War, calibrated

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 31st of March. 

You’re listening to WORLD Radio and we’re glad you’ve joined us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up on The World and Everything in It: America’s new options in Iran.

Over the weekend, the U.S. deployed more troops to the Middle East, bringing the number of troops near the ground to more than 50,000.

This comes as the President threatens more strikes on Iran’s energy sector if the country’s new leaders do not negotiate the end of its weapons programs.

TRUMP: We're doing extremely well in that negotiation, but you never know with Iran, because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up.

REICHARD: Joining us now to talk about the operation is retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Mike Nelson…he’s now Chief of Staff for the University of Pennsylvania’s Washington, D.C. office. He previously served in the Middle East with U.S. Special Forces.

Mike, good morning.

MIKE NELSON: Good morning. Thanks for having me here.

REICHARD: Well, let's just start with what the U.S. has accomplished so far. How far have the U.S. and Israel gotten to achieve its four military objectives? And I believe that's destroying Iran's missile program, sinking its navy, ending its nuclear program, and then halting its support for international terror.

NELSON: For the purposes of your question, I think it's important to focus on two of those: destroying the Navy and destroying the ballistic missile capability. And at one point in time, the President had kind of expanded that second one to destroying the industrial base that allows them to produce some of these missiles. 

To answer that, United States Central Command has been incredibly effective, as well as the Israelis, at targeting these military capabilities that the Iranians had prior to the beginning of the conflict, and have been severely diminished since. 

The key problem, I think right now, is those last two of the four that you specified that the President enumerated before—ending the nuclear program and a lack of support for the regional proxies. Short of truly removing the regime and the people who would make the decisions to sponsor both of those programs, this is going to require some kind of agreement from the Iranian regime that they are going to end those activities or agree to some kind of negotiation where we have some kind of verification of that. 

So there's going to be either a changing in what we determine the end state of this operation is, or some kind of need to ramp up the pressure, both militarily and diplomatically, so that the regime eventually capitulates.

REICHARD: What do we know about Iran's lethality these days? On Friday, 12 Americans in Saudi Arabia were wounded in an Iranian strike. So what do we know?

NELSON: The regime does not want to capitulate. The regime is choosing a path of resistance rather rather than concession, and to that end, they are using different levers that they have at their at their disposal to achieve some kind of pressure back towards us. 

We saw in the initial days that they kind of lashed out with some of their ballistic missiles around the region with not very good effects, they were able to unfortunately kill several U.S. service members in Kuwait, and then we've had several casualties since then. We also saw that they've been able to target key capabilities like the E-3 aircraft that was destroyed in Saudi Arabia just over the weekend. 

So the Iranians are trying to be creative, they are trying to resist. I think they may be trying to entertain certain kinds of non-standard and asymmetric attacks to try to achieve some kind of pressure against us.

REICHARD: Let’s talk about options. The Pentagon says sending 2,500 additional Marines and around 2,000 Army paratroopers gives the US more options. What are those?

NELSON: The first thing I think we should get out of the way is we are not necessarily talking about a repeat of Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2003, large scale invasion of Iran. The President may be considering options for specific capabilities that he wants to bring to bear in the campaign, and those are largely, I think, can be binned in three different categories. 

The first one, right now through our air and maritime campaigns, we've brought some amount of leverage and pressure against Iran, but not enough to change their calculus. So the President may be looking at the next lever to try to increase that pressure, to make them change their decisions. So that would be the kind of thing we've heard talked about with the seizing of Kharg Island, this is a significant hub for their oil trade, and removing that seizing it could increase the pressure and try to make them compelled to agree to some of the things that the President has said he's wanted in the end state. 

The second option would be something to try to remove some of the Iranian capabilities that they're using to try to fight against us. So we've seen the Iranians try to use missiles, fast moving boats and drones to interdict maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. So potentially using the Marines or other forces to clear out the littoral zone just in the vicinity of the Strait of Hormuz, to push back Iranian capability project power against maritime traffic. 

And then the third option which I think is being discussed, and you can see this from some of the specialty capabilities that are being deployed, is a raid to secure the enriched uranium that we know was left over after Midnight Hammer from last summer. This will require excavation, securing, moving thousands of pounds of this stuff onto aircraft and exfiltrating it. So some kind of multi-day, or up to a week long raid by specialized forces that would secure that material and remove it so that the President can say, "Now we've also removed the remaining nuclear material that could be used for additional enrichment or weaponization."

REICHARD: You know, the strategy here looks to be a mix of lethal force and diplomacy, very Trumpian in its approach, you might say. What do you think it's going to take to really force Iran to the table?

NELSON: The regime now probably believes that they are in a fight for their own survival, and whatever conditions they're going to agree to have to be something that allow them to very quickly determine a new deterrent capability to replace the ones that were lost. 

So I don't think that short of some kind of truly verifiable agreement, I don't think we're going to end up with a regime that is more compliant and willing to work with the coalition of nations. I think we're going to end up with a regime that is probably more resistant in the long term, and looking for some way to try to ramp up capabilities, either those that were destroyed, to replace those, or find some new deterrent.

REICHARD: Mike Nelson is a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and chief of staff for Penn Washington. 

Mike, thanks so much for your time and your expertise, really appreciate it. 

NELSON: Thank you for having me again.

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