Name: Free Expression on the Weekend: War With Iran
Uploaded: 2026-03-06T18:52:00Z
Duration: 12 min 17 s
Description: Elliot Kaufman and Walter Russell Mead on how the war with Iran began; Kate Odell with Bradley Bowman on U.S. missile stocks and China–Iran–Russia–North Korea ties; and Elliot Kaufman with Behnam Ben Taleblu on the imminence of Iran’s threat.

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Elliot Kaufman and Walter Russell Mead on how the war with Iran began; Kate Odell with Bradley Bowman on U.S. missile stocks and China–Iran–Russia–North Korea ties; and Elliot Kaufman with Behnam Ben Taleblu on the imminence of Iran’s threat.

https://m.wsj.net/video/20260306/c17373cb-8e32-4a6e-92e9-0484c385f799/3/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Free Expression on the Weekend: War With Iran

Welcome to Free Expression on the Weekend. This week, we've been covering the progression of the US and Israel strikes on Iran. First up, Elliot Kaufman and Walter Russell Mead discuss how the war started and why.

Maybe we can start with the big picture here. I just wanna ask you, why is the US at war with Iran right now?

Well, short answer is because President Trump decided to do it now. So we need to ask why he thought this was the time. Probably this is the weakest the Iranians have been in a very long time. In the 12-day war last summer, Israel with an assist from the US really took down a lot of their air defense systems. Their economy is on the ropes. They've actually ordered some fairly significant weapons from Russia and China, but those haven't been delivered yet. So there might well have been a sense in the White House that Iran is only going to get stronger, and as it gets stronger, it's gonna be even less amenable to the kind of negotiations we would like to see.

If it was a strategic opportunity, in that sense, does this play into criticisms that this was really a war of choice, an unnecessary war? There were, you know, other options. What do you think about that line of arguments?

I'd say, first of all, I've never been that comfortable with the war of choice-war of necessity argument, because almost all wars are wars of choice in the sense that you always have the choice. You can surrender. So that I think is just sort of fog that needs to be cleared out. But this is an offensive war in that Iran was not at that moment contemplating or carrying out major military action either against the US or against Israel. So this is very much in that sense a war that you initiate rather than a war that you respond to. And that I think politically it's a real double or nothing kind of thing for the president. If this thing ends badly, it's a quagmire, or the repercussions are terrible, it sets off some kind of regional chaos and instability that maybe then affects oil markets and raises prices for the long term, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, a lot of people are going to say, "Well, Mr. President, why did you decide, why did you wake up one morning and start this stupid, stupid war?" On the other hand, if it's pretty quick and there's a good result, there'll be a lot of people saying, "Well, Mr. President, what a genius you are." So it's a real gamble.

Kate Odell spoke with Bradley Bowman of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies about US missile stockpiles, and the possibility of cooperation between Iran, China, Russia, and North Korea.

We're covering every aspect of the US engagement in Iran this week, but there's really one element of it that I wanted to drill down and talk to you about. One of the arguments in the administration has been that we're going to run out of air defense interceptors, we don't have enough munitions for this, and we're really getting bogged down and distracted from our larger threats in Asia Pacific. So I'm wondering if you could walk me through, do you buy that argument, and maybe explain how Iran is actually quite ensnared in our larger competition, for instance, with the Chinese Communist Party?

The biggest picture is Iran's cooperation with other members of what we've been calling here at FDD the axis of aggressors. It's my view that the United States confronts the most dangerous geo-strategic moment we've seen since 1945. One of the things that makes this environment so dangerous is that we're seeing unprecedented cooperation between China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, basically across all major domains of power. Pretty much everywhere we look, the slicky boy move of the Chinese Communist Party is they're helping the other three, namely North Korea, Russia, and Iran, with dual use support. And the reason they're doing that is they wanna help their axis partners, our adversaries, our enemies, they want to hurt America and our partners, and they wanna tangibly help their defense industrial bases and their means of their aggression, but they wanna avoid the consequences.

Americans hear the argument, okay, well, we are running short on these air defense interceptors. We've used them, a lot of them in Ukraine and in the Middle East. And first of all, should our shortages of those weapons constrain us from striking Iran? And then second, what's out there that we can do to increase production of these weapons in a relevant timeframe that isn't years and years away?

There's a nuanced picture here and I'll try to answer your question. Let' start with THAAD. THAAD is an acronym. It stands for Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System. It works with Patriot and then it works with other systems as part of that tiered US air missile defense structure. So they launched over 500 ballistic missiles during the 12-day war. According to open source unclassified reporting, we launched about 150 THAAD interceptors during the 12-day war, 150. In the 12-day conflict with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the United States of America expended roughly a quarter of our THAAD interceptors. So we got problems in the United States. One of the problems is insufficient defense production capacity. One of the reasons for that, and one of the main continuing problems, is that the Pentagon consistently across administrations of both parties has failed to buy more. The good news, here's the good news, going to the good news, I try to be an optimist, is that since then, the Pentagon, they've put out contracts worth billions of dollars to buy more of these interceptors. So those who would want to take these facts that I just laid out and say, well, you know, we shouldn't be going after Iran. Well, here's a problem. This is not some tangential concern. We're talking about the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism, refusing to relinquish its interest in nuclear weapons, working at least indirectly toward the eventual deployment of an ICBM, continuing to support terrorist groups, continuing to try to exterminate the world's only majority Jewish state, and has the blood of hundreds and hundreds of Americans on their hands. This is not someone else's concern. This is America's concern. And if you wanna weaken our adversaries and make more Americans safe, you cannot ignore when the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism is refusing to relinquish its interest in nuclear weapons. Yes, we're gonna continue to expend air defense interceptors. Yes, we don't have enough. But no, I'm not concerned of running out of them in this war with Iran, but I am concerned about how depleted it will be when we're done. That is why we as a country should be spending more on defense and sprinting to procure the maximum quantity the interstate can produce right now, demanding that they tell us plans for double, tripling, quadrupling their production capacity and fill those forces as quickly as possible.

And finally, again, Elliot Kaufman with FDD's Behnam Ben Taleblu about whether the threat from Iran was imminent.

And maybe you can tell me more about Iran's missile program, which you know better than anyone. Both Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Pentagon Chief Pete Hegseth, have mentioned and really cited Iran's missile program as a primary justification for America's attack. They've said that if Iran was allowed to continue expanding its missile production, it would essentially have immunity. It could do whatever it wanted, including building nuclear weapons. Is that a credible theory?

Unfortunately, it's quite credible and it's born out in Iranian national security behavior and the sequence of investments that these guys have made in their missile program over many, many years. After the 12-day war, Iran tested not one, but two SLVs. SLVs are space or satellite launch vehicles. This is proof that despite the preexisting missile threat, conventional missile threat, which is against the neck of US partners in the region like GCC countries, like Israel, like even NATO-allied Turkey, which was just attempted to be attacked by a ballistic missile recently, that there is a longer range threat coming our way, first to Europe and then to the United States of America. So it was quite prudent to act, and I think it would be a mistake. I know there's a whole debate here about the word imminent, but I think it would wait. It would be a gross strategic mistake to let the threat be imminent. I mean, I ask everyone now, what is it that America can meaningfully do to roll back North Korea's ICDM capabilities, which continue to grow and can already target the US mainland?

It's a great question. Not too much. Not too much.

And all the picture, all the pieces of the puzzle point to the regime looking to refine these tools, and I don't think we should give them the time and the space to do it.

Okay, so what are you looking for now from the US and Israel going forward?

America has to go big or go home. Ultimately, there is a rationale and there is a strategic logic to limited war. But that logic would actually lose one of the main forcing functions for the crisis, which is the most pro-American and most pro-Israeli population in the heartland of the Muslim Middle East, which is to try to pave the pathway for the Iranian people. So what I'd like to see is America begin to move from the defanging and decapitation mission and have success there, of course, but to begin to move against the rest of the regime, to translate a massive military operation into a slower and more protracted low-intensity campaign that arose the will to fight of this regime, that incentivizes the desire for self-preservation, of lower units of Iran's security surfaces. That gets defections going, that drills down not just against the top of the regime's military brass and political elites, but against level 2, 3, 4, so that the regime knows that there is really no way out, but through here. And so you're looking for a translation or a shifting of the mission from decapitation and defanging to taking on Tehran's repressive apparatus. There's no doubt America and Israel can have a military win in the region, but there is doubt right now they can nest that military win into a larger political strategy that yields success. The president has said before, his end game is to win. The only way you win is if you flip the script on the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism and you pave the pathway so that the Iranian people can turn Iran from adversary into ally.

It sounds like you think this can't be a one-week, even two-week quick operation, and then the regime is on the floor. Rather, America and Israel need a longer strategy. My question is, can it sustain a longer strategy militarily, politically, what do you think?

Well, the Islam Republic is trying to play to the image of a longer and protracted war. But if America is decisive and wins decisively in the earlier missions of defanging the regime, Islamic Republic is not gonna have much military capability or capacity to prevent Washington from pressing ahead. That's really, you know, the art of the deal here. How do we get past the major hurdle, which is the regime's long range strike capabilities without exhausting your own interceptors and air and missile defense stocks? And the way you do that is you go hard on the defanging mission. You destroy missile bunkers and missile bases and storage facilities. That's the approach you take heavy bombers to. But then the transition can, and I would argue, should occur to these, you know, lower and slower flying systems to aircraft that can provide close air support and this is the way you can meaningfully pave the pathway. Because otherwise, limited war is an option, but it's an option that'll lose you the street. And really when we look at the Middle East today, we deserve actually a partner in this part of the world. It'd be good to actually have something that can resemble that partner rather than something that can resemble a failed state.

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