Larry Johnson on the widening of the US-Iran war and Saudi Arabia's role
Glenn Diesen interviews former CIA analyst Larry Johnson on the expanding US-Iran conflict.
Summary
Glenn Diesen interviews Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and former State Department counterterrorism official, about the ongoing US-Iran war and its expanding dimensions. Johnson argues that the United States lacks a coherent strategy and is rapidly exhausting its missile inventories, while Iran has shifted to using China's BeiDou satellite navigation system, making its missiles far more accurate than during the earlier phases of the conflict — and eliminating Israel's previous ability to spoof Iranian GPS-guided missiles, which Johnson identifies as a key reason Israel is sitting out the current round of fighting.
Johnson also contends that Saudi Arabia's apparent strike on a Yemeni airport was strategically self-defeating, given the kingdom's dependence on Red Sea oil export routes that the Houthis could easily disrupt. He argues that the legal foundation of the ceasefire MOU is critical: paragraph five gave Iran sole responsibility for ensuring safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran's enforcement of its Persian Gulf Strait Authority protocols was used by the US as a pretext to restart hostilities in violation of paragraph one of the same agreement.
Johnson warns that Iranian public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of acquiring nuclear weapons following US attacks, and that Iran's parliament is in no mood for negotiation, demanding concrete concessions — including upfront sanctions relief, asset releases, and Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon — before any new agreement could be reached. He notes that Pakistan's diplomatic role is becoming complicated by its statements that any attack on Saudi Arabia would be treated as an attack on Pakistan, which risks alienating Tehran. He also discusses the death of the previous Qatari leader as having further delayed the negotiating track.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Introduction and the Yemen-Saudi Arabia dimension
Glenn Diesen: We are joined again by Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and also a former employee at the US State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, and also a writer on Sonar 21. I will leave a link to the publication in the description. Thank you, Larry. It's always great to see you.
Larry Johnson: Hey, Glenn, I always enjoy our chance to converse.
Glenn Diesen: I have been wanting to discuss the Iran war with you, because it appears that — I'm not sure how to divide the war into different categories — but at least it doesn't look like it will follow the same trajectory as during the two previous rounds, that is the ones starting in June and then in February. We see now, for one, the widening of the war. For one, there is this renewed struggle now between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. That's definitely a very important component of this war, among other components. But I see that the Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi warned that yes, Saudi oil, airports, and other infrastructure will be targeted now if the Saudis escalate this conflict against Yemen. I was just wondering how you are seeing this. What is happening, and what is the relevance in the wider war of this Yemen-Saudi component?
Larry Johnson: So with respect to that — initially when the attack took place on Sana'a airport on Monday, the official government of Yemen, which has been at war with the Houthis in a civil war for ten or eleven years, claimed credit. But then two US officials later, talking I think to Axios, said no, it was the Saudis. And the Houthis wasted no time retaliating, hitting a Saudi airport just across the border from Yemen in southwestern Saudi Arabia.
Now you've got to step back and start asking: if the Saudis did that, what were they thinking? Because from a strategic standpoint, Saudi Arabia is not getting any oil to speak of out through the Persian Gulf right now. It relies upon an east-west pipeline that winds up at Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, from where they're able to ship around six million barrels a day reportedly. So you would think from a strategic standpoint: we've got to keep that oil pipeline open, and we've got to make sure we can get our oil through the Bab el-Mandeb strait to the south or the Suez Canal to the north. Probably the last thing you want to do is pick a fight with the Houthis, who could not only close down that strait but then hit Yanbu with ballistic missiles and destroy the ability to export oil. Yet that's apparently exactly what the Saudis did — and then within 24 hours they backed off.
Now, Iran itself issued a pretty stark warning last week, saying that if the United States renewed its attacks on Iran, not only would they close the Strait of Hormuz, but they'd look at closing the Bab el-Mandeb using the Houthis as a proxy, they would reconsider their nuclear doctrine, and they would withdraw from the NPT. If you withdraw from the NPT, what does "reconsider your nuclear doctrine" mean? Well, the current nuclear doctrine is no nukes. Reconsider means: we're going to go for nukes.
So that's where I think the situation actually sits right now. The parliament — the Majlis — came back into session on Tuesday, and they've already been pretty adamant that they're in no mood to negotiate with the United States, no mood to make any concessions. They view the United States as basically a liar and an aggressor, and they want revenge. That appears to be more than a majority of the representatives in the Majlis.
The legal basis of the ceasefire agreement and US violations
Larry Johnson: The US response in all of this was to restart the war — to start attacking Iran using the excuse that Iran was interfering with ships trying to get out of the Strait of Hormuz. Well, Iran was simply following the protocols it had established in accordance with the MOU. I think it's vitally important that people around the world understand that paragraph five of that MOU gave Iran — and only Iran — the responsibility for ensuring the safe passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz. It didn't identify the United States, Oman, or any other Gulf country. It was only Iran that had that responsibility.
In conjunction with that, Iran set up the Persian Gulf Strait Authority and provided the protocols that ships are to follow: provide the name of your captain, the name of the ship, the owner of the ship, the destination of your cargo, the names of the sailors on board, their nationalities — file that in advance and you can go. But Iran also stipulated in those protocols that any ship that does not adhere to these requirements will be met with force.
So when Iran tried to enforce those protocols, the United States took it upon itself to say, "We're not going to allow that," and attacked Iran — which was a violation of paragraph one of the MOU. Iran responded. Now the United States is caught in a pickle, because it has stated it's attacking targets all along the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. That's about a 200-mile piece of coastline running from north of Qeshm Island — from Bandar Ganaveh, I think it is — all the way south to Sir.
The military arithmetic: Iran's missile sites versus US strike capacity
Larry Johnson: The problem the United States faces is that Iran doesn't just have five, ten, or twenty launch sites for missiles along that coastline. They've got more than a thousand. Think of it over a 200-mile coastline: if you just put ten missile launchers every mile and spread those out over a mile, you've got 2,000. So here's the United States trying to blow these up — and with what?
The only missile it has that can be fired from a high-value platform toward Bandar Abbas is called the Precision Strike Missile, the PRSM, which has a range of 500 miles — but Lockheed has only built fewer than 60 of them. So you've got a very limited supply. That leaves them relying upon JASSMs, Tomahawks, and HARM missiles. We know for certain that there are great limitations on both JASSMs and Tomahawks. I'm not sure about the HARMs, but I suspect it's no better.
So here's the United States, day after day, launching these missile and bomb strikes on multiple Iranian targets — targets that Iran can easily repair, and which don't at all affect their underground missile facilities and launch sites. And Iran, for its part, only has to attack ten bases. They attack the two Jordanian airfields, which are the primary place where US air operations are taking place. In fact, they've hit those so much that a $250 million drone called the Triton that was based there has now been withdrawn to Cyprus because it's too dangerous. So you take out those two air bases — that's two. You've got Al Dhafra Air Base in the UAE — three. Then Al Udeid in Qatar — four. Ali Al Salem in Bahrain — five. Ali Al Salem in Kuwait — six. Then on top of that, you've got Duqm, which is not an airfield but is a navy logistics supply port in Oman — seven. You've got the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain — eight. You've got the army base in Kuwait from which missiles have been launched — nine. And then you've got a refinery in the UAE that's been critical for aviation fuel supply — ten.
All Iran has to do is keep hammering those ten targets over and over and over, to the point that the bases become uninhabitable and are no longer capable of posing any threat to Iran. Effectively, it forces the United States out of the Persian Gulf. That's what's taking place.
The US attempt to retake control of the Strait of Hormuz
Glenn Diesen: The US trying to wrestle back control of the Strait of Hormuz — I think that was predictably one of the main things that would undermine or even destroy the MOU. The idea that the US would accept not just the strait falling outside of US control, but being under Iranian control. Again, I think this was also evident in some of the back and forth with Trump — he was going to put a 20% fee on all ships going through the strait, then he realized this might actually legitimize what Iran is doing, so he backtracked on the whole thing. Of course it would be within Iranian waters, so they would have at least some claim to a fee based on the services they provide, as opposed to the US which is on the other side of the planet.
But in terms of the targeting, you've outlined well the limited number of bases which the Iranians are now pounding — the focus on Bahrain and Kuwait. It could also of course be an effort to undermine the US ability to launch a land invasion. I saw Joe Kent making this point — not exactly that point, but he was making the point that the US could be in preparation for a land invasion, at least considering one. How do you read that? Because it doesn't look like it would be very successful, or at least wouldn't have good projections for success.
Why a US ground invasion of Iran is not feasible
Larry Johnson: I'd like someone talking about a grand ground operation to please explain to me how you get US soldiers or Marines onto land. Right now, the only amphibious landing ship in the area is the USS Boxer, which has about 2,500 Marines — the only Marine expeditionary unit left in the region. The other Marine entity that was there, I understand, has been withdrawn. That's called, according to open-source information, Defender.
So how do they get there? An amphibious landing at Chabahar — how do you sustain that? Number one, you've got to get your ships in close enough to offload the Marines, and these are not small boats. The amphibious landing craft have been increased in size over the years. Iran's got drones and missiles that can rain down on those. And then once they get to the beach, how do you sustain them? Particularly now in the middle of summer, when it is 50 degrees Celsius plus in many of these locations.
Rule out an amphibious landing in the Persian Gulf as well, because the ships have to get through the Strait of Hormuz and they won't make it — they'll get blown up and sunk. That's why no US ships are standing closer than about 200 miles offshore.
That leaves you with an airdrop of paratroopers, or flying them in on a plane. Understand that it's not like you fly a thousand guys on a plane. A C-130 can handle 92 fully combat-loaded soldiers. A C-17, even though it's a much bigger aircraft, can handle 126 fully loaded combat soldiers. So how many personnel are you going to put on the ground? And once you get them on the ground, how do you resupply them?
The last time the United States conducted a ground operation in the Middle East — going back to 2003 — it took over 12 months to assemble a force of 165,000 in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Back then, the total US Army was over 750,000. Today it's 452,000 — about half of what it was 20 years ago. And if you try to assemble a sizable ground force that could actually go into Iran and take control of territory, where are you going to assemble them at a location where they will not be at jeopardy of getting hit with ballistic missiles and drones? The answer is nowhere. You can't do it.
These people talking about ground operations — and we're talking about some guys who had three and four stars on their shoulders — they had three or four stars, but they didn't have a brain in their skull. The challenges of conducting a ground operation, sustaining the forces there with the necessary logistics, recovering the bodies of those killed or wounded — you're assuming that Iran doesn't have any more air defense and doesn't have any more weapons that could counter helicopters and planes. I'm not going to say a ground operation is not going to happen, because I can't rule out stupidity on the part of Trump and those around him. But if they do it, it'll be a suicide mission for those tasked to carry it out.
What is the US strategy?
Glenn Diesen: So what is the overall strategy here for the United States in going back to war to begin with? Because obviously it didn't go that well before the MOU, and there haven't been that many changes. They didn't get that much energy through the Strait of Hormuz. Global markets are not stable. The US hasn't been able to produce all these new interceptor missiles or drones to attack Iran further. Is this Washington assuming that if they just bring some more punishment to Iran, they'll be able to tweak the MOU more favorably? Or is this just Trump going all in?
Larry Johnson: He's not going all in, because he doesn't have the resources to go all in. I think part of it is explained by the fact that he's surrounded by advisers like Stephen Miller, who doesn't know a damn thing about military capabilities and operations. He's got strong opinions, and I think he keeps telling Trump it'll be easy. They believe their own lies — that Iran is under such pressure that all you have to do is put a little more pressure and they're going to break, that Iran is suffering economically, that they can't stand the pain and they'll be begging for a deal.
We've now got two events in the last thirteen months to look at. Go back to June — the end of the 12-day war. What country was seeking an end to that war? Was it Iran begging the United States to end it? Or was it the United States cutting a deal with Iran to end it? It was the latter. The United States cut the deal. Israel was saying, "We can't stand this anymore. Please make it stop." How about April 7th, April 15th — again, who was pressing for the ceasefire? It wasn't Iran. Iran was not out saying, "Oh my god, we can't sustain this, we need a ceasefire." No, it was the Pakistanis who mediated that, and they put some pressure on Iran: "Come on, the United States is serious this time, they really do want to make a deal, so go through with it." And the Iranians reluctantly agreed.
So this time around, there's no amount of military pressure that Trump can apply that's going to change the Iranian attitude. In fact, if anything, the existing MOU is dead. For any new MOU, if there's going to be one, it will come with conditions such as: you're going to deliver $12 billion before we sign the MOU as proof of good faith that you're going to unfreeze the other $280 billion in assets — number one. Number two, you're going to lift the sanctions before we sign the MOU, and not just on oil but on other areas as well, again as a sign of good faith since you violated it in the past. Three, Israel is going to get the hell out of Lebanon now before we sign an MOU, or we're not going to do it.
I see Iran's position becoming much more firm on those issues. And that's why I don't think there'll be a new MOU. I think the United States is going to have to withdraw. US forces are already withdrawn from several of the bases, and they can't go back and they're not going to go back because it's too dangerous.
Iraq, Kuwait, and the spreading conflict
Glenn Diesen: Another area where the war could spread is through Iraq and Kuwait. Just a few hours ago I saw reports of big explosions on the border between Iraq and Kuwait, and yesterday there were some reports of shooting again on the border. How do you see this fitting in? Because you don't only have the Yemen-Saudi Arabia conflict — it also appears there could be a potential conflict again between Iraq and Kuwait. A lot of things could unravel here as we go up the escalation ladder. How do you see this component of the war?
Larry Johnson: I think Iraq is ultimately going to take full control of Kuwait. Previously Kuwait was part of Iraq, before the Europeans came in and started dividing up the area. I think Iraq's going to regain full control of Kuwait, and these missile strikes and drone strikes that Iran is carrying out are just further weakening Kuwait. It's a message to the Kuwaitis: as long as you keep protecting and harboring the United States, you're going to be a target. The way to make yourselves no longer a target is to kick the United States out. Same message to Bahrain, same message to Qatar, same message to Saudi Arabia and the UAE — Iran is uncompromising on that.
Pakistan's diplomatic role and China's strategic calculus
Glenn Diesen: How about Pakistan? You and I have spoken about this before — I'm a bit surprised, and I think many were surprised, by the role it played during this conflict. As opposed to India, the Pakistanis have played a very key diplomatic role, even as diplomacy is dying, because Pakistan also has this connection with the Saudis and a good relationship with the Iranians. In these days of everything being divided into blocs, that's kind of unusual. Do you see Pakistan still playing a key role in the weeks and months ahead, even as the MOU which they helped put together falls apart?
Larry Johnson: Pakistan is going to continue trying, and it's doing so at the behest of the Chinese. China has an interesting dynamic here. On the one hand, China does want to see the flow of oil, liquid natural gas, sulfur, and uranium coming out of the Strait of Hormuz — helium is not going to flow for a while, so just take that off the board. On the other hand, the Chinese also see the advantage of having the United States expend its inventory of Tomahawk, JASSM, and HARM missiles hitting Iranian targets, because every single one of those missiles it fires is one less missile that will be fired at China when the United States attacks China. From the Chinese standpoint, they don't view it as "if" — they believe the United States will at some point attack China, and China is going to be ready for that. So in a way the Chinese get to use Iran as a proxy to attrit US military capability, which is exactly what's happening right now.
Pakistan's main player in this is Asim Munir. But today the Pakistanis reportedly issued some threats to Yemen and to Iran that any attack on Saudi Arabia would be viewed as an attack on Pakistan. If that's now the Pakistani stance, I think they're going to have less sway with Iran, because Iran sees this as an existential threat from the West. While they've appreciated some common interests with Pakistan, this kind of rhetoric out of Pakistan is not helpful.
I know Pakistan reportedly is still working with Qatar to get the negotiating track back on track. But the death of the previous leader of Qatar and the funeral activities surrounding that have really put a delay on some of the negotiations. In the meantime, Iran is continuing its attacks and warnings to the other Gulf states: if you don't want to be attacked, don't facilitate or enable US attacks against us.
Russia's parallel interest in the conflict
Glenn Diesen: I guess with the Chinese you can put the Russians in the same category — it's probably beneficial for them as well if the US puts all its resources and focus on the Middle East. As we saw, Trump signaled his deepening involvement in the war against Russia. Marco Rubio also suggested that peace might be advanced if Ukraine did more deep strikes into Russia. So they appear to have gone fully in, embraced their inner Biden, and committed to this war — essentially as the Europeans and Zelensky wanted.
But you're in some contact with some of the Iranians there. What is the sentiment now? Is it possible to talk anymore? As you mentioned, they don't have much trust in diplomacy. Is the main objective now just to destroy all the US bases, essentially exhaust the United States, and deliver economic pain? What exactly is on their drawing board in terms of objectives?
Iranian public sentiment: revenge and the nuclear question
Larry Johnson: I learned a new word from last week — it was being shouted in the streets of Qom and in the streets of Mashhad. Entegham — it means revenge. That is what the Iranian people want. They want revenge. And the last written message from Mojtaba Khamenei basically endorsed that. So Iran is in no mood. There's no conciliation among them right now, including with Ghalibaf. There have been some criticisms of Araghchi and Ghalibaf among some of the population, accusing them of being way too soft, way too lenient in dealing with the United States. But both have been out in public of late making it clear that the opportunity for negotiation has passed. Iran is going to press forward, and they made it very clear in the release last week: if the United States proceeds with these attacks, they are going to close the Bab el-Mandeb, they will re-evaluate their nuclear doctrine, and they will withdraw from the NPT.
Those are the benchmarks to keep an eye on. When we see that happen, that lets us know that Iran is moving forward in that direction.
Glenn Diesen: What does this mean in terms of Iran actually pursuing a nuclear weapon? My impression was that with the Strait of Hormuz and their ability to fight off the Americans with conventional means, that would be enough — also if they are a threshold state, signaling that they don't have nuclear weapons but can acquire them if it becomes necessary. Do you think the fear of Iranian nuclear proliferation spurring further proliferation in the region is enough reason for the Iranians not to acquire nuclear weapons? Or do you get the impression there's been a mood shift?
Larry Johnson: I want to be clear, because some people listening may accuse me of trying to claim that Iran's got a nuke and therefore the United States and Israel need to strike — that I'm trying to create some pretext for an escalation beyond what we're already seeing. I'm not doing that.
My dear friend Professor Marandi noted in his own conversations — and he's been looking at this over the last three or four years — he said that four years ago, if you went out into the streets, the majority of people would have said, "Ali Khamenei is right, we don't need a nuke." Now, in the aftermath of two surprise attacks by the United States, it has flipped. He said a strong majority of those he's talking to say: if we had a nuke, this wouldn't be happening to us, so we should get the nuke.
Clearly Iran has the engineering and scientific expertise to do it. And they've got relationships with countries that have nuclear weapons — from North Korea to Pakistan to Russia to China. While the Russians and Chinese have been advocates of trying to restrain proliferation, I think Iran can make a very good case that: we've tried the non-proliferation route. What has it earned us? It's earned us unrestrained attacks and the murders of our citizens.
I think Trump has actually lit a fuse on a bomb that he didn't want to go off, and it's going to go off. This will change the entire strategic picture, because in the past Israel has had the implied threat: we've got a nuke and we can wipe you out. But now if Iran shows up with a nuke, Israel has to think twice. Some people say Israel is going to nuke Iran immediately. Really? Well, if Iran fires back with its nuke, it is much easier to destroy Israel as a country than it is to destroy Iran — Iran's size just dwarfs that of Israel.
China's BeiDou system and the shift in missile accuracy
Larry Johnson: The other thing that's going on is China's BeiDou system. The West relies on GPS, and the Chinese used to rely on GPS up until 1993, when a CIA report claimed some Chinese ship had chemical weapons or weapons of mass destruction on board. The US tried to stop it. The Chinese said no. And so the US literally turned off the GPS — this ship no longer had the ability to navigate other than by compass and sextant. It showed that by controlling GPS, the US could control the Chinese fleet at the time. So China said: we've learned an important lesson here, we've got to have our own system. They developed BeiDou, which is actually more accurate than GPS.
Iran adopted BeiDou because previously, back in the 12-day war, Iran was still using GPS targeting on its missiles. It wasn't widely known at the time, but the United States and Israel were able to spoof those missiles — put false GPS coordinates into them to take them off course, so they didn't hit their targets and just blew up sand instead of destroying infrastructure. That's no longer the problem. Now they're highly accurate and they're hitting their targets, because of the Chinese system.
Israel's absence from the current fighting
Glenn Diesen: I was thinking — as this war widens, it is interesting that Israel is sitting this out. They're the ones who started this whole thing in June of last year, and I see reports of explosions from Dubai to Jordan to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait — the whole list — but Israel hasn't joined in. Is this tied up in Lebanon, Syria, killing off Gaza? What is preventing Israel from joining this? And also, Iran hasn't taken any steps toward bringing Israel into the fight.
Larry Johnson: I actually think it goes back to what I was talking about with China's BeiDou system. During the 12-day war, Israel was able to avoid a lot of destruction because they were able to divert Iranian missiles — because the Iranian missiles were using GPS. Now that Iran has BeiDou, Israel has no defense against those. None.
It's noteworthy that two days ago, the Israeli Minister of Transportation tried to ban any more US KC-135 air refueling aircraft from coming to Ben Gurion Airport — he wanted them to leave. It was only yesterday that Netanyahu got involved and reversed that decision. But you have to step back and ask: why would they want to get rid of the US aircraft? They realize it's going to make them a target.
In the past, they didn't brag about the fact that they were spoofing the Iranian missiles. The Iranians would fire these missiles and they'd not hit where they were supposed to hit, just blowing up sand instead of destroying infrastructure. That's not the case now. And that in itself has been a dramatic change on the battlefield.
I think that's one of the reasons Israel doesn't want to get back into the crosshairs of Iran. Right now the United States cannot operate out of Bahrain or Kuwait in any meaningful way — those have been destroyed. It's basically confined to Jordan, and that's now coming into question. Which means the next stop is Iran targeting Israel, and if US operations are taking place in Israel, then Iran's going to hit those US bases and Israel is going to suffer. I think Israel recognizes, despite all their tough talk, there are limits to how much damage they can take.
How long can the US sustain the war?
Glenn Diesen: Just a last question — where do you see this going, and how long do you think the US can keep this war going? As you and I discussed when the last round of fighting was going on before the MOU, the US was running a bit short on missiles, its interceptor missiles, and of course the global economy was being pushed off a cliff — as Trump himself recognized. He was making the point that he signed the MOU because they only had a few weeks left of a certain type of oil. What does this mean? How long can the US stick with this, given that they also kind of threw away the Iranians' willingness to actually talk? This seems like a huge gamble — all in — given that they might not have an off-ramp. And I get the impression the current fighting doesn't have the same high intensity as it did before, but still.
Larry Johnson: You're correct. They don't have the air assets in the region right now to conduct the kind of major combat operations they were conducting during the first forty days from February 28th to April 7th–15th. But that showed that by that five-week period, the US capability to sustain that war was reaching the exhaustion stage. They do not have unlimited supplies of PRSMs, Tomahawks, JASSMs, or HARMs. I looked up the HARMs as well — they're down. The more they use them against these Iranian targets — and it's like punching jello, they blow it up but it really doesn't degrade Iran's capabilities, doesn't at all affect their underground missile facilities and launch sites — the more they deplete themselves.
When you add in the economic issues that are going to continue to crop up, I think the United States can sustain this for about another two to three weeks, and then it's going to be looking for the off-ramp again.
Glenn Diesen: But that off-ramp won't be there, will it? Or it might be — but I'm assuming if the Iranians would want to talk, they would demand a buy-in to the talks, some big gesture from the United States. Not promises, because the MOU was full of great gestures — 300 billion in reparations for Iran, releasing all the frozen assets, cancelling all the sanctions — but it doesn't mean much if it's just words on paper. The more generous the deal was for Iran, the less likely the US would actually implement it. So I'm assuming the principle of a buy-in — the US actually giving something away just to get the talks started — would be a condition. I'm not sure how that would play out.
Larry Johnson: The United States is not going to be in a strong negotiating position — that's the point. By virtue of that, they may have to make even more concessions to Iran than they want to at this time.
There's always some surprise in August. Let's say that by the end of next week, Iran announces: in light of these unjustified attacks and the failure of the world to respond in support of us, we've seen no alternative but to develop a nuclear weapon. If they come out with that, it's going to shake Washington. It's going to lead to some considerations about trying to up the attacks, but all of that is just going to be acts of desperation. Because if the United States ups the attacks and Iran really does have nukes, Iran may use the nukes. We're entering a very dangerous period, and it's made worse by Trump's recklessness.
The absence of a coherent US strategy
Glenn Diesen: That's why I find this war so strange — because there are so many areas where there can be escalation, too many variables that can't be controlled. Iran has warned that if the US attacks its power grid, Yemen will shut down the Red Sea. It's not unthinkable that Iraqi militias would cross the border into Kuwait. You have all these possibilities which are difficult to predict — the Iranians possibly pursuing a nuclear weapon, the US going up the escalation ladder, which is a requirement if they even have a chance of knocking out Iran. There's a lot of things Iran could do.
I would like to know what the strategy of the United States is here, because I just don't see a pathway to victory. I hear a lot of slogans — "we're going to punish them," "they will regret this," "we'll kill a lot of people or destroy a lot of infrastructure" — but no one outlines exactly what victory is, how we define it, how we achieve it, what resources we have, what our approach is. I see nothing of the sort, just emotional appeals and sloganeering. At least among the analysts, academics, or think tanks, someone must have a scenario about how this could actually work.
Larry Johnson: No — that's the point. Nobody's thought this through. The strategy starts with the assumption that the Iranian economy is decimated, that the majority of the population is willing to rise up and overthrow the Islamic Republic, and that the economic situation is just dire. Therefore, all you have to do is put enough military pressure to cause these people to rise up. That's their strategy. Well, the strategy's a failure. It completely failed, especially last week, with forty to forty-five million Iranians turning out in Qom, Tehran, and Mashhad to say farewell to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and to chant revenge. Whatever the US banked on with its strategy, it's not working.
Glenn Diesen: I feel that we live in the post-strategic-thinking era. You see the same with Russia — "let's just do more strikes into Russia, let's get deeper involved," and the assumption is that once we kill enough people in Russia and destroy enough of their infrastructure, they will capitulate and accept NATO moving into Ukraine, stacking it up with drones and missiles which can target anywhere in Russia, and we will essentially have escalation control over Russia through our proxy. None of them appear to have ever looked up in a history book about how Russia looks at this kind of capitulation. No one's asking the basic questions: what does victory mean against the world's largest nuclear power, which considers this to be an existential threat? You see the same in Iran. I just don't get it.
Historical parallels and final thoughts
Larry Johnson: People fail to learn from history. There's this guy named Adolf in Germany back in 1941 who was convinced all he had to do was invade the Soviet Union and it would crumble like a house of cards. And then he discovered, four years later, that it destroyed his own country — he didn't want to awaken that sleeping beast. The United States has now done the equivalent of that, not just to Russia but to Iran in particular.
You could make a credible argument back in December that there was some domestic unrest and some opposition to the rule of the mullahs — that there was unhappiness with how the government was running things, feelings that there was corruption, and so on. But the surprise attack on the 28th of February, the murder of Khamenei, the murder of the little girls at Minab and other strikes — this has completely transformed Iranian society. They are now united in their desire to defeat the Great Satan, because frankly this is the second time in 47 years that the United States has been directly involved in provoking a war against Iran. The first one was with Iraq, where the US backed Iraq's attack. Now they're doing it themselves. And this generation of Iranians — it's created a new nationalism that's not going to be easily quenched.
You would at least assume that the Germans would have remembered that chapter of their history and not repeated it. But here we go.
Glenn Diesen: Anyways, Larry — always a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Larry Johnson: Hey, my friend. Thanks, Glenn. We'll see you later.