- Israel, Ukraine, and the threat of wider conflicts.

This week on "Firing Line."

[dramatic music] [gun shoots] Israel calls it the "second phase" of its war with Hamas.

[tank shooting] Its troops are now making their way through Gaza.

Meanwhile Russia's war with Ukraine has been going on for more than 600 days, with no end in sight.

[artillery shooting] - We cannot allow brutal states to remove independent states by force.

- [Margaret] Dr. Kimberly Kagan is a military historian and the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War.

She has advised the Bush and Obama administrations on troop surges in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As questions mount about what's next in the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, Iran and its proxies are playing a role in these two major wars.

- They share the goal of destroying our way of life, our freedom, our values.

- [Margaret] What does Dr. Kimberly Kagan say now?

- [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, The Asness Family Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, and Damon Button.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. - Dr. Kimberly Kagan, welcome to "Firing Line."

- Thank you.

- You are a military historian, the founder and president of the Institute for the Study of War and you advised General David Petraeus in Kabul for 17 months during the Afghanistan war.

Currently, there are two major wars underway, the Israel-Hamas war and Russia's Ukraine war.

Describe the mission of the Institute for the Study of War against the backdrop of these conflicts.

- The Institute for the Study of War exists to help civilian leaders, policymakers, military leaders, and journalists and the American public understand what is happening in conflict zones around the world.

ISW conducts what we call open source intelligence analysis.

One of the ways that we follow the war in Ukraine is through watching or listening to how it is that the Russians talk about combat operations in Ukraine.

They don't tell the truth.

But some of what they comment on and publish on actually has latent information in it.

And we can use a whole suite of new kinds of tools that allow us to verify that information.

- Well, listen, I know the majority of your work at the moment is on focuses on Ukraine.

And you also have a deep expertise in Iran.

I'd like to ask you first about Israel.

As you know, Israel has launched the second phase of its military campaign, the ground invasion, with troops now advancing towards Gaza City.

How do you assess the evolution of the conflict so far?

- What is interesting about the military operations as they are unfolding is that Israel has designed and is executing a very deliberate campaign to essentially surround parts of Gaza with military forces and to take steps to begin to isolate Gaza City from the agricultural areas around the outside of Gaza City.

It's much slower than typical Israeli military campaigns.

It's quite deliberate.

And it is really only just begun.

- It is presumed that the next stage of the conflict will likely involve intense urban combat, perhaps block by block, against enemies in entrenched and dense populations.

There are military experts who have likened this upcoming battle to the battle of Fallujah in Iraq that was known as a house by house battle.

You understand the battle of Fallujah and have studied it.

Do you see that as a fair comparison or an apt comparison?

- There are some features of how Hamas has fought its past wars that may make the situation a bit different from what went on in Fallujah.

Hamas has been typically a lighter force.

And we have yet to see how it will fight in these densely populated urban areas.

What we saw in Fallujah over time was indeed a very dug in enemy that was optimized for the defense of a city.

And that is what Al Qaeda in Iraq did.

And it defended the city very, very thoroughly, which is why our U.S. Marines and soldiers had a difficult time clearing it.

Urban combat is not impossible, though.

It's just hard and it can be casualty intensive for all combatants.

- What did you mean by Hamas as a light force?

- When we speak of light forces in a military, we really mean that a force does not actually have tanks or heavy armored vehicles.

- How do you also account for the extensive network of tunnels beneath Gaza that have been used over the past decades to smuggle food and people and weapons?

From a military standpoint, how do those tunnels pose a challenge to this kind of urban warfare?

- The tunnel system in Gaza is extremely extensive.

One of the most interesting features of this battlefield is that it will have an air, a ground, and a subterranean component.

It does make urban combat more difficult.

It puts a greater burden on intelligence.

And it puts a greater burden on very deliberate clearing operations.

- So Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in a Wall Street Journal opinion editorial this week of Iran's axis of terror.

And, of course, he was referring to Iran's proxies from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Houthis in Yemen.

And scholars such as yourself refer to this axis as the axis of resistance.

Help us understand what Iran's goals are in supporting these military proxy groups.

- So Iran has some overarching objectives that we need to keep in mind.

One is, Iran has declared that the United States is its enemy.

And one of Iran's objectives is expelling the United States from the Middle East.

Secondly, Iran has, as its stated objective, the destruction of the state of Israel.

Third, Iran has as a major objective, bringing its brand of theocratic rule to other states in the Middle East.

And so within that framework, Iran has assembled a coalition of state and non-state actors throughout the Middle East on which it relies to help do those three things.

- Is the bottom line in your analysis that Iran is seeking a broader conflict now?

- Iran has prepared for a broader conflict now and has been actively preparing that axis of resistance for a broader conflict for several years.

- Is there any way then to contain the current conflict as it is now between just Israel and Gaza, and prevent it from expanding, for example, to Hezbollah to Israel's northern border?

- Iran and its axis of resistance are largely in control of the escalation of this war.

The United States is not likely in control of the escalation of this war.

Israel is not likely in control of the escalation of this war.

And I think it's important to understand that Iran has prepared for this escalation and prepared these groups for an escalation.

- So as you then consider that and scenarios for what a wider conflict could look like, what do you assess is likely to be the next set of developments in this war?

- So we are already seeing right now that the war is wider than just Gaza and Israel.

And so I think it's important to recognize that some of the Iranian groups that are essentially members of this axis of resistance are already engaged against U.S. forces in places such as Iraq and Syria.

And so we have seen the targeting of U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, And that is consistent with what Iran has been preparing for.

And it is in part a signal to the United States that Iran is willing to escalate the war.

And it's in part a threat to the United States that Iran will escalate the war.

So we're focused right now very tightly on what the Israel-Gaza portion of the war looks like.

But the regional actors are already signaling.

- You know, you said Iran is preparing for a wider conflict.

Is that what Iran wants?

- I can't state what Iran wants.

I think that Iran has prepared for a wider conflict for several reasons, including that the aspirations that it has for the region include the expulsion of U.S. forces and the destruction of Israel.

- Let me ask you about Ukraine.

Ukraine launched a counteroffensive against Russia in June and has reclaimed some territory.

But progress has been slow on both sides.

And both sides have suffered incredibly severe losses.

Why did the summer counteroffensive not deliver the results that many observers anticipated who were supporting Ukraine?

- The Ukrainian summer counter-offensive has turned out to be more difficult than I think even the Ukrainians themselves thought.

- Why is that?

- The Russians prepared defenses and those defenses were entrenched and they were they're quite thoroughly mined.

And the Ukrainians do not have some things that are very important for overcoming minefields, drones, and [indistinct] fortifications.

And those include long range precision weapons.

And a second thing that they lack is air power.

And it is therefore difficult for the Ukrainians actually to make advances.

And so that's why I think that they have struggled.

I think, though, it's actually important to note that both the Ukrainians and the Russians are learning and adapting on this battlefield.

And just because the Ukrainian counter-offensive did not go as planned does not actually mean that the Russians have won the war or that the Ukrainians have lost the war.

It means that there is more combat coming, and that there is a lot of adaptation that is going on that we may actually see emerge over the winter and the spring of 2024.

- You have said in September that the war is winnable by Ukraine.

In your analysis, Dr. Kagan, what is the path for Ukraine to prevail?

- Ukraine can still prevail in its conflict against Russia.

And it must prevail.

That's actually incredibly important, not for Ukraine, but actually for the United States and for its European allies.

- Make that case.

- The war that is under way is a war that Putin undertook as a war of choice.

And its goals are to remove an independent state from the European continent.

Well, that is unacceptable.

And if the United States does not stand up against brutal aggression to eliminate sovereign states, then other authoritarian regimes with territorial ambitions will learn that the world is a free for all.

And I think Xi Jinping in China is watching very closely what the United States is doing in Ukraine and what European states are doing in Ukraine, and whether or not Putin will be allowed to get away with the conquest of part of the lands of another state.

- Let me ask you, Hamas and Russia have long maintained close ties.

Since its 2022 invasion of Ukraine Moscow has continued to deepen its ties with Hamas's backer, Iran.

How, in your analysis, are these two conflicts connected?

- So the conflict in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East are deeply connected, and they're connected by our adversaries.

The Russians have relied on Iranian drones as a key component of their ability to sustain the war in Ukraine.

But I think it's important to remember that the military relationship between Iran and Russia is not new.

It goes back, actually, to the Syrian civil war.

This is a very deep relationship, and the shared goal that Iran and Russia had was to preserve the Assad regime and to expel the United States from the region.

What we have seen since 2015 is a maturing of that relationship.

The militaries have gotten more interoperable with one another.

But in addition, the power relationship has changed.

Whereas Russia was the bigger, badder power in 2015, Russia is now focused on Ukraine, and Iran has more leverage in the relationship with Russia than it did previously.

- Russian and Israeli ties have also been strong over the years, going back to the conflict in Syria.

How do you see this relationship changing given the recent developments in Israel?

- I think that the Israeli government has always hoped that Russia would provide some check on Iranian behavior in Syria.

We at ISW have assessed that that check has not been effective.

But be that as it may, it has been Israeli policy to tolerate Russia's presence inside of Syria.

I don't think that this myth is going to last very long.

I think that Putin is going to have to make a choice soon between whether he will maintain his relationship with Iran or whether he will maintain his relationship with Israel.

And Putin needs Iran in order to sustain his war in Ukraine.

And so Putin is going to end up facing a tough choice.

I think he's going to try to delay that choice as long as he can.

But since his war in Ukraine is so important to him and the survival of his regime, I think the Israelis are going to find that Putin is not a helpful or friendly actor.

- So in plain speak, in your analysis, Putin is likely to double down and support Iran?

- Putin does not want to choose between Iran and Israel.

But right now, because of the war in Ukraine, Iran is more important to Putin.

And Putin will end up choosing Iran because he needs the Iranian weapons in order to be able to continue his war in Ukraine.

- Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now the longest serving prime minister in Israel's history, was on this program with William F Buckley Jr in 1986 when he was Israel's ambassador to the U.N. and Buckley asked him to define terrorism.

Take a look at this.

- Let me define, let me try to give an instance of what terrorism is not.

In 1944 the British Royal Air Force sets out on a bombing mission.

The target is the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, perfect target.

The planes loose the bombs, drop the bombs, and they miss.

Instead of the Gestapo headquarters, they hit a children's hospital, and scores of children are horribly killed.

This is an accidental, tragic outcome of war.

This can happen, but it is not terrorism.

Because what terrorists do is target the innocent deliberately.

And therefore, my definition of terrorism is the systematic and deliberate attack, the murder, maiming and menacing of innocents, of civilians, for political goals.

- What do you make of that, Kim?

- Hamas began this war through a major act of terrorism on the 7th of October going and killing and kidnapping innocent civilians in Israel, slaughtering babies.

Those are acts of terror, without any doubt.

- And you've dealt with this question of civilians deliberately being targeted, as well as civilians who have been tragic casualties in war in Ukraine and Afghanistan and in Iraq.

Of course, this is even more complicated during the current conflict since Gaza, so densely populated and Hamas operates within civilian areas.

Let me ask you about something you wrote in 2020.

You wrote that the U.S. national defense strategy was at a, quote, "inflection point."

And you argued that the U.S. was inadequately preparing for future conflicts by falling behind in the race to prepare, quote, "intellectually, doctrinally and organizationally" for wars of present and future.

What is your biggest concern?

- The United States is not prepared for conflict on the scale that we are beginning to see around the world.

The United States is used to having the world's most outstanding dominating armed force, and it is used to being able to use that armed force with limited casualties.

What we are observing now is that enemies and adversaries of the United States are preparing for war, whether we're talking about Russia or whether we're talking about Iran, or whether we're talking about China.

And they're preparing for modern war.

And they're looking at the United States.

And although they may have some very different goals, they share the goal of making sure that the United States is not able to be powerful in this world, and they share the goal of destroying our way of life, our freedom, our values, our prosperity.

And so this is what I'm afraid of.

The United States has not invested enough in its defense.

We have not modernized our armed forces for the conflicts that are coming, and we do not have enough troops, weapons, equipment for the kinds of wars that we're seeing right now.

The war in Ukraine should be a wake up call for all of us.

The amount of artillery and ammunition that both the Russians and the Ukrainians are using is depleting stocks of munitions around the world.

The United States needs to get real.

We do not desire war, but our enemies and adversaries have a say.

They will choose where and when they fight.

And the United States has interests in the world around it.

We rely on free trade around the globe.

We rely on an open society.

The time to recognize that the United States has to invest in its defense is not when the war begins, but now, so that the United States can continue to deter aggression and protect itself without actually having to use that military force at a large scale.

- Dr. Kagan, thank you for joining me on "Firing Line."

- Thank you, Margaret.

It's been a pleasure.

- [Announcer] "Firing Line" with Margaret Hoover is made possible in part by: Robert Granieri, Vanessa and Henry Cornell, The Fairweather Foundation, The Tepper Foundation, The Asness Family Foundation, The McKenna Family Foundation, Charles R. Schwab, and by The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, and Damon Button.

Corporate funding is provided by Stephens Inc. [bright music] [bright music continues] [light music] [gentle music] - [Announcer] You are watching PB.