Terror Without Borders, Part II: Hamas, Houthis, Shi’ite Militias (Oh My)

MONTGOMERY: They could probably survive without Iranian support. They thrive with it. Here’s the kicker: they now have relationships with Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia. And Iran is the prime benefactor.

ROGGIO: Iranian regime is the problem. The only way these militias survive is via the support from Iran. The only real way that you can stop these militias is remove the Iranian regime.

SABTI: The role of Iranian regime in this attacks, October 7th. We know that Iran, they had a lot of meetings with Hamas. This was an Iranian plan.

DUBOWITZ: Welcome to “The Iran Breakdown.” I’m Mark Dubowitz. Today we’re taking you inside Tehran’s proxy network. Three separate fronts, one cohesive strategy.

First, Mark Montgomery will show you how Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has turned the Houthis into a missile and drone force in Yemen. Mark is a senior fellow at FDD. He is senior director of our Center on Cyber and Technology Innovation. Mark is a former Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy and served in the White House and the U.S. Senate. Then Bill Roggio will map Iran’s Shiite militias in Iraq – Tehran’s shock troops and power brokers targeting U.S. forces and shaping Baghdad and Damascus. Bill is a senior fellow at FDD, editor of our Long War Journal – and he embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq where he saw firsthand the devastation that Iranian-backed forces and Iranian-backed proxies had on U.S. forces. Finally, Beni Sabti will break down the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] Quds Force and how they helped plan Hamas’ October 7th assault: Money, munitions, training, and war room coordination. Beni served in Israeli military intelligence, and he is currently at INSS [The Institute for National Security Studies] in Israel, a prominent think tank. Three theaters. One playbook. Let’s break it down.

So, Mark Montgomery, welcome to “The Iran Breakdown.” We’re going to be talking about the Houthis today and break it down, but I want to start by talking about your background, a really great service to our nation. Tell us and the listeners a little bit about how you came to do what you do in the national security world.

MONTGOMERY: Well, first, thanks for having me. Appreciate being here, Mark, the Mark who gets about a third of my emails at FDD.

(Laughter)

Look, I was in the Navy for 32 years. I’ve commanded ships. I was a reactor tester, so I ran nuclear power plants on aircraft carriers and commanded a squadron of ships and then a carrier strike group. And then when I was an admiral, I was very lucky. I got to do two jobs that really go into the political-military realm. One is at US-European Command. I was a deputy director of plans of policy.

So as a one-star, I ran for Admiral Jim Stravidis, who was the NATO commander and US-European Commander, the how we did plans, how we prepared troops to go to Iraq and Afghanistan from Eastern Europe, the policies we had with those Eastern European Balkan – Baltic Caucus countries. I handled all the fun ones, and I had Israel. Then the other cool job was I was the J-3 at Indo-Pacific Command. There, I ran all the operations, the war planning for a Taiwan scenario, a South China Sea scenario, Korea scenario. Worked closely with the Japanese navies and things like that. In between, I commanded a carrier strike group in Japan.

DUBOWITZ: Let’s talk a little bit about your experience in the Red Sea, which is I think germane to the topic du jour of the Houthis. Tell us a little bit about your experience in the Middle East and the Red Sea and in that kind of operational zone where today the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Air Force are striking Houthi targets as we speak.

MONTGOMERY: 1990, 1991 with Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm, we shifted our military to the Middle East. In other words, whether you’re stationed on the Atlantic Coast or the Pacific Coast of the United States, you were going to the Middle East and as a result, you operate really routinely in the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, North Arabian Sea, Red Sea, Bab al-Mandab Strait. You eventually get to know the different groups there, and while the Houthis weren’t there when I first started in the 1990s, by the 2005, 2007 timeframe, the Houthis were beginning to be a force for ill and disruption in the Middle East, principally operating, as you know, out of Yemen. So, I became more and more operating with them and around them that did equivalents of piracy and ransoms and hostages and some limited attacks in the Red Sea. So, we’d come across them every once in a while, but they were a minor, like, fly in the ointment until 2023.

DUBOWITZ: And what fundamentally changed in 2023?

MONTGOMERY: Well, as you know, the Houthis are a mentee of Hezbollah. So obviously there’s three things they hate: They hate Israel, they hate the United States, and they hate Jews. And part of that also was an alignment with Iran. And we began to see a significant flow of weapons and technology and training from Iran starting in 2009, run by Quds Force and IRGC, flowing equipment in, bringing training, and organizing the Yemenis who fought in a civil war from about 2010 to 2014 on and off. And then again, after there was a slight pause all the way through the early 2020s, against– they were opposed to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, who we were lightly supporting in that event. But they got more and more skilled. And here’s the kicker. They now have relationships with Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.

DUBOWITZ: The entire axis of aggressors.

MONTGOMERY: That’s right, the whole axis. But Iran is the prime benefactor. They could probably survive without Iranian support. They thrive with it.

DUBOWITZ: Houthi military, Houthi terrorists who are going to Lebanon to be trained by Hezbollah– I remember being in both Riyadh and in Abu Dhabi and getting briefings from the Saudi and Emirati militaries. And they were showing at the time, and this was a number of years ago, video footage of Lebanese-speaking, you could hear the accent, Hezbollah operatives in Yemen training the Houthis on everything that you see today: advance weaponry, the use of human shields. Everything that Hezbollah and Hamas have been using against the Israelis, they were training the Houthis to use the same tactics at that time against the Saudis and against the Emiratis. So, you’re absolutely right. This has been a mentor-mentee relationship of long-standing. What didn’t work against the Houthis? I mean, you mentioned the Saudis and the Emiratis, and their quite long war against trying to stop the Houthis from firing missiles and drones at their cities. What went wrong there? Why didn’t that work and why did the Houthis just get more and more powerful?

MONTGOMERY: You’re absolutely right with all that, and you can’t understate the role of Hezbollah as an intermediary between Iran and the Houthis in this game. But the Houthis are– they’re tribal organization. They’re Zaydi Shias, they’re from the Houthi tribe. They blend well into an infrastructure-less environment. So striking them is hard. And certainly the Saudis, with their couple of F-15s going and some precision weapons, were unable to impose costs in a way that deterred Houthi action. When you have almost nothing infrastructure-wise, you’re hard to deter. You can’t hold things at risk. They can’t go “Man, that one was bad. We don’t want another one of those,” because they’re never really bad. It’s really hard to hit them. So my take is, did the Saudis and Yemenis on occasion destroy a missile launcher–?

DUBOWITZ: The Saudis and Emiratis.

MONTGOMERY: The Saudis, yeah, and Emiratis on occasion destroy a missile launcher, destroy a missile set, kill a couple bad guys? You bet. Routinely. But what it didn’t do is add up to an imposition of cost that they couldn’t withstand. And look, that training’s important because you do kill a technical person, someone who understands how to launch the missile, someone who understands how to arm the weapon system before you put it on the rails. That’s a skill set.

DUBOWITZ: Well, it’s interesting because I remember those briefings, particularly from the Saudis, complaining about how the Houthis were using Yemeni civilians as human shields and their concerns about how they were unable to strike military targets because those military targets would be sitting in mosques and in madrasas and in civilian homes. I find it a little ironic all these years later, the Saudi government condemning Israel for attacking Hamas and Hezbollah who are obviously using civilians in Lebanon and in Gaza as human shields. But let’s sort of fast-forward where we are today. I mean through the past number of years, what has happened in the Red Sea? How bad has it gotten? And then we can talk about what the Trump administration is hoping to do going forward.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, it has changed. There’s been a marked change, and look, it actually started late 2022, early 2023. He’s got more aggressive in maritime operations. Really, they were seizing ships for ransom. But after October 7th, things changed markedly. After October 7th of 2023, they started to say things like, “We are going to hold Israel accountable for their attacks in Gaza” because as you know, within 48 hours, Israel was holding Gaza accountable, which they should have. And so they said, “We’re going to help our Hamas brethren with strikes on shipping.” Now look, a lot of world trade flows through the Bab al-Mandab Strait into the Red Sea, up to the Suez Canal, and they were serious. What they did was begin to launch ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones at that shipping. They also used their limited helicopter. They had one or two old helicopters. They flew out and dropped on unarmed merchants, took the crew hostage, and directed it into Yemen ports.

But mostly they shot missiles at them, and they hit a few of them – a few of them in a very ugly way, burned to the waterline and sank. And then so the United States began to organize something called Operation Prosperity Guardian, which brought together about 20 countries. In reality, three or four navies, a lot of staff people. In real reality, two countries willing to really shoot stuff down, us and the Brits, and in deep reality, really us. And so, we began to patrol that straits and begin to bring ships through it, because the popular conception is all shipping stopped, and it didn’t. It dropped from about 550 ships a week going through the Bab al-Mandab to about 250.

But certain types of ships still go through, freighters that are large, greater than 10,000 tons, but not super large like you’d see with a big tanker or LNG [Liquid Natural Gas] ship, or one of those container ships where you see the thousand container, you know, [inaudible] containers on it. Those ones went around Africa to go to Europe and go to the United States instead of going to the Suez and spent about an extra 10 to 15% in fuel money to do that. The rest of them still went up and went through, and particularly if they’re headed to ports, you know, Saudi, Jordanian, or Israeli ports in the Red Sea, they still headed up. And the United States began to defend them. Cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, or drones shot at U.S. ships in these 17 months. We’ve engaged the vast majority of them or determined they weren’t going to hit anything. A handful of merchant ships had gotten out of our protected area. We’re either too close to the coast or we’re farther down the straits than we expected an attack to occur in and they’ve been hit.

But the ones in our protected areas have generally all been protected throughout this. And these 250 to 300 engagements have come at a cost. We’ve probably shot one to one and a half billion dollar’s worth of outgoing munitions against these kind of rinky-dink cruise missiles, Shahed drones from Iran basically, and locally manufactured drones and ballistic missiles that are both locally manufactured and come from Iran.

DUBOWITZ: I mean, rinky-dink but obviously lethal if they land. Right? I mean concerning obviously sinking ships and a severe threat to the U.S. Navy. Now, let me ask you this. You talked about the economics of defending against this, a billion and a half dollars versus whatever, $200,000, are being spent to fire at us. It’s sort of knocking down the arrows instead of going after the archer. You’ve commanded carrier strike groups, you’ve planned military operations, you’ve been in policy. Give us your assessment of the U.S. approach to date. I mean, is this an effective way? This is sort of, what, deterrence by denial? “We’re going to make it more difficult for them to strike at us.” But there hasn’t really been serious deterrence by punishment. It’s certainly not against the archer. In this case, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

MONTGOMERY: That’s right. So that’s how I look at it. Exactly. Look, us spending $1.5 billion defending the ships, that’s a portion of deterrence saying that what you’re doing isn’t working. Now you’re right, at $1.5 billion for us, tens of millions max for them, this is a bad, you know, it’s a hundred-to-one trade. That’s not good, all right? I also consider it deterrence by denial to go strike the actual launch places. This is what we’ve been doing. Under the Biden administration, we did probably 10 or 12 days of good striking. The Israelis have done two or three days of good striking.

DUBOWITZ: And by the way, the Israelis are striking because the Houthis have been sending–

MONTGOMERY: Ballistic missiles into Israel.

DUBOWITZ: Ballistic missiles.

MONTGOMERY: And cruise missiles.

DUBOWITZ: Cruise missiles and drones into Israel.

MONTGOMERY: That’s right.

DUBOWITZ: Okay.

MONTGOMERY: Much like they did to the Saudis. And Israelis, and every once in a while, U.S. forces, are shooting down those ballistic missiles because we now have a THAAD [Terminal High Altitude Area Defense] unit in Israel shooting down these weapons coming in from the Houthis, as well as obviously being ready for future attacks from Iran. I don’t consider us striking those– even the Israeli strikes, which are more – Israel just has a different rule set and they hit the port hard, which probably is a dual use thing. I don’t think it’s primarily a Houthi thing, but it’s certainly a Houthi thing. And they hit it hard. We tend to hit the very, very military structures. Either way, it doesn’t matter. Neither one of them actually is cost imposition. Cost imposition or deterrence by punishment will be accomplished when we strike Iran. We have to hold the principal interlocutor responsible. That’s Iran.

And the way you do, that’s three ways. One, you hit their spy ship. They have a spy ship that has been historically maneuvering around the Red Sea. It’s in Bandar Abbas today, but historically there’s one or two of them. They’re not there now, but they provide targeting information to Houthis. We’ve alleged that. I think we can prove it pretty easily. We don’t need to prove it in a court of law. We can either take down or we can either sink or capture that ship. I don’t care which. Sinking is a little easier. We need to do that. Number two, we need to hit Iranian port facilities where ships take things to Yemen. That is a military logistics line. We need to hold it accountable. I’d pick the piers that the military, the Quds Force, and the Iranian intelligence use there, but I’d still hit it. And most importantly, I would hit their manufacturing, their drone and missile manufacturing production facilities.

They were hit by the Israelis in October. There’s lots more of them. We should hit them all and we should set back. We’ll do Israel a favor with this. We’ll do ourselves a favor with it, with the IRGC forces in Syria or Iraq also getting weapons from here.

DUBOWITZ: And we’ll do the global economy a favor.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah, we’ll do everyone a favor. That’s right.

DUBOWITZ: What about a fourth target set, which is hitting the IRGC command and control that are actually directing and supporting and advising on these strikes?

MONTGOMERY: I’m happy to do that too. You want to add that one in? That’s fine.

(LAUGHTER)

There’s certainly nothing wrong with that. It’s a legitimate target. They are part of this. I would lay off- look, I mentioned earlier, North Korea– Iran very clearly provides not just actual missiles and parts, but the training and know-how to do more. North Korea provides missiles and parts. Russia provides missiles and parts. China, little slicker. They provide dual-use equipment that could go either way, but it’s parts. But Iran is the center of gravity on this. They’re the leading member of the axis involved in this and holding them completely accountable across all four target sets we mentioned is absolutely just and appropriate and should be done.

And by the way, it’s one of these things. It validates Israel, what they did in April in a minor way and October in a big way. It says, “Look, this is what you do to terrorist organizations and their sponsors who attack you. You hit the terrorist organization and then you hit the sponsor. And if you do it again, I’ll just go straight for the sponsor.” This is how we should act. It’s how Israel acts. It would reaffirm the righteousness of Israel’s position on this, and it would help all of us because the same missile factories, production factories– In fact, it would help Ukraine. The less Shaheds that are produced in the world, the better off Ukraine is. It’ll help.

DUBOWITZ: Because the Islamic Republic is manufacturing Shahed–

MONTGOMERY: Drones.

DUBOWITZ: Suicide drones and sending it to Putin to kill Ukrainians.

MONTGOMERY: Correct. And including to the degree of building a factory in Russia as well. And, well, there’s other missiles I don’t like in the Iranian arsenal, and I would go ahead and hit those production facilities. Look, Elon Musk famously in October was commenting that the F-35 is a dinosaur that is no longer relevant on the battlefield. And two nights later, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the world’s fourth or fifth-largest air defense system without loss. I’ll just gently say the F-35 is completely dominant in the Middle East, whether it’s flown by Israeli pilots or U.S. pilots. And in my mind, the major risk to force in that kind of scenario is that you have an unintended malfunction in an aircraft.

The Iranians are going to struggle to shoot down F-35s and though they won’t shoot down B-2s. This is, I believe, a reasonably– nothing is risk-free whenever you conduct a military operation, but this is a low-risk way of imposing costs on an axis of authoritarian country in a meaningful way that messages them, messages China, messages North Korea, messages Russia. This is a real benefit. If I were Donald Trump, I’d be looking hard at this if I’m thinking I want to send Vladimir Putin and Chairman Xi a message.

DUBOWITZ: Okay, so President Trump seems to be looking really hard at this. I mean, he sent out a Truth [Social] post just recently, talking about holding not only the Houthis accountable but holding the Islamic Republic of Iran accountable. And it’s not just idle talk. The U.S. military, the U.S. Air Force, has been operating for days against Houthi targets, I think using F-35s and B-2 bombers and striking at Houthi targets. What’s your assessment to date? There’s obviously still much to occur in this ongoing campaign, but what’s your assessment to date of what the Trump administration is doing? Is it doing anything differently than Biden did? Or is it sort of at a greater intensity?

MONTGOMERY: So, this is F/A-18 teams from the aircraft carrier strike group out there. The Navy and Air Force are hitting us hard. They’re hitting it harder than we did in the past. In the end though, this is the furtherance of the deterrence by denial.

DUBOWITZ: Right.

MONTGOMERY: If the president means what he tweets in Truth Socials, then he needs to hit Iran. And believe me, this is win-win-win. Iran needs to be held accountable. It backs up our ally Israel and it sends a message to the rest of the axis authoritarians. There’s a new sheriff. And this is how– when I say, “don’t do something,” I mean, don’t do something and I’m going to hold you accountable. And I cannot emphasize how important that is in Russia-Ukraine negotiations right now, and how Xi looks at Taiwan, and how North Korea looks at South Korea. This is an important moment for the president and it’s the easiest. From my point of view, it’s not like Iran’s– I would never call them an easy target, but if I was the U.S. military and I was told, “Take care of one of these four problems right now,” this is the one I’d want to take care of.

DUBOWITZ: No, I think that’s actually a really profound point because in the axis of aggressors, I mean you’ve got China, which is I think a multi-generational competition, Cold War, whatever you want to call it, but that’s the big one. You’ve got Russia, which is still a serious country with a still large army and nuclear weapons.

MONTGOMERY: 4,000 nuclear weapons.

DUBOWITZ: 4,000 nuclear weapons. I would assume a number of them aimed at our cities. You’ve got the North Koreans who’ve got nuclear weapons, building ICBMs [Intercontinental Ballistic Missile], target the U.S. West Coast, and they could also potentially destroy Seoul in a few weeks. So you’ve got three major problems from hell with respect to those three aggressors. And then you’ve got the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has seen over at least the past year its “axis of resistance,” as they call it, severely degraded by the Israelis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. You’ve seen Assad go down in Syria.

They’ve lost that close ally. You mentioned this, their strategic air defenses were destroyed by Israel in October. 93% of their ballistic missile production capability destroyed by Israel in October. It seems to me if you look at the four members of the axis of aggressors that the Islamic Republic is the easiest target to hit and to send a message. And what I want to ask you, Monty, is to go back in history here, because I know you’re a historian, as well as a policymaker, as well as a fighter. But let’s go back to a historical example where a former commander-in-chief ordered the U.S. Navy to actually strike Iranian assets. And that’s during the Tanker wars in the 1980s. Want to say a few words about that? And from a naval historical perspective, how meaningful was that? What lessons can we learn from– I think it was called Operation Praying Mantis, for what the U.S. Navy and the U.S. military could do today against the same enemy interfering, again, with international shipping?

MONTGOMERY: Well, first I’d say that Praying Mantis – I was in the Navy then, and what was interesting about that is we decided to fight them kind of on close to equal terms. I mean much closer than we would today, which is to say we had a bunch of ships. We didn’t routinely deploy aircraft carrier strike groups. Al Udeid didn’t exist.

DUBOWITZ: Al Udeid being our CENTCOM headquarters, right? Air Force Base in Qatar.

MONTGOMERY: One of my favorite transactional country in the world, Qatar, who I wouldn’t trust to change the oil in my car.

DUBOWITZ: Or trust to host your most important air base in the Middle East.

(LAUGHTER)

MONTGOMERY: There you go. We did decide to hold them accountable for attacks on tankers during the Tanker War and for mining of the Arabian/Persian Gulf.

DUBOWITZ: Which by the way, though those mines did serious damage to a U.S. Navy warship. I think that’s when Reagan decided, “I’ve had enough. You’ve been interfering with international shipping; you’ve been laying mines. And now all of a sudden-”

MONTGOMERY: The [USS] Samuel B. Roberts had been hit by one and so we decided to hold them accountable. And that was with surface ships and some aircraft. And with sank frigates, there was a specific one we were targeting, and a few who’d been– they’d been really tough on merchants, like some of those Iranian ships when they came alongside would execute crew members and things. So, we were willfully targeting a few of the assets there and held them accountable. I think we wanted to sink a little more than we did, but we sunk a few of their ships, didn’t take any real casualty, any real hits ourselves.

DUBOWITZ: I mean, the story as I remember it is after sinking a couple of Iranian ships, the Islamic Republic of Iran backed down.

MONTGOMERY: That’s right.

DUBOWITZ: This is deterrence by punishment.

MONTGOMERY: When you impose cost, people change their behavior. It’s time to do that again. And I think there’s a real– we have a problem here. We’ve had aircraft carriers in and out of the Arabian Gulf, North Arabian Sea for 25 years, telling Iran we’ll do something. I mean, Jim Mattis at one point when he was Central Command Commander, General Jim Mattis who later became Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, had us bring two aircraft carrier strike groups in. I mean, honestly broke the readiness of the Navy and the Air Force doing this, and we didn’t strike. I could live with readiness problems five years later if you’ve altered the behavior of the person you’re trying to alter. But I don’t think we’ve altered their behavior with our military movements and things. What’s altered their behavior is Israeli strikes and sanctions when they worked and are done right. That’s what alters behavior. Imposing cost alters behavior, not the shadow-threatening. I’m at the point now where it’s time to strike them. We can strike them, and we can hold them accountable. And it’s about time, it really is. I’m glad you reminded me of Praying Mantis. We did it before and really in a much lower-key way. I would want something dramatic. I would want two to three days of striking, like happened in October from the Israelis. Hold the Iranians accountable.

And when it’s over, it will affect how they treat Israel and affect how they treat us. They’ll have a fear of us that will drive their decision-making. By the way, if that drives their decision-making to build a bomb, then we can work with Israelis to remove that. And if you tell me, “Oh, we can’t hold Iran accountable because they’ll try to build a bomb fast,” that means they’re going to build a bomb fast someday, or I’m never going to do anything to them and they’re just going to impose their will on me.

Israel’s right about this, and since you know I’m not a complete believer in your B-2 idea, I would really love to have us just take care of this problem, if there was…

DUBOWITZ: Speaking of B-2s, it is interesting you talked about these military exercises, and carrier strike groups, and joint military exercises, and this, sort of, messaging value of that, whether there is value or not. I think I got this right, but I did notice that U.S. military used B-2s to drop, I believe, the “mother of all bombs,” or at least Massive Ordnance Penetrators, on Houthi positions.

Is that a good sign in terms of how this administration is starting to move up the escalation ladder, or you think it’s still performative?

MONTGOMERY: You could use an F-18. Most munitions, 95% of munitions can be delivered by an F-18, F-35. The B-2 only has a few unique ones, like if you’re messing around with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. If we use a Massive Ordnance Penetrator, I would hope it’s only for the purpose of, “Let’s check out how this Massive Ordnance Penetrator works on an Iranian-designed command and control bunker…”

DUBOWITZ: Right.

MONTGOMERY: “… that might exist in Yemen.” In that case, I’d push the “good move” button. If we used it just because we wanted to use it, I would say, let’s save them for the really bad guy. There are a few targets in Yemen where it might be appropriate, so if they did, great.

It is an important thing. The Massive Ordnance Penetrator is a very large, we’ll say, around 40,000-pound weapon that can really only be dropped by very specific U.S. aircraft bombers, and is critical, I think, to destroying anything that’s deeply bunkered. And you can think that that’s probably the Iranian nuclear program.

DUBOWITZ: That would be Fordow enrichment facility for sure, Natanz certainly. The new enrichment facility they’re building near Natanz was going to go about 100 meters underground and be heavily fortified. There’s some deep tunnels at Isfahan, where the conversion facilities are, and the enriched uranium is. I think those Massive Ordnance Penetrators are going to be very important in any kind of strike against Iran’s nuclear program. You’re right, if the U.S. military is decided to test a Massive Ordnance Penetrator against deeply buried Houthi facilities that are Iranian-constructed, Iranian-supplied and Iranian-run, that’s a good thing, and probably more than just performative.

So, Monty, I want to just wrap this up. I think it’s been incredibly helpful, in not only understanding the Houthi threats, but also understanding U.S. military and naval capabilities in the region. There is a prevailing assumption in Washington that we have to make hard choices about who we’re going to go after; that we don’t necessarily have the systems and the munitions be able to supply our Ukrainian allies against Russia, our Israeli allies against Iran, our Taiwanese and other allies against China. What’s your take on that?

MONTGOMERY: Thanks. I want to acknowledge that we have a great Center on Military and Political Power run by Brad Bowman. He and his team are doing a monograph called Arsenal of Democracy, should be out the next couple of weeks. I’ve contributed to it and given them my opinion on a lot of weapons systems. I think generally, broadly, we were able to do all of these. And I think that’s a great testament to our defense industrial base. In other words, we were able to supply Ukraine with weapons systems that did not materially impact our ability to defend Taiwan and to support Israel.

However, we were stressed in several of them, and it would be deceptive to say there was no impact. But when there’s an impact, it’s usually because our defense industrial base had just lost its mojo. There’s some areas, like 155 mm artillery, which is needed everywhere if you’re going to fight. The Israelis have used quite a bit of it and could have used more of it, and Hezbollah if they hadn’t-

DUBOWITZ: Just to understand that, how is that used?

MONTGOMERY: That’s a very large 7-, 8-inch round, fired from an artillery. It goes 8 to 15 miles away, impacts an enemy position, destroys men and maneuver weapons, tanks and things when they’re aggregated around airfields, whatever you want to hit, logistics lines. The Taiwans [sic] have needed against some of it, not that much, against China. The Ukrainians have needed a ton of it.

Just as a data point, North Korea gave Russia 6 million rounds of artillery in mortar and rockets, which is 15 years of our production, and Russia had that much to begin with. So, we were racing it to them. And in fact, if anything, we pulled 300,000 rounds that we stow in Israel in something called War Reserve Supply Allies – Israel, something I used to manage pretty carefully. That’s a lot of rounds. 300,000 rounds were transferred from Israel, with Israel’s knowledge and – permission might be the wrong word, but blessing.

DUBOWITZ: This was before October 7th?

MONTGOMERY: Before October 7th, but after February 24th of 2022.

DUBOWITZ: The invasion of the Ukraine?

MONTGOMERY: The invasion of the Ukraine.

DUBOWITZ: And then Israelis discovered, I’m sure after October 7th, that they desperately needed it.

MONTGOMERY: The one good thing is Israel built 155 [mm artillery]. The other good thing is we’ve been supplying it. And I think Israel’s good there. And the other good thing is they kicked Hezbollah’s ass without needing a lot of it. And I think they expected they would need a lot of it, and they didn’t. They needed some of it, and then they’re getting replenished. I’m not worried. On my list of Israeli issues that worry me, that’s low.

By the way, what’s high on the list, and it involves the Houthis: Arrow. Arrow is a ballistic missile defense weapon that’s used as Arrow 1, 2 and 3. Mostly 2s and 3s now out there. Israel’s gotten low on them, because of Iran, because of the Houthis. That’s why there’s a U.S. THAAD launcher in Israel. Israel, historically, doesn’t like U.S. forces on the ground defending them, and I don’t think they’d take them from any other country but the U.S. It’s working out great, but I think they’d like to procure Arrow to work the THAAD team out of a job and send them back to the United States, and we’d be happy to have that happen. So, we got to get Arrow production going.

By the way, Arrow production brought to you in many U.S. states, including Huntsville, Alabama being a prime place. It’s a U.S. co-designed co-production, and some of it funded by the United States…

DUBOWITZ: I think our listeners would be familiar with Iron Dome, but this is a souped-up Iron Dome against ballistic missiles.

MONTGOMERY: Yeah. Iron Dome is rockets. David’s Sling is cruise missile. David’s Sling, almost all Israeli, not US. Iron Dome has a little bit of US at the beginning and…

DUBOWITZ: Arrow.

MONTGOMERY: … Arrow at the top. And then USA just runs over Arrow for some of the weird things it might come at, and so we have a permanent destroyer station in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea to protect. So really, a lot going on there.

The answer, it’s a complex answer, but if you read our report, what we show is across 24 different weapons systems, we were able to get what our allies needed. However, our defense industrial base is yellow or red in several areas. That means we got to get it going to get it back for ourselves and get our levels up to past the minimum and to the desirable level. We’re at minimums. We want to get to desirable levels, and eventually even maximum levels on some of them. We just got to get doing that.

Read Brad’s report [Arsenal of Democracy], it’s pretty straightforward in there. It’s not all good news, but it’s largely good news, and it reflects the fact that we’re becoming the arsenal of democracy that we were in World War II.

DUBOWITZ: That’s good news. America remains the arsenal of democracy. The bad news is there’s an axis of aggressors, a raid against us working very closely with each other, bilaterally, trilaterally, and as four main aggressive powers. The good news is that probably the weakest element of that axis, the Islamic Republic of Iran, has already taken a beating from the Israelis, both the regime itself and its proxies. With Hezbollah down but not out, Hamas on its knees, the Houthis still standing and still attacking us and our interests, there is a path forward to deter, but it has to be deterrence by not just denial, but by punishment. Let’s hope the Trump administration and their strategy starts targeting not just the Houthis with expensive arrows, but goes after the archer, which is the Islamic Republic of Iran in the way you’ve described.

Monty, thank you very much. Incredibly helpful as always, a wealth of knowledge. Appreciate having you on “The Iran Breakdown.”

MONTGOMERY: Amen to all you said and thank you for having me.

DUBOWITZ: Mark Montgomery just laid out how the IRGC has turned the Houthis into a precision strike force, threatening international shipping, Saudi energy infrastructure, and Israel with missiles and drones. That same playbook of deniable, asymmetric warfare is alive and well north of the Saudi border. In Iraq and Syria, Tehran’s Shi’ite militias serve as both shock troops and political kingmakers, striking U.S. forces one day and shaping Baghdad’s government the next. For a detailed map of that network and what it means for American strategy, Bill Roggio of FDD’s Long War Journal will take us inside Iran’s proxy army. Let’s break it down.

Bill Roggio, welcome to “The Iran Breakdown.”

ROGGIO: Mark, it’s a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

DUBOWITZ: It’s wonderful to have you, Bill. Your work has been extraordinary over the years. And really, honored to have you as part of FDD. The Long War Journal is a must-read for everybody– the military intelligence community, anybody who wants to know anything about the long war that the West is engaged in.

I want to ask you, Bill, because on this show we’ve already talked a lot about Iran’s “axis of resistance” or, I call it, “the axis of misery.” I think folks listening and watching this know quite a lot about Hezbollah and Hamas, some know about Palestinian Islamic Jihad, people know a lot more about the Houthis these days, given that the United States is now bombing the Houthis.

But I think there is a proxy group, or groups, that people have a blind spot on, and that is the Iraqi Shiite militias, so I want to talk about who are they? How did they come about? And let’s get into the weeds on specifically the various groups and who influences whom.

ROGGIO: Yeah. First of all, you said, “the axis of misery,” and that really struck a chord with me, because these militias don’t only cause misery for the Americans, or the Israelis, or the countries, but the people. They are brutal organizations. These militias that we see in Iraq were widely responsible for the sectarian violence that we saw during the civil war– which I call a civil war, in Iraq from 2003 onward. They were targeting Sunnis and stoking that violence. Of course, al-Qaeda in Iraq was the other side of that coin, but they’re just as bad.

Where did these militias come from? After 2003 and the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Iranians decided that they were going to take on a program of building a militias just like Hezbollah but basically supercharged. One of the things about Hezbollah, it’s a country of about 6 million people–

DUBOWITZ: About Lebanon?

ROGGIO: I’m sorry, about Lebanon.

DUBOWITZ: Yeah.

ROGGIO: It’s a country of 6 million people, about 30% or so are Shia. Look at the damage that Hezbollah has caused in the region, not just to Israel, but to the country of Lebanon itself…

DUBOWITZ: And by the way, has killed and maimed 100s of Americans.

ROGGIO: Americans as well, right, with Beirut bombing and two 1983 marine barracks bombings, and on and on and on, kidnappings, other murders.

Iraq is a country of 45 million people, 60-plus percent Shia population. That is the population that the Iranian-backed militias are going to recruit from. So, you could just see a potential problem right there. Now, not every Shia likes the militias. As a matter of fact, a lot of them don’t. But you have a massive recruiting base.

The Iranians, they decided it was going to create a Hezbollah like– well, actually, groups inside of Iraq. What they did was, they took the Mahdi Army, which was at that point run by, it still is, Muqtada al-Sadr. They started recruiting commanders from these groups and they created what the U.S. military at the time called the “Special Groups.” They were known as the Mahdi Army Special Groups. Two of the biggest ones, the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, or the League of the Righteous, and then Hezbollah Brigades were two of the biggest groups. They started launching attacks. Wait, let me step back there. They took commanders from Hezbollah. They took IRGC officers and embedded them with these groups. They trained them, they funded them, they gave them weapons. They brought the commanders and fighters into Iran.

DUBOWITZ: Am I correct in saying this was the brainchild of the former IRGC Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani?

ROGGIO: Absolutely.

DUBOWITZ: In replicating the success for his Hezbollah model in Lebanon, and bringing that to Iraq in order to inflict massive damage on the United States, the U.S. Forces, and on our allies?

ROGGIO: Absolutely correct. Soleimani was instrumental. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was especially designated global terrorist, the US killed him.

DUBOWITZ: At the same time they killed–

ROGGIO: Killed Soleimani.

DUBOWITZ: –Soleimani. Right.

ROGGIO: Correct. Yes, in, what? 2020, is that right? God, it seems like yesterday, but we’re five years from that. Muhandis was one of the key people. There’s others – Qais Khazali – I could go on and on with the names of these commanders. Qais Khazali, we had him in custody. He was one of the ones who was responsible for the Karbala Provincial Center attack. They kidnapped five American soldiers, tried to bring them to Iran. They were intercepted, so Khazali’s people executed them. Again, five American military officers. These are the kinds of people we’re dealing with.

We started to battle these Special Groups. There’s always been this certain narrative too, Mark, that’s always bothered me, that the Mahdi Army and Muqtada al-Sadr didn’t support them. These groups were used as plausible deniability. Sadr is the other side of the Shia coin.

DUBOWITZ: Tell us a little bit about Sadr, because I think that–

ROGGIO: Yeah.

DUBOWITZ: –some of our folks are familiar with Sadr, but–

ROGGIO: His father was an influential leader. He has his own Shia branch that operates a very influential– political and religious leader inside of Iraq. His father passed. They were actually pro-American, or as pro-American as you probably could expect from the group. But Muqtada al-Sadr saw an opportunity, and Iranians– through Iranian influence, they supported Sadr. He had several uprisings against both the Iraqi government and U.S. Forces.

I was in Baghdad in September 2007 when that kicked off, and that was quite violent. I was embedding with U.S. military troops that were battling Sadr forces as well as the Special Groups. He’s promoted himself as a nationalist, as being anti-Iran. But whenever there’s a problem, he and his cadre, they flee to Iran. We saw this in 2007, 2008 when the U.S. military and the Iraqi government went up against him, and another time in 2010. If he was anti-Iranian, if he was against Iran, I think that just wouldn’t be the case. He has his own religious school inside of Iran.

The Iranians use Sadr as– because Sadr tends to not get along very well with these Shia militias, the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq. They become powerful entities in their own right. They have their own political parties. Obviously, they’re in competition for votes in the Iraqi elections for manpower, for resources that the Iranians provide. But the Iranians basically, in my estimation, use Sadr as a hedge. I think they like the Shia militias, the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqs and the Hezbollah Brigades of the world, but Sadr is always an option for the Iranians.

DUBOWITZ: So, there’s an internal Iraqi Shiite “Game of Thrones” going on, right?

ROGGIO: Absolutely.

DUBOWITZ: …between Sadr and these Shiite militias. But one should be under no illusions, they’re all united in their hatred of America. They certainly all, I think, Bill, correct me if I’m wrong here. They all have American blood on their hands.

ROGGIO: Absolutely do, yes.

DUBOWITZ: And they’re all under varying degrees of Iranian influence. And we can talk about the differences, but at the end of the day, they’ve been established as Iranian proxies, both military and political proxies, again, on the Hezbollah model of Lebanon.

ROGGIO: That’s correct. It is varying degrees of influence. For Sadr, he basically runs his own show, and he’ll make an anti-Iranian stand here or there. They’re not pulling the levers. Some of these groups are given a wide berth. It’s just like the militias or the terrorist groups. Hezbollah is never going to be asked to do something that is detrimental to Hezbollah’s existence. The same goes for the Iraqi militias. Some of the militia leaders have come out and said, “Hey, if Ayatollah Khamenei said overthrow the prime minister of Iraq, we’ll do that.” We’ve documented those statements in the Long War Journal. Some of them take a– but at the end of the day, all of these groups receive direction and support from the Iranians. Again, the Iranians never asked them to do something that would harm these groups. They all operate under the same principles: anti-Americanism, pro-Iranian. We all know, at the end of the day, where their loyalties lie.

DUBOWITZ: Yeah. It’s interesting, because in the Lebanon and Gaza context, there was always this debate in Washington and Israel and the Middle East about Iranian proxies who were under the direct control, command of the IRGC Quds Force and would basically do their bidding, and Iranian affiliates, Iranian-aligned organizations that wouldn’t necessarily do their bidding directly and had domestic considerations.

Hezbollah maybe was more of that kind of organization. It wasn’t essentially Ali Khamenei would call Nasrallah and say, “Nasrallah, here are the following 15 things I want you to do.” Nasrallah might say, “Of the 15, I’ll do five. Five I won’t do. And five let me consider because I have certain domestic pressures in Lebanon as a Lebanese entity and Lebanese leader that I may not be able to do.” So, Hezbollah was not a direct command and control proxy in the way that, say, Palestinian Islamic Jihad was, and Hamas was somewhere between Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

First of all, do you think that’s an accurate assessment in the Lebanon-Gaza context, and if so, apply that to Iraq and put that on the spectrum of proxies versus partners?

ROGGIO: I think that applies to all of these groups to varying degrees. For instance, Musa Ali Daqduq, he’s one of the Hezbollah commanders who helped train the Iraqi militias. The Israelis killed him in the last year. He was also in U.S. custody. We interrogated him; we know what he did with the Special Group.

DUBOWITZ: So, he was in U.S. custody–

ROGGIO: He was.

DUBOWITZ:  –and we let him go.

ROGGIO: We released him to the Iraqis in 2010 or ’11, and the Iraqis subsequently released him, and he returned back to Lebanon and got back into the program. Ironically, we then issued sanctions against him.

DUBOWITZ: So your view is, the Israeli form of justice may be better than the American form of justice–

ROGGIO: I–

DUBOWITZ: –against these terrorists, where it’s basically we bring them into custody, we release them to the Iraqis, the Iraqis release him and then we sanction him, and then he’s off committing the malign activities that he’s been doing for decades.

ROGGIO: Yeah, he should have slipped on a bar of soap in prison.

DUBOWITZ: Right.

ROGGIO: I mean, it’s just–

DUBOWITZ: I always say that Israelis have done us a favor.

ROGGIO: Yep, absolutely.

DUBOWITZ: They’ve really gone after Hezbollah terrorists and Iranian terrorists with American blood on their hands. We put out Department of Justice bounties so that these guys are brought to, quote, unquote, “justice.” The Israelis bring justice to them.

ROGGIO: Yes. That’s absolutely correct, the Israelis have taken a lot of people off these lists. The Rewards for Justice, Specially Designated Global Terrorists, Israelis have done a fantastic job of that. Daqduq was, he was one of the guys who was key with establishing his militias, along with Muhandis who I mentioned earlier and Soleimani.

The Iranians asked Hezbollah to help build these militias. Hezbollah clearly said, “Sure, this is something we can do, and we have resources. We’ll send this guy and this guy. We’ll send Daqduq and others to help build them.” Hezbollah has IRGC officers embedded within their organization, so did the Iraqi militias, so did the Houthis.

Again, I always– that line between ally and proxy, it’s blurred. I’m not sure it really matters. I think we’re trying to put this in a context of how we deal with our allies. The Iranians, I think, are far more subtle and they wield their influence in ways– again, they’re never going to ask their proxies to do something these proxies think A, They can’t do, or B, that is going to put them in danger. So that exchange, that example you give with Hezbollah, I believe that’s how it works with the Houthis, that’s how it works with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad or the Iraqi or Syrian militias.

DUBOWITZ: I’m glad you clarified that, because I think, as I said, it was a longstanding debate, but I thought it was a debate by Western analysts and Western experts that really wasn’t relevant.

ROGGIO: I think it’s a debate that it’s an attempt to disconnect the dots. That’s what we see in our industry all the time. Sure, these militias are dangerous and, yeah, they might be taking money and expertise and funds–

DUBOWITZ: And weapons.

ROGGIO: –and weapons and their training them, but they’re not really reporting to the Iranians. I just don’t buy it. It’s no accident that the Houthis start launching attacks against Israel and against Western shipping after October 7th. It’s no accident the Iraqi and Syrian militias start launching attacks against U.S. bases after October 7th. It’s part of a coordinated campaign.

DUBOWITZ: And it’s no accident that Hamas invades Israel on October 7th.

ROGGIO: Obviously.

DUBOWITZ: Right.

ROGGIO: Obviously so.

DUBOWITZ: Right.

ROGGIO: We have a ton of reporting out there of meetings between Hezbollah and Hamas and the IRGC. Hamas isn’t going to take such a substantial action that’s going to put Hezbollah in danger and the IRGC officers in Iraq and Syria. All of this doesn’t happen without the Iranians green-lighting this, basically saying, “Yeah, sure. This is a great idea.”

DUBOWITZ: Let’s get back to the Iraqi Shiite militias. Let me sort of put out an argument. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with it, but I think it’s an important argument to contend with, and that is: Wasn’t the original sin the American invasion of Iraq? Without the American invasion of Iraq, they wouldn’t have been these Iraqi Shiite militias. They wouldn’t have been empowered by Iran, and we wouldn’t have to deal with this terra army that we’re dealing with. Now, what do you make of that argument?

ROGGIO: You know, Mark, it’s not our fault, but there is truth to it in that if Saddam Hussein was in power, these militias wouldn’t have had the opportunity to form.

DUBOWITZ: In Iraq.

ROGGIO: In Iraq, yes. But the Iranians would very likely have been doing this in Syria. Now, the Iraqi militias wield a lot of influence or have now with the fall of Assad, they don’t wield as much influence, if very little influence inside Syria. But these militias largely in Syria, were created by the Iraqi militias. So there is truth to it, but yeah, that’s a difficult one. I don’t like to give credence that, “Oh, if only the United States didn’t do X, Y and Z.” The Iranians were always expanding the “axis of misery.” I really do like that term. And look, they’re doing it in Bahrain. They’re trying to do it in Saudi Arabia. They’re trying to do it in Jordan. Did the invasion of Iraq open a door for the Iranians to access these Shiite militias? Absolutely. But the fault lies on the Iranians, not on the United States.

DUBOWITZ: Right, so they have an expansionist revolutionary agenda.

ROGGIO: Absolutely.

DUBOWITZ: To sow sort of misery, chaos, and violence through the Middle East. And then they look for opportunities in these countries and take advantage of local circumstances to exploit what is going on. And so in Iraq, we could argue by invading, we gave them that opportunity in Iraq that they may otherwise not have had. But they’re looking to do this all through the region. And we see multiple countries where Iran has essentially established Hezbollahs, and that’s kind of the Iranian model. Talk a little bit, Bill, if you could, about the sort of dual-hatted nature of these militias. They’re violent terrorist armies, but they’re also political animals. And what kind of influence have they had in Baghdad?

ROGGIO: Well, this is part of Iran’s strategy, right? It isn’t just a military, Hezbollah isn’t just a military organization. It has a political arm. It has financial. It becomes the state within the state, and that is the exact model that the Iraqi militias have followed. So the Iraqi militias– now people will question, why didn’t they create just one Hezbollah in Iraq, right? Why are there all these fractured different groups? I suspect, because I don’t really know the answer to this, but my suspicion is that the Iranians were looking to see who comes out on top. It’s a hedge for them. It gives them opportunities if one militia or leaders are failing. And I think some of this personality-based, some of the individuals who were established, who established these militias were powerful individuals in their own right. And they don’t just want military power. They want political power.

So Asa’ib ahl al-Haq has a political party, it’s the League of the Righteous. Hezbollah Brigades has a political party. All of these groups are active, and they gather together and generally in a coalition. Now, Sadr doesn’t operate in a coalition with the militias, the Iranian-backed militias that are part of– generally the ones that are in what’s known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, are also known as the Popular Mobilization Units. These are these militias, which are actually part of the Iraqi security establishment.

And after the Iraqi security forces were faltering in 2014, with the Islamic State taking over large parts of Northern, Western and even Central Iraq, these militias stepped in, and the– Iraq’s prime minister gave them the– or actually the Iraqi Parliament passed laws allowing these militias to report under the Popular Mobilization Forces and report directly to Iraq’s prime minister. So they’re a powerful military entity. They’re given weapons and training and whatnot by the Iraqi government, which we ironically fund. And then they operate in the political sphere. They operate deeply in the economic sphere as well. They want to make money. They want to fund their militaries from whatever they’re not getting from the Iranians or indirectly from the US via the Iraqi government, and they want to fund their political parties as well.

So, this is a tried-and-true method for Iraqi proxies, and I’m going to call them “proxies” because at the end of the day, they’re all operating under the Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head, who was killed alongside of Soleimani. When his designation– he was listed– he’s an Iraqi who was listed as a member of the IRGC goods force. That’s how these ties work. So this is the model for the Iranians. They perfected it with Hezbollah, and they’ve exported it to Iraq, the Syrian– that kind of failed with the fall of Assad, and the Houthis, which were organically established in Yemen, but they’ve moved into that Iranian sphere to become an Iranian proxy as well.

DUBOWITZ: So Bill, one thing that’s puzzled me over the past, let’s say year and a half, is, I mean, the Iranians have turned on Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, right? There’s the sort of ring of fire established around Israel, and they switched them all on. Khamenei is also flooding weapons into the West Bank and putting in the hands of Palestinian terrorist organizations. So the Israelis have been taking it on from every front. Where have the Iraqi Shiite militias been? I mean, they’ve been relatively quiet, and why have they not taken on the Israelis in the same way?

ROGGIO: Yeah, some of the issues are geographic. There’s no direct border. There were militias that were funneling through to Syria, but that front up in the limited border with the Golan Heights very secured. They have launched drones and missiles, rockets, mortars, things like that into Israel, but not as much as they claimed.

What they mainly did was attack American forces in Iraq and Syria. There’s a series of small outposts, particularly in Syria, that came under attack. These militias, they claimed it under what they called the “Islamic Resistance of Iraq.” Basically, these Iranian cutouts created cutouts – so, proxies– proxies in order to sort of mask their signature on these attacks. But everyone knew it was happening. And so that was the primary. Their goal was to get the US to withdraw from Iraq and Syria and to get the US to try to– or if the US wanted to remain present to reduce these attacks by getting Israel to back down on attacking Hamas and attacking Hezbollah.

So, they played a role, not as big of a role as I had actually expected. I still think these groups are in their– I won’t say their infancy, but their late childhood right now. They still have room to grow. And implementing or deploying them into that battlefield directly against Israel would be quite difficult. What I could have seen them doing is perhaps funneling forces into Lebanon if there was a major Israeli invasion, but we didn’t. We saw limited action. And with the collapse of the Assad regime, I think that option is now off the table.

DUBOWITZ: It’s interesting. So I mean, Khamenei and the IRGC, maybe smartly, decided to sort of keep the Iraqi Shiite militias focused on driving America out of Iraq and Syria and hopefully out of the Middle East, according to their strategic priorities, not directly take on the Israelis. Had they directly taken on the Israelis, they may have gotten the same kind of beating that Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad have. But it seems to me that given where the President is going, they may be succeeding. I mean, now there’s talk about President Trump withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria.

ROGGIO: Correct.

DUBOWITZ: Or at least limiting the forces there, maybe limiting as a first step to a full withdrawal. And then there’s always been this debate. And Bill, I know you followed it closely about the U.S. presence in Iraq. Where are we both in Iraq and Syria with respect to the U.S. forces and their current footprint?

ROGGIO: So this began under the Biden administration. They put out a plan to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria by the end of 2025. The Trump administration seems to be following this plan. And now keep in mind, the U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria are there to oppose the Islamic state. That’s the primary mission of preventing the Islamic state from retaking territory and then withdrawing U.S. forces from most of Iraq by 2026. There’s talk of keeping a small U.S. presence in the Kurdish areas in northern Iraq, I believe in Erbil, but that has been kind of fuzzy as far as what’s been said.

So, look, we have to remember in this first administration, President Trump wanted to withdraw from Syria. He got opposition to that and wound up keeping a smaller– a reduced number of troops inside of Syria. His inclination seems to be to disengage from the war on terror, less so from disengaging with the war against Iran and its proxies. I suspect that he’s going to see this through, but circumstances often change, and we’ll see what happens, right? But I suspect that it’s something he wanted to do in his first term, and I think he’ll want to see it through in his second term.

DUBOWITZ: So I want to end with this because great analysis of a much better understanding of these Iraqi Shiite militia groups. Who are they? What is their motivation? What is their connection to Iran? But I want to end with some recommendations, Bill, because you’ve really thought a lot about this. What can the United States do to counter these Iraqi Shiite militias? I mean, should we just essentially green-light the Israelis to do whatever they want against these militias? Can the Israelis take them on without U.S. support? Or is the sort of inextricable link between the Iraqi Shiite militias and the regime in Iran, does that give us some guidance to where the real problem lies? What kind of advice would you offer to policymakers in dealing very specifically with this problem?

ROGGIO: I think this holds true for all of Iran’s “axis of misery.” We’ve been trying to deal with the problem. We’ve been dealing with the symptoms of the problem with Hezbollah and its attacks, and maybe we could get them to do a ceasefire and disarm south of the Litani River. But the real problem is Iran. With Iraq, for instance, a lot of people say, “well, we should be supporting the Iraqi military more and trying to work our influence there and increase economic ties,” or all of these things. That to me is just chipping away at the edges. But the fact remains that these militias have hundreds of thousands of fighters in their ranks. They’re well established. They’re established political parties. There’s part of the Iraqi security forces now under the Popular Mobilization Forces.

To me, the only real way that you can stop these militias from growing is to sever the tie between Iran and those militias. And that is to remove the Iranian regime. The Iranian regime is what is allowing the support for the Iraqi militias, the support for Hezbollah. That is what’s fueling these groups. If these groups were no longer funded and armed and trained by Hezbollah, they would be a shell of themselves inside of Iraq, because they’re not very well liked in large segments of the Iraqi community. Even amongst the Shias, they’re tolerated because they’re men with arms in a weak state. And the only way these militias survive is via the support from Iran.

The Iranian regime is the problem, and that’s the case in the nuclear sphere, in the issues of dealing with Iranians providing weapons systems to Russia and in the fight– in the war in Ukraine. You want to stop all of this from happening, remove that Iranian regime. Now, see, a lot easier said than done, and that’s going to take a serious commitment. How is that to be done? Mark, honestly, I leave that to the experts like you understand Iran’s strengths and weaknesses far more than that.

DUBOWITZ: Yeah. We’ve discussed that a lot on “The Iran Breakdown,” and we’ve had some real experts who’ve come in and certainly echoed exactly what you said, Bill, and some real ideas about providing maximum support to the Iranian people. I mean, it’s worth reminding us over and over again.

ROGGIO: I agree.

DUBOWITZ: I mean, people have been in the streets since 2009, yelling, “Death to the dictator. President Obama, President Biden, President Trump, are you with us or are you with the dictator?” And they keep coming back. I mean, they get crushed by the security forces, but incredibly courageous and they’ve come back repeatedly, including most recently with “Woman, Life, Freedom.” So maximum support for the Iranian people as a key pillar of our maximum pressure campaign against the regime. Take a page from what Ronald Reagan did so successfully against the Soviet Union, maximum pressure on the Soviet Union, maximum support for anti-Soviet dissidents. But it’s really the argument about going after the head of the octopus and not just the tentacles. And surprisingly, it took October 7th for these Israelis to understand that. That they can’t keep going after the tentacles, trying to deal with the ring of fire that Khamenei and Soleimani had built around them, without going after the regime itself.

And I think there’s been a sea change in Israeli security policy in the past year, and we’ll see how that plays out with respect to going after the head of the octopus. But no, it’s a good reminder, and I think the Iraqi Shiite militias above anything else is a good reminder that if you don’t go after the head of the octopus, these very powerful tentacles in Iraq and elsewhere are going to continue to squeeze the regime, poison the regime. Sorry, squeeze–

Let me repeat this: It’s a very good reminder that if you don’t go after the head of the octopus, the tentacles are going to continue to create much misery and destruction in the region. And we’re not going to get rid of the Iraqi Shiite militias without stopping that flow of money funds, political support from the Islamic Republic. So Bill, thank you. Thank you for your great work on all of this. I would highly recommend folks follow Bill at the Long War Journal, if you really want to understand in a granular way the details about the “Long War,” both on the Sunni and Shiite side of the street. And also tell us a little bit about your podcast. That’s a must-listen podcast for people who really want to be in the weeds.

ROGGIO: Yeah, our podcast– and thank you, Mark for the kind words, our podcast, “Generation Jihad.” Yeah, we cover all these issues. It’s been a lot since October 7th. A lot of focus on Iran, on Israel, and its war against Hezbollah and Hamas, the war on Houthis. But I do think, a lot of people are forgotten that al-Qaeda, the Islamic state, are out there. As we just saw in India the other day, these terrorists, they’re persistent. They stick around. So we cover both the Sunni and Shiite side of these issues, and we try to get a lot of our people here at FDD to discuss these issues. And it’s been a fun ride, Mark.

DUBOWITZ: Well, thanks Bill. So, “Generation Jihad,” folks, it’s an absolute must listen. And Bill, thank you. We’re going to have you back.

ROGGIO: Always a pleasure, Mark. Thank you.

DUBOWITZ: Bill Roggio’s briefing makes it clear: Iran’s militias in Iraq and Syria are a two-edged sword. Instability on demand and influenced by fiat. But Iran’s most audacious proxy operation unfolded on October 7th in Gaza. There, the IRGC Quds Force moved from training and equipping to full operational planning. Up next, Beni Sabti will walk us through how Tehran’s war room coordination with Hamas turned Gaza tunnels and rocket caches and Hamas terrorists into the most significant border breach against Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Let’s break it down.

All right, Beni, it’s wonderful to have you on the show. Beni, I wanted to have you on the show because as part of “The Iran Breakdown,” we’ve been looking at this “axis of resistance,” or “axis of misery,” as I call it, and we’ve looked at Hezbollah and we’ve talked about the Houthis and the Shiite militias in Iraq. We’ve talked about Hamas somewhat and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but we actually haven’t done a deep dive into Hamas itself, and I want to have you on the show not to talk about Hamas and the war and Hamas and what’s going on in Gaza, because there’s been a lot of discussion on many podcasts and many interviews, including ones that you’ve given. What I really want to talk about is the role that Iran may have played in helping Hamas plot the attack on Israel over a course of several weeks and months, and that the IRGC may have given the final go ahead to Hamas to launch this operation.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal on October the 8th, 2023, and that was exactly the headline. “Iran helped plot attack on Israel over several weeks, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps gave a final go-ahead last Monday in Beirut.” And then the article talks in a lot of detail about the operational and planning role of the IRGC in the October 7th attacks.

And I’ll just say one last thing and then I want to turn it over to you. The article received a huge amount of pushback from the Biden administration, claiming that even though Iran has been involved in the financing, training, and provision of weapons to Hamas over many years, that there is no evidence from U.S. intelligence that Iran played a planning role in October 7th. So a huge amount of pushback from the Biden administration. I’m not sure whether the Israelis agreed or disagreed with that, but I think it is now conventional wisdom that they didn’t play a direct role in the planning of October 7th, though they did provide as the Biden administration admitted money, weapons, and training. So Beni, what’s your view on that very important question?

SABTI: First of all, thank you for having me here in this discussion. I’m very happy to have this. About this article and generally about the role of Iranian regime in this attack since October 7^th: This information is very accurate. We know that Iran, since 2021, 2022, they had a lot of meetings with Hamas, with Islamic Jihad, with other terrorist groups, to bring all the terrorist groups to unite them in the fronts and to begin the war in one day, in one time, just to make Israel more and more tired and frustrated and not let it win the war. Not just fighting against Hamas or Islamic Jihad or Hezbollah one at a time but fighting all of them together.

This was an Iranian thought, an Iranian plan. We had the evidence, actually, when in the April 1st General Zahedi from IRGC was eliminated in Damascus in the embassy. After that, an Iranian official site, Mizan News, they published this news that Zahedi was the mind behind this planning. He was in the room when they planned the attack, the united attack by Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran regime, Houthis and others, who knows?

So of course, this information is real. I don’t know the reasons of Biden administration why to push this back. Maybe I know, because that “don’t,” that don’t was not only for Iran, it was also for Israel. All the time they tried to stop Israel to go against these organizations to limit our steps, but I kind of understand their motives. So the information is real. The Iranians real wanted to be there by their hands. Maybe Hamas insulted them, or something happened there between them at Hamas took the first step and they didn’t join us. They had to like, it was in the plan, but there is no doubt they made so many preparations for so many years. They trained Hamas about the parachutes. I remember it from 2008 and many other evidences that Saleh al-Arouri, who was also killed, one of the senior guys of Hamas. He was also a direct link to the Iranian regime and IRGC. So there is no doubt these denials, they cannot erase the facts.

DUBOWITZ: Okay. So Beni, I mentioned in the introduction your background, but I think it’s important to emphasize, I mean, you were an Israeli military intelligence. You’re a fluent Persian speaker, and you also played a role, which I think is always really important in intelligence community, in looking at open-source intelligence, not just classified intelligence. There’s reams of open-source intelligence, particularly available in foreign languages like Persian that a lot of Intel officials just miss.

SABTI: I was born in Iran. In the 70s, I was seven years old when the revolution happened, and eight years later, when I was 15, we ran away actually from Iran, not by planes, but by foot. And since then, I’m dealing with Iran, many issues, mostly gathering information from the open sources. I was also one of the establishers of IDF spokesperson in Persian. Through that we tried to talk to the Iranian people. I tried to show another angle of Iranian way of thinking and decision-making, and maybe more about the psychological aspects of how they think and the culture of decision-making.

DUBOWITZ: The second thing I want to point out: I mean, there was reporting, obviously in the [Wall Street] Journal and elsewhere, that there were three key meetings that took place between October 7th, one in Damascus, one in Beirut, and one in Tehran. And the three meetings involve the IRGC, Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian, Islamic Jihad, and in the case of the meeting in Tehran, the meeting was joined by Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran. So three of these meetings in the months and weeks before October 7th, we don’t know what was discussed. We assume it wasn’t a discussion about Persian poetry or about the weather, but there was clearly a discussion between all the key actors that are involved in this multi-front war that you refer to.

And I want to quote because I think it’s interesting that in the Journal article, there was very explicit denials both from Hamas and from Iran about Iranian involvement. Mahmoud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, said that the group planned attacks on its own, quote, “This is a Palestinian and Hamas decision,” he said. The spokesman for the Iran mission to the United Nations said that “the decisions made by the Palestinian resistance are fiercely autonomous and unwaveringly aligned with the legitimate interest of the Palestinian people. We are not involved in Palestine’s response as it is taken solely by Palestine itself.” So what do you make of these very explicit denials from Hamas and from Iran that Iran was not engaged in the planning and the operations of October 7^th?

SABTI: Yeah, sure. These denials are so ridiculous. The Iranian system believes in what we call hit-and-run, never to show any footsteps and any evidences that they are involved, and they have so many hands for so many years to do this kind of jobs. Of course, they are behind the curtains. They prepare them, they talk about them, about the plan. The planning was everything. I don’t know if Khamenei was in the room with that, but it doesn’t matter. The moment that IRGC are involved– IRGC is the blood of the Iranian revolution. Without the involvement of Iran Revolutionary Guard, nothing happens. Not in the economy, not in [inaudible]. As I said before, Iranians admitted, after killing Zahedi, that they were involved in the planning. So what kind of denial can help here? They are just lying.

This is the Iranian way. We have two wings, or two hands, of Iranian regime. One is the military IRGC, and these are actually the words of Khamenei when he said them to Soleimani. He said that, “Soleimani, you are my military hand, military wing and Zarif–” In that days, in the days of Rouhani as president, “–Zarif is the diplomatic wing or diplomatic hand, and they are together. They are so talented to make it together and make things happen and deny that after that.” There is no doubt that Iranians were involved in very high level, but if Khamenei was there or was not, it’s the same. It’s part of denying also inside Iran. But of course IRGC was there.

DUBOWITZ: Right. To clarify, obviously Qasem Soleimani, the former head of the IRGC Quds Force, killed by President Trump, somebody who was probably Iran’s most brilliant battlefield commander, military strategist, and certainly a notorious terrorist. And Javad Zarif, former foreign minister of Iran, who led the negotiations in 2015 on the nuclear deal, the JCPOA, with the United States, whose key deputy and friend, Abbas Araghchi, is currently negotiating with the Trump administration in Oman on potentially another nuclear deal.

SABTI: I just have to add that we are kind of lucky that both of these guys, Soleimani and Zarif, were not in the position in October 7th. I think it was a better thing that Soleimani was not here. Maybe he could do much worse. So in a way it’s better that he’s not here.

DUBOWITZ: Yeah. Well, let me actually ask you another thing, because you mentioned this, that Iran has had a battle plan that Soleimani had developed. Create this ring of fire around Israel, use these terror proxy armies, Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Iraqi Shiite militias, the Houthis, flood weapons in the West Bank, get weapons to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist organizations; by the way, target Jordan, try to bring down the monarchy. A multi-front ring of fire strategy. Work with Assad in Syria, obviously. Try to establish another front. You talked about the fact that the plan was a multi-front invasion of Israel.

Now, Hamas, I think, or at least based on what I’ve read, and I wonder if you agree with me, it seems like Hamas and Sinwar, Yahya Sinwar, the leader then of the Hamas military wing, they jumped the gun. That maybe in the conception of the plan, Hamas was not supposed to go first. Perhaps Hezbollah was supposed to go first. Right? The much more formidable terror army with Radwan Special Forces led by Nasrallah, probably again, one of the more brilliant strategists, a military strategist, a political strategist, also taken out by the Israelis in recent months. But Hezbollah was supposed to go first, invade from the north, obviously kill a lot more Israelis, take a lot more hostages, and then Hamas would go link up; maybe Iranian missiles, drones, paralyzing the Israeli forces; and then Palestinian Islamic Jihad, terror armies from the West Bank. That was the plan. The fact that Sinwar jumped the gun and went first, does that not undermine the argument that Iran was involved in the planning of this October 7th operation, or is it fully consistent with your interpretation of how events may have developed?

SABTI: No. I’m sure, I talked about the evidences I’ve done, how the Iran regime also admitted that they were involved. I don’t have any doubt about that. It was the game of honor between the Iran regime and Hamas, and maybe because of the Shiite flag also. They wanted Hezbollah to be the first and to bring the Shiite flag to Israeli land and conquer. And after that, only after that, the Sunnis. Hezbollah was not the same as it was in the years of ’90s or 2000. They were very slow. They were not the same. So Hamas took the leadership. Hamas is much more active and have so many experience against Israel. So I think they thought that they can do better, they can succeed much more, and for them, probably it’s better to bring the Sunni and Muslim Brotherhood flag and to conquer these areas of south of Israel.

So it became a game of honor and insulting between them. Thank God that these things still happen between these terror organizations, and I even mentioned the Iranian regime as a terror organization. As I said before, if you have this IRGC in your system, you are terrorists. You cannot be something else because it’s in their blood. With the intentions, this is the matter. The one who planned it all, Iranian regime with the money, with the ammunition, with the training, with everything that began so many years before, they are to blame. We cannot clean them. It’s not like a childish game that who began, who punched the first punch. It doesn’t matter. They are always against and behind a lot of things.

It even reminds me now, suddenly, in my childhood, Khomeini was disturbing Saddam Hussein since the revolution for one and a half years. And suddenly, Saddam was so disturbed that the Iran regime is going to attack him, but Saddam attacked Iran to prevent the Iranian attack. This is the Iranian way. They always disturb you and make it all planned until something happen. In that case, Saddam made the first move. And in this case, also Hamas made the first move. But it doesn’t matter. Iran regime also plans and always makes this game to go on. So, we have to see them like that.

DUBOWITZ: It’s a really good point, I never thought of that, Beni. Thank you for bringing that to our attention, the sort of sense from Sinwar and Hamas that they want to carry the flag; it’s a question of honor. And this is a question of the Sunni Palestinians affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, taking the first step, launching the invasion, because they had played second fiddle or little brother to Hezbollah and Nasrallah and the “Patron of Iran.” This has got to be Sinwar. It’s got to be Hamas that goes first in order to establish the honor and the ultimate prize of the Sunni Hamas Muslim Brotherhood being responsible for the destruction of Israel and not the Shiites in Tehran or the Shiites in Lebanon.

SABTI: We know for sure that Hamas never was 100% completely in Iran regime hands. They always took their money, took their weapons, the training, but they never gave themselves 100% to the Iranian hands.

DUBOWITZ: Yeah, I think it’s very important. We talked about this on the show, with respect to other proxies. It’s always important to understand that all of these terror proxies that Iran establishes may take money, training, even certain commands and direction, but at the end of the day, they do have local conditions, whether it’s in Lebanon or in Gaza or in the West Bank, in Iraq, in Yemen. They are also local actors and they’re also susceptible to local political calculations and political pressures, and so they’re not 100% in Iran’s pocket. None of them are. But they’re all certainly being trained, weaponized, financed, and providing command and control and direction from the regime in Iran. That’s a great point to raise and really worth remembering.

I want to ask you a question about– okay, so Sinwar decides, “I’ve met with the IRGC, I’ve sat down with Nasrallah, we’ve talked about these plans, but I’m going. I’m going to jump the gun. I’m going to go on October 7th.” And maybe it is a surprise for Iran. Maybe it’s a surprise for Hezbollah. Maybe they don’t realize Sinwar is going first and maybe they don’t know it’s going to be October 7th because if you’re Sinwar, is it fair to say, Beni, from your many years in experience and intelligence, you’re not likely to want to tell everybody the date you’re going because you’re actually, A, very concerned that people might be listening, and so you need very, very tight operational security?

In fact, it’s been reported that Sinwar only told a very small group of people, even in Gaza, that October 7th was the date. So operational security reasons. And second is, you wouldn’t want to necessarily get into a fight with Nasrallah and the IRGC because you’re going to go first and they want you to go third. You may not necessarily be communicating that and get into an intramural or internecine fight with your patron and your other proxy colleagues. Is that a fair assessment of why October 7th may have been a surprise, really, for everybody?

SABTI: Yes. I think one of the things that brought Israel to misunderstand and underestimate Hamas, it was this, because there were no communications between Hamas and outside. Israel found Hamas letters, Mohammed Deif letters. Israel knew about these communications between Mohammed Deif and Iran regime, and Sinwar and Iran regime. So probably they thought if they had some communication and they talk about the exact day and the exact operation, Israel could know about it.

From what we know, they told only to very few people the night before, and after that, only a few hours before the attack, they told the other soldiers or lower rank commanders. So no doubt that this brought the success for Sinwar and for Hamas in that day, that bloody day. But this was the key for success. If they talked with Hezbollah, with Iran regime, there is no doubt that Israel could know about that. We have a good knowledge. We have good information. But with Hamas, it was something else. They changed their communication ways and many other things. So they kept the secret. We have to admit, they kept it very well. And yes, the Iranians were insulted, but no matter for Hamas.

DUBOWITZ: It’s interesting, because this Wall Street Journal piece, and listeners and viewers should really read, it’s October 8th, 2023. Again, the headline is, “Iran Helped Plot Attack on Israel Over Several Weeks.” The Wall Street Journal reported that the head of the Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, who took over from Qasem Soleimani when he was killed in U.S. strikes, “Qaani launched coordination among several militias surrounding Israel in April during a meeting in Lebanon.” This is April 2023. The Wall Street Journal has reported, “Hamas begins [sic] working more closely with these groups such as Hezbollah.” And then, “Representatives of these groups met with Quds Force leaders at least biweekly in Lebanon since August 2023 to discuss attacks [sic] on Israel and what happens next, they said. Qaani attended some of those meetings along with Hezbollah’s leader, Nasrallah, Islamic Jihad leader, Al-Nakhalah, and Saleh al-Arouri,” – who you mentioned, Hamas’ military chief at the time. And, the “Iranian foreign minister actually attended at least two of those meetings.” And then there’s quotes from experts saying, “An attack of this scope could not have happened without months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” according to an expert that they quote. So, very much consistent with what you’re saying. These regular meetings, coordination, IRGC, Quds Force, Qaani, the successor to Soleimani playing a pivotal role in planning and coordination amongst these terror groups.

SABTI: I want to mention something about Qaani that was different from Soleimani. If Soleimani was one-man show and kind of hero, and he arranged only the Shiites around the flag, Qaani was the one who united Taliban groups, and Qaani was responsible for the eastern border of Iran. Soleimani was in the western border of Iraq and all these countries that we know, but we forget about the eastern part. It’s important also for them, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and all that. The role of Qaani was uniting the Taliban groups and Afghanis who fought each other before 2015. Since then, he brought them to be united against Americans, and he is responsible for kicking the Americans out of Afghanistan and killing so many Americans in Afghanistan. Qaani had a very great job, not less than Soleimani, maybe even better. Sometimes if you train these groups better and not just doing one-man show, it’s much more dangerous. And this is the problem with Qaani. Qaani is not less dangerous from what Soleimani did.

DUBOWITZ: Qaani has certainly had a bad year and a half, certainly a bad six-to-eight months. It’s interesting to know where now within the Iranian “Game of Thrones,” in the Islamic Republic where he’s sitting; maybe not exactly in favor with the supreme leader after watching the “axis of resistance” get severely degraded and in some cases destroyed by the Israeli Air Force and Mossad and the IDF.

But I want to ask you, maybe to end with this, Beni. We’ve talked a lot about what happened before October 7th, the role of the Islamic Republic in coordinating and planning, not only in training and financing and weaponizing these terror armies. But now we’re in, almost, May 2025. The question is the Islamic Republic’s ability and Qaani’s ability to rebuild; rebuild the ring of fire, rebuild these terror armies. As you look forward over the next 6, 12, 18 months, what is the prospect of that happening? How badly have the Islamic Republic and its “axis of misery” been degraded? What would it take to rebuild it? And how optimistic are you that Israel and the United States can take this window of opportunity while the regime is weak to do further damage against this axis?

SABTI: Yes, so, until a few weeks ago, the Iranian regime was very weak and couldn’t deal about that so much. But unfortunately, and I say very, very sadly and unfortunately, since the talks, the negotiations began between the U.S. administration and Iran regime, there is a new hope for Iran regime and bringing back this axis of evil and the terror organizations. I know that it’s only psychologic thing, and the West doesn’t think like that. We think that we are strong, they are weak, so they will compromise, and they will put everything aside. No, in the Iranian regime, it won’t work like that.

As I said before, what Khamenei said to Soleimani and Zarif. These are two wings for him. Negotiations is one wing to help and encourage the other wing, the terror wing. So, we have to be very careful with these negotiations. I can accept a very good deal that neutralize also the terror machine. It’s not only the nuclear machine that we have to neutralize. Because as I said before, IRGC is the blood of the revolution, and the main part of its job is bringing these terror organizations to grow and to act mostly against Israel, and also the propaganda against the West. You have all these demonstrations in the campuses in US and in Europe, of course. This is the machine that they cannot stop. So if these negotiations help the terror organizations, this is not a good thing. We have to put all these things together on the table. I only can be optimistic if all these things are together on the table. If not, it can be a very bad challenge for all of us.

DUBOWITZ: Well, I think two points have jumped out at me, Beni. First of all, the Islamic Republic certainly has gone after your country and killed unfortunately many Israelis, hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners. But it’s worth remembering, as an American, that the regime in Iran for decades has killed and maimed thousands of Americans. So, their ability to use their terror armies, their missiles, their drones against not only U.S. troops, but U.S. citizens, they’re plotting actively to kill President Trump on American soil as well as a number of former officials. They’ve tried to go after Iranian dissidents and kill them in New York and in other places. And so they are a dangerous threat to the United States. So that, first thing that jumps out at me.

The second is that people forget, and I think you’ve reminded us, that this nuclear deal has two sides to it. It has a discussion over the nuclear program, hopefully the missile program. It probably does not include any discussion over Iran’s terror proxies. But the other side of it is the massive sanctions relief that the regime gets as a result of any deal. They got huge relief as a result of JCPOA. We had estimated that if JCPOA had run its course and President Trump had not withdrawn, the regime would’ve gotten over a trillion dollars in economic relief. And they’re likely to get tens and hundreds of billions of dollars from a President Trump deal if a deal is actually negotiated.

Well, how are they going to use that money? Well, they’re going to use that money the way they’ve always used that money, which is to rebuild their terror armies. And now they have the resources where they don’t have to choose between guns and butter, guns for terrorists and butter for their people. They can do both. If history is any evidence, they’re likely to use a lot of that money for the guns and not much money to help the Iranian people. So I’m grateful to you for reminding us about the other side of the nuclear negotiation, which is this massive economic relief that the regime needs to restore its terror armies that have been so severely degraded by Israel.

You also make the distinction, I think, which is a very important distinction between the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime, and the Iranian people. As you look forward over the next years to come, what’s your sense of what can be done with respect to supporting the Iranian people to weaken, undermine, and maybe, as I always say, if history smiles on us, to bring down the regime?

SABTI: If the U.S. administration not only talks with the Iranian regime, but also talks to the Iranian people, 85% of the Iranian people didn’t come to vote for this president who is a puppet of the regime. He doesn’t have any role. If we know that about 85% of the Iranian people are against the regime, every day there are so many calls and messages that they are wasting our money and don’t have electricity and water and everything, and the pollution, air pollution even. They lost everything because of this regime, and they don’t understand how waste doesn’t go against the existence of the regime and only talks to them about the nuclear issue or something. And Israel does it already. For a few years, I was also one of the establishers of IDF platforms in Persian, to talk to Iranian people. If the West talks to Iranian people and gives them some hope that things can change, and maybe they will bring the change by themselves. They just need our support, our wind, our spirit. They don’t need guns. They know how to do the work, so let’s just help them by supporting them.

DUBOWITZ: Yeah. Well, I think that’s a great way to end this. It’s a consistent theme of this “Iran Breakdown” podcast. Amongst a lot of our guests who are Iranian or Israeli or American, are people from all walks of life who understand that at the end of the day, the only solution to this is to bring down the Islamic Republic, and that to support the Iranian people, and that maximum support for the Iranian people must be a fundamental pillar of American maximum pressure strategy. Beni, thank you very much.

SABTI: Thank you very much.

DUBOWITZ: Three distinct conflicts. Yemen, Iraq/Syria, Gaza. But the same architect: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. From missile volleys into the Red Sea to militia ambushes in Iraq, to the coordinated Hamas assault on Israel, Tehran’s proxy strategy is constant, deniable, scalable, lethal. If we’re going to disrupt this network, we need integrated defenses, targeted sanctions on IRGC channels, strong partners on the ground, and continued green-light for Israeli military operations that have done so much damage to Khamenei’s “axis of resistance.” I’m Mark Dubowitz, and this has been “The Iran Breakdown.” I’ll see you next time when we break it down again.