---
title: "Middle East Roundtable: Once More Unto the Breach?"
description: "Hello and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable here at Fronts.co. This is Evan Maloney, head writer for War Fronts, Home Fronts, now Defense Fronts, Fronts.co, all the fronts. I am here with Wilfred Miner, Africa correspondent for, again, All The Fronts."
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datePublished: 2026-10-17T11:26:32.000Z
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Hello and welcome to the Middle East Roundtable here at Fronts.co. This is Evan Maloney, head writer for War Fronts, Home Fronts, now Defense Fronts, Fronts.co, all the fronts. I am here with Wilfred Miner, Africa correspondent for, again, All The Fronts.

And Kyle Moran, staff writer here at All The Fronts as well. So quite an episode this week. We have, at long last, potential signs that there may be a breakthrough with the situation and stalemate going on in Hormuz.

It's just not in the direction that most people would care to hear about, I think. Overall, we do seem to be moving in a direction where both sides, Israel and the U.S. on one and Iran on the other are gearing up for a renewed round of Kinetic exchanges, it's not entirely clear how extensive they will be but on the US side of things we have Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pushing hard for a renewed leg of the campaign most likely after the midterms. Donald Trump is reportedly on the fence about it undecided, hasn't made up his mind one way or another.

Other administration officials advising against and to keep up the economic only campaign. As well as in Israel, we have Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly on the phone with Donald Trump talking about going back into the campaign after the Israeli elections on october 27th so we also now have news out of iran they have been gearing up for some time now for a return to all out escalations in terms of making sure the country is as ready as it can be iran is at one of its biggest disadvantages with air defenses they have very little ability to prevent the U.S. and Israeli Air Forces from achieving air superiority over their cities. There have been a few cases of U.S. craft going down, but for the most part, they've basically just been trying to make strategic targets as bomb-resistant as possible rather than any actual campaign to prevent it from happening.

But we also have news now that they have been considering retaliatory strikes that make the springs look like a warm-up act as well as continued talk about potential limited ground operations coming out of Mosin-Razai. That's potentially bluster, potentially not. I'm sure we'll be able to get into all of that today here on the Middle East Roundtable.

So, gentlemen, we are once again staring down a renewed escalation in Hormuz with Iran. What say you all? Where are we going from here?

Well, let's start with the U.S. side of this, because I know you guys have seen as well. There's been a good deal of talk coming out of the White House and the Pentagon discussing that the U.S. is now looking to, potentially after the midterm elections on November 3rd, looking to scale up military operations over Iran. Now, there's a political dimension to this, right?

If this happens in the next couple months, it'll be during the lame-dunk period of the current Congress in the U.S., so that's kind of a time when it's a little bit more politically sensitive and the president can kind of get away with a good deal more, but also there's kind of some greater chance of backlash from people who know that they're not keeping their seats because they've been replaced. Before we get into the political side, though, I do want to talk about the military and tactical side because we've seen the US already attempt a long air offensive against Iran with some effects, right? Certainly degraded and destroyed a fair portion of Iran's military infrastructure, but at the same time, Iran retains the capability to replenish its munitions and continues to strike into the Strait of Hormuz, so on and so forth.

So do we anticipate that a return to strictly aerial operations for the U.S. could make some kind of impact? And if not, then what do you make of these new groups of U.S. Marines and other potential ground personnel making their way to the region? I have always insisted that air operations in and of themselves are effective but only to a point and we've already reached the point where they are effective because if the US really wants to make a statement with Iran and a statement that goes beyond what they've already done, they'd need to really escalate the bombing campaign.

We've seen reports on social media and within the press itself that the US is considering using the mother of all bombs in Iran. And that would be a very dramatic escalation, especially if used against Iranian energy infrastructure. The risk with that is that if the US ramps up the bombing campaign to this point, Iran will retaliate and it will retaliate against American allies in the region that are crucial for global oil prices, global oil infrastructure, just the global oil economy.

And if people think that oil prices are bad right now, just wait until Iran decides to retaliate on such a massive scale, we'll be looking at, you know, situations where Brent crude is at like 200 or something, which is just unfathomable, because at that point, we're in a recession, it's really bad. Just you, we're looking at a major, major crisis. so i don't think the resumption of strikes is a good idea but again i haven't thought this idea this entire war rather is a good idea and the exists the same risk with sending ground troops into iran if iran really believes that this is an existential war, that the very survival of the regime is at hand, then they have nothing to lose. They have so little to lose and so much to gain by escalating that we're trapped in that same scenario where Iran can escalate to a point that the rest of the world doesn't really want to see.

So it's just a bad situation all around. Kyle, what do you think? Yeah, largely on the same page.

So there are certain strategic goals that air campaigns can achieve. We have reached a point where it's pretty clear that this is not some situation where, "Oh, Iran is a few more bombs or even many more bombs away from either defeat or collapse or anything like that." It does not make any sense to me where the first campaign simply did not achieve what it set out to and in fact it's it's emboldened many of the hard liners in the country so it does not make any particular degree of sense to me that we would then return to that same strategy. But again, we don't have complete confirmation that this is going to happen.

Some of this can be sort of smoke and mirrors as an effort to try to intimidate. I suppose I, you know, I don't really know how effective that would be either Iran seems the Islamic Republic's regime seems it seems quite determined to be that they are willing to fight this to the last if the US decides that's the goal here and I would trust them at their word on that one. Yeah, the other side of this is the U.S. and other intelligence agencies, as we're looking at Iran right now, have been surprised, according to recent reports, about how quickly Iran is rearming.

Now, we know a little bit about how Iran's decentralized munitions production capabilities work, right? Iran has very intentionally distributed all of its factories into, like, these kind of small either bunker facilities or in some cases garage factories or other things that can be kind of picked up and moved if needed, or if one of them or two of them gets bombed, that's really not very much a hit to the overall supply chain. So it's not necessarily a surprise that Iran has been able to continually replenish its stocks, but I think that does bring up a pretty important question that we can also Echo given what we've seen in Yemen and Saudi Arabia recently which we'll get to where Saudi Arabia is really struggling to deal with incoming aerial projectiles right now with its existing air defenses so with the U.S looking to potentially re-engage they do need to expect quite a great deal of Iranian counterfire.

You mentioned the prospect of mass retaliation from Iran on a scale that's not, you know, not comparable to what we saw earlier this year, but would try to step that up probably in terms of targeting, whether that's desalination plants, whether it's energy infrastructure and so on. So personally, I'm looking at this prospect and thinking, you know, how many air defense interceptors does the U.S. and its allies have left? How far can you stretch those reserves versus what Iran currently has available?

So I am shocked, genuinely shocked, that American intelligence agencies are surprised at how quickly Iran is rearming because for a while now the Iranian economy the Iranian industry has focused on one key thing the production of weapon systems to keep the country safe that's why missile stockpiles were a really big point of discussion early in the war that's why there was so much talk around Iran's drone capabilities and the American intelligence infrastructure really underestimated how many missiles and drones Iran had in its arsenal we kept hearing that Iran will be out of missiles will be out of drones any day now and that never happened you up to this point iran is still not out of drones so there is a really big failure by the american intelligence community to understand just how vital these weapon systems are for iranian survival for iranian defense and defense in the sense that as long as iran has them it believes it can protect the islamic republic the regime and that's a very important tenet for Tehran as long as the regime survives it's not based on one individual that's why when Khomeini was killed earlier in the year the regime still survived it's not based on one individual as long as key figures within the regime still survive as long as the ideology survives they believe that the Islamic Republic survives so that's that's again a failure on the intelligence department and then there's a question of how long can America and its allies in the region stretch out the remaining interceptors. Evan you did a piece recently looking at the situation in Saudi Arabia its fight against the Houthis and Saudi Arabia was unable to defend its key airports against a Houthi drone strike I can't remember off the top of my head if it was a drone strike or a missile strike the fact that it couldn't intercept whatever weapon system came in just tells you a lot about how thin he stretched the existing air defence capabilities are. You know, the other countries are obviously not Saudi Arabia, they're not fighting against an Iranian proxy group that is really well armed, but they're still in that same situation with air defenses at really low levels.

So it's just a question of which side runs out of systems first. - Yeah, overall, part of this is, I sort of question what the breakdown was of US intelligence failure versus not listening to the intelligence agencies. And unfortunately, because we are still not in any of these signal group chats, we do have to use OSINT Intel exclusively. So we don't really know what the extent of the knowledge was beforehand it could be that some in the administration simply did not listen it could be that it was an intelligence failure overall throughout the summer I definitely remember though there were there was big conversations about the fact that Iran still had a considerable amount of munitions so even if they did not rearm to any significant extent, they almost wouldn't have needed to on drones as well as some missiles at least, because they had considerable stockpiles still at their disposal.

One of the biggest things was their ability to actually launch them. So we saw from the outset of Operation Epic Fury, there was a reduction of better than 90% of actual launches coming from Iran, which did help considerably in terms of shoring up defenses throughout the rest of the region, because without that, several may have ran dry on interceptors until that got replenished. But overall, looking forward, I am just pretty skeptical as to where any of this is actually gonna go and have become increasingly concerned about the possibility of any ground operation.

Evan, to your point, there is another carrier group going in as well as a Marine Expeditionary Force. as long as they are there for blockade purposes that is one thing if we are even remotely considering boots on the ground that would be a catastrophic escalation in my opinion yeah I strongly agree on that I think there is a fair question to ask about whether this Marine Expeditionary Unit has been sent over kind of just to put more ships in the water. If you have a shortage of naval destroyers and frigates and you kind of have this landing group that you can send over and take the capabilities that are on those ships to help with air defenses then great right and maybe you bring the marines along just in case because you're already sending a ship over that's a separate conversation if they are looking at this with the intent to either put boots on the ground on any of the islands near the strait of hormuz or on karg island or potentially even on the sea coast in bund or abbas i mean we've said it many times in this podcast but that would be a catastrophic misstep by the US but I do want to flip the script then and talk about Iran because as you mentioned Kyle there have been some discussions that Iran could potentially be looking at a ground invasion of its own against one of its neighbors whether that's limited operations or whether it's something bigger this I do think needs to be taken very seriously for two reasons firstly because the Iranian ground forces have been sitting out of this conflict for the most part they've been helping to launch missiles they've been operating air defense they've been patrolling the interior to try and keep any kind of civilian discontent well hidden but other than that they've really kind of had to sit on their hands for this conflict and they clearly do not want to. I think personally, Kuwait is the most obvious target.

We've published a video on this on Warfronts a couple months ago that was one of mine that went into this possibility a little bit further. Not only is Kuwait quite vulnerable, and you can attack it through kind of a southern Iraqi land bridge where Iran-backed Shia militias have a pretty large presence already. But you can also entice the U S into a ground defense of another country, right?

I think whether or not the U S is willing to put boots on the ground in Iran is a very different question from is the US willing to defend one of its allies on the ground in Kuwait which I think even at this stage of the war even under this administration I think would still be a yes especially considering the kind of cultural significance of Kuwait in the US military those after the Gulf War and I think once Iran manages to get u.s troops on the ground we are looking at a very different kind of conflict the specter that i always raise and that i think it's important to keep on raising because there's not nearly enough focus on this in my opinion the u.s is not ready to have constant streams of drone footage popping up on social media feeds depicting American soldiers being hunted down by quadcopters. That is not something that the U.S. is ready to deal with. And both for the public relations value and for the tactical value as well, I think that is exactly the situation that Iran would love to either have presented to it through a U.S. invasion of Iranian territory or otherwise seek to create through military action on the ground in another country that the U.S. would have to respond to.

But I'm curious to hear what you guys think about that, or if I'm way out over my skis and being concerned about this, or if this is a real prospect. So I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few days and I'm coming at it from a slightly different angle than you. I generally agree that Iran would love the possibility of you know getting those kinds of videos of American troops running away from drones, of American troops being decimated by drone attacks because and unless you and you know this is for audience unless you guys are seeing the kind of videos we see and we see a lot of drone combat footage simply you know because we are covering the situation in Ukraine we're covering was all over the world where drones are being used consistently but more so you know this is something I've seen from covering ukraine drone videos make for very good propaganda and it's not just that it's going to affect the american psyche because trust me it really is people are not prepared for i mean you called it a public relations scandal just imagine a lot of military families are conservative by nature just imagine someone going on Fox News talking about how Trump sent a kid to war and they go to see their child die from an Iranian drone strike I don't think Americans or even the gop have to be very specific is ready for the electoral nightmare that will come from that we'll we're looking at the possibility of a gop defeat in the midterms if trump sends troops on the ground if trump decides to intervene if iran invades kuwait then the political blow back against the GOP will be generational.

And then the other thing is, this will be really good recruiting footage and recruiting material for terror groups around the region. Because one thing that Americans might not really appreciate is just how its armed forces are seen around the world. There's this sense of invincibility that America has the greatest army in the world, that American special forces are the best in the world, no one can compete.

But seeing American troops getting decimated by cheap drones, that will shift the narrative so far away from that belief that America is invincible towards, oh, these are just people who, yes, they have really good training, yes, they spend a lot of money on their defense industry, yes, you know, they have all this cool gear and cool weapons, but they're people all the same. Drones will do to them exactly what it does to the rest of us. So I don't think the decision makers in Washington are thinking about that.

And it's a possibility that they really have to consider, which is why I believe, yes, all the options exist, but there has to be another alternative instead of you know ground invasion there has to be yeah we are all people all the same and I think that we get into very dangerous territory when we forget those things fly a little too close to the Sun there's a lot of different avenues Iran could go down here I am particularly concerned by way of the slowly rope the U.S. in approach, because overall, I don't think that the chance of the U.S. just randomly deciding, OK, yes, let's let's put boots on the ground is very high. Trump knows it would be spectacularly unpopular and make the war way more unpopular than it currently is. As I have said previously on the pod, right now it is what I would describe as soft unpopular.

So you have there's no big base of huge support, but we're also not seeing any type of mass protests against it or anything like that. This would be a total game changer there. But writ large, if it gets sucked in by that steady erosion of Iran dragging the country in, then that is a different story entirely.

And I think that Iran, they have a considerable amount of forces they could deploy for this. So the IRGC alone has somewhere around 150,000 ground forces that they could deploy, as well as the regular army, the Artesh, which I believe has around 400,000 300 400,000 I believe is that force so when combined that's a significant fighting force the only thing being that Iran's capabilities to fight ground combat are not nearly as sophisticated as their drone campaigns. Iran has not fought a war, like a full war, since Iraq 40 something years ago, almost four years ago.

So overall, it would be uncharted territory, but it's territory that I would prefer to remain uncharted is how I'll leave that. Yeah. There's, I think, an argument that Iran is not necessarily ready to fight and win a war against the U.S. on another nation's territory, going back to that Kuwait option.

That's not necessarily a conflict that Iran would be expected to, like, conquer Kuwait and boot the U.S. out. Probably on balance, that does kind of flip the U.S.'s way. The issue, I think, is the supremely low pain tolerance of the U.S. voting public right now.

Kyle, I absolutely agree with what you say about this kind of being soft unpopular right now, where we're seeing a lot of discontent over the war, but it's manifested kind of in secondary effects, whether it's the price of gas and diesel, or whether it's kind of the upcoming expectations for the midterms or some of the discontent in the agricultural sector over fertilizer shortages and those kind of things. I think even if the U.S. were able to defend and hold a third country or even if it were to establish a foothold on Iranian soil or on an Iranian island, It's not really about the tactical success so much as it is about the perception of damage to U.S. forces and to the people who make up the units that would be deployed there. Really, the U.S. is it seems like the U.S. public is largely unclear on what exactly the goals are of this war and why exactly it had to be fought now, which has been explained very poorly, I think, by the US administration since the beginning.

And for that reason, it's already difficult to look at the 20 plus service members who have died over there and kind of try to rationalize, well, why did that happen? Why did that need to happen? I think it's a very, very different and harder thing to explain away when now it's potentially casualties or fatalities running into the hundreds with footage against an enemy that was supposed to be well under control with this aerial operation, according to the White House, that was supposed to have been defeated like 20 times over now, and still somehow retains the capability to continue its attacks.

But then again, on the other side, I think it's also worth discussing the rallying effect that a resumption of US and potentially Israeli attacks might have on Iran. We've talked last week a fair bit about where is the breaking point for Iran, right? When does kind of the country come to a point where it just has to start acquiescing to more and more US demands does that calculus change now if the US returns to bombing and kind of unites the Iranian people again under not necessarily a vision for the war for the Islamic Republic but at least you know the idea that we would love not to be being bombed right now and right now the Americans are bombing us and the IRGC is trying to stop us from being bombed so I guess that's our guys yeah I think that the sort of recruitment effort styles messaging there is certainly important one of the biggest takeaways that I've had from this has been just how much ground Iran has lost throughout their Middle East so you can see in when the US does something unpopular in particular after the invasion of Iraq, but also a bit in the case of the invasion of Afghanistan.

There were significant protests across much of the Middle East, across much of the Arab world. We're talking Yemen, Egypt, I know there was some in Morocco, so truly across and into North Africa, in solidarity with some rather unpleasant dictators, simply because of the hatred felt for U.S. foreign policy. and after this war, it never materialized. There may have been a few that I saw, and it was a few people, but it was never this mass street protest.

Iran simply lost so much of the Arab world by way of its insistent mishandling of foreign relations, its insistence on using proxy forces that have largely become synonymous with occupying and/or holding countries outright hostage and as well as shooting missiles at them i mean it's hard to protest the united states when it's it's hard to protest the united states bombing iran when iran is bombing you and its u.s interceptors keeping you safe. So certainly a public relations misstep by the Islamic Republic for the last few decades, in my opinion. But I also think that this would be something that reverses that, at least slightly.

So one of the things I have been following particularly keenly is the actions of the Houthis, which are Iran's most popular proxy group right now. So when they bombed the Saudi Arabian airports, it resulted in the deaths of 12 people who, if memory serves me right, were heading for Hajj, they were heading for a pilgrimage in the secret sites of Mecca and Madinah. That will, to Kyle's point, really continue to alienate Iran because when people think of the Houthis strike, they won't really think of them as the Houthis, yes, the title exists, they'll think of the organization, but they'll see in them Iran's backing, Iran's weapons, Iran's money, Iran's training.

All of it will circle back to Iran and will be a blemish on Iran within the Islamic community. But again, I don't want to speak too much about it because I am not a Muslim and this is just an area that I am looking at as an outside observer. To Evan's earlier question, what about inside Iran?

We saw a rallying effect when the US bombed the Minab school for girls killing more than a hundred people and that was perhaps the greatest victory that Iran could get at that early stage of the war, just how quickly the people rally towards the capital, rally towards the flag, because you couldn't be seen supporting the U.S. because that would be a tacit admission that you are supporting the people killing Iranian children. And you know, depending on how far the u.s. goes if it does resume a bombing campaign then again we will probably see another rally around the flag effect because you can only bomber people so long while claiming that you're helping them before they start asking, you're helping us, but at what cost? And that's the question that will keep playing in the minds of the Iranians as the economy keeps stumbling because of the blockade on Iran, the Iranian currency continues to lose value, and if the U.S. does resume a bombing campaign, their infrastructure continues to get destroyed.

And looking back to some of the more recent events in Iran that are kind of presaging this turn to potentially renewed conflict, we had seen a quiet few weeks in the Strait of Hormuz where Iran hadn't really been hitting very many tankers, where it seemed like shipping traffic was returning to something that was closer to normal levels. There had been some reports about just how much ship captains are being paid, how much crews are being paid to take the added onboard risk of trying to do these dead of night runs where they're getting through the straight under USS board and then transferring fuel and then trying to get fuel out, so on. But now that situation has changed.

So over the last 24 hours, as of the time of this recording so on Thursday the 15th of October two ships were hit and both were sunk near the Strait of Hormuz one of them was a container ship the other one was a bulk carrier the container ship was fairly small the bulk carrier was a larger vessel. As of right now, one crew member was killed, all others from both ships were evacuated. These are only the second and third ships to be sunk like not just hit but sunk in the straight since the start of the war in February so that on its own is a pretty significant expansion by Iran and now these come on the heels of about a 10-day stretch where the attacks on shipping have been ramping up again, where the US has obviously tried its best to intercept what it can and where it can, but there are clearly limitations to that.

It seems like the US's focus right now primarily is on these larger oil tankers, which are obviously a much more lucrative target for Iran, and they're a much more important set of ships for the global energy market, but they're not the only ships in the Strait. And we've talked before about how hitting ships in this area, no matter what you're hitting, maritime insurance goes up, ships are much less willing to make the cross. And even if they could conceivably make the cross with let's say 80 to 90 percent chance that they wouldn't be hit often because of the combination of prices and companies wanting to avoid risk they'll just sit on their side of the street and wait for the situation to clear up however long however long that might take so it seems like at the bare minimum Iran is trying to work its way back to that.

But what do you guys make of these renewed strikes and now the sinking of these two ships in the strait? There was a report in Reuters a little while ago, I'll try to find it so that I can use the exact date. But there was a report in Reuters that Iran was using a new strategy to target ships in and beyond Hormuz and this strategy had been approved at the highest levels of the Iranian government.

Excuse me, my nose is getting a little stuffed because of the cold. But yeah, there was, you know, these reports that Iran was using this new strategy as a way to continue to ramp up the pressure on the US ahead of the midterms to really, really ensure that Trump's Republican Party does poorly in the elections. And we've already seen just how poorly the Republican Party is pulling so just any additional attacks by Iran will just really really sink the Republicans chances because again this is a war that is so fundamentally tied to the Republican Party because as long as oil prices go up their chances go down so it's just part of Iran's broader strategy of making this war as painful personally on a personal level for Trump because if there's one thing that Trump hates it's being seen as a loser he still to date hasn't accepted that he lost the 2020 elections and he would absolutely hate to be the president who lost the Republicans, the House and the Senate with the largest possible majority, which is becoming an even greater reality as long as this situation prolongs.

Yeah, so I did the episode last week on what's going on in Hormuz. So just some follow up on that. So we are down a bit in terms, a substantial amount in terms of oil flows.

So the latest seven day average that came out earlier today from Kepler as 11.6 million barrels a day. That's down from the pre-war baseline of 17.1 million but still considerably higher than it was at low points at various stages during this conflict. So overall, certainly something to keep an eye on because the way I worded it in the episode last week is Iran has a steadily lost control of Hormuz but that does not mean that this is at any point the stage where the US should be hanging up mission accomplished banners it fundamentally does not take that much to spot a ship crossing given just how much land Iran has along this body of water.

They've also shown an increased willingness to target ships not just in the Strait of Hormuz itself, but also in the Persian Gulf. So they hit one last week off the coast of Qatar, just north of the coast of Qatar. And that's an escalation, because they hadn't done that since I believe March, and it shows that not only is this sounds like an abstract difference but it's actually significant because previously it was okay if you're crossing hormuz without our permission we're going to shoot at you now it's this ship is in the Persian Sea, and they just start firing at them.

So, I mean, it's a significant difference. It shows they are, I suspect, feeling a bit desperate in terms of they gotta get some hits in. And we saw earlier this week, to Evan's point, this was only the second and the third respective ships that have sank since Epic Fury began.

So, certainly an escalation. And one that I imagine will continue. These companies have started to pay sailors a huge amount of money to navigate these waters.

They're handing out like $25,000 bonuses for people making just a trip through Hormuz. So that really drives up costs of shipping as well. Now, Iran is not the only country that is perpetrating attacks right now, but I do want to turn our attention to something happening in Iran, on Iranian territory, particularly centered around the province of Sistan, Balochistan near the Pakistan border.

It's not totally clear what's happening here. If there's any kind of a larger hidden hand behind the trend that we see going on. But Iranian security forces have been under attack in that area pretty consistently.

Sistan Balochistan is an area with a known ongoing kind of low-grade domestic insurgency. The ethnic Baloch population, which is much more active in neighboring Pakistan, but can use the cross-border region to smuggle weapons, to send fighters, so on and so forth. And they are also active to a degree in Iran.

So what can you guys tell us about the recent wave of kind of lower grade attacks in this area? And what do you make of it right now? Yeah, so we have been seeing this start to escalate.

This has always been sort of an ongoing concern for the regime because, as you said, borders neighboring Pakistan. The Balochistan region is in both countries, and they do have some flow where they can smuggle arms back and forth. So there have been at least 37 separate armed incidents this year including this month militants attacked the police headquarters with explosives there were and according to the human rights activist news agency there were 18 armed incidents in the past three weeks alone so just over just a little back into September is where that rolling period started.

So overall, we have seen this really has escalated. We have seen a pretty dead fast Iranian response. So earlier this month, there was an operation back on the 6th.

And then more recently, just the other day, there was a follow-up operation that killed five militants, Baloch militants. But overall, I think that this is going to be an ongoing issue for Iran. Certainly not an all-out revolution or anything like that, but sort of a low-grade insurgency problem, because I don't see it going away.

Despite the fact that Tehran has a way more sophisticated security apparatus than Islamabad does, they're still relatively at the mercy of the BLA, the Liberation Army, as well as other militant groups in the country, to just not carry these out. Because there are only so many things they can do to crush them given that they're this these are not like mass protests or anything where you can just shoot your way out of it which is the regime's response unfortunately but when it comes to armed insurgencies it's a lot harder and i don't really see any way for them to bring any swift end to that. - Gentlemen, I don't follow Balochistan nearly as closely as the two of you, but there was an article in the Arab Weekly yesterday, on Wednesday, that asked, "Will Balochistan become Iran's Achilles' heel?" You know, looking at the long-term prospects of Balochistan within the context of Iran and their assessment there are weekly assessment was yes it will become an issue that Iran will need to deal with again and again so what do you make of this question specifically will it become Iran's Achilles heel in the long term it certainly could be one of the there is, there is blowback to this, though, because one of the biggest concerns that Iranians often express is steadfast, hell no refusal to go down the route of Syria, of Iraq, where you have armed ethno-armies that sort of go about conducting their own operations in the name of semi-autonomous regions. So they really do not want any type of armed bloc movement really taking form.

They really do not want to see attacks taking place throughout the country. And so much so to the point where that could actually drive some support back to the Islamic Republic, simply by way of, we cannot allow the country to fall apart the way that Iraq fell apart through different ethnic, ethno-armies and separatists like that. So I think that is something that could actually help the Islamic Republic with popular support at a time where it critically needs it.

But I also think that, again, there's just no great way for Iran to simply put a stop to it. The one saving grace is that the ethnic minorities in Iran are relatively less pro-separatism than may be assumed. This is slightly less the case with Kurds, but more with Balochs and Azeris, and it's hard to speak too broadly of these groups, but writ large, these communities have been living there together for centuries. so this is not some new issue it's also something that they've been able to deal with for the last many hundred years so overall i think that they will have that going for them, but the highly motivated militants are certainly going to be a thorn in the side of the Islamic Republic and potentially Achilles heel.

Yeah, I agree. I study the Balochistan issue much more closely from the opposite side of the border. But even from that, it's clear that for the last little while, the Iranian and the Pakistani biolic insurgencies kind of operate in a directional relationship.

So the Iranian side is much more tightly controlled, tightly policed. It's been tougher for a long time for Iranian balaq separatists to kind of get away with as much as they can in Pakistan, where Pakistan's dealing with a number of other internal security issues and just kind of has a harder time generally operating in the Balochistan region. For that reason, the insurgent cross-border apparatus basically exists to funnel, whether it's funding, whether it's limited amounts of weapons, whether it's supplies, over the Iranian border into Pakistan, where the movement generally has seen more success and where its supporters tend to believe that they can kind of get a little bit further than they can going in the opposite direction.

That could change, right? There are plenty of available weapons and explosives in this part of Pakistan that could be moved back across the border to inflame and intensify this operation in Iran, which it does seem like to an extent that may be happening. It's very hard as we saw in the response to the crackdowns on protests earlier this year in Iran, it's very, very difficult for civilians to get their hands on firearms in a lot of Iran, especially the higher impact firearms that you would need to wage a consistent insurgency.

There are plenty of those in Pakistan that you could move across the border. And if you're going to try and get those in Iran, system Balochistan is kind of the place to go, just by nature of how the black market worked over there. That being said, it is still difficult to see these attacks escalating anything beyond what they are now.

There is, of course, some possibility of foreign intelligence services being involved. Obviously, we've seen the U.S. and Israel engage with Kurdish factions on the opposite end of Iran earlier in this war, even though that didn't go anywhere. So certainly a similar thing like that could be happening.

That being said, Iran still is pretty good at internal policing, especially in this part of the country. It does have the requisite forces in that area. Granted, there's only like putting a ton of loyal security forces in a given area doesn't solve all of your problems right those security forces then kind of become sitting ducks on patrol for attacks which we've now seen and that does seem to be where the bala insurgents are having more of an impact but scaling past that I think is going to be really difficult and as you said Kyle Iran is not a place that's very hospitable to ethnic separatism.

Probably if they were to gain much more momentum, that would be a potentially galvanizing force for unity across the rest of Iran, just like a return of American and Israeli strikes might. So I think there are some limitations to where that could go. And I do want to keep us on Iran for one other issue.

So we mentioned last week that there had been some internal struggles between the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Arachi, and some of the hardliners within the regime. The attempts to impeach Arachi appear to have kind of fallen by the wayside. And I would love to hear more about why that is, and also the allies that Arachi seems to have within the hardline faction of the Iranian government.

So yeah, last week we talked about this idea that Arachi could be impeached because of apparent contacts with American officials that had not been approved by basically Iran's supreme leader, Moshtaba Khamenei, who might not be alive. Just shout out to Kyle's recent article on Fronts.co saying that Iran cannot continue to pretend that Moshtaba is alive. So if Agachi doesn't have a Ouija board, there's definitely no way he's communicating with the dead.

But on a serious note, the impeachment motion was predicated on this fact that Agachi was speaking to the US and having contacts with the US that had not been approved by the higher ups. And it seems that the iranian higher apps have finally come down to protect agachi and say hey we actually approved this by the higher apps i mean the supreme national security council chief mosen razay i hope i am pronouncing that right he came out and publicly confirmed that Agachi had permission to speak with American officials. And that is the biggest vote of confidence that Agachi could have received at this point.

Because Rezé isn't, you know, your run-of-the-mill Iranian politician, he's as Evan has alluded to, he's a hardliner who has been sanctioned by the US who espouses the same kind of hardline views we expect someone at that level of the Iranian government to espouse. Your death to America, death to Israel, death to all infidels, basically. The fact that he is coming out in support of Agachi is really, really prominent.

Well, thank you for the shout out on the article, Derry. I do have to say that the ability to invoke from the highest levels as a way of sort of invoking mostaba when nobody has actually heard from him is like the greatest iranian get out of jail free card imaginable because you can just say you can just say i mostaba again most of a green limit and you know nobody really knows where that actually stood where this is going etc so I do think that's going to be an issue they have to grapple with for all of the reasons why you guys can all check out the article on france.co but writ large the fact that this is even under discussion is just like so outrageous to me Arakji's impeachment this is like the, this is the culmination of the issues with the Islamic Republic, its model of governance, its absent Supreme Leader. But even if the Supreme Leader was there, you have these inherent factions that are just constantly clashing.

And this happens within all forms of government. You have different factions, you have different parties, etc. This is natural normal to an extent. But this level is just silly.

You don't have the Secretary of Defense in the United States coming after the Secretary of State, you know, it just does not happen for simply negotiating. And writ large, I think this is just the problem of the very entrenched power structure inside the country where you have different factions that are constantly going to be clashing with each other in order to maintain their own power. So even if they don't necessarily think that Aragji is guilty, they still benefit from being able to flex muscle and being able to shore up their own base of support by presenting themselves as being more in the national interest against traitors or whatever they would like to throw at Aragchi, which, again, is just such nonsense.

Aragchi is a, he's certainly not one of the hardliners, but this man is not exactly a peacenik here. He's not simply saying, you know what, let's just throw down our guns and surrender to Uncle Sam. You know, I mean, this is silly.

It's just silly. So I hope that disappears very fast so that you can, we can hopefully get into some negotiations with the islamic republic no telling us if they'll actually pay off of it or not but this is that would certainly be step one you know what makes it even more annoying? Well, at least from Agachi's point of view, he has been one of the most consistent pro-Iranian voices on Twitter.

He's constantly trolling the Americans back, basically speaking the language that twitter understands it was best that you know constant trolling and he's he's been so consistent with it so seeing him be castigated as someone who would go against the interests of the Iranian regime has to sting considering just how often you know he's putting himself out there he's leading these efforts he's communicating on behalf of the Iranian people and let's flip to the other side of this conflict now and talk about Israel because like the u.s. Israel is also staring down a set of upcoming elections that are now just days away hard to say whether it's really a coincidence that discussions in the U.S. are ramping up about a return to strikes, that Netanyahu apparently has been interested in discussing this directly with Trump in advance of the election. And there's been some concern for some time in Israeli circles and international circles that given the precedent both in israel and internationally that elections may be postponed in the time of war that netanyahu and his coalition may see some benefit politically for themselves in seeking a return to escalated conflict in the middle east we've seen netanyahu kind of push against turkey and start to really ramp up that rivalry and the rhetoric and framing around it so do you anticipate if indeed the trends of israel's election continue as they are and netanyahu is unlikely to win re-election do you believe that there is a any substantive risk that israel could be an accelerant in israeli election elections could be an accelerant to a return to a bombing campaign right now? Probably not.

I mean, it would sound cool, but the Israeli military has very little interest, and we're already seeing pushback because there is talk in Israel about doing this but the army there is fiercely nonpartisan fiercely apolitical and that's separate obviously they're very nationalist but they're for people who don't closely follow Israeli politics it may seem as though they're just very pro-Bibi or doing whatever Bibi wants. He is prime minister, ultimately, so they follow orders. But they are, especially in senior leadership, fiercely not willing to basically go to war so that netanyahu can escape this election so i don't think that's going to happen pre 1027 which is when the israeli elections will be and then by the time the 28th rolls around it's going to be what five six days a few days please excuse my terrible math my terrible math skills there before the u.s election on november 3rd so i certainly chose the right career in being a middle east analyst and not a mathematician i'll say that but beyond that we i just can't see any reason to escalate before then trump certainly has reason he's sort of in the opposite position that netanyahu is in by the way so netanyahu being up first almost helps this thesis because while bb might benefit from a return to war trump certainly would not the most low-key approach to iran right now is possible is what trump would benefit the most from the republicans would benefit the most from so i don't think he's going to have much inclination to really ramp up before then on Israeli elections, I have learned that it's best to defer to Kyle.

It's such an interesting area of the world, but I'm most interested in that idea that the Israeli army is completely nationalistic, completely patriotic, but also at the same time, very nonpartisan. Because again, for most people on the outside looking in, they would really assume that it's a very pro-Bibi army, and that's just a result of Bibi being the person who's been in power for the longest time. But there is always that assumption that the Israeli army is very pro-Bibi. so it's interesting to learn that it's not.

Yeah, it's a pan-national entity, so it's going to be something that, by definition, has to pull from all different sectors of the country. Bibi, not that popular in Israel. Not unpopular.

He's very divisive, so you have people who love him, people who hate him. But, I mean, the army is simply, in my view, not going to go down the road of propping him up and risk dividing that, because there are a lot of Israelis who do not like him do not care for him who are actively serving in the idf today so again again you almost see that with the us as well i believe trump won the military vote but narrowly in 24 it might have been not so narrow i'm not quite sure but you see that in general like the us army does not stop serving if they don't like the president and whatnot. And overall, the expectation is that the US president should not be using the military for political stuff.

And especially in this case, because military use would be even hurt the president further than you don't really have to worry about that too much here, but it's a similar dynamic. And then sticking with the subject of kind of trying to anticipate Israeli elections without trying to predict them at all recent Israeli polling would seem to suggest that the election, wherever it goes, probably doesn't end in a blowout for either Netanyahu's coalition or the opposition. So with that has come more and more talk of the prospect of a unity government, in which we could see Netanyahu kind of hold on to power to some degree, balance his authority with other figures in the Israeli political spectrum.

So do you believe that is a real possibility at this point? Or is that kind of an effort that would be doomed to fail considering Netanyahu's current situation in the Israeli political scene? Yeah, I just can't see that happening.

So I did see, I found the original article where this was reported on the other day. YNet broke the news that President Herzog was trying to float the idea of a Netanyahu-Eisenkot unity government. So those are two of the biggest parties.

They're Likud for Netanyahu and Yashar for Eisenkot. I don't see that happening. So Eisencott has previously ruled out a power sharing government just last month with Netanyahu.

So that sort of kills that from the get-go. Herzog then doubled down and said that he denied the report. It was accurate.

I don't know if that's true or not. He could have been trying to float it, because it makes sense, right? It's the country's two biggest parties, or two of the biggest parties.

But the problem is, even if you take all of Likud and all of Yashar and combine them, you're still not at 61. So then you need to start pulling multiple parties from either Bibi's coalition or opposition. And it starts getting quite dicey as to who would actually be willing to go along with that.

And to be honest, I just don't see Yashar being willing to sort of sacrifice itself to prop up Bibi, because that's how they would be seen. Even if they were the dominant party, even if they won more seats, and BB sort of propped them up, they have no reason to go along with that in the first place, because they can form their own coalition, presumably, depending on how their seats fall, which is the big question, because there are a lot of little parties that are right on the 5% threshold to get in. And if they fall short of that, then those votes are basically just wasted and thrown away.

So welcome to Israeli politics. It's absolute party mania at all times. I will just caveat everything I said that Israeli politics are so wild that, you know, you never know what's coming down the pike.

We did see in the past Benny Gantz do essentially this, where he threw his hat in the ring and it basically destroyed his party. So I don't think Yashar is going to go down there. I think Gadi Eizenkot has plenty of reasons not to.

And I think that even if he did, he would have so many like conditions that Netanyahu would have to accept and Netanyahu simply will not accept that I don't really see it happening and let's move across to the U.S as well where we've seen if we were to bring in another conflict here we've seen some major upheaval in the war in Ukraine for a number of reasons, but all centered around a recent deal that Trump made with Vladimir Putin of Russia to supply diesel fuel to the United States and release it into global oil markets. Now, the overall quantities of oil that are supposed to be released are large amounts if you look at it from Russia's perspective and what Russia can make from those sales which will be funneled back into the Russian war economy but they're fairly negligible if you look at global consumption that's kind of a separate issue we're not going to get too deep into Ukraine stuff today we do have a recent episode on more funds and we'll have another one out today Thursday covering this issue as well so check that out if you would like to learn more but as it relates to Iran right there is a real downstream impact here number one that this release of oil will or at least is intended to partially offset some of the effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz by releasing what was once sanctioned Russian Russian oil and allowing it to flow back in the markets at the same time Russia is one of the nations that is thought to be lending its support however it can to Iran, not necessarily with full-scale military support, but certainly with a measure of financial aid, a certain measure of intelligence support when possible. And really what is good for Russia at this point, especially on financial terms, is quite likely to be good for Iran in the long run.

So what do you make of this decision on the US side to work with an adversary of the United States and of America's allies in Europe with potential downstream effects that could really help out Iran without cutting into the strategic value and impact of their blockade either. It honestly does not surprise me, because of how much Trump has worked lyrical about Putin. I have a video out on home fronts talking about just how Trump has changed the face of American diplomacy.

And one of the things I noted in it is that there are countries that are desperate to do deals with Trump, we're talking about countries like the Congo, DRC, you know, countries that are willing, Congo and DRC are the same, Congo and South Sudan, rather, that are willing to give Trump anything in exchange for a deal, any kind of mineral concessions, just, you know, to be in his good graces. And then there are countries like Russia and North Korea with strongman dictators that Trump is apparently in love with and is willing to just go against his allies America's long-term allies to appease them a couple of weeks ago Trump cancelled well try to cancel and ended up really minimizing an important joint exercise between the US and South Korea all in an effort to please Kim Jong-un. It obviously didn't go anywhere, but again, it just goes to show you how far Trump is willing to go to appease these dictators.

And I think the big thing here is Trump's continued insistence that Russia isn't really helping Iran. I think he posted this on Truth Social that Russia and China were not helping Iran because if they were, the US would obviously know about it. And the thing is the US does know about it.

American intelligence has been sharing this report with the press that Russia is providing Iran with targeting data, which it has used against American troops. There is a very high possibility that the targeting data that Russia provided Iran rather led to the death of American officers, American soldiers. So for me, Trump is just living out his dictator fantasies by helping Russia, giving them money.

And of course, this money will end up benefiting Iran in the long run. It's just really insane to see. I'm going to circle back to that Korea stuff at the end here, but I do want to jump in with a few other things here.

So certainly the Russia stuff just doesn't make any sense to me in terms of strategic benefit. So there is pretty clear evidence Russia is supplying Iran with targeting locations of American warships, aircraft, military facilities, you name it separate investigations showed russian satellites passing over air bases in saudi arabia a day before the a strike that killed 12 or excuse me injured 12 americans there's been a plethora of this and the fact is none of this is new okay so an old boss of mine wrote something where she said that you can't be a Russia hawk, but an Iran dove. And that's true, and so is the reverse, because they are very much working in coordination so china as well has been helping iran in doing this and it is kind of sad seeing the u.s leader u.s president just capitulate on all of this stuff because it's there is no benefit here it is it is blaming is blaming ukraine for having been invaded the italian prime minister just gave a speech that's been widely reported on where she's saying surrender is not peace is conquest if ukraine stopped defending itself tomorrow, Russia would occupy a European nation and Soviet-style imperialism would return.

I do not miss the Russian tanks in Prague and Budapest. I do not miss the Berlin Wall." And high praise on that one is all I'll say there. So overall it's just very obnoxious and does not make any strategic sense and also empowers the arguments that it's just about dictatorships and whatnot.

South Korea, I will just say, if we can get any negotiations going with North Korea, I certainly welcome that. I think that would be an excellent opportunity. South Korea is, they're doing, they have some concerns about the U.S. in terms of especially interceptor stockpiles, very legitimate.

In terms of canceling military operations, this is the reason his first terms negotiations ended up going nowhere because super hardliners inside the administration, namely John Bolton, refused to concede on some of those points. And so North Korea, despite demolishing some facilities, including in front of international journalists, felt like it was giving everything and receiving nothing. And it ultimately went nowhere.

And because of that, we have a much worse security situation. So if we can get progress on the North Korean side, I am certainly not going to be complaining. but perhaps we'll have to discuss that more on an Asia podcast. I am a long time North Korea hawk, but I do want it just out there for the record that the Trump administration really fucked up, pardon my French, I feel like I can use curse words here about an hour into the podcast.

Anyone who's sticking with us this long knows we curse. The Trump administration really fucked up in North Korea by sending in a SEAL team, which ended up killing a Korean fisherman or something along those lines. We have a video about it in the archives and that really ended up ruining American Korean diplomacy.

So if that was, you know, the result of one of these hardliners like Bolton, who advised Trump that, you know, this was the best way forward, the SEAL team was supposed to place some sort of listening technology within Iran to excuse me within North Korea so that they could intercept North Korean communications you know those high-level talks so if it was Bolton or another hardliner who advised this course of action, then they really, really did mess up the prospect of peace between the US and North Korea, and you know, possibly North Korea and South Korea. And we're seeing the impacts of that in Ukraine. But as Kyle said, we're going to save that for a hopeful future Asia podcast.

Yeah, and unfortunately, as we continue to build a case for a really a podcast empire between the three of us here at frost.co, we are coming to that point in the day where we're going to have to start wrapping up the Middle East Roundtable. But before we do, I want to rotate around to each of you guys. First off, if there's any news that we weren't able to get to today that you would like to raise for our listeners, and then anything else that you'll be keeping your eye on in the coming week. - Well, first off, certainly going to be monitoring whatever data is coming out of the poor Moose.

This has been something I've been keeping a close eye on. Wanna keep track of any hits, any hopefully lack thereof of hits on civilian shipping. Also a little bit of news out of Lebanon, where a recent high-quality poll, I will add, just came out showing that Hezbollah has lost significant ground with the country's Shia community, which is encouraging and discouraging at the same time because right now it shows that approval for Hezbollah's leadership has fallen to about 60%, which, considering it essentially destroyed the country, is encouraging that it's fallen 40%, but discouraging that it's still majority support and just sort of speaks to the divides in that country.

Hopefully this will be able to be worked out, but we've already seen recent efforts from Hezbollah to offer funds to Lebanese, especially Shias, who have had their houses destroyed. And this just, this is like a vicious cycle for me because watching Hezbollah, this will likely get them more support because we're, the government is so strapped financially Hezbollah, especially in the South, just operates as the government or a state within a state and might be able to win over some support again which is just very obnoxious to me for me the one story that I did want to bring up that we haven't had a chance to because you know we can only talk about so many things, is a story from Syria that broke a couple of hours before we started recording the podcast. So Mirak Ural, he is a Turkish Alawite leader of a pro-Assad group, was captured by government forces, Syrian government forces, today.

His group was responsible for some of the worst sectarian massacres during the war, including one where more than 450 Sunni civilians have been killed. So sectarian violence within Syria is an area of great interest, personal interest to me. It's something I have covered on Fronts.co before in an article, and it's something that I feel doesn't really receive as much attention in the wider press as it should get because there is so much hope within Syria, but I fear that as long as Al-Qaeda's government doesn't do enough to address the sectarian violence, then Syria might just become another, what's the right word for this, cautionary tale, another cautionary tale a few years down the road.

What I will be watching for the next week is internal Iranian politics to see if we eventually do get proof of life from Moshtaba and in case we don't, I will be seeing if there's any indications from within Iran of agreeing to a deal or any change in strategy towards how they approach Washington. - And finally, on my end, the story that we didn't get a chance to talk about today, but we got to a little bit is the Houthi side in Yemen. Recently, the Houthis were able to strike King Khalid International Airport outside of Riyadh, killed over a dozen people there, injured 300-plus others. They've been able to strike that airport repeatedly, as well as other airports across the country, the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, several other spots too.

At the same time they are ramping up pressure on the besieged city of ties in southwestern yemen and they are continuing to pressure the limited gains that were made by the saudi counter-offensive that took place in the southern yemeni coastline areas where they had the saudi-backed forces had taken over the peninsula that kind of leads into the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which is the southern entrance to the Red Sea, that is now under pressure from the Houthis as well. So it does seem like the Houthis are kind of on a bender right now, just making some real progress in several directions at once, which I think speaks to not only Saudi Arabia's inability to really keep up with them as a security guarantor in this part of the world, which we've talked about recently in an episode on More Fronts published on Wednesday, but also it speaks to the growing potential of the Houthi rebels as they continue to make this play that hopefully for them, right? Hopefully from their perspective, obviously not from ours, will result in them gaining a level of international legitimacy.

So keeping an eye on that and want to flag it for everybody listening as well, we should expect some more escalation out of that area fairly soon or otherwise some hoot the games so with all that said we've pretty much come to the end of the middle east round table today a little bit longer than normal but a lot of good discussion so thank you very much for making it this far in the podcast, if you have. If you are still listening, you are almost certainly one of our premium subscribers, so thank you very much for that. We say it every time, but we've got to keep on saying it.

We really, truly do appreciate your support. It means the world to us, and it helps us to not only do what we do on fronts, but also to offer new YouTube offerings like Defense Fronts and some of the projects that we have cooking if you were listening and you are not subscribed because these episodes do go out for you so they're free to listen to for everybody please do consider hitting that button joining seeing how you like it try it out for a little while if you don't like it yeah no long-term commitment no cancellation fee anything like that we just you know you do it for as long as you want, and hopefully we earn your continued readership. So thank you very much to everybody who has made it this far, and, you know, on behalf of the whole Fronts team, we really, truly appreciate letting us do what we do.

So one final time, this is Evan Maloney here with Kyle Moran and Wilford Mina here for Fronts.co, Home Fronts, war fronts defense fronts all the fronts etc signing off from the middle east roundtable we'll see you next week
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