American Lion, Near East Hyenas: US Options In Yemen And Iran

>> Bill Whalen: It's Thursday, January 18, 2024, and welcome back to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world. I'm Bill Whalen. I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia Hobbes Carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism. I'm not the only Hoover fellow podcasting these days.

I encourage you to go to our website, which is hoover.org. Click on the tab at the top of the homepage, it says commentary. Head over to where it says multimedia and then audio podcast, and you'll see a dozen plus podcasts, including this one. I always endeavor to get the best of the brightest from the Hoover Institution to take part in these podcasts, today being no exception.

We're going to address a very complicated subject, which is what has happened in the Middle East in the nearly 15 weeks now since Hamas fighters attacked targets inside Israel. I also want to discuss the situation in the Red Sea in Yemen. Who are the Houthis? Why are they attacking vessels transiting to and from the Suez Canal, as well as naval forces protecting those waters?

Joining us today to make sense of these matters, Joel Rayburn. He's a Hoover Institution visiting fellow, Middle East historian, member of Hoover's Middle East and Islamic World Working Group. We're also joined by Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near east studies at Princeton University and a noted expert on Yemen and a contributor to Hoover's Middle East working group.

Joel, Bernard, thanks very much for coming on the podcast.

>> Bernard Haykel: Thank you.

>> Joel Rayburn: Pleasure.

>> Bill Whalen: So it's thoroughly Thursday here in California. It's the middle of the day where Bernard is, and it is late in the day in England, where Joel just happens to be the latest news coming out of the Middle east and the Near east.

We now have Iran and Pakistan exchanging missiles. Iran apparently firing first across the Pakistan border. Pakistan retaliating in both cases, one country saying that it was trying to eliminate separatists living in the other country. Meanwhile, the US launched a new strike against the Houthis, targeting a dozen plus Iranian provided missile launchers, the likes of which the Houthis have been firing at ships in the Red Sea.

Bernard, I'll start with you. Let me ask you a very pedestrian question, but I think it's worth one explaining to our audience, who exactly are the Houthis, and how did a civil war in Yemen that broke out a decade ago expand to include western shipping and clashes now with US Naval forces?

 

>> Bernard Haykel: All right, well, that's-

>> Bill Whalen: 30 seconds or less.

>> Bernard Haykel: The Houthis are a political and religious movement that was founded by a family in Yemen that belongs, that claims to be descendants of the prophet Muhammad. That's why they're called Sayyids and they're a minority in Yemeni society.

And their main leader is a man who died in 2004, was killed in 2004 by the yemeni government. He put together an ideology that borrowed from al Qaeda, borrowed from Khomeinism in Iran, borrowed from Hezbollah, from the Muslim Brotherhood, borrowed from also anti-imperialist, sort of old-style leftist ideologies, and put this all together in a series of lectures that are now studied in Yemen.

And in fact, all students in schools where the Houthis dominate have to study his lectures. And it's an extremely radical ideology that is anti American, seeks to destroy Israel, but also condemns Jews outright. It's sort of an antisemitic ideology, which is sort of a new thing in its explicit nature for Islamists.

And the only way that they're unpopular in Yemen, they're extremely brutal with the Yemeni population. And most Yemenis are not either said so. They don't belong to the same group, nor are they Zaidis. The Zaidis, this is a Shiite group in Yemen to whom the Houthis belong, represent about 35% of the population.

So in order for them to rule, they have to use one of two methods, and they typically use them both simultaneously. One is to repress and use violence. The other is to promote this very radical, very anti-western ideology, because that gives them legitimacy. So, the reason that they're engaged in the war against maritime shipping is to sort of promote their identity as opponents, as enemies of America, of the western world, and that burnishes their legitimacy domestically.

The civil war in Yemen actually with them began in the early two thousands. And then there were a series of six wars with the central government. Then the Arab Spring led to a breakdown of the central yemeni government, and the civil war ensued. That was joined by the Houthis.

And the Houthis took Sanaa, the capital, in September 2014, and looked like they were going to take over the whole country. So, the Saudis mounted a coalition to support the internationally recognized Yemeni government and entered the war to stop the Houthis from taking over the country. An effort that was only semi successful because the Houthis still controlled about 70% of the population of Yemen and roughly a third to 40% of the territory of the country.

Very difficult group to dislodge because they're a bit like the Taliban or the Viet Cong. They're kind of a ragtag militia but strongly supported by Iran and strongly armed and trained by Iran and by Hezbollah, which is where all their missiles and drones are coming from.

>> Bill Whalen: And you said, when they fire a missile into the Red Sea, is this a propaganda measure?

Is this just to make the regime look strong? Or Bernard, is there a strategic goal here? Are they trying to disrupt the world economy? Are they trying to somehow screw up the Suez Canal while they just trying to make the US do? What is their end goal here?

 

>> Bernard Haykel: I think there are three goals, actually. These attacks on maritime shipping. Some are unique to the Houthis themselves, and other goals are kind of joint goals of the Houthis and of the Iranians. So what's unique to the Houthis is that by attacking the shipping and presenting themselves as supporters of the Palestinians and Gaza and enemies of Israel and so on.

That all helps, as I said, their legitimacy domestically inside Yemen, because this is something that Yemenis are upset about, and the Houthis look like they're doing something about it. The other two goals are goals that the Houthis share with the Iranians. One is to put pressure on Saudi Arabia and essentially to shake Saudi Arabia down, to get the Saudis to pay for the Houthis not to fight and to kind of make peace.

And there's an agreement now that's being hatched between the Saudis and the Houthis to get the Houthis to make peace with other Yemeni factions. But that comes at a higher price now that the Houthis are attacking shipping, because that affects the Saudi economy and the Egyptian economy and the whole region.

The second goal, again, one that unites the Houthis and the Iranians, is the Iranians have for a long time wanted to show the world, and specifically the United States, but also the Saudis, that they can block all three major maritime choke points in the region. And the three are the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance of the Persian Gulf, the Bab-el-Mandeb at the entrance of the Red Sea.

And the third is the Suez Canal, which if you can control Bab-el-Mandeb, you more or less control the Suez Canal. And this is essentially what Iran is able to now show through the Houthis, is that we're now in control of this region with the ultimate aim, of course, of the Iranian regime and of the Houthis to get the Americans to leave the region.

I mean, this is all about trying to get the United States defeated and to force it to exit the region.

>> Bill Whalen: All right, Joel, let's talk about the regime in Tehran. And what would prompt them to fire missiles in Pakistan's direction? What are they thinking?

>> Joel Rayburn: Well, in Pakistan's direction, that one's a bit perplexing to me because it's a profound miscalculation when they're stretched pretty thin on other fronts to draw in the Pakistanis, when it doesn't seem to serve a larger purpose other than then perhaps to demonstrate that they're able to and willing to use their ballistic missiles, which is something they have an interest in doing right now.

That's why they used ballistic missiles for a fake rationale against targets in Erbil and killed the unwitting Kurdish businessman and his family. And also why they fired ballistic missiles quite some distance into Northwest Syria, to hit an empty building under the pretext that it was a reaction against a response to whatever cells carried out the big terrorist bombing in Kerman.

That's the rationale, I think the Iranian regime is in a phase of demonstrating its ability and its willingness to go further up the escalation ladder with the United States and with Israel on a variety of fronts. They're active on five fronts now in the Middle east and the surrounding region.

They're active via Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, also a little bit in the West bank, where there are some Iranian sponsored Islamic Jihad cells that have been trying to mobilize some resistance there. Second front is on the Israeli Lebanon border with Lebanese Hezbollah. That also extends over into Syria as well.

There's another front with the IRGC and Hezbollah that I consider essentially the same front, what the Israelis call the war in the North. There's a third front on which they're active, and that's striking the American presidents or American interests, American allies in Iraq and Syria. The fourth front is the maritime front, where they're active both in the Bab-el-Mandeb and in the Strait of Hormuz and the greater Persian Gulf region.

Now, with the Pakistanis, that would be a fifth front, and that would go along with what is essentially, indirectly a sixth front, which is the Iranian regime's intervention in the Ukraine war as a principal arms supplier to the Russian military there. So I agree with Bernie, and this has been coming for a long time.

What the Iranian regime is doing is, irrespective of what happened on October 7. October 7 was part of a long developing campaign across the Middle East by the Iranian regime. Essentially, I think, in an encroaching way to seize control of the Northern Middle East, the axis that goes from Iran proper over to the Mediterranean Sea, as though that's a Northern Pincer.

And then a Southern Pincer reaching around the Arabian Peninsula, establishing a strategic outpost via the Houthis off the Bab-el-Mandeb. And it's designed, as Bernie said, to be able to control, dominate the three strategic waterways, the three strategic choke points there, straight Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, Suez Canal. There's also a fourth because by virtue of their involvement in the Black Sea region, then they can also influence the Dardanelles.

They can in the Kerch Strait, which would be a fifth. So, it's quite an ambitious regional and beyond regional strategy, which I think it's designed in the very broadest sense, it's designed to enable them to extort their way into being treated by the rest of the world as a great power so that they can have a military access across the northern Middle East.

That puts them astride the major territorial connections between the European economy and Gulf energy producers and between NATO and NATO's extended allies in the Persian Gulf, Israel and so on. And then obviously, to be able to, I mean, what they've demonstrated, the Iranian regime has demonstrated both in the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Oman and Indian Ocean that they can disrupt the main trade route between connecting Europe and Asia.

And that's a pretty significant thing. And if they're able to do it without the rest of the world, essentially restoring a deterrent to keep them from doing it, then what they will have demonstrated is they can, if they do it now, in the name of October 7 or whatever, they can do it in the future at any time for whatever reason they feel like.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, Joel, you tweeted the other day, or should I say you post on X, I guess we could still call the tweets. But anyway, you said the following on X, quote, deter without deterrence is nothing more than appeasement and worse is yet to come if Biden doesn't change course.

Okay, question, Joel. What exactly is the course? What is the strategy right now? And then, Bernie, I'd like you to chime in as well, because you talked about the Saudis trying to broker a deal with the Houthis to cease and desist. Does the United States get involved or just lets the Saudis drive that one?

So, Joel, first, why don't you start and explain what the grand us strategy, if there is one here?

>> Joel Rayburn: Well, there isn't one yet, the Biden administration came into office hankering to return to 2015 and restore the nuclear agreement with the Iranian regime. What they've been seeking since the first week in office is what they call de escalation, which is another word for detent approach with the Iranian regime and its axis of proxies across the Middle East.

And they have been very slow and deeply reluctant to change course from that overall strategy. Even at this late date, they are not doing the kind of things that you would need to do to really deter the Iranian regime and put a stop to their provocations across the region and beyond.

The most significant case in point is that the Biden administration now is essentially engaged in warfare against the Iranian regime in response to acts of war by the Iranian regime and its allies, like the Houthis. So the Biden administration is in a shooting war with the Iranian regime and its allies, but they are not enforcing economic sanctions against the Iranian regime.

The Iranian regime is generating more oil revenues than they did even before, even before the Biden administration came into office, and they're doing it with impunity. It's ironic that at a time when the Iranians are disrupting a great amount of commercial shipping traffic, that they themselves are running a ghost fleet and an illicit oil export fleet of more than, by some estimates, more than 300 vessels with impunity is being able to sell, by some estimates, as much as exceeding 2 million barrels a day, mostly to the Chinese.

So it's a mixed message there. Us airstrikes against IRGC proxies, but very little action against IRGC revenues.

>> Bill Whalen: Bernie.

>> Bernard Haykel: I think that the Iranians are extremely adept at playing a poor hand very well. They take advantage of situations in the Middle east where you have misery and bad governance and are able to cultivate there in these regions, clients, non state actors, then train them and then use them very effectively.

So Hamas is a classic case in point. Lebanon, Yemen. One way, in addition to deterring them militarily, one way is to deal with them is to think of how do you turn these countries around, how do you deal with the palestinian issue, how do you deal with the lebanese dysfunction, how do you deal with yemenite, so as not to give Iran this entree into these societies.

Syria is another example, and Iraq. What the Saudis have done, and if you track sort of Saudi attitudes towards Iran, they pretty much have taken their cue from the United States. So when the Trump administration was extremely forward leaning and aggressive, the Saudis were very forward leaning and aggressive as well.

And this included their engagement in the war in Yemen, which began before Trump, but continued once he was in office. With the Biden administration, the message to the Saudis was very clear. First, President Biden called them a pariah. He said that he would punish them for their human rights violations, but also for their actions in the war in Yemen, where many civilians were being killed through saudi bombing.

And so the Saudis saw that the United States didn't have their back, and what the Americans wanted was an end to the war in Yemen. So they began this process of negotiating a truce with the Houthis, and now there's a roadmap to peace. And all of this was at the prompting of the american administration and encouragement.

So now the Biden administration, having seen what the Houthis are doing in the Red Sea, has decided no, in fact, what the Saudis were saying about the Houthis was true all along, that they're terrorists. By the way, the Biden administration also delisted them. They removed them from the terrorism list that the US puts out.

Now they've just yesterday put them back on.

>> Bill Whalen: I wanted to ask you, why were they delisted in the first place?

>> Bernard Haykel: Because they wanted to. The Biden administration, in keeping with the Obama administration's belief, has this view that if you try to open up an avenue of conversation.

If you lessen the pressure that the Houthis would be reasonable, like the iranian regime will be reasonable. And that their ideology is just for show, and, in fact, you can do business with them. I mean, this has proven to be wrong, both in Iran's case, and Hamas case, and Hezbollah's case, as well as in the Houthi case.

These people take their ideology and their commitments very seriously, and they're willing to suffer and to make their own population suffer greatly in order to promote their ideology and to wage war. So the Saudis are not willing to engage the Houthis anymore for two reasons. One is because they're doing Biden's bidding by opening up a conversation with the Houthis.

And two, the Saudis don't have faith in American deterrence. So the Americans hit the Houthis, the Houthis have a very hard time to hit back at the Americans. But if the Saudis join the coalition, then the Saudis will get the brunt of the Houthi counterattack and their oil installations will be attacked again like they were in 2019, and their cities will be targeted with drones and ballistic missiles.

So if the Saudis had more confidence in the Biden administration's abilities and willingness to deter both the Houthis and Iranians, I think you would see a very different Saudi Arabia. A much more closely allied Saudi Arabia when it comes to fighting the Iranians and their proxies. But there's no confidence or faith in the Biden administration.

So the Saudis don't want to get involved because they would be the first target of a counter attack.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, now Bernie, let's talk Yemen for a couple of minutes. Let's say in a better world, you can somehow stop the fighting. The reality is you're looking at a country that had racked with poverty.

It's had a civil conflict to deal with it as a shortage of resources. Even if you could end the fighting, Bernie, how would you rebuild this country? How would you develop leadership, and how would you keep other countries from meddling inside its affairs?

>> Bernard Haykel: Yeah, as Americans, we always like to have quick fixes or see solutions to problems.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, we can rebuild it and make it better.

>> Bernard Haykel: Yeah, there are lots of problems in the Middle East that are intractable and that need to be managed rather than solved. Right. I mean, the solutions ultimately have to come from people in the Middle East themselves, and certainly we shouldn't make things worse for them by meddling.

I think what the Saudis are trying to do by getting the Houthis on the same table with other yemeni factions has some chance of at least maintaining a truce. But ultimately, what will happen in Yemen, and this will drag the Saudis in, is that there will be a continuation of the civil war between different yemeni factions, and then you'll have outsiders meddling in the country indefinitely, just like you do in Lebanon, for instance.

So when you have a weak state and you have a very highly divided or extremely kind of fragmented society, as you do in Lebanon and Syria and Yemen, that attracts regional actors and international actors. In the case of Syria, of course, you even have the Russians involved, not just the Iranians and the Americans, but the Turks as well, and so on.

So the same will be indefinitely the case for Yemen. I don't see a country that can be fixed anytime soon.

>> Bill Whalen: Joel, you're nodding your head.

>> Joel Rayburn: Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate. Yemen is a fractured country, it's not clear that it'll remain. I mean, it's a disintegrated state right now, and it's been that way in the past there.

We used to talk about North Yemen and South Yemen, if you recall. So, yeah, that's a very difficult. That's a very difficult conflict to resolve. But luckily for the United States, I don't think it's strictly necessary for US strategic interests to resolve the underlying conflict there. What is necessary is to restore deterrence so that neither the Iranian regime nor its Houthi clients dares to try to disrupt the commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

And it's not just commercial shipping. I mean, if you look at the stakes for the Babelmandev in the Red Sea, an enormous chunk of the world's Internet traffic also goes through the undersea cables that pass through the Babelmande region. Those are at risk. Can you imagine if there was some sort of heightened conflict and those were cut, damaged, and the Houthis, and the IRGC were able to prevent their repair?

Can you imagine the strategic shock to the global economy and just to be able. And all kinds of operations from that. So the US has a very strong interest in. In restoring that deterrent. In addition to that, the other aspect where the US has a significant interest, which we have not been fulfilling since 2009, really.

But in a heightened way since 2015, is to help our Saudi and Emirati allies protect themselves from what is essentially Iranian directed attack from Yemen via the Houthis. But also, we say it's the Houthis and politically, and Yemen it is. But militarily, the revolutionary guards are there in force.

There are a lot of them. And we've learned for some time that Lebanese Hezbollah is also there because Lebanese Hezbollah is to the Iranians, IRGC, as the Cubans were, to the Soviets during the Cold War. So I don't have any direct information on this. I'm not in the government anymore.

But I wouldn't be surprised if someone were to come out and say, well, actually, the ballistic missiles and the anti ship cruise missiles and the armed drones that are being fired off from Yemeni territory, from Houthi controlled territory. Actually, those are being operated by Iranians and by Lebanese Hezbollah operatives, I wouldn't be surprised at all.

Nor would I be surprised if we were to learn that it's the Iranians that are picking the targets, that it's Iranian intelligence that's driving the targeting, that it's Iranian commanders that are directing what targets to hit when. Which makes it, it's an integral part then, and not just maritime targets, but also there have been hundreds of ballistic missiles that have been fired from Houthi controlled territory.

Into Saudi Arabia, including at Riyadh, over the, over the last several years, including Abu Dhabi. That's something that the United States should have acted upon as a crucial interest for the united, for US national interests. And we didn't, I have to say, and I think, Bernie intimated that, and that was certainly the conclusion that the Saudis and the Emiratis drew.

From 2017 onward, there's been a really misguided argument, misguided almost lobbying in Washington, DC, that works in the Iranians favor, in the Houthis favor. Which is to try to frame the conflict in Yemen as some sort of Saudi invasion or Saudi genocide of helpless Yemenis. When, in fact, since 2009, it has increasingly become an Iranian strategic campaign to neuter Saudi Arabia and the UAE to hold them at risk and to fracture the us alliance with those countries.

And it's been incredibly effective. And, yes, as Bernie said, the attitude I think now in the Gulf is now the whole world can see what we, the Saudis we, the Emiratis, have argued for years. Which is that this is a serious threat to the security not just of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, but to the global economy, to global interests and so on.

 

>> Bill Whalen: What is the role that Russia is playing in all of this? And what is the role that China is playing in all of this?

>> Bernard Haykel: So the most important thing the Chinese have done, other than, obviously, trading with the region and buying Iranian oil, but not only Iranian oil, they buy from Iraq, they buy from Saudi, and so on.

Is that they brokered in, last year, I think it was in March, a detente agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Where they open embassies and consulates that had been closed since 2017, and you'd have more Hajj pilgrims and so on. So this was the first time that the Chinese seem to have gotten involved politically in the region.

And it was a wake up call, from what I can tell in the White House. And this really is what seems to have altered President Biden's view on the Saudis and on the region. So he realized, I think, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, that Saudi Arabia is the fundamental player in the global economy.

With the disruption of oil shipments and oil production, that the Saudis could come and play a role in stabilizing markets, but also that he didn't want China to be involved in the region politically. The Chinese so far, other than this one thing that they brokered between the Iranians and the Saudis, have been fairly quiet about all that's been happening.

I think what they're doing is even though disruption of shipments through the Red Sea is not in their interest, because a lot of their own products are traded and shipped through those choke points. The Chinese are watching to see how America behaves in the Red Sea. And if the Americans are not sufficiently robust and hard in stopping this unraveling situation where the Iranians take over the Babel Mandev.

Then a strong message will have been received in Beijing about what America may or may not do in the Straits of Taiwan. So, again, what's happening in the Middle east has these, as Joel said, has these global implications, and it's not just about Yemen or about Saudi or even about Iran.

And so the administration really has to take on board that unless it reestablishes deterrence, it's going to be seen globally. Not just by the Iranians but by the Russians and the Chinese, as a weakness side that can be taken advantage of and pushed and bullied and so on.

Now, some people think that all of what we're seeing are really kind of manifestations of American decline and weakness. And so you have all these hyenas. If you compare these countries to hyenas who are going after this old lion that can barely defend itself and taking sort of bites out of its legs and so on, that's what we're seeing, in a sense.

And I think we're far from actually being that old lion in the United States. And it's just a question of will and imagination. And that's what seems to be lacking. What we see now mostly is this attempt, almost a quixotic attempt by the Biden administration to try to get the Saudis to normalize with Israel by March or April, and that this would somehow solve everything.

Again, these problems are not diplomatic. They're actually about hard military power, first and foremost, and then diplomacy comes next, not before.

>> Bill Whalen: Joel?

>> Joel Rayburn: Yeah, Bernie is absolutely right, I would say. And it's not just that the Chinese, and we can talk about the Russians, too, a little bit, but it's not just that the Chinese are making inroads into the Middle east.

It's that over the course of the last several years, little by little, our traditional allies in the region have begun to hedge in the Chinese direction because they want to shore up their position with the Chinese as they seed. As they've seen, the US sorta recoil from its traditional role in the Middle east, and that's accelerated since President Biden came into office.

China and Russia and the iranian regime are in a military alliance on several fronts. They are mutually supporting. So ostensibly, the Chinese have an interest in seeing free flow of commerce through the Red Sea. They have an interest in that. However, they have a greater interest in seeing the United States recede from the Middle east.

As it stands right now, we militarily dominate if we want to, the source of China's energy. So if we ever got into a strategic confrontation with the Chinese, we essentially have the keys to their gas tank, without which they wouldn't be able to sustain a confrontation for very long.

So when Americans, year after year, talk about wanting to pivot out of the Middle east, when there was the normalization deal in Beijing that the Chinese brokered between the Iranians and the Saudis, there were some people in the us government and Washington who said, well, this is a win win win.

This is good, de-escalation is good. But if the Chinese are going to begin to exert serious political influence in the Middle East and we're to leave, it would be as though we're tossing the Chinese the keys to the gas tank on our way out. That doesn't make a whole lot of strategic sense.

Of course, it didn't make sense to abandon the only C17 capable airstrip that the US had on the western edge of China either in Bagram, in Afghanistan. But we've had a series of decisions that we've made that haven't taken geopolitics and military power projection into account, and our approach to this Middle Eastern conflict has been another one.

The Russians intervened in the Syrian war in September of 2015, and that marked their return to the Middle East with a significant force for the first time since 1973. And the region sort of watched to see if the United States was going to let that happen. And we did.

The Obama administration let it happen. The Russians also have been able to wedge themselves back in the region little by little. And the states of the region have hedged in the Russian direction in a way, from us to be able to, you know, to insulate themselves from potential Russian pressure as they perceive that the US is not as willing as we have been traditionally to help protect our allies interests.

Now, all eyes, too, are on what just happened in Iraqi Kurdistan, for example. Every time you see a very close ally of the United States come under attack by one of these by the Iranians or one of their proxies. The entire rest of the region watches to see what our response will be.

 

>> Bill Whalen: You're referencing the missile strike in I believe it was.

>> Joel Rayburn: Right, exactly. And if it winds up that there is no significant American response, and there hasn't been yet, then you're gonna see people hedge further.

>> Bill Whalen: So we agree, the three of us, that the US either is lacking a strategy in the Middle east or the current approaches desperately need a revision.

So let's talk about what a 2.0 approach to the Middle East would look like, a revised Middle East approach, what the cornerstones of this strategy would be. And, Joel, I want to start with you. You've used the word on this podcast several times, deterrence. Explain to me what deterrence would look like.

 

>> Joel Rayburn: Well, it's to show that you are capable of and willing to use force and to use other instruments of national power to protect us interests and to protect our allies from threats. And that's it, kinda plain and simple. As you implement that, the first order of business is to acknowledge that our allies are our allies and to treat them as allies, and then secondly, to acknowledge that our adversaries enemies are our adversaries and to treat them accordingly.

And we've tended to get this somewhat backwards under the Obama administration and the Biden administration. So the whole thing is not rocket science. It's pretty straightforward. And we have some traditional, we have traditional allies in the region with whom we share longstanding strategic interests, and we need to treat them like allies and work on repairing our relations with them.

Unfortunately, under the Obama administration and then under the Biden administration, our relations with them have been frayed at best. So I'm talking about Turkey, talking about Egypt, talking about Israel. I'm talking about Saudi Arabia. Those are our anchor relationships in the Middle East. And on all four, the relations have been very poor at a time when those countries and our own interests in the Middle east are under.

I don't know, they're under the most intense pressure, most intense attack that they have been probably since 1973 that I can think of.

>> Bill Whalen: And, Bernie, let's talk about the diplomatic cornerstone to this, and I'm interested in particular in Saudi Arabia and what MBS does here. And let's maybe think about his options a year from now when there is either a second Biden term or a second Trump term.

 

>> Bernard Haykel: Right, so MBS is driven and motivated, unlike previous Saudi leaders, by a nationalist agenda. So he's principally focused on his own country. And his big worry is the energy transition and the country's heavy dependence on fossil fuels. So how do you navigate that transition? How do you manage to find other sources of revenue?

And how do you make the society economically prosperous or maintain the economic prosperity of the country going forward? So the lens through which he looks at the world is that. And so, for instance, when he was contemplating normalizing relations with Israel, that was largely not just about. It wasn't really about Israel.

It was more about the relationship with the United States. He is desperate for the United States to consider him and officially publicly state that Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally of the United States. And he wants the security, a treaty with the United States, a kind of mutual protection treaty with the US, and he wants to build a civilian nuclear program managed and run by Americans in his country, and a few other things like a free trade agreement and so on.

So if he was able to get all these things from the US, he would normalize with Israel. That was before October 7. Since October 7th, the price has gone up, in that he also wants Israel to commit to a two-state solution with the Palestinians. And the reason that he is pushing for that, and I think it's a valid reason, is that as long as you have a question like the Palestinian question out there, it's a thing that spoilers in the region, namely Iran, can constantly use to make a life difficult for everyone and to smash and destroy.

And you have to remember, it's always easier to break things than it is to build things. And he's in the process of building. And he wants peace and stability in order to do that domestically, which is, again, why he also had this détente agreement with the Iranians and is looking at a roadmap to peace with the Houthis and so on.

He just can't build his country if you have war and ballistic missiles and drones and so on falling on Saudi cities. And so that's what drives him. And I think that makes things a lot easier because he's not really an ideologically-driven person, right? He's someone who, with whom you can kind of talk about strategic interests and cut deals, rather than someone who is, like the Iranian regime, driven by ideology.

And I agree with Joel that you have to, the United States has to go back to the four strategic allies of the region and rebuild those relationships. Otherwise, you're not gonna be able to get anywhere. The Iranians are very adept at picking off and weakening your allies. I do think also the question of Palestine has to be addressed also head on, because this will come back again and again as long as you don't have some sort of solution to the problem.

And a number of Israelis during the Arab Spring events, which began in 2010, 2011, really were pushing for an attempt at ending the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Because they were arguing that once the Arab Spring events are over, that question will be resolved and people won't be able to take advantage of it again.

But that didn't happen. And we see how Iran is able to use this and Hezbollah is able to use this to whip up kind of an incredible anger in countries like Saudi Arabia, which put leaders like MBS in a very difficult position. And they're unable to kind of get on with the process of stabilizing the region and rebuilding region, making peace and so on.

 

>> Bill Whalen: And another question on the strategy, Joel, and that's how to deal with Iran. The question would be, do you remain passive and just keep going along, hoping, anticipating that one day the regime collapses from within, or now, post October 7th and now seeing the broadening of Iranian activities through the Houthis now into Pakistan?

Do you now have to think of a strategy that involves more, shall we say, external measures to help hasten Iran's demise? And I'll let you decide what external measures would be. But the question is, does the United States remain passive on Iran, or does it become active now in terms of Iran's future?

 

>> Joel Rayburn: No, the United States has no choice but to actively pressure the Iranian regime. It's gone beyond so many red lines. I, for one, keep waiting for the United States and others to respond to that in a way that our interests, you would think, would dictate. The Iranian regime should not be able to sell oil, a drop of oil, openly, certainly after it intervened in the Ukraine war.

Once that emerged that it's Iranian missiles and Iranian drones that are attacking Ukrainian population centers, that should have been it. That hasn't happened. So the US needs to return to a pressure policy against the Iranian regime. They were under immense pressure. Even now, I mean, this week, just recently, within hours, Secretary Blinken at Davos, I think, demonstrated that he doesn't get it.

He doesn't understand the relationship of cause and effect. He said, well, the Iranian regime was in a box under the Obama administration because we had them in the nuclear agreement. And now they're acting the way they're acting because the Trump administration pulled out of the nuclear agreement. No, the Iranian regime is behaving the way it's behaving, because it behaves that way, because that's its nature.

And that's their regional strategy. It's the JCPOA, it's the nuclear agreement that was the wrong approach. The appeasement approach was the wrong approach. And it is, I'm calling it appeasement, not in the pejorative sense, but appeasement in the classical sense. It is literally the appeasement strategy, such as Chamberlain and Stanley Baldwin employed against Germany and Italy before the Second World War.

The Biden administration has been embarked on that as well. Under the Trump administration, we had a brief window of about two years of an effective pressure policy after the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and then the re-imposition of sanctions in the fall of 2018. Those sanctions were enforced quite tightly for a little over two years.

By the end of 2020, the Iranian regime's foreign currency reserves had dwindled to under $10 billion, and they were probably just weeks away from financial collapse, at which point they would have had to cry uncle, I think. Now that was it coming at the same time that there was also a restoration of a military deterrent against Iranian proxy actions.

And the climax of that was the strike that killed IRGC Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. So that's what a pressure policy looks like, is use your economic tools, use your military posture, and use your diplomacy to enforce political isolation. That's the approach that has to happen.

And it was working. Unfortunately, as soon as the Biden administration came in office, they relaxed the pressure. They halted the pressure campaign. The delisting of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization was literally the first foreign policy decision the Biden administration took on January 25, the first week, the first few days after President Biden's inauguration.

That was wrong headed, and we're seeing that now. So there really has to be a return to that pressure policy across the board. And it needs be done not just by the United States unilaterally. It needs to be done jointly with our middle eastern allies and our european allies.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Bernie, do you want to add that?

>> Bernard Haykel: No. I mean, I agree with Joel, but the thing that regional actors and allies in the region don't see from the United States and always worry about is consistency, whether we in the United States have the ability not just to start a process of deterrence, but to kind of see it through.

And it's the vacillation, it's the kind of inconsistency in american foreign policy, which, of course, is partly driven by our electoral cycle as well. That gives a lot of regional actors pause. And this is why, as Joel said, a number of them are doing this hedging strategy, which is to try to build links in the case of Saudi Arabia, not just with China, but also with Russia when it comes to oil production.

They're coordinating very closely through OPEC+ with the Russians on this. So, they don't feel confident that we have their back.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, final question for both of you. So many moving parts in Middle East right now. There is Hamas. There is the situation with Hezbollah in Lebanon. There is Yemen and the Red Sea.

Pakistan now is involved. Joel mentioned missiles being fired in Syria's direction. There is missiles being fired in Iraq as well. Iran's involvement in all of this, all of these different chapters to it. Question for each of you. If you had to focus for the moment on one facet of this, which of those categories are you focused on?

 

>> Bernard Haykel: The biggest challenge to the United States right now is really the Red Sea more than any other challenge, because this has implications for the whole world. And what's happening in Gaza is terrible, but it really is about Israel and the Palestinians. And I would certainly focus on trying to find the long-term solution to this problem so that we can get our allies on board with finally normalizing with Israel.

But that's a long-term thing. It's not something you can address immediately. The thing that you can address immediately is the Red Sea situation. And then certainly if there are any attacks on American forces in Syria or Iraq or anywhere else, you can't just stand idly by and do nothing.

The thing with the Biden people, when I've encountered them, is when they talk about Iran, it's as if they're talking about some sort of eight or ten foot giant. And so, they have this idea that if you attack them, they won't be deterred, they'll escalate. But as we saw with the assassination or the killing of Qassem Saleh Marani, they were deterred.

And so, I think one has to also not inflate the size of the adversary just because it happens to suit your ideological commitments and preconceptions about how appeasement will work better than deterrence.

>> Bill Whalen: Joel?

>> Joel Rayburn: Well, Bernie's 100% right, and he's also right and his also right that our regional allies are frustrated by what they see as the inconsistency in US policy.

And certainly, we have a democratic system, and so inconsistency and policy is built in. But you have to ask, why would a strong us policy concerning the Middle East not be a bipartisan matter? How did it become a partisan issue so that Republicans seem to wanna be more forward leaning and Democrats, unfortunately, want to sort of recoil from our traditional role and our traditional relationships in the Middle East?

There's also, so I wanna touch on that really quickly, which is, it's almost as though in Washington, Middle East policy got hijacked by the decolonization mindset. And some of our relationships in the Middle East came to be viewed through that prism. And that resulted also, that coincided with the neo isolationism on both the left fringe and the right fringe, which you can see in other regions as well.

And that's really muddied the waters with respect to just to preserving what should be pretty clear, US interests in the Middle East. Bernie's also right that we have, and I think this is a post-cold war phenomenon. We have people in policy positions who have no working memory of the Cold War.

They have little understanding of US power, the power differential. They seem to approach. They approach all crises as though these regional act, these middle powers are somehow peers of the United States, and they act accordingly. And they also, I think because they weren't, because they don't have a working knowledge of the Cold War, that they also can talk themselves into thinking that the laws of gravity don't apply to some of these rogue adversaries of ours, whether that's the Iranian regime or North Korea or so on.

That pressure will make them stronger or something, which is not the case. These are human beings. These are kind of, most of them are relatively weak compared to the United States. And pressure works. So, there's a lack of under. We have policies, we have regional strategies, I think, that are informed by a lack of understanding.

And it's unfortunate, to be honest with you on some of this. We need a reset in our national security strategy, in our national security establishment. We need a reset and reeducation, almost, of our national security strategists.

>> Bill Whalen: It sounds to me you both work on the Hoover Middle east working group.

I think you guys have a lot of work ahead of you in 2024 and 2025.

>> Joel Rayburn: That's true.

>> Bill Whalen: Joel, Bernie, thanks for coming on the podcast today. Thanks for helping explain what is a very complicated topic. Hope to have you on the show sometime in the near future.

 

>> Bernard Haykel: Thank you very much.

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