Ex MI6 Chief Hails Trump's Iran Strike: A Turning Point?

A candid conversation with Sir Richard Dearlove about "shock & surprise" at the Nato Summit in the Hague

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

The crowd at the NATO Summit in the Hague is skeptically optimistic that President Trump has concluded his “12 Day War” thanks to an extraordinarily fragile ceasefire between Iran and Israel that has no milestones, no confidence building mechanisms, etc., etc. It crumbled within hours of consummation when Iran struck Israel in the early morning on Monday and Israel fired back. But there’s at least one European at the summit who thinks Trump showed a masterclass of “raw power” that will have lasting impact on Iran’s nuclear program — Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of the British spy agency MI6 during the invasion of Iraq in 2004. Dearlove is a hawk but offers invaluable insight as someone who has worked closely with Benjamin Netanyahu and has been collecting intel on Iran’s nuclear program for decades.

Our conversation below was edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode tomorrow by following The Tara Palmeri Show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

What is everyone saying privately at the NATO Summit about the US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities? I know they want a tightly scripted summit, but what do they really think?

Well, I think there's shock, there's surprise. I think people are impressed by the exhibition of raw power. I think people are trying to draw parallels with past events. Look, it's very early days. And to give you a sort of clear summary and say this, I think it's too soon. But what I would say is that history doesn't repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes. And at the moment, I wouldn't draw a parallel, for example, with events in Iraq and events in Iran now. I think we're dealing with two very, very different problems, and I think the events surrounding them are incredibly different as well.

How so?

We have a clear problem that has very deep long-term historical roots. I left the office in MI6 a long time ago, although I've continued to be closely involved in geopolitics as a talking head. But the Iranian nuclear program was of huge concern, back almost at the same time as Iraq. I'm on record when we were talking about proliferation issues So we have been worrying about Iran's progress towards a nuclear weapons program. We have used many means to try to slow it down, to stop it, to frustrate it. And it's taken a hell of a long time, it's now come to a head. The issue of attacking it, probably was unfortunately a necessary step to take geopolitically.

Do you think President Trump took the right necessary step?

I would have, yes. I've been supportive of taking this ultimate step. Now, what the attack has achieved, it's difficult to say. It certainly will have massively frustrated the program, and it may have created the preconditions for Iran eventually to give up its nuclear ambitions. To have a successful centrifuge center for refining uranium to the level of fissile material for a weapon, these centers have to be incredibly sensitive. The centrifuges have to be tuned, the cascades have to be tuned, they're like grand pianos. And the moment it's disrupted, the disruption is really, really serious.

And you think that this disruption was serious enough to damage their program?

Well, I think it's serious enough to have probably stopped the refinement of uranium for a pretty long period of time, if not indefinitely, but we just don't know yet.

Do you think that is reflective in the way that Iran barely attacked back? They called Trump and said, ‘Hey, we're going to drop some bombs on a base in Qatar,