EXPERT INTERVIEW – U.S. and Israeli forces intensified their unprecedented military campaign against Iran over the weekend, striking strategic military, political and leadership targets deep inside Iranian territory in what officials are calling a coordinated effort to degrade Tehran’s war-fighting capabilities and disrupt its regional influence. The offensive, involving long-range missiles, fighter jets and precision airstrikes, followed days of escalating tensions and marks one of the most dramatic expansions of military action in the Middle East in years.Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and multiple senior commanders were reportedly killed in the initial phase of the strikes, a development confirmed by Iranian state media and acknowledged by U.S. and Israeli leaders. The death of Iran’s paramount authority has thrust Tehran into political uncertainty, even as the campaign rolls on with bombardments of ballistic missile sites, naval facilities and command infrastructure.Tehran has launched retaliatory missile and drone attacks against Israeli and U.S. military bases throughout the region, resulting in casualties on both sides and raising fears of a broader, protracted conflict. The Pentagon has confirmed American service member deaths, and Israeli officials report civilian casualties from Iranian strikes.The flurry of military operations has drawn global attention, with world powers urging restraint even as regional allies recalibrate their defense postures. Against this backdrop of war and strategic jockeying, Cipher Brief COO & Executive Editor Brad Christian spoke with former National Intelligence Manager for Iran, ODNI Norm Roule about what else we need to keep in mind on the heels of the U.S. and Israeli strikes. Their conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. You can also watch the entire interview on The Cipher Brief’s YouTube Channel.
Norman T. Roule
Norman Roule is a geopolitical and energy consultant who served for 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, managing numerous programs relating to Iran and the Middle East. He also served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran (NIM-I)n at ODNI, where he was responsible for all aspects of national intelligence policy related to Iran.
Christian: What are you not seeing right now that’s top of mind for you?Roule: That’s a great question. That’s the intelligence officer’s question because what’s in the news is something that everyone talks about, but what’s not in the news is what a good intelligence officer looks at. So, first things that we’re not seeing right now. What we’re not seeing yet would be any efforts by the Iranians to attack energy targets in the Gulf. We’ve seen some efforts by Iran to disrupt flows of transportation in the Strait of Hormuz. There have been some announcements by the IRGC, but they have not undertaken mining operations, speedboat operations, submarine operations. So, the Iranians appear to be, as of now at least, interested in maintaining the flow of oil and the food and other supplies upon which they and the other Gulf states depend through the Strait of Hormuz. So that’s number one.We’re not seeing Europe stand with the United States in the same way that it has in the past. And this is important because in many ways, what the United States is doing is in Europe’s interest. It’s not just that the nuclear negotiations have been something that Europeans have focused on for many years, but the progression of Iran’s missiles would obviously threaten Western Europe. The improvements of MRBMs [Medium-range Ballistic Missile] would threaten Germany, France, and England. Terrorism through the Quds Force has impacted Europe far more often than the United States, but the proliferation of ballistic missiles to the Houthis has severely impacted the trade of the Mediterranean states in the Red Sea.The United States Navy has done exceptional work in pushing back on the Houthis, but you’ve not seen France, Germany or the United Kingdom stand up and support the United States. In some ways, this is similar to what Chancellor [Friedrich] Mertz reportedly stated regarding Israel last year, in that Israel was doing Germany’s dirty work or Europe’s dirty work regarding Iran. The Europeans are focused on whether this is a legal operation under international rules and I do worry that following this, maybe people will look back and ask whether Europe was standing with the United States appropriately during this event.Christian: Retired Admiral Jim Stavridis said this weekend that if the Iranian regime feels that it’s at the end of its rope, and I’m paraphrasing, “I expect them to go big in terms of their response”. Is the fact that you’re not seeing some of the things that you mentioned indicative of the fact that the regime may not feel that it’s at the end of its rope, or how should we interpret that?Roule: A great question. Let’s look at some of the missile attacks that are being fired on the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and the drone attacks. Iran fires missiles against the GCC for two reasons. First, it’s hoping to strike Americans and kill as many Americans as possible to create a political problem for the president with the American people.Second, it hopes to damage as much of GCC property and kill GCC personnel so that the GCC countries themselves will press the United States to end the conflict. But the number of attacks that have been conducted by the Iranians against the GCC have been comparatively few thus far. That could change. The Iranians have used missiles and we’ve seen a number of Shahed drones used against civilian targets in Bahrain and in the Emirates. We’ve seen attacks in Saudi Arabia against Riyadh, the eastern province, that have been repelled – by the Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, as I mentioned Bahrain – all the GCC states save for Oman itself. But you would have expected to see a more intensive attack against those countries. If Iran was indeed going all out, they would have gone for saturation attacks. They would have gone for a combination of missiles, drones, and cyberattacks all at once against those targets to really have a destructive impact for that final end of the world message. That’s not occurred.There could be two reasons for this. The first is that the United States has destroyed launchers, personnel, command and control, and has prevented them from conducting attacks with the intensity that the Iranians might wish.The second is that the Iranians are trying to extend these attacks over a period of time so that they can maintain psychological pressure against the United States, Israel, and the GCC over the course of this conflict. It’s possible there’s even a mixture of these two things. The only problem with that second theory is that if you’re the Iranians, that’s a pretty gutsy move to think that you’re going to be able to retain missile launchers, missile capacity, and that the United States and the Israeli aircraft – hunting for these things right now is not going to destroy these in the next 15 minutes. So, this is not just a stranded asset. This is probably a use or lose moment for the regime. I think what we’re looking at in this regard is that if the Iranians thought they were going to go out, they might try to do something in a significant way. But the absence of that activity could be reflective of what the U.S. has done to prevent that thus far with its attacks on command and control and the launchers, etc.Christian: There’s a lot of talk about what the possibility of regime change, however that is defined, and how that could take shape. The president has issued a message to the IRGC, imploring them to lay down in their arms and receive immunity. He issued a message to the Iranian people saying, in effect, that when we’re done with this operation, this is gonna be your chance, perhaps the only chance for generations to take over your country. What are you going to be looking for, assuming that there has to have been some sort of messaging, cooperation, organization with Iranian resistance or a group that might be supported to sort of move into a leadership position, should the government as we know it fall?Roule: Let’s talk about a couple of different things. First, regime change can only be accomplished by the Iranians themselves, especially in an air campaign. What we can do is we can degrade the coercive tissue that constrains the Iranian people, and then they themselves have to act against that system if they choose to do so as their capabilities permit. There is another issue here, and that is that it’s going to be counterintuitive. You need to retain some sort of discipline and structure within the IRGC because if you were to, and I’m just throwing out a number, if you were to remove the top 10% or 500 personnel in the IRGC, you have thousands of hardline personnel who would be capable of inflicting horrific violence against unarmed protesters and you need someone to exert control and discipline over these personnel, to keep them in their barracks, keep their weapons under control. So, you need structure on the Revolutionary Guard itself to remain intact. Now in terms of groups, I’m unaware of a group that has sufficient control and influence over the entire country that it would be able to on dayone after the supreme leader left this earthly veil and Iran’s president would step in and suddenly command the popular support of the Iranian people. That individual needs to stand up and you need to then see how the street responds. That’s a crowd action that needs to appear. And that won’t be known until it’s known. That’s something that you just need to see that the people need to come out. And that can’t be measured in advance. There’s no polling that will show that. That’s not an intelligence question. That’s a mystery for the Iranians themselves, even for the people themselves, because at the moment that happens, they’re going to have to judge their personal security and how they feel about the individual at that time. When that occurs, that’s going to be a test of the remaining security structure and how they respond to that person.There’s another challenge here. The Iranians have to have agency. They have to have their own fate in their own hands. That’s not the U.S.’s responsibility. We are to help them whenever possible, stand up and remove the coercion. You have to ask such questions. Would we provide air cover if the military continued to attack them? Would we provide air cover if themilitary conducted bloodbaths? Would we attack military units in the long term? I mean these are questions that might come down the road, but if not, this is an internal issue and it may be messy, it may even be unpleasant. Politics is this way and we want to we hope it doesn’t become another Libya situation but that is up to the Iranian people to choose their fate.Christian: Following the U.S. military operation to remove Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela, we’ve seen a rather unique approach that the U.S. has taken towards working with the former regime of Venezuela in ways that probably were unthinkable before that. mean, It’s certainly drawn a lot of criticism from people who say we left a repressive regime in place, but the United States is working with them and has sent top officials including CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Venezuela. Is it possible that there are lessons that may be applied from how we’re working with Venezuela in a future Iran scenario?Roule: Absolutely, and indeed it’s not unique to the Trump administration. Former Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice has stated famously, that we are not an NGO, we are a country. Our interests in Iran as laid out in the Trump administration’s 2025 national security strategy are uniform across administrations. We want to make sure they don’t have a nuclear weapon, that they’re not threatening their neighbors and ourselves with missiles, terrorism, proliferation of militias, destabilization of maritime choke points, such as the Strait of Hormuz and the Babel Mandab. These are things that touch our core national security interests and those of our partners. Beyond that, we start getting into nation building, which the Trump administration certainly will eschew and deeply oppose anyone who suggests that we spend any time on that.At the same time, as we look at dealing with that country, you will have individuals such as the Obama administration who would say, look, if we have a nuclear deal with these people and lift sanctions, that’s the first step to show maybe we can be trusted and then we’ll build into something else. And then as sanctions are lifted, maybe that will allow the people to gradually become a kinder, gentler entity.Well, why can’t that work with sanctions being lifted by the Trump administration in a deal with a post-attack government as well? Following this issue in a hypothetical scenario, where the government says, we’re not going to rebuild the nuclear program, we’re not going to expand our missiles, we’re not going to proliferate militias and terrorists, and the Trump administrationsays we’re going to provide you with substantial sanctions relief – well, that would be far more than the Obama and Biden administrations could have ever hoped to have achieved under JCPOA and JCPOA-like agreements. And then it would, in essence, have been the same process.We hope this leads to a reform of the government over time, and it would be tested and it could apply. We could see the addition of new sanctions and we would heavily monitor it and we would have an ability to watch their behavior and respond with sanctions or other diplomatic pressures as we see fit if they fall back. So, there is a process here, just as we could apply that process to Venezuela, where the commander of Southcom has also visited and the secretary of energy. So, we have a process that is building up. And remember, under JCPOA, we had Secretary of State John Kerry meet with his Iranian counterpart on Syria to see if cooperation could work there. It didn’t work, but we tried. Cooperation on hostage exchanges. Some would say it worked or didn’t, depending on your position, but we tried. Well, the Trump administration is trying in Venezuela. We could try the same thing in this situation.Christian: What do you think we’re looking at here in terms of a timeline? Do you think this is going to be something that is a very short operation?Roule: A British prime minister was once asked after giving his plans for his foreign policy, what might stand in the way of those plans. And he famously responded, events, dear boy, events. That’s the challenge we face now. What we’ve seen so far is that the United States military and the Israeli military have performed superbly. We clearly have exquisite intelligence, extraordinary technical capability, magnificently trained personnel who have performed with courage and with great skill, and we have significantly damaged Iran and achieved what you would hope to achieve in that initial foray into a country – suppressed air defense. I think the next phase is the hammer against a variety of different types of targets.How the Iranians respond after that will be a weird science of how the political dynamic plays out with remaining personnel. So that’s a chemistry of different people, personalities, where they’re located, how they interact, what psychological pressures exist. You’re going to have the issues of what enormous events occur, what buildings are taken out, unrest that may occur or not occur, what military units respond or don’t respond. These types of things are going to change the dynamic. In any case, we’re looking at days, certainly. I’m certain the Trump administration does not want to see this turn into weeks or a timeframe beyond that.I expect as this goes forward, the Gulf partners – who have historically had superb relations with multiple levels of Iran’s polity and society – will be able to engage individuals as communications are reestablished with Iran. They will find out whether anyone wants to engage and see if anyone of substance rises from the ashes and is able to say, ‘I’m in charge and I’m willing to make a deal. I’m willing to be reasonable’.The trick is that person is going to have to prove one thing: they’re going to have to prove they have authority and a capacity to influence events. There are plenty of people who will say, ‘I am the person who can make things happen and I need nothing – Long pause – except a squadron of F-18s, $500 million and 600 American passports.’ It’s the person that you can turn to and say, ‘Okay, so tomorrow, what can you make happen in Tehran at three o’clock?’Now, when some gulf leader or someone can come up and say, this entity, this person, this group, this structure has risen and they can do this to, they’ve shown this and they want to make a deal. That’s where you start seeing a conclusion come forward or at least the prospect of a conclusion. But it’s impossible to make that prediction. And if someone says they can do that, they should start predicting lottery numbers.Secretary Colin Powell was quite a brilliant and an extraordinary man. I enjoyed working under him and around him. I learned so much from him. I did disagree with him on one famous point. He often said, “If you break it, you own it.” I disagree.If you break it, there’s nothing to own. There’s nothing here to own. There will be no structure and we need to know that going in here we won’t own anything. There will be nothing there. We’ll have to build the structure – or they’ll have to find some kind of structure.The second is how do you want this to end? Don’t go in unless you have an end game confirmed. I think that’s an admirable goal. I don’t think that’s achievable. And I think that’s often now used as a way of saying that you can’t do this because you can never guarantee that Iran will never have this perfect thing set up in advance. All we can guarantee is that we’re going to defeat our adversary, defend our personnel, defend our partners, and have in place a team and an architecture that’s able to structure through the inevitable moments when the plan fails the first contact of battle.Are you Subscribed to The Cipher Brief’s Digital Channel on YouTube? 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