In this episode, retired Marine Corps Admiral Dan Caldwell joins us to discuss the possibility of U.S. military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, and what the implications are for the rest of the Middle East and Iran's allies.
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00:12:00.300Man, can I just say something really cynical?
00:12:03.740It'd be pretty easy to draw us in to a ground war against or a full-scale regime change effort against Iran by attacking those troops, no matter who you are.
00:12:13.340I've said it publicly, you know, prior to being a DOD, in a lot of ways, those troops in Iraq and Syria were a tripwire to a larger war.
00:12:22.960And especially after the defeat of the ISIS caliphate, and you can argue whether or not they should have been put back into Iraq and Syria to begin with,
00:12:35.020but especially after the ISIS caliphate, they should not have been there.
00:12:38.140There were many crimes in the first Trump administration, but one of the greatest crimes in the first Trump administration was an active effort by President Trump's own political appointees, in some cases,
00:12:52.680and elements of the military to undermine his stated preference to withdraw, particularly from Syria.
00:12:58.880And let's not forget, you had the president's special representative, I believe, for Syria, this guy Jim Jeffrey,
00:13:07.480who, after he left the administration, ran around Washington, D.C., bragging about lying to the president about the number of troops in Syria so that he would be less likely to withdraw them.
00:13:21.840And that's not a crime? I think that's a crime.
00:13:23.660It should be. It absolutely should be. And it's disgraceful.
00:13:27.060Subverting the civilian leadership of the military is not a crime. I think it is.
00:13:31.280It absolutely is. And it was completely outrageous.
00:13:35.720And as a result, I think there's a direct line between that and last year when you had three army reservists killed at Tower 22 in Jordan by a drone.
00:13:50.700Tower 22 in Jordan is directly in support of, it exists to support a base in Syria.
00:13:56.120And had Jim Jeffrey and others not undermine President Trump, those three reservists would likely still be alive today.
00:14:11.100Whose purpose is to support the U.S. military installation that is in Syria but shouldn't be.
00:14:15.180It's literally right across the border.
00:14:16.860And that installation in Syria is called TANF.
00:14:22.360And again, none of this, this has all been reported public info, is that was originally established to train anti-Assad fighters to basically effectively retrain them to fight ISIS.
00:14:35.560And so then that mission morphed into a counter-Iran mission where they wanted to keep American troops there and the proxies there so Iran wouldn't have a line of communication or basically, you know, an ability to move forces from Iran through Iraq to Syria.
00:15:08.100And by the time it was, you got to January, 2020, I believe it's January, February, 2024, when this incident happened, the Biden administration, it was reported, you know, when people asked about the Syria policy, Biden admin officials would just laugh because we had none.
00:15:28.080So they were sitting there for no reason other than this belief is that you can never withdraw or retrench from anywhere because of surrender.
00:15:37.240Well, and the irony is, of course, that elements of ISIS now run Syria.
00:15:40.080And we're cool with that for some reason.
00:17:08.020So if you were to frame your foreign policy around your own interests or even around your own grievances, like it's fair to be mad about 9-11.
00:17:17.760Then you would be, you would definitely not be happy that the guy who helped you after 9-11 was overthrown in favor of the people who did 9-11.
00:17:25.520Like from an American perspective, that's not a win.
00:17:27.220And we spent tens of billions of dollars in Syria.
00:17:34.400You know, we know Joe Kent, you know, his wife, absolute heroic woman.
00:17:42.500You know, other soldiers, Marines were wounded.
00:17:45.780We came close at several points to getting into combat with the actual Russian military.
00:17:51.720We had a major battle with Russian mercenaries, the Wagner Group.
00:17:55.860You know, a lot of people focus on the risk of escalation in Ukraine and an incident where American and Russian forces that are operating area could come into conflict and where that could go.
00:18:09.800That almost happened in Syria on a weekly basis for several years because you had Russian and Syrian or you had Russian and American aircraft operating the same place.
00:18:18.400You had American troops and Russian troops operating in the same area.
00:18:22.700One misunderstanding could have kicked off a cycle where we're in a major conflict with Russia.
00:18:29.060And, you know, the focus has been on Ukraine.
00:18:32.540But the place for a longest time where Russian and American forces were brushing up against each other was in Syria.
00:18:39.440So, especially after the destruction of ISIS caliphate, that mission should have ended.
00:18:44.960And it is, again, an absolute crime that it was undermined not once but twice in President Trump's first term.
00:18:52.700You described our true presence in Iraq as, quote, a tripwire.
00:18:57.140Can you flesh out what you mean by that and how it happened?
00:19:01.820I would say both Iraq and Syria and probably more Syria is.
00:19:06.240That kind of gets to ultimately why I think some people wanted to keep our troops there.
00:19:13.400Is that if there was a mass casualty incident where an Iranian-aligned militia or some other actor attacked American troops and, you know, God forbid, killed or wounded a significant number of troops,
00:19:30.880that would have been justification to escalate either against Iran or to get more involved fighting other groups like, you know, al-Qaeda, ISIS.
00:19:40.000And so, just their mere presence was, again, they weren't effectively deterring Iran or other actors because they're just too small.
00:19:49.760But their presence in and of itself was a risk that we could be sucked into a major war.
00:19:54.600So, are you saying that you sincerely believe there are U.S. policymakers who intentionally put American troops at risk?
00:20:01.320I don't think, consciously, there are U.S., at least I don't want to believe.
00:20:40.980And I, you know, my belief is that, honestly, a lot of it more had to do, and we talked about this last interview, this kind of policy inertia.
00:20:50.440Like, it's easier just to say, let's keep doing the status quo as opposed to actually changing something because there's less risk in a lot of people's minds.
00:21:02.840Now, again, I just lead out the risk of keeping troops there.
00:21:05.600But in some people's minds, there's less risk to their career by preserving the status quo as opposed to changing something that's not working.
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00:25:37.060Well, that's where there's really, it all depends on the impact of the counter-strike on U.S. troops and on American facilities and how the United States responds.
00:25:51.740If we continue, at that point, you're on the escalation ladder.
00:25:55.620So if our troops are attacked and we counterattack with a larger strike and a larger force, and if we use certain bases in the region, like say in places like Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia,
00:26:13.500if these countries allow us, and there's a good chance, this is something I think needs to be constantly reinforced, is that these Gulf Arab states are not where they were in 2019.
00:26:25.420So it's not a guarantee that they would allow us to use these bases in their country to attack Iran.
00:26:31.760But if the Iranians perceive, whether it's true or not, that we are using those bases and they're looking to punish us, they will attack bases that are larger, maybe more hardened, but host a lot more troops.
00:26:48.860And that could quickly lead to more casualties.
00:26:52.300They could also attack ships in the Arabian Sea or Persian Gulf.
00:26:57.520And they could also, if we continue to get pushed up the escalation ladder, attack U.S. diplomatic facilities.
00:27:04.960Now, those are all worst-case scenarios, but they're risks that should be considered and can't be ignored.
00:27:11.620So it gets back to this whole idea that I just, and again, I hope I'm wrong.
00:27:16.620I fundamentally don't buy that you can just do one or two strikes and that's it, and the Iranians, you know, aren't going to respond.
00:27:24.040And it's going to have to be, you're going to have to prepare and expect a much longer and much more bloody military campaign.
00:27:32.520Obviously, without divulging the details of any kind of classified planning document, we know that the Pentagon has been thinking about how Iran would respond to a strike against its enrichment facilities for like a long time, a long, long time.
00:27:47.480This has been, I mean, people have, and I know that you're one of them.
00:27:51.080Does anybody think that they just wouldn't respond?
00:27:55.460I'm sure there are people right now who are trying to say is they won't respond.
00:28:11.680So therefore, they're just going to back off, that they're not actually going to respond.
00:28:15.860And if you look at the hours immediately after the Israeli, initial Israeli set of airstrikes, there's some people saying, watch, like Iran's not going to really respond or it's going to be weak.
00:28:31.260And, you know, over the next few days, they launched between 400 and 500 ballistic missiles.
00:28:37.800Again, thankfully, they weren't as effective as originally advertised.
00:28:41.620But still, they've, as we sit here today, I believe, killed around 25 Israelis, wounded nearly 600.
00:29:35.920My understanding, and again, I'm not an expert on this, is that the way Israelis work is that they allow the information to come out at just a later point.
00:29:44.340But, look, I mean, in some ways I don't blame them because somebody filming something from a balcony and how a missile hits, that is intelligence for their families.
00:29:58.720And you saw something, you see that very, in Ukraine as well.
00:30:03.240Yeah, I mean, that's a whole different, I mean, the casualty numbers in Ukraine, you know, American lawmakers who funded this war, extended this war for years at the expense of the Ukrainians, I think, have a moral obligation to know how many Ukrainians have died.
00:30:19.400I actually think there's an amendment, and I could be wrong about this, put in one of the National Defense Authorization Acts, or an attempt to force the disclosure of the two true casualty numbers.
00:30:30.300And I think it was defeated, or it was added in and just, it's being ignored by DOD.
00:30:34.900Yeah, I really think that's contemptible.
00:30:37.180I've asked a bunch of lawmakers who have, are really responsible for the war, or the continuation of the war, you know, like how many Ukrainians have died?
00:30:47.300They have no interest in knowing, you know, but anyway.
00:30:49.700The point of walking all that through that is, and Iran is really adjusting and changing their tactics as the war grinds on, and that's in part because Israelis have been successful in destroying some of their mobile missile launchers and their missile stocks.
00:31:10.320So the barrages aren't as intense, but you're seeing them introduce new systems.
00:31:14.560And here's the most important thing that, you know, absent an American intervention, which, as we've discussed, could be imminent.
00:31:24.320Right now, the war is essentially a race between Iran and Israel.
00:31:28.780For the Israelis, they are trying to destroy as many Iranian ballistic missile launchers and ballistic missiles before they run out of anti-missile ballistic missile interceptors for their Aero, David Sling systems, and then our Thad systems, and our SM-3, SM-6s that were launching off the ships.
00:31:52.360Likewise, the Iranians are trying to preserve as many of their missile systems and survive as many Israeli airstrikes as possible while the Israelis wear down their store of precision munitions and missile interceptors.
00:32:12.460So each side is trying to get to a point where they're either not threatened by certain offensive weapon systems or their offensive weapon systems can breach defensive systems more effectively and inflict more casualties.
00:32:28.000And there are smart people that say right now in that race, Israel has a slight advantage.
00:32:33.980Other smart people say Iran has a slight advantage because of the number of missiles they've stockpiled.
00:32:39.500And that really right now is the game.
00:32:41.780So there's a time pressure here on both sides.
00:32:44.940And absent, you know, American military intervention, which will change the whole dynamic, is that's really what it's going to come down to.
00:32:53.440Which side can outlast the other with certain types of weapons and weapons systems?
00:32:57.860Again, with the caveat, I have no freaking idea what's going to happen.
00:33:01.200Nobody does other than, well, I don't know that anybody does right now.
00:33:04.700So, I mean, there's been reported repeatedly that there's going to be American military intervention.
00:33:12.560Like, that's just, like, reported as fact, whether it is or not.
00:33:16.520So I just want to focus a little more intently on how does that change the dynamic?
00:33:21.360And how much offensive intervention would qualify as, like, dragging America into the war officially?
00:33:28.960Well, again, a lot of it goes back to the conversation we're just having.
00:33:34.920If Iran doesn't respond to just one or two strikes, they decide to take that blow, and there's evidence that they—most of the evidence shows they probably wouldn't, then that would probably contain the size of the American offensive operation.
00:33:53.020But if we were to go in, I think it is likely that we wouldn't just hit a nuclear site for the sake of our own troops.
00:34:02.000So it would not just be a one-off strike, or we'd coordinate with Israelis.
00:34:08.200And again, if there is an attack on American bases in response to this, that would pull the United States more into the war and push us into a spiral where we're constantly escalating against the other side.
00:34:22.060And then that brings us to a point where, even though it's pretty clear the Trump administration, even if they do decide to do the strike, doesn't want a regime-change war, is ultimately get pulled into a regime-change war, whether or not we want it.
00:34:37.180So none of this was even on the table, you know, 10 days ago until the prime minister of Israel called the president of the United States and said, I'm going in, I'm doing it, I don't care what you say.
00:34:46.720It's all been reported in the New York Times, given three days' notice.
00:34:49.200It's just a little bit crazy that all of a sudden we're talking about, like, how are we going to deal with this war against Iran, which wasn't even a thing, two weeks ago.
00:34:59.820How, if this were a war that the United States chose, this was, it wasn't, this was a war that was chosen for us, we were going along with it.
00:35:06.980But if we had chosen this, if we decided, like, depending on HQ, we're going to take out those enrichment facilities, how, like, you wouldn't do it three days later, right?
00:35:18.660There's a lot of planning for these things?
00:35:36.760But does it make it harder to get just three days' notice before the shooting starts?
00:35:41.560Um, this is where I'm a little unsure because I don't know what 100% for sure, there's a lot of public reporting, but that's not always so.
00:35:54.780And, and so I don't know what was in the region or not, but there, to successfully accomplish something like this, you do need a, a, there needs to be a lot of things that happen leading up into that.
00:36:08.260I think that is fair to say, and the United States military can move quickly when it needs to.
00:36:14.220I'll say it can move quickly when you don't have large number of ground troops, when you're primarily relying on air and naval assets.
00:36:22.380So you can move stuff in quickly, but leading up into that, there would have, there normally would be a lot of planning.
00:36:29.540But again, I'm sorry if I'm going back and forth here.
00:36:32.080This has been a scenario that has been planned for, for a long time.
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00:37:48.080In thinking about this, non-classified of course, but given that Iran is part of BRICS and has all kinds of military and economic ties with Russia and China,
00:37:59.720how high is the concern that they might get involved?
00:38:03.220So this is where it gets interesting is I think Russia in particular has a lot of reasons for them not to get involved.
00:38:17.300And the reason there's a few reasons is one, a lot of the things that Iran would need from Russia are actually things that Russians really need in Ukraine.
00:38:27.000So air defense assets, fighter jets and things like that is Russia's military and industrial base is much more developed than the United States and NATO.
00:38:39.960And, you know, the NATO secretary general says all the time is Russia produces more weapons and munitions in three months than all of NATO combined produces in a year.
00:38:50.780So, but the Russian way of war in Ukraine relies on overwhelming firepower.
00:38:57.320So it's very difficult for them to divert weapons to other partners.
00:39:01.920I'm not saying that that couldn't happen.
00:39:04.980Maybe there's some intelligence sharing, but I don't think that my gut would be is they would not support Iran in a very big way.
00:39:14.740I don't think that they would overtly support the Iranians.
00:39:18.600But I think if there's one party that over the medium term, at least, and they may face some short term challenges because of disruption and energy surprise, but over the medium term that would benefit from another major war in the Middle East and what the United States is heavily involved in.
00:39:36.200It is China because the weapons that we would be using to fight Iran are what we would need in a specific contingency and God forbid we fight a war with China.
00:39:50.940It's weapons that we want to supply to some of our partners, whether it's Japan or the Philippines or South Korea or Taiwan.
00:39:58.300Those are all systems that would be heavily used, whether it's air defense, standoff munitions, you know, other types of of air to surface munitions, surface to surface munitions.
00:40:14.200Those those are the things that are going to lead the Iran fight because of just the size of Iran.
00:40:20.000Iran is a huge country, both in terms of population, but geography.
00:40:23.600It's not as small in terms of geography as Iraq, and it's as much longer distances to, say, get from the Persian Gulf up to Tehran.
00:40:32.400So you have to rely on certain types of weapons and certain types of aircraft, again, all of which are would be at the tip of a spear in a fight against China.
00:40:41.040So it is in their interest to see us expend more and more munitions and wear down more and more weapon systems in the Persian Gulf.
00:40:48.440So. Again, China's played it very smart in how they engage the Middle East.
00:40:55.040I think that they would be more willing to do things economically to help Iran and maybe provide some nonlethal systems like they have for Russia that could be beneficial for Iran in this fight.
00:41:07.280But again, you can't what's and what do you mean by nonlethal systems?
00:41:11.560So, for example, China, there's debate over this, but there's not really clear evidence that China has provided lethal weapon systems like Iran and North Korea had to Russia.
00:41:25.140However, they have provided nonlethal weapon systems like counter drone technology to Russia.
00:41:31.820They have provided they've helped them get around some of the Western sanctions.
00:41:36.440They've helped provide them certain types of electronics that are maybe harder to get from the West.
00:41:41.300I think we can say that with confidence.
00:42:18.020Occupying Iran, I believe, twice in the 20th century.
00:42:21.600So, getting back to the theme that we've talked about before, it's like we've all pushed these countries together because of our dumb forward policy.
00:42:32.820But because of our foreign policy over the last 30 years, we're creating these opportunities for cooperation.
00:42:38.100And that makes the situation in the Middle East worse, the situation in Ukraine worse, and the situation in the Pacific worse for us.
00:42:43.920Do you think there's any chance that China become, you know, if this does become a direct conflict between the United States and Iran, that China enters it in a way that's like, that we can't ignore, that's just so provocative that we're at war with them too?
00:43:00.540I think it's more likely that they would make a decision to do something in the Pacific because that is more important to them.
00:43:08.260I don't buy this argument that if we were to pull out of the Middle East, that China would want to become a hegemon in the Middle East.
00:43:20.220They have been able to use smart power and minimal military power to maintain influence and reap economic benefits from the Middle East.
00:43:28.360And they don't have the force projection capabilities that the United States has.
00:43:34.520Some smart people that I've worked with have made pretty compelling arguments that they are not likely to try and dominate the Middle East.
00:43:44.580So I don't think China would get directly involved in the Middle East.
00:43:49.380But if they see the United States worn down even more in the Middle East, that may change some of their calculus vis-a-vis Taiwan.
00:43:56.400And I wonder, not just Taiwan, so we've been in Japan for 80 years, we've been in Korea since 1950, 75 years.
00:44:10.440And I'm certainly not justifying anything China, I'm not, you know, but I'm just trying to understand like their perspective because I think it's meaningful.
00:44:16.920If there were, you know, if there was an 80-year-old Chinese military base in Belize, you'd be like, a little close.