How Iran and Ukraine Became One War

Chaos Theory

Hassan Damalujii and Mike Martin MP explore the emerging convergence of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, arguing they are becoming a

Key takeaways

• The war in Ukraine and the conflict with Iran are merging into a single global struggle for stability.
• Iran is utilizing a pincer movement via the Houthis to disrupt Saudi oil exports through both the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea pipelines.

Main topics

• Drone warfare evolution
• Middle East energy security

Notable quotes

Never start a war of choice when the people that you're fighting, for them, the war is existential.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a warning that modern conflicts are increasingly

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Rule number one of warfare, right? Never start a war of choice when the people that you're Speaker 3 (0:05) fighting, for them, the war is existential. And I think there's another rule I would propose, which is never fight mountain folk. Speaker 2 (0:12) The Russians have developed jet-powered drones so they can fly much faster. They can carry more payload. They're currently hammering Ukrainian cities. They're only able to take out... maybe 50 or 60 percent. Speaker 3 (0:24) Saudis have been buying planes that they don't need as a way of propping up and subsidizing the British and especially American defense Speaker 2 (0:32) manufacturing industry. If Putin doesn't deliver a win, then he's finished in much the same way that the Afghan war contributed to the end of the Soviet Union, although with much, much lower levels of casualties than what we're seeing in Ukraine at the moment. Speaker 1 (0:46) What started in America last year has now spread to every part of Speaker 3 (0:50) the world. The Speaker 1 (0:52) UAE has become the biggest investor in Africa. Speaker 1 (1:05) I want to update you on the latest steps we're taking to fight the disease. Speaker 3 (1:20) Hello and welcome to Chaos Theory, a new podcast that unpicks the complexity of a fragmenting world. I'm Hassan Damaloudji. And I'm Mike Martin. And we're Speaker 2 (1:29) going Speaker 3 (1:29) to kick off our first episode by talking about conflict. Worrying developments in the last week or so, both in the Middle East where the Houthis in Yemen have taken over a key port and there's been strikes on Saudi pipelines that are turning the Red Sea into another theatre of conflict. a lot of developments in drone warfare in the Black Sea and in Ukraine. So we'll be talking about that and then we're Speaker 2 (1:53) going Speaker 3 (1:53) to be zooming out trying to ask ourselves what's really going on underneath those stories. I thought seeing this as a first Speaker 2 (1:59) podcast, Hass, we should probably introduce ourselves. Hass and I have known each other for 25 years. We met at uni and we've been on these different journeys really over the last quarter century. But literally from the first night we've met, we've been having conversations about foreign affairs, about the world, about our own country, about our own country's place in that world. And we've taken these slightly different career paths. So I started out at McKinsey, where you worked on global development and education. And then you went to work for the Gates Foundation, right? So you were Bill Gates' advisor on the Middle East. And now you run your own think and do tank, right? So called Global Nation. And I joined the army. learned push to, spent a couple of years in Afghanistan, most recently been elected as a British member of parliament. And I sit on the Defence Select Committee. We Speaker 3 (2:56) took very different paths because I, as someone who's from an Iraqi background, you know, like you, we both grew up in London, but as an Iraqi and the Iraq war happening when we were both in uni together, that really set me on a path. that was sort of no to the British military. How do we fix countries that were being torn apart, especially Iraq and others? And that set me on my journey. And for you, you had some great experiences in the British Army reserves, you know, at uni and even before school. And that brought a sense of team that you loved. And so you actually did join the British Army and went on a different path. And so we've really seen the world from different Speaker 2 (3:34) angles. But the conversations are still going on, right? And we basically decided to bring them to a pod to see what happens when we externalize those conversations that we're always having. So here goes. So what we're doing today, we're going to do Ukraine and we're going to do Iran. So over the last week or so, we've had this extraordinary series of developments. I'll just list some for our listeners. Obviously, the war is still ongoing. It doesn't seem like it's getting solved. Speaker 2 (4:04) expanded, right? This war that Israel and the US started with the decapitation of the supreme leader in Iran. Now we've seen the Iranians working with the Houthis to cut off another strait, so more oil's been cut off. They've also attacked a Saudi pipeline that runs across Saudi Arabia. So what's going on, Hass? Speaker 3 (4:25) It's so interesting. I mean, you know more about conflict strategy than me, but I just feel like looking at this, is making me think that whenever you're playing cards, you know, whenever you're playing chess, the biggest mistake is to forget that your opponent also has a strategy. They've also got a set of cards and a set of pieces. And it's as if, especially Donald Trump, you know, with his narcissistic worldview has forgotten that. And Iran is playing its cards. It's playing its pieces. And it's really revealing the soft underbelly of the US-Israel gulf. defensive posture by allowing the Houthis who are controlling most of Yemen from the south to take more and more of the Red Sea coast and at the same time have its proxies in Iraq bombing the east-west pipeline. And what that's doing is essentially meaning that Saudi's escape hatch, which has been very effective, right? Saudi Arabia has been able to pump... Rather than Speaker 2 (5:27) taking oil out of the Strait of Hormuz, you put it through this pipeline to take it to the other coast. Speaker 3 (5:32) Yeah, and it's really been amazing to me that the other countries, especially the UAE, which is pretty advanced in its capabilities and has a coastline that isn't inside the Persian Gulf, haven't had that pipeline capacity. But Saudi has had it, right? They've been able to pump oil from the Gulf Coast all the way to the Red Sea. get it out, get it on ships. And of course, most of it goes south to Asia through the Bab al-Mendab, which then gets you out into the Indian Ocean. And so by bombing that pipeline and also trying to control that strait that most of that oil is going through, it's a pincer movement. They've already got the straits of Hormuz closed. Now they're trying to stop Saudi from getting oil out the other way. Speaker 2 (6:13) Well, so oil's now gone well above, you know, sort of 110. $108 a barrel, right? So these are really high prices that we haven't seen for a long time. Speaker 3 (6:22) Yeah, what you have to remember is obviously the main target in the end is America and also the global economy to try to put pressure on everyone, but especially Donald Trump from his own voters to end the conflict. But that's a very secondary effect. The primary effect in order to achieve that secondary effect is to absolutely cripple the Gulf. and in this case, particularly Saudi Arabia. And that effect on them is not going to be a marginal increase in gas prices. It looks like a complete destruction of their economy if this continues. Speaker 2 (6:56) You know, when Israel and America launched the war, technically, you know, as a kind of conflict, it's got extremely proficient, right? They took out the supreme leader, accurate targeting of Iranian infrastructure. If you step back a bit and think, right, what's Iran trying to do in those circumstances? Basically, their strategic aim is, I think, twofold. One is to survive. And I think certainly in the initial stages, there was a lot of the Iranians trying to make sure their regime was stabilised, was not going to fragment. And then secondary to that, I think that they are trying to end the war, but to bring America to a position where they have to give. concessions, right? Because America has started this war, but it's probably going to exit this war having conceded more than it would have done had it not started the war, which is an extraordinary position to be in. Speaker 3 (7:45) With every fact on the ground, essentially it becomes a win of sorts for Donald Trump to have reversed that fact on the ground so that rather than America moving around towards where it wanted to go, whether around regime change, whether around proxies, whether around nuclear, is just to say, oh, well, we'll give you back access to the Straits of Hormuz. And that then becomes the negotiating point. But what are you know, and I think we're Speaker 2 (8:10) going Speaker 3 (8:10) to talk about this later with regards to Ukraine, but it's just so fascinating, isn't it? How the apparently weaker side seems to be doing so well. And it's not just a question of Iran versus America. But when you look at Saudi versus Speaker 2 (8:24) the Houthis, it's the rule number one of warfare. Right. Never start a war of choice when the people that you're fighting for them, the war is existential. Right. We saw it in Iraq. We saw it in Afghanistan because it means that the weaker side for whom the war is extended. I mean, this is clearly an existential war for the Iranians. I mean, for the regime, certainly. I mean, they, you know, again, go back to that decapitation strike of the of the supreme leader. And at that point. you are your strategic goals shift and as i said they're just trying to survive and by surviving they then extract concessions out of america just by dint of surviving and Speaker 3 (9:05) i think there's another rule i would propose which is never fight mountain folk and you know i mean if you look at Speaker 3 (9:13) And partly because they know this is people have invaded Ukraine and Russia so often because they're not mountain folk and you can sweep across with your tanks, although it doesn't always work out well for you. But if you think about the United Kingdom, where we both grown up, you know, the Romans, they never made it into Wales and Scotland. The Anglo-Saxons never made it into Wales and Scotland. You hit the mountains that the Mongols swept from Mongolia all the way to Hungary. They never made it across the Carpathian Mountains. the Kurds have kept their language and culture over thousands of years of Arabs on one side and Russians on the other, or Iranians on the other. And so in the modern era, one of the golden rules of Arab warfare is don't invade Yemen. Gamal Abdel Nasser, the famous 20th century ruler of Egypt, found that to his cost. And that has been the lesson, again, in more recent times. As said Speaker 2 (10:10) by the Taliban, they, meaning us, the Brits, the Americans, may have the watches, but we have the time. All they have to do is wait us out. And again, you know, we're democracies, right? So new governments will get elected that have a different view on whether British or the Americans should be involved in this conflict. What's Speaker 3 (10:31) really astonishing... is the level of inequality between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It's not just that one side is a little bit stronger or wealthier. You know, I remember working with Bill Gates in the Middle East. He always used to say to me, the places that you have to look for for the most conflicts and problems geopolitically are those places where a single border separates people of the biggest... differential in income. That was kind of one of his kind of rules of thumb of geopolitics. And he said the two places in the world where there's the biggest differential in GDP per capita across the border are North Korea and South Korea. Yeah, yeah. and Saudi and Yemen. What's interesting about these people who think that conflict is all about religion and conflict is all about culture is that on both sides of both of those borders, it's basically the same people. North Korea and South Korea, Yemen and Saudi, Speaker 2 (11:28) we're talking about cultures that are the same. The rich looking at the poor and the poor looking at the rich think of the narratives that those two different groups of people can have about each other. Speaker 3 (11:36) Another way of putting it is class is more important than culture sometimes in driving conflict. So we're talking here about some of the poorest people in the world and some of the richest people in the world, and yet the poorest are at least holding their own. Well, Speaker 2 (11:52) I think they're more than holding their own. So the Saudis have about 250 pretty advanced combat aircraft, right? They bought them off the Americans, the Brits, the French. These are kind of fourth, fifth generation. Speaker 2 (12:07) So comparable aircraft to what you would see in a Western military, a European military. The Saudis are having to ask the Americans. They're not attacking these Houthi targets. They have intelligence about where the pipeline strike came from. They have intelligence. They obviously know the port that's been seized on the battle of Mandep. But they're asking the Americans to step in and deal with it rather than, they're incapable of, or unwilling perhaps, to deal with it themselves. But I think if we look at the previous Emirati and Saudi campaigns in Yemen over the last decade or so, slightly longer... They've been really ineffective on a problem that's literally on their border. There are roads that cross those borders. They can drive across the border. It Speaker 3 (12:53) was reminding me about this article I read a couple of years ago in The Economist. Why are Arab armed forces so ineffective? I think it's wrong to have a generalisation that goes from sort of Morocco to to Oman. They're for different reasons. You know, they're a problem. You know, a lot of Arab countries are not very wealthy. A lot of Arab countries are dictatorships. that are quite cut off. They actually don't have some of the best equipment and the rest of it. And that's an interesting conversation, but a different one. I think the question about the Gulf is the one we're talking about now. The basic logic you have to understand about their security arrangements is one that makes the amount