Michael Doran on Iran’s Growing Military Dominance in the Middle East

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By developing an impressive arsenal of attack drones, rockets, and cruise and ballistic missiles, Iran—a nation that struggles to provide clean drinking water to its populace—has achieved a decisive advantage over its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Most importantly, the Iranians have learned how to use these weapons in concert, in ways that can overwhelm even the most sophisticated American and Israeli defensive systems. The U.S., for its part, has shown itself reluctant to respond to Iranian aggression against its Gulf allies, or even against its own soldiers.

The result has been a loss of American deterrence, a subject discussed more generally on the Tikvah Podcast in March. Now, six months later, an essay titled “Overmatch” describes in specific terms how Washington’s inaction has invited Iranian superiority, along with China’s pronounced presence in the Middle East. On this week’s podcast, Mosaic’s editor Jonathan Silver discusses the article with Michael Doran, one of its co-authors.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Regular listeners to the Tickfah podcast may recall that I spoke to the security expert and foreign marine officer Aaron McLean back in March of this year about the subject of deterrence and American power.
0:21.9	We spoke about how the United States faces tests of its own credibility in multiple theaters of conflict, about what America's
0:28.9	adversaries believe about its capacity and will to respond with force, about whether America's
0:35.3	deterrent power has diminished, and how it could be built up again.
0:39.9	Well, that was March, and it's now half a year later. It's time to revisit this question.
0:45.0	Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. Today we focus not on the idea
0:50.6	of American deterrence in general, but on one particular theater of conflict, the Middle
0:55.8	East.
0:56.7	Advances in Iranian military technology over the last five to seven years combined with America's
1:02.5	unwillingness to extract costs when its allies and even its own soldiers are attacked.
1:08.6	This has changed the balance of power in that region. New and more
1:11.9	sophisticated missile and drone technology has given Iran, yes, Iran, the nation that struggles
1:18.0	to provide clean drinking water to its own citizens. That new technology has given Iran a military
1:24.4	advantage over America's regional allies, and possibly even over America's
1:30.1	defensive missile shield itself.
1:32.5	That's the argument of my guest, Michael Duran, who recently co-wrote an essay for tablet
1:38.0	called Overmatch, in which he describes how American inaction has invited Iranian superiority, along with China's pronounced presence in the Middle East.
1:49.2	If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, and Spotify.
1:56.6	I hope you leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of ideas.
2:01.1	I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at ticfund.org.
2:07.3	And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website,
2:12.6	tikfafund.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
	...

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