Iran is now likely being governed by a hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) led committee, but even they have shown a readiness in the past to make concessions, such that Israel and the US can achieve their war aims even absent regime change, former US CENTCOM Chief Gen. Kenneth "Frank" McKenzie Jr. told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview.
McKenzie has a unique perspective on the Israel-US-Iran triangle as he was the top US commander who integrated Israel into the architecture of CENTCOM following the signing of the Abraham Accords, a move which fundamentally altered the region and military relations between Washington and Jerusalem.
This means McKenzie, who was recently named president of the famed Citadel Military College of South Carolina, oversaw the integration of Israel's air defenses with both Abraham Accords countries and Arab Sunni countries that have not yet joined the accords. This move prepared the Jewish state for much more effective air defenses during the wars of 2023 to present.
McKenzie told the Post that Iran will "respond to existential pressure. They have done so in the past - drinking from the 'poison chalice' [making concessions they do not wish to make]. They will negotiate and will try to avoid" harsh economic attacks and regime change, such that "they are willing to modify their positions even without regime change."
Regarding the threat that a mostly hardline IRGC-dominated regime represents, and especially if a satisfactory deal is not reached, the former CENTCOM chief said to the Post, "If Iran cannot govern itself effectively, then this is not worse than before. If it cannot govern itself effectively, it will be an entity which cannot pursue nuclear weapons or more guided ballistic missiles."
Pressed about who in Iran is really running the country, with various commentators tossing out the official ruler, Mojtaba Khamenei (the son of the former supreme leader), relatively newly appointed IRGC Chief Ahmad Vahidi (after his two predecessors were killed in the past two Iran wars), or even Iran Parliament Speaker and former IRGC officer Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
McKenzie stated that he believes "decisions are being made collectively, that there is a committee making decisions. Who are you talking to? A committee on the hard right – an IRGC-level committee. But the hard right has made decisions before which involved the modification of policy. These people can also do that too."
Ballistic missiles more dangerous than nuclear issue
Looking forward to the future of the region's threat matrix, McKenzie said, "The ballistic missiles are more dangerous than the nuclear issue. There must be some limiting governing mechanisms."
When the Post suggested the 300-kilometer range limit for Iran's ballistic missiles, which Israel and other Western countries have suggested in the past (Israel is 1,000-1,500 kilometers away), McKenzie said this could be a possible solution, but emphasized another dimension.
According to the general, no matter what the various sides might agree to on paper, "how you enforce that [the deal] with an overhead monitoring regime with a long-term commitment" is crucial.
Ideally, he said, there would be a formal, including intrusive monitoring of all issues from ballistic to nuclear, but the bottom line was that the US and Israel needed to be ready to employ coercion, "if you build [nuclear or ballistic missile threats] we will strike," he declared forcefully.
Even without a formal deal on all issues, the US and Israel could informally enforce a limit on rebuilding aspects of Iran's ballistic missiles program.
Simply by delivering messages to Iran about US and Israeli readiness to strike if specific redlines are crossed, and possibly doing a certain amount of overflights, could keep the regime down in these areas, something "we certainly have the technical capability to do."
How well did the fight over ballistic missiles go?
Given that Israel claimed Iran had around 400 missile launchers before the June 2025 war, then only around 200 launchers after that war, then around 470 when the current war started on February 28, some have asked whether the regime can recover its full missile apparatus, no matter how badly it was bombed during this war.
McKenzie responded, "Ballistic missile launchers are harder to manufacture than you might think. They have not been able to amass them. They have not been firing big volleys. This tells you something. If they still have 300 launchers, why are they not firing" from all of them in larger numbers?
Even if they might have more launchers, if Israel and the US know where they are based and hidden, "then how many are really usable?" he asked rhetorically.
Next, he said that Iran made a "major strategic mistake by going to deep underground facilities." He said this allowed the US and Israel to "keep persistent overwatch of those sites, so that we know when they bring them [the launchers] out. It is easy to track those systems…so they are effectively out of play."
He stated this was true whether America reached a formal or informal deal with Iran on the ballistic missiles issue.
Instead, Iran "should have widely disbursed them."
Nuclear threat
Returning to the nuclear issue, McKenzie said that the most crucial question was once again not what Iran might promise it would do, but having "an intrusive nuclear inspections regime. I cannot see a way forward which does not involve that."
Likewise, regarding Iran's 60% enriched uranium, which could potentially be used for nuclear weapons and is under rubble in multiple bombed sites in Iran, he said the key was the regime knowing that any attempts they might make to retrieve the uranium would be struck by the US and Israel. Further, he said the regime should fear that retrieving the uranium might even result in a large temporary commando ground forces raid.
What was achieved after IDF said it had destroyed most of its targets
In mid-March, the IDF said it had destroyed 75% and then around 90% of all "critical" and "essential" targets in Iran. By March 31, the IDF said it had struck 100% of these targets.
Confronted with these statistics and the question of whether the war could have been ended earlier, given these achievements, McKenzie praised the continued military campaign.
"From a military campaign view, the campaign is going on very effectively for CENTCOM. We had continued to pound them. This was a clash of human will. Some people are tired. But they are more frustrated on the Iranian side," he said.
Continuing, he stated, "I have a very Clausewitzian view about such a clash of wills. We are imposing our will on those people, and we have a path to do that."
Discussing some of the analyses being published, which frame the war as unsuccessful because it fell short of certain marks, McKenzie pushed back, saying that much of the criticism is uneducated and was overly optimistic from the get-go.
In contrast, he said that in the dozens of times that he, as CENTCOM chief, simulated some kind of war between Israel, Iran, and the US, his predicted results for Jerusalem and Washington had turned out favorable, but usually not as favorable this war has turned out militarily.
Long-range missile attack on Diego Garcia base
McKenzie did not want to discuss in depth the sensitive question of the implications of Iran's firing a ballistic missile around 4,000 kilometers toward America's base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.
However, he implied, and others have said explicitly, that Iran's longer-range ballistic missile program is a potential eventual threat, but is not yet as mature and imminently deadly as the regime would like the world to believe.
The general did warn that all parties should "watch that very closely" going forward.
Strait of Hormuz and Kharg Island
"The Strait of Hormuz must be open – demonstrably open. There are lots of ways to do that," said McKenzie.
If negotiations resolve the issue, then the US military might not need to use force again.
However, if Iran stalls on the issue and tries to maintain it as a pressure point even beyond the current 14-day talks, the general said that the US could "seize Kharg Island, which would shut down Iran's oil export capabilities."
This would effectively both allow the US to physically occupy Iran's oil network and Iran would find it "profoundly humiliating." Later, he said the US could "return that to them if we should choose to do so," as part of a deal in which Hormuz would also be open, and that "this would not do irrevocable damage to Iran's economy," which some warn attacking Iran's energy sector would.
Preparing to directly open the Straits of Hormuz is also still on the table, he said, noting, "It is a good idea to keep all of these options. Talking about doing things adds more pressure. No electric power, no oil internally, would make the population a lot less happy. Are we going to do it? I have no idea. That is a national-level decision for the US," depending on the current negotiations.
McKenzie added that legal objections should not remove these war options: "Keep them on the table. I think these are legally defensible targets under the laws of war. They feed Iran's economy and especially its war economy."
Returning to the idea of displacing Iran from the Straits or from Kharg Island, he explained additional options, such as, "Maybe we don’t need to put people on the shore and do not need to occupy" the Straits. "We can just make it impossible on those islands" for Iran to operate.
He said the US could "control those islands by fire – if the Iranians show up on the island, we kill them. We do intrusive overhead monitoring. Or carry out temporary raids. We go onto the land to destroy a missile launch site" or other threat, but then leave, such that American troops would be less vulnerable to an ambush afterward, compared to leaving a stagnant occupying force in place.
In terms of the Iranian drone threat to shipping coming through the Straits, McKenzie said that aircraft could shoot down the drones and that electromagnetic disruption technology could also take them down.