A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Iran has been striking Gulf countries in retaliation to U.S. and Israeli attacks. Israel this morning is focusing its fire on taking out the Iranian missiles and launchers that allow for that retaliation.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on Iran's current military capabilities we're joined by Dana Stroul. She served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the Biden administration. She's now a senior fellow at a nonpartisan think tank - The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Dana, good morning, and thanks for being on the program.
DANA STROUL: Good morning, Leila.
FADEL: So are we seeing Iran's military might at its fiercest in this moment, or are they preserving their capabilities for a long haul?
STROUL: I think they're preserving their capabilities for a long haul. And what's clear is that the Iranian leadership, even under now-deceased Supreme Leader Khamenei, thought through scenarios for Israel and the United States together attacking them and made a decision to expand and spread out the pain and their retaliation from what we saw last year in the 12-day war, where Iran only directed its attacks at Israel.
FADEL: What is Iran's strategy right now, its long-term goal here?
STROUL: The long-term goal of the regime is to survive intact. And what we've seen in the past three days, I think, is an incremental climb up an escalation ladder. They're just climbing it really quickly. So they moved from attacking U.S. military bases and Israel to civilian hotels and civilian airports in the Gulf and across the Middle East. Yesterday, they started attacking energy infrastructure in the Gulf, including in Saudi Arabia - last night, U.S. diplomatic facilities, like the Embassy in Riyadh.
But they have a lot of cards left to play. We know that Iran has cultivated a global network of sleeper cells. Those cells have not been activated. We have not seen more attacks on critical infrastructure throughout the Middle East. There could be more attacks on energy infrastructure. So many ways in which this could just get worse.
FADEL: Could their strategy of attacking U.S. assets and civilian infrastructure in regional countries backfire?
STROUL: It could backfire, but right now, it's actually served as a unifying effect. So what the Iranians are trying to do is force tension and daylight between the United States and its long-standing partners that host these tens of thousands of U.S. forces across the Middle East. But instead of the leaders of the region trying to call Washington and ask President Trump to stop this war and de-escalate, they're actually doubling down. They are really impressively using their U.S.-supplied, U.S.-trained air defense assets - hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones being intercepted in the past couple days. I would not be surprised if we see Gulf partners starting to join offensive strikes inside Iran because at this point, the best defense is a strong offense.
FADEL: Now, many of Iran's top generals have been killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes. On top of that, Iran has these proxies - militias, allied militias around the region - Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis - that have been significantly weakened in their fight with Israel over the last few months, years. I mean, how significant is their military power given these facts?
STROUL: I think I agree with you completely. They're very degraded, and we're seeing a lot of decision-making or internal struggles within Iran's various proxies as to whether or not they can join this conflict. So Hamas - clearly it's been quiet from Gaza. Hezbollah did decide to launch some rockets at Israel and now is seeing Israel make good on its threat that if Hezbollah entered this war, it was going to launch a massive operation in Lebanon. We have yet to see the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen join this war, but we know that they can shut down international shipping in a critical maritime choke point in the Middle East. And we have not yet seen the militias in Iraq really rise up yet.
So clearly, each of these groups is calculating within the constraints of their own domestic discourse the risk-reward calculus of joining at this point in time, given the kind of punishment they're seeing the Iranian regime inside Iran take.
FADEL: And really quickly, did Iran pose the immediate threat that the Trump administration said it did?
STROUL: I have yet to hear a Trump administration official make a compelling case for an imminent threat to U.S. national security. But clearly, for decades now, we've seen the Iranian mix of nuclear weapons program, ballistic missiles and support for terrorism really threaten not only the United States, but the entire Middle East.
FADEL: Dana Stroul, formerly at the Pentagon during the Biden administration. Thank you for your time.
STROUL: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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