Brigadier General Anthony Tata | On the Homefront with Jeff Dudan #36

They're experts at these kinds of wicked, destructive improvised explosive devices. Under no circumstances, if I were advising Netanyahu, would I entertain any kind of permanent ceasefire. Every day is an existential threat for the Israeli people.

Hello and welcome to on the Home Front. I'm Jeff Duden. In light of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, I reached out to my friend, retired US Brigadier Army General Anthony Teta, who through his 28 years of service has acquired on the ground firsthand understanding of the macro geopolitical landscape of this region, as well as the tactical challenges faced by all parties involved. I believe this conversation with Tony will add to your understanding of this very complicated and difficult conflict from Tony's perspective.

Perspective.

Thank you for listening. Welcome everyone to the home front this morning. We have retired Brigadier General Tony Tata, US army, on with us today. Welcome, Tony.

Great to be with you, Jeff. Thank you.

Tony. The reason that I asked you to come on this morning was to talk about the situation in Israel and the Gaza Strip from an educational perspective. Myself and many others, as this has escalated, has gone to the Internet and spent a lot of time researching the region and the actions and reactions that are happening. And I really wanted to get your perspective as somebody who's traveled the world and spend a lot of time in this area in diplomacy and try to get an understanding of, or maybe raise our understanding of what's going on over there. Right now. I'd like to start from a macro perspective. If you would speak to the geopolitical situation. What challenges does the geography that exists create and maybe set the scene for a deeper conversation around some specific issues.

Yeah, great. Thanks, Jeff, for the opportunity. The state of Israel and there are a lot of debates about when it came into existence, how long Jewish people have been there. You know, we're getting ready to celebrate the birth of Christ, a Jewish from 2000 plus years ago. So put all of that aside because that's something that academics and Internet warriors will come up with different facts or make up different facts to argue whose land that is. It is somewhat of a territorial dispute, but let's just take the situation as it is today. The state of Israel is a piece of land on the Mediterranean Sea. They've got Lebanon in the north, they've got in the northeast, Syria, that press along what's called the Golan Heights. You got Jordan in the east and you have Egypt in the southwest. And inside Israel, you've got the Gaza Strip to the south. The that borders between the southern reaches of Israel and Egypt. The western, eastern portions of Egypt. And then you've got the west bank, which is inside Israel, that sort of surrounds Jerusalem, where the embassy was moved to. So you have the Jewish people. And Israel was really established as a safe place, a safe state for the Jewish people post World War II. And the Arabs around. Some are very moderate and get along great with Israel, and some are not so moderate and want to eradicate Israel and the people that reside there. A lot of this is fomented, Jeff, by Iran. Iran has habitually exported since the early 80s after the fall of the Shah and the rise of the theocracy there. The terrorist groups throughout Yemen, the Houthi rebels way down on the south part of the Arabian Peninsula, the Shia militia groups in Iraq that continuously attack U.S. bases and forces situated in Iraq and Syria. And then you have Hezbollah in the north of Israel in Lebanon. And then you have Hamas, who is sort of the primary antagonist right now, all funded by Iran and as terrorist proxies for carrying out their own ends, ways and means for Iranian foreign policy. And so that's, that's sort of the setting the table for what's happening today. On October 7, Hamas conducted a surprise attack into Israel and really murdered, slaughtered innocent Jewish people at a concert in their homes and conducted atrocities that are not consistent with the Geneva Conventions, which is an important distinction because people try to make a moral equivalency between what Hamas has done and what Israel's doing. And Israel. I've been there, I've been to the Golan, I've been down to the border with Gaza, I've been to Jerusalem, I've laid a wreath in the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem with the Israeli Defense Forces. So I understand the culture, the people, the threats that they face. And every day is an existential threat for the Israeli people. And adhering to the Geneva Conventions and adhering to minimization of civilian casualties is paramount in everything that I've seen the Israeli Defense Forces do as I've operated with them. And so I say all of that to provide the larger context. They are surrounded, they have a constant threat, and Iran is funding all of these different groups. And essentially what you have is someone that's, you know, if a football team is on your one yard line every play and you have to have a goal line stand, that's, that's essential to use a football analogy. That's essentially what Israel is having to do is prevent that touchdown. And on October 7th, the defense didn't hold up on that goal line stand, to use that metaphor.

So this is an ongoing conflict using many proxies. And when you research this, you realize that there's always attacks and counter attacks. There's always anti terrorism operations going on. There's people getting killed all the time between all these factions. And what would the events of the 7th do? What would be the strategy, in your opinion, around that, to escalate this conflict in such a drastic manner?

Why would Iran and Hamas do that? Or.

What was the strategic. You have to. None of these actions happen in a bubble. They might be new to us, but they're not new to the ongoing relations between the countries. They had to understand that this was taking things to a new level. And so you have to assume it was done with intention.

Yep, yep, great strategy.

What would be the strategy behind something like that?

Yeah, the strategy is Iran sees the traction that the Abraham Accords were getting and the normalization of relations between Arab nations in the Jewish state, Israel and for example, UAE and Israel, Bahrain and Israel, Morocco and Israel, others, even Egypt. Lots of initiatives. And the essence of the Abraham Accords, however maligned they get by mainstream media, is that you use economics to bridge centuries of hatred that are sort of baked into the cultures. And so a lot of traction there with that and a lot of. And I was part of that when I served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. You know, the Abraham Accords included weapons packages that helped create offsetting balances of power and that kind of thing. And so, you know, I spent a lot of time talking to both, for example, UAE and Israel policy peers within their ministries of defense and making sure that we had this right. And, and I mention that because it was well along the way, it was fully baked in some cases and partially baked in other cases where these economic relations were starting to trickle down and normalize relations between the countries where, you know, the more that you can exchange ideas and cultures and you say, well, you know, they're not that bad, they're not that bad. And, and so Iran can't have that right, because they're a theocracy and it's in their national interest to drive the United States out of the Middle east and eradicate, eliminate the state of Israel. And so Iran and the Shia influence. Shia, you know, Iranians are Shia for the most part, and then most of the rest of the Arabian Peninsula is Sunni and they have a lot of disagreement. But in this case, the Arab world is aligning to support one another in at least with, with information and statements and diplomacy to try to have the back of the Palestinian people. And so the overall strategic goal of Iran who calls all these shots from a terror exportation standpoint is to disrupt the momentum of the Abraham Accords and the normalization of relations with Israel by other Arab states and to continue to foment distrust and discontent in the region so that they Iran can continue to expand its hegemony in the Arabian Peninsula.

It seems like there are many paths to escalation, maybe first and foremost coming from Lebanon through Hezbollah with their weaponry that they have and their ongoing conflicts that they've had with Israel and Golan and and the other areas. What do you see as the greatest opportunity for this conflict to escalate to a much broader situation?

Yeah, you know, about two, three weeks ago you had hepala in the north with, you know, the leader was getting ready to make a big statement. He made a big statement and everybody was concern that Hezbollah was going to come in and attack from the north and Syria was going to attack from the northeast and the, you know, harken back to the, you know, the mid-70s when you had major tank battles and you know, where Israel was having to defend from interior lines in the north and the south and, and so forth. That was a concern. I didn't see that. And I was pretty consistent on whether I was on. It didn't matter what cable news show I was on. I said I believe that Hezbollah is a fixing operation and fixes a military term to make you Israel have forces in the north so that you can't reinforce in the south. So it dilutes your ability to mass on the real threat, which was Hamas in the south. And so they did probing, they've exchanged artillery and all that. That's classic faint fixing operation, to use military terms. Syria, I don't think ever really seriously ginned anything up the real threat for escalation. And you know, it's a coin toss depending on who you talk to. You know, there is reticence in the administration today to confront Iran in a major way. And we've talked for, you know, last few minutes about how Iran is fomenting all this discontent, not only fomenting funding and supplying weapons and also the rhetoric that goes with it. And so do you treat the symptoms which is Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis, or do you treat the disease which is the theocracy in Iran? And I think from a policy perspective, if I were in my old job advising the president, certainly one of the options to be laid on the table for the president to look at would be an option that takes on in a non boots on the ground way Iran and attempting to dismantle some of their oil infrastructure, reimpose very strict sanctions, because, remember, the administration lifted the sanctions on Iran. They are now selling billions of dollars of oil to China and a lot of that money, they unfroze assets to go to Iran. And even though that's supposedly earmarked for humanitarian aid, it's fungible. Right. If I, if I know somebody's going to be paying my mortgage, then I can take that 10,000, you know, 5,000 or, you know, whatever it is and use it for other things. Right.

Tony, are those policy decisions that you just mentioned connected directly to what we're seeing happen today?

Yeah, I think so. I think the policy decision to eliminate the sanctions on Iran or not enforce them is probably a better way to put it, to unfreeze Iranian assets in exchange for some hostages that Iran had to take the Houthis off the terrorist list. All of these things are done in an attempt to appease Iran, but we don't get anything back from Iran. Right? I mean, there's, there's no. What we get is they were training the Hamas operatives in Iran, teaching them how to do the, you know, the, the parachuting in and the, and the, the tactics. And they rehearsed the October 7th event in Iran. And so this laissez faire approach is very different than the maximum pressure campaign that was in the previous administration that was having some effect on their ability to export terror throughout the region. And so that policy makes a difference. And so what we're seeing today is a result of a more funded Iran and more emboldened Iran. And frankly, one of the things that concerns me is the intelligence failure that happened here. There was an intelligence failure from the US Standpoint, and Ukraine also, and then there was an intelligence failure, obviously, in Afghanistan. And so when I think about the border, US Border, is that the fourth intelligence failure that we're going to find out about? And so obviously, national security is best done in a proactive way, figuring things out ahead of time, predicting what's happening, having policies that attempt to shape it so that you have less opportunity for those that want to harm us to harm us. So I'm really concerned about that. What's that fourth intelligence failure that's out there right now?

Well, simply put, once somebody shows you who they truly are, believe them. And the core of the ideology in Iran was not going to change regardless of us loosening, you know, unfreezing assets or loosening restrictions on them. And so we, maybe we've got what we We've, we got what we bought right now.

Right.

And with respect to the border, I've talked to more than one person in, you know, in, in circles, and there's a big concern that we've probably let in some people that maybe we shouldn't have kind of nestled in with, with everybody else that's, that's coming in with the, with the loosened restrictions and whatnot.

So.

Which is a concern domestically for our security?

Yeah, absolutely. The, you know, any government's job is to first and foremost protect their people and their property. So talking about Israel, Netanyahu's job is to create national security, a secure space, a secure terrain for the Jewish people to live. Same thing with this administration. The security of US Citizens is job number one of any administration. And the policies of any administration should reinforce domestic security because, you know, national security is a domestic issue. If people don't feel safe, then certainly they can't pursue life, liberty and happiness. Right. So consistent with our Constitution. So that's. That the, it's. In today's world, national security and domestic security are inextricably intertwined and certainly haven't operated around the world. And when I was in Afghanistan and we were raiding Al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts, in our intelligence, we, we assess that we disrupted two plots to attack the United States. This was pretty early on in the whole Afghanistan drive. But the, the. To the extent that we can have intelligence assets that are, that are working with other nations so that we can have eyes on ears on pictures, et cetera, imagery signals and so forth, to build an intelligence picture, to continuously assess the threat and then take appropriate action within the United States, that's sort of the whole purpose of our intelligence community and our national security community.

Back into the conflict at hand. And speaking of intelligence, signal mapping within the region, identifying cell phones of known operators of Hamas mapping tunnels, you know, apparently the majority of the weaponry and the forces are can or can or are contained underground and are. Which makes it very difficult to identify movement and also to access by the idf and then identifying operations, basis of operations, basis of where they're launching or defending what role, you know, where were the intelligence failures specifically leading up to the situation? And then what do you believe from an intelligence perspective is important right now?

Yeah, so on the failure side, we, we have, we. The United States has intelligence sharing agreements, arrangements with Israel, and I'm told that some of those were adjusted, rearranged, not enforced, in light of this overall outreach to Iran over the last year or two, which would explain either why we weren't watching, or if we watched and saw and didn't share, either one is really bad. But that would explain sort of the failure aspect. And when you're trying to reach out to Iran, who, as you said, when someone tells you who they are, believe them. If they're shouting, death to America, death to Israel, I'm not sure there's a whole lot of negotiation space there. So the. But in this outreach, what one of the things that we found is, and Congress found this out, there were three or four Iranian. Some call them spies, some call them sympathizers, but they have top secret clearances and they work in the Department of Defense and Department of State. And so it's not too hard to draw a line between. For example, the chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations is. She's a US Citizen of Iranian descent, but communicates regularly with the Supreme Council in Iran. And these emails were uncovered before congressional testimony. She would go and make sure that she's saying what the Iranian Supreme Council wants her to say. And it's not a stretch to assume that if she has access to every piece of intel that comes in, particularly with reporting to this, you know, the number two there, reporting to the Special Ops assistant secretary who, when I was the under reported to me, these people weren't there. Of course, it's not a stretch to assume that that intel was just not shared. So you could get a micro look at it like that, in a macro sense, the appeasement strategy with Iran, perhaps they just weren't watching. And, you know, the worst case speculation is they knew and didn't tell. I would never speculate that, but it's certainly. I've seen people. So. So that's the failure part. Now, what's important now. And I've been, you know, this pause business where Israel, you know, gets attacked and then all of a sudden, you know, immediately you have people saying, oh, don't strike back. Or as soon as they get some momentum, oh, you need to slow down. You know, we need to let Israel defend itself. Right. If Israel's not safe for the Jewish people, then what's the point? Right? And, and what I know about combat operations is that when you have signals intelligence, imagery intelligence, human intelligence, every layer of intelligence that you can possibly have, you can use what time, precious time, you have to develop good plans that protect your people and then try to go find the hostages, try to go and destroy Hamas, who attacked you. And that momentum, offensive momentum, has a quality all its own that's really Hard to capture because as you're pressuring Hamas, they have to communicate, they have to say, hey, I'm getting attacked over here. Oh, I'm moving over here, I'm going here. And they have to move because either that or they die or get overrun or get captured. And so when you have people talking and moving, all your intelligence assets are able to pick up on that. And it creates this operations intelligence cycle that gets inside the decision cycle of the enemy, Hamas, and allows you to be more successful and what these pauses do that are being coerced onto Netanyahu and others by people who don't, frankly don't understand what I just said. Or perhaps they do and want Hamas to be able to regroup and refit because it's like a pick six in a touchdown or in a football game. You've got all this momentum and then you've got to stop. And now they're refitting and your intelligence isn't as good. Right? So that's, to use another football analogy. And I do that because you were a football star upstate. So.

Well, so the latency, any latency between an insight garnered by intelligence and a resultant formalized plan and subsequent action reduces the quality or the effectiveness of the intelligence itself.

Mm, that's right, that's right. The, you know, you could apply that to the business world or whatever, but the, the, now that we're paused, right, and, and I, you know, the pressure on Netanyahu has got to be enormous, right, because these, these hostages that are being doled out in a barbaric fashion, little kids, children, women, 80 year old, 70 year old women. And, and it gets heralded by the media as if, you know, it's a, it's, you know, the, the benevolent Hamas captures, it's barbaric. And, but what's, what's happening is that their Israel Defense Forces are hunkered around Gaza City now and continuing internal cleanup operations. Right. Cordon and searches. And so the pause to me comes at sort of a natural time in the operational sense of you have tactics, operations and strategy operationally. This, I, I think Netanyahu played it about right. He got Gaza City, he's got it surrounded. There's still a lot of little tactical skirmishes happening inside all of that. He's clearing the tunnels, he's clearing the building. He's got a lot of work to do to, to make sure that that's 100%, you know, there's no enemy in there. And, and so he can pause now and begin. And I hope, and I'm sure that he's planning for the next phase to go to southern Gaza, which is a different kind of warfare and it's going to be some of us more open land. And it's a different kind of fight than the urban fight that he's had. There is some, obviously urban in the southern part of Gaza. But if, if they're able to get the hostages back and the great majority of them and continue to plan, under no circumstances, if I were advising Netanyahu, would I entertain any kind of permanent ceasefire. Because he's got to get to southern Gaza. And Israel, in my view, what I know about all of the actors and players here, Israel needs to clean that place out and dominate it, dominate that battle space and then reconstruct it and then figure out some path forward. I don't think the UN is a good arbiter. They have a, they're, they're, they, they have too many Islamic extremist sympathizers inside the UN that don't like Israel and as borne out by the statements coming from the UN Secretary General and others. And so they're, it would be a good opportunity for NATO out of area mission or some combination of un, NATO and even the African Union coming together, some kind of global peacekeeping thing. Because you look at Gaza, it's right there on the med, and much like Beirut, it's been destroyed by this Islamic extremism. And it's unfortunate because the people there, you know, Beirut used to be the banking center of the Middle east and today it's a hollow shell of itself. And Gaza could have been, if all these millions and billions being sent for weapons have been sent for hotels and restaurants and economic development. It would be a resort now.

Oh, it's all beachfront.

It's all beachfront property. Yeah. And, and, but Iran doesn't want that. They want the hatred, they want the division. They want the, they want these people to suffer. Everybody, The Palestinian, they don't care. They, you know, the, the Supreme Council there, they don't care. They want people to suffer so that they can continue to foment discontent.

From a diplomatic perspective, what is the value of hostages to Hamas? And how do you anticipate them maximizing their leverage in that regard?

Yeah, well, I mean, we put a price recently on hostages, about a billion apiece. With, from a monetary standpoint with Iran. Six hostages. Six billion. And then, you know, a few weeks later, after that deal, there's American hostages being held by, you know, by extension Iran. So it's, we very clearly define the value Monetary value of hostages. Now these hostages, you know, are fungible, just like money is fungible. So one Israeli or one American hostage in Hamas, you know, the, the barter that's been defined is you will release one hostage taken not in accordance with Geneva Conventions for three Palestinians, that terrorists who were detained in accordance with Geneva Conventions. So that's, that's a pretty outsized gain for the Palestinians. But this is the tough spot that Netanyahu, who is in is that if you've got parents staring at I want my 3 year old child back that's being held by Hamas. I mean, how do you, how do you say no to that as a no? You can't. And understanding that you have an overarching responsibility to ensure that this never happens again. And so that tension between creating the buffer, defeating Hamas and getting the hostages back is a very small eye of the needle to thread. And I think he's doing it. I think he's doing it. Well, the, the value, Notice that, I think there's been one at the time that we're talking one American, you know, a young little girl released. And you know, the other Americans are probably, they're the billion dollar a piece hostages, right? So, so the, just the transactional value is three terrorists for one hostage, non American, and then one American hostage for a billion dollars. So that seems to be kind of what, you know, if they're looking at a, at a spreadsheet, you know, what, what they ought to be able to get, which I'm sure they've, they've developed. That's, that's, but, but it's larger than that too, because there's this, they're able to, they being the Hamas is able to now dilute the anger. The longer this goes on, it almost, they almost appear benevolent. Oh, we're going to release 10 more. Oh, we're going to release 10 more. They could at any day release them all and quit firing rockets at Israel. But they choose to, in a very barbaric, sinister way, hold these hostages. And they're not being held just by Hamas, they're being held by Palestinians. A doctor was holding one, a teacher was holding one. So, you know, Israel's not far off when they say that, you know, there's not as many innocents as you believe. If these people are holding the hostages, why not just turn them over? If you're a doctor and your duty is to first do no harm, or if you're a teacher used to dealing with children, why not on your own accord, turn them over? And of Course, the answer is because they'll be shot and killed by Hamas. So it's a barbaric situation there that we need to learn some lessons from this. And I'm concerned that maybe we're not.

While we're talking about the people, are there NGOs for humanitarian aid that are able to operate in this environment? And if so, who are they and what challenges are they facing?

Yeah, so the non governmental organizations and private volunteer organizations, NGOs, PVOs, they, you know, the Red Cross, of course, is the big one, the un, There is a heavy slant toward the anti Israel slant in large part toward these NGOs. And when you talk about the aid getting in, you know, that's been part of the mantra here is pause so you can release hostages and pause so that we can get aid in. And these, this potpourri of NGOs, non governmental organizations to bring in the aid. My question, and what I talk about is when I'm on TV or wherever, is if Iran is able to get rocket launchers and ammunition and rations, etc. To the Hamas fighters, why can't they get the supplies into the Palestinian people? That's the first thing. The second thing is that the Palestinian people that are exiting to the south, why don't the neighboring Arab nations, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt take them in? And there's a reason for that. Right. I think, you know, part of it is they don't want to, they want to keep those people or fodder for the larger geopolitical issue of, of whether or not Israel belongs there. Right. They're the cannon fodder for the, the fight that, the, you know, indefinite fight that is, you know, that, that is Iran wants to go into infinity. And, and so they don't want them to leave because they want them to be stuffed right in there and suck it up and suffer whatever consequences that Israel, you know, has to levy on them. After Israel has been attacked. These NGOs that come in there really see one side of this thing. And, and it's true. Every war torn area I've been, it doesn't matter who, who the bad guys are, who the good guys are. However you define that, you know, women and children and young men and, you know, old men, old women, you know, citizens, they're all human. And we lose sight of this human aspect. You know, with all the dehumanization that is going on today from governments and techno fascism and, you know, politics of personal destruction and the dehumanization effort, we forget, everybody tends to forget that, you know, the young girls that were raped and killed at the concert in southern Israel, they were humans. They had families. The kids, the young Palestinian families, you know, they're humans and they just trying to live a life. And there are cultures and education, indoctrination that goes on that is detrimental to this larger goal that we should have of, you know, we're all, we're all on this planet, none of us are making it out alive. And, you know, we should try to get along because everybody's just a human trying to get along. And these NGOs, some of them are good and that's what they do. And some of them have ill intent and they end up, from a social media standpoint, perhaps spreading misinformation. And I won't name names because everybody's, I feel like everybody's trying to, trying to find some path forward here with this travesty that's happening.

From a tactical perspective, we're talking about people. And in Gaza, as you mentioned, these are families with children that have hopes, dreams. They want their children to do well. They want them to be educated. Everybody wants the same for their children. We want our children to live a life, you know, better than we did, whatever that means. And so the crisis is, is real on all sides of this for, for those people. And one of the analysis that I was watching was talking about really a couple of things that were, that would slow down operations. Number one is the people so asking people to, you know, warning them and saying, we're going to Gaza City, we're going to start in the north, we need everybody to move to the south. And then they, then they said, now that we're here, we're going to be moving to the south and everybody needs to move to the sea. And it's, you know, that puts a lot of pressure on the civilians who are trying to get out of harm's way and carry whatever they have on their backs and then move to the south. And of course, there are, there may be forces that are telling them, no, you need to stay right where you are, because if you're here, then that slows things down. And the other thing I'd like you to, you know, comment on from a velocity perspective or a challenge perspective is these tunnels, right? So in, I'm not a historian, but in the South Pacific, in World War II, I think we, we had, we dealt with tunnels in Vietnam, we dealt with tunnel warfare. Has the ability to, I mean, is it. I'm, I don't know, but I'm, I'm asking you the standard operating procedures for dealing with tunnel systems, entrenched combatants inside of that is. Is it. Is there anything you can do other than send people down there and, and have it out in these areas? And I, I didn't. I mean, the extensiveness of the tunnels, many of them in Gaza, are concrete, fortified, reinforced. There's some logistical things like some tracks and wagons and things like that. So it's a very sophisticated and ongoing operation to expand the network of these tunnels. And you can move people even from Gaza into Israel in some cases with the tunnels near the border. So how has the. Dealing with the tunnels and also then the complication of the civilians, how does that slow down operations for the objectives of the IDF?

Yeah, you know, Islamic extremists in the last 20 years of combat that we've seen have no issue in Hamas. I would put in that category using civilians as human shields. It's, it's just there, it's part of the game for them. And so you're right when you say, you know, they're not allowed to leave because having civilians on the battlefield complicates things immensely for people who don't think the way that these extremists think, and they actually value human life and they want to preserve human life. And I know that Israel, I've been in their operations center, they take extreme caution when targeting anything to try to minimize or eliminate civilian casualties. And of course, in combat, that's really, really, really hard. So that's the first thing now on the tunnels, what I would say is that it's, you know, the issues are related in that if, with, with the tunnels, if you indiscriminately try to bomb and close the tunnel mouth or collapse it or whatever, you don't know if they put a bunch of civilians in there or a bunch of hostages in there. And I've been in a couple of tunnel mouths in southern Israel that connected to Gaza that they had cemented. They found them. I mean, these things are just like, you know, holes in the desert, and it just, you know, they pop up and they're very challenging to find. There are different. You know, my last assignment in the army, I was leading the counter roadside bomb effort called joint IED to feed organization. And we had about $4 billion trying to, you know, this was at the peak of our young men and women being attacked by Iranian and mostly improvised explosive devices. Soleimani had created the explosively formed penetrator. And one of the things that we saw, a couple of things we saw, is that if we had a tunnel or we had a house, they could rig that to explode when a American unit went in there for four man squad going in to clear a house, or you go under a bridge, on a road, you collapse it, you know, lots of different things can happen. And so this Iranian connection, they're experts at these kinds of wicked, destructive improvised explosive devices. And so as you look at the tunnels, you've really got to approach each one independently, very cautiously. We developed, our private sector developed, we helped fund ground penetrating radar that could find tunnels to some depth and actually see what's in there. And so to the extent that, and when I was in this job, you know, I was part of my working with the Israeli Defense Forces, you know, I'm hopeful that, that in the last, you know, 12, 15 years, that technology has matured and gotten much better. It was decent back then. And if it's, if it's improved, then they're able to either have something low, like a drone, go, go fly and look for anomalies that find these tunnels, or something high and that, that can cover more terrain and find something that you could then send ground troops to and then you can assess it. And there are ways to, to look at the tunnel and, and put some, you know, we've got robotics that can get in there and cameras and so forth to protect human life. You can send, you know, a bot inside that can then transmit back what they're seeing. And then if you're pretty sure or, you know, or, or 100 sure that there's nothing to it, you know, close, close both ends of it and be done with it, right. And move on to the next one. And, you know, so I don't, I think these tunnels were, are more logistical networks that move to the hospital where they had their command center beneath it, or they moved to the elementary school where they have another command center. That this is how fiendish Hamas is. They put all of their command centers beneath the kinds of things that normal human beings would say, you know, please, please don't go near that hospital. Elementary school, you know, it's a daycare center, but that's, that's what they use as their, their shield, right? And so it comes full circle back to the use of civilians on the battlefield with these tunnels.

Tony, thank you so much for being on today. This has been an incredible education for all of us on the home front. If you were advising the administration today, you know, what would you have them consider that they might not be considering right now to improve the situation as best as possible.

Yeah, great question. I always look at things for really the elements of national power. What national power can we bring to bear on the situation that serves our national interest? Because at the end of the day, that's that, not to be harsh, but that's all that matters, right? U.S. national interest. This administration, any administration's number one job, is to serve the American people. And so what best serves the American people, there's a domestic component and there's an international component. My advice, for what it's worth, is to domestically reignite an aggressive energy exploration and impermitting process so that we can become a net exporter of fossil fuels while also having the green agenda that, you know, decarbonization and all that, which, you know, is important. And, and what that does is it reduces, it eliminates a major concern of. It reduces the relevance of the Persian Gulf to the United States and that reduces perhaps the number of troops that we need to have over there for actions on the Arabian Peninsula. So that would be the first thing. You know, the rest of the world gets their, their oil from that area, but if we can be a net exporter, that means that it's not as important to us. The second thing I would say is that Iran is, believe them when they speak death to America. They're not benevolent. They will never be benevolent. And so take a different approach with Iran. Show the big stick, that Teddy Roosevelt thing speaks softly, carry big stick and compel them to stop this exportation of terror throughout the Middle East. The funding that goes to Hezbollah and Hamas and Houthis and Shia militia groups. And if they don't, then there should be some punitive action and we can do that from afar. We can dismantle a oil, oil field, oil infrastructure. What is it that Iran cares most about financially? Their oil infrastructure, their nuclear reactors. We can very easily impact those. So I would have a flexible deterrent option, as they're called on, on the table, that if Iran doesn't, you know, tell Iran, you know, from an information management standpoint, Iran, stop this, or we're going to consider something more harsh. And then diplomatically, so diplomacy, information, military, economic, diplomatically, I would stop this engagement, a meaningless engagement with Iran because it leads nowhere, it leads to October 7th and just get harsh with them. And then from a military standpoint, have the option prepared to be harsher with Iran because they're the disease. Everything else is a symptom. Then economically, I would reimpose very, very strict sanctions and I would enforce those sanctions. And in particular so they can't send the amount of oil they're sending to China. One of the second order impacts of all of what's happened over the last three years is that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have coalesced and become much closer from cooperation standpoint because they see us as a common enemy that is not acting in our own nation's best interest. And so their opportunity for hegemony, for territorial aggrandizement, Ukraine, Israel, Afghanistan, all of that they, they see as an opportunity. And so I would recommend flexing a little muscle and shoring it up through diplomatic information and economic means.

They've certainly taken advantage of our lack of focus.

Yeah, no question about that.

Tony, thank you for your service and thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today.

The Home Front Always my privilege to talk to you, Jeff and the Home Front Brands team.

All right, take care. Thank you, sir.

Thank you.