Transcript

Why did the United States and Israel choose to strike Iran now – and what are the strategic consequences of that decision? What lessons have been learnt from Iran’s asymmetric response?

Can Iran’s protesters realistically leverage the current crisis for meaningful political change, or has the aerial campaign by US and Israel undermined their momentum?

How can Australia and other US allies balance alliance commitments with national interests in this conflict?

In this episode, Beth Sanner and Dr Rodger Shanahan join Justin Burke to discuss the drivers of the Iran war, and examine the broader implications for regional and global security.

 

(This transcript is AI-generated and may contain inaccuracies.)

Dr Rodger Shanahan

The world doesn't understand why the US has gone to war. The Iranian people are going to understand it even less. And when you're bombing them from the air for a number of weeks, even after they don't understand it, they're going to oppose it.

Beth Sanner

When you have a great power against a smaller power, of course you need to expect them to respond in a way that works for them. And as, you know, an insurgent power as it were, that's how I think of it. Of course they're going to go for these asymmetric things to increase pain.

National Security Podcast

You're listening to the National Security Podcast, the show that brings you expert analysis, insights and opinion on the national security challenges facing Australia and the Indo-Pacific produced by the ANU National Security College.

Justin Burke

Welcome to the National Security Podcast. I'm Justin Burke, Senior Policy Advisor here at the ANU National Security College. As is customary, we acknowledge the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people, traditional custodians of the lands upon which today's podcast is being recorded. This week, I'm thrilled to be joined by Beth Sanner and Dr Rodger Shanahan to discuss the war in Iran. Beth is a distinguished advisor here at the college. She is the former US Deputy Director of National Intelligence, a 35-year intelligence veteran, and now head of geopolitics for International Capital Strategies. Welcome, Beth.

Justin Burke

Rodger is a former Army officer with a PhD in Arab and Islamic studies. He has previously held appointments at the Lowey Institute and here at the College. He has operational and diplomatic experience in the Middle East and remains a regular visitor to the region. Welcome Rodger.

Justin Burke

So to briefly set the scene for this podcast, I sat with colleagues here just two weeks ago and we were debating the US military buildup in the Middle East that was taking place. And I guess the debate was whether it would result in a bold intervention as we had seen in January in Venezuela or whether it would be more akin to the subsequent Much Ado About almost Nothing, which was Greenland. I felt, on one hand, a President who had campaigned on not starting wars in the Middle East might feel constrained ahead of the midterms later this year in November from initiating such a war. On the other hand, if I may put it this way, President Trump's risk appetite seems to be growing with eating, and it seemed surpassingly unlikely that such a large force was being marshalled and not to be used. Suffice to say, unlike the Iraq war in the early 2000s, for example, there was no effort to enlist a large allied coalition, or indeed, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said when recently in Australia there was no prior consultation with allies like him. There were no UN presentations, and there was the barest of mentions in the State of the Union address just weeks ago. There are a plethora of explanations out there from the Trump administration, from various figures, providing explanations about why this has happened and why it's happened now. They range from providing an opportunity for the Iranian people to rise up, the suggestion made by Secretary of State Rubio that Israel was about to attack, the ongoing issue or long-standing issue of Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. And indeed that suggests that the US and Israeli strikes in June last year were not the end of that matter. So I might start with you Beth Saner if I may. Why did this war start? When it did and how it did?

Beth Sanner

I think that there will be books written about this to come and we don't really completely know, but here's what I think. I term this as a little bit incremental, a little bit opportunistic, and a little bit happenstance. So on December 28th, Netanyahu was visiting Mar-a-Lago and he and Trump talked. And the reports are that at that point he agreed, that Trump agreed with Netanyahu that Israel would have to deal with the missile program in Iran and that that strike would happen. The United States would agree to that. And that was thought of, since then Defence Minister Cassis said that was planned for mid-year. Well, that day protests broke out in Iran. But no one was really paying attention to it during this meeting with Netanyahu was kind of low level. And then it really started to take on a momentum of its own in early December. And I think President Trump was generally taken with the plight of the protesters and wanted to support them. And so he issued this support for them, we're locked and loaded, you know, we support you. And then on the eighth and ninth of January, a huge massacre occurred. President Trump came out again and said, rise up, help is on the way. But they weren't quite ready to do that. And so I think things got put off. But then the opportunity happened that, this is the opportunistic part, that there was a gathering in Tehran of all the senior leaders, ironically, probably to talk about the nuclear negotiations that had been going on up until that moment and to discuss what the offer was on the table. And it was, you know, something, it was a juicy target. I hate to say it that way. It sounds terrible, but it was a target they could not resist. And so they decided to go ahead and do the strike. And so I don't think they were really, you know, this helps explain why things weren't really planned completely. They were thinking about it. They were talking about it, but they weren't there yet, but then they were all of a sudden all at once.

Justin Burke

And just looking through that initial lens, Beth, of the millions of people that took to the streets in Iran in recent months, the tens of thousands that we believe were killed to suppress those protests. So, you know, prosecuting this war in the way that the US and Israel have, it isn't immediately obvious that the people who are seeking democracy, seeking regime change in their country, how that's going to connect up and how that's going to support them. Would you agree with that characterisation? Is it too soon to tell?

Beth Sanner

No, think it's true, at least at this point. I think it's very hard for an unarmed opposition or even for a Kurdish faction that has a limited geographic range to really go up against this regime as deep as the security forces are. So I think that, look, this was a promise. And I think that there are a lot of people who probably died as a result of President Trump encouraging them. I don't want to really say it that way, but I think that Iranian activists say it that way. Iranians in the country say it that way. And so there's quite a bit of disappointment. There was elation at the beginning of this campaign, I think, across a lot of the Iranian protesters and opposition. But I think that that is fading now. And President Trump himself has now publicly said that it's not likely that the opposition or the Kurds could succeed in separate notices that he's made. So I think that as usual in war, people are ordinary people, even brave people are the ones who suffer the most.

Justin Burke

Turning to you, Rodger, if I may, just looking through this lens of the protests and the Iranian people's aspirations and President Trump's encouragement to them and his belated military intervention, ostensibly to support their ambitions to create a space and opportunity for them to rise up for the only chance they'll have in generations, as he put it. What's your reading? Is it too soon to tell whether that is going to turn out to have been an insistence? Or as it appears in the very short term with protests, demonstrations in support of the new Ayatollah Mochtabah Hameeni who's been installed in that position, pro-regime demonstrations would suggest that maybe an aerial campaign is not the way to affect this support. What would you say?

Dr Rodger Shanahan

Yeah, listen, I think from the start, the idea about rising up was just one of about 10 reasons that President Trump gave in his six minute social media posts. So was very difficult to understand at the start exactly what this aerial campaign was about. Iran, for those people who've been there, is very complex country. It's 90 million people. It's a multi-ethnic, multicultural country, you know, the defining element for a large proportion of the population in their life experience is the 1980 to 88 Iran-Iraq War. And I don't think unless you've been there and spoken to people and seen the kind of historical reference points to it, including the Massive Believers Resistance Museum in Tehran, which is akin to the Australian War Memorial, how deeply felt Iranian nationalism is when they're put under pressure. So yeah, sure, people, large proportion of people want to be rid of the regime. The regime is not democratically elected regime and yet millions of people voted for the current President even though their choice was exceptionally limited. And we also know that year on year participation in presidential and parliamentary elections is going down and down. In the last presidential elections for the first time, fewer than 50 % of the people voted. But prior to that, even within the limitations, people believed that there was a degree of regulated choice. So they weren't dismissing the regime architecture totally, they would still participate within the constraints. That has been reducing over time as people just don't believe that there's any realistic prospect for change and the regime is so totally embedded that in so many parts of Iranian society that you won't worry about it because we can't affect change anyway. We also have to remember as well that military forces that we're talking about are largely conscript forces, including the Revolutionary Guard, because it's made in their best interests to, if you're a conscript, to elect to join the Revolutionary Guard, there are benefits, real practical benefits to doing that. And I suppose the other issue that we need to talk about is the notion that aerial bombardment of a country as large and with its recent and even pre-World War II history that aerial bombardment is somehow an encouragement to democratic uprising. I mean the idea to my way of thinking is it’s absurd and then asking people to, in that six minute social media posts that President Trump did to Revolutionary Guard and Army, lay down your arms and nothing will happen to you. Who you going to lay down your arms to? I mean, it's a disconnect with what he's asking is completely disconnected with reality. And that for the rest of people, you need to rise up, but rise up in support of whom? Who are you wanting to change in the middle of an aerial bombing campaign? The one thing that Iranians by and large want is national integrity in terms of geographic integrity and stability. Because in stability you can still live a life. Even within the constraints that the system imposes upon you, you can still live a life. So when you're getting bombed from the air for a couple of weeks, stability is something that you're going to get from the status quo, not from something that's imposed from without talks about Kurds and talks about other people being armed goes to the heart of your notion of national integrity and so you're going to oppose that from the start, bearing in, even before you get to the fact that the Kurds are geographically isolated in a small percentage of the population. So the two things are completely disconnected, the aerial campaign and what you want to occur on the ground, but not only that, the scene was set in that address to the nation by President Trump in that he said that there was an imminent threat, is why we had to go. But later in the speech, he said, this is not for now, this is for the future. There are so many disconnects in that speech. And the policy was incoherent to start with. So I think the world doesn't understand why the US has gone to war. The Iranian people are going to understand it even less. And when you're bombing them from the air for a number of weeks, even after they don't understand it, they're going to oppose it.

Justin Burke

And just staying with you for a second, Rodger, thinking about the Iranian military response, it has been interesting to observe that despite the decapitation of the regime, it seems that orders to fight on were distributed. People knew their mission as people were taken out, people replaced them and carried on, which was perhaps a different response to what we saw in June last year, quite a bit more restraint. And they have used this asymmetric kind of response against the rather expensive munitions that the US and Israel, at least initially, were throwing at them with the Shaheed drones and the uncrewed aerial vehicles and so on and so forth. Much cheaper, distributed, and very hard to stop it would seem.

Dr Rodger Shanahan

Yeah, listen, I mean, one of the many annoying things about this whole campaign is that the response from the Iranians was totally predictable. It's exactly how you do it. Directive control, or I think people are putting different terms on it, mosaic, defence, or whatever. Directive control has been taught in Western staff colleges for decades. The Iranians do the same thing. You just have to look in the region, how the Israelis and the Americans have this sense that decapitation strikes are big news. They're an immediate fill-up to the campaign to start with, but in reality they're not overly effective if you have directive control because if your idea is to stop the ability of your opposing forces to conduct operations against you, that hasn't occurred. And if the idea of leadership decapitation is to change the political system, the political system is embedded far more deeply in the national psyche in some instances or in the structures of the state itself. That simply taking away the leaders doesn't really have the effect that you think it's going to have. I think one of the reasons why the, sorry, one of the issues that the Iranians have done after that rather large leadership decapitation is they reverted to the constitution and keep on saying we're reverting to the constitution because there is a system in place. It's not entirely dependent on the leader. There is a functioning constitution that we refer to and that's what happened. The leadership group of three was established in accordance with the constitution. The assembly of experts has now met and they have appointed a person in accordance with the precepts outlined in the constitution. So the Iranian state is saying to the Iranian people, listen, we're not this kind of regime that rules without laws, even though in reality it really does. There's a constitution and we refer to the constitution and the constitution is there for all Iranians and we've simply followed it. So again, we keep on coming back to disconnect between the actions and the results that you think are going to happen on the ground. And that is really a misreading of the people in the countries that you're undertaking military operations in because at the end of the day, military campaigns are about the will. It's the clash of wills. Who is able to absorb more punishment? Who is able to see this campaign out politically? And at the moment, what we're saying is a misreading of the national will, of the Iranians, I think.

Justin Burke

And turning back to you now, Beth, I'm thinking about one of the strategies of the Iranians, which caught, according to reporting, some members of the administration by surprise, is the closing of the Straits of Hormuz at the time we're talking, still effectively close to shipping a major, major, major route for the export of hydrocarbons to the world. So to the extent that people in Australia are often very insulated from from war and from strife around the world. This brought it home very strongly to people. The prices at the pump immediately jumped. There are places in our regions who are not getting their deliveries of diesel, farmers saying, what's gonna happen to my crop? It's real. But I know you've looked at this issue of the straight. And many people indeed in Washington and in the national security community have looked at this for a very long time. Hence a little bit of surprise why some people were surprised that it was attacked. But step us through some of the second and third order effects that you're tracking.

Beth Sanner

Yeah, I think this is one of the underappreciated points in DC and in America is, you know, we're a big country and we're less dependent on the world economy. But some of these things have global, you know, they're global markets. And so there is an impact here. But I don't think we're paying as much attention as we should be to the impact around the world. And that has long term implications for U.S. interests. It has long-term implications for our alliances and it has long-term implications for our adversaries, which I think are in a much better position in terms of benefiting from all of this coming out as net winners, Russia in particular. But even China is able to withstand this and benefits in some long-term ways. And so I think that we are seeing the price of chemicals, petrochemicals, tires, all of these things, polyester. We're seeing disruption in factories in India. We're seeing restaurants closed down. You see rationing all across Southeast Asia. All of these things affect people's lives. I think that as you mentioned in the very beginning, the administration didn't collaborate, consult with, or convince anybody outside of a very small group of people in leadership in the United States on the rationale for this, or really because it was done so quickly, they did not take the steps to prepare for something that the intelligence community and the military obviously had been war gaming and thinking about as a potential for ever. And as Rodger said a little while ago, the Iranian response, when you have a great power against a smaller power, of course you need to expect them to respond in a way that works for them. And as, you know, an insurgent power as it were, that's how I think of it. Of course they're going to go for these asymmetric things to increase pain. President Trump likes to say that certain countries have no cards. Well, even the smallest countries, this proves again, have cards to play that have impact.

Justin Burke

So turning back to you, Rodger, just on that issue of cards to play, Australia is fond of saying that we have this hundred years of mateship with our US friends, with our alliance, that we have participated in every conflict alongside them. In this instance, our participation seems very modest and perhaps, you know, perhaps we weren't consulted and invited in the way that we have been in the past. Do you see Australia's position changing or escalating or indeed do we have too few cards to play in this situation?

Dr Rodger Shanahan

I mean, least in every country works in their own national interests, Australia's no different. In the 2003 Iran-Iraq war, I think Prime Minister John Howard had a different view of Australia's national interest and understood which way the cards were going to fall and that it been telegraphed a fair way in advance what was going to happen and he thought it was in Australia's national interest to contribute to that in a very restricted way. I think things are entirely different now. There's no doubt about the strength of the relationship, but I think in Canberra and elsewhere people don't trust President Trump. He's been quite dismissive of the ideas about alliances. I think most people understand he's got less than three years in office and so they can essentially wait him out. The Wedgetail was an interesting issue because it's been portrayed as a defensive measure and at the request of the Emirati government with whom we have close relations. And unlike President Trump or all administrations, you can't wait out the Crown Prince or royalty in the Gulf. They're going to be around for decades. So your calculations are quite different. The Amirates have been quite good to Australia in terms of assistance. And so I think it was a rational decision on Australia's part in acceding to a defence request from the UAE and that would satisfy broader issues about being seen to provide something, but not as part of the US alliance, something outside of it. So I think it turned out to be quite a neat solution from Canberra by satisfying a regional friend, but not being part of the US-Israeli war effort. And so as with Prime Minister Albanese, as he does many times, he has a good nose for local politics and also the foreign minister has a good understanding of how the world works and so they've been able to, I think, navigate this one quite well but I think that will be the limit of Australian participation.

Beth Sanner

Can I just jump in here? You know, the real question that President Trump is now putting to allies is that they should be the ones to reopen the strait, that they should be the ones to put naval forces into escort ships, almost like, I think, phrased in a way that it's their obligation to do so. And so I do think that a lot of countries are going to become under increasing pressure to add some sort of forces, but this is not an easy or potentially cost-free in many aspects. I mean, the risks to such escorts would be very high. And so again, I think these are real questions. I don't know if, Rodger, you have a comment on that.

Dr Rodger Shanahan

I mean, yeah, I mean, it's interesting. There's two aspects to it. There's the, does Washington want to come knocking hard at somebody's door, knowing what the answer is probably going to be. So sometimes you don't ask a question if you're not sure what the answer is going to be in diplomatic circles. I think the other practical thing is it's not like contributions of air assets. So the Wedgetail was announced and then was going to be there seven days later with all its personnel. Naval assets take time to prepare, take time to transit even if they were to sign up to it, it's gonna take some time to get there. Then you have to coordinate them. There's a big disparity between force deployment, how many actual ships you can escort. So there's gonna be a lag. So it's not a silver bullet. It doesn't bring down oil prices just because you send some ships there who arrive, know, a week and a half or two weeks from now. So again, I think it comes back to what Beth said before, it's the lack of preparation, not preparing the ground before you undertook military action and I think that comes back to the idea of hubris. They thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was because they probably underestimated their own coercive power and underestimated the reaction of Iran, which in both instances, again as Beth said, the US military and the US intelligence community have war game this a million times as have the Iranians. it is really of no surprise about how it has played out. But, yeah, it seems to be a big surprise to the decision makers in the White House.

Justin Burke

And just keeping my Canberra hat on for the moment, Beth, I'm, you know, I think it's true to say Australian government is always alert to alliance implications and we look intently at the experience of others. And there have been some very, very, very difficult experiences of allies in relation to the Trump administration in the last year, but even really recently looking at the Brits in relation to this conflict. I think a very legalistic instinct from the British government led them to deny use of British bases in the early stages of the conflict and attracted the President's ire. Australia, once again, seems to have handled things just very slightly more skillfully and avoided ending up in the crosshairs. But it is an anxious time for allies, would you agree?

Beth Sanner

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you see even Prime Minister Maloney taking a very similar stance to the Spanish, although, you know, using slightly different words. But the bottom line is that, you know, she does not want the joint base in Italy to be used for offensive purposes. And why is that? Because the domestic political situation in Italy is not in the same place as the Trump administration, you know and supporting this operation is an unpopular move. And, you know, you have Chancellor Merz also very much very carefully skating this line, Macron, but we have Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi coming to the White House this week and I don't know this will broadcast before after her visit but it's something that we have to watch a very difficult controversial meeting. Now and look with South Korea: we moved the THAAD missile battery, air defense battery from South Korea. That is a huge deal. The South Koreans paid an enormous political price for acquiescing to US behaviour or pressure on that. And now we're taking it away from them. There are some real questions in the Asia Pacific alliances about whether the United States is going to have first the firepower, given how much we have expended, it's for years in the hole, and whether we're going to have the wherewithal, the interest to come to their aid. You know, I think that they're just really big things that we haven't seen really the end of yet.

Justin Burke

Well, staying on that, Rodger, a comment from you.

Dr Rodger Shanahan

Yeah, sorry, just I mean, there's one. I go back to that, the Iraq war in 2003. And it was interesting with because the stakes were quite high in terms of alliance partners, contributing forces and Prime Minister Kretien, I think at the time, took a rather bold move and did not provide Canadian forces for the US invasion of Iraq, but essentially doubled down to a degree in Afghanistan. And his speech in parliament essentially laid out the reasons why he took that decision and with the benefit of hindsight, he was spot on 100%. And they took some hurt for a period of time, but he obviously understood that the strength of the, besides the due realities of Canada, the strength of the relationship is far stronger than just the temporary residence in both their capitals and I think in Australia's case they'd be doing the same thing that very strong relationship it's stronger than the individual occupying the presidency or the prime ministership. It's deeply unpopular in Australia for its domestic audience. So I think they would rebuff approaches by Washington and say, well, listen, if there's any hurt that comes out of it, I think history will prove us right in the short term. And it'll be in less than three years time, there'll be another occupant of the White House and we'll just readjust the relationship because the relationship itself is strong, strong enough to outlast decisions of particular incumbents.

Justin Burke

And just staying with that analogy for a moment of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the other aspect that occurs to me is the mission accomplished banner that was unfurled on an aircraft carrier somewhat prematurely. And I think it underscored for those that forgot the dictum that the adversary always gets a vote. So in terms of concluding a war, it's one thing to say “we've concluded”, but your adversary also has a say in that and as it showed in Iraq, it can be made to drag out painfully and longer than anyone would wish. So looking at this issue of how this might end, Rodger, what do you see?

Dr Rodger Shanahan

Well, it's one of the things in favour of making a clean exit is, said before, your error campaigns don't have a history of changing too much on the ground in terms of governance. But they're, just because they're easy to start, they're actually also easy to stop as well. So you can declare mission accomplished, put out as many target lists that have been eradicated as you want, and then you can exit, not politically, but militarily quite cleanly. Very difficult in a land campaign because much different beast, you have to pack up the equipment, the optics of troops leaving on a ship or on planes with the mission not accomplished. That is just bad visuals to start with. Nobody really gets to see the planes take off or land. If you stop the bombing missions, you just stop the bombing missions. So, and that's part of the frustrating thing about this, I think, and why it's very, very hard to predict because there's only one person who's gonna be able to say, when it's going to stop and that's President Trump and he's very difficult to read. You can rest assured whatever whenever he decides to stop, victory will be claimed and they'll point to a whole range of metrics as to why victory was achieved but at the end of the day geographic permanence means that the Gulf States, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Iran, will still have the same structural faults that had before this bombing campaign started. And so things will have, the dire will have changed a little bit, but not dramatically.

Jason Burke

And indeed you can cease bombing and Iran can keep the Straits of Hormuz closed, right, for perhaps further days, weeks.

Dr Rodger Shanahan

Yeah, potentially, but then you risk handing a victory to Iran. So I don't think the bombing would stop before that bit was guaranteed.

Jason Burke

Right. Beth, turning back to you, this issue of the criteria by which President Trump may decide at any time really to stop this war, to declare victory, to spell out the achievements and to end the bombing. Many people have come up with this or have repeated this construction of markets, munitions and midterms. I think we've talked a little bit to the market impact of oil and inflation and some of the second and third order consequences. Munitions are also obviously being expended and being redeployed from really key places in the Indo-Pacific, as you've pointed out. And the midterms are looming. It is worth noting that Vice President JD Vance has been particularly quiet in terms of vocally supporting this war. You've had Tucker Carlson come out against it. You've had Joe Rogan come out against it. There's a lot of aspects of the MAGA base that are really deeply uncomfortable with what's going on. What do you think the algorithm for President Trump will be?

Beth Sanner

You have that on the one hand, but then you have some other things that are causing the president so far to be doubling down. And that is once you wade into a war like this, there is a real risk that you leave things as bad or worse than when you started. And one of the big concerns is can he pull the plug when Iran's fizzle material, this over 400 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium is still inside Iran and not accounted for. I mean, we think we know where it is, but the risk is that you leave a remnant regime led by a supreme leader that in my view actually was a bit of a break on the nuclear program, and leave it to people who now have every reason to pursue a nuclear weapon. And at the same time, you're also giving a victory to the regime because just leaving and stopping, if they survive, that is victory in and of itself. So I think that, and then you have the risk of Israel continuing with or without us. And of course, the president could probably stop that to some degree. But I think that as Rodger was saying, you have everything in that formula where the structural tensions in the region remain and the prospect for another round of war starting again is quite, quite high. And this is why I think that the Gulf States right now, you know, are actually saying, “finish the job”, but none of us really know what that looks like at the end. What does that mean? Chaos? Does that mean a complete collapse? I really don't know. And I'm not sure that they will stick with that. I'm not sure we will stick with that. But, you know, so far the president is making noises that he wants to stay until the end, but I still think we just don't even understand what the definition of that is.

Dr Rodger Shanahan

Yeah, I I fully agree with that. I would just add one thing in that there is obviously, for all the right reasons, this focus on the nuclear material. But one of the lessons that Iran has learned, besides the fact that there are, with the exception perhaps of the nuclear issue, no red lines anymore, there's direct attacks against Iran, direct attacks by Iran against Israel, Gulf states. The one thing Iran has learned in that proxy forces are still useful, not as useful as they used to be. Nuclear ambiguity or nuclear capability, that argument is going to be one that's going to consumed, I think, regime remains in place for the next period of time. But the one lesson if you're Iranian, Iranian military would have learned is that your aerospace forces are your ace in the hole. So you would double down on your aerospace forces of all types. That's giving you strategic reach, whereas before it was potential, now it's actual. You have shown the ability to maintain a military response over an extended period of time using a combination of rocket missile and drone types you'll have learned so much over these last two weeks about targeting. And so the regional states will understand that. So I think one of the problems now is that for future US administrations, even if Iran is talking about the nuclear issue as a negotiation point, rockets, missiles and aerospace forces are now going to be, how do you deal with them? Because now your negotiations not going to just be about nuclear because nuclear is potential but hasn't been used. It's the other forces that have been used and are far more effective because you can use them at a lower cost and you can use them for a much more extended period of time. So Iran might well be in the future happy to negotiate away its nuclear capability, but double down on its aerospace capability and the threshold for using that is far lower. It's as effective if not more effective than a one-off nuclear capability because that guarantees the destruction of large parts of your own country whereas aerospace forces come at a much lesser cost but are much harder to regulate. I think that's the big issue that is going to focus minds in the coming years, it's Iran's aerospace forces, not necessarily the nuclear forces, because now they've used them, they've learned how to use them, people in the region know the impact they can have, and that's going to be the burr in the saddle for years to come.

Justin Burke

And if I may direct the last question to you, Beth. Thinking about this question of lessons being learned, it is not just the regional participants and the neighbouring countries that are watching and learning. Many of us are interested to kind of to see what China is going to conclude and is going to learn from it. And it's worth noting that underneath the headline news in recent days and weeks, has been reports of really energetic building of islands in the South China Sea. again, Antelope Reef, if you haven't heard of it or looked it up, I expect to hear more about that as people's attention returns to the Indo-Pacific. But for Indo-Pacific watchers, we do feel ourselves a little bit like Godfather III, always getting pulled back in to the Middle East. But when our attention returns to this Indo-Pacific region, the one that matters the most to Australia clearly, are you going to be facing a potential adversary in China who has learned things from witnessing this current conflict?

Beth Sanner

Absolutely. They have their best intelligence ships sitting right there in the middle of all this, observing, recording, using AI to do their own updates on their war games with very specific and precision questions about flight times and reaction and all of the things that they're seeing. So a huge intelligence bonanza for China and to fill gaps and prepare for any potential future military confrontation. And at the same time, seeing that the United States is going to be probably not only more gun shy after this, which I think we will be, but also we are going to be less prepared in terms of hardware for quite some time as a result of this. So you know, military people use the phrase, ‘attiring future capabilities’. That's exactly what we're doing. And I am very concerned about that. And I'm very concerned about, you know, we have all these promises. You know, I think that Taiwan is already in the hole, about $20 billion in terms of systems that they have purchased but have not yet been delivered. Well, when will those be delivered? These are the very same systems that we are using today. And it's the same with Japan. You know, there's a lot of purchases, Philippines, whatever. And so I think that there's going to be more diversification. Countries are not going to be forced just to buy U.S. military kit, which we have tried to do over the years. But where is that going to come from? So I think quite complicated and also, you know, maybe it's not all going to be a straight line. I think that we'll have to see how middle powers respond to this and if they can get their act together to be a little bit more in control of their own destinies because I think that this is the lesson they're going to have to learn.

Justin Burke

Well, that's all the time we have for this week. I'd like to thank my guests, Beth Saner and Rodger Shanahan for illuminating, if not uplifting conversation. But I and our listeners thank you for your insights and for your time.

Dr Rodger Shanahan

Thanks, Justin.

Beth Sanner

Thank you.

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