What the US-Iran War Means for Asia

0:00You're listening to the Diplomats Asia Geopolitics podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Katie Puts, coming to you from Washington, D.C. And this is Ankit Punda also in Washington, D.C. Good to be with you, Katie. Good to be with you, Ankit. Well, I got to tell you, I was at an iftar at an embassy here in D.C. last Friday. I guess that was February 27th. And amidst sort of the dinner chatter, a guy at this table asked me, you know, when the US would bomb Iran. And I told him, I kid you not. I said to him, it could be right now, it could be tomorrow, it could be next week, it could be never. It's not clear what Donald Trump will decide and when and how. And so then we all woke up Saturday morning in the US had bombed Iran. So here we are a few days later. And I think it's absolutely appropriate for us to talk about sort of the geopolitical repercussions of Donald Trump deciding to bomb Iran and sort of what's coming next. You know, I think this in a large way maybe

1:00will be sort of use hindsight. This was this was forecast, you know, there was sort of a buildup of US assets in the Middle East, a ratcheting up of rhetoric last summer. Listeners may recall the US and Israel launched airstrikes against Iran, sort of saying that they had decimated Iran's nuclear program with those strikes last summer. There has been sort of a half-hearted efforts at negotiation to be frank in the last couple of months. And then on February 28th, you know, the US and Israel conducted coordinated strikes on Iran, including the killing of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Hamine, who had been in power since 1989. And so the US has stated a variety of motivations and strategic goals. It's all a bit of a mess. And obviously the question to you, Ankit, is what was your initial reaction and sort of where are you, where's your thinking on this currently? Yeah, so I think since last summer, since the 12-day war, you know, my view for a variety of reasons, a reason something to do with the nuclear program with Israeli objectives vis-a-vis Iran has been that Israel at least was going to reinitiate strikes against

2:04Iran at some point. I'd basically privately told people like I thought it would be within 12 months of the end of the 12-day war. So that prediction has been true. Part of the reason for the delay was obviously Israel had to kind of reconstitute munitions and particularly like interceptors for higher altitude threats, like the arrow interceptors specifically. They have a lot of iron dome, but arrow is a much bigger, more expensive, more complex interceptor system. So there's been some reconstitution there. And then when the United States, you know, more recently was negotiating with kind of military force backing it up, one of the indicators I really kind of latched on to was the fact that there were two aircraft carriers that were being moved for preparations for attack. One is what you kind of do if you want leverage. That's like part of the theory of why the US has aircraft carriers all around the world is you can move them places to signal your resolve or whatever you want to signal. Two is a little much. And actually, I think, you know, for me, that was like, this is only the kind of thing you would do if there were genuinely like plans being put in place for the kind of campaign that we are seeing now. And so yeah, we are, you know, four days now into this war that is uncontained, chaotic,

3:11spread far beyond Iran's borders into the broader Middle East is having a global reverberations as we're recording this today, you know, financial markets have tanked in the United States around the world. There's expectations that energy costs will rise substantially as the straight of our moves, essentially becomes impermeable in many ways as long as this conflict continues will be very difficult for the Gulf States and the United States and Israel to forcibly keep the straight of our moves open. Iran has a lot of tools to make that quite challenging. The tragedy here, of course, I think you've already hinted at is that, you know, what is the theory of victory? I would even go as far as to argue that the United States and Israel actually have very different theories of victory. When you look at kind of Trump's surprise that many of the apparent candidates that the United States had in mind to replace I told a harmony have now been killed probably by the Israelis. And it does seem that Israel's broader objective here is to essentially cause a broader collapse of the state within Iran, which is different from kind of, well, that is one form of regime

4:15change, but I think the US had this kind of, if you look at what some officials, including Trump himself, have indicated they kind of had this quick kind of go in, bomb the itola, and have somebody take over pretty quickly and pull pull pull pull pull out and have this kind of be a quick kind of Maduro style operation essentially is what Trump like has alluded to, right? I think he got really high on the tactical success of the Maduro operation, which again, was not necessarily a strategic success. And I think that has now led us to this point. So I mean, in terms of predictions like, you know, Iran gets a vote about how this goes in the coming days, and the votes that they've been casting or that they are making this a regional conflict, they are imposing costs on many of the Gulf States. You know, we can talk about whether that's a tactically sound thing to do. I've written a little bit recently about Iran's decision-making, you know, I don't think the Iranians have been, have played the hand that they were dealt, particularly well in the last 18 to 24 months, and that's now cost how many his head. But obviously significant repercussions here, you know, I remember this podcast we've been doing

5:19this for more than 12 years now. And we didn't release to talk about wars and their effects on Asia, but you know, post-Ukraine, we've done a lot of that, and now obviously this war is going to also have, I think, really big ripple effects across the broader Asian region. Yeah, you know, and I think it's hard sort of being the age that I am and watching this and not sort of thinking back to the early 2000s and sort of the invasion of Iraq and sort of the language that was used around, these are obviously different sort of contexts and conflicts, but there is sort of, there's a few parallels that kind of jump out to me, right? Like there's sort of this advertising on the part of the administration that this would be relatively quick and easy, you know, go and kill Kamene, and then, you know, encourage the Iranian people to rise up, and that's it, and that's it, and that that's it, that was sort of the initial language. I think some of that has shifted some administration officials call it a war, some refused call it a war, it sort of goes back and forth and then there's sort of the second, obviously, for our audience and our focus on Asia,

6:23is that was, there was this discussion sort of as the United States got deeper, embroiled in the Middle East in the early 2000s, that this was sort of, this was a distraction from Asia and from focus on building relationships there and sort of that theater, and I was found that a little bit simplistic, but in the sense that the United States is a really big power, of course, it can pay attention to more than one region at a time. I don't know if that is as true, given the capabilities that this administration has sort of whittled away, to think about sort of the state department and sort of downsizing and things like that. So I'm curious, Ankit, on your read on how Asia broadly views this sort of reengagement in the Middle East, is this just a big eye roll, like, oh, they're going back to the Middle East, not really interested in Asia anymore, and sort of what is the vibe there? Also, I mean, I think right now specifically, I don't think the Asian reaction might be as expected, because in the past, the US has been talking about pivoting to Asia and rebalancing

7:24and bringing assets into the region to deter China, and so US allies were very concerned the US wasn't doing that. Like right now, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Greenland, all of these areas where Trump has kind of devoted some degree of geopolitical attention. Some of these places where the US has actually carried out military operations are far from Asia, right? And you could argue about how much the Don Roe doctrine or whatever is driving this. Iran obviously is not in the Western hemisphere, but there's a lot that's happening in the background here that I think has also led to this right, the longstanding place of Iran and US national security discourse, within the Republican Party as being this irrational, undeterrable state. One of the reasons why a lot of people argued that they should be able to get nuclear weapons. We obviously haven't talked about the nuclear issue, right? There was no imminent risk of Iran building a nuclear weapon here, and so that rationale is maybe, again, another piece of evidence for the echoes of 2003

8:26argument. The big difference with 2003, though, is that the United States didn't actually, I'm not praising the Bush administration for this at all, but the US didn't even have a theory to bring to Congress or the American people or the US allies about why this war. In the 2003 case, there was a well-constructed narrative. Parts of that narrative were probably lies, right? Totally lies. I know I'm being too kind, right? But there was a narrative about this. This doesn't seem to have that solidity, which also leads, and we will get back to the nuclear question, but it leads to a question of what is the end goal here? That seems to be ill-disfying. What is the strategic goal? I don't think there's a strong strategic goal here, and I think you've seen very different things being said. Is this about empowering the Iranian people to rise up and take over Iran after the whole world witnessed terrible killings of civilians recently by

9:29Iranian security forces? Is this just about destabilizing and collapsing the state? Is this narrowly about the nuclear and missile programs? Is it about all of the above? If so, what replaces, coming in the coming days or months, very much unclear. This is a country of 90 million people with deep implications for global energy supply chains, etc. And here we get back to the Asian reaction to this. I think partly the sense in a lot of Asian countries is that the US is behaving in ways that are obviously deeply concerning from a global stability perspective. This is having effects on global energy markets and supply chains causing tremendous amounts of unpredictability. Air traffic is interrupted, right? If you've been looking at air traffic monitors recently, there's this remarkable column of civilian aircraft that are trying to thread the needle between Ukraine and Iran as they go from Europe to Asia, and they have to fly over the Caucasus and Caspian over Central Asia into places like India and Southeast Asia. And so tremendous disruption,

10:34not I think the role that Asia would obviously prefer to see being played by the United States. And even for American allies, South Korea, Japan, that depend on tremendous amounts of their very, very high demands for energy to come via the Persian Gulf. This work could also have really long-term domestic economic consequences, similar consequences for a country like India, which doesn't quite have the long-guration fuel reserves that a country like China has invested a lot in the relationship with Iran, right? India is built up like the Chabahar port, which has been bombed now in the course of this war, in addition to New Delhi's reappraisal of its relationship with the United States more broadly since the last year. So very much a set of developments that I think are going to show the rest of the continent that at least as long as this administration remains in the United States, the US is going to be a much bigger challenge for regional stability and predictability than certainly China, right? And we can talk a bit about China maybe in a few minutes,

11:38but I think that's the broader takeaway from the early reactions that we've seen to the conflict. Yeah, absolutely. And so I want to circle back to, I can't believe I said circle back, but we're going to circle back to the nuclear question, right? You know, Iran, it's unclear what the status of their nuclear program was when these strikes happened. I think the administration has tried to sort of say two things at the same time. Last year, we destroyed their nuclear program and then they were also like on the verge of getting nuclear weapon again. And so where does this fit into sort of our understanding of nuclear deterrence? And I think the obvious sort of parallel in Asia is North Korea. What is North Korea taking from this lesson sort of after the Venezuela incidents? Yeah, so I mean, I can answer the second one first, right? Which is, I mean, the North Koreans are going to say, I told you so. This is kind of part of their entire world view. I mean, before the Second Trump administration, it was Gaddafi and Saddam who chose to engage diplomatically with the West and gave up burgeoning WMD programs and

12:44then paid the price dearly, right? Saddam directly at the hands of the United States and Gaddafi indirectly as a result of NATO intervention in 2011. Maduro and how many have now similarly paid prices. Obviously Maduro was not on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons or anything like that. But I mean, for the North Koreans, I think this is again, the only way to assure your survival in a world of predatory great powers is to possess nuclear weapons and credible nuclear deterrence. The other thing I will say though, what's interesting from a geopolitical perspective is North Korea's perspective on Russia, right? And again, I don't think the North Koreans are romantic about Russia being an ally. But for all of these countries, I would also throw in, you know, Bashar al-Assad here, partners with Russia. When things get really bad and you might make that phone call to Moscow, what you really hear back is kind of thoughts and prayers, right? You don't really get anything meaningful in the way of backing. The Iranians did purchase some man-portable air defense systems from the Russians, but it wasn't like the Russians were all in on preserving

13:48the Iranian regime or anything like that. So another piece of, I think just texture for the conversation about how the North Koreans will probably think about what the Russians will and won't do if things do get really bad and they do have a comprehensive strategic partnership with the mutual defense clause. Going back to the nuclear piece, so the 12-day war was about the nuclear program, right? The United States and Israel bombed a number of facilities. The only reason the US joined that campaign was to use massive ordinance penetrators against deeply buried sites that could only be destroyed with those US weapons. So this included, you know, fordo most prominently and netons. So since then, the Iranians have had a whole bunch of uranium and rich to 60 percent that's been buried, we think, in the tunnels at Isfahan. That could probably have helped them put together like nine to ten nuclear weapons if they could have gotten their hands on it and then further enriched it. It was in the form of UF-6 gas, so not the kind of stuff you just machine into a

14:49pit for a nuclear weapon and pop in. They had a whole bunch of centrifuge components, so there was some concern that they could have started reconstituting enrichment sites at covert clandestine facilities, but the broader picture is that this was not a country that was on the cusp of building a nuclear weapon. And so again, I think this goes back to the concern that, you know, I had last year, which was this is all about a longer term play for regime change, and that certainly seems to be how the conflict is now playing out. Yeah, we'll see where that goes. Now, before we end, I do want to talk about China, you know, I think you sort of mentioned Russia and sort of the Russia-relation ships, but China, for the last decade or more, has kind of positioned itself as this alternative poll in geopolitics, and you know, a power of the global south, and sort of these sort of pariah stays could maybe look to for backing, and Iran certainly purchased Chinese weaponry and things like that, you know, what we've seen in sort of the last like three months, right, is that two major Chinese partners,

15:54Venezuela and Iran sort of be directly and very harshly targeted by the United States and Beijing has not really done anything. Should these countries have expected Beijing to do anything, and it's sort of what does this say about China as a security guarantor in the current sort of really messy geopolitical mess? Yeah, so I mean, I think the answer is that, you know, China is not a security guarantor, and like doesn't see itself playing that role. I think while they have a certain degree of sympathy for, you know, fellow authoritarian regimes that are either destabilized through, you know, color revolutions or direct US military action, as might be the case here, Beijing's overall interest is actually in seeing a return to stability. And I think, you know, that's just a factor that comes from China seeing itself actually, I think, is a very different type of global power than the United States is where the US actually spends quite a bit of or traditionally has spent quite a bit of time and energy to back up its allies and partners around the world. The Chinese foreign ministry and officials have been very critical of the United

16:58States rhetorically as you might expect, but you know, that hasn't been backed up with a broader willingness to take action. But the overall, you know, if I looked at this situation from China, again, this goes back to what we started with, right? Which country is actually giving you a tremendous amount of evidence that it is causing a less predictable and more unstable world today? It is going to be the United States. And I think that is a that is a narrative point that has now extremely fertile soil around the world, right? Including in countries that are allied with the United States. And so a public opinion towards the US in Asia, especially in Southeast Asia, right? Which has very much been at the center of many of the discussions on this podcast over the years where the US and China have been really trying to wrangle for influence even with China having a logical gravitational pull just given its proximity and economic linkages with those countries. I think the situation is going to deteriorate significantly for the United States. You know, there's there's a Malaysia's reaction. I think it's been really interesting, you know,

18:00rather harsh and sort of pointing out the danger of targeting heads of state at the start of a conflict like this. So I will be I'll be looking to see, you know, how China chooses to take not just this, but also the Maduro raid and more broadly speaking, the US approach to the use of force under the second Trump administration as it tries to position itself for leadership in the region. All right. Well, I think that's a good note to end on sort of what to to watch for as the coming weeks unfold. We'll certainly be back with with more on this and probably hopefully something else sometime soon. But thanks everyone for listening to the diplomats Asia Geopolitics podcast. If you like what you heard, please make sure to subscribe on Spotify or Apple Podcast wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. You can also watch these episodes on YouTube if you enjoy that kind of thing. And you can always get in touch with Ankit and myself if you have episode suggestions or questions, we'll be back soon with more. Thanks Ankit. See you Katie. Talk to you next time. See you Katie. Talk to you next time.