“I think the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to become more of a problem because Iran will want to push out that capacity further to its proxies. But we could see an expanded threat in the Eastern Mediterranean,” Norman Roule, Senior Advisor to the Counter Extremism Project, “United Against Nuclear Iran, the Nuclear Threat Initiative”, and a member of the advisory board of the Arabia Foundation, points out to GeoTrends.
With more than 34 years in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and as former national intelligence manager for Iran (NIM-I), Norman Roule states that “each week the risk of a major conflict increases, although none of the actors are looking forward to such a thing,” while Mr. Roule foresees that terrorist “know-how” and military capabilities could be transferred to different geopolitical terrains, such as in East Africa.
– With the situation escalating between Hezbollah and Israel, do you foresee a new conflagration in the Middle East?
There are three characteristics of the conflict in the Middle East since October 7th that have been a constant, the first is that all regional actors are not interested in a conventional conflict, because a major war would disrupt all of their long-standing domestic, political, and economic national objectives.
The second characteristic is that Iran and its proxies have multiple incentives to continue the current pace of violence, with that violence increasing in intensity as they normalize the activity or cross what they had previously perceived as red lines on the type of weapons.
The last issue is the nature of all of the weapons used by Iran’s proxies, from Lebanon to the Houthis to the Iraqi militias are very destructive, and they have a capacity that includes new missiles, rockets, and intensity of the quantity. And this could produce an incident that essentially results in the conflict everyone wishes to avoid. So, for the present, I think all actors wish to avoid a war, but we are stuck. Hezbollah is firing multiple rockets and Israel must return 80,000 people to the north. Diplomacy thus far does not appear to be succeeding. So, each week the risk of a major conflict increases, although none of the actors are looking forward to such a thing.
– Lately, the Houthis have been using even more sophisticated technology like drone boats with dozens of strikes on merchant ships and recently a sinking. With the war in Israel continuing, do you think the Houthis will be driven to full-blows against merchant ships?
June saw the greatest number of Houthi attacks since December of 2023, and we now have had the second sinking of a commercial craft. So, there is no question that the Western approach of defence and occasional degradation of Houthi capabilities has not produced deterrence, and I think we are in a very dangerous situation for two reasons:
First, the Houthis are going to adapt their attacks to the local conditions. And we are now seeing them learn, perhaps from Ukraine’s operations against the Russians and the Black Sea as to the capacity of longer-range drone ships, which is something they have used in the past against the Saudis and even Emiratis a few years ago. But the size of these vessels is larger. Let me explain why this becomes an issue. Not only is the capacity of the vessel to carry more explosives but also to go longer distances. So, if you look at the nature of Houthi attacks in the southern basin of the Red Sea and in the Gulf of Aden, you see a concentration of their attacks. But these vessels could allow strikes further out into the Indian Ocean. And these ships can inflict greater damage on commercial ships.
But I think there is a bigger problem here. The problem is that if tomorrow there is peace in Gaza and the Houthis were to stop the attack, it is possible after some time, the commercial shippers will gain confidence that a cease-fire will continue and that the attacks have ended, so they will return their shipping into the Red Sea. But at any point in the future, the Houthis and Iran now have the capacity to touch the global economy. And also, they see that the global actors are not pushing back. So, imagine an incident one year from now where the Houthis say, “Because of an action in Europe.” So, probably they will wish to repeat this entire endeavor. Only at this point, Iran will have been able to replenish the missiles, provide new technologies, and increase their capacity with these long-range drone boats.
Therefore, I think we have a problem not only today but will have a serious problem in the long term because of our weak approach to dealing with the Houthis.
– Is it a strategic goal of Iran to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and thus block the trade root of the Red Sea?
Yes, and at the same time, this behavior increases the likelihood of attacks as well as the likelihood of other proxies learning from them. And do not be surprised if Lebanese Hezbollah expands its actions. Still, the Houthis could move this technology and expertise into East Africa, so we see Iran moving into Sudan or trying to move into Somalia. This is a problem that will proliferate.
– Do you think that this insecure situation will continue after the end of the war in Gaza, increasing war risk premiums and the cost of goods?
It is Iran’s goal to be perhaps the regional hegemon with the capacity to inflict damage on the global economy. That is something that it wishes to inflict at a time and place of its choosing. But by having the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz under its influence, it has a tremendous capacity to touch the global economy and the political stability of the region. So, it seeks this control, but also it aims to turn the trade on and off whenever it feels most useful for its national objectives.
– Moving further east, would you consider it possible that a crisis could be triggered in the Strait of Hormuz?
I do not think so. At the moment, I think it is a different operational threat in the Strait of Hormuz and in the Persian Gulf. Iran has missiles, drone capacity, and a submarine fleet, but, at the same time, the West has a more significant operational capacity. We have naval headquarters in Bahrain, air force in Al Udeid, and other locales gives us the capacity to punch Iran harder.
If you are Iran, one of the things you do consistently is exploit a gap in international strategy. International strategy explains that if someone attacks, the response is given to the attacker, not the instigator of the attack. So, Iran prefers to have its proxies take aggressive actions because the international community only responds to proxies and ignores Iran.
Therefore, I think the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to become more of a problem because Iran will want to push out that capacity further to its proxies. But we could see an expanded threat in the Eastern Mediterranean.
– Do you consider Saudi Arabia the “rich patient” of the region or the weak link in case some unrest breaks out in the Persian Gulf?
Saudi Arabia is a strong security partner of the West and the United States. The same goes for the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, which are also very important partners, and we have much more confidence in our ability to maintain security in the region because what they do does not get a lot of publicity.
The exercises that we have conducted and what we do together have demonstrated some significant capability. At the same time, these regional actors saw what happened when they engaged the Houthis. The world turned against them, and they will not repeat that effort unless they have greater confidence that the international community will stand with them.
– What measures should the EU and US adopt to tackle Iran’s shadowing infiltration?
The United States and Europe should first work as a team and work together with the regional actors because both have a legitimate national security interest. And these interests not only protect their citizens and their economies but increasingly, in this globalized world, we have huge economic interests in the region itself, far beyond energy. And we also have hundreds of thousands of nationals who live in the region who are under threat of these missiles, rockets, and drone boats.
Therefore, you begin with partnerships, with public and private statements to Iran and its proxies. “Stop it! If you do not stop it, bad things will happen.” You then demonstrate your military prowess by hitting with precision strikes, such as facilities and actions that demonstrate your understanding of the situation, your intelligence, and your ability to do things in a very specific way.
If they continue that activity, you move up the chain, striking more facilities, striking personnel involved in aggressive actions, and then moving towards leadership. This is a very specific chain. And indeed, the United States followed this prior to the killing of Qasem Soleimani. It was a very traditional escalatory approach. The United States followed this in maybe a less aggressive way in our response to the attacks on our personnel in Jordan.
So, you need to bring the punishment to the leadership so that they have an internal conversation where they say, “This prize, our aggression abroad, is not worth the potential price and the consequences to our longer-term objectives and our survival.” And indeed, you want to have a situation where the leadership says, “The last guy who ordered a terrorist attack on Europe or the United States is dead and I do not want to be the person who follows him.” If you are not willing to go that far and just prefer to impose long-term symbolic sanctions, then suddenly you have a leadership decision-making table where people say, “I would like to conduct a terrorist operation or a significant operation in the Red Sea. There will not be any consequences that will touch me.” Therefore, you encourage violence by not following this traditional escalatory ladder and even bringing a conventional conflict that everyone wishes to avoid.