Brink: Inside America's Confrontation with Iran

When the enemy says what they're gonna do, you gotta take them pretty damn seriously. And, um, and Iran, sometimes their aspirations completely outstrip their capability. So no one will exaggerate it, but their goal, stated by hominy, in 2015, is that Israel will cease to exist by 2040. Welcome to the Iran Breakdown. I'm your host, Mark Dubuets. For nearly half a century, Iran has been a one of America's most dangerous and persistent adversaries. Four decades of sanctions, diplomacy, covert operations, military confrontation, have so far failed to resolve the Iranian threat, and today the stakes may be harder than ever. My guest is Brett Manger, one of America's most experienced Middle East policymakers, and has served four presidents, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. From the wars in Iraq and Syria to the campaign against ISIS, from nuclear diplomacy with Tehran to the aftermath of October 7th and the race to free the hostages, Brett has been at the center of American Middle East policy for more than two decades. He's the author of the new book, Brank, a revealing insider's account of the decisions and crises that brought the Middle East to the edge of a wider war. Today, we'll examine Iran through the lens of his book and his extraordinary experience in sight for administrations. The failures of diplomacy, the limits of deterrence, Hamas's brutal October 7th invasion, the Biden administration's handling of Tehran, and President Trump's decision to take the war directly to the Islamic Republic. What if four American presidents got wrong about the Islamic Republic, what have they gotten right, has military force changed the equation, and is there finally a path to ending the Iranian threat? Brett McGurk, welcome to the Iran breakdown. Hey Mark, it's great to be here. Thank you. My friend, it's wonderful to have you. So Brett, you've really led a fascinating and consequential life at the highest levels of national security policy. Let's start just tell us a bit about your life before you enter national security. Where did you grow up, and how did you get into this line of work? Yeah, well, I was born in Pittsburgh, and my family moved to Connecticut when I was about eight years old or so. Parents from public school teachers went to public schools in Connecticut, went to UConn, went to law school, Columbia Law School. After law school, as you do if you're on law review and do well in law school, did clerkships. I did clerkships in New York at the federal court of appeals and the district of New York. And then I was fortunate to get a Supreme Court clerkship and I came to Washington in 2001. Shortly after Bush v. Gore was decided, so viewers of our age will remember that. The country felt very divided at the time. I remember it very vividly walking in, and I started with the clerks from the year before. They're all in kind of two pitch camps because of that decision. And then I was on the Supreme Court. I was clerking for Chief Justice Rehnquist and on the morning of September 11th, 2001, I went into his chambers. We had a morning meeting. Every morning about 9 o'clock, 9/15. We had no internet in the Supreme Court. Obviously no cell phones back then. It was all kind of internal and he said a plane just hit the World Trade Center. I'd recently moved from New York City. And one thing unfolded, we figured it was a tragic accident. And then as a court to that morning unfolded, I was in just its suitors chambers right next to my office as the Tower fell. And the Chief Justice wanted to stay in the building. We had cases to decide. And then I was with him and his chambers when the marshals came in and basically ordered him out. Like the first time I think a Chief Justice has been overruled and ordered out. He was brought in the basement for his vehicles to come out. We were told to run out the back. And then basically run towards Union Station because there was still a plane in the air that might be coming for the Capitol. So that was obviously changed the course of history. Mark ended up changing my trajectory because after that, my path of wanting to argue Supreme Court cases, which is what I wanted to do. I was very much on that path at that age. I wanted to be involved in our national response. And so fast forward a little bit. I got the opportunity. You never know what connections are going to come back in your life. But a colleague I had met when I was an intern for the Attorney General of Connecticut, Dick Blumenthal years earlier. Now Senator called me and said, hey, and he was a treasury. It was about six months into the Iraq war and said, you know, they really need people in Iraq who kind of can help with the constitutional process and all sorts of stuff. So I said, sure, and I went and I landed in Iraq in early January 2004. And and spent about a year there, Mark. And I saw it very much up close. And this gap between ends and means and kind of what we had gotten ourselves into. And of course, over the course that I got to know you know, all the names of that period from Dave Petraeus and Briode Erno and Chandar Kapanti. And when Bush was reelected, I was recruited by Megan Sullivan to come into his White House. I spent four years in the Bush White House. And I got I became very close to President Bush as we worked to, you know, turn around what was a losing war. And that led to the surge and everything else. So that, but that was kind of my my defining experience. And then when Obama came on, he kept me on board. And I came in and out. And then I was became the ISIS presidential envoy when Trump came on. He kept me on board in that role. So that that's how how things continued. And just to bring it up to date, I left the Trump minister, first Trump administration after two years. And I was a Stanford. I was actually working on a very different book project about Bush Obama Trump years. A little baby girl, my wife Gina. I did not intend to come back to Washington when but when Biden won the election, he and his team asked me to come back. And I think I mentioned it early in the in the in the book. I did not want to work in the Middle East. I just I'll do anything else. I know what the Middle East is like. And it is, you know, all consuming. But that's what the President and his team wanted me to do. So that that kind of brings up to date, Mark, but that that was the path like many. And I think you have a similar story. You live through something like 9/11. You know, changes the course of of your of your life. Yeah, sure did, Brad. Well, first of all, thank you for your service to our country, extraordinary contribution. And I want to begin with this. So your book begins with the Biden administration on the verge of a potentially historic Saudi Israel normalization agreement and then followed immediately by the horrors of October 7th. Tell me from your perspective, how much of what happened on October 7th in the subsequent regional war? Do you attribute to Iran strategy to prevent a new Middle East emerging? Yeah, so we never could connect that directly. And you know, after October 7th, I asked the question, we looked through everything we could. But we also, we can talk about this. Sinwar kept things so compartmentalized like the October 7th attack. We do not believe was that the Iranians necessarily had foreign knowledge of it. Sinwar assumed that Iran would join in as they as they eventually did. So was there a direct connection? That's hard to say. However, I mean, Iran had been building through the bricks and mortars of the, you know, the kind of ring of fire and all these, it's true what they were doing. And that Sinwar chose to basically light the ring on October 7th. So can I say like it was directly connected to the Israel-Saudi process? No. There were a number of things going on. And Sinwar planned this for, you know, years. It wasn't like, you just don't just put this together in a day. But it was part of that ideological campaign that Iran has pursued for years. And I have learned, Mark, and I've dealt with the Iranians in all permutations, right? So, and you and I've discussed this over the years. Some permutations, I think you completely disagree with somebody I've seen. I've seen a lot and I've, I look forward to getting into that. But, you know, I learned when, when a, when someone tells you what they're going to do, particularly an adversary, particularly a very ideologically driven adversary, you really got to listen to them. And I had a lesson in this just going back to, to the Iraq, years, shortly after I got to Iraq in 2004, you might recall the United States government, the intelligence community released a letter from Zarqawi, who was the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq. A letter changed between him and Swahiri, the kind of operational leader, Osambi Laden's deputy of al-Qaeda central. And in that letter, they're debating tactics, but Zarqawi says, "Hey, look, here's what I'm trying to do." The tools I'm using, I want to establish, I think there's an opportunity to establish an Islamic caliphate under our brand of Islamic law that will change the face of the world. This basically was Zarqawi's plan, and that sounded completely quicksotic and crazy. And then, fast forward 10 years, I am in northern Iraq, and we rush down to Baghdad because ISIS has broken through Mosul, Iraqi armies collapsing. They're coming down the Tigris valley, and I'm in the embassy, and we're talking about evacuating our embassy, like Saigon style, and that was the discussion I was having with Washington at the time. And Baghdaddy goes to the Norimaskan Mosul and declares an Islamic caliphate. I just remember thinking, you know what, like, when the enemy says what they're going to do, he got to take them pretty damn seriously, and Iran, sometimes their aspirations completely outstrip their capability, so they don't want to exaggerate it, but their goal, stated by Hamane, in 2015, is that Israel sees to exist by 2040. And the new supreme leader, if he's actually with us, but he has now reaffirmed that goal, and that is their goal, that's not the goal of the Iranian people. That might not even be the goal of most people in the Iranian government system, but that is the goal of the guards and the Quds Force, and they'll pursue it through various means. So Hamas was an arm of that, as well as an arm of that, the Houthis are an arm of that, even the Iraqi militias are an arm of that, and that all kind of came together in the weeks after October 7th. So, Bradley, let's talk a bit about Biden's Iran policy and sort of inside the situation room, because obviously, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been a war with us for 47 years, it's killed and maimed, tortured, hijacked, thousands of Americans, obviously you saw that up close with the Iranian hand in Iraq, and you talk in the book, and you describe your frustration with these attacks on American forces, and you advocated targeting an Iranian commander involved in those operations. So why do you think it took the deaths of three Americans in Jordan before Biden orders a more substantial military's response, and do you think the Biden administration in general was too concerned about escalation to really establish some meaningful form of deterrence earlier? Let's hear a question. Let me back up a little bit. There's a chapter in the book, this chapter five, called Under Attack, which basically goes through what you just mentioned, but goes back a little bit earlier, and the difficulty of dealing with this problem, and I say, clear, I mean Obama tried the JCPOA, Trump is the first one to go after it directly, Soleimani strike, but you know, there's nothing has worked out as planned, so on the Soleimani strike, Mark, I mean, that was restored deterrence, and I was a private citizen at the time, I supported it, given everything going on, but attacks didn't stop. In fact, attacks against Americans interact went up. I think we took two casualties about a month later. Frank McKenzie, the Sencom commander, was quoted in NBC News in the fall, saying attacks have actually increased. In December 2020, a month before we came into office, the largest attack at the US Embassy in ten years, so when we walked into office in January, the first issue the president's dealing with was this, and this is after Soleimani and everything. We are under regular attacks, and I tell the story in that chapter, that early month of the Biden administration, the use of force, and it was calibrated, and we eventually did a series of strikes, and the attacks went down. And they basically stayed, you know, up until October 7th, it really was not much of an issue. They didn't attack. That stopped. They were so sporadic. After October 7th, and particularly after the first hostage deal in November about a month after the war, when that broke down, attacks against us were almost a daily occurrence. They increased sevenfold. We were effectively defending ourselves, but by the end, towards the end of December, there's one of the Houthis starting gauging, attacking US naval ships, and we take casualties on Christmas Day of 2023. And that began this serious discussion with Biden about, in the midst of this broader regional situation, and Gaza, and trying to contain it, and trying to get a cease-fire hostage deal, how do we use force in this mix? And again, if you read Brank, you're in the room for these conversations. You're there, and the president's view was like, look, I'm doing what we need to protect our people, but the American people understand that they will not understand if it looks like we're being sucked into a broader Middle East war. It's like he kept saying that and trying to draw this distinction, and he sent me out to Oman to see the Iranians on January 10th. And again, this is all in, in Brank, it's in that chapter, and the attacks kept coming. And yeah, Mark, we didn't, we did strikes after the December casualty, we did number strikes, but they didn't stop the attacks. And there's always a risk in these debates when you're kind of arguing, what should we do? It's the escalation ladder, you know, what is Iran going to do, and you're trying to calibrate it, and it's not an exact science, and I know from dealing with the Iranians over the years, and this is also in the book, you know, they always, in a negotiation, in a military tit for tat, they always want the last shot, always. You know you've succeeded if their last shot is like kind of a minimal symbolic thing. So you're trying to calibrate that, and that's what we were working towards, but yes, I was in that period, December, January, you know, people say, what kept you up in night during, like, I was, and obviously, General Kriller, our team of Sencom, I mean, I thought I was going to wake up one morning, and we had out dozens of dead American sailors, particularly because the Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles that kind of caught us by surprise the capability they had, and we're barely shooting these things down, and they're going like mock four, and the Iraq and Syria situation, and we eventually took these tragically three American casualties and dozens of wounded because they were attacking our living quarters on January 28, and then finally, President Biden made the decision for a pretty devastating set of airstrikes, and to go after a revolutionary guard's commander who was in Baghdad coordinating all this stuff. So in the book, his name is Mosin, and we never quite got a shot, and you're in the, in the, in the, in Brent, you kind of go through this with me, but we did get a shot on one of the prominent Kattab Hesbola commanders. And after that, I met February, these hacks stopped. So should we have acted sooner, Mark, we had a debate about it. I think about those three American dead and Jordan quite a bit, I, you know, but the thing about the October 7 stories, like this, this has all been written out of, almost all been written out of the story, like it's hardly ever mentioned. And looking back is fortunate, we didn't take more American casualties in that period because of particularly the Red Sea attacks and, um, and what, what the Iranians were doing. I mean, it was, uh, it was an incredibly intense, intense period. So, Brad, I want to talk a little later about sort of this question of calibration, and, I guess, sort of, I, in some respects, maybe a fundamental divide between the United States and Israel and on the power of escalation, you know, the Israelis who seem to believe and escalate to de-escalate and, and maybe a Biden administration, maybe some, some respects Trump, uh, from time to time, who believe in, you know, de-escalation and diplomacy and Cali. But let's let's get to the Biden administration and Ron's nuclear program Now I've been very public about this and I mean this is a factual point not as a partisan point, but The Iranian nuclear program advanced massively during the Biden administration in fact most of the nuclear escalation occurred once President Biden was elected Obviously efforts to restore the JCPOA failed. There was a I was talk about a longer and broader And tougher deal, but the Iranians were not interested in Negotiations and concluding such a deal and enter any oil exports remained pretty substantial Do you but you think there was a fundamental flaw of the administration's attempt to combine nuclear diplomacy with regional de-escalation Would you doubt it differently if you if you yeah, let's go I mean your premise on the if you plot certain nuclear steps To Biden taking off, but let's I mean let's kind of go through it a little bit and You know you you and your viewers are experts on this so If you go all the way back to inauguration day, what was happening, right? So in December before we came into office Iran passes their modulus bill And that was after one of their scientists was killed I think for cruiser day and we had nothing to do with this They passed the modulus bill. They say we're going to 20% and we're gonna go you know Kind of good gangbusters on centrifuges. So 20% was happening when we walked into office, okay? Um I think 60% started in April or so Again, this is Iran always doing something in response like well, you know, there was an incident at Natanz uh, and they responded with the 60% so like this I Don't necessarily share the premise that Iran sat there and said oh Trump is strong Biden's weak Let's now ramp up the nuclear program. I think it's a little more complex in that and and if you take the timeline from Soleimani through The end of the Trump administration even these attacks. I just described including our embassy in Baghdad like there's no response from the Trump administration um And as you know mark I call balls and strikes. I see it. So I'm not defending Biden. I'm not criticizing just like This is a really hard problem for presidents because presidents are also dealing with a million different things and And I think the Biden administration came into office and yes, I'm the Middle East guy but the overall kind of zeitgeist was Uh, we don't want to be drawn into the Middle East and in fact we want to like focus elsewhere and you know Biden's dealing with COVID and everything else um so And did we make some errors early on uh, yeah, I'm very upfront about them and in fact um The first chapter of the book is pre-October 7th And I mean look I went to CNBS we lifted the sanctions designation from the Houthis we Cut off Saudi Arabia from offensive weapons And we also Significantly decreased our military presence in the region um To a point mark where I some of it. I wasn't even fully aware of I have a I happen to see Brad Cooper In Oman before October 7th Brad was then the deputy sancom commander now the sancom commander known him for a long time the great guy credibly competent uh Military professional together with general krilla. That was a I mean that was just such a class team But I said hey Brad like you know, what do you see in on uh On the Iranian support to the Houthis And he said to me I'll never forget he said Brad you know what I got one ship In the water in the entire a r one ship So you know, I'm not seeing much you only see more any more ships And I was like that can't be right and sure enough like we had one destroyer in the water so This is where For those who might argue just get out of the Middle East Let a vacuum there will be a vacuum The vacuum will be filled and will be filled in a way that draws us back in I've now seen this repeatedly. I saw it in Iraq. I said like We have to find a level of sustainable engagement and I think that first year and a half uh You know what was an error and I I used to I used to say inside like look guys um We're gonna need these countries You know, let's just gonna hit the fan in the world because it always does and there's a reason we have these relationships and Uh sure enough in the Afghanistan crisis um We needed all the golf platforms to land planes with tens of thousands of thousands of Afghans with like no questions asked And you know what every country said yes Uh, and that kind of came to my office to help manage that and to make the phone calls and And then the ukraine rushes invasion if you crane again then it's energy everything is back on the board You need okay. Well look around the world if you we need a good relationship with Saudi Arabia And that led to Biden's trip in the summer 2022 and kind of restoring things and and ultimately getting to that Israel Saudi agenda which I think we could have pursued earlier so to your question uh I think it's a little more complicated than that than that timeline um Could we have done something differently Sure, I think we walked into a very difficult situation And I'm happy to talk about those talks as well, but that That was kind of the first year of the of the administration So you you describe in in the book um aron's april 2024th attack on israel and then the american led defense and and Biden's efforts to prevent a larger war brat um Do you think that episode revealed that that aron was more militarily valuable than then Washington at the time it believed And Again, do you think administration? Miss an opportunity to exploit that vulnerability um did you know sort of restrained of israeli retaliation Did it preserve stability or did it limit pressure on aron and and lead to What became inevitable, which was was the aron war. It's a good question I think if you really go through this like the last two years Have kind of blown apart everyone's assumptions. Let me even Stick with the first 18 months of the Biden administration. I just want to like Because I hear from some democrats you guys should just got back in the jcpa. Well, okay Like We made a concerted effort to do so And aron demanded Lifting the sank terror sanctions on irgc and cutsforce, right? That's what they demanded and we had to debate about this and we had a meeting with president and others about Whether to do that and the Pentagon was totally opposed to it Sector defense and the chairman milley state department at their view and the president said no We're not going to do that and one reason you couldn't do that Was that when you're handling the aron file from inside um You see what they're doing, right? And I'm not this is all public information. They are Uh trying to organize assassination plots on our soil They're trying to assassinate president trump Like so as they're organizing to attack our forces in the region everything else and So for a president to be sitting there. I really wonder if it was you know If like Bernie Sanders was in the seat Is he gonna say you know what? Yeah, let's just do it because we got to get the nuclear deal I it's it's known as you see everything that's going on So in any case we said no, we're not going to drop that um Eventually the iranians took some time and came back with some other things and in case we never got back in the deal But I the blame for that I think is let lies primarily with with the iranians now fast forward to april Uh It's a very good little case study because um So in april first iranian. I'm sorry israel strikes. Mohammed. I raised it so headed who is the I think his your viewers know and you know is the Uh guards Commander in charge of his bullet, right? And the strike was in Damascus At a building that the iranian said was part of their diplomatic compound Now we never saw anything to support that i even think in the unsecurity council US officials have said we've seen nothing to support that that was actually a protected diplomatic facility in any case iran said it was and Iran then started to prepare a counter attack with hundreds of missiles and drones directly against israel and this was like Completely unprecedented iran moving from proxy shadow war to state-on-state attack By the way mark for those who say on the other side this argument. Well, yeah, well israel attacked. It was a heady and Like our embassy was attacked and bagged dead a lot. I was there. We never launched Hundred missiles into Iran. Okay, so Iran is preparing this attack. What does that tell you about iran's mindset at the time? and I trade. this to my meeting with the Iranians in January of 2024, which is in the book, and I detail it in the book. The Iranians at this time were so confident. And this also tells you why we were struggling to get a ceasefire and hostage deal at this time, because Hamas was so confident. The whole kind of access was, they thought the wind was at their back, and at this attack would basically break the will of the Israelis and break the U.S. Israel kind of ironclad partnership. That's what they were trying to do. I go through in the book what it took to defend it, and again, General Krill and the team, and this makeshift coalition we built, and there was like incredible drama. We didn't know whether we were going to defeat it, and Israel was repaired, if the attack landed and drew blood for a massive attack into Iran. So, to be very specific to your question, what should we have done? We defeat the attack by an encouragement in Yahu at that moment, against in the book and break, not to launch an all-out counter. Let's do something more limited, and let's try to get back to the ceasefire hostage talks, which was kind of what I was leading together with Bill. Israel did an effective strike, very quiet, against an air defense system, and then within a month or so we had a full ceasefire deal on the table to try to get the hostages out and get a ceasefire in Gaza by the end of May, which Hamas did not answer for five weeks, obviously, which is a quarrelment of the book. So, at that moment, what had been better for Israel to launch their all-out counter or to handle it the way we did? I think we handled it about right, Mark. But, you know, the thing about the one reason I wrote this book the way I did, I wrote it in the immediacy of the moment so that you are there, and you can kind of reader can make his or her own judgment of what they might have done at that moment. I think the way we played it, we demonstrated we can defeat the largest missile drone attack ever to date. We have 120 ballistic missiles in the air, 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and they were launched in staggered time sequences to converge at the same time. We defeated it. So that, like, in the moment, kind of, in my view, restored a bit of the power equation, and then it was time to try to push for the ceasefire hostage deal. We then had another attack in October we can talk about, but that was the April sequence, and I think we handled that about right, in my view. And Brad, just remind us the comment that Biden said to Nanyah who take the win. That was after the April attack or after the October attack, and give us a little bit of color into the president's thinking and the discussions with Israelis on that comment, and the desire of the Biden administration to really restrain the Israelis from hitting Iran much harder. Yeah, so put yourself in the situation, right? And I read, Brankas, you know, you're there. It's a Saturday. You're seeing the missiles going across the screen. It was like a worst-case attack. 120, where, like, was the kind of upper limit of what we thought. It's a 13-minute flight for a missile from Iran to Israel, and for the first five, six minutes, like until defenses engage, it's just dead silent. And we're on the brink of a major state-on-state war in the Middle East, on top of everything else at the time. And you have said that you were praying in the situation, right? Yeah, I've been in a situation a lot. I've never, and I'm not the most religious guy. I've never said a prayer. I was like, you know, fuck, like, they see their works or a dozen, and we're in a state-on-state war. And again, at the time, Hasbola has not been dealt with. Gaza's a mess. We have no traction on the hostage ceasefire talks with it. They've broken down. So like, once the dust settles in that moment, and, and, and Karila had just spoken to Halevi, and it looked like there were no major impacts, and the attack was defeated, there was like, audible size of relief in the room, right? And then the conversation immediately shifts to how to deal with this. Yeah, Biden's view, I'm as a president who has now ordered, really, first president. I always sent Patreon missiles to Israel back in the, in the 1991 Gulf War. President just ordered US military forces to help defend Israel. We had American pilots in the air, shooting down drones. We have Americans. Manipatriate missile batteries, destroyers working in concert with Israel to defend their country. There's a big decision the president made. And, and when, when Israel asked for that support, he did not hesitate, right? So his, he said his exact language in the room was, I just saved his ass, meaning, uh, baby. And, uh, Jake and others coined it, you know, kind of take the win, meaning that, look, we just defeated this attack. Let's calibrate the counter, the send a message. And then let's try to use diplomacy to get back to the posse deal, which we're trying to do. That was the, the attitude. And when baby got on the phone with, with, uh, Biden, um, you know, Netanyahu was grateful. But he was also, he's like, I got to teach, we got to teach these monsters a lesson. That's kind of his, uh, his immediate attitude. Um, and they agreed to have our military talk about what the response should be. And they decided on this kind of scaled down response. In that moment, Mark had Iran launched, or, sorry, had Israel launched an all out attack on Iran in response. Would that have been better? I mean, we were not, I'm just looking back at that time. Like we were not totally postured for an all out missile war that got into a big tiff retatt. We did something later to prepare for that. So again, it's a little microcosm, though, of a, of a real crisis and real time. And how you handle it. And I, what we did was we, we utilized that moment. And the leverage we had with the Israelis in that moment, because of what we had just done, to get back to that ceasefire deal and, um, and get a deal on the table by the end, which we did about a month later. So before we talk about the Trump administration and the Iran war, I want to just get back to this, this thread that that's run through our conversation, particularly during the Biden administration. And I mean, the disagreements with the Israelis. What do you make of this? I guess it's a real divergence, national security divergence between how Israel wanted to respond after October 7th and how the Biden administration continued to caution that the Israelis not to escalate. I mean, it seems, you know, now looking back after three years, post October 7th, that an Iranian strategy, a ring of fire strategy, an escalation of their nuclear program massively building up their missile capability, um, really positioning themselves to be the major power of the Middle East, maybe even having permanent control over war mues once they had all those deadly capabilities. That was a trajectory we were on under JCPOA, even maybe potentially under the Biden administration's Iran policy. And then the Israelis really reversed that. And then President Trump came in and doubled down on it. It is, what is the lesson from at least the Biden years with respect to this word calibration, this calibration between the use of military force diplomacy, seeking de-escalation. I'm not asking where, you know, where mistakes made or should things have been done differently, but sort of stepping back now, after all these years working in national security in the Middle East, do you think fundamentally that maybe the Israelis are right, you got to take care of the monster, you got to take care of the head of the snake or the head of the octopus, or whatever your favorite analogy is. Um, and then it was essential to drive directly at that head of the octopus and hit Tehran, take care of their nuclear program, eviscerate the ring of fire, put us in the position where we would have escalation dominance. I mean, going way back, Mark, how to October 7th not happened. Iranian capabilities, the trajectory, conventional capabilities, missiles, drones, proxy networks, uh, I think would have gotten to a place where all of this could have been significantly worse. So, you know, you're asking a lot about Israel, American choices, but Iran was making choices in this crisis too. I mean, they, There's so many acts. factors, and the agency of Hamas, of Iran, of Ebola, and they made disastrous choices. We said to the Iranians early on, "Don't get involved in this." They turned on Hisbola. They turned on the Iranian, the proxies in Iraq. They turned on the Houthis, and Hamane from what we know from those who are in and out of Tehran was like, "Just keep everything below the level of war," which to him meant below the level that it blows back inside my borders. And we've talked about, in the patent, like, blowback from America's invasion of Iraq. This in my everything that happened was blowback on Iran for these choices they made. They made these decisions. Now what I'm with the Iranians with Al-Bukhari Khani in Oman in January, and my message to him was, "You guys knock this off or we're heading for a direct confrontation." And they didn't knock it off. So have this all happened, say, 10 years from now, where their capabilities were even significantly stronger? I mean, I think you're asking an important question that often is not asked. And Iranian decision-making throughout this crisis and the choices they made is also often written out of this entire story, which I think is that if you do that, you're not going to have full appreciation for what all of this is like. But in terms of objectives, capabilities, and ways of means, how do you do it? I mean, sure, we all want the Iranian regime to change. It's the Iranian people rejected. They took the streets and were slaughtered massively, something the world seems have already forgotten earlier this year. But how do you actually go about that? And given the difficulties we've had in Iraq and elsewhere, and you can, I think, you know, president's exercise, prudence, and caution before engaging in military force in the region, as I think they should. But there is a time and a place for it. So I don't know, Mark, if I don't mean to not give a direct answer, I just think it's a complicated question. I have a little snippet in the book from a friend of mine, Amosad, you said the difference in strategic cultures between the US and Israel. The US spends 80% of our time planning, 10% acting, and then 10% after action reviews, and then putting that back into planning, whereas Israel is 90% acting and 10% acting again to address the unintended consequences of acting. There's something, too, that's a very different culture. But I have to say, you know, getting back to the assumptions that people have held on all sides of this issue that think had been kind of wiped away, and we'll talk about Trump administration, Mark. But you know, the Ford O's midnight hammer was the US military operation in Iran that had been talked about for years, war game for years, and there was a core assumption that was strongly held by some camps that if we do that, you're going to have, and all that war in the Middle East because Iran will attack all of our bases and everything else. And they didn't. I mean, I thought that was actually extremely well executed, used the military force clear objective, and those who have said for years, if you take military force against nuclear sites, there will be hundreds of American casualties, and this was in all the war game clubs participating, and I think you participated, and so we're just wrong, right? Now the February, though, war this year is different. So, anyway, Mark, these are hard questions. I think the benefit you have, and I think the value with your podcast here to your viewers is your depth of knowledge about it and exploring it, so that when things do come to a head in real time, people have really thought through what to do. So, Brett, let's tackle this, the question of the Trump wars. I mean, obviously, I think they're the Iranian wars that have been taking place since 1979, and finally, US president really responded against the Islamic Republic decisively. But there's been obviously a lot of controversy over the second phase of the war, the February campaign. And I think you certainly been, you're right, you call balls and strikes, I've always really admired that about you without fear of favor and without partisanship. So you have acknowledged some merit and transwilliness to confront Iran directly. I think you've also maybe questioned some of the objectives of the 2026 military campaign. What when you step back now, obviously, the campaign is still ongoing, but what do you think the administration has accomplished militarily and strategically against the Islamic Republic and what important objectives remain unresolved and what mistakes have been made that we need to learn from as we approach perhaps the next two years under Trump's presidency of the Seraan-Canandrum? Well, militarily, first and foremost, is the nuclear program. And I just go back to when I was in the seat, what did it look like as the Middle East guy in the White House? Well, Iran is enriching uranium to 60 percent grade underground in Fordo every day. At one point I went up to like 87 percent, remember that and I said it was a mistake, but at any moment, they can go up to 90 percent and then they have a canister of weapons grade, uranium that they can hide and then you have a whole different problem. So you're like living in that sort of domically so over your head. Because Iran is doing all the other stuff, they're doing terrorism, plotting attacks in the United States, all the stuff, you kind of, this is what Iran is doing and how do you get at that nuclear problem? It's a real problem and I was actually, I happened to be a president bush in the situation room around the time that, I think the DNI made the conclusion that they had, they hadn't really abandoned their nuclear program but they had not, they were going to change the however it was phrased, no longer pursue the direct weaponization work. And remember him question, yeah, but they still have all the accrued demands of weapons program and they still do. So how do you get at that problem? And if you, anyone in the situation room seeing hundreds of ballistic missiles flying towards Israel at that moment, if you don't come away and think, holy shit, this country cannot be a nuclear threshold state. So I came away from it. You have to take care of that problem and you try to do it diplomatically. I do think enrichment is a key question but those, middle hammer was extremely effective. From everything I've talked to, I'm not seeing, the intelligence used to see, but it knocked back that program significantly. They're not spending centrifuges and that threshold circumstance is no longer there. That doesn't mean they can't reconstitute it and they can't do stuff and pick X-mountain is still a huge problem but that's a massive change in the overall equation. That's number one. And the missile in drones, which is a huge global problem and under UN Security Council sanctions now and like nobody seems to focus on it but they've proliferated to Russia, they've proliferated to the who, these they've proliferated all around the world. And now you've got the Russians making Shahid drones with rocket propelled and you've not knocked that back, I'm not seeing all the internal assessments but at least demonstrated that it is vulnerable and has been, is not on the trajectory it was on. A Navy and other stuff that the administration talks about, yes but the Iranian Navy has never remained thought in my mind when I was doing this. So I think militarily you can point to very clear achievements of degradation of Iranian power and the containment or I'm sorry the blockade is putting massive economic pressure in Iran. So there's a lot of, at the tactical level, you can see achievements that if not for the military campaign would be on a trajectory that is, is quite concerning. And in my scenario analysis, if you stopped at midnight hammer and then put an economic blockade and really put the economic pressure on that without have been a better play than what happened in February, maybe. My critique of the February campaign mark was just it kind of violated all my core principles and lessons learned in terms of use of military force and clear objectives. And if you're going to go into a potential regime change type mission, you got to be ready for that. This is why when Obama said Assad must go in August of 2020, it's a sorry, 20, 13 I think. I was like, I agree, I saw it must go. Well, how are we going to do that? Like, what are we, marshalling resources? Are we like, what are we going to do? Right? If that's the objective, because if you have that gap between ends and means, that's how that's where folly lies. And when you take out the Iranian leadership on night one, you better be ready to really follow through on that. And from what I've seen from the campaign and the diplomatic zigs and zags, I don't think we were fully ready for what that entailed and maybe had some false assumptions of where it could go. But bring it up to where we are now. I have a column, I write this column for CNN, I had one today. Like, I don't think the midterms will constrain Trump. I think he's fully committed to this. I do not think we can afford it as bug out. And then it comes to the question we've been talking about on this in the last hour. How do you use economic pressure, military pressure? What might Iran do in response? I think this is going to play out Mark over the next year. I mean, in a, in potentially a, a decisive way. Yeah. You mentioned our probably Cooper before. Great American. And, you know, I think there was a lot of skepticism that the US military would not be able to take back or moves from from the Islamic Republic. They were those who, who I think said that that mission was achievable. I think we've seen Cooper and credible men and women in the US military take it back. And certainly, my view has been the Islamic Republic played their whole moves card at the weakest point, not at their strongest point. When the old man Ali hominay had envisioned taking over her moves, but once they had nuclear weapons, you know, a massive missile shield, hundreds of thousands of drones, Chinese Russian-built military, and the ring of fire intact and powerful and deadly, then he would control her moves permanently. Now, Mustafa hominay played the card at the weakest point. We haven't talked about her moves at all. Brad, what's your view today? Are you think, um, we're winning her moves? We won her moves, or you're still deeply worried about where, where that's heading? I think what Brad and Senkham have done is extraordinary against against all the doubters and, uh, they've demonstrated Iran, you cannot close a straight-off her moves, okay? You can impose costs of shipping and like that, you know, insurance costs go up in terms of getting product out of the straight-off her moves. We will keep the straight open. Just four months ago, that looked like impossible. And I think they've done it in a very creative way. And tremendous credit to our people who are out there working this day and night. I mean, you've got to, you know, I just, my thoughts are with them. I haven't served with so many people over the years, and just extraordinary dedication and service. Um, and you put, it's a key question to ask you, Mark, and again, why might presidents be more aggressive, not like, there's always a debate in the US government and in, and prioritization, and I've seen this in every administration, Republican Democrat. And there's always a very strong camp that the Middle East has a huge distraction, and we got to be postured for China and Taiwan. And fully agree, we got to make sure that when, when Xi Jinping wakes up in the morning, he's thinking, yeah, maybe not on Taiwan. And the more he's deterred, the better. But the argument, let's just kind of get out of the Middle East and focus on that. I just think is so strategically incoherent, because if that scenario ever comes to pass, the straight-over moves, the bubble men deb are critical global choke points. And Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, I don't want to overstate it. They don't have a treaty alliance, but they're aligned against the West. And so even in that Taiwan scenario, which has been war game multiple times, if we just take our eyes off the Middle East for 10 years and allowed this to continue to metastasize, I don't know how that is strategically coherent for that overall global posture campaign. And I, I lived this with the Houthis, because the Houthis, we know they're a problem, terrible civil war in Yemen. But after October 7th, when they start firing anti-ship ballistic missiles, US naval vessels, first time has ever happened in the history of naval combat. Very accurate, they can hit, they're hitting ships like 100 kilometers offshore in the dark at night. Their ballistic missiles are extremely accurate. Like, how did that happen? That's not the Houthis. That is Iran and the guards, and they've had his bullet visors and and revolutionary guard advisers digging these underground facilities and then transferring technology to the Houthis and training up the Houthis. That happened over years and years and years. It's just a huge problem. I mean, I, so I think what the team has done in the straight of our moves to demonstrate that Iran is not as easy a place you might have thought is extremely important. How you then parlay that into the next phase of this and what you do and if we do go back to military operations, what Iran does, it's just worth playing out because it is, it remains very uncertain. And what the endgame here in Mark is, it's hard to, I mean, I, let's all hope. I think you and I fully agree. And I've said this to Iranians when I've been across the table from them, eventually your system is going to come apart. You just look historically, you've lost the support of your people. And let's hope that happens, but they, this system is willing to use ruthless violence to stay in power. I had an Iranian intelligence official when I was doing a hostage negotiation years ago, say to me in a very menacing way, like, no, no, no, no. Like we got the critical mass of the population and we have all the weapons. And like when they would talk about the, when you really start talking them about history and stuff because you spend enough time with them and they talk about the Shah, like the mistake the Shah made in their mind was not corruption, whatever it might be in their ideological narrative of what happened. It was that he refused to use violence to stay in power. And I said, this, this is what we're dealing with. And that is going to require. It's a long struggle. There's some military aspects of that. There's some diplomacy. There's economics. There's public diplomacy. I mean, all the, everything we did in the Cold War. But whether we have the attention span to see that through, you know, I don't know. Yeah. I hope I do. I want to ask you that as a final question, Brad. But it's interesting. I had on the previous episode just before yours, the Japanese ambassador to Israel, who was also the former director general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Intelligence Division in Tokyo, which is, you know, obviously, that's a very powerful ministry in the Japanese system. He made the point that you made the exact point that you made, which is in a Taiwan scenario that Xi Jinping imagined that he would tie up U.S. forces in the Middle East. And perhaps tie up U.S. forces in the Korean Peninsula. And that in fact, the counterintuitively or against sort of the expert opinion out there, he thinks that the Iran war has been very useful in countering China in a Taiwan scenario, because we've so severely weakened the Islamic Republic in the Middle East that we have not removed, but we've certainly diminished the chance that Xi could play the Iran card or the Iran front against us while moving on Taiwan. It was an interesting perspective from Tokyo about Tehran. And again, I think it's contradicts sort of a lot of the expert opinion out there, including from China hawks who have been, I think, deeply concerned that the Iran war has been a massive distraction and has precipitated a munitions crisis. I mean, I think some of our experts have also noted that, you know, we were pretty asleep at the switch with respect to the American defense industrial base. And this war has at least we've woken up. And now there's an attempt to significantly increase our munitions and prepare ourselves in ways that perhaps we were not prepared before. Do you agree with that or for you or the view? That's interesting. I think there's, look, I think there's some merit to that, and you're right. So, and I'm sure if I was in the White House now, you'd have a meeting, interagency meeting, and you have. joint staff sent pointing to the munitions charts. - Yeah, that's a huge problem. It's a huge problem that we should have dealt with years ago. And we're starting to now ramp up. But I mean, if you look at the world right now in the global security environment, like it or not, you're in a bit of a global conflict scenario and the way the United States are comparative advantage, I mean, master the obvious here, but in Europe and in Ukraine, it is coordinates best we can with our allies to bolster the Ukrainians and try to convince Putin. He's actually not gonna be able to achieve his objectives. And that includes munitions and defensive munitions as Russia's ramping up its missile production. In the Middle East, it again, means strengthening our close partnerships in that region, doing all we can to help the Saudis and others. When they're, you know, I mean, we have civilian airports, passenger terminals being hit with houthi missiles and like there's no reaction. I don't like the fact that it's Pakistan and Turkey coming out Saudi Arabia, it should be nice days in our European allies and others. And then the Asia-Pacific region, it's all the partnerships there. I mean, there's a play here. If we use those tools of the Cold War and our alliances and partnerships and interconnectivity and everything that we're able to do, that I worry that we're not doing. But on the munition thing, yes, it's a big problem. This is a big, this came to a head in Ukraine. I mean, we were, you know, looking for pack, pack three interceptors all over the place, including from the Middle East. And again, looking back, I mean, we have focused very much on missile defenses with our partners, not enough on missiles. So there's a missile defense and then there's missiles as a deterrent. Now, Iran is probably not going to launch a missile attack against UAE. If UAE has thousands of missiles that they can respond against Iran, but you know, we've been very reluctant to sell missiles with the ranges that a lot of these countries want and need. I mean, that, I think something that has to be looked at. And I wish the world, I wish this was not the world we live in, but it is, we're in a world of missile warfare and that taboo against, you know, massive missile barrage is against civilian infrastructure from the Russians and Ukraine and from Iranians and the Gulf. It's just been completely shattered. And how do you deal with that world? It's not just the defenses. It's also having a counter capability to deter those who are launching these missiles, including Iranians. And by the way, this is how the Chinese and others swoop in sometimes and say, oh, we got missiles, you want missiles? You know, I mean, it should be the US, NATO allies are incredible industry, Silicon Valley, drones, everything. And there's a lot going on in this space now. But yeah, we're, I think we've been caught a little bit for left footed. - So, Brett, last question, all right. So, you know, lessons of kind of four presidents, you've dealt with the Islamic Republic under Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, you know, as you detail in the book and as we talked about today, you negotiated with his representatives. You've responded to its terapoxies, killing Americans. You helped defend Israel from Iranian missiles. And you've been certainly a fair-minded analyst of Trump's current war, as he's taken the war directly to the Islamic Republic. If President Trump called you tomorrow for advice on bringing this conflict to a successful conclusion, what, what would you tell him? - Well, broad base of three options. One, you kind of sue for deal and try to get out and regroup. And there's some pushing for that. I think that's gonna buy you more problems down the road. And I don't think Iran is gonna give you a deal. You can get, and the June deal, which was so lopsided, Iran even violated that. But that's option one. Try, go back to the June MOU or something. I don't think that's even available right now. Option two, is try to leverage this very effective blockade. And over the period of four to six months, that economic pressure is really gonna build. I don't think to a point of a regime collapse, but then you have a significant card and how do you play that in a negotiation? And can you get on the nuclear, actually giving up their enrichment program and everything you want? Try to play that out. And in that scenario, also be ready in the tit for tat if Iran strikes a ship to respond much more forcefully so that you try to contain and control that. And I would help the Saudis out, and Yemen more than we're doing. That would probably be where I would try to go over the next four to six months. Option three, not in my advocacy, had my analyst has where I think this is heading is a return to a more escalated military campaign. Perhaps and probably together with Israel. And before going down that road, Mark, I would want to really play out. And there could be more information inside than I'm seeing 'cause I'm not, you know, reading what the kind of stuff I used to read. What are the targets? What do we think this is gonna achieve? How does that affect calculations? What's Iran gonna do in response? 'Cause if we do go down the road of taking out energy infrastructure and everything else, they will then target golf infrastructure and are we ready for that? That's the kinetic scenario of option three. So I kind of be in an option two. And you know, see where it goes. And I think of the three options, that to me seems to be the most sound. But if I had to predict, I think we're heading back to, I'm just seeing the maneuvers and we're getting on a bit of a war footing with some of the reduction and even our diplomatic personnel from what I'm seeing. And after our midterms and after the Israeli elections, that's what I predict. But I would also say having work with presidents. So I was in the Bush White House. Last two years of his presidency, Democrats sweep both houses on a rack, right? Like you gotta get out of a rack basically. And Bush looked at it and we had done a big strategic review and we did the search. I was with him for that decision. It was the right thing to do at the time. But presidents in their last two years, I think Trump will be driven by however this has gone and however it might have gone as he hoped or as it is. In fact, he seems far more committed to this than I think people assume and give him credit for. And I would not put past that he has in his mind a big play in which we are going really demonstrate or fully committed to the Iran campaign and make a play for that Saudi Israel deal. And to bring this back full circle, I had the Saudis in my office on October 6th, Mark. I mean, we shook hands on putting everything in place by the end of 2023 and it was kind of coming together. I think Trump still very much wants it. That's going to be very hard to do. But in his last two years, if he's thinking, what am I looking to achieve? I would suspect he'll make a good run at that. But part of that will be just given how the Saudis see the world. You got to demonstrate your full commitment. And so we'll see. But yeah, I'd be more in just in the three baskets of options. I'd be more in an option too. - Well, Brad, let's hope that the two years ends that way. The President Trump thanks you on the White House lawn during the signing ceremony between MBS and an Israeli Prime Minister for everything you've done for our country, a great American, a great friend, a great mentor to me personally. And your book is a fascinating read. I encourage everybody to go buy it. Brink, you get inside the situation room. You understand the issues. You understand the personalities. Yes, your article CNN today is a must read on the options. Our favorite option at the Iran Breakdown is Operation People's Theory. to match epic sherry and economic sherry which is I think you alluded to this earlier which is prepare a plan so that if there any people come back to the streets let's be ready this time we haven't been ready in the past and Brett thank you thanks for being on the show we'd love to have you back on happy to do it Mark thank you great to be here so that's it for today's episode of the Iran Breakdown if you want to better understand what's really happening with the Islamic Republic please subscribe rate us five stars and show this for people who need to hear it but it's your first time here go back to episode one that's where we began laying the groundwork in an episode with crown prince Reza Pallavi you can find me on x an instagram at mdubuets or mdub owi tnc i'm mark dubuets thanks for listening and look forward to breaking it down again with you next time