Matt Schmidt: University of New Haven Associate Professor of National Security on the truce between Israel and Iran

A fragile ceasefire's holding for Iran and Israel after the US President got involved. 

Both sides claim the other has breached the truce. 

Donald Trump scolded both for early violations but directed particularly stinging criticism at Israel over the scale of its strikes. 

University of New Haven Associate Professor of National Security Dr Matt Schmidt told Mike Hosking he's unsure if US strikes fully destroyed Iran's nuclear capabilities. 

He says it's at least set back the program several years. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, it is the Middle East, after all, the maybe
Trump and his voluminous claims yesterday about peace and cease
fires was always a little bit optimistic, multiple claims of
breaches already, but there was a fragile hole that seems
as we speak at the moment. Dr Max Schmidt is
the Associate Professor of National Security at the University of
New Haven and as with us, Matthew, morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
So we're seeing a little bit of tip for tap.
Will it settle? Do you think? Or was yesterday a
bit of a false dawn?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Now? I think it will settle. I think it's best
to understand Israel's strike on that radar system is a
sort of a oh woa, we forgot this one, or
they're spinning up the radar and we can see it now,
and it's important for us tactically to take it out
just in case.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Where do you reckon Iran is at? Is this a
cease fire or is this Look we've been bombed badly.
We're out of mo for now. We need to do something,
So give us a couple of days.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Brown's in an interesting position. They have very little to
retaliate with unclear exactly how many ballistic missiles, for instance,
that remain in their inventory, probably very few, well fewer
than one thousand. At this point. They can't fire everything
because then they have no deterrence. So it's in their
incentive to keep everybody guessing, although I'm pretty sure that

(01:17):
Israel doesn't need to guess that much. So they need
to bring this down for their own sake. And the
regime is sitting here looking at the coming days and
weeks as a question of its own survival.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
I'm watching no shortage of people telling me regime change
is a real possibility, has been for some time. This
could be the tipping point. What's your view.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I think that we are at a point where it's
more likely than it has been since nineteen seventy nine.
I think the default position is still that regime change
is difficult. There are a lot of reasons why the
regime may collapse, but there are not a lot of
people who can stand in place and take over LEADLeadership.

(02:00):
The opposition in Iran is fractured, there isn't a clear leader.
Someone could still emerge, but there's a lot of risks
to doing that, and the regime hasn't lost its capacity
to repress citizens. So you know, as long as those
factors are still in play, I think the expectation is
that the regime survives in one form or another.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
From the American point of view, how critical is the
knowledge of the damage they did with the B two's
or are they Is it one and done and they're out?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
No matter what, I think the knowledge is important. I
think there's more out there than we know in the public,
probably from the Israelis. So you know. The other situation
here is the capability exists, and the president's been set
to go in and bomb, so there's no hard reason
to go back and do this today or tomorrow or

(02:52):
even this year. It definitely has set back the program,
you know, several years, and so you can sit back
and wait and you can always take an another shot later.
I don't see the US coming in anytime soon.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Appreciate your expertise very much, Doctor Matchmiad, Associate Professor of
National Security at the University of New Haven. The markets
are up and oil is down. For more from the
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