Bill Roggio
speaker
300 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 8 Aug
Bill Roggio’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
However, they all share common goals, common interests, a common ideology. So... When the Iranians go to the Houthis and say to them, or the Houthis go to the Iranians and say, we want to hit international shipping, they work that out between them. If the Iranians think that the Houthis' actions are going to prepare the group, they'll try and dial them back.
There's some reporting out there now that the Iranians are trying to advise the Houthis to dial it back.
Within that, there is a deniability. The Iranians are insisting they don't tell the Houthis what to do. The Houthis are their own entity. The Iranians will claim that they're not directing their activities. That's, of course, all is a lie. I do believe that there is some truth to that. The Houthis may have overreached here, not because of... Well, only because of change of administrations.
And this is where the change of administrations works against the Iranians, right? If there was a Biden or a Harris administration and you had continuing policies, I'd be very much willing to bet that these would be resuming strikes. So they do act rationally to ensure their survival.
Their motto is death to Israel, death to America, long live Islam. I'm paraphrasing it, but that's really it. Yeah. At the end of the day, they want those things, but they need to survive. And this is stunning. If you would ask me about nine months ago, the Iranians and their proxies had all the advantages, but they definitely overreached.
They didn't calculate that the Israelis were willing to launch strikes deep into Israel, which has really, I think, shocked the Israelis at the... I'm sorry, the Iranians at the Israeli abilities to launch targeted strikes against their... against their infrastructure.
I believe that they are going to back down. They're not going to admit it, but I don't think we're going to see it continuing attacks against U.S. shipping, particularly if the Trump administration directly targets Houthi leadership. Their leaders, they want to survive. They want to follow through on their death to America and death to Israel pledge.
But a Trump administration, I've always felt that the Houthis are one of the strengths of the Axis of Resistance, but also one of the weaknesses, too. They're exposed. They don't fully control the state. It's not a very populous country. And they're along the ocean where the U.S. Navy, if properly pointed at military and political leadership, it could seriously arm the Houthis.
One of the things that the Houthis are weakened, they don't just have external enemies, the US and Israel, as you noted before, they don't control the whole country. You have other entities within Yemen that want to see the downfall of the Houthis. And if they're perceived as weak, their enemies will go at them.
And then there's also a separatist movement, Southern Yemeni separatist movement as well, that isn't very friendly. It's like Game of Thrones in Yemen. You have all of these actors, and in the case of Yemen, at least one of them we could consider to be someone we could work with, and that is the Trump government that is operating there.
Libya is an excellent analogy. I mean, sadly, the, you know, the government in Aden isn't strong enough to retake Yemen. So I do believe our objective is not just to degrade the Houthis, but to split that relationship with Iran, if that can be done, or at least get the, try to, you know, if it was me, I would be targeting the Iranian efforts directly.
to resupply the Houthis as well and weaken that link, weaken their ability to rearm and re-equip to... This isn't the first time, by the way, that the Houthis have attacked international shipping. You go all the way back to 2015, 2018, 19, they were doing this. So this is a terrorist government that has... It isn't just because of Israel.
It's doing it because of its hatred of the West and to further the Iranian regime's goals. Yeah.
Really quick on the issue of regime change. I mean, unless you're watching what happened in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, I do not recommend we try that. It hasn't worked well over the last 20 years. But what we can do is weaken our enemies. And that should be our goal. And with the Iranians, we should be working with... is a legitimate Iranian resistance. We should work with them.
That would solve issues like Gaza, like Yemen, like Iraq. But as far as Gaza goes, the Israelis are back on the offensive. That ceasefire has appeared to have fallen apart, which everyone expected, or anyone who I know who is... understanding of the situation. For instance, John Shanzer, our executive director at FDD, he told me the day it was signed, I was expressing concern about the ceasefire.
He said, it's never going to make it to phase two. And it hasn't. Hamas has just been refusal to live up to its commitments to exchange prisoners. See, the Israelis have gone back. They're launching airstrikes against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders and military targets. They've entered that border that divided Gaza, and they're splitting it back in half again.
The question is, will the Israelis seek for an ultimate defeat of Hamas or is this a stopgap measure in order to get Hamas back to the negotiating table to get those prisoners? Those prisoners, those hostages being held out by Hamas, the Israelis still don't even know who's dead and who's alive. How you can work, the Israelis, their country is held hostage.
It's not just hostages, Israeli hostages being held. It's the nation of Israel because it wants those hostages released. So the Israelis are on a tough bind. And if it was me, It's a difficult decision and a tough political decision to make for the Israeli leadership, but the number one goal should be the defeat of Hamas.
We're a year and a half into this war, the Israelis are, and Hamas is still at a negotiating table. That should just not be happening, but it goes to show the... how resolute a group like Hamas is.
It would require the reoccupation of Gaza by the Israelis and continuing military operations. It's something the Israelis don't want to do. It's possible, but it's difficult. And that's the real problem with any of these wars. Could we have defeated the Taliban? Yes. But what did we need to do to commit to that with something that we weren't willing to do?
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