Iran

In a collaboration between CFR and Open to Debate, panelists debate the threat of Iran to global security. Did Biden’s diplomacy fail? Can Israel live with a nuclear Iran? Does Iran pose a challenge to the global order? Open to Debate is the nation’s only nonpartisan, debate-driven media organization dedicated to bringing multiple viewpoints together for a constructive, balanced, respectful exchange of ideas. Open to Debate is a platform for intellectually curious and open-minded people to engage with others holding opposing views on complex issues.

Following the drone strike on a U.S. base in Jordan, panelists discuss the possibility of a U.S. military response as well as the implications of conflict spreading in the region.  BRANNEN: Thanks so much. Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us today to discuss recent events in the Middle East, and to think about where the conflict could be headed next. I’m Kate Brannen. I’m deputy editor at Foreign Affairs. And I’m joined today by an excellent panel of CFR senior fellows who are ready to share their expertise with us.   On the call we have Steve Biddle, we have Steven Cook, and Ray Takeyh. And before we get started, I’ll just reiterate that the conversation is on the record and a video and transcript will be posted online afterward. And you can check out CFR.org and ForeignAffairs.com for additional analysis and resources.  So we are here to discuss the January 28 drone strike that killed three U.S. Army Reserve soldiers near the Jordan-Syria border. The U.S. government believes an umbrella group of militants called Islamic Resistance in Iraq carried out the strike. And since the strike occurred, President Joe Biden has said that a decision has been made by the administration about how to respond. But we are still waiting, of course, to see what course of action Biden and his advisers have selected.   So I wanted to start with Steven Cook. If you could give us the context for this strike. It’s not out of the blue. It’s happening amidst a real simmering regional conflict, with the sort of center of gravity in Gaza. But then also, if you could tell us a little bit about what we know about this group that launched the strike, what it was trying to accomplish, and where do you put it on the spectrum of Iranian-backed groups that are so active right now in terms of its closeness and coordination with Iran?  COOK: Well, thanks so much, Kate. And it’s a great pleasure to be with everybody. And it’s a particular pleasure to be with my colleagues, Stephen Biddle and Ray Takeyh.   The attack on Tower 22 comes against the background of a number of moving parts in what you correctly call a regional conflict. I think that it remains—the core of it remains the conflict in the Gaza Strip, but I think that it has become regionalized. And in that core in Gaza there are a number of important things that are happening. The first is that there are abundant rumors that there will be a deal that will lead to a significant pause in the fighting that would lead to the release of those hostages that are living and the return of those hostages who have died in this conflict to the Israelis, in exchange for something—whether it is Palestinian prisoners, or Palestinian prisoners as well as something else.  We know that Hamas was seeking essentially an end to the conflict, something that Israeli leaders have said that would not happen. But nevertheless, there is enough out there to suggest that in the coming weeks we may see a longer pause than we saw in November and December, that leads to a major release of hostages. One has to wonder whether Hamas is really prepared for this, given that it’s giving up leverage that they have. Or the Israelis, who have a hard time regaining the kind of military momentum that they’ve had all of these months. But that’s really an issue for Stephen Biddle.   Against the backdrop of—this backdrop, of course, the Israelis are continuing their operations in central and southern Gaza, with very little indication that they’re changing the pace or the tempo of it, which is, of course, putting, you know, millions of Palestinians in jeopardy, as we have all seen in tragic footage and photos from the conflict. Added to this is just a number of weeks after the Israeli defense minister announced that Hamas ceased to be an organized threat in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israelis are actually moving military units into the northern Gaza Strip to fight Hamas, which proves actually to be an organized threat in that part of the Gaza Strip. Which I think lays bare for everybody how challenging an operation this is for the Israelis. And, again, also in Gaza this comes on the heels of reports that the Israelis have really only managed to destroy about 20 percent of the tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip and are now starting to pump seawater into these tunnels in an effort to incapacitate Hamas.   Again, in conjunction with this, the Houthis are continuing to threaten shipping in the Red Sea. The United States announced just yesterday that it had undertaken strikes that had actually prevented a missile attack on shipping in the Red Sea. This is an ongoing problem. And it will seemingly take a long time to deal with this problem, as the type of military operations the United States has undertaken thus far has failed to deter the Houthis, who have suddenly discovered that they have significant leverage over the global economy. And that is something that they are—they are clearly prepared to use. Which suggests this is something that is actually beyond the conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.  And then that brings us to what happened recently, which is the drone attack that led to the deaths of three American servicemembers. I should point out that dozens were injured. Those injuries didn’t include Americans. There were also Jordanian soldiers who were injured in the operation. And this was undertaken by an Iranian-backed militia group that has, in the past, taken shots at the—at the United States and U.S. forces. There have been, you know, hundreds of these types of attacks since October. Ray can speak more expertly about their relationship to Tehran and their relationship to other members of the axis of resistance.   But it seems clear that IRGC, the Quds Force is engaged in a region-wide conflict, using various proxies to sow chaos, in a way, to suck the United States into the region, in order to convince us that we need to leave the region, which is ultimately Iran’s goal here. And as Ray, I’m sure, will say, that this is perfectly consistent with an overall Iranian strategy of using different groups to advance its interests around the region, while shielding Iran itself from retaliatory measures. As you pointed out in your opening remarks, that may, in fact, be changing. And we’re all waiting to see what the Department of Defense has in store, because they have promised retaliation.  I’ll stop there and give Ray and Stephen an opportunity as well. Thank you.  BRANNEN: Let’s go to Ray next, just to follow up on the question of this group itself, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. I don’t think many people are familiar with that exact title. Who are they? And, again, when they strike the United States, how appropriate is it to think that’s Iran striking the United States? If you could flesh out that relationship for us.  TAKEYH: Well, it’s an umbrella organization that comprises of five different militias that have come into existence in recent years. In terms of the operational linkages between the two, as far as I can tell there are certain things we know for sure—that Iran trains, arms them. We know that there has been efforts to have a greater degree of coordination between these different pillars of axis of resistance. Hezbollah in Lebanon has been cooperating with the Iraqi groups, and Hamas has also been part of the operational conversation. This actually really took off after the death of—killing of Gen Soleimani, where his successor, General Qaani, actually began to have a great—put together an auxiliary force that’s more connected to each other, as opposed to operating individually and separately. The idea being that there’s a greater force and cohesion if they all come together.  The organization put out a statement saying the Iranians didn’t tell us to do that, which is—which is kind of a way of saying the Iranians told us to do that. These attacks have come about, I would say, because of the regional strategy that the Iranian regime has pursued since October 7, namely inflamed the region in order to provoke the international community to impose some kind of a restraint on Israel. Which, in fact, may happen. The proxy strategy was always successful because it’s sort of presumed immunization of Iranian territory from attack. Now that may be breached. May not be. I don’t know.  But if it’s breached, it comes at a particularly difficult time for the Iranian regime, because it has a lot of domestic challenges, that we can unpack as you go through. And if it is breached, and if the Iranian territory is attacked, then there’s going to be retaliation. There has to be some form of retaliation. And then you get into a situation, Steve can talk about this—Biddle—an escalatory dynamic where things can sort of get out of hand, unless somebody exercises restraint.  So we’re in—we’re on the precipice of potentially a much more expanded regional conflict than we have seen before, where you have—you move beyond sort of Israel versus a non-state actor and the United States being attacked by nonstate actors to more of an interstate conflict. And that actually means a lot of different things as we move forward. So this potentially is a kind of a dangerous inflection point in the three months or so, four months, however long it’s been, since the October 7 war began.  BRANNEN: Mmm hmm. We’ll get to that sort of tit-for-tat dynamic, which might be upon us. But I wanted to stay on the January 28 attack for one more minute. Steve Biddle, I wanted to ask you, one question that the strike prompted, I think, for many people who haven’t been following the region as closely the past few years are, what are U.S. troops doing in Iraq, and Syria, and this outpost in Jordan? What’s their mission? And has it made sense for that deployment to continue? And now that the situation has changed, what are the options for withdrawing them, if there are any?  BIDDLE: Yeah. All U.S. troops in Iraq were withdrawn in 2011. But then when the Islamic State burst upon the scene in 2014 and took the city of Mosul, and started marching south towards the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, U.S. troops were reintroduced into Iraq to assist the Iraqi government in dealing with the Islamic State threat. And to this day, the primary announced mission of U.S. forces in Iraq and in Syria. for that matter the largely unannounced part of the role of U.S. force in Jordan that just got struck, was to facilitate the Iraqi government’s efforts to initially defeat, but now prevent, the reemergence of the Islamic State.  So most of them are providing some combination of training, and intelligence information and airstrike coordination, you know, for various efforts by ourselves and regional allies against Islamic State. The war against the Islamic State has sucked in other actors, including Iraqi Kurds, including Turkey, including Syria. And there is now a U.S. military presence in Syria that’s a second-order consequence of all that, that’s there in an attempt to stabilize what had become a regional war in Syria by reassuring our Kurdish allies that they will not be overwhelmed by their regional our enemies, the Turks, or by the Syrian government.   So there’s a smallish U.S. deployment in Syria whose nominal purpose is, helped the Kurds to keep the Islamic State down. Its secondary, less announced, purpose is reassure the Kurds that they won’t get wiped out by their enemies. And then it’s got a third less widely announced mission of making it harder for the Iranians to move supplies through this real estate to ultimate destinations in Syria and southern Lebanon. So the primary road that links, as a land line of communication, Iran to its Hezbollah proxy in southern Lebanon, and its various allies in Syria, runs right through the part of Iraq and eastern Syria and close proximity to Northern Jordan, where this attack occurred and where most of these malicious strikes on U.S. bases had been happening.  So the nominal purpose is keep the Islamic State from coming back. Clear, but less prominently announced purposes, include reassure the Kurds and include make it harder for the Iranians to supply their proxies elsewhere in the region.  BRANNEN: Yeah. It’s worth noting too, less congressionally authorized as well, those second maybe, at least the third mission for sure. While we have you, Steve Biddle, on the line, I wanted to be sure to get a few questions into you especially about a potential U.S. response to this attack. And I know you can’t predict what the administration is going to do, but what are the types of targets they would be considering? And what are the factors they’d be weighing as they decide what might trip a red line, what can keep the escalatory risks low while sending the message you want? What are the kind of things that they’re thinking about as they decide what to do?  BIDDLE: Yeah. I mean, there’s a rich menu of things we could attack. And we’ve been conducting retaliatory attacks in response to the 150-plus malicious strikes that have, you know, been directed at U.S. bases in the region since the October 7 crisis started. They include things like munitions stockpiles, training areas, various fixed installations that the militias use to prosecute their military activities. That’s the kind of thing we’ve been hitting heretofore.   Probably the administration is going to try to strike something Iranian rather than just the militias, because so far retaliatory attacks against the militias haven’t been effective. This has gradually been escalating in its violence level. I think the administration is going to be concerned that if the steady state continues, this escalatory process will eventually end up somewhere we definitely don’t want it to be. So they’re going to have to do something that they haven’t yet done. That prominently includes a range of things, from striking individual IRGC targets in Syria or elsewhere, single officers, facilities, bases, up to things like striking Iranian targets elsewhere.  The Iranians have had a warship in the Red Sea that most people believe they have been using to help the Houthis target their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. We could strike that. That would have the advantage of not being on Iranian soil, but clearly being Iranian. Or, as Ray was suggesting earlier, we could escalate into attacks on Iranian soil, either specific military facilities, specific individual leaders. The IRGC headquarters in Tehran. There’s quite a menu of possibilities from which to choose.  What the administration is probably going to be trying to do is to calibrate this carefully. They know they need to be more forceful than they’ve been heretofore, right? Continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, right, is the definition of insanity. They’re probably not going to do that. By the same token, they don’t want a war—they don’t want a full-scale war with the state of Iran. Happily, the state of Iran doesn’t want a full-scale war with the United States either.  So there’s some hope that, given that neither side wants this escalatory process to run ad infinitum, there are ways to moderate this so that we do more than we’ve done in the past to suggest that we are not just going to tolerate this, but not do so much that we box Tehran into a situation where their response then has to be way more escalatory than ours. All of these escalatory actions operate in the context of deterrence theory, in which there are at least two audiences for all of these actions and threats. One of them is the opponent. The other is your own domestic population.  And you want to convince the opponent that you’re not going to destroy them if they behave themselves, but if they don’t behave themselves you’re going to inflict more pain on them than their mischief is worth to them. And that leads to these kinds of middle-ish, medium, in-between actions. And the trouble with that is they tend to be very unpopular with publics, who want more forceful action because they don’t like what they’re seeing and they think we need to hammer these people to get them to stop doing this stuff that we don’t like. And that works for the U.S. population. The Biden administration is under intense pressure to escalate.   But it will also operate on Iranian public opinion. In the event that the United States uses a lot of force, then you run the risk of creating enough of a backlash in Iran that Iran feels hemmed in and has to walk up the ladder. It’s because there are multiple audiences you’re communicating with, partly through words and partly through actions, it gets very complicated to get the balance just right. And clearly, it isn’t just right yet. Whether it will be just right the next time is yet to be determined.  One last word on this, which is the Pentagon spokesman just came out today with a statement that the first action you see won’t be the last action you see. Now, I’m reading tea leaves here, right, just like everybody else, but I think what that means is that probably the initial U.S. retaliatory response is not going to be a massive air raid on Tehran. (Laughs.) It’s going to be fairly limited, perhaps mostly in Syria—who knows? And so the Pentagon is trying to signal Republicans—(laughs)—and others: We are not being wimpy, because there will be more to come, right? Don’t misread the initial strike as being all that we’re going to do. That might suggest that the next military action will not be massive, and something that might be called militarily decisive, if there is such a thing.  BRANNEN: Ray, I want to go to you next. As you hear about that sort of menu of options, where you think Iran’s red line is tripped for it to take a further escalatory move in a counterstrike? And I’d also love to hear which side do you think is more persuasive right now about its willingness to use force, the United States or Iran, as they jockeying back and forth?  TAKEYH: Well, I’m sure you know there’s no precise answer to those questions, because this is a volatile situation where everybody is sort of making it up as they go along. This is like improvised theater, except highly dangerous. Steve Biddle made a very important point—very important point. These particular strikes are designed for—there’s how your adversary considers them and there’s how your population considers them. And the domestic population of Iran presents a paradoxical problem for the regime in Iran. Because on the one hand they don’t wish for this conflict to escalate and be part of a direct war with the United States. Yet, on the other hand, the Iranian regime, which distrusts its population, has to appear robust as a means of convincing the population that it still maintains control. It cannot be seen as being defeated, because that will reduce the aura of authority and control and power that it has at home. It will damage that.  So their imperative to respond would be not to satisfy the population but to deter the population from essentially seeking to take advantage of the regime’s perceived weakness. Now, in terms of the menu of options that were offered by Steve Biddle, I think the—being attacked in Syria and Iraq are absorbable propositions, because they have happened before. The Israelis have been doing him so often, and they’ve been part of the shadow war that Iran and Israel have played. It’ll be similar to that. There will be some degree of Iranian bellicosity and promise of retaliation. And they may even procure the American phrase, and the time and choosing of the time of their own.  Blowing up the ship, that would kind of—because it’s such an—such a symbolic and ostentatious target, may require a greater degree of retaliation. And anything in Iranian territory itself would present a very serious challenge for the regime, for the simple reason that the regime has told itself—and has told its constituents—that this would not happen. It has assured itself that it can wage proxy war against its adversaries without measurable retaliatory consequences. And it has signaled to its population that you may be tired of the forever wars that we are engaging in, but you’re not going to be directly a victim of those in a palpable kinetic way.   The shattering of those presumptions is likely to produce some measure of paralysis in the system, and then pressure for retaliation in some kind of a way that’s tangible. Even if it’s symbolic, it has to be—they would have to come out of this conflict with a narrative of success, as they did from January 2020 assassination of General Soleimani. Their version is we had the last shot, and the Americans were the ones who backed down. Now, that may not be convincing to a lot of people, but it was symbolically a satisfactory narrative of success from their perspective. They had the last call.  BRANNEN: OK. I want to turn—I want to go back, Steven Cook, to what you discussed at the beginning, this percolating deal that could end the war in Gaza, perhaps temporarily with an exchange of hostages or prisoners. If there is this kind of deal brokered, what do you think the impact will be on these strikes, whether in Iraq, Syria, or in Yemen with the Houthis? They’ve said, that’s what the goal is of these strikes. Do you think that they’ll stop when that happens? Or has it gotten bigger than that?  COOK: Well, I think this goes to the question that Steve Biddle and Ray have been tackling, which is this question of whether the Iranians want escalation or not. And Steve Biddle suggested that they don’t. Ray had a somewhat more nuanced view of it. It strikes me that it’s not self-evident at all that the Iranians do not want escalation. If they did not want escalation, we wouldn’t see some of the things—recognizing, of course, the relative autonomy of different groups within the axis of resistance—but it strikes me that what we’re seeing is the transformation of the conflict in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas into something larger, into an actual confrontation between the axis of resistance in this loosely aligned group of status quo powers, some of whom are more interested in joining the fight than others.  It is tantalizing to believe that if there is some sort of long pause in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, that these attacks would come to an end. The Houthis had attack shipping in the Gulf—in the in the Red Sea even before this conflict. And they’re not attacking just Israeli-linked shipping any longer. American forces have come under attack by members of the axis of resistance for far longer than the war in the Gaza Strip has been going on. So there’s reason to believe that as the United States engages in a kind of self-deterrence here, that the Iranians believe that they have an upper hand. That this is, in fact, the conflict that the IRGC has long wanted.  I think your initial question is, you know, what’s going to happen with this hostage deal. As I said, there’s a possibility that it can happen. The Israeli government has indicated that its minimum requirements for a deal are the release of all of these people, which—including the remains of those who have been killed, and all of the accounting for them. It seems hard after all of this time to believe that Hamas is going to give up this kind of leverage, because if you bring home all of the Israeli hostages, including the remains of those who have been killed, then it really is open season. Then the Israelis can, you know, believe it or not, loosen the rules of engagement in ways that they have not up until this point.  And Hamas’ demand is for, you know, something moving towards if not an actual sustained cessation of violence, then an end to the conflict. Which would be essentially a victory for them, given the Israelis’ declaration that the intention—their strategic goal was to destroy Hamas. So I’m—I believe that there are negotiations going on. I believe that there are, you know, papers being passed, and things are coming into view. And if anybody in the bureaucracy can do it, it’s Bill Burns. And if he does bring this home, he gets to put an S on his chest. But I think that there are a lot of—a lot of reasons to be skeptical that even as they believe that they’re getting closer, that the parties themselves ultimately will not want to pay that particular price. So in some sense, it’s a—it’s a theoretical conversation. But to your larger question, do I think conflict continues? Absolutely, I think the conflict continues.  BRANNEN: Steve Biddle, I know we have you for barely another minute, but I’m going to sneak in one last giant question to you. And it’s about deterrence. This word is being thrown around so much. We need to restore deterrence against Iran, we need to send a message of deterrence. I’d love to hear from you, is deterrence through military force going to work in this case? And what does it take to make deterrence effective?  BIDDLE: Well, you have to remember deterrence is deterrence of something specific, right? Deterrence isn’t just some general thing that you get, right? The Israelis are guilty of some horribly sloppy usage on this issue. So deterrence is all about preventing the enemy from taking some specific action by threatening to do something you have not yet done, but will do if they do it. So deterrence is working right now in the Persian Gulf, right? The Iranians are not charging across the border and invading their neighbors with Iranian armored divisions, right? That’s because they’re deterred—in part, right—that’s because they’re deterred from doing so. The Iranian-backed militias could be expending more ammunition at the United States than they are now. They’re not doing that because they’re deterred from doing that, right?  So there are all sorts of things that are being deterred, because people expect that if they do them the consequences will be negative enough that they’d rather not. The problem is we’re not deterring as many things as we want, right? What everybody involved, but especially Iranian-backed militias, right, for the current conversation, are doing is they’re constantly pushing against the limit to see, if I do a little bit more what will happen? A little bit more, what will happen, right? But a lot more is being deterred. And the problem with this strategy of do a little bit more, test the waters, see what the retaliatory action is, and then go further, is you get these eventual escalatory spirals rather than a single escalatory leap.  So, A, deterrence isn’t hopeless. It’s going on right now. It’s just not deterring as much as what we want it to deter. B, the problem with deterrence is that it operates in the eye of the other side. We can talk about deterrence until we’re blue in the face. We can talk in the floor of the House of Representatives about all the horrible things that will prevent the Iranians from doing X as opposed to doing Y. But what really matters is what the Iranians think. The purpose of deterrence is to persuade the other side that the consequences—what we will do to you if you do what we’re trying to deter is so nasty that you will choose not to do the thing we’re trying to deter.  And the problem is, that communication is operating through all sorts of filters. It’s operating through a cultural filter, where what we’re trying to do is act on the decision calculus of people we’ve usually never met, we know very little about, who’ve grown up in a very different society, a completely different culture, and look at the world very differently than we do. Thank heavens we have Ray Takeyh to interpret for us, but nonetheless, right, we’re operating through a tremendous amount of fog in understanding what the—how the Iranians are going to perceive what we do.  Secondly, it’s all about, implicitly or explicitly, promising to do something you haven’t done yet. What deters is not what you already done. What deters is the thing you haven’t done and are threatening to do if Iran allows its militias to keep killing Americans, right? And that notion that it’s a threat of a future action you haven’t done yet means the credibility of these threats is central to their success, and very hard to establish. Because there are always going to be conflicting signals about the credibility of what you’re doing. It’s impossible for human behavior to be utterly consistent. I cannot be utterly consistent in my behavior toward my daughter or my cat, right? Somehow or another, I’m going to do something that isn’t quite consistent with the deterrent framework that I have in mind to keep my cat from meowing when I don’t want it to meow, right?   So in the international relations sphere, there are always going to be behaviors of the United States that will suggest that we are tough hombres, and will inflict a lot of pain on you if you do things we’re trying to prevent, but also that we’re, you know, wimpy and unreliable, and won’t act. And so what the Iranians are doing, or what anybody who’s subject to a deterrent threat is doing, is they’re looking through this dim, foggy glass at this complex mix of behaviors on the other side, and trying to say: How do I evaluate the relative importance of American forcefulness—we keep blowing up Iranian-supported militia ammunition supplies—and American wimpyness—we don’t just go blow up the IRGC headquarters in Tehran. And it’s inevitably a mixed menu of stuff. And that makes the credibility of threats hard to establish.   And the problem the Biden administration has got right now is they believe that the credibility of American threats to act forcefully against Iran if it doesn’t restrain its allies isn’t sufficient, and they need to do more to establish that future threats will be credible. The airstrikes that we do are deterrent only in the sense that they establish the credibility of doing something more in the future that we haven’t done yet, right?   One last point on deterrence, which is: There’s a two-way deterrent problem here, in that we have Iranian proxies that are doing most of the nasty stuff that we’re trying to stop. Iran has a relationship with its proxies that Ray is vastly better qualified than I am to talk about in its particular details, right, but as a general matter patrons and proxies have an imperfect degree of influence on each other. Because their interests are never the same. There has never been a patron and a proxy in the history of patrons and proxies whose interests are exactly the same. They always diverge to some greater or lesser degree. And often the way they diverge is the proxy has an incentive to use more violence, because it’s useful for recruiting and it’s useful for establishing your bona fides with your local constituency, than the patron wants. Because they think the patron is going to bail them out if they get into trouble, right?  You see this with the U.S. and Taiwan, right? Taiwan has a tendency to get out over its skis by signaling greater degrees of independence, because they’re relying on the United States to bail them out if they get in trouble. A common interest misalignment between patron and proxy is the degree to which the proxy thinks that the patron will bail them out and the patron is trying to control what they do but it has some—but varying—degree of influence over what they do. So who are we—who is the recipient of our deterrent signal? Is the recipient of our deterrence signal going to be the head of the Iranian militia? Or is it going to be the IRGC? Or is it going to be the mullahs in Tehran, right?  They will tend to perceive the signals differently because it’s a complicated communication process that’s inherent in the nature of deterrence. And we’re trying to deter the—we are—in this instance we’re trying to compel the Iranians, a different version of coercion theory, to restrain somebody else. So that there are all sorts of moving parts here.   TAKEYH: But, Steve, when Kataib Hezbollah issues a statement saying they’re not going to attack American forces again, in this case the proxy is more temperate than the patron.  BIDDLE: It can work both ways.  TAKEYH: Yeah.  BIDDLE: It’s not uncommon that patron wants more violence—that the proxy wants more violence than the patrons. The main point is that their interests are never aligned.  TAKEYH: Right, but is the American deterrence—American deterrence, without even acting, has already worked.  TAKEYH: Well, it’s working all the time as we speak, right? This is the point I was making earlier, right? We’re deterring all—we’re successfully deterring all sorts of things. It’s just we’re not successfully deterring some things we really care about. And that’s a problem, right? But there’s all sorts of deterrence. Hezbollah has not crossed the border in force because the Israelis, with our assistance, are deterring them from doing that. That’s great, right? So, again, the problem with coercion theory—deterrence is one subvariant of coercion theory, compellence is another, for you academics in the audience. And it’s a complicated picture, because there’s a bunch of different things you’re trying to deter, some of what you’re doing successfully, others which not so much.  It’s all about future action that hasn’t happened yet. So there are all sorts of credibility issues going on through all these cloudy filters. I don’t envy the Biden administration having to try to engineer all this, because in many ways the communication challenges make it a blunt instrument. And it’s a dangerous blunt instrument because misinterpretation of future intention, or misreading of somebody’s domestic audience, can lead to a different reaction from the opponent than the one you’re trying to bring about.  BRANNEN: Well, Steve Biddle, don’t be surprised when I tried to come commission a piece from you for Foreign Affairs about patrons and proxies and deterrence theory, because I think we—  BIDDLE: Happy to help.  BRANNEN: (Laughs.) OK, I’m going to hand it over to the operator to take questions from the audience now.  BIDDLE: Yeah, and I’m afraid I’m—I regret that I’m going to have to drop off.  BRANNEN: Thank you so much for joining us.  BIDDLE: I successfully talked so long as to deter questions. (Laughter.) So Steven Cook and Ray Takeyh will have to do them.  OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)  We’ll take the first question from Nick Wadhams.  Q: Hey there. It’s Nick Wadhams from Bloomberg.  I had a question about the fact that the Pentagon and the administration basically seems to be leaving no surprises about the fact that these attacks are coming down the pike imminently. Do you think that there is a deliberate strategy in essentially telegraphing the fact that the strikes are coming? Secretary Austin was asked about this in a press conference today. You know, the notion that this was giving Iranian officials a chance to skedaddle ahead of the strikes. But is this all part of the sort of delicate balancing act? Or do you think there’s other factors at play? I mean, we’ve all been on pins and needles for the last couple of days thinking that these strikes were going to come, and it just feels like it’s sort of the worst-kept secret in Washington that it’s imminent. And I’m just wondering if you see that as a deliberate strategy, or just happenstance based on weather conditions, timing for the strikes, targets of opportunity, whatever it might be. Thank you.  COOK: Ray, you want to take that first?  TAKEYH: I’m not sure if I can add much light to this question regarding the administration’s calculations. It seemed to me when the president went out and said the United States will retaliate, then that sets the parameters and pretext for everybody to say that. Maybe the president was premature in saying that. I think everybody understood that with American fatalities there has to be some kind of retaliation, but also the pledge of retaliation to come, I think, to some extent, coexists with the diplomacy to try to release the hostages and have some kind of ceasefire, or some armistice, or something in the Gaza front. So that probably did have some kind of an effect on how you talk about retaliation and conduct retaliation. But I yield to Steve on this.  COOK: My own view is—and, again, somebody who hasn’t, you know, served in the military and has a guns and trucks military analyst, is that it’s quite odd that the administration have been so open about, you know, saying, what they’re going to do, how they’re going to do it, what types of targets they’re going to use. It seems to me that it violates kind of all of the things that we all know about successful military operations. And so it suggests to me that, despite the president’s saying we’re going to retaliate, that there is going to be some retaliation but the effect of that retaliation is intended to be minimal.  And to pick up the theme that we were just talking about, is essentially the United States is self-deterring in order to communicate to the Iranians that it doesn’t want an escalation. To my mind, it’s not self-evident that that’s what the Iranians—that the Iranians share that restraint up at this point. And I should add, before we get to the next question, I think that that’s a common problem in our relationship with the Iranians, that we often believe certain things about the Iranians that just aren’t exactly true. And that because we don’t want escalation, we therefore have concluded that the Iranians don’t want escalation.  OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Jim Zirin.  Q: I congratulate you all on an excellent discussion.  And one of the aspects that I think Stephen Biddle mentioned was the domestic impact of a strike. And here we are in an election year. And you have certainly the voices of the right saying that of Trump were in charge here, you’d have a different story. And that Biden is weak. And a kind of mushy response, which might be appropriate, might not be enough to satisfy the wolves. And I wondered what your impression was of the domestic impact, and what weight the decision makers might want to give it in determining what we’ll do and when we’ll do it.  COOK: Well, Jim, as you know, I do policy not politics. But I would just point out to those critics that both Republican and Democratic administrations have at times pursued policies—had been restrained, when their critics had called for more forceful responses to provocations from the Iranians and from other ones. You know, President Trump did not respond to Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia in the summer of 2019, did not respond to the downing of an American drone over the gulf in the summer of 2019, essentially tossing out forty years of declared American policy. I don’t think anybody is suggesting these things are easy.  The difference here, of course, is that American soldiers were killed in this attack, and the president has publicly vowed to retaliate. So now all eyes are watching to see how robust this retaliation will be. Of course, because we are already in the 2024 election season, no matter what happens the president’s opponents are likely to take advantage of it. But, hey, that’s the nature of politics, which I’m not going to touch with a ten-foot pole.  TAKEYH: I would just add one thing to what Steven said. The Iranian use of proxy war goes back forty-five years. Hezbollah in 1983, that attacked the American Marine barracks, the Khobar Towers bombing. So this has been a longstanding Iranian practice, much—profoundly more accelerated in the aftermath of the 9/11 wars, simply because it was greater degree of opportunity, recruitment, and chaos. But this has been a longstanding sort of this aspect of their statecraft.  OPERATOR: As a reminder, please state your name and affiliation after you are called on.  We’ll take the next question from Garrett Mitchell (sp).  BRANNEN: Go ahead, Garrett (sp). You’re on mute.  Q: Thanks very much. Garrett Mitchell (sp).  Thank you, first of all, for a really thoughtful and helpful discussion. Stephen Biddle made mention that he certainly is glad he’s not Joe Biden, who has to figure out the balancing act on all of this. And one of the things that I’m curious about is how he is doing and how he is doing it. Which is to say, how is Joe Biden—how is Joe—how do we measure Joe Biden’s management of these sort of collected issues that we’re talking about? And in particular, I’m interested in the sort of dynamics between the sort of obvious players, which would be State, Defense, and, of course, Bill Burns. I’m interested to know whether you sense that there is a cohesion here, whether Biden is—whether Biden—is Burns emerging as a more significant player in all of this? So rather than trying to lay out a variety of scenarios, I’m curious to know what your perspective is on how the president is managing this.  TAKEYH: I don’t think I can offer a sort of an insight on this beyond what I read in the papers. So I’m not quite sure, Garrett (sp), if I can be much of an assistant in this. How the president’s management of this, I mean, it’s—I say, how is a movie going when you haven’t seen the ending? (Laughs.) So we’re still in the middle of this. And it can go wrong in many different ways, or right in some ways. But in terms of who’s up, who’s down within the northwest corner of Washington, I’m probably not the right guy to ask about that.  COOK: I think the only thing that I’d add is that, you know, Bill Burns, of all the principals in the—in the administration, given his experience in the past being an old Middle East hand, the ambassador to Jordan, ambassador to, you know, Russia, he knows all of these players extremely well, and is well respected by all of them. So he’s an obvious person to be dispatched to try to help hammer out a long pause. or ceasefire, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t think that this is a function of, you know, who’s up, who’s down, you know, the kind of games, you know, the people—I just think Burns is the appropriate person for the moment, especially since the interlocutors here are all the intel people.  OPERATOR: At this time, we have no more questions in the queue.  BRANNEN: I will sneak in one more then, which I’m happy to do. I wanted to ask about what was in the news today, Steven Cook, about the Biden plans to sanction Israeli settlers who have engaged in violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. And just put that move into context. Is it part of some bigger strategy that you think is emerging about how to resolve this conflict? What did you make of that?  COOK: Well, I thought it was an important step, especially since the settlers, even before October 7, had been engaged in violence and seeking to push Palestinians from their own homes and land, and engaged in all kinds of violence, and have injured and killed. Palestinians. These are people who are also, you know, egged on by Israeli ministers. So I think the United States—it was a long time coming that the United States puts—makes its views clear, not just in words but also in deed. It’s really only for settlers. We know that this is a larger problem. It’s been a larger problem for a long time.   I think it does suggest that overall that President Biden, after having, you know, placed the United States shoulder to shoulder with Israel and its goals in the Gaza Strip, is now thinking more broadly about the day after. And that, you know, to return to some sort of status quo—which I should add is probably more likely than anything else—but that afterwards the United States is going to make a very significant diplomatic push to try to find ways to resolve the conflict once and for all, so we don’t return to a—to, you know, a horrible, horrible conflict. And then it’s a recognition that—small as it is—that the Palestinians are under threat by the settlers, who have been encouraged and enabled by Israeli ministers.   So I think it was an important step. I think, to my—to my memory, it is the first time that the United States has directly taken action against settlers themselves, of which there is a strong American contingent. So it is, I think, important in the end.  TAKEYH: Can I just make—can I make one point that that is—nobody has—in this conversation—has talked about the Iranian nuclear program, which actually, in some ways, is acting as a restraint on the Iranian government. Because one of the concerns that they would have to have is if there is an escalatory dynamic with the United States, and things start expanding the—as you go up this escalatory chain, it’s inconceivable to me that at some stage the Iranian nuclear apparatus would not be at least considered a legitimate target. And actually, the preservation of this nuclear apparatus, to some extent, paradoxically, is acting as a restraint on Iran, in terms of getting the regional balance correct with his domestic imperatives. And one of his domestic imperatives, as a legacy project for the leader, is to expand, preserve this nuclear infrastructure. So he cannot—they cannot sacrifice his infrastructure as the conflict potentially veers out of control.  BRANNEN: That’s interesting. You wouldn’t expect it to be functioning in that capacity. But—  TAKEYH: That’s right, yeah. Yeah.  BRANNEN: Just checking if there are any more questions from the audience before we wrap up.  OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Hamdam Mostafavi.  Q: Hi. I’m Hamdam Mostafavi from a French newspaper, L’Express, in France.  I was going to ask about the nuclear program. There was actually some talks of détente, of more—there was—before the attack of the 7th of October. It seems that the U.S. and Iran could find maybe some way of talking together. Do you think now all talks, all diplomacy is gone? Or is there maybe some behind the door talks going on between Iran and the U.S.?  TAKEYH: Well, as far as I know, it’s hard to see how the nuclear diplomacy can be generated at this particular point, when the two sides are talking about engaging in direct military confrontation with each other, and so forth. So whatever walls of mistrust existed before, substantially more so. There was, as you mentioned, a sort of an understanding, as everybody called it, whereby the United States would transfer some of Iran’s frozen assets back to Iran, and Iranians would exercise some degree of restraint in expansion of the nuclear program. And there was some evidence that that bargain was taking place, in the sense that rate of growth of Iranian production of highly enriched uranium seemed to have lessened. Not that they weren’t doing it, but they were doing it less.  That bargains seems to have faded now, particularly because the $6 billion that were transferred to the Iranian government, with under—the agency of Qatari government—seem to have been frozen and inaccessible to them. So this sort of bargaining that needs to happen between two sides that is engaged in nuclear exchange—nuclear negotiations and diplomatic exchange requires a modicum of trust that, at this point, is absent in that relationship. There was never that much in it, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. And it’d be very difficult, I would suspect, for the Biden administration to relieve sanctions on Iran at this point for modest nuclear restraints.  BRANNEN: OK, well, I think at that, we’re going to wrap it up. I want to thank everybody for joining us. And just a reminder that the conversation was on the record, and a video and transcript will be posted at CFR.org. And you can also visit the CFR page and Foreign Affairs for additional resources. Thank you, Steven and Ray, for your time. And thank you, everybody, for joining us.  TAKEYH: Thank you.  (END) 

Panelists discuss Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, American and British responses, and prospects for regional escalation.  ELDER: Thank you. Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us for this media briefing on “Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea.” Events are moving very quickly, so I’ll keep this introduction fairly short so we can get straight to the heart of things with our esteemed group of panelists.  We have Steven A. Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council on Foreign Relations. We have admirable—Admiral—admirable Admiral James Foggo, dean of the Center for Maritime Strategy and the former commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa. And we have Ray Takeyh, Hasib J. Sabbagh senior fellow for Middle East studies here at CFR.  And I’ll just add that we’ll be posting this to CFR.org later on. And you can find a host of other material on CFR.org, and also at the Foreign Affairs website.  So the Houthis have launched more than thirty-five attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea since mid-November, positioning themselves as responding to—protesting Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks. As of today, the U.S. has launched five strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. Things seem to be—we’ll get to this—but things seem to be also spiraling somehow between Pakistan and Iran. It feels, as each day goes by, that the world is ever closer to the precipice of some conflict even greater than what we’re seeing right now. So thank you to our panelists for joining us to help us make sense of this.  Steven, I’ll start with you. Maybe you can give us an overview of what we’re dealing with here, of who the Houthis are, so everyone has a baseline. And then also, you know, if you could outline their strategy and what you think their goals really are here.  COOK: Great, thanks very much, Miram. It’s a great pleasure to be with everybody. It’s a great pleasure to be with my friend Ray Takeyh and Admiral Foggo to discuss this, I think, extraordinarily important issue and the prospects for escalation in the region. I’m sure that many on the call know already some things about the Houthis, but just to clarify I think it’s important to get some baseline here on the Houthis.  This is a group that has been actually in conflict with the, you know, central government authorities in Yemen for quite some time. It is—it is not a distinct ethnic group, per se, in Yemen. There are—there is a guy named Houthi that the Houthis follow, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. They are Zaidis, or Fiver—they are from the Fiver branch Shiite Islam. They predominate in the north. And since the Yemeni civil war began, they have prevailed in large parts of the country, including the capital, Sana’a. In fact, their taking of the capital in 2014-2015 was the reason why the Saudis intervened in the Yemeni civil war to begin with.  They fight under the banner, “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, damn the Jews, victory for Islam.” And they got involved in the conflict in the Gaza Strip by first trying to penetrate Israeli defenses with drones and ballistic missiles. The United States Navy shot down quite a number of Houthi missiles and drones directed at Israel. Israel’s Arrow anti-ballistic missile system also, in a first test of it in action, actually shot down Houthi missiles. And so the Houthis shifted their tactics, and began attacking what they believed to be Israeli shipping or Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea.  They then expanded those attacks to broadly include commercial shipping in the region. And they have said that this is an effort—that they will continue to attack shipping as long as the Israelis are engaged in military operations in the Gaza Strip. I’m not exactly as convinced that now, after attacks on thirty-five vessels over the course of the last two months, that it’s really specifically about getting the Israelis to stop. No doubt there is an effort to put economic pressure on the United States and countries in the West to bring pressure to bear on the Israelis to wind their operations.   But I think that the Houthis’ ability to disrupt the global economy, or at least attempt to disrupt the global economy—and, thus far, they’ve been somewhat successful in forcing commercial shipping lines to reroute their vessels around Africa, which has a number of economic and environmental knock-on effects—I think that there’s now a kind of—the Houthis are engaged in a broader effort to demonstrate that they can open and close the Mandeb Strait and play this very significant role in the global economy and global security that goes well beyond Israel and Gaza.   ELDER: Thanks.   Admiral, could you tell us what the U.S. response has looked like? They launched this multinational—or, international Naval force to try and protect shipping in the Red Sea. But could you outline, maybe from a military perspective, what we’re—what we’re dealing with over there?  FOGGO: Certainly, Miriam. And it’s a pleasure to be here with you, and Steve, and Ray today.   So the purpose of the United States Navy is—well, there’s several things that we do. One is to keep the sea lines of communication open and to keep commerce flowing around the world, and to protect U.S. and, in certain cases, allied interests. So as you look at the Red Sea, it is a significant vital waterway for trade. And when you start at the Bab-al-Mandeb, things shrink down to a very narrow strait. Then it widens to a couple hundred miles, and 1,400 miles later you get to the Suez Canal. That’s a cash cow for the Egyptians, transit through there of the large tanker and aircraft carries. A million dollars roundtrip, about a half a million each way.   When the ship, the Ever Given, grounded in there, we were losing about $10 billion of commerce a day. Do the math, 440 million (dollars) an hour. Now, some ships have made it through, thanks to the United States Navy, over 1,500. Some have decided to take the trip around the Cape of Good Hope. That’s an additional ten-day transit. It’s driven up our forty-foot container prices. So to rent one of these containers used to be about $1,500. Now it’s up to $4,000 to $6,000, depending on the transit. It’s curious that COSCO, the China Ocean Shipping Company, has continued to sail through there without any problems. And I see a role for China here, but I don’t see them doing anything.  So United States Navy took the lead. We have several destroyers that have been operating in the Red Sea. These are magnificent ships. This has been going on since before Christmas. The first response was by USS Carney on 19 October, about twelve days after the Hamas attack on Israel, when the Houthis chose to throw a couple of missiles at Israel. And Carney shot them down. It was a difficult geometry. She also shot down a number of drones. This has been going on every day until, as you pointed out, the United States government made the decision to conduct strikes on the ground.   So up until that point, we were knocking down the flaming arrows. Now we’re going after the archer. And in the last twenty-four hours, it was interesting because, you know, John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council has said, hey, we’re not looking for a broadening or a widening of this war. We’re not looking for conflict spreading throughout the Middle East. So that last strike was pretty proportional. Missiles were on the rail. And we have pretty good intelligence, pretty good national technical means. We saw that and we took them out. And so I think the response has been proportional.  As far as the Navy goes, the Burke-class destroyer is one of the best platforms to do this. It carries guns, the five-inch, fifty-four gun. It can knock down a drone with an air burst projectile. That gun fires about twenty rounds a minute. They’ve been using it. We’ve also been using missiles. And I’m sure it’ll come up, but missiles against drones, you’re looking at a couple of million dollars versus a couple of thousand dollars. But nevertheless, to keep those tankers and our interests in trade going, and to protect our own ships, we’re doing whatever it takes. So I’m pretty proud of those young men and women who’ve been out there since before Christmas doing this mission every day.  And, you know, I said 1,400 miles long and 220 miles wide. Compared to a big ocean, that’s a bathtub. And so these warships have been in there, mixing it up with the Houthis in a very dangerous location. We’ve also got a naval base down there in Djibouti. And, you know, the Houthis have threatened to attack U.S. military infrastructure in the last forty-eight hours. So we need to be very, very careful as we—as we move forward. But, so far, I think, so good.  Just last thing, a couple of weeks ago on CBS David Martin asked me something along the lines of, you know, can you guarantee 100 percent knocking down missiles, or preventing attacks on ships, or U.S. ships? Well, no, I can’t. But the track record so far has been pretty good. Some companies, like Maersk and Shell, have decided to go around the Cape of Good Hope. And that increases carbon footprint, fuel use, and costs. We need to get this situation under control so we can get all 100 percent of commerce flowing through the Red Sea.  ELDER: Thank you.  Ray, I’d love to talk to you about Iran. I think when people express concern about this conflict growing into something bigger, you know, maybe some sort of direct confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. So could you please explain to us what the Houthi-Iran relationship is? And as I understand it, the Axis of Resistance has various—you know, various—as they call themselves—various relationships within it. And I would be curious to hear a comparison also of the—you know, the tight—very tight relationship between Iran and Hamas. And how does that compare with how Iran conducts its relationship with the Houthis?  TAKEYH: Yes. Thank you. Thanks for having me. And it’s good to be with everyone here.  In terms of the Axis of Resistance, the Axis of Resistance has a hierarchy. And at, actually, the core of it is the Lebanese Hezbollah. And then comes the various other Shiite groups within Iraq and Syria. Hamas actually comes a bit beyond that, in the sense that the operational links with it are not as mature as they would be in terms of Hezbollah. Iran did not create Hamas, as it did with the Lebanese Shiite militia group. But nevertheless, Hamas is important because it’s a Sunni group, and a Sunni group while most of Iran’s allies are Shiite. So it allows Iran to breach that sectarian divide.  The relation—as Houthis—as Steven was talking about, they subscribe to an unusual branch of Shiism which rejects a lot of hierarchies. But also it doesn’t really subscribe to the Iranian model of clerical organization, you know, with all the structures that they have created—the way Hezbollah does, for instance, adhering to the notion of the velayat-e faqih and so forth. That’s not what they do. They have come, as Steven was mentioning, to their anti-Americanism and anti-Israeli policies by themselves. They were not instigated in that direction by the Iranians. So in that sense, they’re not the creation of Iran. This is sort of a likeminded association.  And it’s less mature than other—Iran’s relationship. It really comes into existence as an opportunistic attempt to inflict damage on the Saudis at a time when the Saudis went to war in Yemen, and got mired in that civil war, and got entangled in there in the aftermath of Arab Spring. But right now, of course, Houthis do play a role for Iran, which is kind of an important role. Because if you want to preserve Hezbollah for other operations, and you want to increase international pressure on the Israelis, particularly American pressure, you want to be able to increase that pressure with a fairly dispensable proxy, if you want to even call who Houthis that.   But nevertheless, you want to manage to increase the costs on the international community for not imposing any kind of restraints on Israel, assuming the international community can actually impose restraints on Israel. Which is actually a very big if. So this was an attempt to disrupt maritime trade, as the admiral suggested. It imposed certain costs on the global economy—absorbable costs at this point. So, in a sense, the meeting of minds between Houthis and the Iranians in terms of disruption of commercial traffic in the Gulf came at the right time, given the fact that Iran cannot change the facts on the ground in Gaza. Nor does it want to necessarily inflame the northern front, which may consume Hezbollah itself.  Could this get out of hand? You know, in the past three, four days Iran has attacked three countries. That’s a real experience. And there was a number of reasons why that has happened. I don’t think it should be ignored that there was a domestic terrorist attack in Iran where eighty-five people were killed in the procession for the late General Suleimani. And this actually plays into some of the attacks that Iranians have made against various spaces or territory of Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan as well. Particularly that Baluch area has been unruly. During the protests last year, the Women Life Freedom protests, it was actually not peaceful in that region. The Iranian government did not announce it, but they imposed martial law. And it was quite violent in that area. So there’s a lot of violence in that area, a lot of arms transference that comes through Pakistan and elsewhere, via Saudis or whoever is doing it. So that area is particularly inflamed in sort of the geography of Iran and its political geography, where there is a considerable degree of unrest.  ELDER: Thank you.  I’d like to return to the Pakistan thing in a bit, but let me—let me ask you, Steven. I’m going to quote you to yourself. You wrote in Foreign Policy in December, “If the United States wants to protect freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and its environs, it’s going to have to take the fight directly to the Houthis.” Do you believe that the Biden administration is taking the fight directly to them, and to a degree that would satisfy your analysis of the situation?  COOK: Well, I think this is probably a question that’s more relevant to Admiral Foggo, but I will answer because you’re quoting me directly to myself—which, by the way, I kind of like. So, look, I think that it’s important to recognize that any use of military force has to be taken with, you know, great, you know, care. And we have so much force, we need to use it with a certain amount of judiciousness. I think freedom of navigation is a global interest of the United States. It’s a core interest of the United States. And to allow a group like the Houthis to have leverage over the freedom of navigation, especially in an area of such importance like the Mandab Strait and the Red Sea, is risking too much. And that I think the administration has finally realized that they do need to take action against the Houthis.  But I will say that I was speaking with a number of Arab officials recently who said, you know, look, if you’re just going to poke the Houthis, it’s not going to stop. You’re going to have to undertake the kind of military action that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the Houthis to harass and attack shipping in the Gulf. And thus far, I think the administration is more in the—in the former category rather than the latter category. Now I think Admiral Foggo is better positioned to talk about the kind of gradations of escalation and what’s really necessary to do the job here, but I think at a level of principle, there is—this situation calls for the use of military force.  We’re not talking about, you know, invading Yemen, and changing regimes, and the kinds of things that we’ve done in the past. I’m talking about something that’s genuinely important to the United States and the global economy, and the kind of principles from which we stand in terms of international security. And that’s why I think it’s important that we use military force here against the Houthis.  ELDER: Thank you. Well, I’ll take your lead. Admiral, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And, you know, you’ve said that you’re very proud of what the servicemen over there have been doing. But do you believe that it has been enough, or do you see a situation where this might—from the U.S. administration side—might grow into an ever-bigger operation against the Houthis?  FOGGO: Well, it could possibly. And it could possibly grow into a bigger operation against the malign Iranian influence. And that’s a question that the administration really hasn’t come to grips with publicly. I’m sure they’re talking about it. And I don’t want to be romantic, but if you go back in history—and I talked about, you know, the missions and the raison d’être for the United States Navy, why the Constitution says, you know, maintain a navy and raise an army. Those first six frigates back in 1800, they were fighting the Barbary Wars off Libya and against the dey of Algiers, who was taking U.S.-flagged ships and holding citizens for tribute, so hostage money. We went to war with them. And there were some great heroes of that campaign who had been, you know, immortalized over the U.S. Naval Academy. I was over in Annapolis this morning.  Fast forward to the tanker wars in 1980 to ’88 in the Arabian Gulf. That was the Iranians attacking, you know, innocent tankers. We reflagged some of those ships. And then we conducted operation Praying Mantis. And we went after the Iranian Navy. And it was rather bloody. There were two ships that were involved in particular who had an early demise, and that was the Sabalan and the Sahand. And those skippers were thumbing their nose at both the tankers and the U.S. Navy and our national interests. And they were sunk as a result. So we took action there.  Just ten days ago I was talking to my classmate, you know we were plebes together at the Naval Academy, Commander Kirk Lippold, the CO of the USS Cole. His ship was blown up in Yemen in October 12 of 2000. He lost seventeen sailors. And after that incident, you know, attributed to al-Qaida, we did not take action. And Kirk reminded me, what happened, Jamie, one year later? 9/11. And then we were in this global war on terror. So we’ve had cycles, ups and downs. And we all work for—you know, Navy people work for civilians and civilian government. And that government makes a decision, and we will follow through. So where we have taken action, we—Barbary wars, Praying Mantis, tanker wars—we have nipped it in the bud.  I give credit, however, to this administration for being deliberate. You know, I think National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, John Kirby’s a friend of mine. They don’t want to have a broadening of this conflict because we got enough things going on in the world. They would rather have it resolved. I do subscribe to my two colleagues here, both Ray and Steve, is I don’t buy into this that it’s all about Hamas and the Palestinians. I think this is an excuse for Iran to use a proxy in the form of the Houthis to exacerbate the situation in the Red Sea and to hurt the West with commerce and with damage, and to embarrass the West.  And we will not stand to be embarrassed. That’s why we’re taking action. That’s why we have the Navy in-house in a very dangerous and precarious situation. But we’ll continue to do it as long as we need to. And, you know, I sit in this building. This is the Navy League building of the United States. The Navy League was started by Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. And another person that firmly believed in the reason for the United States of America, an island nation, to have a navy to defend its interests. So I’m fully behind what we’re doing. And I am fully behind deliberate and cautious steps moving forward.  ELDER: Thank you. Ray, what is your understanding of what the Iranian regime wants right now? My understanding is that, you know, Hamas was more successful than even it thought that it could be for its own aims on October 7. What we’re seeing with the Houthis, day by day. But is your sense that the Iranians are trying to keep a sort of contained situation? Or is this them trying to expand this into a greater conflict?  TAKEYH: Well, I would characterize this as sort of an incremental and ideally manageable escalation. The idea, again, being that if you inflame Israel’s boundaries to some extent, in a limited way in the north and even in from Syria and boundaries and so forth, if you can be disruptive of the global commerce and the global commons, as we saw with the Houthis. And hopefully, at that time, the perception would be that the international community and the United States, that don’t wish to expand the conflict, will fear expansion and therefore try to impose some kind of a settlement on the Israelis. The core assumption here is the latter one, that the international community and the United States can impose constraints on Israel. Israel is a sovereign country dealing with a very complicated situation. It’s a traumatized country. But that’s the core logic.   Now this sort of a thing can get out of hand, as we have seen. Again, the strikes that happened recently have something to do with what happened inside Iran itself, with the terrorist attack from ISIS, that has taken responsibility for it, and also some of the unruly, disorderly activity that is taking place on the eastern frontier with the sort of whole Baluchistan area. And actually there had been ongoing security dialogue between Iran and Pakistan. The day before the Iranians attacked, the foreign minister of Iran was talking to his counterpart in Pakistan. And then, of course, the strike comes, and the Pakistanis respond. I think nine people have been killed, allegedly all of them non-Iranians.  And there’s one thing that has happened in these strikes. Pakistan is the first country, as far as I can tell, since 1988, the end of Iran-Iraq war, that has retaliated on Iranian territory for something that Iran has done. Not on high seas, not against Iranian proxies in various ways, but actually within Iranian territory. I don’t think anybody else has done that—the United States, Israel. Israel has launched some operations about the assassination of scientists, or what have you. But this is a—this is a certain—a certain threshold was breached here. And everybody needs to be—consider that.  Right now, there is a Chinese and Saudi mediation between Iran and Pakistan. What could go wrong? (Laughs.) The Chinese probably have more leverage than the Saudis at this particular point. The rhetoric out of Iran today was actually more respectful, suggesting that they wish no harm to Pakistani people. And Pakistan has been a longtime strategic partner with Iran, and so forth. So I think there’s an inclination to sort of subside this conflict. But there will also be a pressure to do a tic-tac kind of retaliation, as we saw. Whether this can subside at this point is in the interests of all—of both parties, Iran and Pakistan. And I suspect they’re working on that rather diligently, through mediation of various outside actors.  Overall, whether Iran wants—to return to your original question—for international community to impose restraint on Israel, for Hamas to survive in some form—not as an organization in a refugee camp or Ramallah, but to survive the Israeli onslaught in some form. And therefore, the argument will be that the narrative—for Hamas to come out of this was some kind of a narrative of success which is not a pure fabrication. And finally, for Israel to be entangled in that area for a time to come, which will sap its energy, divide its politics, and potentially cause divisions between Israel and some members of the international community.  By the way, all those three things are sort of likely, in a sense. So the Iranians might come out of this if they can keep their head with some degree of success as they would define it, I think.  ELDER: I’ll just ask a quick follow-up to that and we’ll go from there. But what do you think the Biden administration’s strategy should be in that case if, you know, they see a successful Iran emerging from this? What would you like to see from them?  TAKEYH: Well, it’s—again, it’s not really for me to say. I would—it would be very difficult for—I think, for Hamas as an organization to be destroyed. I don’t know what it means, Hamas is an idea. But I do think that who comes out of this with a narrative of success is important. It’s important for the sort of political climate of the region, for the viability of the access of resistance. If one of its prized members who has engaged in this daring attack survives with its leadership intact and much of its military force intact, its influence sometime intact, that’s not necessarily where you want to be the day after.  ELDER: Do you—  COOK: Well, I think that’s likely why the Israeli military operations are unfolding in the way that they have and why the Biden administration has been so reluctant to actually use pressure to get the Israelis to wind it down.  I agree with you, Ray. I think the Israelis are not in any position where they’re taking advice from anybody. But I do think that the narrative of success is very, very important here. If you go back to the summer of 2006, when the war between Hezbollah and Israel ended and it was not a clear defeat for Hezbollah there was a narrative of success there that served the Axis of Resistance well.   So as long as—and so that’s why the Israelis seem so intent on carrying on this fight despite the enormous amount of damage and the enormous amount of international criticism that they’re taking as a result of it.  ELDER: Whoever wants to take this can take this. But one thing that I’ve noticed is that—speaking of narrative that the Houthi narrative has changed a lot it seems in recent years, whereas before it was a lot of, you know, although they showed death to Israel, death to America on the flags, wrapping themselves up in this sort of anti-colonialist resistance, you know, the—fighting U.S./Israeli imperialism as they framed it, it seems to have won them some, you know, fanboys and fangirls at least on the far left in this country.  But I’m wondering to what degree do you think that that is an important shift or is that something that can be sort of ignored for the more military-political strategy? Is that something that should be countered in some way?  COOK: I’d just say—go ahead, Ray.  TAKEYH: I’d just say one thing before Steve. If Houthis are capturing the imagination of the left on American campuses there’s something seriously wrong with the left on the American campuses. I’ll just go to—sorry, Steve. I interrupted you.  COOK: No. No. That’s fine, and, you know, I would align myself with that statement, certainly. I mean, the fact that the Houthis are taking on, though, this kind of language is interesting because it speaks to the kind of way in which the Axis of Resistance sees this conflict and that the conflict is not just in Gaza.   It’s not just in the Red Sea. It’s not just in—it is actually—they’re fighting actually a global conflict. And the fact that they seek to capture the imagination of the global left and align them, I don’t think it’s going to have a very significant effect on the way in which the administration pursues the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, but you will see debates about this where perhaps you didn’t in 1987-1988 about Operation Praying Mantis and bringing most of the Iranian navy to the bottom of the Gulf in about three days.  So it will provide—and because everything is narrative and because we have social media. But I don’t see it really impacting what the United States actually does. It strikes me that this would be more kind of Washington inside baseball type stuff.  But I will say you, Miriam, you started out with, you know, talking about the, you know, the flag under which they fight. I had an opportunity to meet with a Houthi spokesman who’s been, you know, quoted any number of times in any—you know, the newspapers of records, this guy Mohammed Abdul Salam.  In early 2018 he had a delegation of Houthis. I was among a number of think tankers who met with him and they took this very, very seriously—this death to America, death to Israel, victory for Islam thing very, very seriously and they actually informed me that, you know, they wished they had more room on the flag for the death to Saudi Arabia and vowed that one day that they would drive to Riyadh.  This is—you know, this is—gives you a sense of the sort of world view of this group and that, you know, they’ve often been described as kind of ragtag and so on and so forth. But they are ideologically committed and that makes it much—that makes it a significant challenge as well to my mind, which requires the use of military force here.  ELDER: Thank you.  We are going—oh, sorry. Admiral—I keep calling you admirable Admiral. If you—if there’s any thoughts that you’d like to share maybe on what you see as the next stage of, like, what we can expect, say, in the next week to two weeks from the U.S. forces out there in the Red Sea.  FOGGO: Yeah. Thank you, Miriam.  You know, just piggybacking on what Steve and Ray said, I think one of the things we have to do is stop legitimizing the Houthis, and Steve talks about that in his writings and he also talked about that in the beginning here.  You know, they’re not a regional power. They’re not in charge of anything. They’re in Yemen and they’re using violence against the Yemeni government and a sovereign state to try to take control, and by paying attention to them—they’re getting worldwide attention and I dare say a lot of people probably think, well, the Houthis are the ones that are running Yemen.  You know, on one hand you could say, well, technically yes through the use of violence and arms. But legitimizing them doesn’t help. So the steps that the U.S. government just took to add them back to the list of terrorist organizations is probably the right step in the right direction to delegitimize them.   Because it hasn’t worked—diplomacy hasn’t worked. There’s been a lot of diplomacy. There’s been a lot of Secretary of State Tony Blinken doing shuttle diplomacy going back and forth saying, stop this. You know, we’re trying to tamp down what’s happening in Israel with Hamas and we’re going to a lower level of operations, some of which is true.  But we’ve got to take those measures to make them look like the bad guys they are and to prevent them from conducting these strikes. Again, earlier I said, you know, hitting missiles on a rail is proportional to try to limit the campaign and the spread of something that looks like a regional war. I think we’ll probably continue to do that. We’ll continue to have a naval presence in the Red Sea.  I want to say it’s not just luck. It’s professionalism that has brought us this far, where we have not had an untoward incident with a U.S. Navy ship. Some tankers and some bulk carriers have been hit. To my knowledge, nobody has been killed yet. How long will it take before that luck runs out? And so perhaps in the next month or so more drastic action will be taken and we’ll have to look hard at the question of it’s not just the Houthis. It’s the people backing them.  Most recently in the last couple of days I was both proud and sad. Proud of the United States Navy for the operation that took place out of CENTCOM where our U.S. Navy SEALs boarded an Iranian dhow and on Twitter or X you saw the take. There were rocket motor engines, nozzles. Looked like guidance systems, potentially a warhead that were being carried to the Houthis for use in some of these drones and rockets and, unfortunately, it looks like we lost two Navy SEALs—the search and rescue operation is still going on but it’s been a couple of days now and it’s pretty rough out there—and that is a very high price to pay, which shows the dedication of both the U.S. government and the United States Navy to bring this conflict to a conclusion.  ELDER: OK. We will open it up now to questions. I’ll just remind everybody to please identify yourselves and your affiliation, and I’ll turn it over to Emily to handle the questions.  OPERATOR: Thank you so much.  (Gives queuing instructions.)  Our first question will come from Farah Stockman.  Q: Hi. It’s Farah Stockman. I’m with the editorial board of the New York Times. Thanks for doing this.  I’m curious what you can tell us about the targets of the Iranian strikes. It seems notable that they’re all in pretty friendly countries. I haven’t been able to see any statement out of Syria. But what do we know about their—the people who were taken out and is there any grain of truth in what Iran says when it accuses these targets of being affiliated or funded by the United States or Israel?  TAKEYH: There has been no official comment from the Syrians. They’re kind used to their territory being bombed by other people. The Israelis have been, I think, active in the Kurdistan area. I’m not quite sure if the Iranians have the right target when it destroyed that house and killed those people.  But the response from Iraq is an interesting one because it’s been a fairly robust response for Iraq. They withdrew their ambassador. They have lodged a complaint with the United Nations and they have even presumably taken their case to the Arab League.  That reflects the fact that perhaps there’s some splintering in the Shi’a community within Iraq and there’s a movement toward greater degree of nationalism as opposed to sectarian politics. Their targets in Pakistan, they—you know, they have announced a number of the areas but they have suggested that no Pakistanis were actually killed. And, frankly, Pakistanis have suggested that no Iranians were killed in their retaliation, although I should say in the Pakistani retaliation four children were killed.  Do I think there is merit to the Iranian case that some of these attacks were instigated by those allied with the United States or Israel? Well, it is the Iranian official position that ISIS was created by the United States and Israel so any attack by ISIS, in their imagination, would have to be attributed to United States and to a lesser extent Israel.  And in their kind of cosmology, in their view—in their at least stated opinion General Soleimani was killed particularly because he was so effective against ISIS, an instrument of American hegemony in the region.  Now, everything I said is just as absurd as it sounds so—but that is their position. I don’t attach much credibility to it but others can comment on it as well if they wish.  ELDER: All right. Do we have any more questions?  OPERATOR: The next question comes from a C. Winter.  Q: Hi. Chase Winter with Energy Intelligence.  Just a question. I mean, a lot of experts—Yemen experts you talk to kind of suggest that, you know, these airstrikes on the Houthis and everything the U.S. is doing, the terrorist designation, just sort of emboldens them further, and that really won’t have an impact on their behavior particularly around shipping. And today, you know, you have Biden actually admitting it. He says, you know, are they going to stop—are they stopping the Houthis? No. They are going to continue? Yes, he said, right? So it’s, like, what’s the objective here, ultimately? I mean, if they can’t be deterred, is this just performative, or—and does it risk sort of a wider escalation?  COOK: Admiral, do you want to go and then I’ll pick up on where you left off?  FOGGO: Sure. Yeah, I think can they be deterred—will they be—will the Houthis be determined to continue. I think their track record indicates that they will continue to conduct strikes and over the weekend reporting in the New York Times, you know, from the thirty different sites, 150 different missiles or bombs that were dropped on those sites were fairly effective in destroying those targets.   But that was a small fraction of the broader capability that the Houthis can bring to bear, and as I said, in the last couple of days you’re seeing some very clinical pinpoint strikes on things like missiles on the rail.   So I’d kind of ask the rhetorical question: If you destroy a missile on the rail or several missiles on the rails, are you, in fact, having an impact on strikes on shipping in the Red Sea? I think the obvious answer is yes; probably saved a few lives there.  I go back to my own experience in the Libya campaign operation Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn. I was the Joint Task Force J-3 in the Mediterranean for that operation and I carried over as a NATO commander into Operation Unified Protector.  That went on for nine months, and if you look back in the records it’s something like 19,000 sorties launched and about 9,600 precision-guided munitions. That was a coalition of the willing and NATO that were conducting those strikes in 2011 and it just goes to show that we as a coalition or unilaterally as the United States or in some security organization can probably continue this for a very long time.   I think the Houthis should take note of that and the fact that we can continue to attrit their assets that are being used violently against Western shipping in the Red Sea and eventually come to some kind of terms where it stops and, of course, that will all depend on the outcome, particularly what’s going on in the eastern Mediterranean right now.   But let me defer to my two colleagues for a comment as well.  COOK: Well, I’ll just say that the—that this underlines—the question underlines the point that the Arab official that I was speaking with was making which is that if we are merely going to engage in kind of a poking or a pinprick against the Houthis it’s likely to continue. But if we are serious about doing a lot of damage to the Houthis, whether they are motivated or not if we do a lot of damage to their capabilities they won’t be able to attack shipping in the Red Sea.  And so it clearly requires the United States to continue to—as the admiral said, continue to undertake operations against the Houthi capabilities until they can no longer do it because if in fact the analysis is that they’ll continue to do it then you have to destroy their capabilities.  I don’t think there’s anything performative about it. I think that we’re certainly capable of doing it. I think we’re constantly looking for the quick and risk-free approach and there’s going to be nothing quick or anything risk free about it.  But I think that in this case when such an important global interest is at stake like freedom of navigation it is worth the American effort to invest in ensuring that the Houthis of all people do not gain leverage over freedom of navigation, the global economy, and the geopolitics of that part of the world.  OPERATOR: Our next question comes from Terry McCarthy.  Q: Hi. This is Terry McCarthy. I work with the American Society of Cinematographers here in Hollywood.  I’d like to pick up on something that Ray talked about, the narrative of success, which as you put it now seems to be favoring the Iranians—that how this plays out would seem to be in their interests.  So to flip that and to say what is the narrative of success that would favor the United States and also Israel it seems to me the nightmare for Iran is that there is a deal that’s done and the Abraham Accords and the deal with Saudi gets back on track, which is what they—their biggest nightmare and that would be something that would then put all these proxies, if you like, on the wrong side of the bargain including the Houthis because then the Middle East completely changes, and I’m wondering if that is something that the Iranians—in that sense the Iranians would like to prolong the conflict in Gaza, not force a settlement on Gaza right now.  Does that make sense?  TAKEYH: Yes, I think it does.  I do believe that the conflict in Gaza will be prolonged and I do think—and my friends Steven and the admiral can comment on this—that this would require, it seems to me, a considerable degree of Israeli engagement if not occupation of Gaza and then come to the task of reconstruction and when there’s a donor group and so on and so forth.  So in that particular sense the prolongation of Israeli involvement in Gaza will persist and then comes the aftermath of this. There will be, it seems to me, a reckoning in Israeli politics. There will be commissions who study this and the Israeli politics are likely to be contested for quite some time.  There is another aspect of this narrative of success that is more practical from Tehran’s perspective; namely, its attempt to consolidate control—I wouldn’t say control—consolidate its influence over the many parts of Axis of Resistance, kind of bringing them together more in a sort of a(n) operational cohesion. And that is actually something that is happening.  They have deepened their relationships not only with themselves and various proxies but between those proxies. So as a sort of a(n) auxiliary force across the region that is projecting—that projects itself on behalf of Iran it’s likely to come out of this experience in a more cohesive and disciplined manner.  This is not to suggest that it was ineffective before. I think that during the time of Syrian civil war the Iranians marshaled about 70,000 members of the variety of militias to fight in that particular conflict and in conjunction with the Russian air power it actually did turn the tide.  But as I said, I think the Israelis will have that preoccupation for some time. Whether the Abraham Accords and the biggest pieces of that being Saudi Arabia can resume I suspect any resumption of it will have much more of a focus on the prospective Palestinian state or movement toward that state and the problem with that aspect of the conversation is the two-state solution is not something that is particularly valid in Israel or among the Palestinians. (Laughs.)  So this complexity of this issue, certainly, and its prolongation—it’s likely to prolong—will benefit Iran in some respects in that sense. (My time ?).  FOGGO: Yeah. I would add a couple things.  One, if you look at the way that military planners think and military planners provide good military advice to civilian leadership and higher authorities, you know, we have this joint operational planning evaluation system which I used all the time as a flag officer.   Mission analysis—what is the mission, what is the end state—and in military parlance some would think that these are simple terms but the end state is to defeat Houthi aggression and restore freedom of—so that’s one, defeat Houthi aggression that’s being used against Western shipping in the Red Sea and terrorizing these elements that are transiting our goods and services and causing prices to go up all over the world.   Restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and restore peace and security to the status quo. That’s the way the military looks at these things and that would be an appropriate end state, as well as preventing the spread of the crisis further throughout the region.  One of the things we haven’t touched on today but I think is really, really important is the Israelis are drawing down some operations in Gaza and they say they’re going to more special operations and targeted operations. I worry about what’s going to happen in Lebanon, and so far Nasrallah and Hezbollah have kind of held their ground and stayed inside Lebanon. There’s been saber rattling on both sides.   We need to tamp that down and keep that under control, and if we can do those things I think that’s a moral or a strategic defeat for Iran and then that becomes—the end state becomes the theory of victory which I think the administration would be very happy with and then we can proceed with, as you suggested, sir, the Abraham Accords and discussion with Saudi that got derailed as a result of the Hamas attack on Israel.  COOK: I think Admiral Foggo brings up a really important point here, that the administration seems to believe that one of the ways it can bring the Israelis around is working through Riyadh, essentially bank-shotting normalization and getting the Israelis to change their tactics in the Gaza Strip.  But I think that that’s unlikely to happen. I think that presently the Saudi requirement and demand on the Israelis is much too high. But if there’s a fundamental change in sort of the regional picture where the Iranians suffer a strategic defeat then you can proceed with normalization in an entirely different way.   If the Saudis are going to—if we’re in a situation where the Saudis are now going to demand that there be a two-state solution or something close to it it’s certainly not going to work. So I think the Abraham Accords—and neither of those things are likely to happen.   So I think the Abraham Accords such as they are will continue. I don’t think that the Emiratis are interested in breaking their relations with the Israelis. The Bahrainis don’t have an ambassador in Tel Aviv right now but they’re not going to break their relations with them. It’s a similar situation with Morocco. There’s no movement forward like we had hoped through the Negev process and other things.  But at the same time the Abraham Accords don’t seem at least quite yet to really be in jeopardy, although Saudi normalization seems far off as a result of the conflict, pardon me.  OPERATOR: So I think that was the last of our questions unless anyone else would like to add.  ELDER: Great. Well, I guess I’ll—maybe I’ll wrap up with one last question and we can do it like a speed round.  If—you know, and I know that most analysts despise prediction but let’s say, you know, we’re sitting here six months from now and having a similar discussion or a similar topic. Do you think that we’re still discussing the Houthi issue and just where are we six months from now? Are we in our bunkers or do you have some more hope that, you know, all actors on all sides can contain this in some kind of a way?  FOGGO: Well, I’ll start.   You know, I’ll jump on the hand grenade and say I don’t think that either the Houthis or the Iranians have considered the amount or the ability of U.S. forces or coalition forces to respond to this kind of violence.  I mean, so far the thirty targets, the 150 missiles, have been delivered. It’s a fraction of the capability that we are able to deliver and I would think—I would hope that they would keep that in mind because it can get a lot worse for the bad guys.  The other thing to consider that we haven’t talked about but I think we—it’s the elephant in the room is this is an election year and there’s going to be a lot of blows across the aisle, one side to the other, on what happens here as well as all the other things that we’re arguing about in this country.  So I think the administration is going to be under a lot of pressure to bring this to a conclusion and how they do that remains to be seen. So far, as I’ve said, they’ve been very deliberate and cautious and, you know, I laud them for that. Probably waited a little too long before we went ashore and started taking out some of these missile sites.   But it’s going to be a very interesting ride for the next six months, and over to my two colleagues for anything else.  COOK: I’d just say I certainly hope we’re not talking about the Houthis and the threats to the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea six months from now. I would hope that by then the United States will have used a sufficient amount of force in order to make sure that the strait in the Red Sea remains open to shipping.  TAKEYH: I will say that as the October 7 conflict began the purpose of the Iranian foreign policy was to be mischievous while immunizing their territory from attack. That line was crossed yesterday by the Pakistanis.  Whether that particular development will impose some kind of a discipline on them to me at this point remains doubtful because they still are focused correctly on the rhetoric coming out of the Western countries about the imperative of not expanding the conflict which means targeting Iranian proxies while maintaining Iranian territory as unmolested.  So long as that is preserved, that logic on the American and Israeli side, I think you can count them on being mischievous. But I don’t—I want to leave this conversation with the following, that something quite dramatic did happen with Pakistanis attacking Iranian territory for something that Iranians had done outside their boundaries.  FOGGO: Just one point to add, Miriam, on that.  You know, during COVID the price of a container—to ship a container worldwide was about $20,000. As I said, it’s climbed from about 1,500 (dollars) to 4(,000 dollars) to $6,000 depending on whether you’re going through the Red Sea or around the Cape of Good Hope to deliver to the Mediterranean or to the High North and the Baltic.  If those prices continue to go up and insurance rates continue to go up and we start seeing it in our pocketbooks and we start seeing inflation rise again just when we thought we had it under control there’s going to be a lot of pressure from the American people to do something more and probably a lot—they’re going to see it in Europe—inflation in Europe before we see it here.   We haven’t seen it yet. Some minor things but, you know, gas prices going up, commodities going up, goods and services going up. People are going to be screaming for a solution. They’re going to want it now, now, now. And that’s going to drive this conflict to the next stage, whatever that is, and we’ve talked about a lot of options here.  ELDER: All right. Well, thank you all. I’ll say thanks to our wonderful panelists. Thank you, Admiral James Foggo. Thank you, Steven Cook. Thank you, Ray Takeyh.   And I will also remind everybody that this video will be posted on CFR.org, where you can also find plenty of other wonderful and informative pieces both on the Houthis and the wider Gaza-Israel conflict.  Thank you all for joining us and thank you to the panelists.  COOK: Thank you. Thanks, Miriam.  FOGGO: Thank you.  COOK: Thanks, Admiral. Thanks, Ray.  (END) 

As military operations resume in Gaza, panelists analyze the application of the laws of armed conflict, ethical and moral considerations, and the complexity of applying these principles in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.

Panelists discuss the war’s effect on the Gulf Arab signatories of the Abraham Accords, the Saudi Arabia-Israel relationship, and the future of the Biden administration’s Middle East policy.

Panelists assess Iran’s interests in the conflict in Gaza and its ties to Hamas, and discuss its broader influence in the Middle East, as well as the future of U.S. policy towards Iran.