Petraeus on Iran: "We Haven't Learned Enough From Ukraine"

General David Petraeus, former commander of US Central Command and former CIA director, sits down with Seth Jones at CSIS to assess the US-led air campaign against Iran - its successes, its limits, and the risks it has unleashed. While the military strikes have been impressive in dismantling Iran's air defenses and decimating its missile capabilities, Petraeus warns of a growing drone threat the US is ill-prepared to counter - and points to Ukraine as the unlikely teacher America should have listened to sooner. From surging oil prices and a paralyzed Strait of Hormuz to the quiet maneuvering of Beijing ahead of a US-China summit, the conversation maps a world where every front is connected and the margin for error is shrinking.

Seth Jones: How is war and peace likely to evolve in the Middle East? How is the character of warfare evolving based on what we're seeing in the Middle East and Ukraine? What are possible implications for China and the Indo-Pacific? Today, I'm joined by General David Petraeus, retired US Army General, former commander of US Central Command and former director of the CIA to examine these and other strategic questions. We will examine hot spots and some of the major issues shaping the future of axis countries from the Russians and the Chinese to the Iranians. We will also talk about the state of US alliances in Europe, the Indo-Pacific and other regions. I'm Seth Jones and this is The Last Line of Defense.

The military campaign in Iran

Seth Jones: I wanted to start briefly with the situation as it's unfolding in Iran. What's your general overall assessment of how the situation is going and where it is potentially headed?

General David Petraeus: I think the military campaign has been very impressive in a number of different areas, but there are some emerging concerns that I'll highlight. What I want to do is just tick off what I think the military's missions have been and how they have done in prosecuting them.

So the regime leaders - obviously the initial strike was very impressive in that regard, taking out the supreme leader and a number of others. That has continued to a degree. The taking down of the Iranian air and missile defenses - again equally impressive. A lot of that was done back in the 12-day air war last summer, but this was crucial, and it was crucial that it be done early on so that we could use not just stealthy aircraft and maritime and air-launch cruise missiles, but so that we could bring in the big heavy hitters, if you will - the non-stealthy B-1 and B-52 bombers, some other non-stealthy fighters in addition to the F-35 stealth fighter-bomber and obviously the B-2 stealth bomber. So again, I think very impressive in that regard.

We have been going after the missile launchers, missile stockpiles, and now even missile manufacturing sites equally impressively. There still are missiles being shot, and that is a concern because over time there starts to become concern about the missile math - in other words, how many missile launchers and missiles do they have left and how many missile interceptors do we have left. We know that over time that could be of greater concern, so the emphasis is still to take down as many of those as is absolutely possible, noting that the number of missiles launched against the Gulf States, Israel, our facilities and so forth is down by some 90 percent.

The drone threat and Ukraine's offer

General David Petraeus: An emerging area of concern is that of drones. The military mission here is both to defeat those drones if they're launched, to defend against them, but also to go after their launch sites, their stockpiles, and even their manufacturer. Now, there are a lot more of these, needless to say, than missiles. A lot of them are stored in underground tunnels. So this is a challenge, and it's a particular challenge because it doesn't appear that we have quite the magnitude of counter-drone capabilities that I think certainly with hindsight would be the case. And this is one where I don't think we have learned as much as we should have from what Ukraine has had to learn, sometimes much of it the hard way.

What you definitely don't want to do - and I described this in an article at ForeignPolicy.com this past week - is to shoot a missile interceptor to take down a drone. The missile interceptor costs two million dollars at least, more for some of the others - that's a Patriot, THAAD, and the SM-3s are more expensive - and that is not a good exchange against a drone that costs at most 30,000 dollars. So this is an area that I think there's going to be considerable additional focus, and it's been great to see Ukraine actually call the countries in the region and even the United States and volunteer to send some of the drone interceptor teams that they have, this kind of capability that they've built up.

Seth Jones: And just briefly, I know you've been recently in Ukraine. They have a lot to give, I think.

General David Petraeus: They do. They have a very comprehensive counter-drone and anti-ballistic missile defense system. There's radars, there's acoustic sensors, they have heavy machine guns, they have lights, they have electronic warfare, and they have these drone intercept teams. I went out on a mission with them late at night from Kyiv, about an hour and a half out, and watched them - in the end, train - because no drones made it that far that particular night. But that could be of considerable help to us. They have very low-cost, very effective drone interceptors, and the pilots are exceedingly skilled as well.

Naval forces and the oil crisis

General David Petraeus: Another target set - the naval forces. Again, very impressive, taking down over 40 of the ships. But there still are mini-subs, speedboats, and a number of others that could cause problems when, if and when, we start to escort tankers through the Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz, which may be needed sooner rather than later given the increase of the price of Brent crude. It's well over 100 dollars. It was way over that at one point during this trading session, and that has an enormous ripple effect. It's not just the price of gasoline at pumps - and West Texas Intermediate has been accompanying it up - so the price of gas at a gas station will go up very considerably, but it's also fertilizers, aviation fuel, all kinds of other uses of crude and also natural gas. And keep in mind that 20 percent of the world's crude and 20 percent of the world's liquefied natural gas come out through the Gulf. So the fact that it's not moving right now is of increasing concern.

Nuclear infrastructure and regime change

General David Petraeus: Also going after remnants of the nuclear infrastructure and ensuring that whatever might be left is inaccessible - and that's ongoing. And then there are additional targets against regime leaders, regime forces, headquarters, even major police stations, logistical bases, and the rest of that. And then even some that might help create conditions beyond all that we've talked about here for internal political change, noting as President Trump did after the initial remarks - which focused on regime change - recognized that we can't bring regime change ourselves through the air. This will have to come from the Iranian people, maybe breakaway forces, although we're not seeing signs of that just yet, to be sure.

And we should keep in mind that the regime forces are not modest in size. They are a million men with weapons who have shown a willingness to kill their own citizens - tens of thousands of them in the January demonstrations alone - and imprisoned many tens of thousands more. So this is a very formidable regime capability, and it's not going to be taken down by small elements of the different minorities in Iran. It would require a very substantial force with real leadership, real command and control, real logistics, and all the rest of that. And we aren't seeing signs of something like that emerging just yet.

The size of Iranian regime forces

Seth Jones: By the way, on the size - you're talking about the IRGC, you're talking about the Basij, you're talking about a large number of forces including MOIS and Iranian intelligence. Who else? What are the other sizes of the forces?

General David Petraeus: So again, the regime protection forces. Obviously, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps - that's over 150,000. Basij militia, which are the pipe swingers on the street with weapons, actually gunning down their own people - that's over 200,000 before they call up reserves. The Artesh, that's the regular Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines - 400,000. National Police are 250,000 alone. And then, as you mentioned, even the Ministry of Intelligence has 25,000 it can put on the street.

So again, do the math. It's roughly a million people before mobilizing or calling up the reserves, which is particularly something that the Basij militia can do. Very substantial force to be taken down if they all remain loyal. And that's not implying that all will, but it would take an awful lot to defect to take down such a substantial force.

And we of course just had a new supreme leader selected. Very disappointingly, it appears that it's going to be another hardline ideological cleric because it happens to be the son of the previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei - and this is now Mojtaba Khamenei, who we sanctioned, by the way, back in 2019.

Boots on the ground?

Seth Jones: One follow-up question here. You talked about the size of the regime forces. There have been some discussions - we've heard them in a range of places, including frankly on CNN - highlighting potential boots on the ground, whether it's small numbers of US intelligence and/or special operations forces operating even under Title 50 authority. What is your general sense of the challenges along those lines? What kind of partner forces they'd even embed with? People have talked about the Kurds, for example, but there would be huge challenges there, and the Kurds in general aren't part of the Shia majority in Iran. How do you see that landscape?

General David Petraeus: First, I think the president has been right not to take this off the table. I think it's unwise for presidents to prematurely take something off that should give pause to the enemy, even if we don't think we're going to do it. A number of presidents in the past have very prematurely given those kinds of statements, or announced a drawdown date when we didn't need to do that in advance to the enemy, or set a red line that when it was crossed did not take action.

So again, I think keeping that as an option on the table is wise, but I'm sure that every one of the contingencies they're examining for the use of boots on the ground - or even sneakers on the ground - they're looking at and asking: is this really truly worth the risk, and could it really truly bring about regime change, or do further damage to stockpiles of 60 percent enriched uranium buried deeply under the destruction of the Esfahan nuclear facility. I wouldn't rule the possibility out, but I think that each case that I could envision, when looked at, is probably one where you say - is the return on that particular investment worth what it might potentially cost us.

Seth Jones: Any thoughts on who and what kinds of local forces in Iran the US or Israelis or others would even work with?

General David Petraeus: Well, there are minorities, well known. These include the Iranian Kurds, there are Azeris, there are Baluch, and there are Sunni Arabs. But these are all small elements, and even if they could take control of their own area, I'm not sure that would be sustainable over time, nor actually wise. I think President Trump has at least implied that civil war in Iran is not one of our objectives, that the effects on the region would be so negative that that is not something that we should promote or support.

No organized opposition

Seth Jones: And I would suspect too, with the size of the force that still exists in Iran, any opposition group that attempts to stick its neck out would run huge risks too and being slaughtered.

General David Petraeus: Well, and the problem is you don't have any organized opposition group. It was remarkable to see the numbers of people on the streets demonstrating, but there was no leader of that. There's no headquarters, there's no chain of command, there's no logistics, there's not even any weapons. So again, remarkable that the people were so upset, frustrated, outraged by what the regime has brought their country - which is poverty at home and isolation abroad. But at the end of the day, that frustration will not all of a sudden turn the demonstrators into a military capability that can be wielded, led by some charismatic leader, to take down one million men under arms who are willing to be very brutal.

Spreading of the conflict: Hezbollah, Houthis, Iraqi militias

Seth Jones: General Petraeus, I wanted to move a little bit. We talked about the Strait of Hormuz, we've talked about the Iranians and the security forces. We know that the Israelis have been pretty active in Lebanon, including with Hezbollah. What is your sense about potential additional spreading of this conflict? I'm thinking in particular of the Houthis in Yemen - they were active last year, the Saudis and the Emiratis have been heavily involved in fighting the Houthis in Yemen. What about the Shia militia in Iraq and other locations? Most of them have been relatively quiet so far. Your sense of whether that's going to continue or whether that changes?

General David Petraeus: Hezbollah has conducted some pretty substantial attacks on Israel, and I think very unwisely, because that has given Israel an excuse to hammer them again, and that is exactly what Israel is doing, including in neighborhoods in Beirut, the capital, also in the Bekaa Valley. So they're going way beyond where they did before. And again, I think a big miscalculation by Hezbollah. If anything, I hope that it helps the Lebanese government pursue further disarmament of Hezbollah for the damage and destruction they're bringing on their country.

The Houthis in Yemen - I do think will cause trouble around the Bab el-Mandeb as they have in the past. There may be some retaliation against them for that, but I don't know that this is going to be that substantial. And keep in mind that you can always go around Africa rather than up through the Suez Canal if the Bab el-Mandeb is threatened. It does add time and cost, but it is not that dramatically different, and the markets priced that in pretty quickly the last time.

Hamas of course is very much contained by Israel. They're still roughly the same size they were at the outset, but much less capable, and certainly I don't think they want to give Israel any more excuses for hammering them in that part of Gaza where they still are the most guys with the most guns.

The Iraqi Shia militia have been carrying out some attacks - in some cases, I think, at bases where we no longer have forces. I'm not sure they got the news flash that we had evacuated.

Seth Jones: That's ok, actually.

General David Petraeus: But not in vast numbers. There has been some reaction to them, there have been strikes on their locations throughout Iraq and so forth. But this is not by any means a game changer. It is very irritating, it's frustrating, it's difficult and it could cause casualties. But it is not by any means the main event.

Syria: a strategic shift

General David Petraeus: And then of course Syria is no longer an ally of Iran. It's a huge loss for Iran because it deprives them the land route to go from Iran through Iraq across the territory of Syria and then down into the Bekaa Valley into southern Lebanon to help reconstitute Hezbollah. So that is no longer possible for them. It's a strategic shift, even as we watch the new leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, who interestingly was a detainee in Iraq during the surge when I was the commander, and quite an interesting interview when I sat with him on stage at the UN General Assembly last year and discussed his rather circuitous route to the presidency of his country.

The Quds Force threat outside the region

Seth Jones: Just wanted to add one more question since there have been some concerns about the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force activity and threats even outside of the region. I think when you were CIA director, there was the plot to target the Saudi ambassador at Cafe Milano.

General David Petraeus: That was the case in which the Quds Force operative tried to hire a hitman in Mexico, and happily the hitman he hired was a Drug Enforcement Administration source. So his direct flight from Mexico City to Tehran made a little detour, landed at Kennedy International Airport, and the FBI was waiting at the ramp to take him off that plane.

Seth Jones: Any sense about the threat posed by the Quds Force?

General David Petraeus: I think it is one about which we should be concerned. Over the years, they have demonstrated a capacity to carry out an attack in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe and Latin America, have tried again in North America, and it's an ever-present challenge, but I think not a very significant one. The cyber threats I think are more significant, but those are generally actually against individuals - in fact, I've been a target of those. Certainly we should be very wary. There have been assassination plots. I think that the former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is a target of one of those, I know John Bolton is high on their list.

Seth Jones: President Trump was on that list too.

General David Petraeus: That's exactly right. So again, this is a time where "see something, say something" should be very much in effect, as the old DHS slogan used to say. But it's not something over which people should lose sleep - which you might do over the price of Brent crude, you might do over the damage to the business model of the Gulf States, and so forth.

Russia's role and the sanctions vote

Seth Jones: We have mentioned a little bit the Russians. Look, what the Russians are doing to help Iran target our facilities, our bases, and civilian infrastructure in the Gulf States should be more than enough to be a catalyst for the final vote on the sanctions that are sitting in the Senate, which Senator Lindsey Graham supports.

General David Petraeus: Senator Lindsey Graham supports it, 90 of 100 senators are supportive, and we need to get that approved in Congress and to the White House for signature because this is the best evidence yet of the kind of malevolent activity that Russia is pursuing against us, not just against their neighbor Ukraine.

China between a rock and a hard spot

Seth Jones: Your sense of how this war is being viewed in Beijing right now? I suspect that based on China's reliance on Gulf oil, they've got to be pretty careful here.

General David Petraeus: They are. They're between a rock and a hard spot. They would like to help Iran. They have some degree of affinity for Iran, as they do obviously for Russia and North Korea. But at the end of the day, the bulk of their oil comes from the other side of the Gulf, and they certainly cannot be seen as providing weapons to Iran for use against the Gulf States or even American bases on their soil. So they are essentially offering rhetoric but not much else.

And keep in mind as well that China very much wants to have this summit go forward in Beijing within a month or so, and both sides - US and China - are being fairly cautious in what they say and what they do. For example, the US has delayed the announcement of a 12-plus billion dollar arms sale to Taiwan to make sure that the summit goes forward, and China is showing some degree of similar restraint in that regard.

Europe's response and the element of surprise

Seth Jones: What is your sense about how helpful the Europeans have been over the course of the war? There's been some administration criticism of the British for not responding quickly enough.

General David Petraeus: First, my understanding from a very highly placed member of the British government is that they gave authority to use Diego Garcia and another UK base very early on - much earlier than has been publicly announced. The French now want to allow us to use their bases in the region because of course Iran hit one of the French naval bases in the region. The Germans have been quite forward-leaning, the NATO Secretary General has as well.

So yes, there was some initial hesitation by different countries. And frankly by the countries of the Gulf - the Gulf States did not allow us to use their bases because they wanted to sit this one out, they did not want to be seen as overtly supporting the US and Israel. And in return, Iran has hammered their civilian infrastructure. And so that also in a way has driven the Gulf States to be more supportive of our campaign, and some even starting to hint that they will join in the offensive operations - perhaps even freeze Iranian reserves in Dubai, for example, in the case of the United Arab Emirates.

I mean, it is worth noting that the US's NATO allies as well as American companies operating in the region were not given a heads-up, understandably, that the US and the Israelis were going to strike targets. There was exquisite intelligence, and if there had been early warning to even the embassies about what was going on, it would have rippled out, it would have eventually leaked, and it might have prevented acting on this precise intelligence that appears to have been in place when the initial strikes were launched. So the element of surprise was actually quite important and quite considerable.

Seth Jones: Just ask the former supreme leader.

General David Petraeus: Well, I can't ask the former supreme leader now.

The state of the "axis"

Seth Jones: One last big question. When this administration came in, there were certainly concerns about an axis - the Chinese probably the lead, the Russians, the Iranians, the North Koreans, even Venezuela to some degree, and Cuba. What is your sense about the state of the axis right now? If you look at the Russians struggling in Ukraine, up at nearly 1.3 million casualties...

General David Petraeus: Killed and wounded, more than we took in all of World War II.

Seth Jones: You look at the Iranians right now, which are struggling. Venezuelans lost Nicolas Maduro. Cubans are partially being asphyxiated now, particularly with oil and gas from Venezuela. What's your sense of the state of the axis right now?

General David Petraeus: Well, it's under enormous strain. But we should also recognize, coming back to the Gulf, that the drone threat as I mentioned is a challenging one, and so is the lack of freedom of navigation through the Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, which has pushed the price of Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate well above 100 dollars per barrel when they were down in the mid to low 60s just a few weeks ago.

Looking ahead: sanctions, China summit, and the Indo-Pacific

Seth Jones: Last question, General Petraeus. Sort of an indications and warning question. As you look over the next few weeks or months, what are you looking at? What are the potential surprises we might see?

General David Petraeus: I'd love to see the US join the EU in substantial sanctions on Russia, which would put enormous pressure on their economy even though they're getting a windfall out of the increase in oil prices. They were supposed to be limiting those prices for Russian oil and gas. I think we're going to give an exception to India, who had agreed to buy much less but now, because of concerns about the market price, there will probably be an exception for India and so forth. And so I'm worried that that could give new life economically to a Russian economy that is going to run out of its national welfare funds this year, which it's been using for its military-industrial complex, and struggling to a degree to recruit and to sustain this war even if they do achieve very incremental gains but at extraordinary losses.

What we need to do if we want serious negotiations about a cessation of hostilities - it has to start with Vladimir Putin looking himself in the mirror and recognizing that he needs a cessation of hostilities as much as do the Ukrainians. And the way to do that is with further sanctions, further help to Ukraine, further crushing of the economy and restriction of the revenue that they're able to get.

In the Indo-Pacific, I think the dynamic here is how cautious both the US and China are already being in actions that might prevent the big summit meeting that both leaders seem very keen to conduct in a month or so in Beijing, and with the prospect of another one later in the year. And that actually is very helpful, because there are certainly those that say "oh, this is China's moment, the US is distracted, it's using up a lot of its missile interceptors, this is the moment where they could do what they want to do with reunification" - and I think this will mitigate the risk of that very considerably.

And in the meantime, we should look at what is going on on the ground and in the air and at sea in Ukraine and learn from that much more rapidly than we have done. And it would really start with enabling the Indo-Pacific to turn its vision - "hellscape" and so forth - into a reality that actually underwrites deterrence there even more effectively than we have so far, noting that deterrence is a function of two elements: potential adversary's assessment of your capabilities on the one hand, and your willingness to use them on the other. And we need to ensure that both of those elements are rock solid when it comes to the most important theater in the world for our country and for our allies, because that's where the most critical relationship is - between the US, our allies, partners, and China.

We are keeping a lot of plates spinning simultaneously around the world if you think of the plates as the threats, the challenges, the issues that we have to address. But there's one plate in that tent that is bigger than all the others put together, and that's the US-China relationship. It is described - our former National Security Advisor described it as severe competition. We have to be absolutely certain that that will never erupt into actual conflict because the effect on the global economy would be catastrophic.

So again, never lose sight of what the main effort is, even if half or more of our naval assets are in the Gulf, and a quarter at one point in Venezuela, and then another substantial amount of our air power as well. Don't ever lose sight of the mission that is most important, and that is the one in the Indo-Pacific, because that's where the relationship that matters more than any other in the world - or all the others put together - is at hand.

Seth Jones: Well, thank you very much for your time, appreciate it, and again welcome back to CSIS.

General David Petraeus: Great to be back, and thanks for this, Seth.