00:00Given all your experience in the region and at the State Department, I do want to ask you
00:03your take on some of these evacuations. We saw it appears at least the embassy compound in Baghdad
00:09seems to have taken a strike this morning. There was smoke rising over that horizon. We've also
00:13got ordered departures in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and a
00:19regional consulate in Turkey. What does it do for State Department operations when you have so much
00:25going on in a region, you need all those people who know those countries, and you also need them
00:29out of harm's way? Well, good to be with you. Yeah, that's a tough situation because the Iranian
00:35regime has been targeting those diplomatic facilities because the Iranian regime doesn't
00:40really distinguish between military and civilian targets. They will target each indiscriminately
00:45as though they're equivalent. They don't respect that division. So our diplomats on the ground do
00:50have to be cognizant of that. It's not the first time that we've had to do this kind of ordered
00:55departure or authorized departure from some of these stations because it's the Iranians
01:01before who have threatened those facilities. So yeah, it cuts down on our diplomats' ability
01:06to do their work and engage with host nations in those places, but they have to be kept safe.
01:12I want to get your read on this story that's developing that the administration is sending
01:152,500 additional Marines to the region in light of what's been happening over the last couple
01:19of weeks, and that will kind of add to the total of 50,000 American troops that are in the
01:24region
01:24right now. What does that portend to you? How do you read that? And then I'm curious, as we listen
01:30to the president not ruling out the prospect of there being boots on the ground unequivocally,
01:35does it concern you? Does it raise an eyebrow that this could be where we're headed if we have that
01:39many new troops headed to the region? Well, no, because in addition to being a State Department,
01:43former State Department person, in a former life, for 26 years, I was an Army officer, and I was actually
01:48a military planner and analyst at U.S. Central Command, the headquarters that is carrying out
01:54this campaign in lead for the United States. And so I was familiar back then in the olden days
01:59with an earlier version of this campaign plan. And the idea of having a Marine Expeditionary Unit
02:06to do the kind of operations that you would need to protect commercial vessels, commercial shipping
02:12going through the Strait of Hormuz, to be able to do operations in the Persian Gulf literal to protect
02:16shipping, to be able to, would give the president, would give the CENTCOM commuter more options.
02:22And it actually signals, I think it's a good signal to the Iranian regime leaders in Tehran
02:28that the president and Admiral Cooper are keeping that option open. That's precisely the kind of
02:33very well-trained Marine force that you would need in order to be able to seize threatening vessels,
02:38in order to be able to disrupt mine laying operations if the Iranian regime were to do that,
02:42or if they were wanting to try to seize some sort of Iranian island, maybe Karg Island or other
02:49facilities like that. It's signaling that the U.S. has that strategic option.
02:54Colonel, since, as you're saying, this plan did exist during the first term, how closely
02:59is this administration's action following that plan and what comes next?
03:05Well, I don't have any inside information on that. Being retired, I'm out of the loop.
03:10But you were in the loop the first time around. So far, is it playing out according to plan?
03:15Well, it's so much more advanced. I mean, as someone who was formerly familiar with an earlier
03:23version of that plan, the military technology advances just in the 15 years or so since I was
03:29involved in that sort of thing are just astonishing. And the military imbalance between the U.S. and
03:35Israel on one side and the Iranian regime on the other is far wider than CENTCOM would have enjoyed
03:41back then under General Abizet, General Petraeus, and so on. If you had told me in 2009 that two
03:48weeks into this campaign plan, the Iranian leadership would be decimated, their ballistic
03:53missiles would be down by over 90 percent, their drones down by over 90 percent, they would have
03:57no operable air force, navy, missile defense, and air defense. I'd have told you you were smoking
04:02something. But it's just astonishing the military progress that's being made, you know, at that
04:10at an operational level.
04:11You talk about the military progress made. The president sat down with Brian Kilmeade on
04:15his radio show a little earlier this week and talked about what an endgame might look like.
04:19Let's take a listen to what he had to say to Brian Kilmeade.
04:22We had the greatest economy in history. We do. We still do. Oh, this will bounce right back.
04:26When it's over, and I don't think it's going to be long, when it's over, this is going to bounce
04:30right back so fast. When are you going to know when it's over?
04:34When I feel it. Okay. I feel it in my bones.
04:37Colonel, I want to get your reaction to that last line, when he feels it in his bones. But you
04:41very clearly laid out that list of all of the defensive targets that have been hit by the U.S.
04:45and taken offline. The Supreme Leader killed, as you mentioned. Your sense from your experience in
04:50the first term and from what you've observed here over the last few weeks of what the endgame is likely
04:54to be here and what the timeline this administration is working with.
04:57Well, there's a military endgame. There's a military endstate that's very clear.
05:01There's a political endstate that's something different. On the military side,
05:05the objectives that they laid out, the President, Secretary Rubio, at the beginning of eliminating
05:10the nuclear program, ballistic missile and drone program, the ability for the Iranian regime to use
05:17terrorist proxies outside their borders, those are all well on their way to being accomplished.
05:23And then the further phase of essentially eliminating the Iranian regime's production
05:28capacity to be able to regenerate those kind of things if there is a cessation of hostilities
05:33with an Iranian regime still there in place. Now, the political endstate is still unclear.
05:37And it seems to me, as I was a staffer for President Trump, we all know the President is someone
05:44who likes to keep his strategic options open. He enjoys strategic ambiguity because it gives him
05:49leverage in negotiating outcomes. And I think he's still doing that here. Whether he's willing to
05:55tolerate an end of campaign with a rump Iranian regime still in place, but greatly weakened with
06:00a lack in the capacity to go on into the future is something he's keeping that option open.
06:07And that creates confusion on the Iranian regime side, I think, that actually hinders their ability
06:12to respond, which is what you want. Colonel, quickly before we let you go, the Secretary
06:17of Defense admitted in his press conference this week saying that I can't say that we anticipated
06:22necessarily that's how Iran would react. He was being asked about Iran striking regional allies,
06:28which in his defense, I think, did take quite a lot of people, even regional experts, by surprise.
06:34Should the U.S. have anticipated that? And how should the U.S. respond to an Iran that is willing
06:39to strike friends and neighbors in the region? Well, I think when you're planning, when you're
06:45going through the permutations and possible scenarios, if you're planning out your war
06:48gaming, a campaign plan like this, I think absolutely the planners would have had a scenario
06:54where they said the Iranian regime just lash out at the region around it. You would consider that
07:01a worst case scenario, but you'd also consider it, I think, low probability because it's something
07:07that's so counterproductive to Iranian interests. It's harmed them so much. The entire rest of the
07:14Arab world and Turkey were drawn into a conflict that they had intended to stay on the sidelines of.
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