Retired General David Petraeus spoke to CNN on Thursday night about the war in Iran:

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN: General David Petraeus is joining me now, the retired Commander for U.S. Central Command, and the former Director of the CIA. Just first off, on what the President is saying about choosing the new leader of Iran. I mean, he has said this now, in I think, three different interviews. And he told Time tonight that he’s going to be working with them on choosing a new leader. He said, I’m not going through this to end up with another Khamenei. I want to be involved in the selection. They can select, but we have to make sure it’s somebody that’s reasonable to the U.S. Is that possible, in your view? GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS (RET.), FORMER CIA DIRECTOR, FORMER COMMANDER, U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND, CHAIRMAN, KKR GLOBAL INSTITUTE: Well, I’d love to see that aspiration come true, but I think that Nick’s observation on that earlier is probably the reality. COLLINS: That it’s — the Iranians are not going to go along with someone that the United States finds ideal. PETRAEUS: Look, I’d love to see us have a veto. They have a process. There is a constitutional process. Right now, there is a trio that is in charge in the wake of the demise of the Supreme Leader. That’s what’s supposed to happen, whether he dies of natural causes, or being killed by a missile. And then there is a selection by the Assembly of Experts of who is going to follow him. We can certainly hope that there might emerge a pragmatist out of this who will realize how terribly the regime has done for the people at home, and how they have been isolated abroad, how they’ve squandered the incredible energy resources and talented population that they have. But at the end of the day, I think that’s a bit more aspirational than as I said, realistic, sadly. I’d love to see President Trump have some say over who it is that becomes the next leader. COLLINS: Yes, he’s made clear he wants it. We’ll see if he gets it. You famously said, Tell me how this ends, during the early days of the war in Iraq. When you look at where this stands tonight, and what Nick was saying there about the signaling of how much the U.S. has depleted what Iran has. Do you think it’s clear to the Trump administration yet, how this ends? PETRAEUS: I think it’s clear to the military. And I should just note for the watchers, I said that I was watch — as I was commanding the 101st Airborne Division during the fight to Baghdad, and watching as the assumptions we had been provided in Kuwait were being invalidated one by one. And it was a bit of a rhetorical question, and I forgot that I was on the record with my embedded reporter at that time, Rick Atkinson, the great journalist and historian. Look, in this case, I actually see the military missions being accomplished fairly steadily here. The trajectory is very good. First and foremost, of course, they went after the air and ballistic missile defenses. Took those down, whatever had been reconstituted after the Israelis took them apart in the early days of the 12-day air campaign. And that’s crucial, because we don’t want to be restricted to just the F-35 stealth fighter bombers and the B-2 stealth bombers. We want to bring in the big ones, the B-52s, the B-1 bombers, and they are flying now almost at will. I would argue that we have actually achieved air supremacy, not just air superiority. But, again, I think people are cautious in making that declaration. Second, take down those elements that can retaliate. Of course, along with this, obviously, take the shot, if you have the experts’ (ph) intelligence, that we had on the Supreme Leader, so many of the other leaders. Obviously, that was a priority at the outset, and I suspect it determined part of the timing, part of the decision to go at that moment, on that day, along with the frustration with the nuclear talks, and a recognition that the missile stocks had been reconstituted, Israel is going to go do that regardless. So now we’re talking about what they can use to retaliate. We’ve seen that. All the Gulf states. Unwisely, Iran has actually widened this war from just retaliating against U.S. assets and Israeli facilities, to going after hotels, airports, fuel loading docks, natural gas and energy and so forth. A huge mistake, in my view, because they were trying to sit on the sidelines, they didn’t let us use their bases as a result of that. Now they’re being drawn into it, and at some point they may actually enter the offensive operations. The Emirates in particular, have very impressive capabilities in that regard. So, we’re going after the missile launchers. That’s target number one, because without those, the missiles don’t get in the air. The missile stockpiles, obviously, some of those are reportedly underground. We’re going to have to pile drive down into those with the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the 30,000-pound precision munition that we have, and only we have the plane that can carry it, and then the manufacturing facilities. Take it all down. The drones. The drones have proven to be problematic. Of course, it was a drone that killed our six soldiers in Kuwait. And, in some cases, we’re having to launch where the host countries are having to launch $ 2 million Patriot interceptors to take down a 20,000 pound — $ 20,000 drone. That is not a good exchange. I just had an article come out, actually, in foreignpolicy.com on this, called The Drone Attrition Trap. You’ve got to have very, very substantial counter-drone capabilities to complement your anti-ballistic missile defenses. COLLINS: But I think this is actually really important part of this. PETRAEUS: But go ahead. You want to — yes. COLLINS: Because in terms of how Iran is responding. The Pentagon, today, was saying, just how depleted they are. Everything they’ve taken out. It’s an impressive list when you heard what CENTCOM was saying. But Iran is responding, and they’re using these $ 20,000 drones that these billion dollar air defense systems are trying to shoot down. I think there’s a question of, how that math adds up when you’re looking at this from your perspective. I wonder, what you think. PETRAEUS: Well, there’s bigger missile math. The missile math that matters most is in constantly trying to calculate this, I think at the end of the 12-day war campaign, that missile math was getting worrisome for Jerusalem. In this case, what we’re trying to do is determine how many launchers do they have, how many missiles do they have? And how many missile interceptors do we have? There are reports today in the news that some of the host nation countries, they all have our Patriot system, some have the THAAD system, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system. And these interceptors, look, the biggest number we ever made in a year was last year, 620. We’re going to try to go to 2,000 tomorrow. This is why President Trump is bringing the industrialists to the White House tomorrow, to dramatically ramp up production of Patriot interceptors, the THAAD interceptors, the Maritime — the SM-6, that’s another version, essentially, of a Patriot. And so, all of that. But that math is being carefully done. And this is why the priority is to take down the missiles. Because if they get through? I was just in Tel Aviv about four or five weeks ago, and I saw what those missiles did. About 5 percent, 7 percent of them got through even the sophisticated, layered air defense that they had with our help with the THAAD battery that shot $ 1.2 billion worth of interceptors in 12 days. So, this is a big issue, and what you don’t want to do is have to resort to, again, $ 1 million, $ 2 million interceptor to take down a $ 20,000 drone. We’re going to learn lessons out of this. We haven’t learned sufficiently. And I make this point in this article that came out today, we have not learned sufficiently from the Iran — the Ukrainians, who have gone through this themselves, and have constructed a very comprehensive counter-drone defense. In fact, I went out on a counter-drone mission, in the middle of the night outside Kyiv, frigid night, where you actually have drone operators who are hitting the Russian drones with their drones, and they have a very high success rate, together with electronic warfare together with machine guns, and all the rest. But so then you go on from the drones are taking down the Navy, that’s very important. We’ve got to eliminate all of that we can to eliminate the threat to the Strait of Hormuz, make sure it’s not mined, and make sure there’s no interdiction of the freedom of navigation, which right now does not exist. COLLINS: Yes, it’s a big concern for the White House. PETRAEUS: And the price of Brent crude was up in the $ 80 — $ 83 — $ 85 per barrel today, having been at low-60s to mid-60s just a few weeks ago. So that’s a concern. COLLINS: Yes. All of that is a big concern for the White House. PETRAEUS: We’re going after the remnants of the nuclear program. That’s hugely important as well. There’s a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency that there may be some 60 percent enriched uranium that was in tunnels underneath Isfahan. I’m sure we’re going to pile drive those Massive Ordnance Penetrators and make sure that that is never accessible either. So, all of these different objectives, and I think we are making very impressive progress in that regard. We have also continued to go after other leaders, headquarters, the facilities, now, the infrastructure of the security forces, which generally, by the way, have dispersed and have delegated authority to continue to carry out strikes, even in the absence of what must be very limited central control, given the damage done to the leadership, headquarters, communications and so forth. So all of that, I think, is proceeding very impressively. Keep in mind, though, there’s a reality, and the reality is that there’s about a million regime security force, if you include the regular Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, they’re about 400,000, but they have the Revolutionary Guard Corps, 150,000, 200,000, the besieged militia, two — 200,000. And you just added it all up, National Police, 250,000, that’s a lot of individuals still, even if dispersed. So if you’re– COLLINS: Yes, and we’ll see obviously how they handle that, and what that looks like. PETRAEUS: The President has said, Look, the military is going to set the conditions for a possible political transition, but it’s up to the Iranian to carry that out. We’ve heard about the Iranian Kurds may be mobilizing. We may be providing some support. COLLINS: And obviously, we will see what they — what they do here. PETRAEUS: That’s a small number. So, again, where does the opposition force come from? That’s the big question. Can it rise up before we achieve all the others? COLLINS: Yes, it is a huge question, and obviously we’re going to be following that.

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