STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
General Joseph Votel is on the line. Before his retirement, he led the U.S. Central Command - which covers the region, including Iran - and he is now at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. General, good morning. Welcome back.
JOSEPH VOTEL: Good morning, Steve. Good to be with you.
INSKEEP: Are we simply back at war?
VOTEL: I don't think we've returned to full-scale operations, but I think the actions over the last 72 hours show that the conflict is actually becoming a little more unstable, where exchanges are more routine, and they're - and thus more dangerous. So the ceasefire is no longer, you know, kind of the stabilizing mechanism that it was earlier in the conflict, and it's not really a brake on escalation. And, of course, direct U.S. and Iranian strikes are now becoming normalized, which lowers the threshold and gives the opportunity for greater escalation.
INSKEEP: Some of the earlier U.S. strikes would seem to fit a pattern that's normal in a ceasefire. The U.S. feels Iran does something, so they strike back in what they say is a proportional way. That's kind of normal. But in the last 24 hours, this seems to have escalated in a different way, General, because we have the president saying, we are striking them because we don't like how they're negotiating. They're taking too much time. We have Secretary Hegseth talking about negotiating with bombs. If you were still at Central Command and you heard that your civilian bosses wanted to, quote, "negotiate with bombs," what advice would you give them?
VOTEL: Well, certainly, there are a lot of - there are still a lot of targets left in Iran that we could go after. But, you know, clearly, I think what we would want to focus on is on Iran's ability to interact and interdict activities in the Straits of Hormuz. So certainly we'd go after coastal missile defense sites. We'd go after command and control locations. We'd go after ground control stations. We'd go after the Iranian republican guard navy capabilities in terms of their fast boats that they can use for mining and really try to disrupt that. And I think in order to, you know, send a broader message if this is the approach we're taking to the regime, I think you actually have to go deeper.
I think one of the things we've seen in the last 24 hours is that these Tomahawk strikes, some of these were impacting relatively close to Tehran, which, again, is really focused on sending a very, very clear message. So there's a lot of things we can do, but my concern would be mostly on their ability to, you know, create an unsafe environment in the Straits of Hormuz.
INSKEEP: No. Well, let's talk about that. Iran says it has responded by firing at U.S. military bases. Does it strike you that Iran still has tremendous capability that it could deploy?
VOTEL: No, I'm not particularly struck by that. I mean, I think we certainly have done a lot of damage to the things that we know, and we could see. But certainly, Iran has had years and decades to prepare for this, so has a lot of that stuff protected - so the ability of them to roll that out. What I am kind of continued to be surprised by is by Iran's efforts to horizontally escalate this. You know, a feature of all this is that U.S. bases and the partners - our partners across the region - are really - all remain under the threat envelope, and Iran is trying to demonstrate that there are real costs for them if they continue their support to the United States.
INSKEEP: All right. When you say horizontally escalate, I want to define that. You're saying in terms of the map, Iran is willing to spread this out...
VOTEL: That's right.
INSKEEP: ...Spread the pain to their neighbors...
VOTEL: That's right.
INSKEEP: ...And that it's surprised you...
VOTEL: That's right.
INSKEEP: ...How far they're willing to go?
VOTEL: Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait - yes, absolutely.
INSKEEP: Do you have to - if you're the United States - think seriously about the concerns of those allies and not getting them in too much trouble as you escalate?
VOTEL: Well, of course, we have to always take into consideration, you know, the risk to our partners. They base us. They support us. They do all kinds of things for us - so that has to be a consideration. That said, we're kind of where we are right now, so we're going to have to work closely with our partners as we do this. I think the fortunate thing is that we - our defenses have been pretty effective, so far. Our defenses and their defenses - our Gulf partner defenses - have been pretty effective in defending against these drone and missile threats.
INSKEEP: Just one other thing - we've got about 10 seconds left. If you're going to negotiate with bombs, does it seem that the United States will also have to escalate considerably to get to the point where the Iranian leaders would care?
VOTEL: Well, yeah, I think that's right. I mean, we will have to demonstrate pain to the leadership. They have to absorb the - what's going on.
INSKEEP: General Votel, thanks so much.
VOTEL: Great. Good to be with you, Steve.
INSKEEP: Retired General Joseph Votel, former head of U.S. Central Command. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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