Jamie Burnett:
First today, all eyes on the Middle East following the joint US-Israel strikes on Iran. Bit to break down, but let’s get to Peter Jennings, adjunct fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs, former Deputy Secretary for Strategy with the Defence Department. Good afternoon, Peter.
Peter Jennings:
Hi there, Jamie.
Jamie Burnett:
What were your first thoughts when you learned about what was happening?
Peter Jennings:
Well, I wasn’t surprised. We knew the strike was long in coming. We’d seen a massive American military buildup into the Middle East that lasted for a few months and the progressive failure of negotiations with the Iranians to produce any more peaceful outcomes. So I wasn’t surprised that it happened, although of course I think we were all surprised that the first strike was in broad daylight, which is, generally speaking, not how these things begin.
Jamie Burnett:
So why do you think that was? Why something so stark to what we’ve seen in the past?
Peter Jennings:
Oh, well, I think it’s pretty clear that the Australians and the Americans had intelligence that there was going to be a meeting of the senior Ayatollah Khamenei with a number of his, indeed 40 or 50 of his closest national security advisors. So they took the opportunity to directly target him at that meeting.
Jamie Burnett:
So the timing was pretty opportunistic. This was something that was sitting there waiting. And then when that intelligence came through, they took that.
Peter Jennings:
It must have been the result of an intelligence tip off. And I think what this points to is that for Israel, Iran has been the number one intelligence target for decades. And they’re very good. They’ve got people planted into the most senior levels of the Iranian administration, and this was just too good a target of opportunity to pass by.
Jamie Burnett:
Yeah, I wanted to explore that. I mean, that level of intelligence and what currently exists to have that understanding of where he and other senior leaders would have been at that time.
Peter Jennings:
Well, as I say, Iran has been the number one target for Israel for a very long time. It begins with deep level of language expertise into Farsi, which is the Persian language and other Middle Eastern languages. I think Israel has close intelligence connections into the Republican Guard, which is the main military unit, the most political of the military units in Iran. And so they’ve been able to use what’s called human intelligence as well as electronic intelligence, cyberspying, to give them this type of information. And really since the Hamas attack in 2023 into Southern Israel, there’ve been a number of occasions where we’ve seen this Israeli intelligence system at work, including most spectacularly the destruction of the senior Hezbollah military leadership with the pagers about 12 months or so ago. So this is an organisation that is very effective in terms of understanding how the Middle East works, and they put that to good use this time around.
Jamie Burnett:
Is there a risk when you take out a leader and a leadership group about not knowing who exactly will replace and the power vacuum that follows?
Peter Jennings:
Yes. I think there is, in all likelihood, a power vacuum, which we’re going to see in Iran in the next couple of days. And that comes with the idea of regime change, particularly when it’s being driven by an American strategy from the air and they don’t have people on the ground to structure what’s going on. I guess the sort of countervailing argument is to say that Iran is a very centralised, tightly controlled authoritarian system. If it’s not one particular general from the Revolutionary Guard, it’s another general, which is likely to step forward to take political leadership. They all kind of have the same ideology. So I think the real unknown here is if that lot now gets wiped away, mainly as a result of actions by the Iranian people, what are we going to be dealing with then? Where will that new source of power and authority come from? We don’t know because one thing the Ayatollahs did was make sure that there was no political opposition to them.
So it’s going to be pretty chaotic. And worse than that, I think we’re going to see a lot of very rough justice that’s handed out to some of these people over the next little while.
Jamie Burnett:
Do you think that you will see this action would lead to potentially an uprising from the Iranian people who’ve been against that regime? Is that something that you’re likely to see on the ground in Iran in coming days or weeks?
Peter Jennings:
I hope we’ll see it, because if we don’t, what we’re going to get is a continuation of the repression and the theocratic state, the Ayatollah is building their nuclear weapons. And so that is the thing that needs to be done away with. There’s certainly been, in the last decade, maybe four or five occasions where it has looked as though popular opposition on the street would threaten the regime. And in each of those previous occasions, they were able to repress that popular opposition away, including in January where the claims are anywhere between 25,000 to 40,000 Iranians were killed by the security apparatus to prevent that uprising from happening.
Now, I think what’s happening in this conflict is we’re seeing a lot of the Israeli and American military targeting is trying to take out the security apparatus, the people that would actually stop an uprising. They’re trying to destroy their ability to function as coordinated security units. And as Donald Trump said in his first television broadcast, well, now it’s going to be up to the Iranian people to seize that moment. If not now, when? And this is kind of the very edgy moment that we’re in right now as we wait to see if that’s actually going to happen.
Jamie Burnett:
It’s 18 minutes past 3:00. You’re listening to Peter Jennings. And as I said, off the top, in so many different areas, all eyes on the Middle East with what we’ve seen over the last few days and what’s to follow. When we talk about timing, Peter, Iran’s, it’s a big country. How long do you think this action could draw out for?
Peter Jennings:
Look, potentially weeks. There will come a point when, quite frankly, the Americans and the Israelis will run out of ammunition. There’s only so many [inaudible 00:06:52] bombs which they can have available for this activity. I’ve seen maps now of the strikes which are taking place. In the first 30 hours or so, there was something like 2000 bomb sorties that were run by the Americans and the Israelis. So that is a very high tempo of operations. I think they’ve got the capacity to keep it going for several weeks, maybe three weeks, something of that nature. But really what they need is for that domestic political opposition to come to the fore in Tehran in particular, and to sort of just push the Revolutionary Guards out of the way. And that’s what everyone is hoping for, frankly, including, I guess, the Iranian diaspora in Australia, but we just don’t know at this stage if that’s going to get traction and work. And if it doesn’t, I think the Revolutionary Guards will dig in and it’s just going to be a tough and extended fight, which could last for weeks and weeks.
Jamie Burnett:
Yeah. You mentioned the air strategy of the US. Will it get to a point where the United States will be forced to deploy boots on the ground?
Peter Jennings:
I don’t think so. I think Trump understands that that’s just deeply toxic as far as American popular opinion is concerned, and it’s politically fatal for him to do that. So you might see potentially a small number of special force troops doing covert operations. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was actually happening. I would almost guarantee you that it will be happening from the Israeli Defence Force. But I don’t think this is going to translate into boots on the ground in any scale at any time. Trump is just not up for that challenge.
Jamie Burnett:
What do you think this will mean for potential terrorism in the West? Does it deter or does it amplify?
Peter Jennings:
It’s a good question. I think the positive here is that the Iranian regime has been one of the key instigators of terrorism around the world, including in Australia. We know that there was an attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne. There was an attack on a kosher restaurant in Sydney at the end of 2024, and our government has said, “Look, that was actually organised by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.” So if they’re defeated, I think that is going to see an end to Iranian funding of really powerful groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis that operate in Yemen. So that’s the positive side.
The negative side is images of American bombs destroying Islamist targets is always going to act as a sort of a spur to extremist action on the part of some people around the Middle East. But I’d say so far, we’ve really seen almost nothing of that in the wider Middle East, and Iran’s use of missiles almost randomly to go after a range of targets in the UAE and Bahrain, and places like that, is actually pushing those Arab governments against the regime and Tehran.
Sorry, that’s probably a long-winded answer, but I think broadly speaking, the defeat of the Iranian regime is going to be good to reduce terrorism risk around the world, and particularly in the Middle East. And that’s the sort of outcome which I think we’re seeing.
Jamie Burnett:
With this operation and what we’ve seen in recent times with the US under a Trump administration, have the rules changed? Are we living in a different world now?
Peter Jennings:
Yes. Military technology has certainly changed. I’m just astonished at the level of accuracy we can see with these attacks taking place, that we’ll quite literally pick the side of the building that a bomb is going to hit. We’ve seen the impact of drone warfare over several years now, which is kind of redesigning how military conflict plays out. So the idea of regime change from the air, which people have been kind of sceptical about, starts to look a little bit more realistic given the new military technology that’s at play.
And I think we’re also seeing a slightly different Donald Trump. We’ve seen him now, I guess fully five years going into his sixth year as American president. Up until now, he’s been very, very limited in his use of military force. It’s been a few missile strikes and maybe some special force operations, not much more. What we have here is full on large scale conventional warfare minus the ground troops bit. And so this is the biggest throw of the dice for Trump in his presidency.
And of course it comes with immense risk, Jamie, because you can’t set these things going and just expect that it’s all going to go to plan. It never does in conflict. And so Trump is really taking the gamble of his political life at this stage.
Jamie Burnett:
Peter, I reckon we will chat a few more times over the coming weeks and maybe months, but I appreciate your insight today. Thank you.
Peter Jennings:
Thanks, Jamie. My pleasure.
Jamie Burnett:
Peter Jennings, adjunct fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs.
This transcript of Peter Jennings on Drive with Jamie Burnett 6PR from 2 March 2026 has been edited for clarity.
