Suzanne Kelly: Good morning everyone. I'd like to welcome you to The Cipher Brief’s members-only webcast this morning.
Our topic for this morning’s conversation, Iran: On the Brink or Not. I'm pleased to welcome Norm Roule to this morning's webcast. Norm served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency managing numerous programs related to Iran and the Middle East. He served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from November 2008 until September 2017. In that role, Norm was the principal Intelligence Community official responsible for overseeing all aspects of national intelligence policy and activities related to Iran.
That also included IC engagement on Iran issues with senior policymakers in the National Security Council and the Department of State. Norm's service in the CIA's Directorate of Operations also included roles as a Division Chief, Deputy Division Chief and Chief of Station. He's held multiple senior assignments in Washington as well as during his 15 years of working overseas. He currently serves as a Senior Adviser to the Counter Extremism Project and United Against Nuclear Iran. Let's get right to it this morning. Norm, thank you for being here.
Norm Roule: Good morning, Suzanne. Thank you for having me this morning.
Kelly: Just to set the stage a bit and personalize this conversation, Norm would you mind just starting it off for us by elaborating just a bit on the National Intelligence Manager role and what that experience entails for larger government?
Roule: The National Intelligence Managers are meant to be the voice of the mission to the senior leaders of the National Security Council, the Intelligence Community Leadership, and warfighters. They are meant to work across interagency and functional boundaries to orchestrate the management of their particular mission. They're a one-stop shop for questions like ‘What do we know?’ and ‘What are our capabilities on an issue?’ This is especially important in a crisis when you need fast answers. Their exact roles come in different flavors because they reflect the mission requirements of a particular area. They oversee analysis, collection, and resources and make sure that everyone in the IC is rowing together. They also issue an annual a unifying intelligence strategy.
Mission managers don't do the actual analysis and collection work; they're meant to just ensure the work is being done. There are a lot of amazing collectors and analysts in the Intelligence Community. A mission manager is just meant to say, "Are we all sharing what we need to know focusing on the right areas and putting our collective effort where it should be?" I would also say that the mission managers are meant to engage routinely, at least on Iran in my day, with policymakers. I used to joke or half-joke that if a policymaker asked a question, I hadn't done my job because I was supposed to know policy maker activities and requirements so thoroughly that I could get them the information before they had to ask for it.
Kelly: That's incredibly helpful background on understanding how the broader machine works especially on engagement between the White House and the Intelligence Community. Thank you for that. As you know, it's been a very busy time. The New York Times published a piece recently under the headline, White House Reviews Military Plans Against Iran, in Echoes of Iraq War by Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes. I believe Julian might be on the call with us this morning.
The reporting said that “Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan recently presented an updated military plan to the president's top national security aides, laying out the strategy for deploying as many as 120,000 troops to the Middle East, if either Iran attacked U.S. forces in Iraq or if Tehran accelerated its work on nuclear weapons.” The reporters were careful to note that, "According to their sources the plans did not call for a land invasion of Iran but it's certainly escalating tensions further." Norm, what do you make of this?
Roule: Contingency planning is not unusual. It doesn't always leak as apparently, it did in this case. Policymakers periodically - particularly if they're going into periods of potential escalation or anticipated tension - will call upon the various war fighter Intelligence Communities to say, "If this gets very difficult what exactly can you bring to the table? What response options might we consider?" It's prudent for policymakers to do this because it allows them to understand that if a crisis does indeed escalate, they understand what options they might be able to present to the president on short notice.
Kelly: The Times also reported that there are divisions within the administration over whether to engage Iran diplomatically or via a maximum pressure campaign. How is Iran likely to respond to each of those scenarios?
Roule: Well, let me step back and say that I've worked for five administrations, and I've never seen administrations where there weren't divisions. There are always different views. That's a good thing. We want people to be able to test ideas and to offer those pros and cons with passion and credibility based upon their deep expertise. That's how you understand where things may go. This said, I don't see the two sides moving toward war at present. Although, the likelihood of escalation, and therefore confrontation, is certainly increasing. Neither side is looking for a war for various reasons.
Norm Roule, Former Intelligence Manager, Iran for ODNI
'In the coming weeks, each side is going to test the other and monitor the other's response while avoiding actions which could lead to a conventional war. I don't see a risk of what some call miscalculation because people tend to calculate carefully what they're planning. Where I see a risk is if an event goes beyond where the initiating actor intended, and the other side must respond.'
Let's say the Iranians authorize (in a hypothetical scenario) a mortar attack by their surrogates on an American military base. Let’s say the mortar strikes the barracks of American warfighters. The U.S. response, therefore, must be quite significant.
The post-attack response could take us into some powerful directions. Any response would have to include a private and public diplomacy message to say, "We're doing this for the following reasons. We're prepared to cease escalation, but you have to stop what you're doing." We do have channels with the Iranians. Not only through third parties in the Middle East and in Europe but also through permanent representatives at the United Nations who are able to engage when necessary.
Kelly: Norm, let's pull a few threats together this morning on some of the recent events as a way to set up some of the excellent questions that we're getting in from members. There was a recent armed drone attack on one of Saudi Arabia's oil pipelines. Yemen's Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for that attack in a statement. We should talk about how that might play into the larger picture. That drone attack also followed news earlier in the week that two Saudi oil vessels were sabotaged causing considerable damage as they sat off the coast of Dubai.
That news came on the heels of heightened tensions between the U.S. and Iran over sending a war destroyer to the region. President Trump issued a statement after news of that oil tanker sabotage saying, "It's going to be a bad problem for Iran if something happens. I can tell you that." Let's talk about tying all of these things together. Are they related? How should we be thinking about them? Then we've got a couple of excellent questions from members we're going to get to.
Roule: Let's look at the broader issue of how Iran is responding to events because the answer is nested within that. Iran has undertaken a pressure campaign, but it's calibrating that pressure to avoid a conventional conflict or a Western response which could unseat the regime. The first phase of that would be rhetoric (defiance and threats). Iran will also expand its nuclear activity which will allow Iran to remain within the framework of the JCPOA while messaging that Iran is willing to move from JCPOA if it does not receive a relief from economic pressure within 60 days. Iran will aim its diplomatic pressure against Europe, Russia, and China.
Moving to the recent attacks on the four tankers and UAV attack in Yanbu, no evidence has been released which proves Iran was involved in these attacks. However, Iran has conducted similar attacks through proxies for years, precisely for the reason that such evidence is difficult to find. The weight of circumstantial evidence, however, that Iran was behind these attacks is vast.
Iran seek attacks which are attributable yet deniable, or what I sometimes call with implausible deniability. Iran's military doctrine since 1992 has been to avoid large personnel losses and to allow, as I put it, non-Iranians to die for Iran and its causes. There were attacks in Bahrain against its main oil pipeline just a couple of years ago.
However, the formal investigation into the attacks may take weeks if not months. Experts are going to want to look at how the explosives damaged the ship. What tells you about the nature of the explosives? What does the nature of the attack itself tell you about the professionalism of the attackers? If a ship attack was involved, but also regarding the drone attack, is there radar data which can trace the assault origin? Is there any information available on the travel records of Iranian military officials which could be tied to the attack? This will take a while to pull together.
Based on the press statements of senior administration officials, including from the Commander of CENTCOM and the Acting Secretary of Defense, I believe there is information which shows Iran is undertaking malign activity to threaten U.S. forces. The U.S. statements are a public messaging campaign to deter these attacks and, thus far, it looks to have been successful.
The main threats in the region appear to be against Americans in Iraq simply because that's where the U.S. has the largest presence in an environment where Iran has the most proxies, influence, and freedom of movement. I think for that reason Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo delivered what I'm sure was a tough message to the Iraqis to say, "We know this is happening here, and we expect the Iraqi government to do something about it." U.S. concerns that the Iraqi government could not offer this protection likely compelled the evacuation of personnel from our Baghdad Embassy and Erbil Consulate.
The evacuation of Baghdad is unprecedented since the U.S. invasion in 2003 and this follows our earlier evacuation of our Basrah consulate. This is driven by force protection concerns, but the evacuations were also meant to message the region on our sense of the threat. The European response is also notable: the Germans and the Dutch have withdrawn their forces from Iraq. That's almost certainly an indication that they share our assessment of the threat and they lack our force protection architecture to protect their personnel.
There was a bit of fuss over a British General’s response on the Iraq threat. I confess when I looked at his response, I found his language nuanced and capable of being read several ways. He may not have disagreed with the broader U.S. threat, but rather gave his personal understanding of the threat environment as it compared to the usual high state of threats in Iraq. Perhaps he was thinking in terms of specific threats versus a heightened general threat. In any case, I think the U.S. forces are well positioned on force protection.
I think it's important to touch on Iran’s potential cyber threats. My understanding is there has been an increase in Iranian offensive cyber activity against Gulf targets in recent months. This is something that I expect will increase, and I wouldn't be surprised if cyber operations against the United States increased.
Iran also seeks to pressure the oil market. The attacks at two pumping stations on the east-west pipeline are important signals. You need to look at the geography of those locations. The Fujairah was built in part to enable oil shipments to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. This became an imperative following the tanker war of the 1980s. The Saudi East-West Pipeline which terminates in Yanbu on the Red Sea was built both to speed deliveries to the Red Sea ports, but also to avoid this threat.
For Iran, a strike against these locations would signal that Tehran doesn’t need to control just the Strait of Hormuz to impact global energy markets. These attacks may have been small in size, but not perhaps the pinpricks as some had described. The have impact, although they don’t damage facilities or actually impact the flow of oil. Their damage is a consequence of the publicity the attacks receive and the subsequent nervousness in the oil market which spikes prices. In this way, they raise energy costs for Europe and China which becomes a lever by which Iran can compel these parties to pressure the U.S. to reduce any action against Iran.
Kelly: Excellent points on the economic pressures at play here, Norm. Also, just one quick note on the cyber threats. There is a piece on The Cipher Brief from General Keith Alexander and Jamil Jaffer about the cyber threats that could be coming from Iran. That’s available for members on the website.
Let's get to some of the questions from our members.
Member Question: Does the threat from Americans in Iraq extend to civilians, commercial personnel, and infrastructure? Do you have any speculation on what the nature of the reported threats is from IRGC, proxy activity? What do you think?
Roule: A quick comment on today’s cyber piece in the Cipher Brief. There are few people on the planet who understand the Iranian cyber threat better than Keith Alexander and Jamil Jaffer. I urge everyone to read that report closely. But there is a real threat to American interests in play and here I mean the missiles being fired from Yemen.
For several decades, my focus has been force protection, i.e., the protection of American lives and interests. The missiles fired from Yemen don't turn left or right over the heads of Americans or Europeans or Asians or their businesses. The Houthi threats to the UAE invite similar risks. For this reason, the ongoing missile attacks are also an attack on critical Western interests.
Speaking hypothetically, Iranian threats also could involve older forms of terrorism against civilians. There is history many, many years ago of Iranians or their proxies attempting to detonate explosives near American interests in the Gulf.
Member Question: Do you think U.S. surgical military attacks against the Iranian strategic infrastructure can help the internal uprising and regime change or will it help the regime to remain? Because war can unite the Islamic community and the military can provide protection and basic security for that part of the community.
Roule: This is an important question, but in my old job I would say that is what we call mystery and not an intelligence question. The response to such actions depends upon a variety of factors but does underscore why Iran does not seek a conventional conflict. Iran is facing unprecedented and simultaneous demographic, economic, environmental, political, and social challenges. A conflict with the United States would exacerbate those challenges. Sanctions themselves are accelerating these problems. I'd like to unpack the sanctions issue in this regard for a moment.
Sanctions in and of themselves do not bring down a country. I equate them to the metaphor of money problems in a bad marriage. There are many reasons the relationship isn't going to work out. Money problems just accelerate its demise. Iran is now enduring this at the same time. You're seeing a lot of infighting in Iran. I think some of the politics has been cast by the West (and respectfully I think perhaps miscast) as hardliners moving against Rouhani only because of the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal.
Iranian infighting always spikes during periods of economic downturn and criticism of an Iranian president is routine during his second term. There is also the fractious nature of Iran’s internal polity during a time when many are considering succession issues. They may see a new Supreme Leader and they will have municipal and presidential elections in the next couple of years.
A surgical regime alone is unlikely to bring down the regime. Indeed, I could see it playing both ways. There is the “rally around the flag” affect which would be reflected in official and social media as well as by voices in the west. But understanding crowd intent is difficult. Iran’s opposition is leaderless, rudderless and lacks cohesive tissue between the various players. Labor and the political opposition have yet to work together to achieve their respective goals, let alone to bring down the regime.
Member Question: How realistic is it to expect Saudi Arabia to meaningfully challenge Iran geo-politically or economically in Iraq? Does degrading Iran's long-term regional influence hinge on supplanting their influence with Saudi influence, as opposed to American?
Roule:I think it's very realistic. The Saudis and the Emirates were instrumental in producing the oil required to make up for Iranian losses. That’s important and should be recalled whenever someone says that because fracking has significantly increased our oil production, we don’t need either. We certainly needed them in this case.
In terms of Iraq, we need Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait, and other regional countries to offering Iraqis an economic and cultural option besides Iran. If the Iraqi people have only Iran to look to for investment and for commercial engagement, you can't blame them for seeking a stronger relationship with Tehran. I believe the Saudis and the Emirates have had success in building commercial and cultural connections in Iraq.
We should be careful in describing how Riyadh extends influence in the region. The Saudis don't run proxy groups the same way the Iranians run proxy groups. You don't have a Saudi group like Hezbollah. For whatever problems we may have with the Saudi government on its handling of the cruel murder of Jamal Khashoggi and dissent issues, there are important positives we should recognize and support. The idea that Saudi Arabia is developing an economy that invites technology and improves women’s rights is important. Events may not be moving as fast as some wish, but things are certainly moving fast for Saudi Arabia.
The success of the United Arab Emirates is also important. The Iranians government can’t help but worry about this as their people – who may not want to live under a Saudi King or Emirati Crown Prince – will nonetheless ask "Why are their people living so well as compared to the people of Iran? Why do they have such great internet and technology, or Starbucks or Pizza Hut? Why can't we have that here in Iran?" I think that is going to be a very powerful corrosive in the coming months.
Member Question: Some like Senator King have said the Iran reactions are in response to American provocations. Is that true? Is it rational to see Iran’s moves as defensive? Or, does their asymmetric approach make them the aggressor no matter what?
Roule: I think you have to respond to that question with a question. What will you care about? If you care about what Iran is doing in the region, if you care about Iran's support for Hezbollah, what actions would you take to roll back Iran from the region, which would not provoke an Iranian test of our fortitude? You can't talk about rolling back Iran without also talking about the prospect at some point that the Iranians would push back. If you believe we should have a rollback policy, then you will have an escalation of tensions with Iran. If, however, you’re only thinking about the Iran nuclear deal, then you have a different perspective. My bias is the protection of Americans and our partners around the world. Iranian-enabled missiles being fired from Yemen against Saudi Arabia could also land on Americans or the American Embassy were it not for the patriot batteries there.
We have an actual military conflict going on in the region. A conventional conflict, which has been disaggregated. We now have hundreds of Israeli airstrikes into Syria. We have a missile war going on between Saudi Arabia and Yemen. We have a naval conflict going in with intermittency in the Gulf and in the Red Sea. We have Iranian IRGC ground forces in Iraq, Syria, and reportedly in Lebanon. Possibly in Yemen. In short, Iran has ignited a conventional war, but disaggregated in a way which means that the conflict is rarely considered as a whole.
Member Question: Should we read anything special into the fact that Bolton reportedly led a meeting of principles at CIA instead of the White House on the Iran situation?
Roule: Not necessarily. These sorts of meetings probably occur more often than people think. I could imagine people having such a meeting to say, "We just want to put a bunch of experts in front of you to talk about an issue and it would be nice if you came to CIA HQS." I think if we look just at the public record you will see that a number of meetings took place in the situation room on issues regarding Osama bin Laden. They didn't need to go to Central Intelligence Agency headquarters to discuss sensitive issues.
Kelly: Let's talk about the situation in Yemen. How that is connected to the broader picture and intentions in the region? What from a policy perspective or a U.S. Military-action perspective should be done? We don't necessarily have to list steps in sequence but what needs to be done in order to change the entire dynamic?
Roule: First, there are several wars going on simultaneously within Yemen. It is a weak state with a fragile architecture of state institutions. Conflicts in Yemen involve a number of different parties. If the United States ended its involvement tomorrow, these conflicts would continue. I've spoken to a number of Saudi senior officials. They ask, if this were happening in Mexico would the U.S. simply withdraw and allow it to happen? This isn’t an unreasonable question to ask.
The Houthis have not been reliable interlocuters. I’ve spoken to senior Saudis, Emiratis, and Kuwaitis who all complain that while they are eager to end the war, they can’ t find reliable Houthi interlocutors able to negotiate. The negotiations in Kuwait – which lasted more than 100 days – were particularly frustrating and the Houthi unwillingness to execute the obligations they accepted in Stockholm are only the latest problem.
The international community routinely talks about pressuring both sides, but it is difficult to see what pressure is being brought – or could be brought – against the Houthis. This puts the Saudis in a tough position. They can't tolerate missiles being fired on their country. They also need to avoid the creation of what I call a Yemeni version of post 2006 South Lebanon, i.e., in situation in which Iranian-supplied proxies put 100,000 rockets and missiles 400 miles from Mecca and along the critically-important Bab-el-Mandeb.
Unfortunately, I don’t see the Yemen conflicts ending soon. Certainly, we should do everything possible to get food and medicine to the innocents of Yemen. But this won’t be easy. Most of the suffering takes place in Houthi-controlled territory. Houthi checkpoints levy charges which make food more expensive as it travels through that Houthi territory. I believe gas cylinders are six times more expensive in Houthis territory for cooking than they are non-Houthi controlled areas.
I believe - there will certainly some who disagree - that the U.S. should stand with the Arab coalition, the Saudis, the Emirates, in part because their enemies are our enemies. We want to enable them to end this war quickly. Standing with them doesn't mean boots on the ground, but it should be proving them with intelligence to make their actions more impactful. We don't want more drones hitting oil facilities. We don't want missiles landing on Americans. We should also provide them with precision-guided munitions frankly, so their munitions use is precise and limits civilian casualties. I believe our mission should be empowering them to do the best they can in a very difficult situation with the interests of the Yemeni civilians foremost in our minds.
Norm Roule, Former National Mission Manager for Iran, ODNI
'Wars in the Middle East consume reputations, calendars, and armies. Very few wars in the Middle East since Roman times have turned out the way they were intended. It may not be inaccurate to say that the Saudi-led Arab coalition has not performed as well as we (or they) would have liked, but I would be challenged to come up with a conflict in the region which ended quickly or came out the way people wanted it to.'
Member Question: There seems to be growing concern among the Arab states over what's happening with Iran. Are you noting any of them preparing for war or seeing war as being inevitable? In other words, how are the Arab states reacting to this the escalating tensions?
Roule: I've spoken to a number of senior leaders throughout the Gulf and within Israel in the last handful of months. You hear a common theme. First, when the west talked about concessions to Iran to provide an off-ramp for the crisis, the concessions are often perceived as coming at the cost of people who live in the area. One interlocutor complained that in regards to the nuclear deal, the West decided what aspects of their security could be ignored and they understood how the Poles felt in the 1930s when they found that Western Europe had decided that half of them would live under Germans and half of them would live under Soviet Russians. Even for me, it is hard to conceive of concessions which we might offer Iran to gain their support for additional nuclear restrictions which would not simultaneously empower other malign activity we seek to prevent.
My second point is that no state in the region seeks a conventional conflict against Iran. This may explain the relatively muted response from Israel and the Gulf in the last couple of weeks. War will take place not only in their front yards, but because of the reach of missiles, in their backyards as well. This isn’t to say that they don’t want an international effort against Iran, and they don’t necessarily seek regime change. They are realistic about things.
Finally, I would say that there isn't a lot of confidence in the United Nations Security Council. The Russians have blocked every effort to censor Iran for years going back at least to the Iranian effort to kill the then-Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir.
Member Question: The Iranian community had a very bad memory with war in the last century. Do you think a small-range calculated conflict started by IRGC Proxies against U.S. allies in the Middle East can provide the protection for the poor or the Islamic Republic and minimize the weights of the economic crisis on the shoulders of the regime?
Roule: Yes and no. First, Iran's military doctrine since 1992 has aimed to avoid a repeat of the costly conflict with Iraq. But in many ways, conditions today are similar to that time: they face a well-armed counter revolutionary entity (the U.S. and Britain). They have no friends other than Syria. Syria was relatively weak in the 1980s, but it is broken now.
Surrogates, however, are an important part of a hybrid war or gray zone activity. We, the West, and the Gulf states (which were built by the West), don’t have a strong capacity to respond to militia forces as employed by Iran. We don't know how to do that, and such targets have not traditionally been our most important adversaries. I've often said that confrontation with Iran is less a rivalry, but more like a deadly game of paper, rock, and scissors.
Any conflict would involve massive economic pressure on Iran, so the economic pressure on Iran isn't going away no matter what happens. It likely remains at least a consideration within Iran's military and security leadership that they can deter conflict by killing Americans, Europeans, and even Gulf Arabs outside of the region and that such attacks could exacerbate political frictions between the U.S. and its allies.
Iran has also worked hard to emulate in some ways, what the Russians did in the United States. The Russians used social media to exploit existing social problems or social dispositions. The same social media approach is being used by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and likely Iranian intelligences. There is little strategic incentive for Iran to enter into negotiations with the U.S. Nonetheless, Iran's foreign minister cruelly, offered to conduct a prisoner exchange with the United States. The Americans held in Iran have been convicted on spurious charges. Javad Zarif knows this. His offer to conduct an exchange is likely to deflect pressure. We must also recognize that any exchange may well simply encourage Iran to take future detainee to obtain the release of their own operatives abroad. I will close here by noting that the Iranians have never cooperated on the issue of Robert Levinson and they need to answer for this.
Kelly: You made the case when you did an excellent piece for The Cipher Brief just recently that members can find just by searching the site. Its headline is Iran’s Tale of Two Leaders and you compare Qasem Soleimani and Javad Zarif. I encourage people to read that. Let me wrap this up with a final member question.
Member Question: Can you cite an example in which Iranian influence has been rolled back in the Middle East since Trump entered office? And to what degree has the U.S. invasion of Iraq empowered Iran in the region?
Roule: I often hear the United States invasion of Iraq opened the door for the Iranians to all of the bad things they're doing. I think that is hogwash. The Iranians could've come into Iraq in 2003 with their foreign ministry, with their aid groups, with their pilgrim associations. They chose to use their Quds Force instead. If I think there was a something U.S. policy should've spent more time on in the Iraq war it is there should've been a recognition that Iran would exploit this so aggressively and we needed an international approach to prevent this. We didn't have a plan to pushback.
Member Question: Can you cite an example in which Iranian influence has been rolled back in the Middle East under Trump?
Roule: Success in the Middle East is rare and it's never satisfying, but I will offer two. First, Hezbollah is routinely complaining of financial problems and this will inhibit their aggression. Second, the Iranians have sought to place missile facilities in Syria and probably, a naval base as well. They have not been able to do so. They have also sought to create a Hezbollah-like structure in Sanaa. Iran's engagement with the Houthis has always been identical to its engagement with Kata’ib Hezbollah, and with Lebanese Hezbollah. Sometimes the best thing you can get in dealing with such issues is things could've been worse.
Kelly: Norm, I want to thank you so much for joining us to talk about Iran. I'd also like to thank everyone who called in and asked excellent questions as well.
Roule: Thank you.
Read more from Norm Roule in The Cipher Brief and engage directly with the experts at the 2020 Cipher Brief Threat Conference. Request an invitation here.
