Skip to content
Home » Alastair Crooke: Iran’s Strategy – Evict the U.S. from the Middle East (Transcript)

Alastair Crooke: Iran’s Strategy – Evict the U.S. from the Middle East (Transcript)

Editor’s Notes: In this insightful interview, former British diplomat Alastair Crooke joins host Glenn Diesen to analyze Iran’s strategic response as the war against Iran enters its third day. Crooke explains how Iran is meticulously targeting American military bases and radar systems in the Persian Gulf to systematically degrade US and Israeli capabilities and eventually evict the United States from the region. He further discusses the profound miscalculations regarding the assassination of Supreme Leader Khamenei, arguing that rather than triggering a regime change, the move has unified Iranians and ignited massive anti-American protests across the Middle East. Ultimately, the discussion explores how this conflict is forcing a radical shift in the global geopolitical landscape, potentially signaling the end of Western military hegemony in West Asia. (Mar 2, 2026) 

TRANSCRIPT:

GLENN DIESEN: Welcome back. We are joined today by Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat and negotiator who worked for decades on conflicts in the Middle East. He’s also the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum. So make sure to read his Substack and I will leave that link in the description. So thank you very much for coming back on.

ALASTAIR CROOKE: It’s always a pressure. You don’t have to, you don’t have to ask.

Iran’s Military Strategy: A Phased Approach

GLENN DIESEN: Well, we are now way into the third day of this war against Iran and Iran is retaliating in a big way. If you look at Iran’s strategy or structure, how do you read it? Do you see the retaliation organized in phases or is it planned properly, or how do you make sense of this?

ALASTAIR CROOKE: Yes, I mean there are two sort of separate components to it. But the first component, largely because of the array of missiles that they have in their possession, was always going to be — and I think I may have said this at times to you — the main focus was always going to be on American bases in the Persian Gulf area. And why I say it depends on the array is because they can be reached. They have a large stock of drones, a big stock of drones and short range missiles, missiles that can’t reach or easily reach Israel. So it made sense, if you like, to focus to begin with on the Gulf, on the American bases.

Ali Larijani has emphasized again that this is not an attack on the Gulf states per se, but on the American bases and CIA facilities that take advantage of Gulf states to pursue their conflict against Iran. So that was one element.

The second element is likely related and has three phases. The second element, which is more focused towards Israel — of course, the first component of this is attacking the radar systems, the radar systems that allow America and Israel to see into Iraq. And they’ve done that, taking out major radar bases in Gulf states, in Qatar and in other places, in Bahrain too I think, I can’t remember, but they’ve taken out a large number of major radar sites belonging to the Americans in the Gulf states.

So the first exercise is focused on the radar, which also incapacitates or limits — it’s not incapacitates perhaps — Israeli missile systems and their attack on Iran. And then the second phase is to continue to use older missiles and drones to draw out and to deplete the Israeli air defense intercept capability, to wear it down, to reduce it to the minimum.

And you can see that — I mean this is pretty obvious. You’ve probably seen the videos, or anywhere you can see the videos of Israeli strikes into Tehran, although now they’ve moved to the faster, into the higher, more sophisticated missiles in some cases. But you can see that the Israelis are using huge numbers of intercepts against each single incoming strike and missing, mostly missing. So you see easily 8, 10, 12 used against every arriving missile strike.

Depleting Gulf State Air Defenses

So where we are now is at this sort of stage. Stage three: the Gulf states have almost exhausted entirely their ADAPT system. So there are signs — you can see Iranian drones, they fly freely over Dubai and other sites. They have used all their air defenses. And so the Iranians can at their leisure destroy, continue to destroy American bases. And they are destroying American bases to a very large extent.

I think they’re evacuating a number of bases — I don’t know exactly which ones — but they’re evacuating bases, particularly in Bahrain. In Bahrain, there’s been huge damage done to the facilities of the Fifth Fleet, the US Fleet.

But going back then to the phases: with Israel, the aim is to use older, slower missiles to deplete their intercept capabilities, and then the next phase — the next stage of the plan — is to move to the more modern and more sophisticated and faster missiles. I think they say — and I’m not a military expert at all, not at all — but they say that the air defenses of Israel can’t cope with anything above Mach 4. So anything that’s faster than Mach 4 is not likely to be intercepted. And of course hypersonics are moving much faster than that.

So eliminating those, reducing those, is the priority. And then the third stage that the Iranians have — and we don’t know anything about — is that they say they have new weapons. I think we have had a glimpse. I don’t know if it’s all of their new weapons, but we have seen now a hypersonic missile with multiple warheads arriving. Certainly, while I don’t know if there’d be more than that, there have been new weapons because we haven’t seen them with sort of cluster warheads before, to my knowledge at least. As I say, I’m not a military nerd, I may be wrong, but I think I’m pretty much right about that.

The Broader Strategic Objective: Evicting the U.S.

ALSO READ:  This Past Weekend: w/ FDNY Firefighter Tony Bonfiglio (Transcript)