Exclusive - The Iranian End Game: Richard Nephew

I think what still is a little bit surprising to me is the ambiguity about our objectives and what we're trying to achieve. I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today I'm joined by Mr. Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and former director for Iran at the National Security Council. Mr. Nephew joins us today for a discussion on the rapidly developing conflict in Iran and the broader implications for the region. Stay with us as we speak with Richard Nephew. Thanks for joining us. Richard, let me just turn it over to you at the outset. What did you think of the strike? And give us your assessment of where you think we are right now. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing when you sit back and think about it. We're only talking about, what, 72, not even 96 hours ago yet, right? I mean, a couple of things. I mean, one, I had built in a sense that there were going to be strikes again on Iran targeting its missile program. I thought that was basically inevitable because there was a lot of concern in Israel about Iran's ability to reconstitute and what that could potentially mean. And so I can't say I was surprised that there were strikes. I can't say I was surprised that the United States participated in those strikes. I think what still is a little bit surprising to me is the ambiguity about our objectives and what we're trying to achieve. And, you know, you're seeing kind of both things. You're seeing the administration talk about Indian Iran's ability to project power. And then you're seeing, you know, press reports about arming the Kurds and trying to actually topple the government. But certainly the strike on Supreme Leader Khamenei was part of that. So, you know, I'm still, as I'm sure everyone is, you know, trying to kind of suss out what's the end game here? You know, what do we need to see in order for hostilities to end? What's our objective and how long this potentially go on? Because I think there's a very strong possibility that that by the end of the week we're in ceasefire. I would not also be surprised at the end of the week that we're seeing a significant escalation as well. Wow. You think we could be in ceasefire? It feels like they are really going to prosecute the entire target list this time. You think ceasefire is even on the on the horizon? I think it is. You know, it is, you know, frankly, as as CENTCOM said yesterday, they're moving through their target list pretty fast. And if you were to get an Iranian government to come forward and say, OK, we're going to give up our missile program or give up, you know, any possibility of having nuclear weapons, we're going to agree to transition. You know, we're going to set up someone to be the Dulce Rodriguez of Iran. And to be clear, I don't think there is an obvious one of those. Then I could absolutely see the administration saying good enough. I'm not sure the Israelis are there. That might be worth talking through. But I do actually think that this administration, given what they have set out as the objectives and the pace through which they're moving through a target list, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be willing to entertain a quicker move to ceasefire if we see the sorts of impacts on oil and gas that we're already seeing ramp up. So I want to get to you on whether and how easy it is to escort tankers through the Straits of Hormuz. But let me press you a little bit more on this potential ceasefire thing. So apparently the former Supreme Leader's son is going to be the new Supreme Leader. And I was thinking that that message was new boss, same as the old boss. We are going to be rigidly inflexible. So then this gets me back to this argument that JCPOA notwithstanding, fundamentally at this regime's core is just sort of an uncompromising anti-American assertion of their own rights to have missiles and a nuclear program, etc., etc. I mean, do you read it differently? I just feel like they are never going to sign it. Even if they're getting pounded all day long for a week, it just makes me wonder whether they would just rather have the war and survive standing rather than compromise. Well, I think that's that's the rub, right? Would they have the war and survive standing? Well, that implies that they think they're going to survive it. Right. So, I mean, I buy into what's been the longstanding U.S. intelligence community conclusion. which is the number one objective of the Iranian regime is to be the Iranian regime. Right. At the end of the day, you know, survival of the regime is the number one objective. And that's part of the reason why in the past they have made compromises. I mean, remember that we all remember the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate about Iran's decision to suspend its active weapons program. Right. The reason for that, as the IC said, was that they were worried about regime stability. And so they took a chance on suspension because they thought that was going to lead to the regime staying in power. And you can make similar arguments about the JCPOA itself and so on and so forth. So they have demonstrated a willingness to make tactical compromise. And that's that's an important nuance I'm making here. Tactical compromise. If they think that that will preserve the regime for some period of time. I don't think that they would give up having missiles or having an option on nuclear weapons or similar in perpetuity. or that they wouldn't cheat on a deal, to be clear. But that doesn't mean that there couldn't still be a, okay, let's get a ceasefire for right now, just like we had back in June, right? I mean, it's what I'm pointing out. The June ceasefire had no terms, right? It was just, we have ceased fire. Is there a possibility that we could cease fire again? Sure. And then we would potentially be back at it in six weeks, six months, six years. Okay. Okay, the supreme leader select successor. Is there anything else to read into this? I mean, we're all reading up on him and et cetera, et cetera, but as a longtime State Department, consumer of intelligence, what can you say about this guy or what message does it send? Well, so look, I think he's always been bandied about as a possible option, but that there's been a lot of anxiety inside of Iran about trying to create a hereditary supreme leader position. I mean, that is not what they were aiming at when the regime was set up. I think there's a lot of anxiety about creating a hereditary position there. There are some religious reasons, as I understand, for why that would be problematic. But certainly there's also political reasons for it, too. So I don't think much to bow is always, you know, the front runner. I think one of the factors, frankly, is that a lot of the people who might have succeeded to Hamané are dead, and not just in the recent airstrikes, right? And we're also talking about people like Raisi, who was the president of Iran, who died in a helicopter crash. You know, Rasanjani had been talked about as being a supreme leader. I mean, there are lots of people who might have been the person, but at this point, they're starting to run through their options. I think what this Moore says, to be honest, is that Mojtaba is a known quantity to some folks. He's pliable to the IRGC. He probably has made some kind of arrangement with the IRGC so that they're comfortable with the kinds of decisions that he potentially would make. It wouldn't surprise me if there's some kind of deal that they've struck that, you know, much about will be the supreme leader, but that the IRGC gets a freer hand on things like potentially nuclear weapons. Right. Or their ability to enrich themselves economically. I mean, there's lots of things the RGC could get from much to that leads him to be potentially the person. I will say, though, what's interesting is while we've all heard it so far as I am aware, and I've been distracted a little bit doing things this morning, but I don't think we've got official confirmation that much to has actually been named. And I think that's that's right. That's indicative of the fact that they're still working through some of the process. And there might even be objections that are now coming forward. people are saying, yeah, we don't really like what this says, especially with much of being a relatively young man. Making this decision now potentially has him be the Supreme Leader for another 30 years if this system were to survive. One more on successor, and then we're going to go to the news about the Kurds. But Ali Larianjani, I think you've had dealings with him. Do you think he was ever a serious candidate to be Supreme Leader, or is he going to be like a power behind the throne? Power behind the throne. Yeah, power behind the throne. I think he's always been that kind of guy. And I think, you know, some people have talked about, you know, Rouhani as being that. I don't think that that's a likely outcome, especially right now. You could have maybe imagined that if the JCPOA had been implemented and if he had some window sales on that score. But I think it was always going to be somebody who is got at least minimal religious credentials and has got tight IRGC relations. And I think there are definitely other clerics that could potentially fill that that role but I think that's part of the reason why they may be focusing in on how much to vote so amazing CNN article posted last night that suggested that the CIA has been transferring weapons to the Kurds and that we're very interested in them I'm not sure what marching on Tehran or otherwise being in a position to, if not outright, take the regime, which seems unlikely, at least to supply an enormous distraction for the regime when it's up to so many other items, so many other things. What's your take on this? I was kind of surprised. I thought Mossad might do it. I was kind of surprised that the CIA, allegedly, we're not briefed, is doing it. Yeah, I was surprised, too. And I have to say, you know, people I know who are much more longtime, you know, Kurd watchers or people have deep relationship with the Kurds. They're still pretty skeptical that this is going to be terribly durable, not least because, you know, I think the Kurds have got some bad taste in their mouth about how things have have emerged in Syria. you know, things out. They emerged and worked out in Iraq, too. I think there's also some reason to be skeptical from a Turkish angle, right? That it's not clear, I think, to anyone that the Turks are going to be terribly, you know, positive on the idea of arming Kurds to go and, you know, break off pieces of territory up right around the Turkish border. So there are lots of reasons to be skeptical of this. I think, look, you could make an argument that if they are willing, arming them such that they can cause distraction and difficulty for the Iranian government right now is useful to broader U.S. war aims, potentially diverse resources and forces. It's worth noting though, right, this is not a ground war right now, right? This is an air war. So from the standpoint of whether or not this actually takes away Iranian resources, if it doesn't take away their ability to launch missiles at Israel, doesn't take away their ability to launch missiles or drones at energy infrastructure in the Gulf. So I'm a little skeptical that this is going to even necessarily have the impact that it might be billed as having. And I think whether or not it is a durable approach to the situation, I think one thing it does signal is that there is a strong willingness to entertain and support regime change and regime collapse, not just who is in charge of, who's the supreme leader who's in charge of tehran but also potentially try and fracture the country and and that actually that worries me pretty much as as much as anything else right now the the idea of of trying to create a fracture in a fail state in iran comes with tremendous risk we've seen in syria and other places too so uh i don't know i mean i i was surprised like you uh wasn't on my you know top 10 list of things that would happen but if it is in fact true i think it says a lot about what U.S. ambitions might be, and frankly, about our willingness to break an awful lot in Iran as a means of achieving what we're setting out to do. Well, sometimes I see people that are deeply skeptical of Israel say that that is one of their aims, a fractured country, maybe even in civil war, could possibly suit them. That's, wow, that's cynical, but maybe. Well, I mean, I'll be honest. I mean, I have heard not necessarily people in government, but I have heard Israeli strategic thinkers say a chaotic, disorganized, dismembered Iran is not one that is able to develop nuclear weapons or launch long range ballistic missiles at Israel. And so I don't think it's necessarily like the main objective of Israeli policymaking. But I think if they're facing two or three scenarios and one of them is a IRGC run state that is now furious about everything that's happened over the last couple of years or a chaotic broken apart of Iran. I mean, I don't think it's it is either crazy from an Israeli perspective or unlikely that they may prefer one to the other. And you know as I guess as we move on to a different topic here it worth noting just how many different ethnic groups there are within Iran So I assume there are many more others than the Kurds who were willing maybe to rise up at least to cause distractions I mean it always assumed that all the agents that the Israelis recruit are from all of these disaffected ethnic groups So I'd be surprised if the Mossad is not also in the game here somewhere. Yeah. And, you know, I think, you know, if you were attempting to make problems for central government Tehran, I think there is a little bit of logic there. The one thing I'll say, though, is while there are a lot of different ethnic groups, I mean, some of them are core parts of the Islamic Republic system. I mean, people have pointed out that, you know, the Azeri are an ethnic group, but they're also built into the fabric of the of the country as well. Right. So, you know, I think one concern I have is making making a leap of logic that just because there are different groups within a country, that means they're automatically going to be opposed to central government or be willing to join in into collapsing the system. And that simply may not be the case. And I think, you know, that the Kurds may be different than the Baluch, for instance, in the way in which they're looking at this and what their capabilities are and, you know, what are what Assad or anybody else's ability is to influence their decision making, too. So I don't think that we should look at Iran the same way we might have looked at Syria or we might have looked at Iraq. And I don't think that the fracture lines are nearly as exploitable. But, you know, again, that doesn't mean that, you know, from a from a certain way of looking at things, even if it's only a small contribution to a good outcome, you know, somebody might think, well, I'll take that and at least cause more headaches. Well, small contribution reminds me when I was in the NSC, the CIA would always say we're not the policy. We can support the policy. We'll be part of a larger plan. But don't look at us as the silver bullet to solve everything. OK, so let's let's let me ask you that we'll get to scenarios, I think, towards the end. But before we get to oil, what's your gut tell you on? let's say that we're done with some bombing very, very soon. And we've done all we can do to blow up the so-called instruments of regime repression, the besiege IRGC local, who knows. Do you think, what's your gut tell you? Do you think the Iranians are going to go back on the streets? I think it's possible, but I'll say, while we're seeing a lot of police stations and IRGC headquarters and similar be attacked, destroyed, You know, my understanding is that there are still armed besiege, you know, walking the streets. And I don't get the impression that they have backed down in the slightest. And frankly, you could make an argument that they have every more incentive to not even tolerate limited protest activity the way they did for the first couple of days of January. I mean, it's worth going back. You know, the ultimate repressive instincts of the Islamic Republic were on full display. Right. I mean, they killed tens of thousands of people. They didn't do that on day one, though. Right. They they they attempted to give some space for ventilation. And there were even statements that effect made by the Iranian president similar. Then when they thought things were getting a little too out of hand, they responded. My sense is that the Iranian government now responds on on moment one. And so I think this goes to a real question of what is the level of U.S. support? You and I certainly remember, you know, everything that went on in Iraq after the first Gulf War. You know, there is going to be some skepticism that when the U.S. says we've got your back, that that's going to be meaningfully represented by what we would actually do. And I think, yeah, if you're an Iranian protester and you're looking overhead as the seizure are bearing down on you, you might be a little bit nervous that the U.S. isn't going to be there. And I think that will all have an impact on what the Iranian population is going to do. So my guess, you know, you want my gut reaction. It's that they will be a little bit tentative until they have seen what actually is emerging. if they think they have an opportunity. Yeah, I think there are lots of people in Iran who would take the opportunity to get rid of the system. I mean, no doubt about it. But I think that they will want to be sure that they are going to at least have a chance of success and not be attacked in moment one. Yeah, I mean, we've definitely left the Syrian Kurds holding the bag at least twice and to say nothing of Afghanistan and Iraq. Okay. So were you now, Iran vowed before the war to, quote, regionalize the conflict if they were attacked. But you know what? I thought that ultimately they wouldn't. And if they did at all, it would just be oil infrastructure because I thought, why antagonize other states? But they did it and they did it boldly and they went after civilian targets as well. Were you surprised by that? And walk us through the rationale. Is it just to sort of, as we read, they hope to inspire the Gulf Arabs to call up Donald Trump and say, this has gotten too hard, you better stop? Yeah, I can't say I was surprised. I was maybe surprised a little on the timing, right? I could have imagined that the first couple of moments that the Iranian retaliation would be solely aimed at U.S. bases in those places and wouldn't immediately go to civilian infrastructure. But I can't say that I was shocked by the Iranian response or because, look, their perspective, in part because of the nature of the U.S. attack in the first instance or U.S.-Israeli attack and target the supreme leader, is that the system is under the most serious threat. And so one of the things that I've been thinking for a while is that security people inside of Iran probably thought that the previous Supreme Leader left way too much on the table and way too much on the field. Right. That, you know, think think back, you know, back to 2023 when, you know, Hamas unleashed the atrocities they did in October. You know, there were, I'm sure, people in Iran who said, well, you know, we didn't necessarily pick the day here, but we've got to do something here. and the Supreme Leader didn't. And then when the Hezbollah was attacked, you know, I'm sure there are people in Iran who said, we got to do something here. And then he didn't. And then when there was the exchange between, you know, Israel and Iran, you know, so when you add all those things up, there's been a lot of, I wouldn't say caution, but a little bit more reserve in the Iranian security response. And I think that they have been broadcasting as loudly as possible. We are not going to do that this time. And that's part of the reason why they wanted to make sure from moment one that everyone understood um this is a this is a chips to the center of the table kind of moment for us and to hope you know that that is you know bearing some sort of influence and if it doesn't then they want to try and at least make the pain so broad um and this is where straits or moos come in that um that the u.s has to take a note of it as opposed to just you know having a free hand so from that perspective you know i i kind of thought that the iranians were going to be as aggressive as they were. I wouldn't have necessarily picked a hotel in Dubai as the first place. But from the standpoint of trying to really upset and worry people, I think that they were broadcasting that that was their intention and that things are going to be different this time. Okay. So the other part of the Iranian response is, of course, to cause disruption in energy markets and oil originally rose i think it was eight percent the iranians have struck a refinery in saudi arabia to gas plants in cutter um causing cutter to halt lng production i think yeah what um so this was their plan all along rock the boat cause oil prices to go up to try and get the united states to back down or others to call the united states and back down uh anything to add to that before we get to Hormuz? Well, and to make sure that gas prices went up in the United States. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah. I mean, they are clearly trying to make sure that they get attention in the places they think are vulnerabilities. And yeah, I mean, you named all the main things. I would also say that there are lots of reports about tankers being attacked, even some drone activity that may not have sunk ships, but I'm sure has had a massive impact on ship captains and whether or not they're willing to transit ship owners, especially now that they don't have insurance coverage. All of that is definitely having an impact in terms of market dynamics and people's looking at it. Yeah. So, of course, Iran has called the straits, quote, effectively closed. I don't think there's been a traceable passing since Saturday night. Maersk and Hapbeg-Lloyd and all these shipping firms are saying we're not we're not letting our ships go through there. So we've been talking about it being sort of a de facto closure of the straits because insurance won't broker or won't cover you for going through it. And, you know, Trump was tweeting about that yesterday and trying to do terrorism risk insurance. But talk a little bit about this. We've sunk their Navy, apparently. I just read that we had a submarine sink another naval as another naval asset of the iranians but i've also heard it's pretty easy to mine the straits you've got fast boats you've got other smaller craft that could get out there um and that the united states doesn't have a great bunch of mine sweepers so talk a little bit about this for a minute and um and let's go from there yeah i mean look i i And again, as an analyst, you have to look back and you have to hand it to your adversary if they do something that is a bit clever. If I were six months ago trying to figure out how they would close the straits, I would have probably imagined more direct attacks on shipping, if not actual mining, as being necessary. But frankly, even just the threats and the impact that's had on insurance companies and shipping companies and ship captains, it's been pretty remarkable, actually. And it's preserved options. Now, it is a little funny to me that the Iranian reaction from the naval perspective wasn't at least to put the ships at sea. At the end of the day, an awful lot of their naval resources were sunk at the dock. and from an all-in perspective, that is not what I would have imagined the Iranian response would be. But look, as you said, they have at this point now, without having to put a single mine in the water, they have managed to have a fairly significant impact. It may be that that's their next step is to try and deploy some mines. I think that they are pretty sure that doing so will get those ships sunk. And so they may be thinking, you know, yeah, we can probably get some mines out there, but they won't survive that long and so forth. But I think what that more speaks to is the same reason why the Iranians haven't attacked a lot of oil and gas infrastructure, because they certainly could. They've done all the things you mentioned, but we haven't seen the kind of big epic attacks on Hopkake, for instance, that I would expect. So why not? But why not? It's because I think they're thinking that they're going to have a future and that they're going to have to live in that circumstance. And they know that such a response potentially results in the elimination of their own oil and gas infrastructure. So the Iranian risk here is they take an action and the United States destroys Karg Island. And that means the Iranian economy comes to a crashing halt in the future. Now, that goes to a real fundamental question of how long do the Iranians in charge of those military resources think that they have a future? We don't know that. And that means that all of these things are still potentially on the table. Gotcha. Smart. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more of our discussion with Richard Nephew. execution of bespoke strategies to mitigate business risk, drive growth, and navigate a complex geopolitical environment. With a bipartisan team and decades of experience, Beacon provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. Okay, so the Iranians have effectively closed the straits. And talk a little bit about, We'll come back in a second to whether the president can escort ships through the Straits of Fort Worth. But I want to go back to the rise in oil prices. People are rightly focused on China. It sounds like anywhere from 90 to 100 percent of Iran's oil goes to China. And that's something like 9 percent of their total Iran imports or oil imports. Tell me about the knock on effects What China going to do Is this going to hurt their economy in the medium term Or tell me your take Basically it all goes to the question of duration How long is this going on? Right now, there was enough oil on the water. There was enough excess supply. There were ships that were already laden with oil off the coast that we haven't seen dramatic effects right now. And I think that's reflected in the price. You know, a colleague of mine, you know, points to the fact that you would think, you know, given this is the big one that everyone's kind of been anticipating, you'd see an even higher price impact. But ultimately, the explanation is people still think this will be over sometime soon and that there won't be significant physical damage that's done. All that potentially changes if either physical damage is done or this is, you know, still an issue two weeks from now, three weeks from now or thereafter. or thereafter. If you have ships being sunk, if you have mines in the water, if you have a very long-term campaign, that's where you potentially see those sorts of spikes. And that's especially the case depending on what's actually hit, right? So, you know, you're exactly right. You know, the Iranian input to China is, you know, pretty high for Iran, but it's not very high for China. They could probably survive Iran going away. But now if you're going to add to that Saudi going away, right? And you're adding that, you know, Kuwaiti, et cetera. And so that's what we're starting to see. We're also starting to see a impact in terms of production sites. So, you know, there's reports that we're starting to see shut-ins or that we will soon see shut-ins. Well, that has a longer term impact. If you start cutting off production, that has an impact in terms of the oil fields themselves. It has an impact in terms of how long it takes them to bring on back online um that's absolutely happening on the gas side too so from that standpoint you know right now people can say okay you know 96 hours and we can we can manage this sort of thing but two weeks from now um when you've had production cuts when you've had um you know a significant impact on the supplies the reserves the inventories the oil that was on the water all going away you basically take it away all the fat and the moment you've taken away the fat that's could see much more significant oil price increases, both in terms of oil and in terms of gas. So when you did the Iran file, of course, one of the things that we all worked on, of course, through different administrations was to warn insurance companies not to get out there and cover Iranian tankers, know your customer, the state sponsors of terrorism and the rest. I don't know if this gives you, do you have any insight on what the president's trying to do by terrorism risk insurance? Do you think that's going to work through DFC? Or is this just some workaround that's not really going to succeed? Yeah, I'm a little skeptical until we start to see some actual practical, you know, plans on the table here. I mean, you know, right now, we effectively have a tweet. You know, I don't know that there has been a, you know, formal document laying out, you know, who's being covered and for what. And frankly, some people have pointed out as they're looking at this. So is the U.S. going to provide essentially risk insurance that's going to have a primary beneficiary being China? Is that the other thing we're about to do? So there's some really interesting questions into actually how that'll be executed, who will be allowed to be a participant in it, how that all work. And, you know, that immediately has an impact on the credibility and the durability of this. Also, So, you know, what are we talking about in terms of amounts? Right. You know, if if the amount of money that is going to be put down in terms of insurance is not sufficient to actually make captains being willing to make that risk and shippers to make that risk, you know, concerning all the potential downsides. Because, again, a ship gets hit by a missile and starts leaking oil throughout the Persian Gulf. That's a long-term durable problem that has now been created. All that comes back to a question of you can maybe provide some amount of insurance coverage, but you can't actually prevent the bad outcomes that insurance would just help ameliorate. And so you might still have ship owners and shipping companies and similar just say, pass. Pass. I'm not doing this right now. at least at current prices. And that's where we come back to a real fundamental question of, yeah, probably someone would do some of these things at a higher price point, but then that price point gets passed on to consumers. And all the bads come from that. Yeah, I hear you. Okay. So the president says he's going to take a series of actions to make sure oil prices stay low. What does that mean? Does that mean tapping the strategic petroleum reserve? Does it mean waiving different ethanol standards? That doesn't sound like it's going to be much of a help, but we've gotten that question. What can he do before we get to escorting tankers through the Straits of Hormuz? Can you think of anything else he can do? He's got to go to Congress for relief on the gas tax. What do you think? What do you think he can do? Well, those are all the ones. And I've asked my colleagues. There's nothing else. There's nothing else. And I got to admit, every time I ask a colleague about this, they make a kind of hesitant laugh go? I don't know. I think there's a lot of head scratching at this point as to what's available. I think tax relief is potentially the one potential option there. I think it's all about trying to keep supply in. It's certainly not going to come from pushing for new investment, new production. One of the questions I asked my colleagues a little bit ago was, what would it take for you to see massive new investments and how long would it take those investments to come online? And the answer is pretty straightforward. It would take higher prices over a longer period of time and you're not seeing any new investment or new production for quite some while. So this right now is really much more about probably demand destruction more than anything. And so, I mean, the real question that I think the president's going to have to confront is, are you telling Americans not to drive? Are we back to the kinds of shocks that we've had in the past? But this all feeds back where we started this conversation about why I think there's a possibility of a ceasefire because the longer this lingers the longer this is in place the decision points he's going to come across are much worse well no i agree there'll be a ceasefire i just didn't know it would be soon i i kind of believe they want to but who knows how far we are down the target list exactly all right so um what about um the straits of four moves is it true Well, first, OPEC. Sorry, that's what I was grappling with. They made a modest increase in supply. But is it that Saudi and everyone else is also hemmed in by the Straits of Hormuz? So OPEC increases don't matter? Yeah, well, and also the increase was pretty de minimis. And so, I mean, yeah, all those things go back to, I think, if anything, it was an attempt at a market signal. But it really, as far as I am aware, it's not really struck anybody as a durable or serious way of actually responding to this problem. Now, I know you're not an admiral, but tell me, I'm sure you've studied this issue for years. Tell me a little bit about the practicality of the U.S. Navy escorting tankers through this very narrow 21 mile, but only two miles worth of navigable channel through the Straits of Hormuz. Is this practical? Well, so I think, you know, let's start with a base concept. You know, everyone's always going back. Well, we did this in the late 80s. No reason why I couldn't do it now. But as people kind of pointed out, the U.S. wasn't an active combatant during that time frame. And so the nature of our escort duty was if you hit a U.S. ship, we will be an active combatant and people should avoid that. And then when eventually we did become an active combatant, we were able to destroy a significant part of the Iranian Navy and oil refineries or oil platforms and similar. And so we demonstrated the value of that deterrence thereafter. after, but it all started with, we are not a combatant. That's not the case now, right? And so you're basically saying you're going to have US ships escorting while we are potentially under fire ourselves. So there's already a vulnerability that we potentially have. And as you said, not an admiral here, but my understanding is that one of the reasons why a lot of our ships are right now operating in the Gulf of Montmartre instead is because of the potential risk of taking you know, fire from Iranian batteries on the eastern side of the Gulf. And, you know, whether or not drone attacks, whether or not missile attacks on U.S. ships becomes that much more serious, you know, once they're in the straits. So, I mean, could we potentially do this, perhaps? What does that actually look like practically? And what are the risk profile of doing? So right now, I'm a little bit more skeptical. And the last thing I'll say, too, of course, is, you know, Look, you can imagine, you know, a week from now when we believe that we have managed to take out an even larger number of Iranian missile launchers and similar that we think we've suppressed enough of their ability to fire on us from from the shoreline that we're OK. But but there is still going to be significant risk there. And that that's part of the reason why you might still see captains, you know, and insurance companies and others saying, yeah, OK, we'll be interested in this. But let's see you do it a few times before we actually get ourselves invested in this. Yeah, everybody get comfortable at anchor. Why haven't the Iranians this time, I think they did in June 2025, why haven't they targeted any of the Israeli energy facilities? So it's interesting. I think the logic could be the same as why they may not have targeted Gulf Arab state facilities. Because Israel is going to go hit Karg Island. They'll hit Karg Island, and then that solves that problem. Yeah, I see. All right. Brilliant. OK, let's get a little bit into first of all, before you mentioned that we're hunting, of course, launchers, we're hunting ballistic missiles. What other military targets? I mean, it's been described to me. That's a it's a lot of work, but it can be done over time to hunt these targets. And then I want to ask you about the nuclear targets. Yeah. I mean, so, you know, we're hearing that they in the first instance were hitting production sites, which makes sense, and that they've been going after the launchers and potential storage locations similar. The problem that we've got is that the Iranians are aware of that. And so a lot of these are in deeply buried bunkers that are really hard to hit. And so, you know, I think that doesn't mean that we can't attack entrance points. Right. I mean, if you can't go back in to go get another missile to drive back out and launch, that makes things harder. Right. You can try and close the exits that missiles potentially use from underground missile bases. So you can make it harder for them to engage in launches, even if they still have a supply of missiles. And if they don't necessarily have the ability to produce more of them. That's I think as far as I understand it, that is been a major part of the target set. in addition to suppressing air defenses, you know, we, speaking of CARG, there were reports about, you know, smoke, you know, coming up around CARG, but it sounds like that that is because the U.S. attacked air defense systems there, you know, allowing us to potentially attack the site itself more freely in the future. And I think that there is also, you know, again, clearly been attacks on the Navy and some of the conventional, you know, Army forces as well, you know, might have been, taking place, given the nature of the kinds of airplanes that have been involved in the strikes thus far. Okay, great. So you're a huge next nuclear expert as well. You know, I haven't been as offended by people saying that we were going to prosecute some more nuclear targets if they were, quote, obliterated, because I think Trump told the Israelis in June to stop after 12 days. And I know they had a larger target list. There's probably so many different militarization R&D labs and the rest. So here's my target list. My target list is finish off any weaponization labs. Definitely go after Pickaxe Mountain. I want to hear what you have to say about that and why it wasn't hit last time. I think it's supposed to be a newly even more deeper centrifuge hall. and then maybe hit the other sites, which I think we've already done at Natanz. I don't know if we're aiming for the missing phantom 400 kilograms of HEU. What do you think about the nuclear target set? Well, look, I mean, as you said, I mean, you know, there are definitely some targets that have been hit. I mean, there's reports of going after some of the facilities that might have been involved with weaponization, you know, that had been rebuilt and similar. some of those labs and network, you know, places like Parchin and, you know, outside of Tehran and similar. But you put your finger on part of our problem here, which is the Iranians have some facilities that are much more deeply buried and therefore much more difficult for us to hit, that the mop doesn't solve, right? And Pick Act Mountain is at the top of that list, but coming potentially, you know, in close behind is the tunnel system at Esfahan, which is where Iran we believe is storing the majority of that 400-odd kilograms to 60%. And- Are they storing it or is it buried Do you happen to know Well so this is almost a terminological problem They were they were storing it there They then they the Iranians then filled in the entrances with dirt to try and reduce the risk to the material that is stored there and possibly also make it harder for ground incursions and similar similar to to try and deal with it And so is it buried in that it is a resource that they have hidden so that they can retrieve later? Or are they doing something with that material inside those tunnels at Espa Hunt at Pickack Mountain? And this is the problem we have with the IA not having been and we're not having international inspectors. Now, people in the intelligence community might say, we know exactly what's going on with that material. Richard, you're panicking over nothing. But my literal anxiety, the thing that is keeping me up at night is the idea that the Iranians have got multiple weapons worth of HEU that they could potentially use in its current form, and if they don't enrich but could potentially enrich further, that they could be doing all sorts of stuff, including turning into uranium metal for fabrication into a crude nuclear device. And, you know, there was all this talk back in June that we killed all the scientists that are associated weaponization. So everything's fine now. But, you know, that is a much bigger problem. If you're talking about sophisticated missile deliverable warheads, that is not the issue. If you're dealing with a crude device, I am pretty confident that the Iranian scientific community still has in place people who could, you know, create a trinity or a hiroshima uh you know type type weapon system and that does not require a missile delivery uh could involve a boat or a truck or something similar it certainly could be a demonstration test that they could do that's all that could be happening yeah yeah and all that could be happening you know at those tunnels that us behind or a pickaxe which which we can't which we can't penetrate so far as i understand oh god well we need to figure out if pickaxe is mob proof real quick I've read about this so the crude nuclear device you would take the 60% HEU, take it out in the desert figure out a way to blow it up and declare yourself a nuclear power? Yep. Let's, as we begin to wrap up here go through some possible scenarios I'll name five and you can edit these as you see fit one is total collapse we're greeted with flowers and a democracy or something representative breaks out gradual collapse i don't think people think about this enough as i understand it it took the more than you know it was a year before between protests beginning and his actual collapse some sort of civil war so this is the chaos situation the fourth one as we work down the spectrum is regime alteration. So the Venezuela option, there's a new boss, but we can manipulate or they cooperate with us a lot more than they do now. Trump's even said that's a win for him. You know, he's not into democracy. He's into who can I find to work with? And then finally, is the regime stays the same old boss, new boss, same as the old boss. Why don't you react to that? yeah i mean look if i'm picking what i think are the most likely i i think you know your last one new boss old boss still has to be in the running as as a most likely scenario i think the only thing i'll say is that could have a sub variant which is um the rgc is just that much more in charge right and and this always gets people to say well rgc was in charge beforehand and the answer is honestly no they weren't they they were a significant power center that has been expanding it's control over huge parts of the system over the course of the last decade, in part as a reaction to response to sanctions and some of the damage that's done to the economic class in the country. But that essentially doesn't mean that they had their own way. They had to deal with other political forces. And you could imagine much to Bahamaneh saying basically, yeah, IRGC, go do your thing, and being a little bit more of a figurehead as opposed to the central control over a whole system. I think that we are not estimating highly enough the Civil War chaos option that you spoke to. I think that is very, very real. And it certainly could be even potentially an objective, but I think it can also just simply come from the fact that, you know, infrastructure collapse is something that's already underway. And in that scenario, you have massive refugee flows. You've got a lot of people starting to run for the border in Turkey. You know, you have got arms potentially coming in. You have IRGC commanders with delegated authority doing their own thing. There's a greater likelihood of that than I think we thought was really, really serious. And then I think, you know, the last scenario that I think is more likely than not, I can absolutely see a regime change scenario that's more positive. that you see the system collapse. It's not quite the total collapse. And we're agreeing with flowers six months into this, because I think what it still looks like is a city by city, territory by territory, province by province. People are thrown at the IRI and have declared that they are no longer being governed by the Islamic Republic. But that doesn't necessarily lend itself to stability. And so what that feels like to me is a positive scenario, but that is still incredibly vulnerable and where you've got risk of unrepentant elements still coming in. Candidly, very similar to what happened with Iraq. And it's just sort of kind of foot stomping this point. It was the IRGC that was in charge of building all those IEDs that were maiming our people in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's not like they've forgotten how to do that. And so the risk, even in a positive scenario, even assume you're number one, is that the flowers eventually give way to IRGC people engaging in terrorist attacks on a continued basis. All right. So I think you and I are in agreement. The new boss, same as the old boss, is the most likely. It's my base case. Yeah. Do you have a percentage you want to put on that? Percentage is always rough, but I'll give you one. I'll give you one. So look, if I had to really be pinned down, I would say 40 percent. And then I would say Civil War chances at this point would be somewhere in the 25 to 30 percent. And then the positive scenario, but with a real nasty sting in the tail, give me another 25, 30 percent. So I think the old boss, new boss thing, though, is also predicated on this being the end of a phase in conflict. Because ultimately, I will say, I think that what the protests in January showed is we are heading towards regime collapse. Your gradual scenario would have been my best case before bombs started dropping over the weekend. I think that now with bombs dropping, it just raises the possibility of some of these alternative ones starting to emerge. Well, that's interesting because they rally to the because the security forces get more hardcore because it's existential. Yeah, because because they are then in a position where they are not getting the same kinds of pressures on reform and, you know, allow protesters to come back out. They're not getting the same demand signals from, you know, their their mom or their grandma about, you know, how can you go out and wear that uniform when what happened to your sister, what happened to your brother, that sort of thing. All those sorts of regime instabilities that otherwise could have been present in the system, I think, get a little occluded by what's happening. And I'll say this bluntly. If the president had asked me on the first of February, what should I do going forward? My recommendation would have been, OK, look, we've now seen that regime collapse and regime change is something that we can potentially envision. It's a possibility now. For years, it wasn't. So what do we do about that? How do we get that? And that comes from, in my opinion, more bottom up pressure than what we're doing right now. So speaking of bottom up pressure. So when we think about the opposition, people have said, well, on the one hand, it's every class and creed. You need widespread economic dissatisfaction. But what they're missing is an opposition leader. and what they really need is some sort of schism in the regime, be it here three cleavage points. I want to see if you agree with them and based on your knowledge of the IRGC and the security state. I guess one would be the army, the regular army versus the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the guardians, the regime. Maybe it's within the IRGC, those who enjoy the spoils and those are versus the have nots. And then maybe there's another one, I don't know yet, generational or something like that. Do you have a view on this question? Yeah, I think to me it's a generational one combined with parts of the security services that have not been benefiting from it and are now getting all the bad pushing back. So it's a combination of your two and three. But ultimately what it comes down to is the Iranian economy was heading towards some kind of collapse, right? And not just the economy, but when you broaden that out, you're including the lack of water in Tehran. The governance system was really starting to fray. People had just, again, had enough of the social controls and similar. All of that combined with the generational element combined with a breakdown in any of the security services ability to explain why this is all for the better good. Right. Why this is something that that they should still continue to have the disproportionate advantages. All of those are cleavages that were certainly present in these on a public for years. But then all got magnified when the when the security people killed 30,000 people. OK, last question. Let's go through. And we've touched on a couple of these. If you could outline the worst case scenarios, here we are in a huge combat air power situation. and we get the questions a lot of what's going to happen. So civil wars on the list, great loss of American life, the oil prices. Tell me some more. We lose an embassy. There's a terrorist attack. Tell me some of your worst case scenarios. It doesn't have to be the end game per se, but how about bad things that could happen? Yeah, I mean, those are definitely on my list. Then add some sort of mass drone attack on OpCake. some mass drone attack on, you know, Kuttery LNG facilities that, you know, right now probably had to shut in and shut down because they were starting to, you know, overfill, right? You can't fill these things too much. And so that's part of the reason why shutdown took place. So, but now add to that physical damage, right? That actually makes it impossible for those facilities to just come back online when what's going on in the straits has taken place. Nuclear weapon test. I do not think it is implausible that the Iranians would attempt to fabricate those crude devices in Tasman. And, you know, that doesn't mean that they all of a sudden have the ability to, you know, attack U.S. forces with it. But, you know, again, in a scenario in which they have demonstrated that, that is a capacity that doesn't go away. But related to that, we lose control of that nuclear material in a civil war and collapse scenario, right? So, you know, we have the possibility of onward proliferation coming just as dangerous as what we ever hypothesized with the collapse of the Soviet Union or, you know, collapse of North Korea or similar. So the proliferation follow on as well. And then I think that the last big one you can imagine is, you know, some sort of mass attack on on U.S. naval forces, you know, attacks on the carriers or something similar that that does result in significant loss of American life. I think that's plausible, just as plausible as a massive drone attack, you know, hitting a shopping mall in UAE or something similar. you know the mass loss of life from one of these big fixed you know potentially pretty vulnerable targets um is a is definitely in that well especially scenario yeah yeah if we're wasting not wasting but if we're using too many interceptors on drones that's a bad strategy for us richard nephew that was fantastic a tour de force thank you so much for joining us and we're going to have you back really soon that was great my pleasure thanks for having me That was Richard Nephew. I'm Michael Allen. Please join us next week for another episode of NatSec Matters. NatSec Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with assistance from Ashley Berry. NatSec Matters is a production of Beacon Global Strategies.