Newt's WorldEpisode 658: The Growing Threat of Iran-Backed Groups
Three American troops were killed and 40 others were wounded on January 28th in a drone strike on the military base known as Tower 22, in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. Since mid-October, there have been at least 165 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and Jordan. The U.S. is striking targets across Iraq and Syria in retaliation. Newt talks with Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about the growing threat of Iran-backed groups in the Middle East.
On this episode of Neutch World. As war continues the Middle East between Israel and Hamas and Palestine, we witnessed I ran back militia's attack a US base on Sunday. Three American troops were killed and several were wounded. On January twenty eighth, and a drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. The military base is known as Tower twenty two. The one Way Enemy Attack drone approached the base around the same time as a US surveillance drone, causing confusion and preventing the US from deploying air defenses. Since mid October, there have been at least one hundred and sixty five attacks on US troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. The US has launched several retaliatory strikes, including in Iraq. Joining me to talk about the escalating tensions in the Middle East and what the United States response should be. I am really pleased to welcome my guests, benham Bent He is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defensive Democracies with a focus on Iran, and I must say I find the Foundation for Defensive Democracies one of the most useful organizations in understanding what is happening around the world. Venham, welcome and thank you for joining me on Newtsworld.
It's an absolute pleasure. Sure great to be with you.
I have to ask you. On January twenty eighth, the three Americans were killed about twenty three were injured in a drone strike in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border. Most, if not all, those injured and killed were Army soldiers at a base known as Tower twenty two, which has been in support of the counter ISIS mission for years. A coalition of Iran backed militant groups calling themselves the islam Make Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility. The Pentagon on Monday announced the names of the three Army reservists killed as Sergeant William Jeron Rivers of Carrollton, Georgia, where I used to teach you, West Georgia, College, Specialist Kennedy Leyden Sanders of Waycross, Georgia, and Specialist Briona Alexandria Moffatt of Savannah, Georgia. They were, by the way, forty six years old, twenty four and twenty three, all from an Army Reserve engineering unit from Georgia. Biden said the US quote, will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing. Secretary of Austin and the Secretary of Defense said, these brave Americans and their families are in my prayers, and the entire Department of Defense mourns their loss. Our Ran backed militias are responsible for these continued attacks on US forces, and we will respond at a time and place of our choosing. Fresh wol I think it's interesting that they both use exactly the same language. We will respond at a time and place where're choosing. But what do you make of all this.
It's a pretty complex situation right now because the Islamic Republic of Iran has a proxy network that they themselves have been calling the axis of resistance. And in this axis they have some terror groups which we know they've created, groups like Lebanese Hezbolah. Some say that's the most successful export of the nineteen seventy nine Islamic Revolution in Iran. Then you have other groups like the Bodder organization in Iraq. But then contrasting that, you have groups that the regime did not create, but groups that they have co opted. Good examples are Hamas and Gaza starting in nineteen eighty nine as a spoiler to peace, and then arming them, training them, equipping them, and then much more recently you have the Huthis in Yemen, and also this group was brought into the fold with lethal advanced weaponry. The militia networks that treat the Iraq Syria border as something of a less a passe, much like the Taliban and their supporters in Pakistan tree at the Afghanistan Pakistan border as non existent, benefit from sustained Iranian political and material support and are really the tip of the spear when it comes to having Iran be able to have its cake, you need it too, And realistically, here this is Iran empowering a group that wants to shoot at Americans, but being able to control the cycle and the tone and the tenor of the violence at a time of Tehran's own choosing. So you'll note, you know, the vast majority of these strikes happened after October seven, precisely because the Iranians were intent on activating affront the use of military means towards political ends to generate pressure on America through sustained mortar, rocket, drone, cruise, missile and even on two occasions close range ballistic missile attacks on US positions in the heartland of the Middle East to generate pressure on America for standing with Israel in order to prevent Israel from being able to accomplish its military goal of the destruction of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. So this is a very, very, very multi layered problem we're facing here, and I find the calls on the fringe left and fringe right on both sides of the Atlantic, to be honest with you, to be counterproductive to think that all we have to do to stop these attacks is not to punch back at the militias or their patron but just to force Israel into some kind of a ceasefire situation, which I think would be counterproductive and would vindicate in the minds of the worst of the worst actors that they can have a veto over US foreign policy over Israeli Foreign Policy.
Secretary of Austin said at a press conference which I actually listen to quote, we will have a multi tier response and we have the ability to respond a number of times depending on the situation. We look to hold the people responsible for this accountable, and we also seek to take away capability as we go forward.
What does that mean?
What is a multi tier response?
This is where and there is not much with immense respects to the Biden administration, there's not much room for cautious optimism in the Biden administration almost three years in being able to do a one to eighty or course correction to their rather problematic foreign policy towards Iran. They're a desire to disengage from the Middle East, their inability to connect the dots between the patron and proxy networks and one of the most troubled parts of the world. But there was a little bit of room for optimism in that element that you just read, which you also I think mentioned that Biden or Blinken had said as well about this multi tier, multi domain you know, continued response. And the reason that gives me a little bit of cautious optimism is that you have two different sets of voices. Voiceset one that is saying all we have to do is pull the plug and will stop getting hit, you know, pull the plug with Israelis and will stop getting hit. And on the other side, you know, we have some folks, many of our friends and in fact some of my colleagues calling for a direct, overt retaliation against the government of the Islamic Republic on Iranian soil, something we haven't done technically and would be akin to running a very public social science experiment as to how would Iran respond. In light of some of the shortcomings of US foreign policy in the Middle East recently, there is no straight line from failing to deter the proxy, whether that's the militias in Iraq, the Huthi's in Yemen, Lebanese has Belah in Lebanon, to being able to deter the patron which, as we saw in the aftermath of the US strike killing Costum sole Money, was not afraid to launch the biggest ballistic missile barrage since the end of World War Two against US positions in history. So, if I can read anything or presume anything in the multi tiered response we heard from Secretary of Austin, one would hope it comes across several different geographies, that it would not just be limited to Iraq. There's public reporting now that says the US has chosen targets in Iraq and Syria, that it would not just be limited to Iraqis or Syrians or Iran backed militias, but to Iranian officers themselves, ideally elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. There was just a recent Reuter story that I don't believe anyone else has confirmed, because it was an exclusive to them, that Iran was rotating out or at least pulling out some IRGC officials from Syria. Given the fact that high ranking folks kept getting hit, admittedly or assumedly likely from the Israelis, one would hope that also there would be a cyber element to this response. There were allegations reported in papers like The Washington Post and New York Times. Then in the aftermath of the two Times in twenty nineteen, when the Trump administration did not use military force to respond to the downing of its throne in June and the attack on Appcake oil refinery in Saudi Arabia in September, that the US instead had opted for a cyber response. So one would hope that there would be different targets, stronger weapons, bases, personnel, and also activity in different domains so cyber, and one would hope that there would be a sanctions component as well. This is again hope. We don't have much room for hope in the way the administration has conducted Middle East policy in the past, perhaps this could be a little bit of a sign of maturity that the past things we've done in response to the past one hundred and sixty five odd strikes was insufficient to deter I.
Found it curious. Secretary Austin said that we didn't actually know whether or not Tehran understood about the specific drone strike on Sunday, but he then went on to say, quote, it did not matter, since we do know that Iran sponsors these groups, and funds these groups, and in some cases trains these groups. And I think we've now been told that the wreckage has been examined and we are convinced that the drone was actually built in Iran. If that's all true, why does the administration, through various spokespersons, say again and again we are not at war with Iran, since obviously, through their epoxies, Iran is at war with us.
And indeed, anyone who takes a slightly wider or longer view of this national security challenge knows that Iran was at war with Us in one shape or another, in one form or another, ever since the Islamic revolution achieved victory in nineteen seventy nine and really took that proud nation Iran hostage. In many ways, Iran has continued this fight with US under the revolutionary Islamist government, in the rhetorical world, in the political world, in the economic world, in the military world, in the cyber world, in the finance slash illicit finance world.
If there is a domain, you can almost bet.
Your bottom dollar or bottom line that the Iranians are on one hundred and eighty degrees opposite of an issue that the Americans are on. So if we're for freedom of the seas, therefore harassment in the seas, and so on and so forth. If we've tried to build up Iraq in the past to become a stronger, more stable, more prosperous country, the Iranians having the business of destroying those institutions. There are so few areas where under the auspices of the Islamic Republic, the US and Iran are not at odds, And I think it's time to call a spade a spade. This remains the world's formal state sponsor of terrorism. We think so far out that in lieu of this proxy network that they have either created or co opted and sustained control over through material support, through provision of weapons and training and funding. That Iran is not involved in these attacks, then there is a bridge I'd like to sell you after this phone call or after this podcast, Because indeed, the fact that we cannot find a signal intercept, for instance, from the Supreme Leader of Iran's office to the head of one of these militias, does not mean that Iran was not behind the attack. In many ways, the absence of that directive is the success of the proxy network in action. Iran need not call and turn on and turn off the spigot like this, because by empowering local actors who share similar views, they get to control the cycle of violence anyway, because they have someone else who will fire weapons and die on their behalf.
Both Obama and Biden seem to have this curious view that they can somehow find a moderate Iranian regime around which they can build an effective Middle Eastern policy. Why do you think they're so pro Ranium?
It's an excellent question, And again, if we zoom out the context, this is a trap, for lack of a better word, that many US officials have fallen, and if we Broughten out the context, one need only remember Iran contra during the Reagan administration, the fact that the Clinton administration, for instance, did not kinetically respond to the Iranian inspired attack on Hobar Towers, killing nineteen service persons. There's a whole string of things that come with believing that there are genuine moderates, not just in Iran, the country, which there are more than genuine moderates. We have genuine allies in the Iranian people. But this over inflection of the Iranian people onto the government. You know, you could not find two more things at odds than the people or the population of Iran and the government of the Islamic Republic, which is brutally repressed the aspirations of these people. But to think that there are factions or cleavages within a constantly narrowing ever since it's been around since nineteen seventy nine ultra hardline majority at the helm of this regime is indeed a fiction. And it's a fiction that occasionally the regime will trot out folks like former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Jawad Zarif to try to take advantage of the fact that he speaks great English and is affable with Western diplomats, and to lure Western politicians into a false sense of security and blur the lines between the nation of Iran and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and through that tempt Western and particularly even American policymakers into thinking that there is a moderate and all you have to do is peel back the pressure and you'll empower that moderate.
I had a conversation with the Secretary Bob Gates one time when he was Secretary of Defense. He said he had been the deputy to Brazinski going to Algiers to meet with the original Iranian revolutionary leadership who Jimmy Carter was trying to find a way to work with. And they said, look, we can honor our military contracts and give you the things you need for the f fourteens. We can provide economic aid, and they went through a whole list. And the guy sat there and looked at them and said, we want the Shaw. We have to have the Shaw so we can try him and execute him. And they said, well, I mean, we can't give you the Shaw. They would violate every sense of hospitality and decency. And they went back through all the things they could do, and when they had done, the Iranian said, you don't understand. We don't want any of those things. We want the Shaw And he said a couple days later they see he's the American embassy illegally of course, and kept the hostages for four hundred and forty four days. Engaged. Look to me, said, anytime I hear somebody talk about moderates in the Iranian dictatorship, I remember those meetings and think, I don't think so. I don't think there's a single moderate in that group. I thought it was a very compelling story.
He was quite wise to mention that, and that's something that one would hope would be a sticky reputation in the minds of American policymakers who've seen that through. Another correllary to that, to the story I saw in a documentary was, you know, former Deputy Secretary of State. I think he later on he became Secretary of State, Warren Christopher. And this was after they took the hostages. And this kind of connects to what I was saying about the affableness of some of these folks, these diplomats. There was one of these high ranking Iranians family wise, related to the Homenes for lack of a better word, related to the founding father of the Islamic Revolution. And he met Warren Christopher, I think in West Germany's somewhere, And Warren Christopher said this in a documentary. He said he was shocked when he saw him because he was expecting some you know, hostage taking brigand and he saw this gentleman in a three piece suit. And this is part of the Christopher narrative. He says he was holding his cigarette. This Iranian individual, I think his name was Sawdek Tabatabay, he was holding his cigarette like the old school Hollywood movie stars, you know, with three fingers, and that this just kind of blew this cultural context. So even if someone isn't as grass as that form a negotiator and they have this veneer, unfortunately, I think Western diplomats have fallen for it.
And I think that speaks volumes.
And when you had recently the Ayatola Hamoni go on national television and say, when we say death to Israel and death to America, these are not slogans, this is our policy. How do you think people like Obama and Biden take that and somehow in their head translated into an open for a reasonable relationship.
There are some folks you mentioned FDD have had the pleasure of being with FDD. You know, next week will be eleven years now covering the entirety, the breadth and depth of the Iran problem. And you've seen rises and ebbs and flows in the willingness of some folks in Washington to believe exactly that narrative, to bleep exacuately what you said. And in some cases you'll hear folks say no, no, no, they don't believe this. This is domestic politics, This is domestic consumption, to which I, as an Iranian American, will say, the vast majory of the population doesn't believe this stuff anyway, So at most it's for inter elite consumption. But who does Kaminae, the Supreme Leader of Iran, a title meant to be taken very literally, feel that he has to signal to These are genuine revolutionaries who believe what they say. And I think some point after the Ukraine invasion in February twenty twenty two by Russia, I actually wrote a piece for The Atlantic linking the folly of not taking Putin's word seriously to not taking Kamene's words seriously. And unfortunately that was written well before October seven, but only proved to be true in the post October seven Middle East, where.
When they say thatth Israel they mean it.
So this constant downgrading of the adversary, say no, no, no, he didn't really mean that that. This is driven by some exogenous force that they feel the need to signal to, is in fact actually belittling the adversary, is in fact denuding the adversary of agency. I don't know where else kind of philosophically or intellectually it comes from. But this constant need to define it downward is unhelpful for US foreign policy. And you can see the string of it being unhelpful from Romani to Putin, to Romenae and to many others.
From your perspective, what should they a next administration do to sort of reset the stage.
Well, it depends a great deal on the ways, the means and the ends that the next administration wants to go for. I leave it at this time. There is no nuclear deal in the offing. Hypothetically, if it's a Biden two point zero administration. Unfortunately, I do believe that they will continue to pull punches. They will continue to sacrifice the defense of the national interest for the resurrection of a nuclear deal in some form or another. Because A are the first most important P politics. This fits in with the political legacy of the Obama era, and you have a similar group of personnel at the helm. Again, B for policy purposes, because many of these folks want to leave the Middle East because they think you don't need to deal with the Iranian problem, you just have to manage it a nuclear deal that buys time, and literally they seem content with giving the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism sanctions relief. They feel that it's okay to engage in this kind of policy of bribery or kick the can down the road, when in reality they're just kicking the can at the wall and it's going to come barreling back at the US any day now. And Third, philosophically, again, they don't believe this is a solving problem.
This is a management problem.
And if that view of these three p's is congealed in the next Bided administration, nothing about what I say about maximum pressure against the regime in Iran, and maximum support for the people of Iran will really be able to be enacted. Conversely, if there is a genuine desire to run the clock, to turn back the page, and to resurrect the Trump administration's successful maximum pressure campaign, then we stand a chance as to influencing the calculus in Tehran, there are three balances we have to influence. There is the balance of capability, which we already have vastly skewed in our favor. But then there's the balance of interest and the balance of resolve. It's debatable right now that the Iranians actually believe the defense of our positions in the Heartland and Middle East is an interest of ours, given how sparsely and sporadically we've defended that.
And then there's the.
Balance of resolve, which Iranians believe, due to a series of bipartisan unfortunately foreign policy mistake, they believe that they have the balance in their favor, and it will take time for the next president to restore to terms economically or militarily. But there were some major wins in the past administration that were just watered down due to domestic political purposes.
One on the.
Economic front, I mentioned for you. Economically, the Trump administration used unilateral economic sanctions, and even though everyone was crying that this is going to break the global order and that this will not work, within about a year and a half to two years time, the Trump administration impacted the Iranian economy, so did more macroeconomic damage and one and a half to two years, when you look at inflation, when you look at the presence of stagflation, when you look at the value of the real relative to the US dollar on the black market, when you look at oil exports, or when you look at a whole other bunch of macroeconomic indicators, US unilateral sanctions in a shorter time were more powerful than multilateral sanctions over a day, and that was.
A huge victory.
And multiple times the IRUNI officials said that the weight of these penalties was of greater weight than the military pressure they felt during the Iran Iraq war. And this was a leverage that the administration currently has junked, given the fact that it has not been actively enforcing these penalties.
So that's the baseline policy.
They've actually done. The know the direction, I mean, when Obama sent a billion dollars in cash, which I understand could not be US dollars said to be Swiss, Franks and Euros. I just thought, there's something so mindlessly disconnected between the behavior of the dictatorship and the interpretations in the White House and the State Department that it's almost unimaginable.
And when the adversary sees that exactly this disconnect, it reminds me of the title of the book of I think former NSA Chief General Michael Hayden. He wrote a book called playing to the Edge. When there's such a chasm, the adversary will play to the edge and extract as much as possible, and that cast transfer literally palettes of cash is what you get as the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism when you play to the edge against an administration that misunderstands you and unfortunately pulls punches at the wrong time.
Do you think that we should actually have a strategy of trying to empower the Iranian people in trying to encourage maximum domestic unrest.
I absolutely do. And the good news is that we need not be the.
Ones to encourage maximum domestic unrest because there have been a boom and bus cycle of protests in that country, and particularly concurrent with a period of maximum economic pressure that many thought years ago in Washington that would have been the kiss of death for those protests. That when the Trump administration vigorously stood with the Iranian people, people said that this would have been the kiss of death. But actually you had Iranians chanting in twenty eighteen outside the parliament Doshemadame Mojamin jos do rumighin omricost, which is our enemies are here. They lie when they say it's America. They chastise both sides of the spectrum, quote unquote, both sides of the spectrum. The reformists and the hardliners are the principalists in Iran. When they said reformist principalist, the jig is up. The fact that the US broke the sacred cow of actually being able to stand with the Iranian people was huge. And in a future administration, if one can marry that foreign pressure and support for the grassroots, you will have a really successful, powerful pincer. And I mean the regime will try to wrestle away this princer, and it will try to do things to divert and throw off the US, but just kind of like asphyxiation, the more successful or the more kind of closer it gets to finishing off an adversary, the more violent the throes of the adversary will be. The US needs to prepare for this now, or folks who are in a position to be able to implement maximum pressure and maximum support need to be thinking through the scenarios now.
Well along that line, the Israelis have been pretty adamant that they will not tolerate an Iranian nuclear weapon, although you could make the argument that they may have four or five already. What do you think Israel's options are in this kind of a setting.
It also depends a great deal on the risks tolerance of the Israeli government right now. You see, for instance, there's a lot of talk about the need to go after Lebanese Hezbela, which is to Israel's north, even though the threat the war the October seven attack came from Israel south came in Gaza. You have over one hundred thousand internally displaced people in Israel right now. They can't go back to their homes in the north. Hezebel is a much much, much more potent adversary than Maas in Gaza. So I think the thinking in Israel, and I wouldn't want to speak on their behalf is that if there ever was going to be something against the regime, and in particular any kind of the ability to pose even a credible military threat to the nuclear and military installations, they would first have to deal with the knife that the Iranians have at their neck, and then over the course of the past decade, have been sharpening against their neck, and that is the Precision Guided Munitions Project, the PGM project for short, that Iran has with Hesbeola and Lebanon, where they've taken the quantitative advantage that exists on Israel's northern border, the one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand mortars, rockets and missiles and move them more into the world of missiles. So a rocket versus missile. A rocket, just for the audience, is a unguided munition. A missile has a guidance system, and if you can kind of marry these in volleys, you can try to surpass or break through the iron dome. And the Iranians understand this because as early as the twenty twenty one war, the Eleven Day War in May between Israel and Hamas and Gaza. There was reporting by the IRGC almost braggedocious reporting that said, whether the Israelis intercept or not, they lose. So they are understanding the economics of these interceptors, and we're seeing those same economics now impacting the US. At what bases do we have sea rams at? What bases do we have patriots at? What bases do we have thads? What kind of anti ship anti missile destroyers do we have in the Persian Gulf? What kind do we have in the Red Sea? How interoperable are they with other elements, other armies that can provide greater coverage to track, detect and destroy what Iran has, which is the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. These things have to be dealt with if you're going to pose a credible military threat to the regime's crown jewel, which is the nuclear program. And in this sense, unfortunately, I'll say the quiet part out loud. I think the Israelies have been conventionally deterred by the Iranians, because had they not have been, I think you would have seen something a la Osirak nineteen eighty one or a la Al Kibar two thousand and seven, which was kind of the raids on the facility in Iraq and in Syria by the Israeli Air Force to take out what was likely going to be a nuclear capability, I mean Iran's terrain. The disbursement, the hardening is much more complex. In many different reports about war games and assessments, people talk about the Americans needing to join in, and I think the Iranians understand that, which is why they are still whether they're against Israel or America, content on playing to the edge, and one wonders what the bounce back will be in these really national security establishment post October seven planning post Kaza about how to deal with this.
Israelis then, in a sense have to finish up Gaza so that they can shift and then contemplate whether or not they want to try to take out hisbe Lah, which should be a much bigger project than Hamas.
Absolutely, and the question is what is the staying power? What do they need?
Also, again, what will the population support and what is the legal context for this? All these are things I'm sure Israelis are thinking through at the moment, but all these are things that will involve with respect in my view a different level of Iranian involvement that we've seen at present right now is Iran is trying to escalate, but also it is trying to get out of the involvement or the blame game. That's why you have these two fronts, the Yemen Front and the Iraq Syria Front coming online to generate the pressure, so Iran need not generate the pressure. This axis of resistance, these independent proxies and partners and allies Iran has created or co opted are now more interoperable. They're not perfectly interoperable, but they're trying to bail each other out, so the regime need not have to.
But for a group like Hesbelah.
Which defends Iran's crown jewel by posing a threat to Israelis with that large Arsenal that we just spoke about, I do fear that the regime in Tehran might become more directly involved. And so one thing these rallies are also going to have to game out is to what degree of Iranian connectivity can they handle and if the Runian threat comes online directly from the homeland to bail out Hesbela, which has a qualitatively different meaning for the regime in Tehran than Hamas does in Gaza.
What then, with all of that going on, why would President Biden issue an executive order Thursday aiming to punish Israeli settlers who've been attacking Palestinians in the West Bank.
By working on the Iran issue, you get to touch some third rails in Washington. I think you know better than I, sir. But if there ever was a fourth rail, I would say it'd be the Israeli Palestinian stuff. It makes my job look like a piece of cake if I had to guess here. This is Biden trying to pander to a progressive left flank that you've seen lots of different protests across different cities in America on about calling for a cease fire and even some very nasty things about basically doing incitement to violence and genocide in the post October seventh space from protesters.
And I think this is part of Biden's balance strategy.
You know, you've had a whole series of leaks from the White House about different phases of Israel's military operation in Gaza that is designed, I think to placate those folks. This too, in my view, I think is designed to placate those folks.
So it's really about domestic politics.
And twenty twenty four I think so one other.
Front, which is this whole thing with the Houthies, when we began bombing them recently. I went back into a tiny bit of research, and if I understand it correctly, between twenty fourteen in about twenty twenty, the Saudi's and the UAE bomb the Houthies about twenty five thousand times. Now it raises the question, why do we think that US bombing them will somehow be a major deterrence as opposed to just something they endure. Well, they keep doing what they want to know.
This reminds me of this quote by a very famous political scientist, Tom Schelling when they're talking about coercion and punishment and escalation. I'm going to butcher the line, but I'm going to paraphrase it from memory, where he's talking about, you know, escalation versus absorption, and they're talking about how to signal resolve. And I think the line he uses is sometimes the cold blooded absorption of punishment is just as impressive as the infliction of it. And I think what the Houthis have tried to garner both on the Arab Street and both on terms of Iran's axis of resistance is that they have withstood that. That's kind of like a status dividend for them. The one area I would draw a little bit of a sharper line on between the Saudi led operation and that which the US and the UK and hopefully others could do is just better.
Isr better targeting.
An empirical example of that, when the twenty fifteen war began, the Saudis had an operation called Decisive Storm that was the pushback against the Houthis and Yemen. Prior to that, they launched an aerial campaign to target the long range strike capabilities, so the ballistic missiles that the predecessor regime that the Huthis had overrun had had, and some of those military folks affected to the Houthis, and the Houthis got access to some of those weapons depots and storage facilities and whatnot and became a heck of a lot more stronger. And in those arsenals was a Russian single stage, solid propellant short range ballistic missile called the Tachka.
This is twenty fifteen. We have seen military parades.
In twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three in Sana, in the capitol of Vmen, put on by the Houthis that still feature the Tachka, meaning a Russian weapon that the predecessor regime in Yemen had received, had managed to survive all of those bombings you mentioned. So it wasn't just that the arsenal has grown because the Iranians have given the Houthis in Yemen.
And this is a point of contention.
I can't stress enough for the audience, and unfortunately official Washington has not woken up to this. The Huthis in Yemen possessed the most advanced long range strike capabilities out of any Iranian proxy. They are the only ones with medium range ballistic missiles. They are the only ones who haven't have used anti ship ballistic missiles. They are the first ones to have used land attack cruise missiles. This is a game changer kind of weaponry that the Houthis in Yemen have and that's essentially brought to you by the Islamic Republic. Everon, I mean, HESBLA doesn't even have all this stuff. There may be a debate as to do they need it or not, but nonetheless, the Houthis were that good at being able to move this stuff around. I think with some of the US and UK strikes, when I say we have better ISR, we're not just going after depots like the Saudi's were, and the presence of the Tachka tells you they weren't that good of that. Anyway, we are able to detect weapons being put onto rail launchers, which means that we have more kind of eyes and ears on the ground. This is not a solution to the problem, but in an election year, I don't think the vided administration is too keen on trying to find a way to solve this problem. But so long as we just think we can do pinprick strikes, we'll be replicating the problem that we had in Iraq and Syria, which is we failed to restore to terrence against a proxy. Oh and by the way, we have a supply side problem, because it's not just the Hoothy's five hiring them and getting it intercepted, or the who He's preparing them for launch and getting them struck on the launchers, but it's the Islamic Republic of run continues to send things that send Common Task Force one fifty three. Fortunately are intercepting like missile and rocket components.
The change rate financially is against us. We're using very sophisticated weapons to take down much less expensive weapons.
Absolutely, and that was the philosophy that the Iranians understood in the twenty twenty one war, and they're intent on playing that up. So even if that they lose something, they lose the projectile we fire an interceptor. They know that our interceptor costs more than their projectile. So they're also fighting a financial war against us. And then there's also a political war, because we have to have the authorities and the will and the capability to stay in the region to engage in these kind of interceptions, or to train up local forces and make sure they have the right tech to track and detect and destroy these kind of things. It's a very complex and expensive arche texture to maintain, and this is the low footprint side. The high footprint side is taking the fight to the adversary and moving away from deterrence by denial, which is what this architecture does. To terrence by punishment, to going after hoothy leaders, to going after weapons depots, to striking the facilities that engage in the transfers, all of that stuff.
But aren't we faced with a reality that if we are going to continue what is a very long tradition now of keeping freedom of the seas, we're going to have to defeat the Hoothies absolutely.
I think the question is what does defeat look like and at what price? I think at most the Biden administration is comfortable with a few of these sporadic strikes.
But they will have no effect.
That's what it seems like.
And I think that's why the Houthies, despite suffering the strikes, almost always instantaneously fire something else to signal, not even just to prove, but to signal that they are not deterred to drown out our military strike with their military response, even though we have superior firepower. They show the will, the staying power. And that's why it gets to the balance of interest. If this really is an interest, then we have to defend it, and then we have to move the fight just from the passive targeting of installations to the targeting of personnel. And in that vein, the administration just course corrected, but not even fully, by redesignating the Houthis as especially designated global terrorist Group. I mean, I think they should have done the FTO, which is the authority of the Trump administration when after the hooth he's under But again this is three years too late. In that time that the Houthis were off the terrorists list, and later on you had a cease fire in twenty twenty two extended into twenty twenty three.
It was during that time that the Houthis received and paraded and unveiled some of those most damning long range strike capabilities that we saw them first fire towards Israel and then later towards international shipping. So a lot can happen when you engage in an own goal, and I think the delisting and taking the eyes off the ball and the disconnecting the dots between patron and proxy continues to come back and bite us.
It seems to me that the question becomes who intimidates who that if we're not careful, we could literally be intimidated out of the region over time, and.
That's something they're counting on.
That our self deterrence, our self restraint is a limiting factor by nature of us being responsible and deliberative and democratic and trying to be cost efficient and legal, that we put ourselves into a box that the other side doesn't even.
Have, right, amazing, You're obviously very knowledgeable. I hope in the future we might do this again because I'm afraid, sadly this stuff's not going to go away. But I think that Benam, you have really been helpful in this. I want to thank you for joining me a news world and for helping us understand more about Iran and the proxies and the signaling and the challenge the United States and coming to grips with a very difficult reality. So thank you very very much.
It was an absolute pleasure, sir, And just let me say from a distance, thank you for your years and years of service.
Thank you to my guest, Benam Ben Talabloom. You can learn more about the Foundation for Defensive Democracies on our show page at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Gingrid three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at gingridh three sixty. If you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with five stars and give us a review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld can sign up for my three free weekly columns at gingrichswe sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm new Gingrich. This is neut World
