The relationship between iran and syria, the governments decision to help syrian president assad in his civil war, and how iran can destabilize the region. This is about an hour. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for coming to the American Enterprise constitute. Im fred kagan. Im director of the critical threats project here at aei. And its my great honor and privilege to lead this panel discussing a report which has just been released by my colleague, matt mcinnis, the future of irans security policy, Available Online at aei. Org. And we have these beautiful copies as well, if anyone would like one of those. We have a Magnificent Panel today. We are thrilled to have Lieutenant General tom trask, and vice admiral retired mark fox, formerly Deputy Commander general of the United StatesCentral Command along with matt to talk about the report. Without further ado ill turn it over to matt. Thank you, fred. Thank you, general trask, and admiral fox, and frankly all the team here at aei thats helped put this event together, as well as all the people behind the scenes for the past two, two plus years that have been working with me on the research. This has been a labor of love for many years. And its inspired not only by my work here at the institute, but frankly by my number of years working inside the u. S. Government, from my time in the department of defense, and particularly my time at u. S. Central command serving with these two fine gentlemen as well as general petraeus and john allen and particularly under jim mattis, where we struggled with these issues of how to understand iran and its behavior, how we can better anticipate what iran is going to be able to do. And this is what really pushed me when i came here to aei, to think about how can we do this better. And i think the biggest thing that i ran into, when i was engaging in the larger think Tank Community and the larger academic community, is this challenge of getting past iran as opaque, that iran is too difficult to understand, as well as the idea that iran is irrational. What i consider the mad mullah problem, that iran is the iranian leadership is too crazy. And i think both these ideas really handicap us in being able to understand what tehran is thinking about, how it looks at the u. S. , how it formulates foreign policies, its security policies. Thats really at the heart of what im trying to do in this monograph, is take the face off that confusion and say, you know, you can understand this, you can learn about it. And so what im trying to do is not so much provide a whole bunch of policies, policy prescriptions for this administration or for future administrations, but basically provide analytic frameworks, models, if you will, for understanding how iran develops its foreign policies, how iran develops its approaches in particular to security issues, how it goes to war, how it looks at the u. S. , how it looks at israel, how it looks at its rivals in the persian gulf, how it looks at threats such as isis, and particularly how it develops concepts about military doctrine, how it approaches its Defense Budget. These Big Questions. And this is what i want to provide, you know, for the Larger Community here in washington and frankly around the world, about ideas of toolkits. Things that you can use this to develop better volumes. So that if you understand the variables that go into how iran approaches warfare or how iran approaches Foreign Policy decisions. Things, for example, from irans perspective, as the saudi threat increases from their viewpoint or decreases, or how gdp increases or decreases, how thats going to affect defense spending or how thats going to affect their approach to investing in certain capabilities. This is what i want to be able to do with this type of work and provide a Better Foundation for that. What are some of the key findings that we did get from this work, is that fundamentally threat perceptions really does drive irans behavior more than anything else. Once theyre on a path, they really tend to stick with it. And threat perceptions you know, it requires a change in threat perceptions to push them off that path. Finally, the u. S. Drives it more than anything else. After that, you know, israel. And then perhaps extremist groups like isis. After that, maybe the saudis and other gulf rivals. But of course more than anything else, they fear their own people and internal instability. Ideology still matters. And this is of course a point of contention at times, when people wonder, is the revolution still alive, does it still matter. And i think it does. And i think what well see, that ideology is an important point in key aspects of their Foreign Policy. It drives what i call geopolitical irrationalities in places like its policies toward israel, overinvestment in places like the levant. In other places it behaves more like a state. Especially when youre studying things like what the Islamic Revolutionary guard core does and its proximity to groups like hezbollah, shia militia groups. You have to understand the ideology plus the more normal geopolitical actors. From a conventional military standpoint, iran still is very much defensively oriented. This is where it becomes, you know, frustrating at times for people to deal with this very aggressive destabilizing iranian Foreign Policy that we have through its proxies, combined with a very weak conventional military that is still i think fundamentally deterred by the u. S. And its a reminder that the degree of leverage that we have. 2016 also appears to be a fundamental inflection point, however, where iran is looking at potentially shifting to a more offensive conventional military. Thats being driven, i believe, by wars in syria and iraq, where iran is looking at potentially building a different type of military. Also what i looked at in digging into irans Defense Budget and its approach to acquisition and research and development, that its what i consider the discretionary defense spending and investment is actually somewhat rational, especially when youre looking at investments that are not tied to existential fights, like what you have going on in syria right now. And i think this is actually an important tool for policymakers, when theyre looking at the how theyre going to respond to iran long term, after the implementation of the nuclear deal, that you can understand, if you know where irans gdp growth is going to be, if you have a sense of where oil prices are going, and you understand where irans threat perceptions are, whether its looking at mainly fighting the u. S. And israel, or its mainly looking at regional wars against rivals like saudi arabia or others, or is mainly looking at nonstate actors like isis or al qaeda as its main threats, if you understand these basic variables, you can anticipate where iran may be needing to put most of its money when it comes to, is it going to buy new airplanes, is it going to buy new ships, is it going to invest more in its missile program, will it be buying most of its stuff from russia or will it try to build most of its stuff indigenously. These really Big Questions about where to put all those millions after the nuclear deal, which is of course an important issue for us now, i think you can actually understand those broad patterns. From my own research, iran tends to spend its money in a fairly rational manner when its not tied to what i call the existential fights like we have in syria. Finally i would say that the u. S. Has an overwhelming influence on irans strategic decisionmaking. This is something i cant drive home enough. And i think that for the u. S. , as were looking at what to do, i think that we have to remember that iran has chosen to make us their number one enemy. This is not something that we necessarily we did not create this situation from our perspective. They chose after the 1979 revolution, from an ideological at some point, to make us their enemy. And they have created from their strategic thinking, they build their military, first and foremost not only to protect their own regime, to protect them from counterrevolution, from their own people, but to protect themselves from us. And we still have that degree of influence over their threat perceptions, any type of war that we go to with iran. We control escalation, and we have to remember that. We can shape the resources that go into their defense industry. Theres a whole spectrum of capacity that we have. And i think this is something that in many ways should give us greater confidence in approaching iran, and that we should not look at iran as ten feet tall you know, and recognize that iran poses a very significant threat to stability in the region. But we can approach things, i think, with greater confidence and with greater strategy, and frankly in a smarter way than we have in the past. Thanks, matt. General trask . Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and fred, thanks so much for inviting me to represent Central Command tonight. I only wish someone had written this monograph then for us to use as a tool. Because obviously im no iran expert or a middle eastern expert, but i am a military planner. So from my perspective, tools that we can use to understand our adversaries are critically important to us as we try to provide options for our government and for our secretary going forward. And i think thats what this product does. Any time you have an opportunity to get into the minds of your adversary and try to understand decisionmaking processes on their side, it allows you to prioritize your planning in a way that you couldnt do otherwise. And particularly with iran, thats particularly important. I took a few specific things away from this as takeaways from a socom perspective. I will remind everybody that socom is in a support position to centcom for iran planning. Within the department of defense, centcom is in the process of going through another drill at this time on what our way ahead needs to be from a dod perspective on iran. Socom certainly contributes to that. One of the things we bring from socom is a global perspective on several issues. The reach of Iranian Networks is certainly one of them. And thats one of the ways that our analysts and our planners can help centcom in that regard. A couple of particular things that jumped out at me as important takeaways. You hit off the bat on probably the most important one, and that is that if you understand the mindset of this particular adversary, their activities are going to be predictable. And most of the time youre going to be able to look at this, there is enough body of evidence since the revolution of 79, to prove, i think, as you point out in the monograph, that their actions are going to be predictable. And the fact that they dont match up to a rationale that we easily understand in the west doesnt mean theyre not predictable if you spend enough time understanding the mindset, what the important aspects are to the regime, what they will do anything to fight for and what are what you call conflicts of opportunity versus ones that are conflicts of survival in their minds. And that allows us as planners to develop a list of options for our leadership that are focused on that. The second big takeaway that i had is kind of related to that. And its the idea of proportionality. And that was something that we struggled with a lot when you and i worked together, because it didnt seem proportional. It may have been a symmetric iranian response to whatever the issue was. But at least in their mindset it was proportional most of the time. I think thats an important thing that we can use in understanding how the United States actions will affect iranian activities going forward. So thats a probably even more important element as far as planners. Now, either way, we have to plan for as many eventualities as possible as military planners. Thats central to anything we do. At socom we had to prioritize our planning efforts. Were going to continue to plan primarily against that network of proxies and Unconventional Warfare that iran pushes out away to create that buffer for the regime that you describe in the paper very well. And thats going to be the focus. And i know theres been a lot of discussion on whether increased Defense Budgets in iran are going to lead to a greater emphasis on the conventional military capability. But i think you hit it off the bat when you said that iranians are going to be driven by what they perceive as the threat, more than anything else, properly more than budgetary opportunities or limitations. And so thats the piece that we can still manage the same way, even if they chose to put more money in their defense spending, and particularly on the conventional side. Right now, i think for us, and particularly i think your paper supports the idea that for socoms perspective, were going to stay focused on those proxies and networks and the reach that iran has well past syria and yemen, but into africa and south america and europe as well. Again, thats part of the nature of my commands charge to look at these problems from a global perspective. And i think thats going to be kind of one of the key takeaways. The last point im making, and it has to do with the last section of your paper on developing an Industrial Base and whether or not its even possible for them to reallying is significantly increase the capability of their forces. Ill tell you, particularly in the last few years ive worked in the socom area on our budget and how we develop our decisionmaking process on what we buy, that takes a long time to change. Youve got to really build a significant infrastructure. And right now, i tend to agree with your conclusion that thats unlikely to happen. Even though its possible, and as i said, as military planners, were going to make sure that secretary mattis and the president have options in either case. But our focus right now is going to be with an expectation that theyre going to continue to push, and if anything, increase defense dollars in iran are likely to go toward increasing that network, looking for ways to expand it. Weve already seen evidence of them taking units and officers out of the conventional side that are working with the irgc in syria. That may be an indication that theyre looking to push on that side with the defensive nature of their conventional forces, we dont see that being a major change anytime soon. Anyway, i thought as a tool, the paper is extremely useful. Well make it mandatory reading with our planners down in tampa going forward. And as i said, i wish we had had it a few years ago. I look forward to the discussion and your questions. Thanks. Mark . So i approach the iranian question first of all, thank you for having me here today from a former fleet commanders perspective as navsent. I also spent time in baghdad, and the malign activities that were going on were striking to me at the time. And then in my most recent military assignment as the Deputy Commander at Central Command, and there is a consistent theme. In fact for those of us who have studied this and watched it closely since the 79 revolution, weve seen these spasms of increased tension, with decreased tension, kind of an ebb and flow. And from a western mindset, it seems like its a very difficult thing to either anticipate or predict. From a navy perspective, they are very much focused on the asymmetric. They like mines, they like small boats, they like a lot of different small small submarines. And so the main thing in my mind as a former fleet commander is how do you prevent miscalculation. Nobody wants to go to war with iran. Nobody wants to have miscalculation. How do you prevent that, at the same time not taking the first strike . When i was a Strike Group Commander a few years ago, when i was in the gulf, the then fifth thrfleet commander said, okay, i dont want you to take the first punch and i dont want you to start a war. Somewhere in this spectrum of potential activities, and people would ask me how frequently do you interact with the iranians . And it would be on a daily basis. Is there is a marked difference between the irgcn and the irin. Weve had regular vessels render honors to u. S. Navy vessels. Theres an entire spectrum. The vast majority of our interactions, quite frankly, has been routine and professional. And then youll hear us refer to it as not routine or unprofessional or aggressive or that sort of thing. In the big spectrum of activities, we watch it closely. Youll see contradictions in the midst of the runup to and subsequent to the nuclear deal, actually the escalations and some of the activities, some of the malign activities have increased. There has been interdiction of forces and flow into yemen, for example. Were seeing a lot of the Coastal Defense cruise missiles. Iran from my perspective has always been very much devoted to proxies and to asymmetry. And they are the masters at keeping it just at or just below the boiling point. And so its a home game for them. And we have Rotational Forces that come through. And so its always very important that you get your the Commanding Officers and the action officers on board ships and in aircraft to make sure that they understand how to handle this situation and to always be in a place where youre prepared. As was previously mentioned, we have a very we have a dominating ability to escalate and to control a situation. But at the same time, these are international waters, and theyre international airspace, in the case of the navy. And so they have every bit as much right to be at sea as we do. And so this is something that you watch very carefully. General mattis, when i was in fifth fleet, used to always challenge me, are you the boiled frog, are you the guy whos been in this hot water long enough that its now the normal . So its something that you make sure that youre not completely cooked, but at the same time, its something that requires thought and reflection on, every day. I thought your piece was really well done. And i too would add to toms comments about, it would have been really usef