Danielle Pletka analyzes the fluid U.S.-Iran conflict, advocating for a Libya-style deal to remove hundreds of kilograms of enriched uranium and limit missiles while ending support for Hezbollah and Hamas. She dismisses the Strait of Hormuz closure as an economic suicide pact for Tehran, refutes claims of U.S. involvement in the 1953 coup, and warns that military strikes on "Pickaxe Mountain" risk civilian casualties without guaranteeing regime change. Ultimately, she argues that verifiable inspections are essential to prevent Iran from rapidly producing nuclear weapons, emphasizing that diplomatic solutions must distinguish strategic targets from dual-use infrastructure to ensure long-term security. [Automatically generated summary]
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Uncertainty Around Iran's War00:14:26
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Welcome back to Washington Journal.
We are joined now by Danielle Pletka, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Danielle, welcome.
Morning.
What's your assessment of where the U.S.-Iran war is right now?
That is an excellent question that is not that easy to answer because there's an enormous amount of uncertainty around almost everything that relates to the war, the ceasefire, the Strait of Hormuz, negotiations in Pakistan, and who's in charge in Iran.
And so making an assessment about where things are is, let's say, let's cheat and say it's a very fluid situation.
Well, in your substack last week, you said that you do support the war in Iran.
With a second round of talks possible in Islamabad, what would a negotiated agreement look like that you would be happy with?
So I think goal number one is that we need the fissile material, several hundred pounds, kilograms of highly enriched uranium removed from Iran.
Not downblended as some have suggested, not limited, as some have suggested, but much as we did in Libya at the turn of the century when George W. Bush was president, it needs to be removed from Iran.
Then there need to be verifiable limitations on Iran's missiles.
And when I say verifiable, this is always the challenge, right?
Because it's not a question of the kind of missiles and the kind of range they had.
It is that we don't actually know what they're working on.
So there need to be verifiable limitations.
And then we need verifiable limitations, an end, not the limitations, an end to Iranian support for groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and others.
And finally, the human rights question.
We need the Iranian people to be safe and secure.
More than 40,000 of them were murdered by the regime in days in January.
That can't happen again.
So that, to me, is what looks like a good outcome.
Is there any sign from the Iranians that they would accept any of those?
There are lots of signs from the Iranians that they would accept some of that.
The problem is twofold.
Number one, is it verifiable?
Number two, what's the nature of the concession that the Iranians are willing to make?
And number three, and this really is the sort of most important question, at least right now, who speaks for the Islamic Republic of Iran?
Because it's not entirely clear that the guys who were in Islamabad a couple weeks ago and are planning on returning are actually capable of speaking authoritatively for this very fractured regime.
Now, the U.S. administration has always said that this war is not about regime change.
They feel that the regime has changed.
However, does that mean that it'll be easier to make an agreement, come to a negotiated settlement with them, or harder, do you think?
I think that's the risk that we always face.
You know, there have been people who have suggested for many years that anything would be better than the regime that we saw under Ayatollah Ali Khamedeh or under Khomeini at the outset.
And the answer to that was never as sure as some suggested.
You can end up with a regime that is better, a democratically elected regime that is better, or you can end up with something worse.
And there is some risk right now that what we are looking at in terms of what the president called a changed regime could actually be more hardline, more extreme, less sophisticated in terms of what the exigencies of the international community are.
And that's a risk for all of us.
If you'd like to talk to Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, you can do so.
We're talking about Iran, so start calling in now.
Republicans are on 202-748-8001.
Democrats 202-748-8000.
Independents 202-748-8002.
The lines are open for you.
Danielle, you were on Washington Journal last in February, just two days before the war started, and we were discussing the possibility of military action against Iran.
So now that we're seven weeks into this conflict, how does the reality of what's going on now compare to what you anticipated back then?
So I think in terms of the performance of our military and what we've seen and from our allies in Israel, it has come out largely as I expected.
You know, military operations are not the great mystery.
It's unfortunately the politics that are always much more mysterious.
You know, you launch a missile, you drop a bomb out of an airplane, it tends to respond to gravity or to targeting.
And that's pretty straightforward.
Human beings are a much harder read.
I do think that this has been a hard target in the sense that the Iranians have, I think, produced more drones, more missiles than perhaps were expected, although there's been an enormous attrition in their ability to deliver those weapons and the explosives on them to their neighbors, to Israel and elsewhere.
The other problem for us is that the Iranians have been resupplying.
And so we've seen that both the Russians and the Chinese, particularly the Chinese, have been supplying rocket fuel to their friends in Tehran and attempting to enable them to claw back some of their ability to threaten the region.
And so all of those things are a problem that should be dealt with, that needs to be dealt with, but that frankly have not been dealt with decisively.
Has Iran been acting in the way that you anticipated, Danielle, with the retaliation against Gulf states, with the closing of the Strait of Hormuz?
So the Strait of Hormuz is an excellent question.
The Iranians have for decades.
This regime has been in power for 47 years now.
They have been threatening for ever, frankly, in their existence, to close the Strait of Hormuz.
That was very rarely considered a credible threat because 90% of their oil exports go out through the strait.
And that means that if they close it, in theory, that their own exports can't get out either.
Now, that wasn't the case in the initial stages of the war.
That is very much the case now that we have closed their shipping.
But I think that there were a lot of people who were surprised that the Iranians followed through with that.
And the reason we shouldn't have been is because the regime is at risk.
At the end of the day, we can talk about the goals of the Islamic Republic, right?
What are their foreign policy goals?
Is it domination of the region?
Is it managing Iraq?
Is it Hezbollah?
Is it Hamas, the Palestinians?
And the answer is no.
Their number one immutable goal is regime survival.
And that's what they thought was at risk, and that's why they closed the strait.
But Danielle, going back to your point, a lot of criticism of the U.S. administration is that they were kind of taken by surprise that Iran closed a strait of Hormuz.
As you said, they have been threatening that for a very long time.
And they were letting their ships through, just nobody else, or just certain people.
A select few, correct.
So do you think that the Trump administration planned properly for that, what ended up happening in the strait?
Yes, 100%.
So I do think that that reporting on the fact that the closure was a quote-unquote surprise is really not correct.
You know, in an earlier substack, I wrote about our central command, right?
This is the part of our military, the combatant command that covers the Middle East.
Those leaders, those planners, those strategists, Admiral Cooper, who is the combatant commander of CENTCOM, they have, the way I phrased it was, they have ears, right?
The idea that the Iranians have been saying this for decades and that they completely wrote it off does not withstand scrutiny.
They did absolutely.
The challenge for us always was limiting Iran's ability to retaliate against us and our allies, should they have chosen to join us and our allies in the strait.
Because you are, you know, you are, for those who don't know, you know, the topography here, we are looking at a very, very constrained waterway.
And so what the military had to do was to limit the ability of the Iranians to shoot at our forces in the water because they would otherwise have been sitting ducks.
That was the time lag that we saw.
Not a, oh my God, they meant that, which is what the papers were reporting and I thought wasn't credible at all.
So even if a deal is reached, would I mean, how do you prevent Iran from just closing the strait at will whenever they want?
You ask Mimi the exact question that I have been asking of the administration, which is now having done that, absolutely this is devastating to the Iranian economy, right?
The Iranians are from the closure losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue every single day.
Their ability to store oil and gas on their territory is limited to about less, a little less than two weeks.
So for them, This is what we had an outstanding guest on our podcast, my podcast with Mark Thesen last week, Miyad Maliki from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
And he said, no, no, for Iran, this is the nuclear option, right?
This is them thinking all is going to be lost.
So there's no question, yes, in extremists, they could do this, but it is truly, truly damaging to them.
People talk about our gas prices.
No, no, no.
The Iranians are devastated.
So, Danielle, you would have recommended this be done essentially on day one instead of waiting so far into the war.
Do you agree with that?
No, because again, I think that the strategic exigencies are such that had we done this on day one, the Iranians would have been able to direct their drone fire and their missile fire at our destroyers, at our carriers.
We don't want that to happen.
And so we needed to establish a secure area in which we could do this.
I think that the president made a decision to go ahead and do this because the Iranians brought the straight into play.
Had they not done that, we probably would not have done it either.
And President Trump has threatened to destroy the bridges and power plants in Iran.
Do you think that that helps negotiations or hinders them?
I think that the way that the president articulates this threat, and he's articulated it several times, is completely unhelpful.
And the reason I say that is because there are legitimate strategic targets that include bridges, that include power plants, that include those sort of dual-use things that supply at once the Iran, innocent Iranian civilians and the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Attash, the military and the Basij, their paramilitary police.
So there are legitimate targets.
The problem is the president doesn't differentiate when he talks about it.
And so it sounds like he's targeting civilians in Iran.
And that is not what we're doing.
B, not what our military is going to do.
And C, not what is strategically called for.
And so his sort of generic threat in this area is really not helpful.
All right, let's talk to callers.
We'll start with Joseph in Buena Vista, Pennsylvania.
Republican, you're on with Danielle Pletka.
Joseph, are you there?
Yeah, go ahead, Joseph.
This is Joe.
I was a former Democrat.
Now I'm a Republican.
Does A Nuclear Iran Help00:15:38
And in regards to the Iran shutdown, does anybody think the world would be safer if Iran had a nuclear weapon with missiles to shoot?
Okay, Danielle, regarding Iran getting a nuclear weapon.
Look, this is the challenge.
You know, we understand that the Iranians have enough fissile material to very quickly create up to 10 nuclear weapons.
And no, the world would not be a safer place.
One of the things we've really come to understand in recent decades is that the nature of the regime that has these weapons matters a great deal.
We have not seen information about, for example, India proliferating nuclear technology.
Pakistan?
Yep.
India?
No.
North Korea?
Yes.
Israel?
No.
And this regime is not only extraordinarily dangerous, it is an ideological regime.
These guys are not just, you know, run-of-the-mill enemies.
Are ideological enemies, enemies of not just the United States, enemies of our Gulf allies, enemies of our European allies.
And for them to have a nuclear weapon or the ability to produce one on demand is truly, well, it should be inconceivable.
And is that because you believe that they would use it, Danielle, or just use it for deterrence?
And having a nuclear weapon for deterrence would be inconceivable.
So the problem with deterrence is that deterrence is only credible if there's some risk you might use it.
And I think what we've seen over the last 47 years is a regime that not simply wishes to dominate its own country.
It wishes to dominate the Middle East.
It wishes to overthrow regimes that oppose it.
And it seeks to control things far beyond its own regional interests.
And for us, that is not a tolerable threat.
You pair that with missiles that we now know can reach Diego Garcia, for example.
That is a very substantial range.
And it's only a matter of time before they have missiles that can reach beyond southern Europe into Northern Europe and even to the United States.
How can we explain that to the American people that the President of the United States, no matter who he or she is, allowed that to happen?
Dave in Pontiac, Michigan, Democrat, you're on the air.
Go ahead.
Yes, first of all, this lady is a very wicked, evil liar.
We don't call our guests that, Dave.
You can disagree with her, but you don't need to call names.
I'm sorry about that, but I'm very emotional.
People got to look back to history to the early 50s when the United States and its so-called allies assassinated a democratically elected leader.
That's one history.
Okay, far as the nuclear thing, the war criminal DV is on video for decades saying Iran's going to get a nuclear bomb.
It's a bunch of lies.
And the problem with American politics, you have to get these Zionists out of our politics, AIPAC, all those people that support them.
This is wrong.
The reason why we are in this trillion-dollar debt is because of these wars that our American military are dying for the state of Israel.
Danielle?
Well, I appreciate the caller's perspective.
Let's start with Mossadegh, who was the elected leader in Iran in the 1950s and who the United States opposed and who was actually overthrown by the Iranian people, not by the United States.
It's important to get history right.
And there's been a lot of, I would say, perversion of that history over the years, aided and abetted by the narrative and the propaganda of this regime.
As to why we're in debt, well, you know, that's a much bigger question than the question of Iran, I'm afraid.
And it's a much bigger question than the question of our defense budget and the wars that we've fought.
Our profligate spending is unfortunately much more on entitlements than it is on war.
And any serious grown-up economist will tell you that.
You can oppose wars, and we are a free country, and that's one of the things I love about us.
But the idea that this is a source of our national debt is not factually correct.
And as far as the Iranian nuclear program, we can only go by what the International Atomic Energy Agency says.
We can only go by what the United Nations Security Council has said.
We can only go by what Barack Obama, who I'm assuming the caller supports more than this current president, said they had a nuclear weapons program.
Simple as that.
Danielle, I want to go back to China.
We've got reporting from Reuters that the China's President Xi, in a call with Saudi Crown Prince, calls for the Strait of Hormuz to remain open.
Can you discuss China's strategic interest in Iran in the port and also if they would welcome the extension of the ceasefire, whether they are in favor of this war?
What do you think of what they're thinking strategically?
Oh, well, China is certainly not in favor of this war, but China tends to sit on the sidelines of things like this and help its allies in what Iran calls the axis of resistance, Russia, China, North Korea, Iran.
But for Iran, I think the most important factor here is that they buy an enormous amount of oil from Iran.
A lot of it sold at cut rate prices because of sanctions on Iran, because of its nuclear weapons program, its missile program, its support for terrorism, its murdering of its own people, and things like that.
And so for China, most importantly, this is less about: are my friends still in power in Tehran, and more, am I going to be getting my cheap energy supplies that I need, much of which travels through the Strait of Hormuz?
So for them, that's the interest.
And, you know, it has been interesting to watch President Trump try to manage this.
He's supposed to be traveling to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping in a couple of weeks.
I think he was hoping this would all be behind him and we could talk about tariffs and trade and things like that.
That's not very, looking very likely right now.
And it has been interesting to see that the Chinese have been willing to continue to resupply the IRGC and the Iranian military with the means to continue to make the missiles and drones that it uses to, quote-unquote, defend itself and attack its neighbors.
Let's talk to Paul in Port Chester, New York, Independent.
Good morning.
You're on with Danielle Pletka.
Good morning.
Regarding the nuclear program, what about dirty bombs?
If you recall, the U.S. dropped that bunker-busting bomb.
Right before that, there were a bunch of trucks lined up at that site.
And what's the possibility that they got the nuclear material out of there?
And number two, how easy is it to make a dirty bomb out of that?
And if the regime's back is up against the wall, what's the possibility that they might use that?
All great questions.
So, first of all, for your listeners, maybe who are interested in what Iran has been doing around the nuclear sites, and there are several.
Even after the strikes of last summer in the 12-day war, we still see that the Iranians have activities going on, although some of their nuclear material is definitely buried.
But I really recommend to everybody the Institute for Science and International Security.
The head of that is a man named David Albright.
He's a physicist and an outstanding analyst.
They've got a number of really good people.
They have lots of well-diagrammed satellite pictures that people can look at to gain a better understanding of exactly what the state of play is.
So, there's no doubt in the minds of American, European, and other Allied regional intelligence that after last summer's war, the Iranians were moving very quickly, not just to reconstitute their missile program, but to reconstitute their nuclear program.
And we saw lots and lots and lots of the kind of activity the caller described: trucks moving things around, tunnels being built.
The conclusion that they came to after that war last summer was we need a diversified supply.
We need things all over the country as opposed to in one or two or three key spots.
We need this deep inside mountains that are impenetrable to bunker buster bombs so that we can continue to pursue this nuclear program with security and immune from airstrikes.
And so, that's what we've seen doing, them doing.
In terms of a dirty bomb, look, this is a last-ditch sort of an effort.
And I don't want to paint myself as an expert here on how to make a dirty bomb, although I suspect the internet will tell you.
But really, if you release fissile material anywhere, the dangers of radiation are probably localized, but they are enormously frightening.
And this remains an option for the Iranians.
This is why, as I said at the outset, when Mimi asked, the number one goal is to get that fissile material, that highly enriched uranium, out of Iran for once and for all, verifiably, so that we can see it being taken out.
Well, so, Danielle, to your earlier point about the buried stuff, so this is on the front page of today's New York Times: Nuclear Fures Rise for Sight Deep in Iranian Mountain.
Trump is urged to move on a facility thought to be beyond the reach of bombs.
It's talking about this facility called Pickaxe Mountain.
It says it's so deep that it may lie beyond the reach of America's most powerful bunker buster bombs.
There are some, it says Iran hawks have pressed them to consider special forces on a ground mission to destroy the facility.
Other experts who favor dialogue call those ideas far-fetched and say that Pickaxe Mountain illustrates the impossibility of relying on force alone to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.
What do you think of that?
So, Pickaxe Mountain is absolutely a challenge, and that's really the kind of challenge that I described that the Iranians are investing in in order to make their nuclear weapons program immune to outside interference, to outside weaponry.
So, a couple of interesting factors here.
If you bury something deep in the mountain, that could indeed be immune to the kind of conventional weapons that we use, including our very heavy daisy cutters are bunker busters.
However, if you have that there, Iranians need to be able to get in and out, right?
And that is a vulnerability for sites like that, because obviously it doesn't have lots of entrances and exits because it's deep inside a mountain.
And so our ability to close that off with bombing is quite clear.
The problem for us is that they can dig it out.
And this is what we don't want to do.
We don't want to do what in the region is often called mowing the lawn, right? Is going back again and again and again in order to deal with a challenge as it rears its head again.
What we want to do, and people who suggest this are right, what we want to do is we want to find a negotiated answer to this in which they give that up to us in a verifiable fashion because the military answer is complex, it's dangerous, and it is fraught with risk for whoever does it.
Well, Danielle, you've used the term verifiable several times, and I want to ask you, how can we really know?
One of the issues that critics bring up with the JCPOA of the Obama administration is, well, we couldn't really verify what was actually going on in Iran.
What makes you think that we can actually verify this time if they do come to an agreement?
So the problem with the JCPOA is that we weren't doing the verifying.
It was the International Atomic Energy Agency.
And while I have an enormous amount of respect for their leadership and for their technical abilities, the bottom line is that at any moment of its choosing, Iran can basically tell inspectors, you can't go there, and did that on a repeated basis.
They can tell inspectors to get out of the country.
They've done that on a repeated basis.
And that is the challenge.
That's why the model that we had with Libya is one that is so desirable.
And that is where we went in.
We, the United States, our officials, we took out their centrifuges.
We took out their fissile material.
We took out the means of developing further nuclear materiel and the means of delivering it.
And we brought it to Lawrence Livermore Laboratory in the United States.
That's the way you do it verifiably.
You go, you see, you take, you scrub, you visit every site you need to visit without opposition from the regime or anybody else, and then you can be assured that nothing is there.
The Libya Model for Disarmament00:00:55
Valdez in Mapleton, Illinois, Independent Line.
Good morning.
Yes, hi, good morning.
Say, I've been watching Ms. Koputka for a long time on C-SPAN.
And if she notices, I've been reading a lot about the international community, including Jose Andres, who is just about as innocuous as anybody could be.
You're losing a lot of friends there in Israel.
In fact, they are being considered one of the most terrorist nations in the world.
So somebody's got it right, or unless everybody's wrong and we're the only ones.
You can watch the rest of this on our website, C-SPAN.org.
We'll leave it to take you live to the House for votes.
Pursuant to clause 9 of Rule 20, remaining electric.