Special Episode - The Battle for the Middle East: Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery

I was impressed with the thickness of the first night strike plan. I'm host Michael Allen with Beacon Global Strategies. Today I'm joined by Admiral Mark Montgomery, the Senior Director of the Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation and a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. In addition to his 32-year career in the Navy, Admiral Montgomery previously served as the Executive Director of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and as the Policy Director of the Senate Armed Services Committee when John McCain was Chairman. Admiral Montgomery joins us today for a special episode on the rapidly developing situation in Iran, including the death of the Supreme Leader and U.S.-Israeli strikes over the weekend and the outlook for the conflict in the coming weeks. Stay with us as we speak with Admiral Mark Montgomery. Admiral Mark Montgomery, we're really excited to have you explain to us the geopolitical significance of the United States and Israeli strikes on Iran. So thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me, Michael. Well, this will be great here to get your insights with your storied career and your understanding of the U.S. military and how we're approaching the target sets. Let's just start there. I mean, I'd love to hear your view on how we're prosecuting the military campaign, but were you surprised that we went, at least the Israelis did, for regime change so fast and right at the top? And a short answer, no, but I want to say broadly, I was impressed, right, with the, you A 900-strike first-night dimpy, that's big time. And this combined force, I think that's the terminology we're using of 150 to 200 Israeli fighters able to generate each day, 75 to 100 Navy fighters, 75 to 100 Air Force fighters, and long-range bombers from the United States coming from the continental U.S. And then both the U.S. Army, Navy and the Israeli forces able to do ground attack. All of that together was impressive. Now, knowing that, of course, I'm going to hit. I mean, I have two priorities on the absolute first strikes. One is suppression of enemy air defense that I know is active. In other words, hitting whatever air defense systems have reconstituted. Because when the Israelis took it out as part of the 12-day war, in many cases, they took out a radar here, a launcher there, a control system there. And the, you know, the always MacGyver-ish Iranians were able to pull some of those back together. So, you know, you want to hit that suppression of enemy air defense. But simultaneously, not, you know, not later, but right at the same strike, you hit the leadership. because you had a one-time only chance to catch, you know, four or five guys on your top 10 bingo card in a meeting. I think they thought there might even be even more, but they definitely got four or five in one meeting. And that was worth the – that allowed the timing to change. It also demonstrated that while we like to shoot you – we like to hit you at night, we're more than capable of hitting you during the day if that's what's required because it was in the middle of the day. So, you know, I was not surprised at the leadership attack, but I was impressed with the thickness of the first night strike plan. And I think that sets a if done properly, if the this goes to its natural extension, that that really set the bar high. Yeah. OK, so I heard and talked to somebody within the administration who mentioned that the objectives were, of course, regime change. a lot of that is Israeli, and that the United States was focusing on two things. One, the military infrastructure to completely eradicate the ability of the Iranians to project force and to destroy any, this is the third purpose, to destroy any of the vestiges of the Iranian nuclear program that were left over from June or that have popped back up since then. Does that sound about right to you? Yeah. So what I would say, I would kind of categorize it as leadership, which is the first one, as you mentioned. The second would be their ability to retaliate or to impose cost. And that would include not just the missile stowage units and launch sites, but also production. And this is what the Israelis had started near the end of the 12-day war, but had in no way, shape, or form completed when kind of President Trump, out of kind of nowhere on day 12, declared victory. So we need to go back and continue to destroy their ability to produce ballistic missiles. And then I would say the same thing, and cruise missiles, and I'd say the same thing for drones. So get that. So that's their ability to impose costs. And then another part of that imposing cost is their Navy and their mine lane capacity and the IRGCN's anti-ship cruise missile programs. So all of that's the imposed cost. And so I think if you do all that, then you're going to be in much better shape. And we're nowhere near done with that. In my mind, this should be at least another two-week campaign just to do that kind of really hitting all the production facilities and stowage facilities, reassessing them, striking them, reassessing them, striking them. It doesn't mean you have 900 strikes every night for two weeks, but it means that you're hitting very consistently every two weeks. And the third one was suppression of enemy air defense, which we did on the first night, which we'll continue to do. Paint a picture how this is going on a month from now, a hot war. How could it escalate and how could this spiral out of control? I mean, there's not an easy answer to this. what I'd say. First of all, I mean, in our mind, there's a number of strikes that we wanted to do, we and the Israelis together. We'll eat that elephant one day at a time, you know, one airplane at a time, knocking it down over 12 or 14 days. You then, the whole time you're assessing, doing battle damage assessment, adding targets back in. And at some point you're down to, okay, we've serviced every target the number of times we want to service it. Now we're just doing, Air patrol, you know, satellite, radar, signals, intelligence, some overhead flights, you know, combat patrols looking for the adversary to hit. But those would be ad hoc, you know, not like a 400 plan nightly strike. So, I mean, at some point you get to that. Now, branches off of that, the people do. There is a populist uprising. Now you have IRGC. concentrations that you have to go hit, and then it continues, you know, extends. You know, they go all out on, you know, they just kept coming out every day trying to launch a cruise missile into the Straits of Hormuz. We got to go hit those and hit those and hit those. You know what I mean? I can give you branch plans for all the different Iranian responses, but, you know, our smooth main plan is to run this for several weeks till we've exhausted our target sets, and we've reattacked everything we need to. But the enemy gets a vote and he can take us down a bunch of branch plans that you have to have. And I'm confident Admiral Cooper, the central command commander, has eight or ten branch plans that he has I and W on. Multiple ones can go at the same time, too. So he's watching for the indications and warning that, hey, we're getting into one of the branch plans. Here's the authorities I need or here's the resources I need. Here's what I need to talk about with Israelis. Execute. you know and so my gut reaction is he's executing a main plan he's got eight to ten branches maybe not that maybe maybe six to eight you know that he's checking on and then ready to execute on those as necessary this is just a supposition i made i want you to check it as a senior flag officer so i assumed we would do military and maybe the leadership first nuclear vestiges but that we would do the so-called instruments of regime repression last because the president said in his speech, hey, no one go out, please don't go outdoors yet. There are going to be bombs dropping everywhere. But when we're done, you know, he opens the door to them and says, this might be your only chance in a generation to overthrow your government. And so it seems to me if he's going to hit the besiege and IRGC local or whatever local sort of domestic intelligence services there are, he might do those last because then that sort of opens the door for the people to rush into the streets But maybe not Maybe it doesn matter the sequencing But what your take on all that Yeah I not sure about that Look I think the important sequencing was senior guys first hit suppression of enemy air defense in that first night the beginning of the first night, everything after that. If we somehow knew where nuclear vestiges were, they would have been in my first strike as well, because that stuff will start moving right away. And that's harder to track you know i mean it gets small pretty quickly that's kind of what have been my first night you know this thing on when do i sequence in these it might be that we're going to get hit there's so many irgc facilities uh mike that michael that we may have to hit them every night okay all right well then that makes sense what's your take on regime change everyone's scholars have written it's very hard to do from the air but we're trying to enable the population as best we can. We assume they're almost completely unarmed. What we don't have right now is an armed insurgency in progress in Iran. We have protesters in the streets, but that's not the same as an armed insurgency. Now, it can become one, but a lot of things have to happen that if the precursor has been done for that, like the movement of weapons in, things like that, the organizational elements, If Mossad or someone has done that, it hasn't evidenced itself yet. Doesn't mean it's not happening. Doesn't mean it couldn't happen. Maybe Mossad has an ace up its sleeve. If it is, I'd start dealing the cards because, you know, we're going to start hitting. If we're going to hit things hard for a couple of weeks, that's about the time for the for the political for the political resistance to show itself again. You don't think this is very likely that the political – they may come back out on the streets. By the way, the students came out last week, which was remarkable. But you don't really foresee the students taking over the government by themselves, not just the students, the protesters by themselves. Do you believe there has to be a fracture in the regime and a lot of people with guns side with the opposition? Yes. I just don't. It's not enough to just be an unarmed resistance. Somebody with guns, whether it's the traditional army, you know what I mean? The non IRGC army or someone has to has to throw in with them or they have to get access to weapons. yeah yeah gotcha let's say there's a political appointee who looks at a flag officer like you and says the president really wants you to think of targets that are would directly benefit the people on the streets and i need you to come up with these and if they're neighborhood by neighborhood maybe we won't do them but what would your answer be what would you just would it be just the besiege and IRGC local or what would it be? Yes. You know, I think you'd have to do some kind of estimate of the cost benefit on eventually on energy. This is a tough one, right? And President Trump isn't going to hit energy because he possibly thinks some future world friends of his will, you know, be involved in the Iranian energy business, right? And so So this might be tough for him personally. But, you know, most of us say, hey, if you hit energy, two things about that. One, later on when there somehow is a new government, you know, they've got a big bill to fix broken energy. Or two, you know, the well, you know, if you if you if you damage the economic lever, you know, the economic productivity, the people fill it before the elites. I'm not sure. There's a third answer, which is if you hit the energy, there's no more money coming in. And at some level, although there is a percentage of the could force, it's ideologically driven. There's a percentage that is salary driven, you know, and if you can begin to cut off the tools that they have to do things like that, you weaken the government significantly. so you would go for the jugular quickly which is yeah how do i how do i sponsor a fracture within the irgc but maybe general or generationally on the assumption that the older ones are already benefiting from the spoils of the system and if you maybe blow clips up and the younger ones see there is no future and kleptokers they're more likely to schism that's true again i'm told you You know, and I've, you know, it's been a while since I read the exact intelligence on this, but, you know, 125 to 150,000 in the IRGC, 25 to 35,000 are truly, are true believers. That's a lot of people. You know, in other words, there's a lot of people that got to throw down their arms and disperse, right? Right, right. All right, so we've read this afternoon here that there have been Iranian ballistic missile shots at our naval ships. I think I even saw four were aimed at a carrier, presumably the Ford. Now, the whole point of these, right, is to protect the carrier, but how would it work for them to be able to get a shot through and strike one of our Navy ships? Could you put a likelihood on that? look we're really excited when our offensive weapons are 90 we're like oh good that's a good day 90 hit their target that's great you know 10 got shot down i can live with that we don't feel the same way in defense right when you're told hey we're 90 effective you might most defending officers are like what we were 10 ineffective what happened with those 10 where did they hit you know what i mean so um you know you don't you're you worry a little bit our defensive weapon systems are not 100%. Now, I think the place where we're safest is probably the ships. When it comes to air defense, for a lot of reasons, some of which are luck and a lot of them are money, we have invested, you know, $40 billion over 50 years in developing Aegis, just on research development and testing of Aegis, the weapon system that defends our ships. As a result, we actually have good ballistic missile defense, cruise missile defense, and okay drone defense. I mean, by okay, I mean, we can shoot drones down. It's just really expensive. So I think that the likelihood of a strike on a ship is much lower than the likelihood of one of our bases getting hit because there just wasn't enough THAAD and Patriot to spread around. And that doesn't mean THAAD or Patriot aren't good systems. It means that if you have a Navy destroyer, you have a Navy Aegis system guaranteed with you. If you have an air base, you don't have a guaranteed Patriot. Okay. We'll zoom back out to the strategic here in a minute, but can you put a percentage on it? I mean, let's say they, you've said they're not a hundred percent, but let's say they shoot 10 ballistic missiles and a hundred Shahed drones at the Gerald R Ford. I mean, Can we protect against that, or are they very likely to get something through? I believe that they're in good shape. I don't believe the ships, you can't say never, but I think that's the least likely area for success would be a ballistic or cruise missile attack on one of the ships in the Arabian Sea with the carrier. To the degree that ships start escorting people through the Straits of Hamus, if that starts to happen, that's some spicy air defense there because you're at a very short range, you know, going through a 12-mile wide strait. So that puts Iran pretty darn close to you in the Iranian missile systems if they've hidden one and can pop it out real quick. So I know that's not a 100% answer, but I would say I feel pretty good about the carrier strike groups. I feel a little spicier about independent destroyers doing convoy duty in the Straits of Hormuz. And I feel even less comfortable with ground forces at bases that have limited or spread thin air defense systems. yeah okay so before i get to some of the places where we may be additionally vulnerable someone in the air force put it to me last night that this is probably the biggest per u.s projection of force in the history of the world and maybe obviously in the history of warfare do you sign up to that have you you know have you seen something like this at least at least in the last 50 years? Not in terms of number of aircraft. I mean, if you think about Rolling Thunder or, you know, 8th Air Force in World War II, they're bigger in numbers of aircraft. But in terms of, like, ability to operate at will in an enemy's airspace, this is unique, right? I mean, this assemblage of air power could defeat any other assemblage of air power ever put together just because of the modern techniques and weapon systems and all that The modern technology and weapon systems I mean in terms of pure numbers I think there probably been larger groupings of aircraft But, you know, I take the point there, your Air Force friend said, which is that we've never had this much kind of fifth generation, fourth generation plus combat air power ever rolled together than what you have between the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and Israeli Air Force. We're going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back with more of our discussion with Admiral Mark Montgomery. Beacon Global Strategies is the premier national security advisory firm. Beacon works side by side with leading companies to help them understand national security policy, geopolitical risk, global technology policy, and federal procurement trends. Beacon's insight gives business leaders the decision advantage. Founded in 2013, Beacon develops and supports the 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 we covered a little bit about the vulnerability of our ships. Let's talk about what else the Iranians are up to. I'll admit that I thought it was unlikely, even though they vowed to, quote, regionalize the conflict. I thought they probably wouldn't go at Saudi and the UAE because why bother? They had enough trouble on their hands and what payoff did they expect to get? But they did it and they're going after civilian targets. downtown Abu Dhabi in Dubai. Did that surprise you? Do you agree it's a strategic mistake because it took them off the fence and put them in our camp? And what do you think they're doing? So, yes, it surprised me. And, yes, for the exact reason you said, that it's pushing the Arab states into at least grudging support, if not overflight and access guaranteed. And potentially, I would say with the UAE of all states, I could see them, they have no love for Iran. I mean, they particularly they might be mad at Saudi Arabia right now. You know, it's they they have a blood grievance with Iran. So I would not put it past them saying that was not accidental because that's what the Iranians have claimed. Like we didn't do that. Some some other owner of Shahid drones did that. You know, OK, I will say one or two of these, not the ones where you see the strike into the hotel, hotel. But one of the ones when you come across a flaming datum of like heap of metal, sometimes that's something got shot down. The Iranians probably did not have tight tactical control. Like people are like, I have a target set here. I'm going boom. And, you know, they didn't have the, you know, as we would say, the national command authority's approval for everything. But, you know, the fact that they had thought about it, the fact that they threatened it And the fact that it happened means they own it. And they are going to regret that because I think at a minimum, the UAE and possibly others are really going to be hard, hard against Iran over the next couple of weeks. Yeah, I mean, I'm guessing they'll even request to make a few sorties. But yeah, that's no, I think that would be UAE. I'm not sure I'm going to put anybody else in that category. Uh huh. I put the UAE there. All right. Gotcha. All right. We get so many questions about the Straits of Hormuz. You're the right guy to talk about this. How would it go down? I've heard or read that it would be Iranian submarines putting mines across. Is that right? They still have anti-ship cruise missiles. And anti-ship cruise missiles tend to hit merchant ships unless they're being escorted by Navy ships that protect them. Very closely escorted, by the way. So that's not on offer right now. So they have some, you know, just doing one of them would put the joint war council and the other people who kind of control insurance and movements and listed areas would be on edge immediately and begin to shut things down and raise insurance premiums to the degree that shipping stopped. That's number one is those. Number two is mines. We're going to have to sink a lot of ships and blow up every stowage facility if we're going to stop the threat of mining. It is, they have done it from, you know, I'm kind of joking about a bog hammer, but they've done it from all kinds of nontraditional vessels. And just a couple of mines gets, you know, the herd gets spooked, right? I mean, you know, things very quickly get uncomfortable. I don't know that there's any good minesweeping nations left. You know what I mean? It'd be a real pain in the backside. And minesweepers move slow and you've got to protect them. And it'd be a real pain in the backside to do it. And so mining would go, would have a significant impact in my mind. But I've read, we're here the animal, but I've read the Navy's obviously been preparing for these contingencies for decades. So it would be a few days in the mine? Let's be clear here. Have we been preparing? Let me, I just real quick, your audience probably doesn't know this, but we suck at minesweeping. We're the worst. There's a ship called the Littoral Combat Ship that's like 20 years into its growth. you know, into its startup-ness, right? You know, we've had them for about 20 years, and we still barely have them functioning as minesweepers, and they're vastly under-equipped. So, no. And our other minesweepers are like 50 to 60 years old and generally broken. Now, maybe four or five days of strikes, and that's, you know, everything's a smoking ruin at all the naval bases. They don't have any mines left. That'd be fantastic. I'm not willing to push that button. And if I were an insurer or a shipper or the joint war council i would really be taking a uh john district i'd be taking a very steady deliberate view of that to make sure that they don't have the capacity to to mine it i think the thing stopping them from mining it isn't the u.s navy it's the fact that it you know is the fuel of the uh of the iranian regime as we said earlier it's fuel that you know it's what fuels the iranian economy right okay let's keep on what the iranians can do one was the united it could possibly get a lucky shot off and hit a naval vessel they're trying to regionalize the conflict by hitting the gulf arabs and others and they could mine the streets of hormuz what other cards do they have to play what what else could they do to other hitting israel all the time yeah they're attacking israel i think they've come to realize that's not a good card right i mean the israelis um are probably the most resilient state in uh in the middle east and you know probably next to ukraine one of the most resilient ones in the world so they're they're probably at this point you know the with the idea that hey this is the us and us doing this together i think the israeli people are willing to take the risk that's associated with this you know if they could convince one of their proxies to go i mean their proxy's got to be like yeah this is not a winner right i mean i don't think hezbollah is like you know right down to get in those last couple rounds of combat did not go our way okay so let's cover our vulnerabilities then they've already hit the headquarters of the fifth fleet in bahrain and that's the quote easiest target for them to hit yeah and we did naval vessels so now i'm talking about actual land what else and it's ain't it seems like we're more vulnerable and i'm not sure whether we've confirmed where these fatalities were i've heard some suggestion they might be where american soldiers are in iraq and i think that's a train soldier training mission but how do you score where we're vulnerable around the gulf in terms of our our land mass bases Yeah, so I would score it this way, that three things go into it. Is the U.S. able to get an air defense system there to protect the base? You know, Patriot, something called C-RAM, counter-rocket and mortar, which is our form of Iron Dome, which is a phalanx gun and some other things on a truck, and potentially THAAD. If we have our stuff around you, that's pretty good. If it's amplified by a partner, you're in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, countries that have some form of our weapon systems, that makes it even better. And then the third thing is geographic proximity. How far are you from the launch point so that can our aircraft, like for drones, can our aircraft get there fast enough to shoot down the drones? because our aircraft have to have combat air positions and not every, you know, when you're only 150 or 200 miles away from the launch point in Iran that not a lot of response time So it a mix of geography U capabilities and the partner host nations capabilities So the ones that strike you as in the worst condition there are probably the U.S. forces in Iraq, where there's no host nation capability. And some of the U.S. capabilities are limited by our ability to get the footprint in there. And then, you know, you're reasonably close to, you know, Western Iran. Okay. Russia, China. So I guess China is the one that's most worried here. If their oil, which I think is, you know, they take a lot from Iran, it's pretty substantial. What's the view from Beijing right now? And they're also seeing Donald Trump go wherever he wants all over the world and topple dictators. Tell me how it looks from Beijing. Well, I'm sure Beijing is a little worried about their, you know, they're most worried about their economy and the oil. I mean, that's got to be number one. Venezuela didn't matter. I know people say, look, they, you know, they gave a big chunk of their stuff to China, but it wasn't much. From the Chinese perspective, it was a very small percentage of their imports. Iran is different. Iran is a significant part. And, you know, China's been profiteering off the war in Ukraine in the sense that they're able to buy cheap shadow fleet fuel, fossil fuels. But if the overall prices go up, prices are going to go up. It'll impact the Chinese economy. That's number one for China. Number two, there is a credibility issue here. um you know countries that they and you know groups they have you know that they publicly give support to are challenged by the united principally the united states and china is not supportive you know china kind of blends into the background but i think the number one issue is the economy issue that's first and foremost and i don't think that they lose sleep over any of the other ones. Long term, if we actually are solving the Iran problem, you know, like, there's a regime change to something that is more hospitable to the United States, and it, you know, it really turns down the rheostat in the Middle East, then we could pivot to the Pacific, and we could legitimately, you know, make that our priority. You know, as long as, you know, Venezuela is under control, you know, we could make the number one thing the number one thing, We can actually concentrate on China. And, you know, I say that that we have been distracted by the Middle East every year since 2012, when President Obama declared we're pivoting to the Pacific. And we over the last 14 years have not 15 years have not pivoted to the Pacific. And as a result, we're not doing the proper force posture, lay down, all the deterrence building measures you would normally do to check Chinese power. So that would be the biggest loss for China, would be if we actually were successful. Because then, like I said, as long as Venezuela is comfortable, then China is going to be getting all our attention. No, you're right. I mean, we're always pulled away, and so this could be the enabler in a year or two to have a true pivot. So how does this look from Moscow? Here they are again. They couldn't help Assad. They can't help the Iranians. I mean, what's going on? They didn't help Maduro. Yeah, of course. Maduro, too. So how do you think this looks? And I'll give you one more. Cuba is slowly being choked to death with no help. I think he's got bigger fish to fry. He's got a bigger problem in Ukraine, which we won't go into here, but I'll just say he's in the middle of a full-scale invasion that's not going well. That's his number one concern. He got what he needed from Iran. He didn't just get 5,000 or 6,000 Shahid drones. He then got the plans for a plant, several of which he's built, and he's not producing his own drones. In fact, Jaran drones are better than Shahid's. The Jaran 3 and 5 are rocket-based and go much faster and are a bigger problem for the Ukrainians. So, I mean, I think, you know, when you say Ukraine's fighting four countries, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, the Iran one is kind of the work is done. so from Russia's point of view they're not getting much more help from Iran um you know I think they've gotten a little bit more advice on a few things but that that's about it um the uh to me you know from Russia's point of view this that it's not a good look to have Iran get beat up like this but there's really not much they can do about it yeah okay gotcha so talk a little bit about when you talk about how the United States could benefit from the transformation of the Middle East because we might finally pivot to Asia. But talk about Vision 2030, the UAE and Saudi Arabia and others trying to deepen their economies and grow into AI. So, I mean, is it fair to say this is sort of a short-term blow regarding investments and business climate, but it could be a medium to long-term win? Yeah, exactly. And the short term could be pretty short. You know, so I look, I think, you know, I think this is what long term they had to resolve. You have to resolve the Iran issue. You know, there's a benefit to resolving the Iran issue for each of these countries. You know, there's other issues that have to be resolved in the in the Middle East, you know, with Gaza and other things before, you know, you suddenly begin bringing Saudi Arabia into the Arab Accords. but in terms of UAE and Saudi Arabia kind of stepping out with data center production water I mean right now I mean these salinization plants you know if Iran really wanted to hurt these countries that's where I'd be attacking right now and that would have an impact you know if you're farther along on 2030 and data centers and other things being built you'd even be in more water extremists and have even more targets to hit and i you know i'd say the same for power you know for power grid is the electrical power grid as well so you know yes there's some vulnerability in the short term but in the very long term i think this is this provides a more stable middle east potentially again i'm i'm imbuing like a positive end and result on this yeah yeah so it's dependent upon there being a new regime or at least one that's more like in the Delcy Rodriguez model. Because it's, you know, the IRGC will still maintain, under your scenario and I think mine too, the IRGC or other regime rowdies will stay in control to a great degree, right? As long as they can. As long as they can. Yeah. Well, as we begin to wrap up here, the big question, of course, is we've all, all of us who've studied national security issues or the news, we've seen the Supreme Leader, who's been around since 1989, finally killed. First, just reflect on this, Mark, as a guy who served his country in uniform, who knew all about the Middle East. Just sort of reflect on his demise, and then let's talk about whether this could truly usher in a transformation of the Middle East. So first, let's be clear. This is under his leadership. It's our intelligence community's estimate that Iran directly contributed to the deaths of a thousand, almost a thousand American soldiers. And principally Iraq, but also a little bit Afghanistan. So no tears. Bad dude. Got exactly what he deserved. so i have no empathy there um he's also contributed to israeli deaths i mean there's a lot more on his plate but you know just for us it's enough i i would i would put him as you know more culpable uh than suleimani general suleimani who we killed in the in the last trump administration in january 2020 um so from my point of view i'm you know i'm comfortable that that happened Admiral Mark Montgomery, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me, Mike. That was Admiral Mark Montgomery. 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. you