U.S. Options Toward Iran: Defenses, Assets, COAs (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: President Trump has put Iran on notice and repositioned huge military assets to the region, an armada by any measure. But what is it actually capable of and what does an operation like this look like from the inside?

[00:00:14] Speaker 2: From tactical to strategic, I've worked inside the inner mechanisms of operations like these and I'll give you my best assessment of the most likely and the most dangerous courses of action.

[00:00:24] Speaker 1: Is the target Iran's supreme leader? And if they did take out the Ayatollah, what would that mean? We'll break it all down for you. This is the Security Brief. Mikey, we've been hearing over the past week about the United States' readiness for an operation inside Iran and we've been hearing about the United States' readiness for an operation inside Iran and we've been hearing about the United States' readiness for an operation inside Iran. And we'll look at the force and what it could actually do and what might be going on inside the planning room. But I'm interested, what do you think they're looking at right now? And when does the planning phase move into the go mode?

[00:01:10] Speaker 2: Yeah, hi Christian. I think there are a number of trigger mechanisms that will be looked at across the political and military spheres. But let's try and understand why the US has not launched an attack yet. I mean, we've been in Libya. We've been in Limbo for about 10 days now with people expecting one. So let's have a look at what's under consideration. I think there are two key components here. One is a defensive component and the other one is an offensive component. So defensively, I think it's basically Israel's ability to be able to withstand a counter response from Iran. Not just one, but maybe two or three. And what that involves is that involves Iron Dome. So let's take a look at what Iron Dome is. What you're looking at here is a map, basically. Iron Dome is a common term that's effectively used for Israel's ability to defend itself with air defense batteries. But actually, when you go into Iron Dome, it's a three-tiered layered air defense system. And it starts with what is called Iron Dome right in the middle. And that's annotated by the red circle that you can see around Tel Aviv. That's basically the Tamir missile system. And it goes from about three to about 40 kilometers. And that basically is the area that's under attack. And that basically targets rockets and missiles, anything that will get through, if you like. The second bit on that is the blue bit. That goes out to 300 kilometers. That's David's sling. It's called David's sling. And that basically goes out at 300 kilometers and targets short-range ballistic missiles. And then the big, wide one you can see there, the yellow one, that's the Arrow system. And that's Arrow 2 and 3. Basically, that targets high-speed, high-altitude ballistic missiles. And it can even go, Arrow 3 can even go into space.

[00:02:52] Speaker 1: And how many missiles does that kind of defense structure require in order to work effectively?

[00:02:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's actually the nail on the head. That's the key bit here. So if you look at the Iron Dome system alone, so that inner red circle, there are about 10 batteries of Iron Dome Tamir missiles that protect Israel. Now, they need around 600 to 800 missiles to be able to withstand a barrage from Iran. So if you imagine that 600 to 800 missiles, 600 to 800 missiles from one attack, and then you've got all of the missiles that go into David's sling and all of the missiles that go into Arrow 2 and 3, imagine the stockpiles that are going to be required to withstand that barrage from Iran. So I think that basically is one of the trigger mechanisms. And we also know through open-source intelligence that the U.S. are now putting extra missile batteries. So that could be THAAD, which is Terminal High Altitude Air Defense Systems, or PATRIOT. They're putting additional ones in. To be able to absorb anything that Israel's Iron Dome David's sling and arrow might not be able to.

[00:03:57] Speaker 1: OK, got it. That's the defensive part of that equation you talked about. What about the offensive?

[00:04:04] Speaker 2: I think basically, Christian, it's all about intelligence. It's about building up human intelligence, so informants, imagery intelligence, called IMINT, and ELINT, which is electronic intelligence. And the amount of intelligence that is required across those three in order to launch offensive strikes is significant. So I think that would be another part.

[00:04:22] Speaker 1: On the last Security Brief, we were focused on Venezuela, and we looked at the capabilities of the USS Gerald R. Ford. This time we're looking at the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was redeployed from its operations in the Indo-Pacific region, but I would imagine has a similar firepower, right?

[00:04:42] Speaker 2: Yeah, it's slightly smaller. The Gerald R. Ford is the biggest aircraft carrier, biggest warship that's out there. The Abraham Lincoln is Nimitz-class. We'll canter through this quickly. But basically, America has 11 aircraft carriers, and it can deploy roughly half of that globally. So the reason why a carrier gives such freedom of maneuver is that you can position it in international waters without requiring permission from any other country to use their air bases. That's called homebasing. Now remember, territorial waters start at 12 nautical miles off the coast, as does sovereign airspace. So actually, a carrier could potentially get fairly close to where it wants to hit. Let's take a quick look at the Abraham Lincoln. It's got 5,000-plus personnel on it. It can actually surge on a combat surge capability through a 24-hour period up to 160 missions. And it's nuclear powered, so it can go without refueling for up to 20 years.

[00:05:35] Speaker 1: That's a lot of kit. I mean, I'm looking at the image there on the deck, and you're so close to Iran and the many proxies, under greater threat, perhaps, than the Gerald R. Ford was in Venezuela. How do you defend a critical asset like that? Like an aircraft carrier?

[00:05:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you've got all sorts. I mean, it's a great question. It's all about layered air defence. Let's just take a quick look at the aircraft capability on the Abraham Lincoln. You've got the F-18 Growler. That's basically suppression of enemy air defence, so that can get airborne and start targeting radar systems on surface-to-air missile systems. It can also do jamming. You've got the F-18 Super Hornet. That basically can do combat air patrol, so basically set up racetracks in the sky to look at any enemy air defence fighters. It can also do precision guided fire. It can also do guided bombing. And then you've also got the F-35C. The C is the aircraft carrier equivalent. And that basically has been used in really different ways. In Venezuela, it was put very near the coast of Venezuela, and it was using its sensor platforms to be able to update where the S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems were mobile and moving to. And then it was relaying the coordinates back to the warships with the Tomahawk land attack missiles on to update the GPS coordinates so they could make accurate strikes. Now, that's basically what the carrier has. If you go on to the question of how do you defend against that, well, the carrier comes with a carrier strike group. And with that carrier strike group, you've got cruisers. And those cruisers have what's called SM-2, SM-6, and SM-3 missiles. Now, those basically are missiles that are designed to take out various forms of threat. Some are designed to take out ballistic missiles. Some are designed to take out cruise missiles. Some are designed to take out aircraft. Some are designed to take out drones. Now, if anything gets through all of that, then you have what's called a close-in weapon system, which is effectively a Gatling gun, which has six barrels on it, that can fire 4,500 rounds a minute. And those rounds are the size of Coke cans. And that goes out to about one to two kilometers. So you've got all of that kit. And there are probably about one or two of those systems. They're called phalanx, based on every warship. So you've got basically anything that gets through, you've got that close-in weapon system, that phalanx. And then, of course, you've got submarines that will defend the carrier strike group against other submarines as well. So it's massively protected. Current open-source intelligence has the carrier strike group kind of like hiding around the southern end of Oman to prevent the Iranians giving direct line of sight of it. But there has been, on open-source intelligence as well, indications that the Iranians have been launching long-range surveillance drones in order to try and get eyes on that target, in order to develop some form of justice. In order to develop some form of GPS coordinate.

[00:08:18] Speaker 1: But it's not just the carrier group, is it? I mean, there's so much more that CENTCOM has at its disposal. Further assets that have been flown to the region. And you've just described those as home basing. So what are we looking at?

[00:08:30] Speaker 2: Yeah, home basing. Basically, you've got the aircraft carrier, which has got significant capability, but you can't land a KC-135 air-to-air tanker on that. You have to have big, long runways. And that requires, as we've said, home basing. Home basing requires the political support of countries close to Iran, mostly allies. And it also requires permission from home basing en route, so strategic en route points. OK. And it's not always guaranteed.

[00:08:58] Speaker 1: So which countries are we talking about, then?

[00:09:00] Speaker 2: Right, so let's look at the staging post. Now, you've got RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath in the UK. There's been lots of open-source intelligence, which has seen KC-135 tankers coming through there. And also F-15s that are based at RAF Lakenheath, they are now known to be in Jordan, and they are now forward deployed with that. So you've got the UK. You've also got Portugal. So there is, again, open-source intelligence indicating that you've got F-35s that are coming from the Venezuela operation. They're flying through an air base called Lages Field, which is in the Azores, which belongs to Portugal. And according to OSINT, they've come through there. And then you've got Germany as well, Ramstein Air Base. Most people will have heard of that huge US base. Now, there's an interesting asset that's been seen there called the EA-37B. This is called the Compass Corps. It's a very new aircraft. It operates against the electronic warfare spectrum. So it's a very new aircraft that conducts attack operations on Iranians' electronic warfare capabilities. And that's going to be fielded probably for the first time, so that will be one to look out for.

[00:10:08] Speaker 1: And presumably those assets are then moved forward from European bases towards the region. Yes.

[00:10:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, there's been a huge build-up. I mean, we just spoke briefly about the F-15Es. They're the two-seat version from RAF Lakenheath. They're now at Muwaffak Salty Air Base in Jordan. And you're seeing this sort of huge, huge build-up in the region. And the F-15s are a significant part of that.

[00:10:33] Speaker 1: Yeah. Al Udeid is another. I've been there in the build-up to the war in Iraq. It's a huge base in Qatar near Doha. What sort of role will that be playing?

[00:10:43] Speaker 2: Yeah, Al Udeid, you're right, it's the largest US military base in the Middle East. It's got about 10,000 US troops there. It's home to the forward basing of CENTCOM. CENTCOM, basically, their area of coverage is huge. It's as far west as Egypt and as far east as Kazakhstan. And it was also targeted by Iranian ballistic missiles in June 2025. Well, we do think there was a heads-up by the Iranians on that. But also there's a big air base there. So you've got a huge build-up of what are called KC-135 and KC-46. Air-to-air tankers. And they're basically there to set up a 24-hour petrol station in the sky to be able to sustain 24-7 enduring operations. There also is the RC-135, and that's called the Rivet Joint. Now, that's the same airframe but a different capability. It's a more niche capability that involves the 763rd Expeditionary Recon Squadron flying basically an aircraft that is jammed with electronic intelligence, so the ability to listen. Yeah. Listen, signals intelligence, E-Lint. And that will be providing that E-Lint intelligence requirement for the trigger mechanism we spoke about. That's there to do that.

[00:11:52] Speaker 1: So this is very much a live operation then when you look at the kit that's there. I saw Bahrain on that map, which tells you just how deeply involved the Gulf countries are.

[00:12:00] Speaker 2: Yeah, the Naval Support Activity Base in Bahrain. That's basically home to the US Navy Fifth Fleet headquarters. And they're responsible for a sizeable remit. They're responsible for operations in the Persian Gulf. They're responsible for operations in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the Straits of Hormuz. And you know as well as I do, Christian, the Straits of Hormuz is a critical area of geography when it comes to being able to control the sea lines of communication for global shipping.

[00:12:24] Speaker 1: Last year, in the build-up to Operation Midnight Hammer, that strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, we had satellite imagery of the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers in Diego Garcia. Do you see a similar build-up there?

[00:12:40] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think what's interesting at the moment is, and I think we can show a satellite image from 2025 last year from Planet Labs, and there were a number of B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, low-radar cross-section, but they're the only aircraft that can carry that GBU-57 penetrator bomb. We haven't seen them there this time, but I think the point here is it's keeping the Iranians guessing. So the B-2s were seen at Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia last time. But ultimately, as we found out, there was a 36-hour flight directly from the US where the B-2 struck the nuclear facilities inside Iran. And then there was that other decoy mission that went the other way. So I think what Diego Garcia does is it keeps the Iranian guessing and spreads their sort of intelligence assets quite thinly.

[00:13:33] Speaker 1: The Ayatollah over the weekend threatened a regional war. So presumably, as you've already hinted, the Americans are moving air defences in.

[00:13:40] Speaker 2: And the Iranians are moving air defences into the region. Yeah, they are, as we spoke about. That trigger mechanism right at the very beginning. But unhelpfully, China have been taking and publishing satellite photographs of where those Patriot missiles are now deployed, and they're in Kuwait and Qatar. And as a consequence of this, that's going to be easier for the Iranians to get some form of GPS coordinates to be able to attack them. But it kind of just sort of builds into that theory that, again, this is a really important trigger mechanism before the US takes any action on Iran.

[00:14:08] Speaker 1: We speak on the Security Brief, Mike. You've told me a lot about COAs, Courses of Action. When you look at everything that you've just said out here, what do you think the main Courses of Action are likely to be?

[00:14:22] Speaker 2: And I think one of the key ones, especially given the recent lifting of Maduro in Venezuela, I wouldn't be surprised if this was being worked up as a most dangerous course of action that looks at basically the capture of kill of not just the Ayatollah, but also high-level leadership inside the regime and the Iranian Guard Corps. So I think that basically would be the headline on the most dangerous COA.

[00:14:48] Speaker 1: Let's say that that most extreme course of action is under consideration. If the commander-in-chief has said, get ready for that, how do you go about planning?

[00:14:58] Speaker 2: So, I mean, I've worked inside these kind of operations, they're called Heli-Assault Force Operations, or HAFs, inside Iraq. And I've taken a look at the geography, obviously looked at how the operations went down for Southern Spear and Venezuela. And I think Iraq would be the most obvious point to put the 160th in. Now, the 160th are called the Night Stalkers, they're the Special Operations Aviation Regiment that the US used to lift Maduro. But I'd also expect other Western Special Forces units to be joining that sort of operation. So that could be, you know, Special Forces from Israel, could be the UK SAS or SBS, it could be German Special Forces. And I think they'll all work together on sort of trying to figure out the best way to cut this. You know, all of those Special Forces teams bring something very unique and very special to the table.

[00:15:49] Speaker 1: But this is a very different environment to the Caribbean, Mikey. I mean, long distances involved. How do you... How different does a mission like this look to the one in Venezuela?

[00:15:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a real key point in all of this. It's very different. Let's take a look at the map here, and I think we can bring up sort of a straight line. It never is a straight line, obviously, but it's around 640 kilometres from Erbil, or near Erbil, to Tehran. 400 miles, that's roughly... Helicopters can travel at about two miles a minute at 120 knots. So we're talking about really a 200-minute flight, which is about three hours 20, so it's a long transit. That's likely to be at night, and it would be fraught with surface-to-air missile threats, including MANPAD threats that we spoke about in Venezuela. That's basically a shoulder-launched missile system that could be popped up with a soldier and launched as it uses an infrared seeker, and it's really difficult to defend against. You know, looking at this and sort of just looking how we kind of did it in the past, I think three hours 20 is a bit too much to bite off. So I think what would happen is that you'd use all of those assets for suppression of any major defence, the F-15s to soften targets, Iranian surface-to-air missile systems, ballistic missile systems. They'd soften that route up like they did when we looked at the target sets in Venezuela, and then I think it would allow them then to put what's called an FOB, a forward operating base, somewhere way closer, about halfway down that track, so they can give them some distance, but at the same time they can launch with safety. So I think you'd see a precursor operation to that before that most dangerous COA was actually committed to.

[00:17:21] Speaker 1: What other COAs do you think are on the table?

[00:17:24] Speaker 2: I think one of the premises of why the US is doing this is going back to the nuclear facilities. You know, there is operation... There's open-source intelligence that suggests that construction is now going on at the Natanz and Isfahan plants, so I think, again, the US are going to use that intelligence to be able to get ahead and prevent the Iranians from being able to rebuild these facilities, and, again, that was what the B-2 bombers and the GBU-57 penetrator bombs were used for.

[00:17:53] Speaker 1: Should we be looking at signals on the ground, some softening up, targets being hit, to lay the groundwork, if you will, for some of these COAs?

[00:18:02] Speaker 2: Yeah, I think both COAs will require... It goes back to suppression, it goes back to suppression of enemy air defence, so using those F-18 Growlers, using the F-35 to be able to understand the sensory aspects, and targeting those surface-to-air missile systems, targeting the ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missile systems that are now... have now been replaced around the nuclear plants. So, depending on whether that most dangerous COA, which is the targeted leadership COA, or whether it's the nuclear facilities or whether it's a combination of both, it will need softening of targets, a lot of strikes, and I'm pretty sure the Israelis, the IDF, will be involved in that as well.

[00:18:39] Speaker 1: OK. Just to finish, Mikey, you've already said you've been involved in missions like this, so walk me back to that time. How do you plan and prepare for a mission like this, and what is it like being on perpetual standby?

[00:18:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you have to sort of go back six years from the type of operation that we saw in Venezuela and the type of one that we're potentially talking about here, and it all starts at home. You build up your skill sets, flying at night on night vision goggles. You then learn to do that in formation with other helicopters, first two, then four. You then learn what type of threats are posed to you from the ground. You learn about your self-defence systems on the helicopter. You learn how to operate those. You know, that can be flares for infrared missiles like MANPADS. It could be radar warning receivers with CHAF. CHAF is basically little bits of metal that you kick out for a radar missile that might be tracking you, and it puts up a plume, which is designed basically to decoy, the missile. And then you move into what are called cameos, which are composite air operations, and that basically is where you're speaking to a commander in a command and control platform, which is usually airborne, and he is talking to or she is talking to aircraft assets that are, again, that we've spoken about, those assets that are there to soften up the route that you're taking in order to minimise that threat. So, you know, for me, it was a six-year journey.

[00:19:58] Speaker 1: But just in terms of the preparation, it strikes me that once you're deployed, with all this training that you've talked about, your days, possibly weeks on standby, how does that preparation change once you are part of the bigger plan?

[00:20:13] Speaker 2: Well, I mean, so, yeah, it's another great question. So, you're basically going into the operating environment where you're expected to conduct these missions. So, for example, going into... When we went into Iraq in 2003, we were going into Ali al-Salam. Now, it wasn't that hot because it was February, but you can imagine deploying there in June. It's blazingly hot. That affects the power of the engines, for example. It's supremely dark, so there's no cultural lighting, so you might have to operate four-ship helicopter operations onto simulated targets at night, in the heat, with reduced power, and you just have to get used to that in order to ameliorate and reduce the risks that you might have when you're going on a mission. Again, you're looking at intelligence, you're looking at route study, you're looking at potential contingencies. All you've got to imagine is you're there for sort of four to six weeks. If you're lucky, you're looking at the routes. That can be compromised, and you may have to replan very quickly, so it's about getting all of that information in your head and being able to adapt and be agile as required.

[00:21:11] Speaker 1: It's a lot of detail, but that's what we specialise on here in The Security Brief. It gives you a real idea of what is going on, perhaps out of sight. It gives you just an idea of the scale of the operation that is unfolding. Mikey Kaye, as ever, thank you very much. And remember, if you want to look back at the previous editions of The Security Brief, you will be able to find them there on YouTube. We'll see you next time. Thanks for watching. .