It Takes Three to Tango: Episode 20

In this episode of Alternate Shots, John Ellis and Richard Haass dissect the messy endgame of the US-Israeli war with Iran. They discuss leverage, informal and formal ceasefires, and strategy. The conversation explores whether and how Washington might end a conflict it started, given that Israel and Iran still have their own agendas. Haass explains why Iran’s biggest bargaining chip may be the Strait of Hormuz, where even the threat of disruption has sent oil markets into panic. The discussion widens to the geopolitical ripple effects: Russia and China quietly benefiting from U.S. distraction, Ukraine watching American weapons flow elsewhere, and the uncomfortable reality that a trillion-dollar Pentagon still struggles with the cheap drone warfare dominating modern battlefields. And as always the two find a way to pivot from geopolitics to golf, safely predicting that the favorite will win the Players Championship.

Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass

News Items on Substack

Home and Away on Substack

Produced by Dale Eisinger 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Alternate Shots. I'm John Ellis. I'm the founder and editor of two SubSec newsletters. One is called News Items, the other is called Political News Items. You can find them both at news-items.com.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

I'm Richard Haas. I'm a regular reader of John's two newsletters, but in addition, I put out one of my own, Home and Away, which, as the title suggests, follows things domestic as well as international.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

So I'm going to read you a post at CBSnews.com that goes like this. In a phone interview with CBS News Monday afternoon, President Trump said the U.S. war with Iran could almost be over. Quote, I think the war is very complete, pretty much, the president said, speaking from his Durell, Florida golf club. Iran has no Navy, no communications, they've got no air force. The missiles are down to a scatter. Their drones are being blown up all over the place, including their manufacturing of drones. The U.S. military said it's struck over 3,000 Iranian targets in the first week of operations. Quote, if you look, they have nothing left. There's nothing left in a military sense. So the war is almost over, mission accomplished. What do you make of this?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

Well, on one hand, it's welcome. These comments suggest this, after all, is going to be a limited war. When the United States talked about regime change, when the United States talked about unconditional surrender, it opened up the possibility that this would be essentially an unlimited war of uh, if not unlimited, prolonged duration. So the president has basically now suggested that he is prepared to put up the mission accomplished banner. And I think that is a good sign simply because we've reached the point of diminishing returns right when it comes to what we can accomplish militarily. I'm not sure it's quite as absolute as the the president suggests. Meanwhile, the costs of continued war are beginning to, shall we say, escalate, in particular the economic costs of higher energy prices, also some of the military costs, some of the strategic costs. We could talk about them if you you'd like, John. The real question is if the president does this, imagine John in a couple of days. He stands up and he says, We, you know, we started this war two weeks ago, what have you, and we set out to do what this, this, and that. We've accomplished this, this, and that. Iran is a far weaker country than it was, mission accomplished. The real question then is, given that it took only one side to start the war, the United States, but it takes three to end it. Israel and the and Iran have to essentially join in the ending. And the question is, how does the United States accomplish that? And it and on what terms? What is it we need to do either to pressure or induce the other two parties to this uh to to this party, so to speak, to to also agree to to end it?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

And what do you think that would look like? I mean, Israel and Iran don't exactly uh share mutual goals.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

John, out of all the things you've ever said on this podcast or anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Deeply insightful.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

That might be the most profound. If we put out branded alternate shot t-shirts, that might have to go on it. Look, um, Israel is on a path that it has wanted to be on for some time, which is demolishing, obliterating, choose your word, as much of Iran's military capabilities as it can as it could. Israel has never much cared about the political complexion inside Iran, though I expect there are some Israelis who prefer Iran to be headed by a military guy, almost like uh another authoritarian leader with which Israel's familiar with, having lived in the Middle East as long as it has, would prefer that to another clerical ideologue. Right now it looks as though uh the Ayatollah's son is going to be the or is the third Ayatollah of Iran. The question is whether that really takes root, and more important, how much power he has. What what I don't know is what will be the balance of power between him and the revolutionary guards and the uh like but I think for Israel, my guess is they will resist any American call to end the war until they feel they've done all they can and would like to do in terms of uh militarily really setting Iran back. And I don't know if they if they'll ask for days or weeks more, but my guess is they want to do more because that buys more time. It just means that if you thought it was inevitable that sooner or later Iran would want to rebuild militarily, what Israel would like to do is slow that process and destroy not just all their weapons or as many of them as you can, but their capacity to produce new ones. And again, presumably Iran could rebuild industrial capacities and the like, but all that will take time and the like. So for Israel, if you can kick this problem down the road a decade or what have you, that's a that's a pretty good couple of weeks' work. So one issue is going to be persuading the Israelis that the time is done to do this. And I would just say if there's any American president who can do it, it's Donald Trump. He has, as you know, extraordinary standing in Israel. Plus, you know, Bibi Netanyahu can ill afford to get on his wrong side, uh, because Trump has essentially endorsed Bibi. He's leaned on the president of Israel to give Bibi a pardon, and you still have an election coming up over the next, what, six or seven or eight months. And Bibi Netanyahu's best chance of coming out in a good position and getting and becoming prime minister again is that he is seen as the candidate of Donald Trump in the United States. So my own guess is getting Israel, even if it's a reluctant Israel, to agree to um a ceasefire won't be impossible. And again, Trump can do it in part because he doesn't have Trump to worry about. He's not going to do an end run around himself. The question is what, if any, conditions Israel attaches to it. And that gets to the United States and Iran. It's one thing for the president to stand up on TV and to admission accomplished. But what is he what is he going to insist on, John? And I'm stalling a little bit, but what is he going to insist on when it comes to the terms Iran would have to meet or military action of one sort or another could resume? What is he going to specify about the nuclear materials, a good chunk of which are sitting in and around uh the city of Isfahan? And Iran does have uh an amount of enriched uranium, not quite bomb ready, but enriched all the same. What is he going to insist upon about ballistic missile inventories or any other military inventory? What's he going to insist upon about drone strikes? Drones are plentiful, they're relatively cheap. So Iran presumably has a good many left, could produce some more. And what is it the United States is going to threaten to do if Iran shoots any more off? So this to me is is part of the consideration. And also, is there anything more cooperative? Does the United States say to Iran, okay, there's certain threats, but if you do certain things where on the nuclear, for example, if you were to meet our concerns about the physical custodianship of the uranium, for example, or you were to cease all operations against your neighbors or against shipping, we'd be prepared to reduce certain sanctions. If this sounds familiar, John, it should. The reason is this was a big part of the agenda of the talks that Messrs. Whitkoff and Kushner were holding before the war began. And they said there was no chance these talks were succeeding. We had to go to war. My own view is they rushed the talks, and they were far more impatient and less willing to compromise in these talks than they were, well, say, with Mr. Putin's representative when it came to Russia and Ukraine. But I think that question could come back, which is whether we simply end the war, what I would call in a de facto way, with a kind of signaling of Iran, or we actually follow it up and we try to formalize it and we try to restart negotiations to end up with a new set of rules of the road for the United States and Iran. And you could do both. You could first have an informal end, and then you could try to lock it in with negotiations, which would be my recommendation. Try to get, if you will, the equivalent of a ceasefire based on certain understandings, and then you would lock it in.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

So you and I are in some bunker in Tehran and we're advising the uh leadership there how to what to do. And the one enormous piece of leverage that Iran has is shutting down uh the Strait of Hormuz. I just looked at a map on maritimetraffic.com or whatever it is, and the strait is it's white. There are a thousand little red and green uh ships all over the world, but nothing in the Strait of Hormuz. Don't they have all the leverage? I mean, if they keep the strait closed, which they can essentially do by not even attacking ships with drones, but just flying drones around the strait, that is it's not like the first week it's X this much increase in the price of oil and price of energy generally. Next week is not the same as the first week, it's twice as much or even three times as much because it works its way through uh the supply chain essentially. So as long as they can keep the uh straight closed, they they have us. They've got the leverage. Isn't that true?

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Well they have some leverage. So the question again is what is it we demand that they stop doing? And what do what can we either threaten them with if they don't stop or incentivize them to stop? So again, I find us back in a negotiation, and I think one of the questions is, and I don't have an answer to this, is whether Iran would accept a ceasefire or not. They might refuse a ceasefire, figuring they'd give up their leverage if they were to. And they would they might say, well, actually, we're prepared to stop, but let's resume negotiations about it because we have some terms. And I don't know. I mean, it's complicated because we have, if you will, a new leadership in Iran. This also begs questions about whether they're in a position to stop all uses of force, whether they've uh re-centralized command and control over the military operations after decentralizing it. But I think they it's uh it's ironic, John. We had the initiative in terms of starting the war, may have been prodded by Israel, but we had the initiative. Iran has a lot of the initiative now about ending it. That even if the president gives his uh we're ready to calm things down, we've accomplished what we've accomplished. And by the way, the more he brags that he's accomplished everything he set out to do, in some ways I think it makes it somewhat more difficult for the Iranians to hold back. But again, I the real question is whether they what what if anything they demand? Because that's their big leverage. You're right. They've watched our debates, and presumably if the president does come out and say, uh, essentially, we've done all we've done, we needed to do, another way of interpreting that is we've had enough. And the Iranians, the real question is whether they see this as a moment of some advantage or leverage, and what is it, what is it they demand at this point? They know they know they're not going to get what they want on nuclear stuff, but it's not inconceivable. They would begin by asking for reparations. We're not going to do that. But what if they asked for some degree of sanctions relief? I think it's not inconceivable we could have a conversation with them about sanctions relief, even rules for investment there in exchange for what kind of limits on their military, certainly nuclear. And I don't rule that out, John. And I think there's that, and both sides would have a degree of leverage. We would have the leverage that comes from the war and the threat to renew military operations, and Iran would have the leverage that would come from all they're doing to disrupt the flow of energy and you know, with all the uh economic consequences of that.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

Well, let's say we're back in the bunker again and it's unconditional surrender on Friday, right? The strait is closed effectively on Saturday, uh, the markets open Monday in Asia, the price of oil skyrockets, and the next thing you know, the president is saying the war is almost over. If you're if we're in the bunker, we're saying we have a lot of leverage here. You know, how do we maximize it? And the I guess the question is, can they maximize it or is that all they've got.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

The leverage at the moment is real, not to be confused with Israel. The leverage is real, in case there's anyone, yeah, you never know who's reading this as opposed to listening to this, and I have my my various New York accents are kicking, kicking uh in here. That's probably a bad podcast pun. I apologize to any listener who's still with us after.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

We can edit that out.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

No, don't you dare. Don't you dare. I gotta be allowed at least one dad joke, you know, every every now and every now and uh uh then I've almost lost my my train of thought. Look, I'm not Iran has leverage. The question is they might not be in a rush, and they might be willing to continue to keep traffic down and see what the president decides to do. They might watch our politics and see what it is they can get from it. So my guess is they may not be in a rush that the president might be a little bit more impatient than they are, because they almost it reminds me of an old line, it was in a Solzja Nitsin novel. I'm gonna mix a lot of metaphors here, John. So get ready. Okay. And I can't remember, it was the one, I don't remember if it was First Circle or one of the others. And he was talking about the prison system, and the character said, once you've taken everything away from a man, you've you've liberated him, you've freed him up all over again. And in a funny sort of way, Iran has been freed up because we've done so much damage there. So they may say they don't have a whole lot more to lose. So let's let's leverage this. And a week more of holding out, even if they'd pay a price for it, they may be interested to see what they could leverage that for in the way of terms of a post-war settlement. So I just hope this administration, which tends to, shall we say, live by improv, I just hope that they are having their version of the conversation we're having about what would be the terms formally, informally, what do we signal Iran again in the way of threats, in the way of inducements, and so forth. And if if the I'd also recommend they do it not unilaterally, the way they launched the war, but among other things, they talk to Iran's neighbors, not just Israel, but the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others, and they had a serious conversation about what these countries would want to see. And you may end up, again, I my guess is people would like a two-phase process, a ceasefire and then something more permanent. And to me, again, I don't know the answer to the question is whether Iran would agree to that, or they would be afraid if they agreed to that, they would give up too much of their leverage. Well, back in the bunker, the uh John, you're clearly in the bunker. Has Susan kicked you out of the house?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Well, you know, I mean, I don't want to go there. We're back in the bunker. The prices of energy have spiked, right? Oil prices through the roof, and the president comes out in response to that and says the war's almost over and the markets calmed down. So if we're in the in the bunker, don't we say, let's put out a statement that says by no means is the war over, we're in it to the end. Won't the energy markets like skyrocket right back up again?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Absolutely. And the stock markets uh will plummet. So again, but if you're gonna do that, other than for simple dishing out pain and retaliation, I assume at some point the Iranian policy becomes purposeful. And we had to decide what it was it, what was our definition of success, both in launching this war and trying to bring it to an end. Well, Iran now has to think about what's it that's what's its definition of success in terms of curtailing, what does it want to get for agreeing to end all operations that, among other things, are driving energy prices through the roof. And that's a conversation they have to have. Simply to extend the war for the sake of it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Uh, you know, it was Saddam who said revenge is a dish, best served cold. Well, they may want to wait for that. The real question is, you know, they might want to consolidate power. There's a new leadership there. They've got uh, shall we say, a lot of rebuilding to do. I assume they'd rather not have more infrastructure destroyed. They'd love to have sanctions lifted, be able to export oil. So Iran has a stake, if you will, in calming things down. And I would think in our bunker, an interesting conversation of the Iranian decision-making mechanism would be what is it they uh what is it they trade, if you will, peace for? What is it they want to get from the United States? What is it they want to get from some of their neighbors?

unknown 16:43

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

What do you suppose, or what do you think China wants out of this, or what do you think Russia wants out of this? I'm I'm curious of their what you think their take on it. I mean, aside from higher energy prices, which is great.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

I think if you're Russia, what you'd love is more war. That you know, the Russians reportedly helping the Iranians with targeting information. Russia benefits from higher energy prices, obviously. Some sanctions have gotten relieved, if I recall, dealing with India and others. The fact that we're using munitions at a great rate that, at least in principle, could be transferred to Ukraine, even though they haven't been, has got to make the Russians pretty happy. So I would think if you're Putin, the best thing that could go on is is more war. Right. And that distracts the United States, drains the United States. And I would say that's pretty true for China. Trade the word Ukraine for Taiwan. So more of this is pretty good for them. China has, you know, unlike Russia, China imports a lot of oil. On the other hand, they've also got you know considerable storage. So China is not, if you will, living day-to-day here. They've prepared for this, plus, they have a lot of leverage of their own in terms of rare earths and other things. So my guess is China's in no particular hurry to bring this to an end. I don't I don't know if you've noticed, but there's been more yak-yak in recent days also over the last 10 days about Taiwan and about Chinese planning for Taiwan. So my my hunch is they don't mind the fact that we are spending down a lot of the uh weapon stocks that might be relevant in a Taiwan scenario. We'll also know more about this, John. Here it is, it's what, the second week of uh March. And so we're about two, two and a half weeks away from the planned visit of the president to China. So I would think the one thing this president definitely wants to do is get this war behind him by then, which is another source of potential leverage with Iran and and China, which is they may be in less of a rush than him.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

So we need to talk about the fact that President Zelensky is sending people to the Middle East to help them figure out how to shoot down drones because of Ukraine's enormous and amazing ability to uh fight the Russians off essentially with drones. We talked about Pentagon 2.0, but how is it does it strike you as just impossible to believe that we have a trillion, roughly a trillion dollar Pentagon budget and we have to turn to Zelensky in Ukraine for, you know, technical expertise on how to shoot down drones? I mean, doesn't this just strike you as unbelievable, or am I exaggerating? Possibly.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

No, the sad thing is it strikes me as eminently believable. It's uh that a point is if you needed one, that our defense spending is in some ways what locked into the past. We've got all these a small number of extraordinarily capable, but also extraordinarily expensive systems like aircraft carriers and fancy fighters and the uh fighter jets and the like. And we're not well positioned for the era of chief, plentiful anti-ship, anti-air missiles, drones, what have you, that we're almost a generation behind. Ukraine has had to adapt in the crucible, shall we say, to use a cliche of war. United States hasn't had to adapt. And so we are we're lagging. And you and I have talked about this on this podcast before. It's almost like we need a second defense budget, a more nimble, high-tech, almost with a totally different paradigm. You know, the defense budget we have is the Army, Navy, Air Force, what have you, Marines, again, small number of very capable weapon systems and manned weapon systems also. And we almost need, and this there's a lot of momentum behind the chose, what we've described here as the uh military, industrial, legislative complex. Right. It's gonna be extraordinarily hard and time consuming to break that hold. It might just be easier to create a de facto second defense budget. And people like Eric Schmidt and others would probably agree with us. And I'm hoping that this experience accelerates that. That it shows that we need to. So they say what you say is say about Ukraine to me is all too believable. It's not surprising at all. By the way, Iran is ready in some ways for this period of warfare with its with its drones. Now, again, we still have enormous quality and quantity to bring to bear, as we've done. But I I worry about how we match up against, and particularly against China. And you know, we just don't have the defensive systems. But we need that. That's the other thing, by the way, John. My takeaway is we have a it's not a scandal, it's just a massive weakness with our defense manufacturing base. We just can't turn out enough of the stuff we need in in in in a time period that's relevant. So we're looking at years in order to turn out twice what we now produce, say for Patriots. That's crazy. We need to be we need to be able to turn out in you know matter of months or most a year, five or ten times what we probably and I just don't see I don't see how we get from here to there. We have uh we've dug ourselves into a real manufacturing uh ditch.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

Pentagon two point oh, I think is the only sort of realistic Solution and just you know create a start-over defense department and fund it as best you can.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

It's almost the sixth side we can call it the sixth side of the Pentagon.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Sixth side of the Pentagon. If you're in Ukraine, how dreadful is the all this news?

SPEAKER_00 22:16

I was reading Ann Applebaum the other day, maybe it might have actually been this morning, and the statistic she put in her substack was that basically we've consumed in the first few days of this Iran war something like the either the more than the number of patriots we sent to Ukraine since this phase of the war has begun. I may be a little bit off, but essentially that's order of magnitude, right? So if you're if you're Mr. Zelensky and you're sitting in Kyiv and you go, wow, they didn't send me any of this stuff, and they're churning it up at an enormous rate. That shows where I stand on the in the pecking order. It just shows that we're not, and particularly since Russia, so much of its strategy, when Russia learned it couldn't win on the battlefield, it switched to a strategy of trying to break Ukraine's will by attacking civilian areas and power stations. And that's exactly why they need these system defensive systems. So the fact that we're making them available to our allies, but not to Ukraine. Talk about discouraging or disheartening or infuriating, choose your word. But it sends a real message to Ukraine, also sends a real message to Putin that he can just about do what he wants, including helping Iran with impunity, and we're still not going to do do much, if anything, to help Ukraine.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Yeah, there was a report uh yesterday in the Yon Hap News Service, a South Korean news service.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Well that's the first one. That's uh impressed with your my subscription expired, John.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

So it was in news items today, in case you didn't read it.

SPEAKER_00 23:47

I read news items every day.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Okay. So they reported that the Patriot Missile Systems in South Korea uh are on the move to the Middle East. You can you, Mr. Zelensky, can help us by giving us drone knowledge in the Middle East, and we'll send Patriot missiles not to you, but to the Middle East. It has to be more than discouraging for the Ukrainians.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

It also has to be worrisome to the South Koreans. You know, North Korea is armed to the teeth. My own guess is this war, if you think about it, you know, the South Korean stock market, what's it must be down 25% since this began, John? I don't know. Now this question, you know, the lack of consultations, the uh unilateralism of the United States. The last polls I saw showed, I don't know, north of 70% of the people of South Korea wanted South Korea to have its own nuclear deterrent, no longer had confidence in American pledges and guarantees. And my guess is wars like this and moves like that reinforce that. So when people say, let's tote up the strategic benefits and costs of this war, and you know, glad to acknowledge what we've accomplished in the way of, again, diminishing, degrading Iran's military capabilities. But we've done some things that are really worrisome about how we've once again weakened alliances and you know raised questions about American predictability and dependability. Uh, and I just don't think that a lot of people who are supporting what's going on have thought have thought through some of the longer-term consequences of this war.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

We have to do our prediction, which is the players' championship is this coming, uh, begins on Thursday. And uh I need your predictions for the top.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

I want to be the first to admit I haven't focused. I've been Iran, Iran, Iran. So I'm gonna defer to you. I am uh my life is out of balance. I will be the first to confess. I did a trip to Florida the other day, and the whole idea was that I'd planned it for months, a four-day trip where I'd get some serious golfing, and I got about half a day in. And I I confess that uh I had to cut the trip short, couldn't play golf for most of it. So I am I I can't carry my share of the burden here in this conversation. So I'm gonna leave it to you.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Well, we'll just go the easy route and say Scotty Scheffler.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

That's the default option. The default answer to any golf question either who's gonna win or who's gonna be arrested.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

All right. We've reached our limit of time. Uh thanks very much to our producer, Dale Isinger. You can see him at daleisinger.com. Richard, we will talk next time. Take care of yourself, my friend.