Lawfare Daily: Iran War Update—and How We Got Here

The Lawfare Podcast

The episode examines the escalating conflict with Iran and the systemic degradation of the United States' national security infrastructure. Guests Ariane

Key takeaways

• The administration has significantly reduced the National Security Council (NSC) to levels below Eisenhower-era norms, paralyzing interagency coordination.
• The 'Doge' initiative led by Elon Musk is criticized for cutting essential expertise and institutional knowledge rather than just costs.

Main topics

• Iran-U.S. Conflict
• Dismantling of the National Security Council

Notable quotes

We had a kitchen that needed a and we decided to just blow it up.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that the erosion of professional expertise withi

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) You have the United States barreling toward war in February of this year. And for some reason, the State Department is not planning for the evacuation of a half a million Americans. While our allies and partners who didn't start this war all managed to have their own evacuation plans for their citizens. Speaker 3 (0:21) It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Natalie Orpett, executive editor of Lawfare, with Ari Tabatabai. vice president of research, security, and defense at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and a contributing editor at Lawfare, and Julia Curley, a public service fellow at Lawfare. Speaker 2 (0:38) You know, maybe we had a kitchen that needed a remodel, and we decided to just blow it up. Instead of saying, let's think about what would make sense, we're just going to gut the entire thing. Speaker 3 (0:49) Today we're talking about the war in Iran, where things stand today, and how we got here, including how the gutting of the national security apparatus in Washington affected the way the war is being waged by Tehran. Speaker 3 (1:04) Okay, Ari and Julia, I have invited you on to give a bit of an update on the status of the war in Iran. And also to explain a little bit of the why of what's going on and what it all means. You two wrote a piece recently in Foreign Policy Magazine that we're going to dig into analyzing that exact question of how we got here and why and what else we should understand about what it means. Before we get there, though, let's just set the scene a little bit by talking about what's happened lately. It's actually been a little while since we had a sort of straight check in on the state of the war in Iran and where things stand. So Ari, can I come to you first and just give us a lay of the land what's going on these days? Speaker 2 (1:51) I mean, we can say it very briefly by just noting that it's where we left it off last time we did a podcast on Iran, which was probably a few weeks ago. But things haven't changed really significantly. We, you know, Julia and I wrote a piece, I think it was a couple of months ago now, talking about how we had entered the stage of the conflict where the two sides were on and off negotiating while also targeting each other to kind of, you know, continue to raise the costs of the conflict for one another. And that's essentially where we are. A few things that have changed a little bit is, number one, that we now have a second choke point in the region that has been affected by the conflict, that is the Bab el-Mandab and the Red Sea. So, you know, we've had obviously disruptions there in addition to the Strait of Hormuz, which was already ongoing. We have also had on the U.S. side of things, we have had a DOD IG report that essentially restates some of the things that we've known from press reporting, which is really the cost of this conflict for the Department of Defense, both in terms of the capabilities and munitions stocks that we've been depleting in the course of the conflict. And then just I think it was yesterday we had additional reporting about the DOD might be underestimating, at least publicly, the number of casualties and the conflict among U.S. service members. So So, you know, I think domestically in the U.S., what we have seen is obviously the cost of the war for everyday people, we all feel it because we all presumably drive places. We all presumably buy groceries. So we all feel that cost. But I think there is also a bit of an increased scrutiny on what is going on and what it means for the national defense in a way that maybe a couple of months ago was not as front and center when we were talking about the conflict. Yeah, Speaker 3 (3:58) Ari, it occurs to me that I think one of the things that has been reported out more of late, and I think very much since our last podcast on the subject, is just a better sense to the general public of how finite defense resources are. We have this really incredibly capable military with a lot, a lot, a lot of resources. But, you know, there was a very prominent story not too long ago about the USS Abraham Lincoln having been at sea for significantly longer than it was supposed to be and getting reports from Speaker 3 (4:36) from people who are on board and really struggling with the conditions, learned a little bit more about why that's happening. And it turns out that the Iranian strikes on military facilities in the Middle East that Americans are generally less aware of, because they're not happening in our own backyard, actually do have a very significant impact. There's sort of been movement of resources from other regions. And It seems to me that that feels to many of us like we are in a different phase of the war. But I wonder if you can give us your sense from more of an expert perspective of whether that's reflective of a meaningful change or whether it is more the case of reporting, bringing it to a more mainstream public. Speaker 2 (5:27) I think it's a bit of both. You know, I've been worried about the readiness issues stemming from this war for a while now. We have talked about this on the podcast. Even before it was really reported, we had started to talk a little bit about it because, you know, my assumption had always been that the longer this conflict went on, the more of a hit we would take to our readiness. Look, as you said, we have a very. you know, strong military with all of its branches that can do a lot of things for a sustained period of time, but it's not a finite amount of time. And the longer this goes on, the more those readiness issues become, you know, come to the fore and the more they become visible. And, you know, the fact that we've had this kind of sustained attacks for the past few months on our bases, the fact that we've had folks who've been deployed for a significant amount of time. And by the way, it's not just in the context of the Iran war, right? We've had folks who've been deployed from theater to theater, from doing supporting operations in Venezuela and the Caribbean to the Middle East. And so all of those things, it takes a while. for a military that is as capable and as strong and as large as ours is. But eventually it starts to actually catch up with you, right? So I think this is naturally the phase of the war we're at. I think that's number one. And number two, I think, again, the longer this goes on, the more visible it becomes to the general public. It's that a few months ago, only those of us who... think about and care about these issues from a professional perspective in addition to a personal one would be like, hey, what are these deployments going to mean for the service members? What are they going to mean for maintenance cycles? What are they going to mean for training cycles? What are they going to mean for all of these different things that we track? I think now it's becoming more obvious as Things like, you know, sailors can't get their contact lens prescriptions or their prescriptions for drugs that they need. As those things become more apparent, the human stories come to the fore. I think that's when the general public also starts to kind of become more aware of it and really understand it. Because when you talk about maintenance cycles, you know, it's hard to kind of explain that to someone who doesn't really think about ships in their day-to-day life, which is most people. But when you start to talk about, hey, this person was not able to get there, you know, insert whatever drug they need here, I think that becomes much more relatable for people. I Speaker 1 (8:06) was going to jump in and say, since the last time we talked, there have been a few military developments, some of which Ari has already mentioned, that have really underscored that time is really not on the U.S.'s side in this conflict now. So first we had the Houthi advance down the coast of the Red Sea, really. choking the bubble manda, the other main choke point around Saudi Arabia for the export of oil and gas to Europe now being squeezed. We had an attack on the east-west pipeline that allows Saudi Arabia to export its oil, avoiding both of those two choke points. And now we've had a Houthi attack on Riyadh itself, really underscoring that. The U.S. Security Alliance, which many of these countries have relied on for a long time, is not defending them against either the threat of the Iranians or the Houthi proxy groups. And really, it's underscoring to the region that they cannot rely on the U.S. and there's really no cavalry coming. There's no other move the U.S. has to provide. And we had that all underscored just. yesterday at the UN General Assembly, where the president ratcheted his rhetoric once again back to 11, threatening to annihilate the Islamic Republic. At the same time, he's saying that his envoys are meeting with the Iranians and they're making unprecedented progress. And so everyone kind of rolls their eyes now. at the threats of the U.S. president. The president also said in his speech that he predicting a deal now with the Iranians after the midterm elections and that the Iranians are waiting to see how he does. Obviously. Most political observers think the president is going to suffer grievously in the upcoming election, giving the Iranians yet more reason to wait until the president's further politically weakened or to try to sign a deal while they think they can maximize their leverage out of the president. Anyway, either way, the U.S. in being unable to provide security to our allies and partners in the region, seemingly giving away the farm in public as the president seems to negotiate with himself. in public, it really gives us no confidence that the longer this conflict goes on, that the U.S. has any discernible exit strategy. Speaker 2 (10:28) You know, I think another really important implication of the war that we're kind of watching happen in real time is this shift from this notion that U.S. presence in the region served as a deterrent against Iranian aggression to now actually putting a target on the back of US partners in the region. This is not a novel development since a couple of months ago, but I think it's become a lot more pronounced as the Houthis have been essentially increasing and escalating against Saudi Arabia specifically, and as attacks against bases in the region have continued. So, you know, I think at some point when this war ends, I'm sure we will do an implications and, you know, kind of like... a wrap-up episode that talks about all of the things that happened. But I think this is one that is worth watching in real time and seeing the reactions of U.S. partners, especially during this week, you know, where the U.N. General Assembly is meeting, of course, and where folks are, you know, talking about how they see this conflict, which is front and center for essentially the entirety of their national community. It doesn't matter what the first item on your agenda was coming into UNGA week. You are probably going to be talking. about Iran at some point. Speaker 3 (11:45) Yeah, and I want to come back to UNGA in a second. But before I do, I am wondering what may be a more obvious question to the two of you who are experts, but I think is actually not super clear, which is To what extent do we think that the Houthis are actively coordinating with Iran versus, we know, obviously, Iran has for a very long time provided significant support to the Houthis. But is that sort of in the form of, you know, financial and military support and some ideological alignment, but not actual sort of strategic coordination? Or is it more the latter as well? Speaker 1 (12:31) I think it's all of the above. I mean, they receive material support from the Iranians. They receive intelligence support from the Iranians. But they also don't need much in terms of strategic direction. They know what the assignment is. It's to cause damage and pain and complication to U.S. allies and partners while their own allies is under threat in the Iranians. I don't think they need much strategic direction, and they're moving out. They have... shown themselves to be a much more resilient threat. And now we have Saudi Arabia begging for assistance from the U.S. and, you know, according to press reporting, direct pressure from the crown prince on President Trump to intervene and a very strong reluctance for the president to do what the Saudis need us to do, which would be to provide air support to join their conflict with the Houthis. And he has shown, the president has shown no interest in committing, further committing U.S. forces given how unpopular he is heading into the midterms. Speaker 2 (13:32) Yeah, the only thing I'll add to what Julia said is that the Houthis have always been a bit more independent compared to some of Iran's other proxies. If you look at the kind of laundry list of proxies, both those that have existed for a long time, like Lebanese Hezbollah or some of the newer creations, some of them are much more dependent on Iran, whereas the Houthis have always maintained that independence, which doesn't mean that they have not received intelligence. and military support from Iran. They certainly have. They've received training from both Iran and from Hezbollah. So, you know, they've also had a direct channel to Lebanese Hezbollah, which has been really instrumental in helping them kind of establish themselves and build their capabilities out. But they don't necessarily rely. on Iran on a day-to-day basis to get kind of, you know, support for or approval for the attacks that they're going to be committing and so on and so forth. So it's a bit more of an independent relationship that some of the, you know, the traditional proxies would have had a decade ago, for example, in Iraq. That's interesting. So it Speaker 3 (14:37) sounds like there's at least a decent possibility here that the recent escalation from the Houthis, which has been notable, I think, I mean, it's not that they've been silent for the duration of the conflict, but it does seem like things have escalated quite a bit lately. It sounds from what you're saying that it is certainly plausible that that was just a sort of independent strategic judgment by the Houthis rather than an instruction from Iran to hit the gas. I Speaker 2 (15:07) don't know specifically, obviously, what kind of approval or communication may have happened around this particular cycle. But there is definitely precedent for Iran not necessarily knowing what the Houthis were going