I'm i Boris and this is straight Talk mcran. Welcome back to straight Talk. Mate.
It's good to see you. Mark.
Now, this is we're going to give this out today because it's pretty current, so we're doing this podcast now. We're going to rip it out later this afternoon. Obviously I'm wanting to talk to you about the Iran Israel USA conflict, but probably then then, of course, you know Katar, you know, there's a little bit of a skirmish and Qatar overnight. But then I just saw that there was announcement on truth by the President of the United States
saying that there is a ceasefire. Oh my god, Like, how quickly you get brain damage trying to follow this.
It's it's whiplash. I mean, the strategic environments moving very quickly at the moment. And that's modern modern war and modern politics written large. I think, you know, there's a very close relationship between war and politics, and that's what we've seen out in the last eleven days or so that this.
New Israel Iran war has been going.
Let's sort of go backwards as opposed to looking at the today's announcement and I'll come back to you on
that one. But if when I just look at it, and I have no idea about warfare strategies and all that sort of stuff, but when I look at it, it looks like to me that this would have been planned months ago, probably alongside Israel, and maybe the plan was, look, we're just going to we're going to go and do this because we already know that they've got enough uranium to make a nuclear warhead, and you go out and sort of, Israel, you go out and start it off,
and we'll sneak in over the top somehow, I mean, am I sort of being naive about this or that's probably how it did work.
Firstly, this is an operation that will have been planned years ago. I mean, particularly the Israelis have been rehearsing out over the Mediterranean for a very long time, and there will have been talks with America.
I'm pretty sure.
America would not have signed up to anything, but there would have been a variety of different planes with different levels of American involvement at least discussed over time, and a lot of these plans would have sat on shelves
ready for the right moment politically and militarily. And it appears last week the President of the United States has commander in chief decided it was the right time for a limited military operation to achieve his political outcome, which was actually to end the war but also prevent Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, which he has actually been very clear and forceful about over a long period of time.
But that's interesting because I remember for the Iraqi War, we talked about chemical weapons that Satimassein. Everyone in the world was convinced through the media that Satamussein actually had these can be weapons of warfare. Surely, I think I'm correct that it turned out he didn't, but they went to war. Is that corecked?
Yeah?
I mean, there's been a lot of reviews in the US the UK about the Iraq War and the intelligence failures that led up to it, and without rehashing those old lessons, they are actually useful lessons because there's no such thing as one hundred percent certainty going into these kind of things. You can never be totally certain what the enemy's doing, what they're hiding, what they're building. Unfortunately, in the lead up to the Iraqi War, some people convinced a lot of us that we were certain and
that just wasn't the case. So you know, we always need to be careful as citizens, as do politicians and military leaders. Do not think that there are any certainties in war. There are more uncertainties than not, and I think we've seen that born out in this conflict as well.
So what do you think about the let's call it the certainties in inverted commas than in relation to enrich a certain level of enrichment relative to iranium uranium which needs to be done in order to build a nuclear weapon. There's a few steps after that, Richmond, of course, But how do you feel about that? When you first heard that, did you feel shocked or did you say, well, that's Elada MASI I expected that. What did you feel then?
No, I wasn't really surprised by the latest International Atomic Energy Agency reports just before Israel kicked off its operations. I mean, Irean has has had a program for a very long time to develop the ability to build a nuclear weapon.
How close they.
Were to that will remain subject to some conjecture for a while. There's disagreements between Israeli and American intelligence communities on that, but one thing is absolutely certain. Iran has been very clear about wanting to destroy Israel about wanting to perpetrate another genocide on the Jewish people. So you know, if you put those things together, if you're the Prime minister of Israel, how else can you act but to try and destroy your sworn enemies desire to destroy you
and your people. I mean, Israel's a small place, It's uniquely vulnerable to a nuclear weapon. So you know, I understand the Israeli imperatives. The questions really are around was this the right time and how proximate was the threat of Iran building a nuclear weapon right now?
So when Israel says the Iran Iranian regime, and I'm not talking about Iranian people, I'm talking about the theocratic regime that controls Iran and therefore controls the defense forces too, I guess when they say that they are an exexstential threat to us is what you sort of just explain. Someone says to me, mate, Mark, I'm going to come
around and murder you in your household and all your family. Immediately, I would think that's an existential threat, whether or not it's right or wrong, where they going to do it or not? Right away, I'm immediately thinking, well, what am I going to do? So first thing you can do is you can play defense. So Israel has this so called Iron Dome. Do you mind explaining what that is? I mean, because we keep hearing the word, but I don't even know what it means.
Yeah.
Firstly, I mean Israel's whole strategy with dealing with Iran change fundamentally on seven October twenty twenty three.
I mean it.
You know, I don't think Australians really understand the shock it caused to the Israeli society and to their military and to their government. So that fundamentally changes strategic calculus when it comes to defense. Obviously every country is, but you know, Australia wants to focus on defense rather than having to undertake offensive operations. So that's also a given
in democracies, which means we often get surprised by our adversaries. Now, when it comes to the era and missile defense network that Israel has, it has multiple layers. The most basic layer is Iron Dome. It's really focused on intercepting short and medium range missiles that come over the border from
places like Gaza from Hezbola territory in southern Lebanon. But it has other more capable missiles David sling and missiles that can intercept very capable enemy ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere, which have been used more widely in the last few days.
With this have also been American high altitude ballistic missile interceptors the FAD system, as well as US Navy ships with their ballistic missile capabilities, which have been integral and crucial to not only intercepting many of these Iranian missiles targeted at Israeli cities and citizens, but in saving probably hundreds of lives over the last couple of weeks.
So what does that mean, though, Do you mean that there are inceptor missiles, if that's the right word, sort of placed in strategic places all around let's call it Tel Aviv or Israel, in the ground, maybe next door
to someone lives, or perhaps in the street. We just put the US naval stuff aside for a second, and then when the missile is sort of approaching somehow, it's detected by radar and then it sends a message to wherever, and then all of a sudden, these missiles just come out of the ground and start firing off to intercept the missiles that are coming coming towards Israel. I mean, I'm trying to simplify it, but because we don't know what irondome means here in Australia, I've got no ideas.
Is that sort of the setup.
Yeah, Basically you have a detection network, which is a bunch of radars and other senses which go into a central command and control network. It's human lead but also supported by AI and other computer analysis systems. The first decision it makes is where's the missile going. Is it going to hit anything important or is it just going to hit in the desert or hit in the ocean.
So does the calculation.
Yeah, absolutely, it calculates where the missile will land. If it's not going to hit anything, generally they ignore it. Why waste a million dollar interceptor that's something that's not going to hurt you. So that's the first big decision that's made. It has to be made in microseconds. The next decision is what kind of missile is it? And
what have we got that can intercept it? And it can be a short, medium, or long range or outside the atmosphere missile that the Israelis and the Americans have. This is the kind of system that Australia does not possess, and that we are very vulnerable to. I mean, we just don't have the kind of air missile defenses or defenses against drones that the Israelis have developed over many decades.
So, mick, but are those missiles where they originate from? Is that like, would it be in the middle of tele Avif somewhere, or is there army bases all around tell Aviv, for example, that they get fired from. Is it in the civilian area.
No.
Generally these are located on military establishments and government establishments wherever possible. I mean I visited one when I was there in Israel last I spoke with an extraordinarily smart Air Force officer who runs an iron dome battery and about all the things they need to do to keep these things capable. These are generally held on military bases. I mean, they are very expensive, so they also need
to be defended. So they don't want these sitting out on the street, and they're just located in the best places to intercept missiles from their most likely places of origin.
And what I presume they do is they blow them up in the sky.
Yeah, Generally, they hit them and they get either a proximity kill where the interceptor explodes and the fragmentation destroys the incoming ballistic missile, or they get a kinetic hill, which is where they actually hit each other, which is an extraordinary achievement when you think about it. The last time I was in Jerusalem, you know, I looked up and within a minute there'd been an interception right above us. So this is the kind of thing Israelis have become
used to. Unfortunately it happens all the time.
So have the arrangement. It looks like to me here we're looking at a technology war too, because clearly Israel is building incredibly fast microprocesses to make decisions about what should happen within split seconds, but equally Iran or any other enemy of Israel trying to make decisions about how can we evade that detection. So there sounds like there's
a technology war. And by the way, everybody, not everywhere, a lot of people know that Israel's technological ability, not just in warfare, but just across the board is incredible. Do you see there is there a race between the two in terms of Israel vers anyone else in terms of their technology. Is this a race is to race itt Israel seems to be winning.
Yeah, it's certainly an adaptation battle. Each side is learning and adapting constantly. Each side every day is looking at the performance of the other side's technology and then changing the capabilities of both their defensive and offensive systems, whether it's software, hardware, human processes, political guidance to adapt to that. So this has been something that's been going on for
some time. It certainly has a technological aspect, but there's a whole range of human elements about humans being willing to learn and change as quickly as necessary.
So if if I look at what's going on in relation to the last skirmish is within Israel from Iran, they then decided to start sending drones, And of course we all we don't. I don't know if it's true or not. I've heard you heard that Iran supplied Russia the first lot of drones to go into the Ukraine. Iranswers me pre advanced, correct me if' wrong in relation to the drone technology.
Yeah, I mean, Iran is a fairly it was a well educated society. It's had a very strong industrial and scientific on R and D base for a very long time, it did provide the Shahaed drones to Russia, which Russia have.
Used ever since.
It now has, with the assistance of the Iranians, built factories in Russia. In fact, my last to Ukraine a couple of months ago, I was presented with part of one of these drones.
I wasn't able to bring it in, of course, to Australia.
But Russia now fires these by the hundreds every night into Ukraine to kill Ukrainian civilians. That is specifically why Iran gave them these drones, and it's specifically how Iran has used these drones against Israel over the last week or so.
And of those drones more effective at avoiding the let's call it the idome or the defensive systems within Israel, is that one of the reasons they chose that.
Well, they fly a different trajectory.
But the the real thing with these drones is you use them in large quantities to saturate your adversaries air defense system, so they have to make difficult choices about which ones they intercept. Now the Ukrainians now have very cheap interceptors. The Israelis will clearly want to do something the same now, but they're all about saturating and overwhelming an air defense network. I mean, this is not the
first time the Iranians have done this. I was in Baghdad in two thousand and five when the Iranians inserted very advanced IDs to the insurgents and helped insurgents against the Americans use these. I saw the impact of how Iran helps our adversaries. They've done it again with Russia. They've done it against Israel now, and if we don't stop them, they'll do it again.
So that sort of covers off the defensive side of things. When you feel like there's an existential threat against you, let's just move on to the offensive side. Other words, strike first. When a nation like Israel decides that they're going to make this call, and you, as you said, they've probably been planning for these sorts of decision making for many, many years. It's sort of sitting there on the shelf. It's been you know, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, rehearse,
plant plant plan. Now is the time to make the call. I know you won't know the answer this, but just speculate around this. Given your experience, what would have been the reason that Israel felt more vulnerable a couple of weeks ago, would however, a long ago, thirteen days ago, when they first started their assault onto Iran in relation to the nuclear and the military capabilities of Iran, what would have been the thought process.
Well, I think there would have been a bunch of things that contributed to the final decision. The first thing is, you know, just this long standing deep unease that the Iranians are moving towards the capability to assemble a nuclear warhead.
So that's always there.
You know, the IAEA report that came out two weeks ago, which indicated that the Iranians probably have more hidden facilities, that would have induced a fair amount of uncertainty and more unease in the Israeli leadership about Iran's capacity to build a nuclear weapon. I think too, that you know, the Israeli Prime Minister has been working on the American President about degrading Iran's nuclear program for some time. I mean, Netnya who's never been a great fan of negotiations, is
more a fan of using military action. And I think that you know, Trump's statements about Iran not getting a nuclear weapon played into that. So these all came together and you know, we can't discount domestic political considerations of Netna who They're always part of his calculus. We shouldn't
forget that. So all these things probably came together, and we don't know what other intelligence they might have seen, but they would have been key elements of the decision that the Israeli cabinet and prime minister would have made a couple of weeks ago.
So when the Israeli prime ministers, I mean, in your experience, what would happen the Israeli Prime minister and his cabinet makes it the call, They then instruct the generals or the military. But would he have sort of picked up the phone and said, listen, DJT Donald, mister Trump, we're thinking about doing this. I need your you know, your sanction or whatever the words are. Is that a normal thing or do they just say they we're doing this and we'll let them find it down the track.
No, I mean there would have been a dialogue there. You know, as tough and forward leaning as the Israeli Prime minister is, even he would like to have the support of the Americans. So there would have been a die log gone on for weeks, maybe even months about this I mean, there are some reports we're seeing now on the Washington Post that this was a dialogue that went on for many, many months, So you know, the
Americans would have been across the planning. You know, we saw the Americans start to withdraw dependence from embassies a couple of weeks before Israel commenced its operations, So they clearly had an inkling that it was very likely, even if they didn't know the exact timing of Israel's attack, and they probably weren't across the full details of the weapons that Israel had inserted into Arena over a long period of time to conduct these attacks on the air
defense network in the first hours of the Israeli assault.
So Micki, you saying that Israel had already got weapons inside Iran. I thought everything came out from Israel or from outside Iran. They were actually inside Iran already.
Yep.
They had inserted over many months and years, trucks with drones, remotely operated anti tank missiles, and other capabilities, intelligence agents on the ground, probably special forces, and what they did were the initial attacks that destroyed Iranian radars and air defense sites. That ensued that the following waves of crude Israeli Air Force aircraft could get into Iran conduct their
attacks with minimal interference from the Iranians. I mean, this is one of the lessons of this and Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb, that our bases in our home lands are uniquely vulnerable to these kind of attacks and we need to pay very serious attention to this method.
So they sort of stitched them up. Basically in Australian terms, they basically said, we're going to normal you, sorry the better word homble you before we even send our first plane. And so but how do they get away with that? I can't imagine. I mean, like, you know, you're in if some truck arrived here. As you know, we had a caravan here, which was bad enough here in Sydney, but a whole series of trucks were sitting in weird places.
Someone who would say, well, what the hell is that truck sitting out the front of my house doing there or in that factory industrial zone because I would go past it every morning to work or whatever the case I be. How do they get how does that happen? Like this sounds crazy to me, like that they can actually happen without anybody asking a question.
Well, it's happened in Russia and Iran in the last three weeks, and they're both authoritarian regimes that have restrictions on the movement of people internally. So if it can happen in them, in a democracy, this would be very easy to pull off.
I mean, in.
Democracies we're not inclined to pull over every truck and question the truck driver or search their bill of goods, and nor should we be. But you know, there is a vulnerability here to these kind of attacks because they're very easy to hide, and frankly, they're extraordinarily cheap. With you know, five hundred dollars drones, with a kilogram or two of explosive you can fly over the fence of an air base and destroy your really badly damage one hundred million dollar aircraft.
So in a military strategic sense, what would various militaries around the world studying this consider they've learned.
Well, I think they'll be learning about detection first and foremost of small drones that might be approaching or coming over the perimeters of their bases. I mean, the detection alone is a major gap. We need to be able to do that. Now it's not easy. But there are small short range radars which Ukrainians use in their thousands now, which are very good at this.
And then the.
Second thing is be able to destroy these things. Now, there's a whole lot, especially in Australia where we love bureaucracy at state and federal level, a multitude of different rules that prevent the ADF at the moment from using
electromagnetic or kinetic ways of intercepting these drones. We're really going to have to have a hard look at our legislative underpinnings to allow our soldiers as well as our police to use weapons to destroy offensive drones that might be going against critical infrastructure, against military bases or major public events.
So you said there's regulations, like, we have regulations that say we can't protect ourselves absolutely.
I mean, you know, just spectrum management in Australia is highly centralized. The Federal Aviation Authorities CASSA have a very hard approach to the use of drones and particularly countering drones. So there's a bunch of legislation about the use of jamming, GPS jamming, electromagnetic jamming in Australia.
I mean, there should be.
You don't want everyone doing it, but there's going have to be some carve outs for military and police forces. There are some limited ones for major events, but we're going to have to have a more holistic approach and then look at, well, what can we do to intercept these things. If you have someone on a military base firing a weapon at a drone and the rounds from that weapon goes over the perimeter into civilian housing areas,
where you have a problem. So this isn't exactly a simple problem to solve, but we've got to get ourselves on the path to solving it.
And there's Australia somewhere that we are, given our proximity in the world, is a drone attack feasible for us. We're not attached to anybody's what I.
Meant, well, we're very attached to the American Alliance and to our partners in places like Japan and Europe. So we're actually uniquely vulnerable to this because someone could do this against us without the fear of any kind of long range response from Australia. We don't have long range attack capabilities, we don't have weapons of masters struction. So as a way to curse the behavior of the Australian government. This could be a very effective way for a potential enemy to act against us.
And are you saying that they would actually insert themselves into Australia similar to the way Israel has done in Iran with trucks full of drones for example, or are they going to do it from team or they were in Genetia.
They would fly in people through Mascot Airport or Brisbane International Airport. They would go and buy trucks from a normal truck salesman. You can buy them without any problems. In this country, they would go buy a few hundred drones from the latest dji store, which I walked past at the shops all the time, and then they could probably pretty simply acquire a few hundred or a few dozens of kilos of explosives from criminal gains or mind sights around the country. That's all you need and then
a little bit of creativity. This is why it's such a profound issue, because that's the very This is not a difficult or expensive undertaking. With a million dollars, you could pull this off without any problems whatsoever.
Wow, that's mad. That's well. Hopefully that there are people listening to you, are there more people like you forming groups who are actually reaching out to the government or reaching out to your counterparts, who are you know, sort of active in duty. I mean, do you guys talk about these things or how does it work?
Well? A lot of people talk about it.
You know, the government talked about it in the National Defense Strategy, but you know it's an extraordinarily weak document with you know, defense spending that's just not up to it, and our bases, unfortunately, are extraordinarily vulnerable to this kind of threat.
When I look at what happened before the ceasefire announced today this morning, when I look at what happened leading up to that, I saw that Iran might have been a minister of Defense or Minister Foreign Affairs or something like that to Russia and sat down with Putin. What do you think about Putin's response or lack of response, or do you think he'd already been called by Trump? I mean, it just looked like a stitch up to me.
In fact, when I was watching the engagement between the two across the table, I was watching it on Fox News last night. Because these things get you, they tend to occupy my mind. I was watching his body language when he was being spoken to by the Iranian representatives, and he looked kept looking down. He looked like he'd already made a decision. I'm not going to do anything. I'm just going through this process to for face and to make sure you still think I'm in your team.
But dude, I'm not going to do anything. What did you think about that?
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
I mean, the Russians and Chinese have sent thoughts and prayers to Tayhran and not much else. You know, we know the UN Security Council as a two tiger. He really didn't result in anything despite Tyran's best efforts. You know, if you're Putin, you're looking at this situation at well, I've already got one war. I know Trump's pretty serious about taking these guys out, and he's not serious about me. So I don't want to align too closely with them.
You know, it's not really in Putin Norge's interest to get too involved in this other than you know, sending good wishes to their authoritarian fellow traveler.
Did at any stage did you think to yourself, make this could be World War three before today I'm talking about Well, I.
Think it's been clear that we've we're probably in the early phases of what future historians might term World War three. I think that started February twenty twenty two. You know, it's not like World War One or World War two, but we are in the midst of a global conflict and confrontation between democracies and authoritarians. There are some violent parts of it, which is Ukraine and the Middle East, and there are some ideological parts of it which we
see in the Pacific and elsewhere. So it's probably closer to the phony war that occurred in Europe in nineteen thirty nine than the full out war that occurred later. But you know, future historians might see what we're living through now was the early phases of what might be called World War three.
In the future, we'll see.
It seems to me that globally, in lots of respects, we have division. You know, do we look after Palestina or do we look after Israel or the Jewish community. Do we back Russia or do we back Ukraine. Do we back China or do we back in the US? Do we back Taiwan. It just seems to me there's this massive division everywhere. I wouldn't call it a Cold war, but definitely it looks to me as over there's division.
Do you think the division is being ideologically driven actually, you know, made to happen, or do you think it's just the world dividing itself.
No.
I think this is an ideological struggle that's been going on for some time. The Chinese have been in an ideological struggle with US for decades. We just haven't noticed until recently. You know, only got to read G's speeches to see the struggle and conflict that he talks about against the West and how the East is rising and the West is declining. I think Russia, China are in a North Korea see an opportunity to undermine the system that we've all greatly benefited from since nineteen forty five.
They're not proposing any better system, just that they hate the US led world order because they're not leading it. So we are in the midst of an ideological war. We're seeing it play out on TikTok and social media and other means around the world with misinformation, and we're seeing it play out on streets in Australia with some of these demonstrations that get out there and want to support hamas and other causes.
So when you look at what happened over the past thirteen days, particularly with what the USA did in their one endeavor, do you think militarily does that send a message to the rest of the world, because like China and North Korea and Russia, but probably the former two that the United States is still militarily not only significant,
but probably superior. Was it enough the way it was organized, executed, planned, the planes they used, the bombs they dropped, is that a big enough signal in the world for other people go, wow, let's just pull back here and be careful.
Well, I think it is a key message from the United States that despite the isolationist inclinations of the Marga movement, they're not fully disengaged from the world, and that they are prepared. They do have the will and the capability to act if it isn't in their interests or in the interest of their closest friends. So, you know, I think the US saw in its interest to ensure Iran did does not get a nuclear weapon, it would cascade into all kinds of problems in the Middle East and
more broadly and in greater proliferation we must add. So you know, when the US sees it in its direct interest in lack, I think President g will be more worried about this than putin there is you know, one of the few things the American polity agrees on is the competition with China, and he will be looking at this goalon Okay, so Trump is serious. I need to rethink my decision calculus when dealing with the United States.
Henceforwarth because a lot of people were saying, well, if this turns into a war, maybe this is China's opportunity to go assert its dominance over taiwan Is. In other words, US gets engaged in another place, So you know, the old diversion attack there over here will just go over there and do our best. Do you think though, make I don't have any sense of this, But is the US capability greater than everyone else in the world. I mean,
I've looked at the number of planes. The US by far has many more fighter jets in any other place in the world as understand it. I saw a stat come out the other day like ridiculously more so much more that Mevini and I don't know if we know actually what China has but anyway, But in terms of the technological capability, is China clipping at the hills in days or is it a long way away?
Well, when it comes to the size of the US military, remember the US has global commitments, so it can't concentrate its entire military in one or even two places. It's dispersed, whereas China and Russia can concentrate their entire military in a small swathe of the Earth's surface. So that's a challenge for the United States. Secondly, its industrial capacity has
waned significantly since the end of the Cold War. Its ability to produce large quantities of military material at an affordable price has declined, as has Europe, although they're trying to turn that around. Russia and China have maintained the capacity to be what I call an arsenal of authoritarians. So these are two big problems. And then technologically, I mean Russia is not near the United States or even Europe technologically or even economically. But China is close to
the United States economically and technologically. It is the most wealthy and technologically advanced competitor the United States has ever had, and that means that you know, there's no way to spend your way to victory against China. You've got to produce a lot of stuff, but you've got to outthink them as well, So you've.
Got to Yeah, so you know, you see all these various technological advances in terms of the military capabilities. Is the US winning that war or winning that game? Because there there's another The second War is a technological war. That's the we can now think you war. And the United States always has been the technological leader in the world. But in terms of military do you think that China's
slowly was surely sneaking up with US? And therefore any alliances they might have with Russia, Iran or North Korea sort of enables those countries as well.
No, they certainly are very technologically sophisticated. The research and development base in China is extraordinary, and they can move with great speed in both researching and rolling out a new technology.
But there are some.
Critical technologies where China is behind or well behind the United States. I mean AI. The US is the undisputed world leader or the major companies doing AI research and development in the United States, and that is a very significant advantage not just for AI but for using AI.
To research and develop other technologies, things like submarine warfare and stealth is an area that provides a very significant qualitative advantage for the US military forces and its allies that it will share those capabilities with.
So I think that's important.
And so I think those two things are very important. And you know, I think we should be very cautious about questioning US will. You know, we've seen before where America has preferred an isolationist approach, but if it is challenged in any significant way, it's the kind of country that can surprise us with how it can unify rally and build capacity to overwhelm and adversary. So we should never write off the American capacity to do that in
the right circumstances. And the Chinese will have to be very very careful, indeed, if they want to make assumptions about American will in the future.
So where do field Taiwan might be now or China the Taiwan or relative to Taiwan, do you think that they might have this whole event may have put them back a few steps, Yeah.
I think so.
I mean, the Chinese have obviously watched the war in Ukraine closely, but they've watched all our wars all the way back to the Falklands War, so you know, they've been learning from other people's wars for some time. Some lessons from Ukraine would have given them heart, others would have given them pause, particularly quality of people and these kind of things. You know, the US policy for Taiwan is not to encourage independence for Taiwan and not to
encourage a Chinese takeover. And you know, it hasn't changed that policy. It's still walking that careful line. But you know, I think there are enough signals there that if China was to do something militarily aggressive against Taiwan, America would certainly view that dimly and would probably seek to intervene to protect one of two large island democracies of twenty six million people in the Pacific, the other one being Australia.
Of course, can we just quickly talk about the way the USA snuck up on Iran? They had sort of all these diversionory tactics going on, as sending B two bombers all around the joint. Maybe you could just quickly take us through that, because whilst some of us, some of us have read about it, we don't really understand what they were trying to do. It just sounds like the old curve ball. But maybe you just take us through that, Mick.
Yeah, I mean a couple of weeks ago, ironically, I published a major report in the US on the future of military deception with my friend Peter Singer Wow, and we talked about these kind of things that, you know, contrary to the prognostications of the ten minute military experts that we often see talking about these issues, the battlefield isn't totally transparent. You can't see everything, and you can't always see what the enemy plans to do against you,
So surprise and deceptions still matter. And the Americans with this bomber raid, I think employed the deception in a couple of ways. One at the political level by saying, oh, we're going to think about this for a couple of weeks, which induced the Iranians to think they had time, whereas
they didn't. And secondly, on the military side, I mean, the Americans allowed word to get out that some bombers were heading across the Pacific when the real bombers had actually turned around out of sight and were heading across
Europe towards Iran. So there are a couple of levels of deception, and in Iran, they as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs outlined, they used decoy aircraft as well ahead of the crewed aircraft, just as a final measure to deceive any remaining Iranian air defense radars and interceptors. Is still an important part of war, It's an important part of being successful and is vital to achieving surprise
against an enemy. And the more surprise you achieve, the more successful you are, and the more of your own people you bring back alive, which is always important for military commanders.
And particularly also politically. I think, to let get it, the political impact of no one getting injured or hurt is a big deal. And that's sort of what Trump would call success. You just hit on something, as I found quite interesting. So in terms of deception, the B two bombers were sort of, by the sounds of what you just said, they were sort of at the back of the parade. In other words, they sent out I think he is used to a decoy decoy aircraft. Were they Israeli or were they American?
No, the Americans got very detailed brief on this yesterday morning. This was an entirely an American operation with about one hundred and twenty aircraft overall, dropping bombs and precision munitions as they went to suppress any Iranian defenses, as well as precision cruise missiles launched from American submarines. So you know, this would have been complex to orchestrate in time and space, but was an American operation where they basically said, the Israelis,
get out of Iranian airspace for this time. We're going to do some stuff, and once we're gone, you can return to your previous engagements over Iran. So that's the rough details of how it all went down.
And then the B two bombers did this so called Midnight Hammer, which I guess is dropping those thirty thousand pound bombs I think there was fourteen of them or something like that into these facilities. Is this ever happened before? Is this a thing? Thirty thousand pound bombs like sounds pretty big to me.
Yeah, no, it's pretty big. I mean, the last time weapons of this size we used was World War Two.
I mean, the.
British had some pretty big bombs they dropped on submarine panes and dms in Germany during the Second World War.
But these bombs were designed and built specifically for this kind of target, primarily in Iran, but potentially in North Korea as well, because over the last twenty years been very clear that certain countries, in order to hide and to protect weapons of master stuck instruction programs nuclear but could be others, we would need to get through not hundreds of feet of rock and concrete to destroy them.
And these weapons were designed and built twenty years ago for it, and this is their first real operational employer.
So I was watching TV last night in anticipation of you and I speaking today, and they were showing vision of the places where they were some of the places where these three thousand pounds bombs had dropped. I just looked like it looked like they just knocked a few buildings out. But when you see it, maybe you could give us a bit more insight as to whether or not you thought it was complete destruction. So I kept seeing the myself, well, actually get what was going on underground or not?
Well, it will depend whether these bombs were actually able to penetrate into the voids under these mountains where these facilities are. If they were, they would have caused very, very significant destruction that old scene from Armageddon when they talk about you know, you have a firecracker in your hand. If it goes off when it's open, no damage. If it goes off when it's closed, no more hand. You know, it's the same kind of things with these bunker buses.
If they get into those enclosed spaces and set off all that explosives, the damage will be extraordinary. We just don't know yet whether that has occurred, because at the end of the day, you can't confirm this from space. You're probably going to need people on the ground to confirm this.
So what would the next steps to be theymic would the ceasefire was sort of alluded to today by Trump. I don't think Ryan has confirmed it at this stage with whilst you and I are talking, nor Israel. Does the International Atomic Agency do they do someone say, well, we want them to have access going inside those bunkers and have a look at what happens next.
Well, I would hope that Iran would allow the IAEA access. I mean, they're probably not going to get people him. They'll probably have to send robots or remote senses in to ascertain the status of these facilities, not just to see if they're working or not, but the degree of radiological contamination that might be present, well, clearly be monitoring the atmosphere for that, but they'll want to see if there's radiological contamination that's enclosed within these facilities, or indeed
if these facilities have suffered damage. I think that's probably the way ahead for getting the best assessment, But that will be up to the Iranians whether they allow the IAEA to do.
This, because you know, there the Iranian leadership probably is looking and feeling a little bit overwhelmed at the moment. I might imagine a either got surprised, be either got hit by the rings, which they weren't expecting Israel. I think there's another twelve hours of fighting between the two until the seasfire actually commences, So in Israel's already gone and given a good whack to them over the past
couple of weeks. Anyway, would what normally happens there they sit down and have a meeting or something sounds ridiculous, but like they're in there trying to blast each other off the face of the earth. Then they go and have a meeting. Is that what happens after war season?
Well, you have.
Meetings all throughout war unless the animal attacks your meeting and you're all dead. But I mean, we shouldn't forget too that the Iranian leadership have been chased as individuals by the Israelis. There's a great report in New York Times today about how the Israelis have been emailing all the senior Iranian leaders saying, you have twelve hours to post a video renouncing the regime or we're going to
kill wow. So they also have that looking over their shoulders as well, which will kind of coerce them to decide one way or the other. But you know, I'd expect that the Iranians would be keen to firstly project to their own people that they haven't lost, that it's not over. But secondly, they'll they'll want to conduct an
assessment of just how much damage has been caused. It would have been hard to produce an accurate assessment of damage to the nuclear as well as conventional military capabilities of Iran over the last week or so. They'll want to do that just to see, well, what defenses have we got less. I mean, that will be one of the first couple of questions that the Eyatla will ask, is one do we still have a nuclear program in general? Do we still have a viable defense of Iran general?
Is probably the first two questions they'll ask.
Do you reckon it? Actually the ceasefire what probably isn't going to be a SEISFI makes sense? But do you actually if the Iranians come out and confirm what Trump has said today, do you actually believe that it is a It's not called it permanent, but do you would you believe it will ennure for the benefit of the whole world for years to come? Or if this is just do you think the Iranians are just going to say, We'll just say we're there's a ceasefire and we'll start to rebuild.
We'd all like to hope for the former, but we probably have to plan for the latter. I mean, the Iranians have been pretty unreliable when it comes to declaring the full scope of their military and nuclear programs. The only thing they've been reliable in is their dedication to the destruction of Israel. So it's hard to see them giving them giving up on those objectives. But despite desire, hopefully the last ten days has taken away their capability to do that for some time.
To come.
But surely they would. I mean, the concept of total destruction of this of Israel in order to no longer be a threat somehow, you'd have to convince the regime. We'd have to believe that the regime has actually moved away from that concept. And I don't. I would have thought now, after having had the crap be bombed out of them and sort of being completely made legless and ashamed in front of their own people, that that would actually galvanize the regime, the current regime into what they've
always believed and get rid of Israel altogether. The Zionists, devil or whatever they call them. Can you see it, like you know, you've had a lot of experience in these regions, can you see them actually changing their conceptual view the philosophy around Israel.
No, in a word, I don't see anything that's happened that will change their view of Israel and their desire to exterminate the Jewish state from the face of the earth. It's and I think the Israelis accept that they're never going to change the Iranian calculus unless there's some fundamental political shift in that country and another change, a regime change, and even then you've got to be careful with regime change.
One.
We're not very good at it, as we've proved in the last twenty five years. And sometimes you can get a regime that's even worse, not one that's better. So you know, by beware if you want to go down the path of regime change, because it could work out much much worse than you anticipated, not much much better.
They're saying that better the devil, you know. I mean, we've seen a regime change in Syria. Has that been for the better? Do you think so far?
It's hard to tell. It's probably too early to tell. In some respects Israel has newed Syria's conventional capabilities, but whether Syria becomes a chaotic, unstable state that's a breeding ground for terrorism remains to be seen. I mean, that's certainly one of the potential future scenarios for it good.
I noticed that because I follow Trump on X but Trump said on truth rather, Trump said something like he wanted to thank prior to the ceasefire announcement, or Trump's cease fire announcement, I should say he said that he wanted to thank the Iranian administration for pre warning the United States that they were going to hit Katah with at a military based US military base, and that allowed the US to get everyone out, so to speak, So
there were no casualties personal casualties. Would that be right doing? What's the point of doing that? What's the point of Iran signaling that they're going to go and hit a military base and I'll get all your people at because we just want to bash your base up. What's the point of that?
No, that there's a certain logic to Iran doing that. Now, the mechanism by which it did that could just be openly missiles and stuff like that. But you know, I think it's Iran signaling to the United States that, Okay, you know, we're.
Kind of done in this round.
We're happy for it to be over, but you need to allow us to demonstrate to our partners and our people that you know, we've at least responded ceremonially to what's gone on here, and that's what's happened. So you know that there's always a performative elements in many of these these attacks. You know, it's not just about in war.
Its not just about winning the war. It's winning the story of the war and the Iranians with this attack on Qatar a engaged on winning their version of the story of the war.
Sort like saving face a little bit. So we did respond.
That's a that's a term to use, but it's the Ranium way of building a story around their their war against Israel and America, who they still call the Great Statan.
Of course, yes, if we just come back home domestically for a moment. I mean you've sort of highlighted you've done this in the previous times and a lot, you know, you've said a lot over a long period of time about Australias vulnerability. What do you think given that you know Albanese is now out there needing to speak about August to the United States President. I mean, obviously now we know why the president was so busy. What do you think August. Where do you think August stands? Now?
What effect or if nothing at all, perhaps, but of all this last week or so, what effect would that have on the Aucust agreement?
Well, I think a lot of people will look at it.
You know, it's a very expensive undertaking, and because the government is unwilling to really substantially increase defense spending, certainly not beyond the impacts of inflation. AUCUS is being a much much larger part of the defense budget, which means the rest of the Australian Defense Force becomes less capable, less ready, less lethal. So you know, in a decade or so, you know, it could well be that we have three second hand American nuclear submarines and two dogs
in the Australian Defense Force. There's a skewing impact of the Orchestra program on both force structure and budgets which needs to be addressed if we want to have an ADF and nuclear submarines. The only way to address that is more money, because we clearly need more in the ADF than just three submarines. There's a whole range of contingencies, challenges, military and otherwise that the ADF need to be ready for that. You know, the budget is less and less
able to meet. So you know, the three to four percent range for GDP is about right according to pretty much every defense expert in this country.
So we should be spending three to four percent of our GDP on defense. What are we currently spending.
About two percent?
You know, sometimes it edges open to two point one, sometimes just under depends on exchange rates and inflation. But unfortunately, most of the defense increases we've seen have been entirely absorbed by inflation. You know, Marcus Hellier's work on this,
I think is both substantial and very well informed. So we need to get beyond this and start looking very seriously at the kind of force structure one that is required to defend the Australian homely particularly from missile and drone attacks, but as well from other Chinese coercion, like you know the Chinese naval circle work around Australia that occurred a little while ago.
Well during the election period that was actually not that far long ago, yes.
And the government did everything they possibly could to keep that from the Australian people. So you know, we need to have those kind of defensive capabilities as well as contribute to operations in the region where China might decide that the sobig to you of other nations should be challenged.
Do you think our intelligence community, because all this still starts with intelligence. Intelligence first you got to find it what the hell's going on. So you know, moss AD's very good at this sort of stuff, and Israelis are very good of this, as are the US. But in terms of Australia. Do you think our intelligent capability is as much as it fits under that whole topic of defense is our intelligence community also need to have much more funding and much more training and much more attention.
I think the Australian intelligence community in a qualitative sense is extraordinarily good. I mean, we certainly are able to there's one area where I think we do punch above our weight.
To be honest.
Could it be bigger, absolutely, Could it have more technology and more people, yes, But pound for pound, I think it's a very good intelligence community that's pretty straight with the government. And as you've seen with the head of ASIO, you know, I really welcome the public statements by him about the kinds of threats from countries and capabilities that Australia faces. So, you know, I don't think the problem in this country is our intelligence community. I think it's
pretty good. It's the problem is responding to what the intelligence community are identifying and recommending to government.
In other words, our ability to execute and I don't execute a person, but execute a strategy.
Well, I think there's a couple of these. One the ability of the Australian government to have an honest conversation with Australian citizens about the nature of the threats we face, which is far more profound than the Government is willing to discuss with the Australian people. And secondly, their ability to have an honest conversation about the resourcing needed to respond to those threats. They are two things that are really missing at the moment.
What do you think about our Prime minister's sort of lack of public commentary in relation to what's currently going on, particularly what went on the other night when the US dropped the b twodrop bombs dropped the thirty thousand pound bomb.
Yeah, I mean it's you know, when these kind of things happen, a lot of us go straight and see when is the government going to make a statement on this, When's a foreign minutter going to tweet out a state? When's the PM going to say something? I mean, the day long delay was very difficult to fathom other than they were doing a careful political calculus about is it domestically better for them to say nothing than to support our American allies in what was a very limited and
successful military action. So you know, their considerations are all around domestic politics, as are most politicians, and I appreciate that the problem is their inclinations at the moment to lean back from the threat posed by countries like Russia and China is the wrong inclination. They need to lean forward.
They need to engage in more deterrence against these threats. Otherwise, you know, an expensive bit of deterrence now will look cheap compared to what might have to be spent on defense in fetu.
As a former major general in Australia and if you're let's say you're current, do people of your ilk and status get disappointed with the politics in relation to money allocated to defense. Things that are obvious, you know, the world has changed. Commentary by our leader relative to our alliances, even saying something like congratulations America, well done or something
like that. Do people of your status who are in the currently in the in the army, for example, or in the military, and also former people who are like you, who are still active in strategic analysis and reports and commentary, do you feel a bit disappointed? Do your colleagues get a bit disappointed?
Everyone has their own personal views on these kind of things, but it's important to note that in a democracy, civil military relations are about civil primacy. And you know, soldiers don't get to publicly disagree with the government for very good reason. You know, even if the government makes a stupid decision, it's still better that they make a stupid decision in a democracy than the military come out and says that. So, you know, this is something that Elliott
Cohen calls the unequal dialogue. It is a very important principle in our democracy and others that the military gets to offer best military advice, but ultimately the government decides and acts on that advice. And that's a system that I strongly agree with. It's something that we should probably educate Austrayans about more. But at the end of the day, civil primacy is the most important and overwhelming principle in those kind of in those kind of discussions and negotiations.
And what do you mean, Mick by that In terms of civil primacy, that means the civil the the the rights of the civilians, and the process of the civilians. She overrides everything that the military might want to do or might want to say. In other words, the military is basically an arm of the total. In other words, just doesn't the tail, which is the military doesn't wag the body. It's the body or the head decides what's
going to happen down downstream. So to speak of it don't mean that being lesser downstream.
Absolutely, you know, the democratically elected government of the day is the lead and the final decision maker. That is extraordinarily important in our democracy and many others. It's it's a principle that I strongly agree with and have supported through my own service over thirty five years, and it's
the only way a democracy can function. Military can only act to achieve the policy and political outcomes of the democratically elected government, even if those outcomes don't see the size or capability the military that some of us would prefer. There's always tensions in this and that tension is generally pretty healthy because it leads to better and more creative solutions.
And it's hardly a new problem. I'm pretty sure a couple thousand years ago to Russian, sorry to Roman soldiers standing on Hadrian's War were debating those politicians they didn't like in Rome. This is an old story for soldiers, but it is certainly an environment and a situation that's preferable to the alternative.
Well, Mick Ryan once again, thanks for your insights. May have been fantastic. You've actually cleared up a lot of the nuances, but you've also cleared up a lot of the dust that's sort of floating around these sorts of conversations because media tends to get hold of it and it goes all over the joint. One good thing is, Mick, as we're sitting here now, at least we know that
Donald Trump is called for a ceasefire. And that's probably whether it depends what irrespect of what happens in the future. Sitting here right now today, that's a better position for you and I be in and for the rest of Australia being then it would be otherwise. So once again, thanks very much, Thanks for all your service, Thanks for everything you contribute to Australia, and you've never stop. You just keep contributing it and I appreciate it.
Thanks Mark, it's great to talk to you again. And yeah, let's all hope this six five weeks.
Goodnight,