General McKenzie (Ret.) who led U.S. Central Command from 2019 to 2022, said specifically about Iran, “had we acted earlier and more directly, we might not have been in a place where we were forced to take action against [Iranian General Qasem] Soleimani in January of 2020.”
In a wide-ranging interview for Subscriber+Members, The Cipher Brief talked to the retired General as the U.S. is engaged–without boots on the ground but as a leading financial and military supporter–in two major wars.
In both cases, the nations receiving American assistance–Ukraine and Israel–have struggled to achieve their aims, and in the case of Israel, the U.S. is being blamed in many parts of the world for the extent of its support.
The U.S. is also leading a retaliatory campaign against the Iran-backed Houthi militia that has increased in intensity in recent days, with each new strike bringing fresh concerns about a looming conflict with Iran.
GLOBAL BACKGROUND
Houthis and the Red Sea
- Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have been attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea since Israel started military action against Hamas in Gaza.
- The U.S. and U.K. have conducted a series of strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen; the Houthis have said the strikes will not deter them from launching further attacks in the Red Sea.
- Iran is supplying the Houthis with increasingly advanced weapons and military equipment, including drones and long-range missile parts.
Israel-Gaza
- As Israel continues its military campaign against Hamas, some Israeli brigades have withdrawn from northern Gaza, while Israeli forces have surrounded the southern city of Khan Younis and say they are targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure in the area. This week the toll of Palestinians killed in the Gaza war topped 25,000.
- Israel is building a buffer zone along the Gaza border, despite U.S. opposition, to prevent future attacks from the enclave.
- The U.S., Qatar, Egypt and others are pushing for a new deal for a pause to the fighting and the release of hostages held in Gaza. CIA Director William Burns is set to travel to Europe for meetings with officials from those countries and Israel to discuss the deal.
Russia-Ukraine
- After a largely fruitless 2023 summer-winter counteroffensive against Russian forces, Ukraine is increasingly using drones to hit targets deep within Russia, including oil facilities as far north as St. Petersburg.
- While the EU works to approve new military and financial aid for Ukraine, and a Ukraine aid package founders in the U.S. Congress, Ukraine is working to expand its defense industrial capacity to support military needs and lessen dependence on foreign military assistance.
Taiwan Strait
- The U.S. destroyer USS John Finn transited the Taiwan Strait in a demonstration of the U.S.’ commitment to freedom of navigation. It was the first such transit of 2024. China condemned the mission for causing “trouble and provocation.”
- Tensions have run high between Beijing and Taipei since President-elect Lai Ching-te of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) won Taiwan’s January 13 presidential election.
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
General Frank McKenzie (Ret.), Former CENTCOM Commander
General Frank McKenzie (Ret.) spent more than four decades in the U.S. military, where he last served as head of U.S. Central Command, with responsibility for the Middle East, Central Asia, and parts of South Asia. He retired in 2022 and is now the executive director of the University of South Florida's Global and National Security Institute and the Florida Center for Cybersecurity. General McKenzie is also a principal member of the Cyber Initiatives Group and a Cipher Brief expert.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity
The Cipher Brief: You were CENTCOM commander during the strike that killed Iran’s Quds Force General, Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, and you wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal about deterrence and Iran. You said, "Even before Hamas' October 7th attack, Iranian forces were launching missile and drone strikes on our bases across the region, acting through proxies that gave them a measure of deniability. Our response has consistently been tentative, overly signaled, and unfocused." So, let's jump in right there. What does deterrence need to look like in the Middle East in order to be an effective measure against Iranian actions?
Gen. McKenzie: I think you begin by considering what is Iran's strategic concept, and I think they're looking at three things. The first is regime protection. They want the regime to survive and they'll go to great lengths to do that. The second and third priorities sometimes move back and forth in order: they aim for the destruction of the state of Israel, and they aim to eject the United States from the region.
This was going on well before the attacks on Israel by Hamas on October 7th. I would argue that, for example, in 2019, the Iranians had very advanced attack planning on U.S. installations and on other facilities across the region. Again, with the aim of pushing us out of the region. They launched a number of low-level attacks in the summer of 2019, including shooting down our RQ-4 unmanned reconnaissance aircraft. We chose not to respond.
Our responses were similarly muddled throughout the rest of the year. Iranian attacks were ramped up.
My argument would be, had we acted earlier and more directly, we might not have been in a place where we were forced to take action against Soleimani in January of 2020. So, that's the lesson I draw, that in matters of deterrence, in matters of establishing credibility with Iran, you're best to act early and you're best to act with a certain degree of force that the Iranians will know and understand.
The Cipher Brief: After the strike that killed General Soleimani, there was this expectation that there would be a much bigger response from Iran. Did that make you believe that his killing did in fact, deter Iran?
Gen. McKenzie: We struck Qasem Soleimani the night of January 2nd. On the night of January 8th, they struck our base at Al-Asad (in Iraq) with a number of short range ballistic missiles. We know the Iranians were trying to kill Americans in that attack. They were unable to do so, and their punch landed largely on air because we were able to reposition our forces after they had locked up their targeting, and they were not able to adjust their strike. What we saw then was the possibility of a large state-on-state attack dropped off.
We need to understand that the Iranians have always believed, and continue to believe to this day, that they can operate below a certain red line in Iraq and Syria to cause us pain, and they don't believe that we will respond to that.
The Cipher Brief: Israel's war now is well past the 100-day mark. Given what you've learned over the course of your career in dealing with terrorists, is it ever going to be possible for Israel to root out Hamas terrorists completely?
Gen. McKenzie: That's a very high standard they've taken as their policy, as their objective. And those actions are still continuing in Gaza. They're very incomplete as yet. There's still a lot of work left to do, but as you know, the Israelis haven't limited themselves to Gaza. When they find Hamas leadership, they'll strike it anywhere.
It is very difficult to root out completely a violent extremist organization. We found that particularly in the case of ISIS. Today, we are still continuing actions up and down the Euphrates River Valley, largely with our Kurdish partners in Syria and sometimes in Iraq to get after isolated cells of ISIS. And we should remember that we never said our goal was to completely destroy ISIS. We wanted to remove their ability to act internationally, to interconnect with other ISIS cells, and ultimately, for local security organizations to be able to handle the problem. ISIS is not dead yet either and we need to recognize that. It's not going to go away as long as the conditions that gave rise to the creation of ISIS remain.
The Cipher Brief: There's been a lot of talk and a lot of differences of opinion among Cipher Brief experts about the U.S. presence in Syria. With the increase in Iran's actions and attacks on the U.S. presence overseas, do you think it's a wise idea to keep U.S. forces in Syria at this time?
Gen. McKenzie: I think (the U.S. forces in Syria) have had a good effect against ISIS, supporting the Kurdish forces. Remember, we also sit on top of large prison populations and if we were to withdraw, those people would almost certainly return to the fight. And those are some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, that are in those prison camps. So, it's much more complex than just a purely anti-terrorist mission. It does tend to put a little bit of a blanket on Iran's ability to operate up there as well.
But the (U.S.) forces are in a vulnerable location, open to attack by Kata'ib Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, and we recognize that. I think over the last several months, U.S. Central Command has done a magnificent job in protecting our people that are out there, but these attacks are going to continue.
I think a reasonable case can be made that our military presence in Syria has outrun our policy objectives, and therefore it would benefit from a complete review of why we're there and what we hope to achieve. The troops in Syria are vulnerable. I will agree.
The Cipher Brief: You've talked a lot in the past about improving regional missile defense in the Middle East as another form of deterrence and working with allied partners in doing that. What else do you think can be done in terms of working with those allies and partners, given the situation in the Middle East and Israel's war in Gaza?
Gen. McKenzie: I think if you were to go out and quietly poll most Middle Eastern nations, they’d say the most significant threat is Iran. Aside from the proxy forces that operate, and I don't want to discount them, Iran's primary threat in the region is actually its ballistic missile force, its drone force and its cruise missile force. Over the last 10 years, Iran has managed to build up that capability to a remarkable extent. In fact, I would go so far as to say the real crown jewel in Iran is not the nuclear program, but really that capability.
The neighbors in the region know and understand that Iran has the ability to gain overmatch, certainly against its immediate neighbors. They can cause grave damage to Saudi Arabia, to Kuwait, to Bahrain, to the UAE, to our bases in the region, and they can reach out and strike Israel as well, although with fewer missiles. That is a very real threat.
So as nations in the region look at ways to respond to that, there's a great demand for the ability to build a common architecture for air and missile defense. The beauty of a common architecture for air and missile defense is that unlike ground operations, it doesn't require you to give up sovereignty, because really what you're doing is you're trading information. You're building a common operating picture that nations share. You share sensors, you share tactics, techniques and procedures, how to intercept forces. ‘Hey, we see something that may be headed your way, perhaps we can help.’
Now, obviously what's happening in Gaza is going to have an effect at the political level and how these discussions and arrangements continue going forward. But I think when it's all said and done, everybody in the region recognizes the existential nature of the threat that emanates from Iran. This is a good way to establish a collective security architecture within the framework in the Middle East. In the long run, I'm optimistic about where this will bring us.
The Cipher Brief: The US Navy's Fifth Fleet commander, Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, said recently that Iran was “very directly involved” in Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Can the U.S. reestablish deterrence without directly engaging Iran militarily?
Gen. McKenzie: The Houthis are a great success story for Iran. With a fairly small investment in human beings and equipment, they've created a monster down there that has wreaked havoc in the region. The Houthis have taken these weapons (from Iran) and the Houthis are good engineers. They've improved these Iranian weapons and they've employed them.
The Houthis, however, are not completely controlled by Iran. Just like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis make their own semi-independent strategic calculations, and they've chosen, for example, to come in heavily against Israel in the fight in Gaza.
The fact of the matter is their ability to hurt Israel is very limited, but they can have an effect on the operations of merchant shipping in the Bab-el-Mandeb [a strait linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden]. If you go through the Suez Canal, you're going to go through the Bab el-Mandeb, which is a really significant choke point. The Houthis have the ability to directly impact maritime shipping there, and they're doing so through the use of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones.
Now, the Iranians certainly are the moral author of these attacks. They don't dictate, however, exactly when and where they occur. What they have managed to do is create a significant crisis for us by closing a critical maritime choke point. A choke point that in our national security strategy and our national defense strategy, we rate as a very high priority to keep open. Because as we know, people on the other side of the world, probably in China, are looking at Taiwan, and are looking to see how we do and what we do as we respond to this crisis.
I would hope that one of two things occurs: Either we reduce their offensive capability to zero by destroying their missile launching sites, their radar sites, their command posts, the locations where they build these missiles, and if necessary, Houthi leadership. It's also my belief that if we continue to strike the Houthis, even at a very high level, it will not necessarily escalate. I don't believe that it follows naturally that striking the Houthis leads to Iranian misbehavior somewhere else, because Iranians are already going after us in Iraq and Syria and were doing so before this occurred. We can either take away the weapons or we can cause enough pain so that the Houthis stop.
The Cipher Brief: Let's transition to Ukraine. Some people are looking at Russia’s war there as a stalemate at this point. How are you looking at the situation in Ukraine–from a military perspective and how are you thinking about the strategic alliance it’s brought together among Russia, China and Iran?
Gen. McKenzie: I think the problem in Ukraine right now is that both sides are near exhaustion. We are at a near stalemate. The clock probably works more against the Ukrainians than it does for the Russians in this regard, because of the potential uncertainty of continued funding for Ukraine. I'm sure that Russia is looking to our presidential election and what potential political changes that might bring in the United States. We're at a difficult time.
The fact that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] continues to rattle the threat of nuclear weapons should be very concerning. As I look at problems in the world today, certainly what's going on in the Middle East is a great concern to everyone, but the greatest problem we face, I think, is in the Ukraine conflict. I think the possibility of war, large war, remains really more in Europe than in the Middle East, as I look at the two situations right now.
The Cipher Brief: Do you believe that Vladimir Putin would use a nuclear weapon? What do you think his calculus would have to be to make that decision?
Gen. McKenzie: I think for Putin, job number one is to stay in power and stay in control. So yes, I think he would use a nuclear weapon if that were threatened. But he's not being threatened. No one's talking about regime change in Russia.
It's hard to see what would happen to him personally if he were removed from power. I think he thinks about that a lot. So, I think that's how you get to a situation where you might see that used. I'm not saying he's going to drop a nuclear weapon on a city, I'm saying he might do a demonstration shot somewhere and say, "Look at me. I'm crazy." The next one may not be a demonstration shot.
The Cipher Brief: Given the stalemate there, do you see the possibility of Ukraine being forced into some sort of negotiated settlement?
Gen. McKenzie: All wars have to have a political end. Typically, a war that has a political end means nobody gets everything they want. I don't think either side is ready to negotiate yet, because Ukraine still thinks they can retake some territory, and because Putin is fully committed and he can't afford to appear weak. Will that change over time? I don't know, but I could see a political settlement there. But I see nothing to lead me to think that's in the realm of the possible right now.
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The Cipher Brief: Let's talk China. The Pentagon has said that China is the greatest national security threat facing the United States today. Do you agree? And do you think the U.S. is ready to militarily engage China if push comes to shove in Taiwan and they force a reunification there?
Gen. McKenzie: I do agree with the premise that our greatest threat, long-term, is certainly going to be a resurgent China. On the other hand, China also has to draw some conclusions about what’s just happened.
I think China probably drew some conclusions from what happened in Afghanistan, but they now have to draw conclusions from what happened in Ukraine, particularly about the relatively poor performance of the Russian army, and what that might mean for their forces. And they also have to think about the United States' ability to gather a significant coalition, which is, I would argue, our unique advantage, the advantage the United States has when confronting Russia, China, or North Korea or Iran, is our ability to be a convening power, to bring like-minded nations together to confront the threat.
I think our military is very good. If you fight China, it's going to be an “away game.” We all realize that, and it's also going to be a global game. But we have a significant amount of combat experience, China has none, and their military is largely built on a design that has not worked very well in recent operations.
The Cipher Brief: How are you thinking about the future of warfare–and is the US military adapting quickly enough to be ready for it?
Gen. McKenzie: For any military organization, the thing to remember is what Sir Michael Howard said: Whatever you plan for, you're going to be wrong. The key is to not be so wrong that you can't adjust to the new reality that will emerge. And that's a very humbling comment from a great historian.
Having said that, let's talk about cyber and space. Two domains that I think are going to predominate as we go into the future. For most of my career, space was a global commons where we got vast amounts of information. We were unchallenged in space. Our satellite constellations provided the vast digital downloads that we needed to build information, and no one was going to affect our ability to do that.
Now, we are challenged in space, principally by the Chinese, to a lesser degree the Russians, but other players as well. We cannot take space for granted anymore. That's a unique thing for the United States. We're adjusting to it right now, but we are intensely vulnerable in space. The ability to maintain that architecture of satellites that actually transmits information for us–if we lose it, it will hurt us, and people know that. So, they've designed–the Chinese in particular–systems to go after us to make it very difficult for us to operate in that space.
Then there's cyber. I would actually argue that cyber is a more complex domain than space, simply because the domain is limited only by the human mind. We have not yet fully explored it.
We have not yet developed protocols for operating effectively in it. And what we have not been able to do, I think, is talk about establishing deterrence in cyber, and how hard it can be to determine where an attack is coming from and who's doing it.
But as we look at warfare in the future, cyber and space are going to be absolutely fundamental to these new forms of warfare.
Cipher Brief Managing Editor Tom Nagorski contributed to this report
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