Iran War Update: After the Ayatollah

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Monday the 2nd of March.

Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

And first up on The World and Everything in It: The war in Iran. Our producer Lindsay Mast has been following, and she joins us now with more.

MAST: Thanks Mary.

When he announced Operation Epic Fury Saturday, President Trump laid out both reasons for the strikes…

TRUMP: Iran is the world's number one state sponsor of terror, and just recently killed tens of thousands of its own citizens on the street as they protested. It has always been the policy of the United States, in particular my administration, that this terrorist regime can never have a nuclear weapon. I'll say it again, they can never have a nuclear weapon.

and goals:

TRUMP: We're going to destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground. It will be totally again obliterated. We're going to annihilate their navy. We're going to ensure that the region's terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world.

MAST: Joining us now to tell us more about the strikes and what it will take to achieve those goals is Bradley Bowman. He’s the director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He previously served as a national security advisor to members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. Brad, good morning.

BOWMAN: Good morning, how are you?

MAST: I'm doing well. Thank you. Walk us through. To start off with, walk us through the days leading up to the strikes. There were talks, but the President apparently decided those weren't working. Why?

BOWMAN: Right, so we had these protests start in Iran in December and really build strength in January, and President Trump warned the regime not to harm the protesters. And he basically said, “don’t hurt them, or else.” And then the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime there, essentially shrugged and proceeded to kill, slash murder, thousands. Some estimates are above 30,000 of them.

So in my world of foreign policy and national security, that’s basically the president issuing a red line and then an adversary regime saying, “so what?” And they proceed to blow right through that red line. And so when that happened, I think both because of the personal political interests of President Trump, but also the national security interest of the United States, one of two things, in my view, had to happen: Either the president needed to get a good deal at the negotiating table, or there was going to be a U.S. military action.

And I believed that a good deal, or as President Trump said a few weeks ago, a meaningful deal, would have the following three or four elements. It would include an end to Iran’s nuclear program, including no enrichment; addressing its ballistic missile program, the means by which Iran has habitually attacked Arabs, Israelis, and American troops; would also address their systematic support for terrorist groups, which they’ve been doing since 1979; and an end to the systematic murder of Iranians.

And if you believe that this regime was going to agree to that, then I got a bridge I’ll sell you in New York, because there is no way they were ever going to agree to that, because it would require them to be something they are not.

I was worried that President Trump’s negotiators, his son-in-law and Steve Witkoff, might get bamboozled, if you will—that’s a technical term—at the negotiating table. Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and they wanted to see if they could get the deal. They couldn’t get the deal, and so military action was coming. And the only question was, how robust would the American national security objectives here be? What would they go for? Would it be just pinprick strikes, like messaging strikes, if you will, or something more robust? And we now know that the president and the United States, along with our Israeli partners, have gone for a much more robust campaign objectives.

MAST: Well, they are robust. So what are some of the challenges to achieving, destroying the missiles, raising the missile industry, annihilating the navy and more. What sorts of challenges do we face there?

BOWMAN: You know the primary means by which the Islamic Republic of Iran has retaliated or lashed out are missiles. So ballistic missiles mostly, but also cruise missiles and now drones, terrorism, maritime aggression, and cyberattacks.

And so always, both from the 12-day war last June and also again now, I predicted—and what we’ve seen in the early hours—is that the first thing you go for is the radars and air and missile defense capabilities and the offensive strike capabilities of the Iranians, so they have less ability to defend themselves and you have more ability to conduct strikes, and you can go after their launch capability—so their ballistic missile arsenal, their launch capability, their ability basically to hit our bases, to sink ships, and shoot down aircraft. That’s what we’ve seen.

We’ve also seen the involvement of B-2s. These are the stealth bombers that were involved in the last day of the 12-day war in June that hit the hardened and deeply buried targets at Isfahan, Natanz, and Fordow.

And so what we’re seeing is just breathtaking in scope. This is the largest war—any war—Iran has had with any country since 1979. These are combined operations with the Israelis. So what we have now—we just had the Israelis declare that they have air superiority over Tehran, over Iran. And so that essentially is like playing soccer against an opponent that doesn’t have a goalie.

So we have already seen American casualties, which are tragic. These are U.S. service members who will not be returning home to our families. We’re not talking about a game of checkers here. This is life and death. I suspect this will take longer than most people think, and the costs will be higher. But generally speaking, it’s just a matter of time until the United States accomplishes its military objective in terms of destroying things.

But in the end, though, what we’ve had is a decapitation of the Iranian regime—the death of the Supreme Leader and all his other key military leaders, by and large. But that is not the same thing. A decapitation of a regime is not the same thing as regime change. And regime change, unless we’re going to send in American ground forces—which I would strongly advise against—is going to have to come from the Iranian people. And there’s some real challenges associated with that.

MAST: Can you go into some of those challenges?

BOWMAN: I can. So the Iranian people are an incredibly impressive people, well educated, but generally speaking, they are not armed. And this regime, while decapitated, still has 1000s of men with guns who are true believers in a sick ideology, who are ready to murder as many Iranian civilians as necessary to maintain their grip on power.

MAST: I want to turn to the broader geopolitical situation. Specifically, how will this affect Iran’s terror proxy groups?

BOWMAN: Sure, terror proxy groups. So after October 7—that’s the horrific Hamas terror attack on Israel, which constituted the worst single-day murder of Jews since the Holocaust—and let’s remember Hamas was a proxy of Iran. And then on the next day, October 8, Hezbollah started attacking Israel.

So Israel has essentially decapitated the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah, and they severely degraded both terrorist organizations. So in many ways, they are not completely out, but they are certainly down and shadows of their previous selves.

But you still have the Houthis in Yemen, and you have militias in Iraq. Iran still has a regional and global terror network, and I will be surprised if we don’t see terror attacks coming, whether they be lone wolf or something more systematic. We’ve actually seen Iran-linked individuals trying to do things within the United States.

I don’t want people to be afraid, but we should also start with the truth, and that is true. So if this is truly an existential moment for the Islamic Republic of Iran, we should expect them to use everything they have, and I’ve just described some of the things they have in their terrorist arsenal.

MAST: Last question: one of the criticisms that's been lobbed so far since this has started, is that this is another quote, unquote, Forever War. What do you say to that?

BOWMAN: When we talk about forever wars, maybe they’re thinking of 170,000 ground troops in Iraq—that was the high-water mark—or 100,000 ground troops in Afghanistan. The 12-day war was not a forever war. It was 12 days, and the American involvement was one mission over one evening.

This war is just a few days in. I pray that it doesn’t last long, but I also pray that the Iranian people will finally have a government more interested in their welfare than the export of terrorism.

So I think what we cannot have as Americans—the core American national security interest here—is you can’t have the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism with the world’s most dangerous weapon, nuclear weapons, because they would be all the more aggressive. We can debate whether they would use it, but at a minimum, they will be more aggressive. And so we cannot permit that to happen.

And even after the 12-day war, respectfully, President Trump said we obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. He’s right that we severely degraded Isfahan and Natanz, but we did not obliterate the entire nuclear program. Otherwise, what is there to attack right now? There wouldn’t be anything to attack if that were true.

So we didn’t know where all the centrifuges are. We didn’t know where all the enriched material was. So that right there alone, I think, justifies additional American military action. When you combine that with their support for terrorism and building ballistic missiles, including the use of their space launch vehicle program, where they could develop the means to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that could someday hit the United States, you put that together, and this is not a peripheral concern for Americans. This is a core national security concern, something that we have to address.

We can debate how to address it, but it’s undoubtedly a problem that needs to be addressed.

MAST: Alright, Bradley Bowman is the director of the Center for Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Bowman, thank you so much.

BOWMAN: Thank you.

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