. The TJ-100 is pretty cool. You can put that thing on a glider and it turns into a jet. It's absolutely amazing. It's a cool engine.

Aaron 38:35

Can I give another shout out? I always do this, but I want to do it again. Dennis Gormley.

Jeffrey 38:41

Friend of Pod.

Aaron 38:44

I love that man. I love Dennis. Dennis Gormley, friend of Pod. Neither have I. But if he listens, you were right, man. That book you wrote was prophetic. Fabian, thanks for...

Fabian 38:58

Thank you so much for having me here. It's an honor to be here.

Aaron 39:00

Thank you to Jeffrey and Ann, too, for squeezing in around a microphone. It's very, very tough.

Jeffrey 39:07

Yeah, sorry about the poor sound quality.

Aaron 39:10

Yeah, sorry about the sound. We do realize we need to make upgrades and we're in the process of doing that. And if you like the show, head on over to patreon.com slash ACW podcast, where if you have a, you are a student, it's $3 a month and a regular person, it's $5 a month and you get access to a Slack channel where we talk about a lot of the stuff.

So with that, thank you everybody for listening and always a pleasure to speak with you.