In this gripping episode of STRAT with Hal Kempfer, retired Lieutenant Colonel and Marine Intelligence Officer, we delve deep into the recent geopolitical tensions that are shaping the current global landscape. Hal provides a detailed strategic risk assessment of Israel's military responses to Iranian aggressions, interpreting the implications of these decapitation strikes and Iran's potential counteractions. Shifting focus, he analyzes the battleground dynamics in Ukraine and the unexpected deployment of North Korean troops. The conversation spans further to investigate covert election interference activities conducted by global powers and how these efforts influence the geopolitical stage. Tying together international military maneuvers with covert activities, Hal offers a comprehensive insight into the strategic challenges across the world. Join us for an enlightening session designed to go beyond the headlines, offering an expert inside perspective on today's security issues.

Takeaways:

·      The recent Israeli airstrikes targeted Iranian military capabilities to send a strategic message.

·      Israel demonstrated its advanced military capabilities through a massive aerial strike mission.

·      Iran's response to Israeli actions is uncertain, as regime survival remains a priority.

·      The geopolitical implications of the strikes extend beyond Israel and Iran, affecting regional dynamics.

·      Israel's restraint in targeting nuclear facilities reflects its strategic goals and US interests.

·      The ongoing conflict in Ukraine is intertwined with Iranian and Russian military strategies.

#WorldAtWar #GeopoliticalAnalysis #IranIsraelTensions #MiddleEastConflict #UkrainianFront #NorthKoreanTroops #ElectionInterference #GlobalSecurity #DeepAnalysis #MilitaryIntelligence #RiskAssessment #DefenseStrategy #InformedPerspective #InternationalTensions #RegionalStability #GlobalPolitics #InsightfulDiscussion #ExpertAnalysis #STRAT #StrategicRiskAssessmentTalk #HalKempfer #RetiredMarineIntelligenceOfficer #MutualBroadcastingSystem

From the Mutual Broadcasting System, this is Strat Strategic Risk Assessment Talk.

Now, retired Marine intelligence officer and globally recognized risk expert, Hal Kaemfer.

Well, welcome.

It's another Strat podcast and we're going to be having truly, by the definition of the term, a strategic risk assessment talk.

It has been an amazing week.

There's been a lot of things going on.

It's been an amazing month, I should say.

It's not slowing down in the least and I'm going to hit a lot of different things again.

And I guess at some point I'll quit saying this, but every time I do this, I still think of my Strat co host, Mark Mansfield, who, you know, tragically passed away last Christmas.

And I just wish every day that he was here.

There's hardly a day that goes by that something doesn't pop up in the news.

I go, I got to call Mark.

Anyway, let me move on and let's talk about what's been happening.

Of course, one of the things hanging over for a very long time, hanging over everybody's heads, was when and how Israel would respond to the Iranian ballistic missile attacks of October 1st.

This was the second time that Iran had attacked Israel directly.

You may recall last April, they launched somewhere around almost 300 drones and ballistic missiles towards Israel, which were pretty much almost all of them were interdicted.

So Israel then reportedly responded with something that akin to a stealth attack, which was taking out a S300.

That's a air defense missile system the Russians have.

It's one of the more advanced ones, not the most advanced one, but one of the more advanced ones.

Most advanced one.

The Iranians have took it out near a very sensitive site, a place that the Iranians thought was somewhat impervious to attack or strike.

And that was to send a message.

And the message is, you won't see us coming.

And we can hit pretty much anywhere to include the places you think are most well, most heavily defended or best defended.

In Iran, that message was clearly lost on Ayatollah Khomeini, lost on the Revolutionary Guard Corps, lost on his command staff.

Basically, it was very subtle the way it was done.

And everyone was very pleased that Israel had shown great restraint in terms of this.

Well, you know, of course, a lot of things have happened since April.

You know, Haniyeh, the head of Hamas, the political side of Hamas out of Doha, was not just assassinated, but he was actually assassinated in a Revolutionary Guard safe house in Tehran.

And he was there for the inauguration of the Iranian president.

It was extremely embarrassing to Iran and that is one of the big reasons that they responded.

And then of course also the Israelis managed to take out Nasrallah, the head of Hamas in Lebanon, in a very spectacular strike.

Then this week, this last week, they took out, they admitted they'd already taken him out, but they admitted taking out Hassan Sufideen, which was the heir apparent to Nasrallah, the next head of Hezbollah.

And I don't want to get into all of the leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas, ET, etc.

And of course also in these strikes, they took out the head of the Al Quds Force who was reportedly with Sufideen standing next to him when he was struck, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps who was standing next to Nasrallah when he was struck.

So just an amazing series of decapitation strikes across the board.

Anyway, all of that has led to what the Iranians did on October 5th and that has led to what just happened, which is the Israeli response.

Now what did Israel do?

Well, on basically, I don't know, you could say, you know, Saturday night, I guess there's a big time difference between the US and over there.

But in the wee hours of the morning, there was a massive Israeli strike involved over 100 strike aircraft of various different types that I would remind everyone that they fly the F35 which is one of the most advanced fighter bombers we have.

They also fly the 15, the more advanced 15 Eagles.

These are, these are not the ones from way back when in the 70s.

These are very advanced strike aircraft and of course F16s as well.

All of these flew very long missions.

Now some of the, some of the target sets were closer to Israel than some of the others.

They did get all the way into Tehran, in and around Tehran.

There were, there are videos that are out there circulating taken from Tehran residents where you hear constant explosions and stuff.

You hear anti aircraft fire, but you can clearly hear what sounds like something big exploding in the distance.

And those would probably be the Israeli strike missions hitting various targets in and around Tehran.

Part of that is for the physical attack, taking out air defense in Tehran, which of course degrades the ability of Tehran to defend itself the next time there might be a strike.

But also it is a big psychological operation in that it tells everybody in the capital city, well within the air defense envelope of Iran, that they are vulnerable, that they can be hit.

And it is a bit of a reminder on that.

Now a number of the strikes are actually closer to the border with Iraq and Kuwait and they took out on all the strikes, I should mention took out military sites, none of them were aimed at civilian stuff.

They did not take out, they did not go after the nuclear facilities that had been talked about so much in the news.

They did not do that, although there were reports still waiting for confirmation that one of the strikes may have been close to maybe not exactly on.

Again, we're still waiting for more information, but close to one of the sites that Iran had said was going to become a nuclear research and development facility.

And right now, if I had to guess or just take from what we got, I should say it looks like they may have taken out one or two air defense sites in and around that area just to send the message that that that particular location is vulnerable.

And it's an interesting message that sends the Iranians, which is that they did not, they were, they didn't hit a nuclear site, and technically this was a nuclear site because it was still being built, but that they have the capability to do so.

And that's an interesting one.

The other one was they hit a number of things.

A couple of provinces close right on the border with Iraq and Kuwait, and those are areas at least one of them, certainly the one next to Kuwait, that's an area that's heavy in oil production.

A lot of oil fields, both of them have oil refineries.

Oil pipelines didn't hit any of those, albeit one thing I should mention is last week there was one of the refineries in one of the areas that was targeted that had a mysterious fire, an explosion, a fire.

I think one one person was killed.

And it wasn't quite clear what exactly caused that to happen.

There was speculation it might have not been accidental.

It could have been intentional.

And then you can read into that what you will as to how that could have been done.

But I did find it rather interesting that in and around the area where that mysterious fire had taken place that then we, you see Israeli strike missions hitting various military targets, if you will, in that area.

Now, they flew over, I don't know if they flew through Saudi airspace.

I think with one of the missions, that's very likely.

I don't know if they flew through Jordanian airspace, although I think that's very probable as well.

You may recall that Iran had pretty much threatened Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries in the Middle east that if they allowed the Israelis to retaliate by flying through their airspace, that those countries themselves would become the targets of Iranian retaliation.

However, it does appear that a number of the planes went up through Syria and Iraq.

And the reason we know that is because they struck military sites of Shiite militias, Iranian proxy groups in Syria and Iraq.

So we know that some planes went up there because they actually did strike missions in those countries.

And of course, to fly through Syrian airspace, they're not going to ask permission.

And frankly, to fly through Iraqi airspace, they're probably not going to.

They wouldn't ask for permission either.

They went through those areas and they hit those targets.

Three waves, over 100 planes and a lot of damage, but no big.

And this was something I was wondering, I'd said this many times in the air that I thought they might go after some command and control.

They did not go directly after command and control.

What they did was they went after the air defenses surrounding these high value targets, you know, like irg, Revolutionary Guard Corps headquarters, and certainly all the major buildings, facilities in and around Tehran, the capital city of Iran.

They didn't hit them, but they kind of left.

They left the gate door wide open, if you will, by taking out air defense and basically sending a message to Iran is okay, we did this, we showed restraint, and we'll see what you do.

And if Iran retaliates in some way similar to what they've done in the past, then I would anticipate whatever Israel does would be much more honed in on going after things that are much closer to what, what maintains a regime, if you will, in, in, in Iran and taking out that autocratic theocratic regime, at least removing or loosening some of those pillars that prop it up.

So that would be my guess if Iran does something like some big retaliation.

But again, we don't know.

We don't know what they're going to do and we'll find out soon enough.

So that's what happened this week.

One of the more interesting targets they hit was taking out a manufacturing facility, a ballistic missile site, and there was some discussion about maybe there was a drone facility, drone manufacturing facility might have been hit.

I never heard any confirmation that they actually hit a drone manufacturing facility.

I certainly was looking for that.

That is one of the targets that I had speculated that they might look at that before, before the missions took place as a possible target set.

But I did not see where they got hit.

But they did confirm that they hit a ballistic missile.

And they hit the missile site in such a way that went after basically the fuel system components, I should say tied to the fuel system components that they don't have organically in Iran.

In other words, they don't produce those components in Iran.

They have to import them.

I believe they import them from China.

And if you're familiar with the Carver analysis, Carver, it's a analysis used for critical infrastructure vulnerability.

It's also used for targeting.

It's a kind of a double edged sword thing.

But if you're familiar with that and you're certainly welcome to look it up online.

Carver, ironically, I always thought it was really amazing stuff.

And then years later I was, I was somewhat, I don't know, disappointed to find out that the guy who developed the Carver acronym, his last name just happened to be Carver, which kind of always made me wonder, okay, what if his name was John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, what would it have been then?

But nonetheless, I, you know, I would say take a look at that.

And it was kind of interesting that they hit that facility.

I'm sure that was going after components that would take a long lead time to replace and that really slows down the ability of Iran to produce ballistic missiles that could be aimed at Israel.

Also the ability of Iran to produce ballistic missiles that could potentially be shipped to Russia and that they might try to use those in fighting the Ukrainians.

So there's a rather interesting message, strategic message across the board from taking out that particular set.

So I thought that was kind of interesting that they did that.

Now what were Israel's strategic goals in this thing?

I'm sure a lot of people are kind of wondering, you know, what did they want to accomplish?

Well, one of the first thoughts is, well, they'd like to see regime change.

Honestly, I think every other country except for Syria in the Middle east would like to see regime change in Iran.

I think everyone's had enough.

They would certainly like to see it happen.

To execute regime change would take a lot.

And it's not something you're going to do on one overnight strike mission.

That would be a series of strike missions over an extended period of time.

And frankly it would be much more than that because you'd have to have, you know, things that you just don't have now, which is you'd probably have to have some sort of commando or a presence or something like that to go in there and actually do physical raids on the ground.

And that's not something that obviously Israel was set up to do with this particular raid.

The other thing you'd have to do is have a phenomenal clandestine or covert action program that would somehow mobilize Iranian personnel, Iranian citizens I should say to try and overthrow the government.

And certainly with the crackdown from the last series of protests, even though this is a very, very unpopular regime, to say the least, I just don't see that manifesting itself in short order.

That would be a very, that would be a tall thing to put out there.

So that, so Israel's strategic goals was basically, from what I can tell, was to strike at those things that posed a direct threat to Israel.

And in that regard, I think they largely accomplished what they set out to do.

I mean, certainly they could hit some more targets.

I can think of plenty of things they may want to hit, but.

But I think they accomplished what they want to do with this one.

The other thing is militarily, they can still have their hands kind of full with what's going on in southern Lebanon and Lebanon as a whole, dealing with Hezbollah.

You know, they're still having to occasionally deal with things coming out of the Houthis down in Yemen.

And of course they have the ongoing situation in the Gaza Strip and of course things in, in the West Bank.

And it was interesting to hear Israel talk about this as a seven front war.

And I actually had to do some math to go seven fronts, where they get seven fronts.

And then I realized what they're talking about, you know, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and then they get into, you know, certainly Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and then of course the Houthis down Yemen.

Like, yeah, there you go.

You got a seven front war literally spreading across the Middle east if you look at it.

So it's a.

They've got, let's just say they got a lot of things they have to take care of militarily without opening up this thing further.

The other thing is their primary backer, the United States has been very clear since the outset that they did not want to see nuclear facilities targeted for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is they thought it could have the opposite effect.

Instead of, you know, slowing down Iran's movement to creating a building a nuclear bomb, it could actually have the indirect effect of speeding up Iran's movement into trying to build a nuclear weapon.

So that was a big fear that also the real world is some of those facilities are so deeply embedded underground, reinforced concrete, so tough to target that you could go in and hit them with strike missions and frankly, you wouldn't destroy them.

You can, some things you could destroy, but there's a lot of things, certainly the most sensitive sites, the ones you really would like to take out, you probably wouldn't take out and again, that would be a big setback to hit them and then not have accomplished the mission.

Just wasted ordnance destroying things around it, but not actually destroying the target sets themselves.

So that, that's another thing.

So the US Was opposed to that President Biden, and I don't know what he was thinking when he said this, but he did one day he talked about this, he said, well, maybe they could hit oil facilities like refineries or pipelines or something.

I'm not quite sure what he was thinking when he said that.

But literally the next day, global oil prices jumped 10%.

And the day after that, he immediately came back, said, no, no, no, I didn't mean that they're not supposed to.

They should not hit oil facilities or pipelines or refineries and stuff like that.

Oil prices started to come back down.

And in this discussion, it, prior to the strikes, it was, it was announced that it had been agreed by the Israelis that they would not hit nuclear sites, nor would they hit oil pipelines, refineries, oil infrastructure as well.

And so that appears to have been something that the US did not want to see hit, and the Israelis did not hit it.

And I think the Israelis did that in order to pay some level of, of, I don't know if you want to say homage, but certainly some level of compliance with what the US wished to see with whatever Israel did.

And so they did that.

And I think that's kind of interesting to see that.

Also, at the same time, the US is working on trying to get a ceasefire agreement in place in Gaza, is working on trying to get a ceasefire in place in Lebanon.

So there's a lot of other externalities that the US is working on that would have been completely upended if Israel had gone into a big escalatory war, if you will, with Iran.

And the reality is Iran does not want to go to war with Israel because at the end of the day, Iran cannot win a war against Israel.

And the regime knows that.

So the regime has done what they traditionally have done, which is they have focused on regime survival, which is live to fight another day.

And so there's a lot of reason to believe that there really won't be much of a retaliation or response to what Israel just did.

Although I don't want to second guess Ayatollah Khomeini's ability to never miss an opportunity.

To miss an opportunity.

And frankly, what I understand is that Khomeini overrode a number of his.

Overrode the present of Iran and a number of other Senior officials there who said don't do the October 1st strike.

And he decided to do it anyway.

And so whatever's happened, he kind of brought that on himself.

Whether that will cause him internal political damage yet to be seen, I don't know.

Now, the Israeli Defense Forces have said that this phase, this particular mission is complete.

They're not looking at doing anything more.

They have nothing.

I'm sure they have stuff planned, but they're not saying that.

They're, they're saying that this chapter is kind of closed.

And although they say Israel is ready to respond, they've degraded Iranian air defenses to a great degree.

Iran certainly has to recognize its vulnerability there.

Iran has threatened to retaliate, but at the same time they're also saying publicly that the damage was inconsequential.

It really didn't add up to much.

And this is the type of language that you would hear from a country if they were trying to find some graceful face saving way of avoiding any big retaliation.

So again, there's a lot to look at here which indicates that Iran may not do a big retaliatory strike.

Now some other stuff that's going on in the news, the war in Ukraine cooking right along.

The Russians are taking phenomenal losses, although they are making some small marginal gains in the eastern front, securing various small towns and villages incrementally.

The Iranians are, I got to tell you, the Iranians have quite a bit of arms, not as much as they need.

They could certainly use more of everything to include, especially artillery.

The Iranians also need manpower.

That is also a big problem.

But the Russians need manpower.

And something that popped up a couple, couple, three weeks ago was that they were using their strategic forces personnel.

This is like their version of air force or space force personnel, highly trained operators doing things, working in like ballistic missiles and aircraft and stuff like that, bombers and using them as line infantry.

And you don't do something like that unless you are absolutely desperate.

I mean, even in a very tactical environment, when you, when you pull the, all the support personnel, you know, the cooks, the administrative clerks, the motor pool personnel and everything, and you put them on the line to fight.

That's because you're in a last ditch effort and you're afraid that your lines are going to get overrun.

Well, the Russians aren't quite there, but they are so short of personnel that they're doing this.

And one of the problems the Russians have, and this is a problem that Putin has personally is he has sold this war as this, you know, special military operation.

Or whatever it is that he sells it as, but he doesn't, he didn't like it for a long time.

And there's been some times where they have called it an outright war.

They have tried to avoid calling it a war to try and placate those urban populations around major centers like Moscow and St.

So he's very afraid of something like that.

So he doesn't do this mass mobilization, if you will, bring in lots of troops.

So he's trying to basically do stuff internally despite the long term consequences this has to Russia and it's, and Russia's defense complex, if you will.

And of course, one of the things that happened, we started seeing about over a week ago was that North Korean troops were going into Russia and they were training in the, in the far east around places like Vladivostok.

Well, those North Korean troops have shown up on the border with Ukraine.

Ostensibly, everything I've seen sounds like they're in the Kursk Oblast.

And that's the Kursk oblast or province is where the Ukrainians had actually made that incursion into Russian territory.

So initially it appears that they're going to use the North Korean troops kind of like cannon fodder to fight the Ukrainians on Russian territory.

And when it said Canafoder, there's a lot of assessments out there that these troops are in a lot of trouble.

Now.

They sense the special Operations, the Special forces the North Koreans did, those are far better trained, far better disciplined, and they potentially could cause quite a bit of havoc in the rear areas of the Ukrainian forces.

And they're very much motivated, they're far, far more disciplined.

Regular North Korean troops are malnourished, they're poorly trained, poorly equipped.

One of the things the Russians have to do with all the North Korean troops is they issued them Russian uniforms, Russian equipment, they put them through some rudimentary tactical training.

And when you look at the abbreviated time frame of that training, you have to assume from that that apparently North Korean troops were not very well trained at all, that they had to get some sort of tactical training for a week or two weeks and then they're sent straight to the Front.

And so there's a very, very high likelihood that you could see these North Korean troops suffer extremely high attrition at the hands of what are truly battle hardened Ukrainian troops out there.

But for Putin, I don't think he cares for Kim Jong Un, the dictator of North Korea, I don't think he cares about throwing these troops into a meat grinder and they never come back.

I don't think either of them really care.

Certainly Kim Jong Un's sees as a necessary sacrifice to get something in return from Russia, maybe technology, weapons, things like that.

And certainly for Russia, they just see it as a way of avoiding a mobilization that could undermine Putin's support in these major urban areas.

So that's, that's some of the stuff that's going on there.

There's a lot more in the news happening across the board.

Dark tankers, Russian tankers that are old, under, under third country flag are traversing some of the tightest waterways in the world without turning on their AIs identification system and causing, you know, potentially extreme danger and potentially a horrendous environmental disaster, especially as they operate in places in the, in the very closed waters of the Baltic, the very confined waters of the Danish Straits.

And we're seeing that all over the place.

And that is getting a lot more attention this week.

And then the head of MI5 had talked about publicly that the Russians are doing sabotage and things to undermine what's going on in Great Britain and basically talking what we describe as hybrid warfare, that sort of gray zone activity.

It's not outright hostilities, but it does seem a lot like what, you know, certainly what we saw in World War II with the special Operations Executive and the Office of Strategic Services.

You know, they would see themselves as going behind enemy lines and engaging in all sorts of stuff.

And in more and more cases, we're finding that they actually hired criminals, basically hire a saboteur, if you will.

They pay criminals to go and do some of these attacks on their behalf.

So just a lot of things happening across the board.

And then here in the US one of the more dynamic things, and I'll probably spend more time on this, maybe next weekend or next week when I, when I do my podcast, and that is Chinese, Iranian and Russian interference with the U.S.

election.

And it is, it is rather fascinating.

All sorts of things, you know, certainly using AI, deep fakes, fake email addresses, all the things that they do to rev things up, to cause a viral, putting out a false information or, you know, fake news, if you will, across the board.

And certainly all Those tricks of the trade that go back way back when.

They're much, much more sophisticated than they ever were.

But one of the things I would point out with this is Russia and Iran would very much like to.

Or Russia, Russia and Iran would very.

Well, Russia, I should say, would very much like to see Trump reelected.

It's not a political opinion.

That's just what everything's reporting is that they've been doing stuff that supports Trump.

Ironically, Iran and China do not want to see Trump get elected.

So they've been doing all this covert activity to try and stop Trump from getting elected.

They've been actually kind of trying to subtly push Harris and waltz in getting elected for president.

And I just find it fascinating because as you know, Russia and Russia and Iran are close allies meeting all the time, you know, lots of support back and forth.

Russia and China have a relationship or friendship that knows no bounds or whatever.

And yet if you look at why they're doing what they're doing, it's to oppose the West.

The center of the west that they're trying to oppose is the United States.

And they're trying to do all this underhanded subterfuge stuff to do this.

Yet they are operating in completely opposite directions in terms of what they're doing.

And I just find this to be a fascinating development.

We'll see what happens.

One thing I will say is we're a heck of a lot more sophisticated picking up on this stuff than we, we've ever been in the past.

So when it does come out, it's not like we waited forever and it's revealed.

It is revealed.

Hey, I have covered a lot of ground.

Literally.

We have traveled around a good chunk of the, I think pretty much the entire world at this point, from the Middle east to Europe to Asia to the United States, North America.

I think that's pretty much globetrotting or globe spanning discussion.

I really do hope you've enjoyed this discussion.

You know, this is, this is really talking about strategic risk and it's really, it's a strategic risk assessment discussion or talk, hence the term strat.

And that's what this is all about, is to dig beneath the headlines, to get a little bit more or a lot more in depth as to what's going on and try to overcome some of the things we see in the news.

I should mention, you know, I'm on a number of news outlets, I'm on almost daily on fox's Live now streaming news network.

I'm on regularly with News Nation and a number of other local stations, television and radio.

And certainly a lot of people think that I do have a face for radio.

But with that, this is a way to kind of get beyond some of the wave top stuff you sometimes see in the broadcast news and to get more in depth.

So I hope you stay tuned.

I hope you tell all your friends, family, colleagues, anyone, to take a little time, maybe listen to this, those who would be interested.

And I hope you found this very valuable use of your time.

Thank you.

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