Ex-CENTCOM chief: Lower Iranian officials can push nuke breakout without Khamenei - interview

Lower-level Iranian officials could potentially push Tehran to break out to a nuclear weapon even without consulting their Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, former CENTCOM chief and Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) distinguished fellow General Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie has told The Jerusalem Post.

In a recent interview, McKenzie was asked about recent reports that the Islamic Republic is finally advancing its nuclear “weapons group” activities – such as nuclear detonation issues – beyond uranium enrichment.

“I think they are flirting with breaking out, but they have not made a decision to do it. The command and control in Iran is so rickety, that you cannot assume a decision by the Supreme Leader. This could happen at a lower level,” he said.

“The Iranians routinely have taken military action at lower levels without the approval of the Supreme Leader. There is no reason not to apply this to other elements as well and I would not be surprised,” he continued.

McKenzie added that his analysis on this point was based “on actions we have seen in the military sphere.”

The conventional wisdom tends to be that Khamenei has tight control over nuclear policy, but former IDF intelligence chief Tamir Hayman has told The Jerusalem Post in the past that the best way to track any potential Iranian decision to breakout into a nuclear weapon would be to follow nuclear scientists and officials at the lower levels.

McKenzie asserted that Iran’s ballistic missile threat is currently more dangerous than the nuclear threat: “My argument about Iran, which is contrary to lots of people, is that Iran doesn’t want to possess a nuclear weapon, but wants to be able to possess a nuclear weapon. They are flirting with breakout. They can produce enough fissile material in a matter of weeks. But they have not chosen to do it. By not crossing that line, from which they could never come back, they can work on the US and the Europeans for concessions.”

He added that “the other half of the equation, the Iran nuclear weapons problem is not a physics problem, because they are so close… But they must have a missile to take it there [to the target] and a warhead that can survive reentry into the atmosphere. It will take months, perhaps many months. The physics problem can be solved quickly. This is an aeronautical engineering problem.”

Regarding “the other half of the equation – we [the US and Israel] agreed that Tehran should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. However, what the Iranians have done over the last 10-15 years is improve their ballistic missile, drone, and land attack cruise missile capabilities” against the Saudis, the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar, such that Iran “can gain overmatch [overpower] against them.”

The Iran missile attack

On the night of April 13, Iran fired around 120 ballistic missiles, 170 drones, and dozens of cruise missiles at Israel.

“What is new to the equation? They tasted their template in mid-April. By any objective situational assessment, the attack [against Israel] failed.” Then explaining why Iran’s April attack failed, he said, “The Israelis are pretty good, the US assisted, neighbors in the region assisted, geography assisted given that Iranian missiles had to travel a long way.

This gave Israel strategic depth in which to intercept those weapons. So Iran must recalculate” how much it can threaten Israel, he explained.

McKenzie recounted what former Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi said after US President Joe Biden was elected – that “there was talk about returning to the JCPOA and there was talk also about other weapons” being limited, within the deal. The Iranians said, “We are never going to give up our ballistic missiles. They represent the center of gravity of Iranian capabilities – not necessarily the nuclear program.”

Iran’s April attack had nothing to do with Gaza, McKenzie argued. Rather, he said, it was a show of how desperate Iran was to do something to stop Israel from pummeling it in the “shadow war” between the countries.

Digging into the details of the ballistic missile threat Iran posed in April against the threat it could pose going forward, McKenzie explained that out of around 3,000 ballistic missiles, the Iranians have around 1,000 with sufficient range to reach Tel Aviv.

But both to the Post and in a separate JINSA event, he discussed Iran’s “salvo rate”: Tehran probably can only fire some 200 missiles at a time because it has only around 300 ballistic missile launchers and even fewer TEL (Transporter Erector Launcher) tractors – approximately 100-250 – for moving the ballistic missiles to launch positions. This limits the number of ballistic missiles it could launch at Israel at any one  time, probably to between 100-250, and not the full 1,000.

“This has been a problem for the Iranians throughout. April probably represented the most ballistic missiles they can shoot at any time – based on the number of launchers,” he said.

He did acknowledge that the Islamic Republic “could reload, but it takes time to do that. This is an important technical and tactical distinction.”

Current US defense officials have urged Israel not to respond at all to Iran’s April attack, given that Tehran was embarrassed by Israel and its allies’ success in shooting down 99% of the aerial threat. McKenzie said that this approach “was a misunderstanding of the basic relationships in the Middle East. Turning the other cheek does not go a long way in the region.

“The level of the Israeli response was brilliant and carefully calibrated. They walked a very fine line – it was just enough, but not too much,” he added, referring to Israel’s destruction on April 19 of a key part of Iran’s S-300 antiaircraft missile system meant to protect its critical Natanz nuclear facility.

So what lessons should be drawn from the more recent exchange of attacks and threatened attacks between Israel, Iran, and Hezbollah over the killing of Hezbollah military chief Fuad Shukr and the killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh while he was visiting Tehran? Will Iran still launch a new major attack in the near future as its Supreme Leader Khamenei had promised?

McKenzie explained: “I think he got cold feet. The Supreme Leader said right after the strike in Tehran, that they would respond in 48 hours. Then nothing happened. Here is why. He listened to his military guys who told him ‘Our options against Israel will probably lead to the same result’” as Israel’s embarrassment of Iran in April.

He added that “Israel’s response to [Iran’s aerial attack] on April 13 was brilliant. They went into the Isfahan corridor and caused minimal damage. They used technological superiority with restraint. The Iranians are befuddled by it. They [Israel] didn’t push the US away [by overreacting], they didn’t push other countries away from Israel… and the Iranians don’t have the capability to hurt Israel directly.”

However, he warned, “Hezbollah does have such a capability [to harm Israel directly], but if they generate a massive attack – such as hundreds of missiles into Tel Aviv and Haifa over a short period of time, the Israeli response would be massive and overwhelming. They [Israel] can hurt Hezbollah deeply and [Hezbollah Chief Hassan] Nasrallah understands that. It will not be a stalking horse for Iran, even though it is supported by it.”

He added that “Nasrallah’s relative position in Lebanon is weaker than in the past. The government is in paralysis. Hezbollah is getting the blame. He is not as strong politically as [during the Second Lebanon War] in 2006. He is committed to destroying  Israel, but he won’t engage in strategic combat” if he would face strategic defeat.

He explained that “there is lower-level back and forth and this moved Israeli citizens south [fleeing Hezbollah missile fire in the North]. But Lebanese Hezbollah has no interest in getting into a big war, and they know about Iran’s limited ability” to strike at Israel.

Questioned about whether Iran could adjust its ballistic missile delivery process to achieve greater strategic surprise against Israel, he responded, “Nothing stays the same. The Iranians work very hard to get better. They can build more TELS, drones, and land [based] cruise missiles to destroy Israeli radars. All air defenses are ineffective against ballistic missiles without radars.”

But no matter how Iran much improves, Israel would have a long warning time, he explained. In the April attack, there was a 16-minute warning. “Sixteen minutes is a long time,” McKenzie responded. “Iran’s ballistic missiles are more Gulf-oriented. They could go to underground sites and fixed sites. But fixed sites can be destroyed. We should encourage them to do fixed moves.”

Addressing the question of whether Israel has missed the opportunity to normalize with the Saudis due to the war, and given that McKenzie knew Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman personally as CENTCOM chief, he said, “Normalization is inevitable because it is driven by Iranian behavior, which poses an existential threat to the close Saudi and Gulf states. It may be delayed a bit, but it is inevitable that nations must act about what threatens their highest survival.”

Confronting the state of the war in Gaza, McKenzie said, “In 11 months, there has been significant military attrition of Hamas. But I don’t think it is completely finished militarily. If the US or Israel militarily take 20-30% casualties, they become combat ineffective because we maneuver on attack.”

In contrast, Hamas is “fighting in fixed cells and does not maneuver, so it can absorb much larger casualties. They cannot carry out command and control functions, but they can fight until they die. That’s why Hamas on the ground is still a factor in Gaza.”

In an optimistic tone, he said, “My Israeli friends laugh, but I think the future must involve the two-state solution. In the future in Gaza, there must be some other force other than the Israeli military. If Israel’s military will fight forever, I don’t think Israel wants that. Hamas does want that.”

“There needs to be in the future some form of limited sovereignty,” noting many “don’t want to talk about that until they finish the campaign.” He added that in some past wars, “the US had campaigns without a clear end state,” which led to many problems. He suggested that in Gaza, “the vision would not necessarily envision a continuous sustained occupation on the ground, though lots of people disagree. But unless they are willing to fight forever, with the trickle of casualties every day and the loss of Gazan lives, they need to find a way forward.”