The third Gulf war: one week on

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The economist.

1:07

Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host, Rosie Blore. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shifting shaping your world. Today. And for the second time this week, we're devoting the whole show to the conflict in the Middle East. Later in the show, we'll speak to defence editor Shashank Joshi about how long Gulf states can keep up the defence of their countries. And as it's Friday, our obituary's editor will look back at the complicated life of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the first hours of this conflict. But first, after a week pounding Iran from the air, there's no sign that America and Israel are letting up. Overnight, America's Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth announced what he referred to as a dramatic surge coming in firepower.

1:14

Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation.

2:17

Donald Trump has repeated calls for the regime to lay down its weapons and for Iranians to take over their country. I'm joined by two of the paper's editors to look back at a momentous week. Josie Delap is our Middle east editor. Ed Carr is the deputy editor of the Economist. Hello to you both.

2:25

Morning, Rosie.

2:44

Hi, Rosie, Ed, Josie, we're going to come onto this heck of a week in a minute. Just quickly tell me your views on what's happened overnight.

2:45

Well, a couple of things have struck me. First of all, is Trump insisting that he actually should have a role in joining the very, you know, 88 strong Council of Ayatollahs to decide who's the next supreme leader in Iran. Then also, interesting move on the oil markets with the treasury waiving temporarily the sanctions that prevented India from buying Russian world clear attempt to try and massage down the price there. And Then the third thing that struck me was Trump endorsing the idea of Kurdish fighters going in in order to start attacking Iran and carving out something there. And I think he will come onto that. I think that's quite a significant move and potentially quite a dangerous one, actually.

2:54

Yeah. I mean, I agree with Ed that the Kurdish involvement is a sign of the war ramping up, which we've also seen from American statements about how something big is coming. And meanwhile, we're seeing quite a lot of movement on the northern border of Israel with Lebanon in terms of Israel escalating its attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

3:34

Ed, do you think we're any clearer at the end of this week what the point of this war is?

3:55

Well, I think the thing that strikes me even more strongly is a sort of the two faces of it. One face is the extraordinary firepower and operational efficiency, if I can use a rather sort of bland word for something that's really quite terrifying, the efficiency of the American and Israeli forces. They are able to conduct operations at an extraordinary level. But on the other, in the United States, vagueness about what this is for. And war, unlike politics, having more than one reason to go to war is not necessarily better than having just one reason. And America has, by my count, five reasons for going to war. There's a nuclear program, there's the missile program and how that extends across the region. There's the violence used by the regime against its people, and there's a regime change itself. And I think there's also a kind of reckoning of history. Trump, in his eight minute video on the night the attack started, went all the way back to the hostage crisis. Jimmy Carter, in order to say so. There's a kind of historic settling, of course, here, and each of those reasons sort of takes on a life of its own. And when you're wielding a machine of the power and devast of the American armed forces, you have a responsibility to ensure that it's for a purpose. Because if you don't have a reason, you don't know how much sacrifice to impose on your own people and on the enemy. So it is at once a war that clearly Israel and America are winning. Absolutely. But it's not also clear what winning means.

4:02

Josie, how resilient do you think the Iranian regime is at this point?

5:35

Probably more than the Americans would like to think. They have killed a lot of the top leadership, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. But this is something that the Iranians were prepared for. Khamenei had put succession plans in place. And I think what is important to remember about the Iranian regime is it is a deep, wide regime. It's not one that is headed by one man. And when you decapitate the regime, suddenly it crumbles and something new arises in its place. And that is true both because you have organizations like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, hundreds of thousands of fairly ideologically committed people. They were fully part of the bloody repression of the protests. They have everything to lose at this point. So at the moment, we haven't seen widespread defections. We haven't seen huge numbers of people refusing to turn up for work, as it were. And that was one of the things in the run up to the revolution in 1979 that you began to see. You saw the army refusing to fire on its fellow citizens, and that wasn't what you saw in January, and you are not seeing it in large numbers now. So I think right now, although the country is being pounded, the targets are being taken out at a steady rate by the Israelis and the Americans, you haven't seen any widespread collapse of the regime. Now, that's not to say it couldn't happen, but it's just not what we have seen yet.

5:41

Yeah. What Josie says makes me think of another irony of this war, which is before the bombing started and after that horrific shooting of thousands, possibly tens of thousands of citizens by the regime, our reporting had been that the regime had never been so unpopular or so frail that actually Khamenei was an old man who was going to die at some point in the next few years. The transition to a new leader was a very difficult moment for the regime. It could actually have led either to the collapse or to a moderation of the regime. Just leaving it to fall was a perfectly reasonable policy. So if you wanted regime change, it really doesn't, to my mind, make sense to go in and try and precipitate something that's going to happen. Because as Josie said, it's just as possible possible that for one reason and another, actually, you stop that process happening and the regime clings on. And I think mere survival at this point is a kind of victory for the regime.

7:24

A week ago last Friday, the Economist was arguing that the US And Israel shouldn't bomb Iran. We're in a very different situation now. So where do we go next? Should they continue bombing or should they stop editing?

8:20

Well, we had a long debate about this when we were sitting down to write the editorial this week. And we concluded in the end that once you've started, you Kind of need to finish at least one aspect of this, and the aspect that we think you have to finish is degrading Iran's missile batteries. Because if there was an argument for why to go to war now rather than later, it was that intelligence showed that Iran was building up its missile capabilities really quite fast after the war of June last year. And there is a kind of logic that says if Iran has offensive missile capabilities, then if you do need to attack its nuclear program again because it's reconstituted that, then it gets much harder. So I think there is a kind of argument there for why you might go, and that leads to conclusion, which is, okay, well, let's just try and destroy their ability to make missiles and to set that back. But this whole thing is based on what I think was a strategic error right at the beginning of Trump's first term, which was to go out of the nuclear agreement. At that point, you only had a sort of offensive ability to deal with Iran's nuclear ability. And then you bomb it. In June last year, the threat returns again. And even after this campaign, it may be that a new Iranian leader says, I'm going to surrender this program and you get sanctions lifted. But equally, it may be that a new leader says, you know what? North Korea has not been bombed and that's the way we should go. And at that point, what do you do you have to bomb them again? Well, how many times can you go back and bomb Iran every two years? I think it's a policy that doesn't really add up to me. In the end, the only way you deal with Iran's nuclear program is with Iran's agreement. And you're trying to bomb this country into agreeing something. Well, that might work, but you might bomb it into resistance.

8:36

So what do you think we're going to see next? And how could it end? Ed?

10:24

Yeah.

10:29

What I hope is that Iran gets a new future because it's a wonderful country that deserves that. And the people, I think, have been inspiring. The culture is incredible. We have a piece this week about Iranian cinema. I've been watching Iranian films. They're just amazing. It is an amazing country. It deserves much better than it has. That's what I want. What I fear is sort of one of two outcomes. One is the regime survives, as we said before. But the other, and this comes to the Kurdish point, Iran has got these large ethnic minorities. Only 60% of the population is Persian. And we've seen in the Arab Spring where countries fell apart and came into ethnic conflict and civil war that countries can disintegrate. And that's long been a big fear of Iran and of the Persian empire. And if a country of 90 million people starts to descend into violence, that is my greatest fear.

10:30

Josie?

11:21

Yes. I mean, as Ed said, what you would want to see is a new start for Iran, a move away from the autocratic theocracy that has dominated for the last four decades. I don't think that's likely. I think more likely is even as America and Israel continue to take out large swathes of the Iranian leadership, we see a sufficiently large hardline, a contingent left in place that seizes control because there has been some kind of rally round the flag effect. Because as the war goes on, you continue to see appalling casualties like the bombing of the school in southern Iran, because, as Ed said, you see those ethnic divisions becoming more and more pertinent in Iran. You see the unrest and the consequences of this unrest spreading further around the region. So, you know, you have an Iran that has seen that it can bomb its neighbors and as a sort of wounded state, continues to behave in that way. So my fear is that you see a future that is both for Iran and Iranians as a country and for the Middle east as a whole is a lot bleaker than it was a week ago.

11:22

Josie. Ed, thank you very much.

12:34

Thanks, Josie.

12:37

Thank you, Rosie.

12:38

And you can hear more from Ed and of course, much more on Iran on Checks and Balance, our weekly U.S. politics show, which is out later today for subscribers. We've talked about the political strategy, or lack of it, but what of the military sustainability of this conflict? In the first days of the war, Iran fired hundreds and hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other Arab states. Most of these were apparently intercepted. But that is putting a huge strain on stocks of these crucial interceptor missiles.

12:39

If you think about the first Gulf War in 1991, Saddam Hussein fired 42 missiles at Israel and 46 missiles at Saudi Arabia. By modern standards, that is a light sprinkling.

13:19

Shashank Joshi is our defence editor.

13:35

The last three decades have completely changed the missile landscape. Air defence is now really fundamental to preparedness.

13:38

And are the countries swept up in this conflict prepared?

13:47

Well, to a surprising degree, yes, they are. Actually. Israel almost goes without saying, has some of the world's most advanced and exhaustive air defences at every level. Many people will have heard of Iron Dome, that's for short range rockets, but of course there's all kinds of other systems, like David Sling, the Arrow system, which intercepts missiles at Very, very high altitudes, some of them up in space. But if you look at the Gulf Arab states, the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, they actually have a huge number of air defence assets themselves. Orbit Oman have the Patriot system which is one of the American made air defence interceptors. Many of them also have the Thaad interceptor. That's another American made system. It's a terminal high altitude air defence system and those are both capable of taking out very, very fast incoming ballistic missiles. Now I did some of the maths earlier today actually I was interest did how does this compare to European members of NATO? And while there are more air defence batteries in European NATO, if you look at it on a per capita and a square kilometre density basis, the Gulf Arab states are much better covered than Europeans. So in a great many ways you'd be surprised how well prepared these countries are even if the systems are not always integrated with each other as well as they could be.

13:51

But stocks don't last forever, so how long can they go on?

15:09

That's the critical question. Now I don't know how many interceptor missiles these countries had to begin with. I think based on public documents the United Arab Emirates, the UAE may have ordered somewhere in the region of 1000 PAC3 interceptors which are some of the most modern types plus some older variants over the last 15 years. They may also have got some more during the course of the conflict from America. But let's look at how many missiles they have faced Iran as of a day ago. The numbers have changed now probably fired about 400 ballistic missiles at Arab countries. Saudi Arabia doesn't publish numbers, we just don't know. Let's say it's 400. The typical way you would deal with these would be to fire two interceptors per incoming missile to be reasonably confident of an interception. If that's the case, you would estimate that Arab countries have fired at least 800 interceptor missiles over the course of the first few days of this conflict, which is a significant proportion of their pre war stocks and it is a significant proportion of annual production of these things. So just to give you a sense of this, if you look at production of PAC3 interceptors which are fired from Patriots, those are about 600 interceptors per year. The hope is to scale that up to 2,000 over the next seven years. But it's about 600 now. And so you can see that's not very much fad production. And Thaad is even more capable than Patriot. That Production is about 96 per year. The aim is to scale it up to 400. But right now it's well below that. So the short answer is we are burning through a huge proportion of annual production every few days in the current conflict and that cannot be sustainable.

15:14

So how long have we got?

16:53

If Iran continued to fire ballistic missiles at the same rate it did in the first day or two of this conflict, we would have a crisis very quick in under a week. The good news, Rosie, is that Iran has not been able to keep up that rate of fire. In fact, we had a press conference from General Dan Kaine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, just a couple of days ago, this was on Wednesday. And what he said was that Iran's theater ballistic missile launches were down about 86% from the first day of the conflict and they were down about 23% between Tuesday and Wednesday alone.

16:56

As a result of this, CENTCOM is now shifting in day four already from large deliberate strike packages using standoff munitions at range outside an enemy's ability to shoot at us now into stand in precision strikes overhead.

17:35

Iran.

17:54

Iran was thought to have about 2,000, 2,500 ballistic missiles by the beginning of this campaign, having rebuilt some of its Stockpile since that 12 day conflict with Israel last year. That's of all ranges capable of hitting Saudi Arabia, the uae, the Gulf states, but also capable of striking Israel at longer ranges. And of course on Wednesday we also saw launches as far afield as Turkey and we've also seen some attacks on Cyprus. So this is a lot of missiles. That means if they conserve the rate of launch, they could go on like this for weeks, waiting for air defence interceptors, stockpiles to be depleted, at which point they can then try to overwhelm those defences with much bigger salvos of missiles. But my gut feeling is that Iran really is struggling to launch missiles. You know, an Iranian missile launching crew out in the field has a very short lifespan. I would say it's one of those jobs you really don't want to have, like Supreme Leader designate. It's one of those jobs that comes with a very high likelihood of imminent violent death. But of course, what I will say, it's not just ballistic missiles that are the problem. Iran is also firing drones. Shahed136 drones. Rosie, you and I have talked about these many times in the context of Ukraine and you don't want to be spending your Patriot interceptors on these relatively crude drones. You want to be firing at them with cheaper systems. And to some degree the Gulf states can do that, but they're also struggling with that Low level interception problem and that will also tend to absorb some of these Gulf interceptors. So what's the short answer to all of this? We don't know when they run out, they say they are not running out, but then you would expect them to say that. I think if this goes on for more than sort of 10, 12 days, you will have to see rationing of where these things are used and you will see more Iranian missiles get through.

17:55

So what happens to the defence for those countries once the stocks run out or start to run out?

19:49

We've already seen Iran has scored some hits. It has struck the US Consulate in Dubai or its vicinity. It struck a US mission in Riyadh. We've seen attacks on American radars in Qatar and we've seen six American troops killed, not all of those with ballistic missiles. What happens if you don't have enough interceptors is that those sorts of incidents go up. You will see also, I think, the business model, the political model of the Gulf states in further turmoil. And that will be a really difficult knock to the ethos, to the identity of these small, relatively fragile states that just don't have very much strategic depth.

19:56

And Shashank, this interceptor crunch that you talk about sounds like it has lessons beyond the Middle east for conflict in future and preparedness for that.

20:38

It has immediate consequences. You know, Ukraine has had an interceptor crunch for years. That is why I told you air defense crews like to fire two interceptors at an incoming missile at times and places in Ukraine, they have to ration that to fire one, which of course means there's a much higher probability of missiles getting through. They also have to ration their Patriot systems. So they have to choose do I defend my cities, do I defend my frontline troops, do I defend my energy grid? Those are the decisions that the Gulf Arab states may have to make in due course. They are also decisions that Europeans would have to make if a war were to break out today, because we have neglected those defences for so long. But the final thing to note, Rosie, is that the decisions being made today will have profound consequences for the stockpiles available to the United States and its allies in other parts of the world. This will mean a potential crunch for those American forces in the Pacific who may be denuded of air defense missiles. If this campaign goes on for a lot longer, this will mean a crunch for Europeans who have been trying to buy air defence interceptors to give to Ukraine. The Germans recently had a request, turned down these decisions. The conflict today will have knock on effects on production of interceptors and the stocks available for years to come.

20:48

Shashank, thank you very much.

22:04

Thank you for having me, Rosie.

22:06

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22:58

Down the years Ali Khamenei found plenty of reasons to hate the West.

23:42

Ann Ro is the Economist, the of Obituary's editor.

23:50

First of all, there was the west support for the Shah who was put into power, really by the CIA with British support. And as long as the Shah was there he protested against it as soon as he was old enough, having been fired up at the age of 13 by an Islamic scholar who visited and proposed an Islamic state and retailed the benefits of one. After that he was a devoted supporter of the idea of an Islamic republic and he went to prison six times under the Shah. He was tortured there, he was kept in isolation, and when he became the Supreme Leader himself, he found that he was already plainly in the sights of the Americans. This didn't particularly daunt him. He thought martyrdom would be sweet. Iran had divine right on its side and he felt this was absolutely true of himself. The west, on the other hand, he viewed as completely corrupt. He didn't really want any dealings with was only his own heroic flexibility, he said, that enabled Iran to strike a nuclear deal with America in 2015. When Covid came, he also refused to let Western vaccines into Iran because he believed that they would bring the virus in with them. The nuclear talks that were going on as the war broke out were ones in which he had no trust at all that America would grant Islam the right to have nuclear power. It seemed to him that America's only aim in the talks was to ensure that Iran had no nuclear power at all. And what was the point of being an independent nation if you could not have the sort of power you wanted? His position as supreme leader of Iran seemed assured, but in fact, it had been anything but. His background was humble. He was brought up in extreme poverty in a single room and a damp basement with several siblings. Sometimes they only had bread and raisins to eat for supper. But from the age of four, he was immersed in Islamic studies. He was interested in many other things. In fact, he was a great reader of European literature. His favorite book was Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. He enjoyed music, not necessarily Islamic music, but he enjoyed Western music. And his mother would read the poet Hafiz to him. So his interests were broad. But from a very young age, he was completely submerged in Islamic studies, eventually going to Kum, the sacred city where the most important Islamic teachers were found. And he worked for many years as a humble cleric, never rising to the position of a proper jurist. And so when the supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini, after his death, tried to maneuver him into the position of supreme leader, he really didn't want it. He thought it was not his proper place. And indeed, they could only convince him that it was by, first of all, giving him the title of ayatollah almost overnight and then declaring that he had divine authority. And he became, therefore, very suddenly, a man possessed of divine power. And no sooner had he put on the black cap of a direct descendant of Muhammad, then he started issuing fatwas, ruling by decree. And you could argue that his character had actually changed from humility to absolute confidence in his own authority. It appeared that this humble cleric had inherited the earth. But his exercise of power over the years gradually led his subjects to loathe him and to rise up in protest against him multiple times, and most astonishingly in January this year, when they protested against economic struggle particularly. But they laid it at his feet, where he would have said the reason for their problems was American sanctions. So he had absolutely no sympathy with these protesters, no desire whatever to concede. He had always wanted to keep to his own path. And that was reinforced by an assassination attempt against him in 1981 when his right arm was paralyzed. And he always said he didn't need that arm. As long as his brain and his tongue were working, he could keep control of the country. It did look for a while as though he could not possibly keep control of Iran. But he simply gave orders that the protesters should be either beaten or imprisoned or killed. And he killed tens of thousands. He hoped to leave a legacy behind. This did not have to be dynastic, although he did have four sons, and they were all clerics. He had brought in in 2020, what he called the second step of the Islamic Republic, which was to become more pious and more energetic and even more fundamentalist. But as far as he could see, what was going to happen was that if the American strikes became inevitable, and it seemed they would, he would simply be bundled away for safekeeping. He didn't particularly look forward to that. He thought it would be far more honorable and more deserving of the paradise to come if he was to drink the sweet draft of Martyrdom.

23:53

And row on Ali Khamenei, who has died aged 86. That's all for this episode. Tomorrow on the Weekend Intelligence, we're taking a break from Iran to tell a different story. The last whales of Marineland. When a sea life theme park closed, the animals inside it got stuck. Our correspondent finds out what happened next. You'll need to be a subscriber to listen. That's it for now. The editors of the Intelligence are Chris Impey and Jat Gill. Our deputy editor is Sarah Lanyuk and our sound designer is Will Rowe, with additional help this week from Mark Burrows. Our senior producers are Henrietta McFarlane and Alize Jean Baptiste. And our senior creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Anne Hannah and Jonathan Day. And our assistant producer is Kunal Patel, with extra production assistance this week from Sarah Treina. We'll all see you back here for the Weekend Intelligence tomorrow.

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SA.

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