In this episode of SSI Live, Major Brennan Deveraux interviews Dr. Jacob Stoil, a research professor of Middle East Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute, regarding the ongoing operations against Iran. The conversation explores the historical context of tensions with Iran and examines current and futures challenges that region may face in light of recent events.

John Deni

Hello and welcome to SSI Live. You’ve long known the Strategic Studies Institute, or SSI, at the US Army War College, as the go-to location for issues related to national security and military strategy, with an emphasis on geostrategic analysis. SSI conducts strategic research and analysis to support the US Army War College curricula; assist and inform Army, DoD, and US government leadership; and serve as a bridge to the wider strategic community. Now, we are bringing you access to SSI analyses, scholars, and guests, through this, the SSI Live podcast series. Thanks for joining us.        

Brennan Deveraux

Welcome back to SSI Live. I’m still your host, Major Brennan Deveraux. Today, we’re talking with Dr. Jacob Stoil, a research professor of Middle East Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute. He’s also the chair of applied history at the Modern War Institute. Dr. Stoil specializes in applying lessons and understanding from military history to the contemporary and future operational and strategic environment, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and practitioner focused solutions.

He is a historian who received his doctorate from Oxford. And today we’re going to really push his looking back to looking forward method for this conversation. We’re exploring the ongoing US Israeli military campaign against Iran and its potential strategic implications. But before we jump in, I want to be clear that the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the guests and not necessarily those of the Department of the Army, US Army War College, or any other agency of the US government.

Thanks for joining us, Jacob.

Jacob Stoil

Thank you so much for having me. This is going to be, I think, a really fascinating talk.

Deveraux

Yeah. And I’ve actually tried to get you on just for a regular SSI Live podcast. But for obvious reasons, as we look to the Middle East, you’ve been quite busy.

Stoil

The Middle East does tend to be one of the hotter theaters, both in terms of temperature and activity.

Deveraux

You’ve done great so far at SSI, tied in with commands. I know you’ve worked with ARCENT (US Army Central), CENTCOM (US Central Command), [the] Joint Staff, and have taken some trips not just to their locations, but out to the Middle East itself.

Stoil

Yeah. And I think this is one of the strengths SSI really brings to the force is our ability to link academics who can then tie into academic networks, who have a practitioner focus in their work and bring it at the time and place of need, bring that academic and research background in whenever we can. So it’s one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about this position.

And I think really if this podcast can advertise that, not just me, but the entire team at SSI stands pretty ready to do this kind of work.

Deveraux

And we have every region represented. And you bring over a network you had built up, when you were working over at SAMS (School of Advanced Military Studies) out of Fort Leavenworth.

Stoil

Yeah, I had the privilege to be a SAMS instructor for nearly eight years. Five years on the AMSP (Advanced Military Studies Program), which dealt with the kind of majors and lieutenant colonels from the operational level planning and then three years with the O6-level program called ASLSP (Advanced Strategic Leadership Studies Program), working on the strategic level, which has the benefit of getting to visit every combatant command that the US military has and get briefed by them.

So it’s a great program for understanding kind of the strategic and integrating the strategic picture.

Deveraux

And I know when you talk to the some of the senior leaders, the uniform wearers, it also provides some instant credibility. Maybe, you know, the secret handshake. We like to joke about, but probably a nice, fun foot in the door. We’ll go ahead and transition. But before we get into what’s ongoing, and everyone, I think, is tracking what’s ongoing, we’ll talk a little bit about it in detail, can you offer up some historical context on the region? Why tensions are what they are and kind of how we got here without going too much into, you know, maybe a graduate seminar on the history of the Middle East.

Stoil

I think the key point to remember here is Iran has really been at war with the US for nearly 40 years. The US has not necessarily reciprocated being at war with Iran, but Iran has seen itself at war with the US since essentially the Iranian Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini, in his writings, is very explicit about the US as his enemy.

As a really fun fact, when he was getting ready to take over in Iran. The US was very much in the Cold War frame. And so we thought of him as a religious leader and therefore an anti-communist, which was true. He didn’t have much love for the communists and was anti-Soviet, but we didn’t hold his rhetoric that he also hated America to be true, because in our mind, if you were a religious leader, you were anti-communist, and if you were anti-communist, you were pro-America.

The Soviets also backed him because they looked at all of his “Death to America” rhetoric and his revolutionary rhetoric and said, “well, if you hate America and you want death to America, then you’re obviously a Soviet.” Even if you say communism is evil. So, it’s really inbuilt into the idea of America as an enemy. Is really inbuilt fundamentally into the Iranian revolutionary ideology.

And it’s something they’ve been carrying out since the beginning. Obviously, a lot of our listeners might remember or be familiar with the Iran hostage crisis, where one of the first things the regime did when it took over with stormed the US embassy and take our diplomats hostage. Then there were a lot of times where they killed US personnel in Lebanon, both civilians and military, the Marine Corps barracks bombing, the embassy bombing, all our key parts of them.

And this didn’t stop. It continued going.

Deveraux

I think it’s important to note, when we say they’ve been at war with…, that’s tangible. There are tangible actions, not just Iran hates us. But we’ve seen historical events and even fairly recently, if we looked at, say, the global war on terror, I remember, very much finding weapons that were clearly supplied from, Iran. So good points on some of these more actual historical events.

Stoil

Yeah. And I think that’s really important, especially for our veterans who are veterans of the, global war on terror. They will know that Iran used that as an ability to, use that as an opportunity to target American service personnel and American civilians throughout the globe, though principally in Iraq. And we can talk about everything from some of the rocket systems that came in to the explosively formed penetrators.

Iran has been responsible for the death of potentially thousands of Americans over the years. So they very much took actual practical action on this war. And the US largely did not. And this leads to a historical context where after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran starts to look at more means to secure itself. That it feels that it might be in jeopardy, that there’s some US rhetoric coming after it, and it also is feeling kind of its strength that it’s been able to use its proxies to target America and target Israel for quite some time. And there hasn’t really been blowback against it.

And so it begins to invest very heavily towards a nuclear program and the alignment of three key aspects of their strategy. The development of the nuclear weapons program, long range missile and then drone strike and loiter munitions, and also the backing of proxies, really become the cornerstones of their approach to their global power.

And through the way they enter deals with Russia, and even now or until very recently on as Russia was fighting in Ukraine, they served as a strategic deep area for Russia, helping Russia with its drone production and some of the Shahab drones that have been raining over Ukraine are directly coming from Iran.

Deveraux

Similar to a lot of Western nations. Then, the Ukraine battlefield has been really a battle lab, potentially for Iran.

Stoil

They have taken lessons from it. It has been something of a battle, but it’s more of an area where they’ve been able to provide critical support to an ally. And in return, that ally was supposed to provide them critical support. It certainly provided them money. It’s provided them resources towards their nuclear program and of course, their air defense system, which as of now is in somewhat of tatters. Not a great advertisement for buying Russian product, I suppose, but, it less about a lab and much more of an opportunity to really integrate with an ally.

Deveraux

I think you make interesting point about the air defense, and I don’t think Iran had the most exquisite potential Russian systems. I know for a while they were sitting still on S-300. I don’t know their current capabilities and what we’re targeted. It kind of helps build a narrative that I had talked with, Evan Ellis about in here about Venezuela.

One of the takeaways was air defense is defeatable, which is something people kind of struggle with because there is a narrative that I have this gia...