The Real Reason Iran, Iraq, and America Keep Colliding

Joe: How's going, Mark? It's great to get you on the podcast. I am extremely excited for our conversation. Ever since ever since Jim Jim Lawler made the introduction for us, I've been I I've been like on the edge of my seat. Can't wait to talk to you. Mark Fowler: wow. Well thanks for having me, Joe. It's a it's really a pleasure to be here. I look forward to it. It'll be fun. Joe: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. so Mark, you know, why don't why don't you tell my audience, you know, how you got started, what your background is, because I I know you you spent a lot of time over at the agency and and just talk about, you know, what you can obviously about like what that journey was, because that's not like a normal path to take for someone Mark Fowler: Yeah. Joe: right to go into an intelligence agency. a and and like be successful at it like you were and and be as instrumental in a harsh environment as you were, you know? What was that like? Mark Fowler: Right. Sure. well, I mean, you know, we always say that we're ordinary people, you know, basically put in an extraordinary situations. And, you know, the journey into the agency is it's different for everybody. you know, a lot of people some people come in through through other government or military. some people come in with incredible qualifications, you know, they speak Chinese and Korean or or or Arabic, Native Arabic, et cetera, which gives them a huge hand up. for a lot of people though it it just it's almost I was gonna say happenstance. For me, I think it it it kind of that was it. I was when I was younger, I I was always kind of a little bit restless, if you will. I was always looking for something that meant something. It was just me. I mean, I work in real estate with real estate developer in Florida, because that's where I graduated from, University of South Florida. and I was married and I had a young son at that point. And but I was restless and I wasn't really satisfied with what I was doing. So for me, it was I wasn't I didn't know exactly what I was looking at. it's funny, a couple of years before that, I had before I was even graduated from college, I had taken two years off and went around and did jobs to fight figure out what I didn't want to do. and I at one point I was working, frankly, in a rubber factory, not rubbers, rubber, it was ball rubber in Ohio. And I did apply, and I was getting ready to go back to school, and I did apply to FBI, CIA, and I was taking criminal justice at that point because I was thinking maybe law enforcement, federal law enforcement, something like that. So I did actually reach out to them and with letters. Of course, it was letters at that point. This is in the 70s. and I reached out to, like I said, FBI Secret Service, CIA. And I got back, you know, packets from each, and you know, it was manifestly unqualified for, you know, the FBI, certainly at that point, it was lawyers and accountants mostly, and or former cops for our Secret Service was very intimidating, you know, their packet. It kind of explained. And the CIA basically said, well, we don't do law enforcement, so just go away. So, but I still have those letters. It's kind of funny. So later on, went back to college and and actually graduated, and I was in Rotzi. in college, R O T C Army. and I came very close to signing up. But again, this is in the late 70s. It's a very difficult time within the military. This is post-uh Vietnam and everything. And and my actually the head of the Razi program there was a former special forces officer who was a Vietnamese speaker, had spent time there, was one of the last guys off the roof of the embassy. It was one of those things. So bottom line is I came very close to To going into Razi, I didn't. I met my wife, she distracted me, and so we went off on a different route. But I was still restless. So, bottom line is a number of years later, working for a real estate developer, I saw an ad in the paper, believe it or not. the agency was advertising, and actually I've got it, I've got it right here. I can show it to you. This is it. This is the ad I actually answered. It was in the Wall Street Journal, and it was 24 May. nineteen eighty three. So that's what it was. It's you could see it's not unlike what they put online nowadays. And it basically said, you know, gotta have a college degree and this and that and the other thing. You gotta have prop people are innovative. It's it's not that different from what people see now. on So frankly, I I had no idea. I said, that sounds interesting. That looks interesting. That's something. And I again I had reached out at one point years earlier. So bottom line is I sent in a resume and they asked for a writing sample. And I had a little bit of Razi. I had done a semester of France in France, so I spoke some French. And I mean, not great. Okay, you know, I could get around, but I wasn't fluent by any man, by any means. had spent some time overseas, et cetera, et cetera, interest in foreign affairs. So I sent it in and somehow I got through the process. I have no idea how, because it's a crapshoot, frankly, and it's still a crapshoot. the actual qualifications they're looking for, you know, they the military thing probably helped a little bit, the Rotzi, but I hadn't, you know, done active duty, obviously. Had Joe: Mm. Mark Fowler: a little bit of language, some overseas. I guess my writing was pretty good because I I graduated in history. I was a history major, so it wasn't anything, you know, tremendously focused on that. Joe: man. Mark Fowler: bottom line is it took about a a little less than a year, which is pretty quick. and this is all by paper and f and weird phone calls when they're calling and saying, This is this is Jim from Joe: Hmm. What is going on here? Mark Fowler: Washington. You remember that job you applied for? Well, we're interested in following it up. It was stuff like that. so I ended up in in the agency finally, and I felt I was thrilled to be there, obviously, but I felt tremendously and so I I remember in my my EOD class, we call it EOD, entering on duty class. I looked around and there was another friend of mine who was there who used to sell plastics, and I'm from real estate, and we're looking at each other, and there's PhDs and there's guys who speak Chinese, and there's former West Point Special Forces, et cetera, et cetera. And we just felt really kind of overwhelmed. But It turned out that you know, it was there's room for many different kinds of people in the in the agency and they're always looking for different people with different qualifications. Baseline is you have to be, you know, obviously a US citizen, you have to have some center core morality, et cetera. and they're always looking for that. and so that's how I kinda I I kinda stumbled my way in, frankly. terms of where I ended up Wanna say you want me to continue? Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: Okay. I once I got in, I again I was interested, I had a little bit of French and they kept on saying, Well, you know, you could go anywhere and you know, Uagadougou, which is, you know, French Africa or something, you know, you could end up there. I said, That's fine. My wife was, you know, definitely a f she didn't know, even though her father had been a foreign service officer, a diplomat, and she'd grown up overseas, but this was a little bit different journey. And so I went in and I was interested in Chinese, actually, the Chinese language, because I was, you know, this is an important thing, is an important target, as we say, hard target. And I wanted I wanted a language and I wanted to do something that really mattered. but I didn't have any Chinese, and a couple other people did. So in my class, I was far enough down on the list, if you will, that I ended up in what we call any division, Near East, Middle East. it's now the Middle East. center or something. They've changed the terminology. So I kind of stumbled into that and then I stumbled into Farsi, which is the language that's spoken in Iran, Persian. And that was by accident as well. Someone dropped out because female officer. She was in Farsi, but she decided to get engaged to another officer who was taking Arabic. And back then it wasn't so easy. Nowadays things are quite different. Tandem couples, married couples. so she basically dropped out of Farsi, was her choice. I don't think they actually forced her to, but her choice and cause they went off to somewhere else in the Middle East. So a slot opened up. So I kinda I said I raised my hand and I said I'd I'd like language and I I'd like Farsi. I I didn't even know anything about I hardly knew anything about Iran, to be honest with you, other than, you know, they taken the hostages because this is an eighty four, taking the hostages and they'd blown up some embassies and you know, there was stuff going on, obviously, but I I certainly didn't know an awful lot about it. and it became the sort of the center of my career. I was in for 22 plus years, a Middle East specialist. I spent my most of my career in the Middle East, but not only focused on Iran. I did a lot of other things as well. I did a lot on Iraq as well. and did some counterterrorism things, obviously, all of us did after 9-11, especially. but I always had sort of I was an Iran specialist, if you will. So I had the language and my expertise in my back pocket, if you will, so that no matter where I was, that was always available. and so served overseas in numerous places, including as a chief of station. and also served several times in Washington and Pretty senior roles. I was the number two in in CIA for Iran at one point. I was also the number two in CIA for Iraq at one point, right after Joe: wow. Mark Fowler: the war in 2003. So I saw what happened there, which was frankly a bit of a disaster. We all know what happened. It turned into insurrection and it got very ugly there afterwards, after the military did such a great job getting us in there in two and three. So Like I said, I I spent a lot of time, not my entire career, but a significant portion of my career directly focused on Iran, coming back to it numerous times in terms of, you know, whether overseas or in headquarters. At one point I was the number two, like I said, at another point I was the chief of what we call internal, which means that I was running the section responsible for running all of our spies inside Iran. Joe: Wow. Mark Fowler: So it was obviously that was an important job and that was probably one of the best jobs I ever had. High stress, a lot at stake, but tremendously fascinating and high risk to say the least. But you know, these are the people inside working against the Iranian regime who are providing significant impactful reporting. on a whole variety of things. It depended on who they were, of course. But anything from military to intelligence to civilian to nuclear to frankly everything. So yeah. Does that make is that Joe: Wow. Mark Fowler: is that that's I kind of covered the waterfront there kind of quickly. I'm sorry if I kinda ran through it. Joe: Yeah, no, I mean it's it's fascinating. It's a fascinating journey. D when you were when you were considering just applying, did you ever think that you know you you would you would have that kind of role, that you would have that kind of career going forward? I mean I mean as someone that is completely on the outside, right? If I were to apply to something like that, I would never think in a million years I'd be doing any of that. I would be thinking like, okay, more than likely I'm sitting behind a desk, maybe, you know, looking at some intel and that like that's it, right? What was your mentality going into it? Mark Fowler: Yeah, that's a good question because there are different roles, obviously. I was an operations officer or a case officer. I was the we like to call it the pointy end of the spear, you know, in terms of we were the operators within the agency. We're the people that are responsible for operations officers for recruiting spies and stealing secrets. So we are we're not the spies, we're the spy handlers, the recruiters and the handlers. Obviously there's analysts, analysts, and it's changed a bit, but it for the most part. They're in more headquarters-based, although they're more in the in the field that things have changed. Just after 9-11, things changed tremendously. But analysts obviously take the information and all source, they call it, and put it all together and turn these into assessments that are provided to policymakers all the way up to the president, including the PDB, the president's daily brief, which is the ultimate sort of like piece of the book on intelligence that he gets every day, or they they get every day. so I most for the most part, they kind of explain and obviously there's things out there. Even back then, there were some books out there. They actually recommended when in during the process, they gave it once you got first the the past the very first initial or and you were it looked like you were probably gonna go in. They actually gave you some examples of books you should read because most people don't understand what it is. It's not it's not James Bond, obviously. It's it's a it's different and it's so they act they want you to have at least some idea of what you're getting into. And again, this is back in the eighties, so a lot less out there. But there were things out there. There were some books written by a guy named Philip A. G. who actually defected to Cuba, believe it or not, and and wrote wrote a book years ago. about what what happened and outed a bunch of officers and whatever. Some others wrote some and I can't remember exactly. But they gave us a couple and frankly it's a little intimidating because it's it could sound really scary when you read about it. so when we came in you have kind of an idea for myself. I always knew I mean I'm smart enough, but I, you know, most analysts have at least a master's if not a PhD, really smart. and it's a different role, obviously. We have other things called reports officers who are kind of hybrids between operations officers and the analysts. We also, more recently, have targeters who, because of all the information, the explosion of information, you know, open source information and and everything, you know, they they help focus and everybody's online now. So there's that. And then of course there's a lot of tech people and a lot of cyber people now and all sorts of other stuff. But I always knew back then it was much, much smaller in terms of the actual cadre and the actual roles. For me, it was always, I want to be an ops officer. That's the only thing I want to do. I have no interest in sitting in Washington. I don't need a job. I had a job. I wanted a career. I wanted a I actually wanted a mission. So for me it was important. And I told him this right up front. I said, not interested in, you know, analyst and even reports officer, because for the most part, especially back then, they were more headquarters based. less so now, but still. and I said, I'm interested in in being an ops officer, but I still didn't really know what that actually meant. All I knew was that it meant overseas, meeting foreign people, you know, recruiting spies and stealing secrets, like you say, and that's what I wanted to do. Where it actually led me, frankly, you know, no one can predict, right? everybody has a different career. I ended up, you know, the Iran thing obviously ended up being Pretty important, obviously. It still is, even today, you know, as we speak. it always comes back. It's even sometimes it's in the background, Iran, but it always comes back to the fore somehow. It's just for the last 40 years. So I've never been not busy. and I was heavily involved in Iraq stuff at one point in the nineties and the two thousands, etc. and that's obviously relevant as well. but no, I I had some some episodes in my career. So a lot of them I can't talk about, obviously, that I I felt a little bit like Forrest Gump. It's like, how did I get in the middle of this? I'm talking about 911 stuff, Iraq stuff, and sometimes Iran stuff as well. Just like, you know, you can't predict this kind of thing. And I was fortunate, I guess. I my Farsi was good enough, not fluent, not native. When I say fluent, I see fluent Farsi. I could sit down with an Iranian who spoke no English and I could do my job. I could talk to them and I could debrief them and I could I could do what I needed to do. But it wasn't easy. you know, I'd come away with some of these things. It was just like I have a massive headache because I just spent you know hours sitting with this person trying to understand what they're actually saying, and you know, a lot of tikraquani, please re-repeat or whatever. it but it was I was fortunate enough. So I was one of the ones who was out there a lot because Not everybody, even after they take Varsi, you know, some people are better at it than others. I was pretty good. so I was good enough to be one of the ones, and there weren't that many at the at the time, who could actually be sent out to talk to somebody who didn't speak any English. And as you might imagine, in many cases, the the person who doesn't speak any English could be the most valuable because they're so deeply entrenched within the the organization that you're actually looking at. Just because they don't speak English doesn't mean they're high they're not highly intelligent in an extremely important job. It's just means that they perhaps never had a chance to develop that, never went to school for that, never met Americans or English people, whatever. So yeah, you're right. It there's no way to predict where a career would go. and so you have to sort of ride the wave, if you will. And circumstances dictate that as well. Of course, 911 changed everything. everything. I remember I was in a car with a headquarters officer tech who was my boss and he was visiting me overseas where I was the chief. And we were literally in the car driving down when the second plane hit the tower. We could Joe: Well Mark Fowler: hear it because we heard something. It's like, my God, what is this? You know, because we had radio there, obviously. It wasn't the middle of the desert. But we were listening to this and it was about this, you know, small plane. it's not clear what's going on and how the heck did that happen. And then the second plane hit. And the guy looking over at me, he said, Mark, he said, everything just changed. Everything just changed. Because we knew immediately that it was an attack. I mean, without question. And we pretty much knew it was almost certainly Al Qaeda, because we had been following this and watching it build, et cetera, et cetera. and so yeah, like I said, everything changed there. And of course Iraq came not long after that. And that changed a lot of things too. So yeah, when you're right in the middle of that kind of thing, it takes you in directions you're not really sure. you're not really sure about and you but you have to roll with it and you step in and you do the best you can. Joe: Hmm. That's fascinating. So I I assume you probably like ha have been to Iran. Can you can you tell me if you've been to Iran before? Mark Fowler: I can't really talk about that, but it's we don't have an embassy there. Joe: Okay. Mark Fowler: since seventy-nine when they took the hostages. So it's not a question of really going. So for the most part, no. operate around Iran, but in a a lot of countries around it, and there's a lot of things are done what we call remotely. so Joe: Mm-hmm. Mark Fowler: that's a little bit tricky. I can't really get into very much about that because some things change and technology changes, but Joe: Right. Mark Fowler: You know, there are certain things that, you know, rather not say in terms of Joe: yeah. Mark Fowler: in terms of how we do things. But like I said, it's not necessarily in Iran, per se, more more around it. I did step across into Iran once from Iraq, but that's doesn't really count as being in Iran, you know, because like I said, Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: we haven't had an embassy there since 79 and we still don't. so it turns it into a whole different kind of threat if you will risk and I and I wasn't you know as you're I don't know if you're aware but we have with staff officers who are you know full-fledged CIA and this is out there this isn't I'm not giving away secrets there's people who are undercover perhaps with the State Department perhaps with military whatever and then there are Knox non-official cover and they are non-affiliated with any government at all. Sometimes not even the US, not affiliated. So in a case like that, perhaps someone in that role might have gone inside. But for someone like me who spent most of my I did a lot of things in different sit in different settings in alias, another name with it perhaps a different passport. In some cases Joe: Mm. Mark Fowler: I did things where I was sort of like nominally doing thing nominally when I say nominally I wasn't deep cover knock, but I did a lot of things where I was supposedly in commercial cover, but it was very shallow cover and it wouldn't have s withstood very much scrutiny. So that's not the kind of cover you would go into Iran with. so does that make sense? That's about as far as I can go on something Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: like that. Joe: Yeah, that no, that makes that makes total sense. I I I was wondering I mean I I guess like the follow up to that question would be what what's the workup look like in terms of like, okay, I'm going to X country, right? Like you're you're going to Iraq or w whatever it might be. What's the workup look like? Because The the reason why I ask is like from from my perspective, it seems like man, i if if I was gonna go over there, it just seems like it would take me like a year or two to get like fully prepared and worked up or something, like, you know, because you gotta learn the language at least to some extent. I mean, like you mentioned, like you have a pretty good working, you know, knowledge of Farsi, right? But I would assume Farsi for an native English speaker. is probably like extremely difficult to pick up unless you're, you know, one of like the polyglots out there that that can just speak a hundred different languages, right? Mark Fowler: Right, right. Joe: so like you gotta like factor that in as well of like how fluent I need to be in this language to be able to to do that sort of thing. Or you know, is there is there anything that you could share on like just preparing to to like go overseas to somewhere? Mark Fowler: Yeah, I mean it I'm gonna use the phrase that sort of is the most common one related to any intelligence activity at all. It depends. it depends on where you're going, it depends on the situation, it depends on what you've done before. I mean, obviously as a Farsi speaker, for the most part, I never told anybody I spoke Farsi, ev regardless of where I was. Because even when I was in a normal tour, when I say normal, non It wasn't focused on Iran. I was doing I was in a different country in a different station, sort of like you know, just doing normal case officer things, which is recruiting spies and stealing secrets, but not necessarily focused on Iran. I never said anything about speaking Farsi because frankly, someone like me, blue eyes, brown hair at least then, and you know, pretty unusual. And what it tells a lot of people, including the Iranians, is that person is probably CIA. And they weren't always that not that it's always true by any means, but they're not necessarily wrong. So a lot of time and so in terms of preparing to go overseas for a normal assignment for a normal case officer, because you know, I was there was a normal case officer who just happened to have Farsi and like some people speak Chinese, some some people speak Arabic, some some people speak Spanish, obviously, and So it depends on where you're going. Sometimes it wasn't always required that you had language. It depended on the country. let's say, for example, you're going to a country like Yemen. Yemen is less developed, and I'm talking about even back then, it's still less developed. But Yemen was a country where you essentially had to have Arabic. Probably, but not always, in a place like Egypt, much more cosmopolitan, sort of the Gulf. absolutely Arabic was not required because they all speak English. They speak English better than we could ever speak Arabic. usually they, you know, and they because they the Brits have been there obviously, especially in the Gulf, and it depends on where you are, but tremendous numbers places. But if you went to Tunisia or Morocco, Morocco might be French actually, because these are the former French colonies. So it could be either French or Arabic, although normally they prefer French in terms of dealing with us. So it all depended on where you were going. I knew people that went to France. We usually, when we sent people to France, usually you didn't have to have French. usually our chiefs did. French is not as hard as hard. It's not easy per se with all the grammar, but usually these things were like a six-month French might be six or eight months or something like that, Arabic or Chinese, two-year program. Two years. Yeah, because that is hard. Varsity was less because there's less grammar. That's technicalities, but it's hard, but it there's less grammar, so it's not as difficult to become proficient. so it all depends on where you're going and what this what role you're gonna be in. and so everything's different. You know, usually you know a year ahead of time, you're what we call PMC. that's sort of like personnel talk for you you've been assigned officially. I mean paperwork is done and you're going next May or something like that. You're gonna arrive in Egypt, for example, as a case officer or whatever. And you know you have to work on what's your cover going to be because we're undercover. Unless you're like, well, even if you're the chief, you're still nominally undercover. You might be in a certain office and the locals know who you are because you're doing what we call liaison. You are speaking to the local service on behalf of the, you know, the agency. and maybe they're you, a deputy, it depends on how big the station is, and it could be a couple other people too. but other people are under different covers. It just depends. So, and there's always preparation for that. Documentation, having to provide, I would say legends. It's not really so much legends, it's just Making sure thing all the ducts are in a row and all the paperwork is done in such a way that your your cover is maintained and you're able to actually do your job. So it could be anything from a couple of months to a year or two. Sometimes if you're going to Joe: Hope. Mark Fowler: a place like Moscow, for example, you're probably gonna have Russian and you're gonna have to go through significantly more training for obvious reasons because it's what we call a denied area. And again, that's not giving anything away. They want the the Russians know all this, you know. Same thing for them. Joe: Right. Mark Fowler: So that's a several year preparation period. so it just depends. But it's it's not a simple process, but again, it doesn't always incro include having a language, it just depends on what your role is, and and what makes sense. And some people just don't have time, they're working a job because if you're gonna take a language. It's full time. You're not doing this at night. You are put Joe: Right. Mark Fowler: into language full time. So you are going to somewhere to sit down with native speakers for could be six months, it could be a year, it could be longer. in some cases, you are you do a year in the States in intensive every day, five days a week, lots of homework, practicing, practicing, practicing, and then you go overseas for a year someplace. And actually use it every day for a year on really hard languages. And you become pretty proficient, as you might imagine. in that and you have to be in some of these places because it it's just required because most people don't speak English or any other known language, as we say. so yeah, it always depends on where you're going, what your role is gonna be, where you are in your career. usually. The earlier in your career, the more preparation involved for a variety of reasons. You know, maintaining your cover. 'Cause n again, not giving too much away, but sometimes the youngest officers handle the most sensitive things, if that makes sense. Believe it or not. Joe: Hm. That's interesting. I I probably wouldn't have expected that. Mark Fowler: Yeah, so people people go out. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay. I mean I'm not giving anything away. This is not unusual, but you know, yeah, sometimes the very youngest, not not completely raw, but it just depends. Again, if you're if you're really new, but you have the right skill set, maybe it may take a year or two to prepare you. but sometimes the young the most innocent looking, the most, you know, normal looking, whatever, that's the person. who is doing the most sensitive thing. We used to call them the real spies when you're like a chief, or even a deputy or even a branch chief sometimes. because it depends. Some stations are pretty large, others are much smaller. but if you're, you know, if you're declared, as we say, the term is declared, means the local service knows who you are because your job is to work with them. that's your primary role. And there's a lot of that because some we have a lot of good liaison with a lot of very competent services overseas. It just depends on the situation. But we used to call the younger people the real spies. Joe: Yeah, it's interesting with the languages, just how much work actually goes into it. When I when I was in college, I I was taking Spanish and I just I hated Spanish but by the time I got to the last class, so I so I dropped out of Spanish, picked up German, and I like German a whole lot more. And Mark Fowler: Hard gra hard grammar. Joe: Once you learn the rules, I I Mark Fowler: Yeah. Joe: found it to be pretty easy. I I don't know what it is. Maybe like once I learn the rules or the tricks to the language, it's like, I could just piece this together and, you know, move forward with it. And it it was funny the difference between you know, you're taking it for like two, maybe three hours a day, right? Including like homework and everything in college. And then for a semester I went and studied abroad in Germany. And it wasn't like a full semester, it was a you know a a shorter time frame, but you go through a semester's Mark Fowler: Right. Joe: worth of of work in that time frame. Mark Fowler: Right, right. Joe: And you know, when I got to Germany, I just like noticed a huge difference. Like, my god, like I'm like because now I have to I have to hear it, I have to process in real time, I have to respond in real time, you Mark Fowler: It's hard. Yeah. Joe: know, and like I can't even tell you the amount of times that I was like drunk and lost in Germany. And trying to find my way back to my apartment and everything. It's a totally Mark Fowler: Right, right, right, right. Joe: different skill set, you know. And fast forward like, I don't know, 10 years, I'm I'm in a similar situation where now I'm back in Germany and I haven't spoken the language in a long time. But as I'm there, even to this day, as I'm there, I I pick it up, you know, a little bit more and more every day. Yeah. Mark Fowler: Comes back to you. Right. Right. Right. Joe: And you know, first day. Me and my friend that I'm with, we get lost on the train and he's freaking out and I'm like as calm as can be, 'cause it's like, man, I've been like completely drunk in this country before, not speaking Mark Fowler: Yeah. Joe: the language. Like I'm fine, like we're fine, we're gonna get it there, you know? But it's a different Mark Fowler: Yeah, it's not that scary. Joe: kind of stress. Mark Fowler: Yeah. Well that's why it with a hard language, some of these languages are truly hard. I mean, you know, Arabic's pretty difficult. There's a lot more grammar than Farsi. Chinese obviously is extremely difficult. and Korean or something like that. These are hard languages and they're when I say foreign languages, they're truly foreign to you know Ours even more so. So the Romantic languages, you know, of course, especially like French and Spanish, are just they're much closer, they're easier, it's not so hard. Oddly enough, just an aside, is Farsi is not unlike German in that the verbs come at the end. So in that sense, it's it's there's a there's a kinship there. That's you know, there's an that whole Aryan thing, because the Persians call themselves Aryans. Joe: It's interesting. Mark Fowler: Yeah, that's a historical thing now. Joe: It's interesting. I mean, I I just figure anything that doesn't have letters in it, like obvious letters in it, would be just like considered to be extremely difficult. You know, like something that you really gotta spend a lot of time in. And I I would assume in that prep even, I mean, you you obviously don't have to tell me, but like I would assume even in that prep, like they probably like, you know, orchestrate different scenarios of like, hey, this is what like a market looks Mark Fowler: Sure. Joe: like over in this country. Mark Fowler: Right. Joe: Everyone in here is speaking this language natively. You know, let's get you kind of inoculated to that kind of stress where it's like, I have to order this thing, they're gonna ask me questions about it, I have to respond. Like, because I there's no other way to like really replicate that, even when, you know, and and it's not the same kind of training, obviously, but like even when I was in the classroom learning German over here in America, you know. The they had the rule, as soon as you get in the classroom, nothing but German. We don't want to hear English or anything else Mark Fowler: Right. Joe: like that. If you absolutely cannot, you know, make it through the higher level classes, you know how to ask questions, you know how to apologize and all that sort of stuff. Mark Fowler: Right. Joe: And so I would assume, you know, it's just taking it to another level. Because if I have to go into a country kind of cold in terms of I've never been there before, right? And now I have a job to do, I would want that inoculation to that level of stress because it's like I don't know, like when I got to Germany, it it was almost like I forgot everything for like a day. You know, like it took me it took Mark Fowler: Yeah, no, it's hard, it's very intimidating. Joe: me like a time to decompress, you know. Mark Fowler: Well. Yeah, no no question about it. But part of part of the selection process for CIA officers is the ability to deal with unknowns, to deal with n I don't have a lot of information to adapt extremely quickly to any situation. It's just a a quality they look for. it's beyond specific skills, you know, do you have a language? are you technically this or that or whatever, you know. A lot of case officers are not highly technical at all. We used to say, you know, in the technical gear we use, Covcom, commute covert communications, has to be case officer proof because a lot of us are not even remotely technical. so there's very little of this. I'm the the case officer, but I'm also an expert in you know highly technical stuff. No, no, no, no, no. We bring in a we bring in somebody else to do the technical stuff because we most of us would screw it up. but yeah, with the language. It w it was more difficult in the sense that obviously for Farsi and Arabic or Chinese, you gotta learn a whole new alphabet. it's not simply I mean, German is d not ho not easy, but it's the same alphabet. Obviously, French is and even Turkish is a at this point, you know, they've changed it from the former Arabic script years ago under under Yeah, you have to learn a new a whole new alphabet, which is not easy, frankly. but a lot of it was initially it was done phonetically. then we would learn the words and then you you study that. I got to the point where I was a I well at this point, I've I'm rusty in terms of knowing all the words exactly what they are in camera. What is that actually? What's that verb mean or what's that noun? But I can read Arabic or or farsi. As easy as I could read English in the sense of the words themselves. I Joe: Mm. Mark Fowler: mean, I if I want to really get a feeling for something, because I read Farsi language stuff just to stay up on what's going on. You know, again, it's it's hard because some of the words are in the the grammar's hard when I say grammar. The nouns, I don't always remember everything. I'm a little rusty, but I can read it so well because I did it for years. We used to get from some assets sort agents inside Iran, we would get we call SW. And this is an old form. It's called secret writing. And basically this is the old thing. It was used all the way back in the the revolution, you know, but with George Washington spy rings that he ran and they use like lemon oil or ink or some you know heat it up we have obviously highly sophisticated stuff and they would write in farsi. sometimes it's the cover letter and some other but some pe some of these guys I knew they tremendously productive agents, but they didn't speak any English. Or they couldn't write in English anyways. Sometimes they spoke verbally, but speaking and writing is two different things. It's a different skill. And they they just didn't so I remember getting SW in in Farsi, only Farsi. and it's a it's a very pretty language when you see it written, if especially if someone has good handwriting, it's artistic. But I could write, I could read pretty much everything they wrote. we always had a translator to make sure we were getting it right. But you know, that's just a skill you develop. and that's some people have a better ability that than than others. And sometimes that's not clear until you get into the agency. But it's not like like I knew a couple of seni very senior officers who spoke no foreign languages whatsoever. So it's not a requirement, just depends on the situation. Maybe they just don't have that facility to learn a foreign language, but they're so good at everything else that it doesn't matter. And a lot of the people that we talk to, frankly, they speak English. Joe: That's really interesting. I hmm. Yeah, I I just wouldn't have thought that there could be officers without a foreign language, but that's I mean, it would make sense. If you're so skilled in something else, it's like we don't want you to spend time on that. We want you to spend time over here, you know, where you're most valuable. That makes sense though. Mark Fowler: Yeah, sometimes it's just serendipity. I mean it's sometimes it's just where did where did you go for your assignments? And I don't have time because it depends on the pace of operations too and the pace of world events. it's Joe: Mm. Mark Fowler: like a lot let's say post nine eleven. I mean, obviously we spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan and places like that. very few people spoke Dari, which is what they speak. It's Actually Dari is is is the is an is a form of Farsi. They're very similar, although they have some different phrases. but we had to send so many people over so quickly and it was like, you know, it was a war zone and it's a completely different situation. they're usually a year-long tour, things like that. But they didn't have time for for to learn Dart. You know, a couple people either had it or learned it. You know, they were willing to put in, you know, the year or so that it would take to actually learn that. but most of them didn't. so in cases like that, you end up with a lot of translators. sometimes they're CIA officers who are native. Other times you just you hire local people and you heavily vet them. they're a local person who is speaks English obviously and can translate operate we called an ops translator and we would have that you know sometimes sometimes we had them for for Iranians obviously for Iraqis and other foreign you know either Arabists because you need someone this is so important this guy's so important but you don't speak Arabic so rather than put somebody else because you've got all you got all the skill set we're gonna put an ops translator with you so Who's going to be essentially, you know, just a communicator between whatever you say in English, they will translate, whatever they say in Arabic, they will translate back. But you're still Joe: Right. Mark Fowler: in charge of the operation itself. So it's almost like, you know, nowadays it's like on the phone. They got translators on the phone. You know, it's it's getting pretty good. so it's Joe: Right. Mark Fowler: almost like simultaneous translation. But we used to have people that did that. Joe: Hmm. So, you know, Mark, to to maybe fast forward a bit in your career. You know, talk to me about maybe your time in Iraq, specifically like after nine eleven, because you you said that it was like a totally different, you know, ball game in Iraq after nine eleven. which, you know, like I'll I'll I'll maybe I don't know, paint the picture, but I'll I'll just give you, you know, my my own person I don't know, mentality with it, right? You know, I I was a little kid when nine eleven happened. Like I watched the planes hit the buildings on the on the you know, in New York and then like I watched it on T V and then I was like forced to go to grade school that day, which like thinking back on like I would never send my kids in a million year to to to go to grade school after after something like that. You know, Mark Fowler: Yeah. Joe: just watching it on T V it was crazy. And then, you know, shortly after, right, we hear about like WMDs and Iraq and everything else like that. And now, of course, you know, or maybe even shortly after, I honestly don't remember, it came out that there was no WMDs. But you know, I had Jim Lawler on previously, and he said there was actually really good evidence, and hopefully I'm not getting this wrong. There was actually really good evidence that all the different like key components had passed through Iraq at one point in time. And so that's why it was kind of believed that there could be something there, but it was never stated that there was, you know, something there. So that that's my own knowledge of Iraq in that time. And then obviously the you know, America goes in and take over the country, right? And then we do a fantastic job of leaving the country in, you know, shambles compared to where it was previously and now it's in a different state. Right. So maybe just talk to me about that time. Mark Fowler: Yeah, I that was a strange time. There's nine eleven, you gotta separate nine eleven and Iraq. They're not unconnected completely, but they're really not connected. I mean, not really. the Bush administration tried to connect them, but there was really no connection. So that's a do that's another issue altogether. on nine eleven I was overseas, in the Middle East. and I was the the chief of station. and That's why I say the world changed, the right then. We had been doing some things on We we all always did things on terrorism, you know, that was part of the deal, what we did. And but things changed completely, obviously, when three thousand plus Americans died in in you know in one day. and we refocused. We couldn't stop everything we were doing everywhere else, but obviously we refocused on on on fo on on on terrorism and stopping that. And the country I was in, I guess I could say it. I mean it doesn't matter, people could track it. I was in the UAE. and there were two hijackers on the planes from the UAE. It turned out took a while to figure this out. It was a big shock because it wasn't like, you know, Saudis, there were like 17, I think, out of the 19 or whatever, or whatever it was, the numbers. It was significant majority were Saudis. There was Syrian, there was Lebanese, I think, and there was a couple of guys who were from the UAE, had lived in the UAE. They weren't necessarily full-borne. you know, UAE tribal, you know, grew there. They were one was, I think, background in Syria and another one had come from someplace else. I can't remember, but you know. so that was obviously that changed things a lot. And they had, and again, this is a lot of this is out there. If people want to Google this or or whatever, they can find a lot of this stuff. It's been talked about. some of the money that went to some of the hijackers came through the UAE, not known to the government. they had no idea what was going on in terms of this because frankly Al-Qaeda was pretty damn good. They were smart. These guys were not stupid. And we we underestimated them to a degree, to be honest with you. we knew what was we had an idea what was going on, but we we underestimated them. There's no question about it. but we refocused a lot of our efforts. and again when it changed everything, you know, it was is a question of then of course, shortly thereafters we were in Afghanistan. we had people in there and I I had friends of mine. I think all of us who were there, every single one of us volunteered to go. I speak for RC, they did I volunteered to go. I said, if you need me, I'll I'll go into Afghanistan with the first group or whatever. But I was already, I was the chief. So they said, no, no, no, we need you where you are. You know, it's just whatever. Some people got pulled away, other people in other locations. Not just for that, but also for subsequent things. You know, the the first group that went in, the guys that were on horses and all that stuff. Some were SF special forces, but our people were right there too. And I had a couple of those were friends of mine. but then there were a lot of other people, obviously, that were on the ground after that. and subsequently it just grew and grew and grew. so That changed everything. Obviously, the focus became, you know, because we thought another attack was coming. and they were planning, plotting, and so tracking down all these people became priority to say the least. And then Iraq came along, sort of out of the blue, to be honest with you. Not that Saddam Saddam was a very, very bad man, obviously, and the regime was really terrible, malignant. and so, but the Bush administration made that an issue. They sort of tried to connect it to Al-Qaeda and to su in some manner to 9-11, but there really was no connection. He had nothing to do with that. He wasn't a religious guy. He had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda really. There were threads here and there were some people who were working on some vel some v some portion of WMD and had a connection back to Al-Qaeda or some of the other groups, Islamic Jihad, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, because they were. were connected to Al Qaeda too. It's very complicated stuff. and so there were threads there, but you know, we ended up going into Iraq and frankly that that kind of separated that that separated our focus. Very difficult to say the least because it turned out that this one really had nothing to do with that one. You know, what we were doing in Afghanistan against primary Al-Qaeda was not what we were doing in in in Iraq. and even when ISIS came along, ISIS is a different animal than Al Qaeda was. You know, eventually they came along a number of years later. So when I was overseas, I got involved in certain things related to Al-Qaeda. I got involved with certain things related to Afghanistan, obviously. They were kind of one and the same, if you will, heavily involved, tracking down the the primary planners, et cetera, of some of the people who execute executed some of the operations against US forces, killed US, we captured some of these people. and subsequently, when I came back to Washington at the end of my tour, I was put into the job of number two on Iraq. We had what we call the Iraqi Operations Group and it was a huge group back in Washington at that point, as you might imagine. And we were just really setting up in in Baghdad. I was supposed to go to little aside, I was supposed to leave my previous post and go in as the deputy of Baghdad, but that got changed and I ended up in the number two position, essentially the the same thing in Washington. And we were just running Joe: Hmm. Mark Fowler: everything. We were supporting the station and we were doing all the briefings downtown. We were supporting what we call the seventh floor, which is where George Tennant was and all those guys. I used to brief him multiple times a week on what was going on, et cetera. Sometimes going down to brief Congress. what was going on and as you might imagine it was pretty controversial and it was a pretty difficult time. It was very, very divided in terms of why did we go in? And of course when the no WMD came came to the fore, that changed the dynamic a bit. We were put, you know, the agency, not just the agency, the IC, the intelligence community in general, screwed up. And we like say Jim, Jim was right in the middle of all this. And I worked with Jim on some of the things he was doing as well. Just a superb officer. and some of the things he did were groundbreaking and truly historic. and I I'm proud to say that I I helped facilitate some of the stuff he did. but the whole Iraq thing was turned out to be a bit of a mess, as we say, you know, because turned out the military part, not the easy, it's never easy, you know, people die, et cetera. But it was relatively easy. We used to almost joke that the only reason it took us as long as it did to get to Baghdad was because we our tanks had to stop for gas. Because it moved pretty quickly. but once we got there, you know, things changed and the WMD was not found. and in terms of, you know, a lot of people say, you know, the Bush administration lied or that George Tennant lied, etc. No, that's not true. It's a lot more nuanced than that. I was involved, I wasn't directly involved in the Iraq thing until the summer of 03. Which is after the military operation was concluded, the primary military operation, and we were occupying, but still looking for Saddam and still looking for WMD. so it's not that simple. and that's pro I that would take a long time to explain, actually. we had we didn't have a lot of good sources inside Iran. They were just not very good. And we had people like, I don't know if you've ever heard of curveball. Does that ring a bell with you? Joe: I think I may have r heard that before, but I I just can't place it. Mark Fowler: Yeah, like that's a whole nother thing, and that's a that's a whole long story. And I've actually written a little bit about that on my my Substack, references to Curveball and some of the story behind that. But I I wasn't involved in the lead up to where his reporting became very important in going to war, frankly, because he was talking about mobile biological labs. And that became very prominent in the case the Bush administration made to go to war. But his law his reporting turned out all to be a lie. And that's that wasn't the agency, that was another organization within the intelligence community. I won't name them right now, although it's it's it's on my substack. People should go read it. And there is a little bit on that there. bottom line is his information was a lie, but for a variety of reasons it it became part of the narrative on why it was important that we had to go into Iraq. and what a danger they were, the WMD and all the rest of that stuff. And it turned out obviously that there was no WMD. And part of that was basic faulty assumptions. And I think that's what Jim was referring to when he said Obviously they had WMD at one point. They had biological weapons. They're anthrax said. Obviously they had chemical. They used them against the Iranians in the Iran-Iraq war. So we knew we had these things. And we knew they had some kind of we knew they had a an Iraq a nuclear weapons program. They were trying. They hadn't gotten very far, but they had one at one point. So a lot of the assumptions were they had it, they used it, they must still have it, or they haven't proven to us they don't have it yet. Because this is all the inspection stuff in the 90s leading up to the to after 911 when the the mindset of frankly our political leaders changed as well. and so they they got rid of this stuff, but we everybody assumed that they had it, they used it, they haven't proven they don't have it anymore because he he just wasn't cooperating as much as you might think. Therefore, they must still have it. Or until we can prove otherwise, we have to assume they have it. Therefore, they you know, it must be there. And that turned out not to be correct. But it wasn't so much a lie as a combination of like you know, you talk about the perfect storm things coming together. and there was a lot of blame to go around because as part of my job in the spring of 04, and I've written about this again, it's on my sub stack, I'm not here to just promote that, but that's what it is, it's a fact, as The the Directorate of Operations, the DDO we call him, Deputy Director of Operations, is sort of the head spy, if you will. he a he asked me to be the Directorate of Operations representative to the WMD Commission, which was the presidential commission that explored what the hell happened when there was no WMD. How did this all come about? This disastrous we went to war, supposedly because of WMD. There is no WMD. What happened? And they explored this whole thing. And I was in the room for a lot of the the post-mortem, if you will, and saw a lot of these things, including things like curveball. Your readers should look up curveball. It's not the a great chapter in the history, the legacy of the intelligence community, but for a variety of reasons it you know, it paved the way for changes that were made the intelligence community. But like I said, it it turns out that there was a lot of faulty assumptions made. another one, example, for example, was a one that really resonated. I don't know if anybody follows this and you read about it, they had the aluminum tubes. There was a whole series of aluminum tubes. And this was part of the case used to go to war as well, because the Iraqis were buying these aluminum tubes. You know, think of them circular aluminum tubes, and they were of high quality. Highly spec good high spe high specs, good quality aluminum tubes. And technically, I guess they could have been used for centrifuges. And this is where I think one of the things Jim is talking about. Centrifuges are used to spin to make uranium, lowly enriched uranium, into highly enriched uranium, where it becomes weapons grade. It's a very complicated, very technical thing, and Jim is much better at this than I am. in terms of knowledge. But they were buying these things and for a variety of reasons. of course they were hiding it. They didn't want us to know. They claimed they were using them or after the fact. Well what they were saying was, because it came out, this was part of this was in the public at it's at a certain point. Because the the the final assessment on why we were going to go to war. It's called a national intelligence estimate and NIE was made public. By the Bush administration because they were making a case to go to war. Unlike what happened with the Iran war we're in now, where the president, frankly, didn't make any case to anybody. That's another Joe: Right. Mark Fowler: issue. He just kind of went ahead and did it. And that's a whole nother discussion. so bottom line is this guy, and it was an analyst who was the guy on the tubes, and he was absolutely convinced. For variety of reasons, and and I don't mean malignant. He wasn't lying, he wasn't an idiot, he was very smart, but he had developed all this information that he was convinced, and his assessments were put out as such, that these aluminum tubes were being used for centrifuges and that they were reconstituting their nuclear program to develop nuclear weapons, highly enriched uranium, stuff like that. Well, it turned out not to be the case. For a variety of reasons. And I was in the room when this guy, this analyst, and this is after the fact, after the war, and when we were still looking for WMD, frankly, and this guy came out. I had not recruited so much as I had a ha on my hands on him. He wasn't being in he wasn't a prisoner, but he certainly wasn't free to go anywhere. Very, very, very senior Iraqi scientist. and I had him, and I I was the one dealing with him. And I brought these two together because frankly we were still trying to figure out what the hell's going on. Where is this stuff, right? This was early on in the in the war was the the actual military opposite was still going on. And so I put them together. This guy was cooperating with with us because he didn't he didn't like Saddam either and he'd been forced to do a lot of these things. And I sat down, this guy, whose name was Joe, the aluminum tubes analyst from the CIA sat him down with this. guy who was a physicist, a real physicist. I mean, spoke English better than we do. and they sat down for hours and this guy, the the the our analyst went through everything he had done because he was trying to figure out where the hell and this guy should know and he he did know. And he made his case and the the the Iraqi guy said, listen, I I I see all this. I I see where what you're looking at. He says, I see how perhaps you came to the conclusion you did, but you're wrong. And he turned out he was right. He wasn't lying to us. He says, these these aluminum tubes, it turned out, were used for missiles. And whether it but the suspects were too high, people were saying for just simple missiles, because it's you know, you fire a missile, it's gone. It's it's too too valuable. Well, a lot of the reasons that were happening is because companies that were being used by the Iraqis, private companies, to purchase the aluminum tubes were basically upping the specs so they were making more money. It was corruption. So they ended up with these high, high spec aluminum tubes to use with high-end missiles, high-end, not ballistic. We're talking, you know, the tubes are this big, you know, whatever. Maybe, maybe a little bigger, but I don't remember. But they were missiles. And that's what they were using them for. and it but it turned out that this was misconstrued, and everybody assumed the worst. And that has a lot to do with what happened in the WMD thing. They just they made basic assumptions based on history, past behavior, malignant behavior, lack of, frankly, updated real information, because and this is well known, and I could tell you from personal direct experience, our sources, unfortunately, in Iraq sucked. we just didn't have them because frankly, they didn't last very long. if you had a good source, half the time they get caught and killed. And I I lost sources that way as well. so they didn't last very long because it was such a an oppressive, dangerous, security laden, denied area. And and Saddam and all those people were so so paranoid that they constantly were churning in terms of counterintelligence. And it was very hard to keep an asset in place for very long, frankly. So even if we got someone good, how long did they last? And we had Our intelligence wasn't very good. So it was a combination of things. So it wasn't just that, again, the Bush administration was lying. Certainly wasn't that George Tennant was lying. He thought that it was there. and a lot of these analysts they were making assumptions based on the information they had in hand. Good faith, but wrong. Does that make sense? Joe: Huh. Wow, that is really interesting because I mean, it makes a lot of sense, right? Thinking about it in terms of, you know, kind of just like objectively. Well, I'm working with everything that I have, and everything that I have, all of my experience points to this one possibility that's the most rational possibility. But then without that enhanced information, you know, that you would get from a reliable on the ground source, you miss the context. You know, you you miss Wow, that that's that's yeah. Mark Fowler: There's a tremendous amount of context there. And if you really dig down, and a lot of this is out in the in the open. I'm not giving away secrets, although I don't think everything is not like I've written a book about this. I certainly haven't. and I was unique, and a lot of people were involved, obviously. I was uniquely involved in a way because I saw things from overseas, then I came back and I was directly involved. Then I actually saw the postmortem. So I was like dipped in this, sheep dipped in this thing deeply again and again. but it was good faith. But also part of this was because of the way the Bush administration, and again, this is all out there, and it's been written about at length. The Bush administration for a variety of reasons was wanted to take Saddam out. Not that he wasn't a horrible guy, he was a terrible guy. And I didn't necessarily disagree with it. How it was done, of course, you know, is a whole different thing. The military piece of it was quite amazing, frankly. It was boom, boom, boom, just like that. it was the aftermath and what they actually tried to do after the fact where things got screwed up. but part usually what happens is the US the intelligence community provides intelligence to policymakers so that they can make good decisions. That's what it is. That's what it's about. We we inform them so they are in a position to make the best decision. in the case of the Bush administration, They had already made their decision. They just had. I'm just telling you that's that's the way it is. They wanted to do it. Unless something came along to really to upset the Apple car, which it didn't for a variety of reasons, they were gonna go. We all knew that well before he announced it to the public. It it's just the way it was. But so essentially, if you want to use you know, thinking in your mind, you know, usually we provide the information, they use that information to make a decision. They'd made their decisions. So we were the intelligence community, military, because there's 18, I think at the time there were 16, different organizations in the intelligence community. And virtually every single one came to the same conclusions about WMD. It wasn't just the agency, the CIA, everybody. Overhead people, NSA, you know, everybody made bad calls. It was really quite amazing to see this firsthand as they did the post-mortem and the WMD commission. But so they we were essentially running to catch up on a decision they'd already made with not great intelligence just because it's so difficult to operate there. And so we ended up trying to and what they were looking for was things to confirm what they'd already decided. And so a lot of people I think fell into that, not by malignant or malicious or even not doing their jobs, or you can argue that, whatever. People, the decision had been made, we knew, or and everybody thought they had it. I thought they had it. I said, I remember this discussion, this is when I was still overseas, we would talk among ourselves, obviously. And I knew I'd already been heavily involved in Iraq before that in the nineties, and that's a whole nother another story. trying to overthrow the Saddam Saddam regime. and we would discuss this in our view is this is, you know, I don't think they have a nuclear program anymore. Pretty much we didn't think they did. But they had biological. We knew at one point. We certainly knew they had chemical. So most of us really felt that the chances were, and it's not that we saw hard intelligence on this, but there were like hints and all sorts of stuff. Because we saw a lot of intelligence even in the field. not the most sensitive stuff, even though even most of that was crap, frankly. but we just we all thought they they still have it. There must be some, they will have held on to some chemical weapons, if nothing else. You know, like one, two, two rounds, which are like howitzer rounds, because they had to use those against the Iranians. He said, There's no way they've gotten rid of everything. We just we made we all made assumptions. So we all thought there would be something there. The fact that it turned out to be absolutely nothing was a big surprise to everybody. Everybody, to say the least. And I did ask the that senior scientist, the Iraqi guy, who was very, very senior. He knew virtually every scientist in in Iraq. Who had been involved in any of these programs. And I, you know, and I said, Why did you get rid of why did Saddam get rid of all these things? And then he didn't tell us because he was screwing around and he didn't want us to know. And actually he wanted the Iranians to think he still had WMD, that was part of it. So he was essentially bluffing them. He wasn't doing it for us. He was doing bluffing so that the Iranians wouldn't be emboldened against him. You're scared of the Iranians. so he wanted them to think he still had. chemical or whatever. He di so he it was still not clear. And I asked him, I said, why did you get rid of this stuff? Why did Saddam? Because it's you know, there's only one guy who made decisions. he said, well, he said, well, he decided that the use of any WMD at this point, and specifically certainly against us, not necessarily Iran, but WMD use against certainly against US troops, chemical, biological, God knows nuclear, but you know, He said any use of WMD of any sort would have been a regime ending incident. In other words, if they'd have used chemicals against us or biological or something really horrible, all bets are off. I'm not saying we would have gone nuclear, but it certainly would have meant that we would have responded in a way that would have been 100% the end of the regime. Now we did end the regime, but that was that was due to that was a different that was year number of years later. And it was done in a different way. I don't think they ever thought we were gonna actually invade on the ground with five hundred thousand troops. Joe: Right. So Mark Fowler: That was a miscalculated on s miscalculation on Saddam's point. Joe: That's it's fascinating for sure. Well Mark Fowler: This is the behind the scenes complicated stuff. These things are not simple. There's gray areas, and like when people like to say, it's this and this and that, it's usually something in between, and there's lots of smoke and mirrors, and you're trying to figure out. We Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: don't know for sure. Occasionally you'll have a source who can provide you with the smoking gun. But that's actually rare. then of course you have to consider all sorts of other things. Is there, you know, are they being run by the local the opposition service? Are they actually lying or are they exaggerating? And you know, is is is there enough here that it very rare to get, like in the movies, they say, It's the it's the thing, here it is, and it's right there, and it's the the the the thumb drive and that's all we need. It's got the specs for the thing. Very rarely do you get that. It's usually bits and pieces here and there. Joe: Yeah, it's almost like you gotta put the puzzle together while the puzzle is being designed. You know, like that's kind of what Mark Fowler: Yeah, exactly. Well, that's what it is. Joe: it is. Mark Fowler: Yes. 100%. 100%. That's a good way to characterize it. Joe: So I mean we just spent like an hour Mark Fowler: Sorry, I I got off on a tangent, didn't I? Joe: No, it it's it's not your fault. I mean it's a fant fascinating conversation. But you know, I want to dive into Iran to to the extent that you can talk about it. maybe not like your own personal experience, but just to build context, how how in the world Did our relations with Iran ever get so poor into a place where I mean you know, look, the the the first time that I've really started to pay attention to any of it at all, I was already an adult and I heard of the Stuxnet hack and I thought that it was the most fascinating thing in the world, and that at that actually like propelled me into cybersecurity because of the the technical capability, the skill sets, the expertise. That went into it. Absolutely astounding, absolutely fascinating. It captivates me to this day. So I don't really have any context for myself before that event. Right. So what happened that kind of just, I don't know, broke apart relations if we ever even had relations to begin with. And now we're in this situation which, you know, from I hate to say it. But from e every angle that I look at it, it doesn't look like it's gonna end well. Even if we were Mark Fowler: No. That's that's the easiest thing to say about it. Joe: It it it seems like even if we were to hypothetically just be like, Okay, we're we're done attacking you, we're gonna pull all of our forces away from you, we're still setting ourselves up for a long term conflict because there's no way Iran Iran is gonna just let it slide and be like, no worries, you know, like that that like that's like I don't know, that's like the best case scenario. I I mean I don't know what I don't know how we even got here and I don't know how this is gonna end. Mark Fowler: In the crowd. I have a better Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: idea of how we got here as opposed to how it's gonna end. Okay, well, I'll I'll address some of that. I mean, there's a lot of history here, obviously. I got involved around in the mid-80s. obviously, the revolution, the Iranian revolution, where this current regime came to power was in 1979. but it goes farther back than that. Iran was a Great power, obviously. We've all heard of the Persian Empire and the Darius and Cyrus and you know, Thermopylae with a Greeks turn back, whichever one it was, I don't know. Was it Darius? I think it was Darius. no, whatever, it's in the movie. I love the 300 movie, it's great. But it goes it goes back into history, but it also it starts in, you know, for many, many years re recently before before the revolution happened for many Many decades and frankly several hundred years, Iran had been very poorly treated by, you know, the great powers, if you will. You talk about the great game between Russia and and England and all the rest of these. This is pre-World War One, into World War One, and even afterwards. Sort Iran was kind of like a used and abused by many powers for many. They had fallen into disrepair, if you will. They had They had still had Shah's, but they were corrupt and ineffective, and the people, you know, they weren't taking care of Iran per se. It's a miracle Iran managed somehow to kind of stay together as a country, frankly. Russia tried to peel off the northern part of Iran at one point after World War II. and that that's one of the reasons the Shah came in, the Shah of Iran, and we were, you know, trying to make sure that they weren't able to do that. so think back to about 1953. This is there's a guy named Mossadegh. This is an important name. Anybody who knows anything about Iran or wants to know anything should read about Mossadegh. He was the an they had a parliament at this point. And he was a he was elected parliament member and he was elected as the prime minister. He was selected. So there was no Shah right then. You know, he had been supplanted after World War Two. because the Shah's father, Reza Shah, after he he had he had sort of kicked out the the the previous Shahs who were like you know the Qajar dynasty they call it people can look that up but ineffective to say the least just so tremendously corrupt and he was more of a strong man almost like Kamal Ataturk in Turkey he was more like that kind of thing and he was trying to modernize and bring Iran back into the into the 19th century or 20th century at that point 1900s and so He did this and he was fighting against the the religious people and fighting against the more the traditional people. And bottom line is he he got sort of pushed off to the side because he got a little too close to to Nazi Germany, frankly. He he was boarding on being a fascist, to be honest with you. and then after that, after the fact, after World War II, they became more of a democracy. They were tr budding democracy, if you will. They had parliament, the British Parliament, that's that system where You know, and Mossadegh was the prime minister, but he was trying to nationalize the British Anglo, the Anglo-Iranian oil company, because it's oil, so it goes back to oil in the Middle East. and it was people were concerned that he was too socialist and/or whatever, too friendly with communists, Russia. and this scared people. And this is under Truman and Eisenhower, etc. This is way back when. Bottom line is Mossadegh elected prime minister. We we helped, but the Iranians did it. He was overthrown. Okay, covert action, you know, and we talk about all these things we did. Most of these things don't work out very well. This one actually went down pretty easily and he was overthrown and he was it was a coup. and sort of we brought the we brought the Shah back in. It did happen. It was you know, so bottom line is the Shah was brought back in and from fifty may have been fifty-seven when it actually happened. because he was there for a number of years. Until 79, the Shah was there. And this is where the famous Sabak guys, they were the, you know, the the intelligence service, security service, and they were pretty oppressive. Although compared to the Khan regime, they were Boy Scouts. but people did die over the years as they were trying to suppress communism, you know, Well, whatever. You know, communism was still trying to do there. The religious people, all sorts of other people who just wanted more of a a say. So bottom line is back to nineteen fifty-three and fifty-seven, the overthrow of of Mossadegh, we we did have a hand in that. This is out there. It's called Operation Ajax. It's everybody should look it up if they are interested. that's a lot has come out since then. And I never met with an Iranian who didn't at least mention Mossadegh at least one time. So why did you do that? It was a historical thing. I mean, it's like my first response was, of course, is I wasn't heir. I don't know, you know, had nothing to do with me. But they still went back to it. And then, of course, for a variety of reasons, the Shah was also trying to the Shah Pavy, you know, the he was trying to modernize, continuing to modernize the country. they were a bit corrupt, and it's a you know. absolute power corrupts absolutely as they say. And they had a court. I mean he was a shy, he was a king. and it was pretty pretty glitzy and all this. And they would do things like fly in food from Paris every day for, you know, some of the celebrations they had and stuff like that. It was it it was extravagant. And a lot of people were poor and not doing well. So they were pissed off, frankly. so the people started to protest and it just gained ground to the point where The people, including some of the military, turned away from the Shah and he had to leave, and the rest is history, ended up with cancer. He ended up going to Egypt, and then, you know, we brought him to the United States. So they blame us for a lot of this stuff. There's things we had a hand in. And so the this and so when the revolution happened in nineteen seventy nine, it was a mix of people. It was everything from parliamentary people who just wanted to be in charge of their own country to the MEK, the Mujadini Khalkh, they call it. and they were communists. and they were part of this, also the religious people, and some military people, but they were trying to take back their country. Well it turns out that a lot of these people miscalculated and of course Khomeni, Ayatollah Khomeini came in from Paris where he had been in exile for a long time, you know, years, if not decade or so. But he came in and everybody kind of r rallied around him and they very he was very smart obviously. And it turned out the religious guys triumphed over everybody. They turned on the MEK, the Mujahideen Khalk people who were the communists, and they actually started to kill them. The MEK actually blew up the part the the the building and killed a bunch of the original clerics. Khamenei, who was the supreme leader for many years, who was just killed. He was one of his arms was badly was it was crippled in in that explosion. So bottom line is all these things happened and we had a hand in some of it so we were looked at as the great Satan and the religious people used us as the sort of like the what they were fighting against. And and of course not long after in eighty one, I guess it was, Iraq invaded Iran, because they saw them as weak. Saddam thought he could take the oil fields at the least, because the oil fields aren't that far from Iraq. And of course it turned into an eight-year war where they were bleeding each other dry. and frankly, and again, this is out there, and I knew one of the guys, an Air Force officer who was doing this, we were helping the Iraqis because They w we didn't want s Iran because remember, Iran Shia, the Shia revolution, they were talking about exporting the revolution. Because this is all the hyperbole and the the rhetoric coming out of Tehran, because they were flush with success. Because the Islamic Republic, and these are, you know, truly religious people. Not everybody in Iran is like that, but these guys were committed. especially, you know, with Khomeini being the supreme leader, the first one. and and we did help the Iraqis in the war. they blame us for, you know, some of the chemical weapons that the Iraqis used against them, although we did not do that. We had nothing to do with it. But there were statements made by one point at one point or another by certain people that they took to mean certain things. So they blame us for a whole bunch of stuff. So we became the focus of sort of the resistance, if you will, that justified the Islamic regime as it was, because everything they are and still are is based on resistance to something else. And it was Iraq at one point because they were shooting at each other. But we've always been the great Satan, you know, you've heard that term. Satanabazorg, the great Satan. Israel's the little Satan, just because they're smaller. And so that's where the history comes from and the antipathy of the the regime. And a lot of these guys, the revolutionary guards, or the guardians of the revolution, obviously that's what their name is. And they were they came to being during the Iran-Iraq War. And at the end of eight years, they had turned into a quite a formidable force. They were a bunch of nothing, they were a bunch of kids at the beginning, you know, who just you're part of the Revolutionary Guards and you're part of this brigade and you go and most of them died in trenches and or were gassed and everything. And the ones that survived, I mean they were they were real military men by the time they were done. And they were the revolutionary guards were here, the regular military was here. They had an air force, obviously. They were trained by us. They had a bunch of pilots Joe: Hm. Mark Fowler: in the regular military, the regular air force that the that the Iranians had when the Shah was overthrown, who had F F sixes, I guess, and F-4s. This is Vietnam era stuff. But they had these things, and these guys were trained to fly, and they were pretty good pilots. And I worked with some of these people, they were good, really good, but they hated the regime. But the regime used them because they needed them, because you know, we got planes, we got bombs, they had these things. and they were quite effective against the Iraqis in the Iran-Iraq war. So that's where the revolutionary guards grew up, and they're really the predominant military force inside, and they handle all sorts of things. They handle the missiles, they handle whatever nuclear programs there are, they handle everything that mostly to do with the proxies, Hezbollah, the militias in Iraq, the Houthis. it's really not simply the Rev Guards. It's the what they call the Kutzforce, which is sort of the paramilitary arm, the overseas arm, almost like special forces kinda guys. but they're part of the Revolutionary Guards, but they're pretty separate. But they're the guys who go overseas and work with people like Hezbollah and teach them how to blow shit up and or, you know, do intelligence collection. They've you know They're the ones that have sort of led the way on this. But that's the history in terms of the antipathy towards America. And that's it's been maintained because first of all, we had Khomeini, the original Supreme Leader, and he died in eighty-nine, at right after the Iraq war ended. and then Khomeini, who is the one that just was killed, and he was there since until you know just earlier this year. And so these were the original. revolutionaries. They were part of the revolution. The guy who's there now, Mochtaba, is the son of Khameini, the new supreme leader. And he's a pretty young guy, but he did fight fight in the Iran-Iraq war. He was young, young, because a lot these guys were 16 years old. And I met some of these guys over the years, and they they went through hell. This was kind of a combination of modern warfare, but also World War I trench warfare with gas. I mean, just horrible stuff and and nerve gas and just terrible, terrible stuff. So they were, you Joe: Well Mark Fowler: know, yeah, it was ugly in some of the stories, you know, these guys, they were yeah. and so he fought there, so he has some cred, if you will, and he's always been close with the IRGC. So it's sort of there's a there's a straight kind of a line that kind of comes from all the way from 53 all the way up to way up to where we are now that is sort of part and parcel of Everything that justifies the Islamic regime as it is. Now where it's gonna go, that's a whole nother story. Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: But that's the history. Joe: That's hm. I yeah, I I a lot of it I honestly didn't even know. and that's on me. Like I I just don't have the time to look into everything, right? But Mark Fowler: It's complicated. No, it's complicated. Joe: where you know, where did their pursuit for a nuclear weapon like start? What what what spurred that? Because what I've what I've heard or at least what I've read Is that you know some nations are taking notice that you know essentially if you have a nuke, like you're not gonna get invaded, right? Like just look at North Korea as an example. They have nukes. Mark Fowler: It's a good example. Joe: Kim Kim Jong un, you know, is an absolutely terrible, terrible leader, absolutely just decimates his own population and whatnot, doing whatever he wants. But no one's evading them. No one everyone's leaving them alone. I mean, there's a lot of sanctions on them, of course, but like still nothing's going on with them. So, you know, I I think that there's obviously some truth to that, but is that something potentially I you know Iran identified early on back then and just kind of worked towards it ever since, or what was that like? Mark Fowler: Yeah, that's a that's an important issue, obviously. well one thing, yes, all everything you said is absolutely true. And then certainly people looking at the situation now with Iran think this is a factor in the sense of, you know, what's gonna happen or how they're looking at it. One thing remember in in in the case of North Korea, they kinda have a a big brother or sponsor in China. Okay, sort of. It's kind of a weird situation, but Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: you know, it's not just like it's not just Korea. It's Korea China. Because remember the Korean War, the Chinese were involved in that. I mean, that's that's where we ended up with the militarized zone and North and South Korea. China was part of this. Now I'm not sure they whatever role they played in Korea getting, I'm not sure they're thrilled with it either. They're a bit of a wild card. But that's a little different situation. Iran kind of stands by itself. Notwithstanding where we are right now, they're kind of working with Russia a bit because you know, giving drones to use against Ukraine and selling oil to China. That's not the same thing. In terms of the actual nuclear program, actually, the first atomic reactor was given, I think it was under Eisenhower, Adams for Peace. So we gave them a reactor as part of the program at the time. It's called Adams for Peace. And it was thinking nuclear programs. I think it was a it was a plutonium reactor. And there's two ways to get fissile material that you use in a nuclear bomb, and one is plutonium that's used in a reactor, and it it becomes enriched that way. It's but it's a very complicated process. And another is the sort of the centrifuges and the HEU, the highly enriched uranium. That's a that's another way. There's two roads you can take. So bottom line is that started, frankly, with us now. Subsequently, so they always had they had a capability. And you know, Iranians are smart. And I'm not sure when they started to get real physicists, but a lot of I don't know if you're you you wouldn't remember, I do, it just so happens. there were a lot of Iranian students in the United States during on the revolution when it happened in 79. I mean a lot. And a lot of them were taking technical stuff in things, including things like physics. You know, and they were in the UK and they were in France because there was a connection to France. Bottom line is they were educating a population under the Shah. They continued to do this for many years. Bottom line is they had real physicists, and I mean people who were actually knew what they were talking about. And a lot of these people went back and everything. Not all of them. A bunch stayed here, a bunch stayed in the UK, a bunch stayed in France and places like that. but a bunch went back. So they had a real nuclear program. They claimed it was for peaceful purposes because there's nuclear power, right? You know, you have a reactor, it generates electricity, it runs power. So that's where it kind of was. But they already had this. They had a capability, they had people, and they grew this and they're smart. Iranians, they're not just a bunch of religious zealots. You know, they're not just a bunch of crazy people, I want to die. No, that's really not their society. There's the whole martyrdom thing that's kind of built into their religion. But that's a whole nother hour of conversation. But they don't the way I put it is they celebrate martyrdom, but they don't seek it, if that makes sense. And they're not like, frankly, the Sunnis. I guarantee you could if you looked at all the the the broad swath of, you know, the like the suicide bombers they call them, you know, they put on the the explosives and they blow themselves up. The Iranians don't do that. When you tell me where an Iranian has ever done that. You might find one or two. We're not sure about Lebanon when they grew up. Blew up the the marine barracks there. But of course, that probably wouldn't Irani. It was probably Lebaneseia. That's another issue. They don't they don't blow themselves up, they're not, but they're willing to die for what they believe in. Frankly, I don't know about comparing us to them, but Americans die for what we believe in too. So so they had a nuclear program, and subsequently, as it's developed. and we we ended up today where they had sixty percent highly enriched uranium, which Jim probably talked about with you. And that's dangerous stuff. That's very close to true weapons grade. You know, you put it in a bomb and it's gonna go off. But what they've always done for many years, quite a few years at this point, under the revolution. Under the Islamic Revolution, they've never made a decision. I mean, at one point they had a weapons program, but they stopped it. That was confirmed by the intelligence community. That was in around 2009, I think. Joe: Mm. Mark Fowler: And so 2007 and 2009. And that was the intelligence community. And for a variety of reasons, they they didn't make the rush. First of all, maybe they weren't ready. But I think part of this also comes back to the when I talked about the Iraqi guys is. If they actually get a weapon or they get too close, they pretty much know that either us, certainly Israel, especially in the last, you know, 10 or 15 years where things have gotten really bad, obviously. There's no way they're going to allow that. We we can't allow it. They certainly won't, because they're right there, right? It's this is existential for them. so I think they just made the decision. They didn't make a decision, it's not clear, to go for a nuclear weapon. And a lot of people say, they're doing it. And but there's no proof of that, frankly, because having the capability or it's almost like a taunt. It says, we can do this, and we're you can't tell us what to do. You're not the boss of me kind of thing. There's a bit of that. Also, it it gives them the option, should they ever make a final decision that we have to have a nuclear weapon, they're much closer. They have the capability, because they have, you know, maybe they have all these centrifuges and they have highly enriched uranium. But there's there's several components that have a nuclear weapon or or deli it's it's the fissile material, which is uranium or plutonium, there's a device, which is the whole thing where it makes it blow up. It doesn't just blow up on its own. You know, you have to do certain things. It's quite complicated. There's implosion, there's all sorts there's different ways to do this. And then there's how do you deliver this thing? Now are gonna put it on the back of a donkey? I mean, I suppose you could. Or put it in a in a speedboat. I mean, I suppose you could, but mostly they're thinking about missiles, right? And that's a whole nother thing, too. And I'm not saying that and they're also developing their missile capability, but it's not clear they have either the fully weaponized uranium. They were not aware, or at least at this point, that they have a weapons, an actual device. And it is a device, it's highly engineered stuff. and then there's Is it small enough to be put inside an actual missile? Because I mean, you might be able to put a weapons together that takes up a weapon that takes up like the size of a desk or something, but how are you going to get that anywhere? Bottom line is they've they've held out the possibility of this, and that's part of the issue. And the big question has always been: are they do they have a weapons program or a device, you know, are they weaponizing it? Because there's the enriched uranium. Are they weaponizing it to with a device? And are their missile programs getting to the point where they might be able to deliver this thing? And this is part of the complex intelligence collection problems that you know we have and that the Israelis have. and you know, that's kind of led to this. But I know the president said it was part of the justification for going to war. He says they're gonna they're going for a nuclear weapon. I hate to say it, but there's no proof of that. Now, I pretty much guarantee you if we had intelligence. Real intelligence, vetted, you know, corroborated real intelligence, or the Israelis did, that they really did have a device and they were truly weaponizing it and might use it, we would see that. Because you don't go to war without, you know, this is what you do. It's kind of what happened with Bush with Iraq. Turned out to be wrong, but we they they released a lot of stuff to justify all this thing. That's where I talked about curveball earlier. that was done there. Right. So Joe: I see. So even even when the mistake was made, there was a huge amount of justification around it to still say, Hey, we were wrong, but this is why like we came to that conclusion, regardless of us being wrong. But now right. But but right. Mark Fowler: Well, after the fact, yes, they did that. But before the fact they were making the case to that we need to go in because, you know, they they have these mobile biological w labs. They still have chemical weapons, and we think they're working on their nuclear program. Frankly, that was the closest thing to a I don't want to say to lie, but that's the closest thing you got. We pretty much knew they didn't. But we couldn't prove they didn't. Proving a negative is really hard sometimes. Joe: Right. Yeah, no, I I don't think I think even when I talked to Jim about it a couple of years ago, like I didn't even say that it w that it was a lie. It just seemed like there was a mix up somewhere in the process, right? And I think that that's where people kind of like misconstrued it and people like to just, you know, go with like the black or white scenario, right? Where it's like they either lied or, you know, they knew or whatever it was, right? But now right, right. Mark Fowler: Right. It's complicated. Joe: But you know, and and now you're saying to to reference back to Iran, like that that isn't even the case, that essentially Trump kind of like unilaterally made this decision to go in and you Mark Fowler: Yeah. Joe: know, get do it. So, you know, I I wanna ask because last summer last summer I actually had Jim on, I think the week after we bombed the two facilities. like last July, I wanna Mark Fowler: yeah, the the nuclear facilities, right. Joe: say. Mark Fowler: Right. Right, June. Joe: June or July. And and you know, Jim said that like, hey, there there was actually proof that they were developing it there at this facility. We talked about the skill required of those bombers to be able to precisely put, you know, multiple bombs on top of each other to burrow down into the facility. Extremely fascinating stuff. Mark Fowler: Yeah, bunker busters. Yeah. Joe: yeah, absolutely amazing. I mean, like I hope that they like turn it into a movie or something. I'm that kind of guy that like, you know, I love that kind of sort of stuff. Mark Fowler: Right. Joe: but, you know, n now it just seems like I don't know why we went in there. The only viable theory that I've that I've personally heard actually came from John Kiriaku on a on another interview where he said that the only thing that Mark Fowler: I know John. Joe: yeah, he He mentioned that the only thing that made sense to him that he heard was that Israel essentially said, You're either gonna start going to war with Iran or we're gonna go and nuke them, essentially. And you know, Israel's not a declared state that has nuclear weapons officially. And I know that you can't like speak to any of that, right? I wouldn't expect you to, but I'm building in the context because that's literally like the extent. of what I know. And I'm asking in your head, do you think that that's even plausible? Because it doesn't even seem like that's plausible now. It seems like this was just like a unilateral decision that happened. And I I don't even know why. I don't know anyone that knows why it was even made. Mark Fowler: Okay, well I can I can address that based on my interpretation. And again, I know John, and that's that's part of it. I think the he obviously okay. Prime Minister Nanyahu visited the White House. We know that. The reporting from the York Times, really good reporting, and you know, you don't have to believe everything you hear, but you know, th these people, these are Credible journalist. So he was there, he made the case. He came in and made the case. This is not unusual. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in or out of power, whatever, has wanted to do this for the last four presidents. And I think he's proposed to each president that they should bomb them or invade them or whatever it is. We need to, because they're an existential threat. This has been going on a long time. We're talking, you know, decades here of, you know, teasing out the nuclear program. Obviously developing Hezbollah and the other proxies. The missile program has been in motion for a long time. These things have all been developing. Netanyahu came in and he made the case. And I I don't know what he said, obviously. they have pretty good intelligence, obviously. You know, we saw what happened in with Hezbollah with the Pager program, the Pager thing. That was amazing from Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: an operational perspective, you know. And I heard some of the details on how that happened. I I can't go into it. obviously, and their intelligence is such that they've been able to kill, literally assassinate a whole series of nuclear scientists inside Iran at different times. Over the next last couple of years, we're talking everything from the guy named Fakhar Zadeh, who was like the father of their program. They killed him with a remote controlled machine gun, for God's sakes, apparently on the road. I mean, they're able to operate in the country. They have Assets on the ground, et cetera, et cetera. This is probably not Mossad people going in on the ground, but I don't know. I they obviously have good intelligence and obviously, you know, and we've been sharing a lot of this stuff. He came in and made the case to President Trump. And I think one of the cases he made was: if we do this and we do it in such a certain way, including the decapitation, sort of the thing where we take out the leadership. the supreme leader and a bunch of the senior leaders, and that's what we're going to try to do, then th they'll the government will collapse. I think he made that case. Now our people, including the CIA director Radcliffe, kind of poo-pooed that. He said, that's far he actually used the word farcical. And I have no doubt he probably did. And our intelligence indicate didn't indicate that the same sort of like the fact that they they would Joe: Like immediate Mark Fowler: collapse the way he said. And I have no doubt, I hate to say it, I'll be a little political here. I have no doubt that Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed the button with President Trump on legacy. His legacy. I have no doubt about that. Joe: Hm. Mark Fowler: again, I don't know this for a fact. I'm speculating, but he convinced him that it could be done. And it could be done quickly and relatively cleanly. Which actually, even so far it has. We've lost people, there's no question about it. But it's not like we've lost hundreds of people. You know, it's been some of the bigger things were done. It was a a drone that got through or a plane crashed or something like that. so one person is far too much. But needless to say, it hasn't been high casualties or anything. Bottom line is he bought it. So the fact of the matter is, how we got into this. It I think it one man made the decision. President of the United States, he's the commander-in-chief, he's responsible for this. He failed to heed the intelligence when it really mattered, our intelligence. He listened to, I guess, Prime Minister. And I don't blame Prime Minister Nanyo. I don't particularly like him. I think he's bad for Israel. I think he's bad for the Palestinians, obviously. He's bad for the Middle East in general. He and his government right now, they're zealots, to be honest with you. It's that's a whole nother that's a whole nother two hour conversation. But Joe: Yeah, right. Mark Fowler: yeah, I know. But he he came in and he convinced, but I don't I say I don't blame him. That he is who he is. He's transparent. The person who made the decision was President Trump. He failed to heed the intelligence, our intelligence, when it really mattered before he went to war. Now he's probably looking at the intelligence a lot more because, you know, what's happening, bomb damage assessment, they call it BDA, bomb damage assessment, and all the rest of the stuff. He's paying attention now. But frankly, there's no good options now. So it's a whole different situation. So the thing to keep in mind, and this is important for your listeners and for anybody who's thinking about this, says basically we went into this. We we, the administration, went into this without thinking it through thoroughly and without really can considering who they were dealing with. They didn't understand their the foe. They didn't truly understand the the Iranian regime and who they were. The Iranian regime, on the other hand, has been preparing for just this, in in you know, hostilities or whatever, for a generation. So that's why we're seeing not that our military's, our military is great. There are certain things they can do, but they can only do what the, first of all, what the civilian leadership tells them to. And without boots on the ground, which is never going to happen at this point, you know, there's only so much you can do from the air. So very important, you know. We should probably should have l we shouldn't have gone in. You know, perhaps in this illegal war, I don't know. And they say unconstitutional because they didn't consult Congress. I certainly think he should have. And I certainly think he should have made the case to the American people why this was in the interest of America, and not just in the interest, but critical interest. We had to go, we had to go now. And he kind of made reference to the fact that they're going for a nuclear weapon. We see no indication of that. I've no one's seen anything. I pretty much guarantee if they had intelligence that showed that, we would have seen seen it in some form. You know, they would Joe: Hmm. Mark Fowler: have made the case more strongly. and now we're we're kind of stuck, frankly. we're probably gonna have to the only option, probably, the only way I see out of this is some kind of negotiated settlement of some in some manner, or a low level sort of like hostilities to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. And to to minimize what the Iranians can do, but that's not really practical. So I think we're gonna have to come to some negotiated settlement. They need to take the MOU. You know what I'm talking about? The MOU that they they signed not too long Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: ago. It was negotiated with the Pakistanis. What a disaster. if anybody reads this thing closely, and I wrote about this on my Substack and Joe: Hm. Mark Fowler: it basically f had most of the talking points were favorable to Iran. I don't know what I have no idea what they were thinking. I really don't. But the president signed this thing. Now it's already kind of by the by. They've already kind of torn it up and thrown it away. But the fact is the Iranians are still working from that document. And it gave them essentially permission to sort of impose their interpretation of how they control the Strait of Hormones. It was in there. It was actually written in there. It also provided some level of protection for Hezbollah and Lebanon because sovereignty in Lebanon, non-interference. There was all there's language in there was inexplicably. one sided towards Iran because so of course they signed it and now it's gone. It's it's again it's essentially been torn up. but that's not you know, they're still operating from that and we're still obviously it's escalated again because the Iranians have decided they're in a pretty strong position. They can weather the airstrikes, whatever they are, and they know pretty much they know say without a doubt, but we're not going to put boots on the ground. It's just not really possible with the political domestic lack of support, if you will. Putting troops on Joe: Mm. Mark Fowler: the ground, we could almost certainly prevail. They can't stand up to our military. But are we going to take hundreds or thousands of casualties for this? I don't think so, because that's what it would take. You don't fight a war. you do it from we've been lucky so far. Like I said, one is too many, but the the casualties are not too high. But it would be ugly if we actually put people on the ground and the American people are just not willing to do that. And the Iranians know it. So they've got the Strait of Hormuz. They don't even need a nuclear weapon at this point. They got the Strait of Hormuz. Some people have very cleverly called it. Tom Friedman, who writes for the New York Times, really smart guy. he called it a weapon of mass disruption, disruption. They've disrupted Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: the flow of oil and it's they now control that. It's unless we take the entire coast of Iran and the southern coast that could, you know, oversees the Strait of Hormuz, they could close it at any time they want to. All they have to do is shoot one missile. across, they don't have to hit anything. But they're the Joe: Right. Mark Fowler: the oil tankers, of course, and the insurers, because that's how it works. You know, if the insurers won't Joe: Yeah. Mark Fowler: insure your tank are full of, you know, you know, sixty million dollars worth of oil or whatever it is, you're not going to take a chance because you can't lose it. so they they could disrupt things. So frankly it's a real mess right now. and it there are no good options. That is not hyperbole when we say there's no good options, no easy way out of this. I don't know what they're gonna do. I assume it's going to be some kind of negotiated something when the Iranians are in a position when the Iranians reach the position where they're willing to give President Trump enough that he can say, Okay, I can get out of this now, then that's kind of when it'll end. but I I I you know it's everybody's throwing up their hands. So right now we're in a kind of a tit for tat thing. And I am actually writing an article right now that I'll put on my sub stack that will talk about where I w kind of why I think this is happening. I need to get into it now. But I would, if you don't mind, I would if people want to go to my Substack, they can see a lot of things context, because you mentioned that. Context is important. No it's not all history. It's some of the things that I saw when I was doing intelligence operations and I try to apply it to the current situation. find it very interesting and I I continue to write on this stuff 'cause it's simply so so important for people to understand context and background and history on these things. Joe: Yeah. Yeah, this is I mean this has been a fascinating conversation for sure. I I mean I've I've really enjoyed I mean it's been a fantastic conversation. Mark Fowler: Well, I'm Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If I could just mention my Substack is Mark Joe: Absolutely. Mark Fowler: Mark A. Fowler and it's at M-A-L-F O W five, at Malfow5. And the other thing, Liffy, I'll just plug, I have a book coming out. and it's fiction. It's a novel. It's an espionage novel about Iran. It's called A Prince of Mirrors. And I'll be talking about it on my Substack and I also have an author website under my name. But it's about it's kind of timely because it's it I'm writing about the aftermath of the killing of Sa Qasim Suleimani in 2020, which is when we killed the commander of the Kutzforce, the RGC, the Revolutionary Guards Kutzforce. And it's a story about CIA, it's a story about Iranian spies, it's a story about the Kutzforce, it's a story about revenge and one way the Iranians might try to exact revenge on the United States for the killing of Qasim Soleimani. It's just one way they could do it. So pretty fascinating. Hopefully that'll be out in the next month or two. Joe: Hmm. That's awesome. I I can't wait to get my hands on it. Well, you know, again, thank you very much for coming on, Mark. I'm absolutely gonna have to have you come back on. I feel like I could do another two hours with you minimum. You know, Mark Fowler: Yeah, Joe: like it's fantastic. But all of the links, you know, that that you just brought up, all of the links will be in the description of this episode. So look, guys, i if you enjoyed, you know, this episode, you enjoyed this conversation, make sure that you check out you know, the sub stack, make sure you check out all the links that we put in the description of this episode. And yeah, thanks everyone for watching this episode. Mark Fowler: Thanks, Joe. It's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed it a lot. Thanks for having me. Joe: Absolutely. Likewise. Bye everyone.