Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Michael Allen
Michael Allen is a Managing Director at Beacon Global Strategies, co-host of the NatSec Matters Podcast, and a former NSC official who ran intelligence strategy and counter-proliferation efforts and discusses escalating tensions in the Middle East.
Episode Summary
s the United States about to launch military strikes against Iran? Former National Security Council official Michael Allen joins One Decision to discuss escalating tensions in the Middle East, revealing why he believes President Trump will soon authorize joint US-Israeli military action against Iran.
In this episode, Michael Allen analyzes:
Why Iran negotiations may be doomed to fail
Putin's negotiating strategy and the Donbas sticking point
Europe's slow response to Trump's defense spending demands
Michael Allen is a Managing Director at Beacon Global Strategies, co-host of NatSec Matters Podcast, and a former NSC official who ran intelligence strategy and counter-proliferation.
Show Notes:
A Second Wave of Popular Anger Is Building in Iran | WSJ
The Critical Importance of Ukraine’s Fortress Belt in Donetsk Oblast | ISW
Hosted by Sir Richard Dearlove (former MI6 Chief) and guest co-host Sabrina Singh (former Pentagon Press Secretary).
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Transcript
COLD OPEN
Allen: The president is doing what he does best, which is trying to ratchet up the pressure on Iran. If this administration does strike,
Singh: will the protesters view that as in support of their movement?
Dearlove: Why does the president keep taking his foot off the accelerator letting the pressure off Putin?
INTRODUCTION
Singh: Hi, and welcome to One Decision. I'm your guest cohost Sabrina Singh. I'm joined by One Decision host, Sir Richard Dearlove. Global power is shifting, and it's shifting fast. Will The United States intervene in Iran? Will there be a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine? Breaking it down for us, we welcome Michael Allen, who is managing director at Beacon Global Strategies and co-host of the podcast Nat Sec Matters. He is a former National Security Council official who ran intelligence strategy and counter proliferation. He is also a White House veteran, and he can tell us what these flashpoints mean for Western security. Michael Allen, welcome to the show. Of course. Well, there's a lot to get to, and I want to jump right in with something that the president actually announced on Tuesday. He told Axios that he is considering sending a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Middle East to potentially prepare for military action against Iran should negotiations with Iran fall through. And we would love to get your thoughts on what this means and what considering even sending a second carrier to the Middle East could mean for the region.
INTERVIEW
Allen: Well, thanks again for having me, and it's an honor to be on with you and certainly Sir Richard. I think the president is doing what he does best, which is trying to ratchet up the pressure on Iran. He has staked out some very hard asks, well, I guess we would call them maximalist asks of the Iranians. But I think the president nonetheless has some feeling that the least that we could accept doesn't get anywhere close to what Iran could possibly offer. I think he's probably moving it in because he needs the firepower and he wants at least as much firepower in the region as was there during the twelve day war in June.
Dearlove: Isn't there a sort of conceptual gap in the way that we believe the negotiations to have been set up? As far as I can see, the Iranians are trying to, as it were, run the clock down and talk only about nuclear. But on the other side, the president, Netanyahu in particular, who has, of course, a strong interest, it's about support for, let's say, Shia groups in Iraq. It's about the missile capability of Iran. It just seems to me that at the moment, they're not really negotiating about the same things. And you and I know well through the experience of the JCPOA that the Iranians are really pass masters at spinning stuff out and not, as it were, being pinned down where they think they're at a strategic loss. I mean, how do you see that?
Allen: Well, I think you're exactly right. I remember they made a big deal about even coming forward to negotiate with The United States on their nuclear program, and they had made clear through the years that that didn't mean that other parts of the regime's business were up for negotiations. And so I'm not surprised that they're trying to stick to their guns here and say that ballistic missiles and state sponsorship of terrorism is something to be negotiated on. I think that was briefly why the collapse failed when they were supposed to go to Oman and they were briefly derailed, then they were back on. So, I see this as something the Iranians see as sort of core to who they are. It's a character of the regime. It's resistance against the great Satan of The United States. And I have a hard time seeing them being able to give much on those two issues, just as I don't really see them being able to even give us a symbolic forswearance of uranium enrichment. So, I think they're really tough. I think being tough is part of who they are, and I think almost they would rather take another beating from the air from Israel and The United States than be seen trying to compromise on what they view as core issues.
Singh: We're sort of in an interesting spot right now too because all of this is coming because of the widespread protests that we saw in Iran. And of course, this administration has now pivoted back to the idea of, you know, dismantling entirely their nuclear program. On Wednesday of this week, actually, Prime Minister Netanyahu is headed back to the White House. And, actually, it's been reported that he moved up his visit for a week. I'm curious, Michael, what you sort of make of this visit by the prime minister, why he's coming now, and what you think some of the conversations will be like in the room of what he's going to urge President Trump to do when it comes to Iran?
Allen: I think he's coming with the express purpose of trying to make sure that President Trump does not strike a deal with the Iranians. The Israelis see this as absolutely an existential issue for them. They of course violently opposed the JCPOA during the Obama administration. And they believe that on nuclear or the other issues we just discussed, any so called deal with the Iranians would be shambolic. And they want to make sure that Donald Trump and his sort of zeal to get a lot of agreements in pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize doesn't get carried away and try to do a JCPOA for terrorism or missiles. And I think that's why he moved his trip up a week, and he very much wants to make sure that the plan, as they discussed it recently, is still on. And that is, and I still believe it's on, that is a joint strike between the Israelis and The United States on Iran in the very near future once I believe The United States has finally set the theater with enough firepower to get the job done.
Dearlove: Michael, obviously one of the other important points on the agenda strategically is the whole future of the regime in Iran. Do you think that they would mount a direct attack to try and knock the regime over? I mean, one can understand what the targets might be, and during the twelve day war, it was rather more, you know, a direct aerial conflict with Iran. This would be, as it were, an escalation. And the supreme leader, following the sort of massacre of his own population, must be in a very, very fragile position. How do you see this playing out now? I'm thinking about the impact on the internal politics of Iran.
Allen: I've been discussing and thinking about this question as well. I've been proceeding under the idea that in June the newspapers reported that the Israelis wanted to strike the Supreme Leader, but the Trump administration talked them out of doing that. There is some difference of opinion in the Israeli security establishment, whether that much is true or not. But to me, that helps sort of inform what each of the leaders' attitudes might be going into this potential military phase. I still believe the Israelis, if they had a shot at the Supreme Leader, would take it much like they did when they had Hassan Nasrallah in their sights and successfully killed him deep underground. I'm not sure the president wants to go in that direction. I think he wants to get in and get out very quickly. I don't think he wants to be seen as trying to own regime change per se. I think he liked it much better when there were many, many tens of thousands of Iranians on the street. Unfortunately, we missed our opportunity to strike around that time, but I think the president wants to be able to give the protesters a shot in the arm, maybe call these punitive strikes against the regime, and maybe he's kind of shifted the goalposts a little bit to something that is more countable, which are, here's how many ballistic missile sites we got, or here are additional, let's call it nuclear weaponization research and development labs that we've found since June. So maybe he's trying to get into a place where he can claim that he's been successful. Because if he only had so called instruments of regime repression, like the IRGC and the Basij, and it doesn't lead to regime change, some will say that's a failure and Trump doesn't like that idea. So, I've been wondering all along, well, maybe we're switching the target set a little bit here, more in line with what the American people already understand better and something that's easier for me to be able to say, you know what? We achieved something. We substantially degraded their ballistic missile stockpiles, which is of course the reason the Israelis were looking before the protesters to hit the Iranians in this calendar year.
Singh: Well, you raise a good point on the fact that this administration, when The United States led that Operation Midnight Hammer, targeted those three nuclear facilities in Iran. I remember the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, came out and said their nuclear program has been completely destroyed, or I think he used the word obliterated. And, obviously, you know, General Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, hedged his language a little bit more. But I'm, you know, you raise a good point about these protests. And I just wonder if this administration does strike, whether it's nuclear facilities or something that, you know, aligns with the nuclear program or ballistic missile sites, will the protesters view that as in support of their movement that they were, you know, had launched starting in December? Because I do think you're right. We sort of missed that window when, you know, Trump could have initiated some type of action that would have been a sort of a direct response in support of those protests. So I'm just curious if you think, you know, striking larger military targets is actually going to feel like the protesters feel like The United States actually has their back right now.
Allen: It depends and it's hard to say. I mean, The Wall Street Journal, I tweeted out an article they had the other day, which was signs of new dissent in Iran. I thought it was fascinating because I thought it was a little early for people to be speaking out after the massacres. But one of the things the article said, and of course this is anecdotal, but it was that Iranians are looking up to the sky all the time, wondering when The United States is going to hit Iran because the protesters, the people feel like they needed a boost, a shot in the arm to help them. So, I still think that the protesters would interpret a US strike as on their side and against the regime, even if it were ballistic missile bases. But at the same time, I can still see us hitting, for example, the IRGC or this neighborhood thug operation called the Basij. These are the people you recall who were on the motorcycles with billy clubs beating up protesters in the past. So, I think they would interpret some action by The United States as pro people.
Dearlove: We have the Saudis basically saying publicly, well, you know, we want to avoid a conflict in The Middle East. But on the other hand, if we're being pragmatic, it's significantly in Saudi's interest if this Iranian regime is knocked over. Certainly, it occurs to me that the president might well be tipping off Salman before he takes any military action. I'd be keen on your interpretation of that.
Allen: Well, I agree with you. I think he would definitely let the crown prince know what we're up to. I think it's in the longer term interest for Saudi Arabia for the Iranian regime to collapse. However, of late, I've noticed that the Saudis seem to be really worried about just general instability in the Middle East. When the crown prince came here, he talked a lot about Sudan. I don't think the administration was ready for a long conversation on what a civil war might yield in terms of refugees and instability coming into Saudi Arabia. It's definitely, I think, part of what Saudi Arabia's plan is, as they intervene or try to back regimes elsewhere in the Middle East because they fear instability. And all of that leads of course to their decision, which I think they've made pretty clear now is they're not ready to recognize Israel. So in general, I think they think these are a lot of unstable regimes. There's a lot of war making and fighting and proxy wars, and things are just not in the right moment to have another major revolution. So, I think they're a little nervous and they pause about something big going down right now, but I totally agree with you. They're still enemies essentially, and they won't be shedding too many tears if they were to go down the drain sometime soon.
RUSSIA AND UKRAINE
Singh: Well, transitioning over from The Middle East to Europe, I want to discuss what's happening with ongoing negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, specifically what's going on with the war and Russia's economy. We know that this war has taken a huge impact to the inflation, fuel shortages. On top of that, we are seeing what is likely after four years of war, nearly 2,000,000 casualties between Ukraine and Russia. So, Michael, I'm just curious on your thoughts on where you think the war stands and really the impact this has for the Russian economy.
Allen: The relative incremental gains that Putin makes for the loss of sometimes 30,000 troops in a month is prohibitively high for about any other regime in the world. And it's shocking that he still continues. I even read last night that the casualty rates for the Russians are getting so high, it almost eclipses how many people they're able to recruit per month. And you're right about the economy. I've tried to read all of these hundreds of articles in some way where they could all be true. I think it is that in the medium term, the Russian economy will be wrecked. They have done nothing on innovation or technology, or they've turned their economy into a complete wartime economy. So I think they can still keep chugging along as long as the Chinese are buying their oil, but their days are numbered. This isn't going to go on forever. But I don't know that Putin today feels like he's pressured enough to make a real deal with The United States. I still think we need to figure out some way to prevent the Chinese. It would be helpful if we were still transferring arms to the Ukrainians, but at the very least, we need to be, of course, selling them like we're doing by way of NATO. But the other thing is that we ought to be selling them or sending them long range precision strikes because when the Ukrainians were doing that recently, that was one of the biggest things that I think the Russians noticed in terms of their oil and gas revenue going down. Some of their infrastructure had been blown up. So, I agree with you. The troop costs are too high for almost anybody else in the world, but as long as Putin thinks he's making a little bit of progress and not feeling sanctions or real battlefield pressure, then I think he continues to stumble along because he believes that at the end of the day, Trump is more likely to pressure the Ukrainians than he is the Russians. Now I'm aware that Trump has sanctioned Lukoil and another Russian oil company. So I don't want to say that President Trump's done nothing, for a while there we had the Indian purchases as well that were prohibited, but it feels like we could do more and we could begin to sort of condition Putin into believing it's his turn to make concessions and not just pressuring the Ukrainians to make concessions like giving up the Donbas.
Dearlove: The common question I get asked in Europe the whole time, Michael, is, you know, why does the president keep, as it were, taking his foot off the accelerator, letting the pressure off Putin, encouraging him with sort of a negotiating process, which makes everyone rather worried, but Putin optimistic. And it would seem to me that the one thing that Putin would understand is sustained coercion on his regime, and at the moment we just don't seem to have that.
Allen: I don't think it's fair for when people say, well, President Trump just loves Putin and loves dictators. I think there's something to his worldview from when he was in the 1980s that the Soviets, now the Russians, there's something to them and we want to be able to have good relations with them. He definitely likes to deal with leaders he believes can deliver their whole country, and that's why you see him skeptically talking in his national security strategies about European governments that are not even in a majority coalition. So, there is something about wanting to deal with the big leaders, but I also believe that because he wants a deal so badly and almost doesn't care about the actual elements of the agreement, that he looks at the Russians and he looks at the Ukrainians and he says, who's easier to pressure? And he thinks, well, the Ukrainians are easier to pressure because they're smaller or they're more desperate or they're not the mighty Russians who might be having some trouble now, but will always be a big force in the world. And so I think he looks and says, and that's who I should pressure because that's the quickest way to A to B. That's the fastest way to get a peace agreement. And I really think at times the Europeans and others have talked him out of that and explained that the Ukrainians just can't surrender territory politically, militarily, or constitutionally. But he keeps coming back to that fundamentally because I think he thinks it's just easier to pressure them than he does the mighty Russians.
Singh: You know, Sir Richard and I were talking about this earlier this week about how, you know, Putin is such a master negotiator and manipulator. And so he, I think, also, like you said, sees this as an opportunity to just continue to run down the clock. We know that it's going to take a significant amount of time for Russia to gain control of the Donbas, but I think Putin certainly views time on his side, which brings me to the question of these, you know, negotiations that keep happening or that have been organized by The United States between Ukraine and Russia. It does seem like that the largest sticking point, which I don't know how there's going to be any resolve, is the Donbas area. And I'm curious on how you think these negotiations could move forward into some type of ceasefire agreement that both sides would be willing to accept. Or do you think that both sides are just going to be so dug in on this issue, on the issue of territory, that this is not going to get resolved, especially under the kind of timeline that Donald Trump wants, which has been reported that he wants it done by June of this year?
Allen: So, you can imagine that I'm obviously partial to the Ukrainian point of view, but when you actually look at the territory, and I read these reports like everyone that the Institute for the Study of War have produced, the Ukrainians can't possibly give up what's called the Fortress Belt. And if they give up this high ground, if you will, if the Russians are allowed to achieve at the negotiating table that which they're having awful trouble achieving on the battlefield, and leap over all of these fortifications, they would have an easier pathway to Kyiv over the long term. So, I think that's why the Ukrainians are saying, militarily, this would be ridiculous. By the way, our constitution is against it. And even if you could get around that, it would be political suicide for anyone who suggested it. So, I kind of get all of those arguments at once, but the Ukrainians are being smart about this because they don't want to be seen as the obstructor in President Trump's eyes. And so, they've said, well, what if we backed off a little bit and the Russians backed off by the same amount and we made this into a DMZ, a no man's land? Maybe. Let's talk about that. Putin's rejected it. Now Trump's adopted his own version of, well, why don't we turn this into an economic zone? Which is classic Trump. Let's develop the land. And of course, the Russians have said no so far. So, I think the Russians are the ones that have the ridiculous objective here, which is to gain territory that they don't even control. I mean, it's one thing for all of us at the end of this to shrug and admit to ourselves that on a de facto realist basis that the Russians aren't going to give up territory that they've already conquered and ship it back to Ukraine. But it's quite another to say that Ukraine must give up territory which the Russians don't even hold. And I even asked ChatGPT how often this has happened in history. I mean, it depends on how you phrase the question, but it's not often. That's the way I see it. Ultimately, I think Putin will just keep chugging along because if he takes a kilometer a day or something, that's in his, he thinks that's terrific and he'll get there because he doesn't care about casualties and he's at least got his war economy humming on Chinese oil and gas revenue.
Singh: ChatGPT, the new national security analyst.
Dearlove: I think what's interesting really, and this is probably very frustrating for Trump, is we're very close to an impasse. I mean, no deal, continuation of the war. I mean, someone recently described the trench warfare around Pokrovsk as the battle of the Somme renewed from the 1914 to 1918 war. The other thing I think we all understand, this war can't go on indefinitely because neither side have got the resources to sustain it. The sticking point is clearly the Donbas, and I didn't see any sign whatsoever of the Ukrainians giving up on, you know, their intransigence over the Donbas. Who would blame them for that position? It's exactly been consistent. So, I mean, I do find it depressing that, you know, despite the probing and the discussions, actually, nothing's really changing at the moment, except both economies are suffering hugely. And, of course, the human loss is staggering, particularly on the Russian side. I guess that's not a question. It's a sort of statement of depression. You're so experienced in the national security field. I guess both of us are. We haven't confronted globally a situation like this in living memory, really.
Allen: Yeah, I think it confounds us. We're in the West, and while our governments, our countries have sustained horrible casualties in the past, this one just seems needlessly intentional, especially on the Russian side of things. I think the others, the Ukrainians really respect life more like you would expect us to in NATO and beyond. But I remember when I visited Ukraine a couple of years ago, we were all probing with the group, what are you going to do? How long is this going to go on? And several people from different walks of life more or less had the same answer, which was, if we give up now or accept some symbolic peace agreement, we are passing on this problem to our children and our grandchildren. And we're here, we're here now. We never wanted to be here. We're in the fight of our lives. But I don't think they believe that if they struck some sort of temporary agreement with the Russians at President Trump's insistence that it would do anything. It would just mean, and I believe this myself, that it would just give Putin more time to reconstitute and come at them again later. I think they've internalized that as a people, and that's part of the Ukrainian resilience story, which is going to be one of the most notable aspects of this when it makes the history books.
Singh: Pulling on something that Sir Richard said about things being a bit depressing, I think some of our European partners and allies certainly feel that US priorities have shifted during this time. And in fact, you know, sometimes they're not even at the negotiating table or invited to the negotiating table, and we're talking about, you know, the larger Europe here. And so a question for both of you is how do The US and Europe disagreements affect the chances of a ceasefire? Or how do you think they might actually give Russia an advantage here?
Allen: Europeans have done a good job with President Trump in the sense, especially Mark Rutte, but others as well, of making the European case. Now, I know it's frustrating for the Europeans to have to come over here or call over here constantly to try to keep The United States on side. But I think it's been effective in explaining to the president that the Ukrainians, just as we discussed earlier, can't very well give up territory that the Russians haven't taken and that would leave them in a really weak military position. And I mean, I'm one of the Republicans, of course, that still values, very much values our allies in NATO and the great history that we have with the Europeans. But I'm glad in a sense, I don't think we needed to do the whole Greenland episode, but I'm glad in one sense that this has really gotten the Europeans' attention and that the Europeans now have religion. And I don't mean The UK, of course, I mean more of the continental Europeans finally have religion on reconstituting their armed forces. We in The United States may have wanted to dominate the spending scene after it or during the Cold War so that we could call the shots, but now I think most people agree in this age of geopolitical competition, we need a stronger Europe.
Dearlove: I agree with Michael, but I think the one thing that the Europeans need to do, and Michael's being rather polite about this, they need to go a hell of a lot faster, and they need, as it were, to spend more money on defense more quickly. The bellwether lead country is Poland who've done a great job and the small Baltic Republics, but they're not big enough really to count. And the Germans are getting their act together. I mean, The UK is doing okay, but, you know, we're being really rather slow at increasing even to 3.5% of GDP. And in my view, we need to hurry to 5%, and that means launching spending programs now. But, of course, this is such a sensitive issue in Europe. And I'm not here talking about the EU. I'm talking about the individual nations because it implies quite significant cuts in the welfare budget. And, you know, we've had a European sort of Indian summer where the American taxpayer has taken the burden of defense whilst European governments have been over generous to their own populations on social security. And, of course, this is tremendously potent issue socially and politically, and you can understand the problems that some governments are facing. But, I mean, Michael's right. They've made a good start. Trump was rough, but he needed to be. And it's one of the areas of his policy which I think has been extremely positive. The question now is, you know, get your foot on the pedal and push the accelerator hard and get it off the brake. And that's not really happening as quickly as it should, except in Poland, we'll make an exception for the Poles. But I mean, you know, part of my career previously, I've been in Central Europe. I spent time in Czechoslovakia when it was one country. I've been back to those areas, and it's a very different story if you're sitting on the front line very close to the Russians than if you're in Spain or Italy or even The UK where you're farther away from the problem. But my God, there is real anxiety amongst the national security professionals. If you take someone like the Czech Republic, they're really, really worried.
Allen: There's a way for us to do this, and it doesn't involve, in a sense, pulling out too quickly. I mean, we have to be able to hand the ball over. And by the way, we're reconstituting our defense industrial base over here as well. And it's hard and not going, I mean, it's going. I don't know if it's going that well.
Singh: It's definitely something that this administration has been focused on with the defense industrial base and sort of speed and scale and emphasizing that across defense contractors, but also just, you know, new startups. I think there's certainly a push, not just here, but also I think, as you both said, Europe is now turning attention to this as well with more force. What is the one decision that you're watching for this week?
Allen: I guess I have to say it's when does Trump pull the trigger on Iran? By the way, I mean, we sort of alluded to this earlier. I think there are many reasons why Trump's going to do it. I think he doesn't want to be Obama who seemed to sit out the green revolution. He doesn't want to be like Obama in the sense of not enforcing a red line. The president's had nothing but success with the use of military force, so I don't think he has any internal pauses about that. And he doesn't really have any inhibitions of late on many of the things that he's doing. So, I think in his mind, even before you get to the policy and security aspects of this, I think President Trump is going for it. So, to me, it's just a question of when. The other thing I could say, I guess, is when does President Trump realize or decide whether the Iranians are being serious or not? And I guess I would put that in there as well, but I still have this belief that the Iranians, the minimum that they could give us is nothing that we could even get close to.
Dearlove: I think that's a hugely important prediction that Michael is making in terms of the balance of the evidence. I actually agree with your analysis. I think it's much more likely that we're heading towards some sort of intervention in Iran, and it'll be very interesting to judge what Netanyahu says after his forthcoming visit to the White House. So watch this space.
Singh: We're sitting on something that is pretty dynamic. Well, we'll continue to watch this space. Thank you, Michael, for joining us today. We really appreciate it.
Allen: Well, it's been great being with you, Richard and Sabrina as well. Love talking about these issues. So let's do it again soon. I loved it. Thank you.
Singh: For conversations with leading decision makers and thinkers, check out onedecision.com and our YouTube page where you'll find additional commentaries, conversations, and explainers. I'm Sabrina Singh. Thank you for listening.
