The Conflict in Iran Has Become a Global One: Expert

Welcome back to our live special on the breaking situation in Iran. I'm Kerry Dunst. Joining me now live is Brandon Weikert. He's a senior national security editor at 1945.com. He's also author of The Shadow War, Iran's quest for supremacy. Brandon, good to see you. When we spoke on Friday, you were quite convinced that the U.S. was going in, though you had concerns about Iran's ability to counterpunch. Now we're in day three. What's your initial assessment of the commencement of the joint epic fury and roaring lion? Well, the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes were mostly successful, but it was done mostly from standoff ranges, which means we are still very much concerned about Iran's ability to shoot back at us. In fact, it looks like now the Iranians have been escalating their ability to retaliate that is now gone from a U.S. Israeli war against Iran into a full blown regional conflict with pretty much every country in Middle East being affected, as well as some countries from outside of the region, such as France and even the British are now getting involved, which means that this is very technically speaking, a global conflict now with real global implications. I'd like to also just comment very quickly here. The before the war began, the D.O.D. gave the Pentagon gave an assessment in which they said there are roughly eight days worth of critical stockpiles of air defense systems and critical attack missiles in the area, the CENTCOM area of responsibility. We are now on day I think three now or almost day three, which means by next Sunday, next Monday, it is likely that the U.S. military and Israelis will have to pull stockpiles from the Indo-PACOM area of responsibility, which is the part that deals with China back into the Middle East, which will leave our our people in the Asia-Pacific, the Indo-Pacific. It will leave them in a weak position, not able to fully deter China. So there's global implications there. Right now, it looks like the Iranian regime has survived. We've gotten about 40 leaders, top leaders, including the Ayatollah, which is good for us. But ultimately, the regime has not crumbled. There has not been a popular uprising. And the longer this thing lasts, given the timeline we have of depletion, the Iranians, all that regime has to do is survive. And we have to try to basically achieve regime change, get rid of the nukes and get rid of those ballistic missiles. So I would argue right now, as long as the Iranian regime continues hanging on, they're technically winning, even though we're doing a lot of damage to them. And that is, I think, the real story here that people aren't talking about. Yeah. So as you say, we're going into day three. If it goes beyond, you said day eight, we will have to pull in munitions from other theaters. Yes. President Trump said it would take four to five weeks and he warned of potentially more casualties. So what is your expectation as we get to that eight day threshold? What could be done to turn that tide? Well, it's important to note that Trump's people have also been talking about they would be sort of these pauses over the four weeks, which indicates to me that our logistics people are going to be sort of trying to stretch out what we have and then start pulling in the stuff from Indo Paycom. And that's really the last big stockpile we have available before we have to start trying to rush production at home. And so I would I would imagine that, yes, the plan is probably for four weeks with these offering, excuse me, these off ramps built in. But I just want to make sure everybody understands the operational tempo right now in the Middle East means that we're going to be blowing through these stockpiles a lot faster, I think, than what even the White House was anticipating. This is a real crisis here, which is why, by the way, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Cain was trying to warn the president on Friday that there are real downside risks here. Ultimately, right now, I would argue that obviously, yes, the U.S. has been able to interdict and has been able to do what it wants to do, killing those leaders and whatnot. But right now, as long as that regime hangs on for life, they're technically going to win because that's their only strategic objective. So we need to keep that in mind as we go forward. And we need to remember that we are on the clock here. And it doesn't look like the Iranians right now are really interested in picking up the phone, which tells me they think they're winning. And that's a scary notion. Now, President Trump had told ABC most of the candidates for the next leadership have been killed. And that the administration had identified a possible candidate within the Iranian government, so not the crown prince. Who do you think could be the potential candidates? Well, he also said that they killed most of the potential candidates, which indicates to me there was a mistake when we went in, because we would have already known who some of those potential candidates we wanted to use were. And if we blew them up, then that means that was an absolute mistake. I don't I don't even want to even begin to guess it might be. You know what? I'm not even going to guess right now because I mean, who knows? But ultimately, all I can tell you is so far, the Iranians are not very serious about picking up the phone, which you would think, given what the media is saying in the West, how overmatched they are, supposedly. Why wouldn't they be? Well, I think it's because, again, they are not overmatched. We are still interdicting and doing what we need for now. But I think the Iranians are really anticipating that depletion. It's a race to depletion right now. Well, Brandon Weikert, always appreciate your expertise on Iran. Thank you so much. Thank you, sir.