Iran’s Missile Strikes in Iraq

Jeffrey Lewis 0:05

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

Aaron Stein 0:21

And I'm Aaron Stein, the director of the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia.

Jeffrey 0:27

Aaron, we don't have Anne Pellegrino with us. She is on a plane on her way back from your side of the country.

Aaron 0:36

Yeah, she was in the CNSDC office for a couple of days, and she was tweeting that she was at Dulles, and the Iranians just couldn't wait, so Ann told us to go ahead without her. So we'll miss her on the show, but we have her blessing to go here.

Jeffrey 0:54

Well, it's been a terrifying and interesting, what, 72 hours now since Iran launched its retaliatory missile strike against U.S. bases in Iraq. So I don't know, Aaron, what do you make of it?

Aaron 1:16

I think we got really lucky. I wrote this in the piece on War on the Rocks today, and I really mean that. You know, there's a lot of back-slapping going on. There's some very odd leaks that were at the outset of this that the Iranians missed on purpose. I don't think that that's entirely accurate. I don't think that has any shred of truth to it, any validity at all.

I think we can talk about that as the show goes on. I think we just got lucky, and... I don't think this is a good place to be in, and I don't think that there's any winner or loser here. We are all losers.

Jeffrey 1:50

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a combination of luck and Iranian objectives for this missile strike. So I guess we should talk about what actually transpired. Yeah. So there were two waves of missile strikes from Iran proper against targets in Iraq, mostly Ain al-Assad airbase. But it seems like there was another facility near Erbil. Is that how I say that?

Aaron 2:29

Erbil.

Jeffrey 2:31

You're the man with the language skills.

Aaron 2:36

I was staying there. I know where they were aiming at. My hotel the last time I was there in April overlooked it.

Jeffrey 2:43

But, you know, and it was a mixture of missiles. It was apparently I guess it was it was maybe 13, I think, is the number I saw. Mostly, we think, Fatah 313 short range ballistic missiles and then some Qiyam short range ballistic missiles. We know the Fatah because the Iranians said it. And I think they may also have confirmed the Qiyam, but the debris that we saw online, I think Scott LaFoy pretty conclusively demonstrated to all of our satisfaction was Qiyam debris.

So it was a mix, which actually is what we saw in previous strikes that the Iranians have carried out.

Aaron 3:26

Yeah, I think – Perhaps the one that jumps out to me is the one that we talked about in this podcast in Mayadin in Syria. They used a mix of Zolvocars, if I'm remembering correctly. Kiam, obviously, is what they export to the Houthis in Yemen for strikes on Saudi Arabia. And, you know... I call them the Fatah series, or I think are interesting to dig into a little bit, because sometimes in the game of telephone for the initial news reports, people call them the Fatah 110s, but obviously there's a difference between the 110, the 313, and the Zoltan.

Jeffrey 4:02

And the Dezful. And the Dezful.

Aaron 4:06

I love the Iranians. They're so weird. But yeah, they got four in the family, I call it.

Jeffrey 4:11

Yeah. So I think for listeners – I mean the way to start is Iran developed a family of initially short-range solid propellant ballistic missiles. Yeah. An artillery rocket they had developed. And the family initially consisted of a 610 millimeter diameter missile. And so that's the Fatah 110, which has been improved several times. It had a range of a few hundred kilometers.

My sense, it's a little unclear what the Fatah 313 was. It was an extended range version of the Fatah 110. There's some evidence it has a composite airframe, maybe something like that. And then Iran moved on to this thing called the Zolfgar, which we don't think they used in this strike, which is even further range, which is actually a little bit bigger.

One of the cool tests we did with Adam Martin and our team of photogrammetrists is people who measure in pictures. I gave him pictures of the Fatah 110 and pictures of the Zolfgar. And I said, estimate the size of these two missiles. And, you know, because they're only 70 millimeters different, right? Which is seven centimeters, I guess.

Am I doing that math right? 610 millimeters and 680 millimeters, right? Okay. I asked him to measure them and come back. And he got basically 610 millimeters for the Fatah 110. And he found the Zolfgar was like a lot harder to measure, but also got 680 millimeters, which is what the Iranians say. So, you know, we're pretty sure that the Zolfgar is a little bit bigger.

And then the Iranians have later told us about this thing called the Dezvol that I haven't had time to measure yet.

Aaron 6:13

Yeah, I don't know much about that one, to be honest. Of the four, it's the one I know the absolute least about.

Jeffrey 6:18

I suspect it'll turn out to be a super Zolfgar, but we'll see. But the thing is, the Iranians brag that these things are really accurate. Yeah.

Aaron 6:30

Which I guess we'll talk about.

Jeffrey 6:32

The Qiyam, maybe not so much, right? That's just a scud.

Aaron 6:37

The Qiyam is a scud with – exactly. It's just a scud. A finless scud. A finless scud. That's what I'm looking to say. And it's kind of the outlier in the attack. So the Qiyam debris, and I think somebody was tweeting it, didn't really fall anywhere near what's expected target. Sometimes this is the U.S. consulate in – Erbil or the airport.

The consulate and the Erbil, just having been to both, are relatively close to one another, so it wouldn't be... I can understand why there may be some... Some confusion about what they were aiming at, but it hit sort of further west and sort of way out there. And this leads to hypotheses that we'll come to later, but maybe we'll talk about what the stuff that they did hit at Ain al-Assad because you guys, Middlebury Institute with Planet, your team, Jeffrey, I think was first to go with the imagery.

Jeffrey 7:30

I do think we were first. I know that when my kids woke me up at like 4.30 in the morning, which is just a nightmare to begin with, I couldn't go back to sleep. And Dave Schmerler was already up, and he checked Planet and saw – That there was an after picture of Ein Al-Assad Air Base. And so we went through and we found most initially, but not all.

Maggie Croy, I think, later found a couple other spots that we'd missed. Dave went through and found most of the strikes. And I think then Maggie found the rest. And, you know, it's not clear exactly how many, but... I see 10, which is pretty consistent with what we've heard. But two of those are difficult to assess.

Aaron 8:33

Yeah. You know, and this is where I want to touch on something real quick before we dive into where they hit, is the initial reports when there were no casualties was that they were carefully trying to manage escalation, which may be true and probably is true. But one of the ways that they did that is that they were aiming at parts of the air base directly.

Basically, there's a lot of sand on the air base. They were aiming – I'm joking. They were aiming more towards the sandy areas rather than the sort of concentration of buildings. And I didn't believe that on – before I had seen the imagery and then when the imagery came out, it's like, no, no, they didn't aim at the sand at all.

They aimed at specific buildings, as I say, in the heart of that base. And hit them. And hit them. Which surprised me. I'm going to be completely honest with you. I expected them to not be as accurate as they looked out to be. So in my initial thing, I was like, oh, these things aren't that accurate. I was wrong.

And so I wanted to say that on the record. I was wrong in my initial assumptions about their ability to strike with precision.

Jeffrey 9:41

Well, we had seen the Zolfgar strike. One of the previous Zolfgar strikes didn't look that accurate.

Aaron 9:47

Correct. Correct.

Jeffrey 9:48

So that caught me a little bit by surprise, although honestly the imagery wasn't that great.

Aaron 9:55

This was in Syria. They had a drone that was overflying it. We sort of saw it come streaking in if I remember correctly.

Jeffrey 9:59

Yeah, that's right. So I think what we should probably say is that – I mean first Iran targeted the US portion of the base, right?

Aaron 10:13

Yeah. It's an Iraqi base, but it's basically where the U.S. – I always say it's made famous by its large U.S. contingent and the two sides are – kind of have different sides of the base.

Jeffrey 10:24

And – I think it was you who pointed out, you know, you can tell which parts the U.S. uses because of the helicopters and other things that we sometimes see out. Right. So, for example, there were what were they? There were Chinook helicopters, which the Iraqis don't operate anymore.

Aaron 10:44

Yeah, I didn't say that, but somebody else did in a DM group we're in. I have some friends who have been there. So I just ask them and they're like, yeah, we mostly keep to our sides. There are some parts where we come together and obviously we interact, but there are our sides. So I just ask somebody to spend some time there.

Jeffrey 10:59

So, I mean, I think one thing is when people say, you know, oh, they targeted – they deliberately missed, like – No. I mean they targeted the part of the base where the US was. And the second thing I guess to say is that they destroyed – By my count, six structures at the base, most of which are these kind of temporary.

I mean, temporary sit there for a long time, but temporary shelters, which I think General Milley described as tentage.

Aaron 11:42

Like those clamshell hangers.

Jeffrey 11:44

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and they are tents, but they're, you know, they're where U.S. forces work, like do maintenance on helicopters and drones. And there were buildings that were struck. I mean, there were things that are... There's at least one thing that is clearly a building, and one of the misses to me, or near misses, looks like another building.

So, you know, when I look at... The part of the base where the buildings are, you know, I think I see seven strikes and six buildings or structures destroyed in those seven strikes. And that's, those things are hit pretty dead on. Yeah. You know, so for example, the, there's a row of five maintenance shelters that, And they destroyed the middle one and then the two maintenance shelters on either side of it.

Right? So they hit right in the middle of that complex. I mean, I saw someone do an analysis, which I found very uncompelling, where that person just sort of assumed, you know, a spherical cow, right? That person said, oh, well, let's assume one aim point, and then we'll calculate the CEP from that, and just assuming everything missed.

I think that's wrong, because there's very little chance that you would have gotten... If you fire it at one aim point, then by just dumb luck, gone six for seven against buildings. You know, it's not that densely populated.

Aaron 13:29

Right. And it looks to me, okay, just like looking at the signatures on that base, it's like the portions that they targeted were those that – again, it's just that – That support U.S. operations, and I think maybe even drone operations, and it was the drone that killed Qasem Soleimani. Not the physical drone that was destroyed, but sort of like if they were politically trying to quote-unquote keep it proportional, it was a way to sort of signal that you shot at us with this, we'll shoot at you because you shot at us with that.

Does that make sense?

Jeffrey 14:07

Oh, yeah, that's the point I want to make. I should say, before we jump into that, so there are two sections of the base. There are the seven strikes in the portion of the base that's pretty heavily populated. And then on the other side, kind of much further south, there were two or three. It's really not clear to me whether the third one really is a strike or not.

There's two hits on taxiways that are probably misses. And then there's a tent that seems to have a mark on it. And I think it's ambiguous what that is, whether that mark is a dud that just tore the tent, or whether that tent got damaged by a piece of debris from a near miss, or whether that mark is just something that the sun is hitting it in the right way so you can really see it in a way you couldn't see a couple days before.

So... But if it is hit, it would be a dud that directly hit. So I should say there are some things that we call misses that are at a different part of the base. I just wanted to say that.

Aaron 15:21

They're on the other side of the runway. On the other side of the runway, that's the first. They're on the other side of the runway.

Jeffrey 15:27

But the point you made, I think, is the really important point because a lot of people are kind of acting like the Iranians – Back down because they didn't try to maximize u.s casualties and i think that's the wrong way of looking at it i mean i think from the iranian perspective oh go ahead i was just agreeing with you i was like absolutely i agree yeah i mean i think from the iranian perspective there's a certain language to this strike they wanted this strike to clearly come from iran They actually carried out the strike against Aramco in a way that made it difficult to attribute to Iran and made it a surprise.

They did not do this here. And I think some people have interpreted this as a kind of giving the US a warning because they didn't really want to kill anyone. I think that's wrong. I think they were just simply optimizing to make sure that the US knew and that it was clear to everyone that this strike had come from Iran.

And the Iranians tend to have this very legalistic public attitude. And so I think it was important to them to target military facilities that were directly involved in the drone strike. And like the fact that no one was killed, it's because there was local warning. People seem to have gone into like air raid shelters because we heard at bases air raid sirens went off.

I don't think the Iranians – I don't think they – they weren't trying to maximize casualties. That's true. But I don't think they cared if they killed Americans. I think they, in fact, were slightly – would have been – would have slightly preferred that. Because what you've seen is the Iranians have come out and said that there were medical evacuation flights, which they believe are indicative of casualties.

I don't know that I believe that, right? Like, I think the U.S. is probably telling the truth that there weren't any casualties. But I don't think the Iranians cared. I mean, they weren't trying to maximize casualties, which is great. But if two or three or 10 U.S. servicemen had been killed or service people had been killed in this strike, I think that was a risk they were willing to run.

Aaron 17:45

Completely agree. You don't fire, you know, tons of explosive into the heart of an air base and not accept the risk of killing somebody. To me, I find that to be flabbergasting. I think one of the reasons, and by the way, as I understand it, again, from people who've been there, just buddies who've spent some time out there, you can't put everybody in a bunker, you know, so there was some risk.

That's why I keep saying that there was luck. There's too many people, not enough bunkers. Right. You can stay indoors, you can wear body armor, stuff like that, but, you know.

Jeffrey 18:14

But I think – go ahead. That there wouldn't be some later, harder-to-attribute violence that does kill a lot of U.S. service personnel. Right? I mean, this thing came from Iran, and this was supposed to have a return address on it, so it looks a certain way. I don't know that we're done, but the outcomes may not have a return address on it, and so it might be slightly bloodier.

Aaron 18:47

Yeah, it'll be – to use the parlance, it'll be great. But – oh, I think one of the things that we also have to attribute is the technical means of the United States. Yes. I just saw a Danish report this morning. I'm sorry. I have an odd admiration for Denmark, and so I follow a lot of other people on Twitter.

There are people who were deployed at the base, got about six hours warning. So my guess is that something along these lines happens, is that National Technical Means saw preparations to fire the missile. I think the Iranians then gave warning, as they have said, to the Iraqis because they did, in this sort of legalistic way, didn't want to kill Iraqis, even though they were firing into an Iraqi base.

So they gave a warning. They probably picked that up. We saw it, and then we knew that they were planning to strike, and it would be relatively probably overnight. We begin to take preparations. We're then watching for it so that when the strike actually takes place is when the air raid sirens go off within a couple of maybe 30 seconds after their launch, which gives everybody on the base maybe, what, two, three minutes before they impact?

Yeah. So the base was deserted outside, which lessened the likelihood of people dying. But again, they couldn't know where they were aiming at inside the base. That's sort of the sequence I can put together in my head.

Jeffrey 20:07

Yeah, I mean, I think it was kind of strategic warning leading up. The Iranians didn't make any effort to hide that fact, which, again, they did in the Aramco strike. Right.

Aaron 20:18

Yeah.

Jeffrey 20:19

So, you know, I think there was a nice New York Times story that kind of detailed. I say nice, but actually, as I read the New York Times story, it gave me like all kinds of ideas about how to circumvent the warning system. Yeah. But, you know, again, the Iranians successfully carried out the Aramco strike. So my guess is it's they, you know, they didn't they didn't learn anything new.

But there was strategic warning leading up to that day where they were pretty sure something might happen that day, which I'm guessing is satellite imagery of things moving around and then probably communications intercepts. Even if you can't listen to the communications, you can see the spikes. But then there was something very specific that resulted in a very specific warning that the strike would come that night.

And then obviously, as you say, when the when the missiles pop up, satellites are going to see them. And so there should there was there should have been warning. But I also think, you know. No one being seriously injured, as best I can tell. That's slightly miraculous, right?

Aaron 21:30

I agree. Do you want to jump into the hypotheses about the hits? We talked about them. I think we said 10. I think those are all closer to one missile type. Did we say that in the 313?

Jeffrey 21:45

We didn't. Your hypothesis is that the Fatah 313 is very accurate. Yeah.

Aaron 21:50

Which is an updated hypothesis.

Jeffrey 21:52

Yes. And I – that is also my hypothesis. And so given that there was a mix but we don't know exactly which was which, I also suspect that – It's I mean, the reason we don't think the Qiyam is very accurate, right, is that the Iranians have given the Qiyam to the Houthis and they fired it at like Riyadh a couple of times and, you know, and some other places.

And it doesn't have like the world's greatest record. Your theory is the Qiyam's missed and the Fatah 313's hit. Yeah.

Aaron 22:30

And I think that's because this is my hypothesis is that the Qiyams do not have some sort of satellite technology. Aided navigation, whether GPS, GLONASS, or Galileo, whichever one they choose. I just think it's straight INS, and I think they fire them to longer ranges, and they drift, right? And that's it. And I think that's why it goes off track, and I think it's just a relatively poor missile.

And I think the distances that they fire it also contribute to that. That's my hypothesis about the QM. The 313 is – go ahead. Again, this is an updated hypothesis. If you had asked me 72 hours ago, I would have said that, no, these probably aren't that accurate. But now that I keep thinking about it, that was a bad assumption to go into because why the fuck would I think like that when we saw what they did in the Aramco strike?

So the Aramco strike, they were able to put cruise missiles where they wanted them to. That should have been like, oh, they can put stuff where they want to over hundreds of kilometers. It's my bad for having a bad hypothesis going into this before the strike.

Jeffrey 23:32

Well, you know, the issue is the Iranians had publicly stated, and I can't dig it up now, but they had asserted that it had an accuracy of only a few meters, which would be really, really accurate, right? Yeah. And... I, you know, I think I just generally maybe like everybody else thought like, well, it's easy to say, but it's like a lot harder to demonstrate.

And there had been some reporting, which now I want to go back and look after some of the strikes in Syria. There were people who asserted that a lot of the missiles had missed. But boy. Yeah. I mean, if you just count the whole point of CEP, right, it's it's circular error probable. It's the distance that half the missiles fall in.

Right. Because you want to exclude the stuff where it goes really weird. But if we just look at the, you know, if we isolate the northern section above the runway and assume those are all one missile type. Right. Because we do have different portions of the base have seem to have different accuracy levels. Right. Yeah, it looks like it's a few meters.

Which I guess, I mean... I don't think I can blame you for waiting to see the evidence. But yeah, it does look like we have the evidence now.

Aaron 25:16

Yeah, I agree. And again, that's my bad from the original, but... Well, so two questions, though. Go ahead.

Jeffrey 25:25

First, no missile defenses at the site. So... Which is inexcusable that they kill Soleimani, know that a retaliation is likely to come, have all this strategic warning, and then don't bother to try to defend the site?

Aaron 25:47

They're deployed elsewhere. I mean, it's indicative that they weren't planning for this. So they weren't planning for an escalation with Iran, you know, from top to bottom. The Ain al-Assad air base has a lot of these temporary structures, you know, semi-temporary, but they are kind of like canvas, robust canvas shelters for these things, one. Two is no missile defenses.

Those missile defenses are somewhere in Saudi Arabia, you know, some of them in Germany, Japan, you know, and then the continental United States. I think it's just illustrative of how this all happened so rapidly. There was no forward planning, and basically what we told our troops was, well, give me a couple hours, stay inside. I find that to be egregious, if you ask me, because Patriot was designed for these types of missiles, this sort of class, and literally to do this, to point defense for air bases or ports.

Why weren't they there?

Jeffrey 26:46

Well, and my second question... And I presume, I mean, we don't know the answer to this yet, but the U.S. military will. I mean, they have the debris from these missiles now, right? Yeah, and radar tracks and all that stuff. So they should have some sense of how these missiles function. And if they are using satellite navigation to get this high level of accuracy, why aren't you f***ing jamming it?

Aaron 27:17

Yeah, or maybe we did.

Jeffrey 27:18

Or spoofing it or, you know.

Aaron 27:20

Or maybe we did. It didn't work.

Jeffrey 27:22

Yeah, that's true.

Aaron 27:23

And some got through. I mean, we don't know. We don't know what type of like electronic interference was out there. Maybe we were electronically interfering with him and. I mean I can't like definitively say that.

Jeffrey 27:37

It's possible that they – it's like the old – the cruise missiles had what? Digital scene matching. But I don't think anybody – I'm not sure. I don't think you could do that with – I don't know. I'd actually have to check. I know. It would be interesting to see how they achieve the accuracy. And then that would raise questions about whether or not we had taken the correct steps to protect against those.

Because, again, it's nearly miraculous that nobody gets killed to begin with. But also the Iranians don't take the measures to hide the preparations that they took for the Aramco strike. So. You know, like I think the Iranians could have done this in a surprise fashion, which would have been – which would have resulted in a lot of people killed arguably and that would be not a good day.

Aaron 28:33

Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the things that does give me pause though if I'm being honest is – You know, we're assuming they're accurate. I think they're accurate. As I just said, my hypothesis is accurate. But what if they were aiming at something? I don't know. Because I have to assume that there was some electronic interference. That's the thing that's kind of getting me.

It's one of these things that lingers in my head is if we knew all this, why didn't we try and jam them or spoof the GPS? Yeah. Yeah. Learn yeah and happily everybody lived so it's all good right no yeah I mean so we dodged a bullet but it's all good and I think almost instantly you know in addition to the strikes there was the almost immediate speculation about an inadvertent shoot down of that you have that 737 that was headed to Ukraine that was those carrying a lot of Canadians and I know that in our direct message group where we kind of shove a whole bunch of stuff, people were trying to do a whole bunch of geolocation and all that stuff, and obviously everybody was very hesitant in sharing anything publicly.

Yesterday, I think it was the U.S. said they were confident. I've heard that the intel is relatively robust. This is not a good thing. This is another civilian airline that was probably shot down by a surface-to-air missile.

Jeffrey 30:10

Yeah, I should say Bellingcat has done a ton of good work on this too. But when we saw – I mean the principal evidence is that there are two pictures on social media showing what appears to be debris from Tor M. Is that right? Yeah. There are a couple of variants I guess. Michael Dutzman was explaining it to me and I –

Aaron 30:40

I get a little overwhelmed.

Jeffrey 30:42

We'll use NATO pilots. And, you know, we reverse image searched to make sure that that image hadn't appeared anyplace else. And that system is in service with the Iranian military. And, you know, I mean, the plane did crash. And so you kind of got to wonder, like, what it was. And there's apparently now video, which we have not verified.

But you do have the U.S. saying that, you know, the same sensors that depicted the missile launches that caused U.S. service personnel to get underground also caught the two surface to air missiles firing. So it does look like the Iranians accidentally shot it down. Man, I am you know, I am the king of I told you so, but I don't I don't love the fact that the 2020 commission starts with what I thought was a real threat that an airliner could get shot down because it's happened a lot.

I don't like it happening again.

Aaron 31:42

I know, and it happens just after MH17 is your fictional scenario in the 2020 commission, which is loosely based, I would say, on the Soviet Union shootdown of a civilian airliner in the 1980s.

Jeffrey 32:00

Not all that loose.

Aaron 32:03

Let's say based on true events. Yeah. And, you know, we had the American shoot-down of the Iranian jet during Operation Praying Mantis. These things happen, are happening, and it's one of the costs of this escalation. It's all these people who are literally incinerated or dead by impact at high G hitting the ground. That's not a win. I don't find any winning involved in this.

These people were largely flying home and this isn't good.

Jeffrey 32:43

Yeah. So, you know, this is like the number one question I got. I did a lot of Canadian interviews yesterday because obviously it's a, it's a huge story in Canada. Yeah. And, and you know, Two things. I mean, first, there is no widespread appreciation that there are surface-to-air missiles all over the world ready to fire, right? That comes as a shock to some people.

But the second thing, which is really interesting to me, is the idea that a mistake could happen, right? Even though from the perspective of those of us who study this kind of thing, this is exactly the kind of mistake you would expect to have happen, right? The Iranians had launched a retaliation the night before, so they were prepared for a They thought that retaliation would come from aircraft.

There had been reports, which I think turned out to be false, that the US had launched aircraft out of the UAE. There were reports that the Iranians were threatening to use missiles to target any air bases that supported a retaliation on them. Let me stop you there.

Aaron 33:58

It would be weird if we didn't. Launch some aircraft out of the UAE just to protect our bases because what if the Iranians put up their own air force and so that these were just entirely routine moves, routine at the state of heightened tensions. Right. Not for offense, I should say.

Jeffrey 34:16

So I say all that to say that when you, once the Iranians conduct the missile strike, they are looking for a retaliation that will come by air. And that crew almost certainly, when they went on duty, would have been told to be extra vigilant and to be aware of this possibility. And, you know, everything we know about human psychology is people are so vulnerable to that kind of confirmation bias.

And the Tor-M, I guess, is really automated. So there's, you know, the computer's doing a lot of it and the human being isn't doing that much. But the human being who's sitting there... Is going to be primed to see a military jet and not an aircraft, not a civilian aircraft. And, you know, that person sitting in a van and that, you know, it's a radar.

So they're not, you know, they're not looking at it with their eyes. Although, as we saw in the case of the Soviet pilot who shot down the KL 007. He insists to this day that it was a military aircraft and he saw it with his eyes. Right.

Aaron 35:24

Yeah.

Jeffrey 35:25

So, you know, from my from my perspective, like people who study organizations and how organizations behave in crises, we know that that's this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when you have a prolonged crisis. Right. Is it somebody gets jumpy and misidentify something and makes a mistake? And that's not like normal. People don't think that way.

They really are like it doesn't make any sense because people have these really simple rational models like no one would shoot down an airliner. Nobody would mistake an airliner for a military jet. And I think that's kind of why Trump gets away with this really dangerous situation that we've created because people just want to believe that at some level it's all deeply rational.

Aaron 36:11

Yeah.

Jeffrey 36:13

And that these men who are in power are not going to make any mistakes and that they know what they're doing and that they have perfect information. And, like, they don't.

Aaron 36:21

They f*** up all the time.

Jeffrey 36:24

And they don't know what's going on. And, you know, yeah, I'm ranting, but I always go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Because Bob McNamara was so arrogant. And there's that famous moment, you know, and that arrogance survived forever. The tragedy of Vietnam. And I mean, so that's I mean, that man had that man had arrogance in spades.

And there's the famous story about him meeting Castro and Castro explaining that there were already Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba. And not only would he have given not only would he have have demanded that the Soviets use those nuclear weapons in response to an invasion, he had already made that demand. And so – and McNamara at that moment realizes that he had drastically underestimated the risk of a nuclear retaliation if the US had invaded and was like shaken and upset.

Aaron 37:30

Yeah, I think the story is his knees go weaker. I think he tells the story. Yeah, yeah. But like –

Jeffrey 37:37

He was so arrogant and he was wrong. He was just wrong. And he doesn't realize he's wrong until 30 years later. You know, he's sitting with Castro in a conference room and it's like, like, like, what do you mean there were no nuclear weapons there? Of course there were nuclear weapons.

Aaron 37:56

Yeah, you know, it's one of the things that really bothers me too is that we build neat escalation models. If they do this, then we'll do that, then we'll do this, but then we'll stop. Somehow we'll, you know, we don't know. We honestly don't know. And we don't know how any of this would have reacted. What we are told via secondhand news is that Donald Trump didn't want to escalate and they breathed a sigh of relief after no Americans got killed.

But if you actually think about that more rationally, that means that they were prepared to counter-strike. Yeah, that's right. And he was afraid. He was afraid of being prepared to actually have to execute the 52 whatever preselected targets, which aren't a lot. And I wrote this in my War on the Rock space. 52 is a small strike until you're at the other end of 52 tomahawks.

Rather than the 52 Tomahawks and Twitter's going crazy and you can't talk to your commanders in the field, people get nervous.

Jeffrey 38:54

Well, which is exactly the point of the 2020 commission because it's six missiles, right? It's six South Korean missiles. And then the question is, do the North Koreans really know it's six? Like we say 52 targets and God knows how many missiles that is.

Aaron 39:09

Yeah.

Jeffrey 39:10

You know, do the Iranians know that it's that limited? Right. And frankly, even if they do know it's limited, can they pull it backing down? You know, so just I think the it is miraculous that no one was killed. I think the reason people are saying the Iranians missed on purpose is because the enormous risk that was just run defies any logic whatsoever.

And so to accept that we had locked in this giant escalation scenario and the Iranians had been like, yep, we're ready to go. I think people can't process that information. And that's to me what is so important about the loss of the plane, which is trying to get people to understand that. These leaders who claim to understand the situation and who think that they can engage in this brinksmanship, that their confidence is an act.

It is not real. They don't really know what they're doing. No one does. And they are running these enormous risks entirely because they are afraid of looking weak. You know, I mean, did you see the report that Trump has been telling his friends he had to kill Soleimani because he was he wanted to he was afraid he was getting pressure from the senators who are going to vote on his impeachment?

Aaron 40:40

He has a lawsuit.

Jeffrey 40:42

Right. He escalates because he's afraid of looking like a pussy. And it's so like our toxic masculinity is totally going to get us killed.

Aaron 40:54

It's the mythology we've told ourselves.

Jeffrey 40:56

This is like the story I read, which God, I don't I haven't read the underlying study. Maybe it's not true that some men won't recycle because they think it makes them look gay.

Aaron 41:06

I think I've heard this.

Jeffrey 41:08

Separate your trash. Yeah.

Aaron 41:14

I don't compost, I'll tell you that, but that's largely because I can't deal with the smell in my own kitchen. So I'll tell you, I recycle, I don't compost.

Jeffrey 41:23

But it's true. It's like the same people who won't recycle because they're afraid of looking gay are exactly the same kind of people who would put the entire world at risk by escalating a situation because they're afraid of looking weak. It's so stupid. And again, the airplane should drive that home. They are not in control. They don't know what they're doing.

They do make mistakes. It's not going to be perfect.

Aaron 41:50

Yeah, and the amount of people involved in these things. So, like, that night they tell the Iranian military, just hypothesis, you know, a guess. It's not even a hypothesis. Be vigilant because we're going to hit them and, you know, we've got to be prepared to defend the capital or whatever it was, you know. There's some poorly trained guy out there who's probably poorly trained, who is operating a system that, you know, he's never actually fired in real life.

It's only been training. He doesn't want to turn on his radar because he's been told, don't ever turn on your radar because if you emit, you're going to get an American missile up your ass. And so he's sitting there in a van and he goes, I think I see this. I got to shoot because if I don't, they're going to bomb the missile factory right behind me.

Jeffrey 42:36

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe. I mean they must have seen it somehow. So they must have had a radar on, right? What do you think they used for detection? Passive and relatively passive, I guess. Yeah, maybe I'm saying something dumb. People in the Slack channel will say Aaron's an idiot. Hey, well, actually, Slack channel, you know, this is a good time to discuss the technical aspects of the tour system. It was only so many hours in the day, but you know what, that's actually, that's a really good illustration, which is We are struggling to remember all of the technical aspects of the TOR system.

Supreme Leader doesn't know shit about the surface-to-air missiles.

Aaron 43:17

Go be ready.

Jeffrey 43:18

Go be ready, right? But ready is not a military command. And so then how ready it gets actually – the US did an alert like that where Nixon conveyed some vague guidance to the JCS and they were like – they had to interpret what that meant in terms of actual orders, right? So –

Aaron 43:38

For a lot of Americans in the Middle East. It's interpreting vague guidance. I don't even mean that to sound partisan. I know that that's a, whoa, are we leaving? Are we not leaving? Are we staying? Do we go? Do we take the oil? Do we not take the oil? Cultural sites? I'm not sure. We'll interpret it how we feel.

Jeffrey 44:00

Yeah. So anyway, the Iranians didn't miss on purpose. They didn't even miss Happily, no one was killed. Yeah. As far as we can tell, no one was injured.

Aaron 44:12

Not that I know of, no.

Jeffrey 44:13

It should be fantastic. Trump took the off-ramp. He did. We're not sure this is over. Hope it's over, but it might not be.

Aaron 44:26

There's easier ways to kill Americans in Iraq. This was showing. There's much easier ways to kill Americans in Iraq. I'll just leave it at that.

Jeffrey 44:34

And we dodged a bullet, which we should know because an aircraft got accidentally shot down not long after, which just indicates how fluid, dynamic, unpredictable, chaotic, complex, pick your word, these situations are. So, like, we have a warning that this can get out of hand, right? Mm-hmm. Like, we have a very clear warning? Mm-hmm. So we're going to learn from that warning?

Aaron 45:00

No. No, we're not. No, because the only off-ramp here is to actually go sit down and talk to them. I'm sorry. Yeah. We're not going to learn. No, we're not. So we'll be – we're still in the escalatory pattern cycle if you ask me. We've just hit pause. It's like that – do you remember when you first got a DVD player and you hit pause and it wasn't like a VHS?

I'm really like dating myself and you didn't have like the weird squiggly white line in the middle of it? Yeah. We're at that point where you hit pause on the DVD, you can hit start any single time, and the thing will just pick up right where it left off. We have a crystal clear image of, like, what I mean is, like, all the drivers of escalation are still right there.

They're still under sanctions. They can still do stuff within the JCPOA. An American could still end up, you know, dismembered and killed in the middle of the Iraqi desert. And we have troops in Syria and Iraq that they can mess around with. We are still there. So I just think we're paused on the streaming service. I do not think that we're anywhere near where this needs to go.

Jeffrey 46:06

Got a happy note for me?

Aaron 46:09

This is my first recording in my new basement that we're turning into a cool home office, and I'm really enjoying it. I think the acoustics are nice, and we even have a little window. It's not great, but there's a little hint of sunlight.

Jeffrey 46:23

That's good. Yeah.

Aaron 46:25

So that's happy. I'm happy. My basement's comfortable. That's good.

Jeffrey 46:29

Yeah. I'm looking forward to the weekend.

Aaron 46:32

Oh, God. I'll do the readout. So thank you, Jeffrey, for joining me. And you are somewhere probably by now, like, you know, probably two hours gone from D.C. So have a safe flight when you land. Thank you for listening. If you like the show, head on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast for $3 a month if you're a student, $5 a month if you are a normal person.

You can join our Slack channel. And there was some really cool stuff in there during this about geolocation. So there is some cool stuff in there. So thanks, everybody, for listening.