A native of New York City, John M. “Jack” Keane grew up in a housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. When he enrolled at Fordham’s business school, he became the first member of his family to attend college. In 1966, he earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army. He later earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Western Kentucky University and graduated from the Army War College and the Command and General Staff College.
A career paratrooper, Keane served as a platoon leader and company commander in the Vietnam War. He rose to lead the famed 101st Airborne Division and the legendary 18th Airborne Corps before being named vice chief of staff of the Army in 1999. He was at the Pentagon when it was attacked on September 11, 2001. He lost 85 Army teammates that day and was soon dispatched to New York City to take part in the response to the World Trade Center attacks. He retired from the military in 2003, but three years later, he was a key architect of the surge strategy that changed the way the US fought the war in Iraq.
Since retiring from the military, he has remained an influential adviser to US presidents, members of Congress and other senior officials. General Keane is a foreign policy and national security expert who provides nationwide analysis and commentary. He is chairman of the board of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington, DC-based think tank, and a member of the prestigious Secretary of Defense Policy Board.
For his valor in combat operations, he received numerous decorations, most notably the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, two Defense Distinguished Service Medals and five Legions of Merit. He is the first military leader to receive the Ronald Reagan Peace Through Strength Award, and in March 2020, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
I spoke to him on Monday about Israel’s war against Iran with the assistance of President Trump and the United States .
Can we say that we’re living in amazing times from a military perspective?
There’s no doubt about it. A lot of this is quite personal for America’s military people, because they’ve been attacking us ever since the Iranian regime took over in 1979. In 1983, they blew up two of our embassies in Lebanon—the embassy itself and an annex they had moved into—as well as a Marine barracks in Lebanon and the embassy in Kuwait. In 1996, they blew up our Air Force barracks in Saudi Arabia, and in 2006 their scientists developed an advanced IED that would fire at the highest volume vehicles we had—tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles—and destroy them. These were used against us in Iraq in 2007 when we had the surge, and they were only used to target American vehicles. I saw a boneyard of destroyed tanks and armored vehicles right outside of Baghdad when I was advising General Petraeus during that time.
The official death count as a result of the Iranians doing that was 603. The last general we had in charge of Iraq, General Lloyd Austin, who later became secretary of defense under Biden, told me, “General Keane, I really think it’s closer to 2,000.” And they’ve killed close to 3,000 of our troops over the past 45 years. In the last few years under Biden, they attacked our bases in Iraq and Syria 350 times—I’ll repeat that: 350 times—and not once did the Biden administration respond against Iran. How shameful and reckless is that?
Do you think there was an inflated fear of what Iran might do in response to an attack?
I think it has less to do with the Iranians and more to do with our leaders. The attacks in 1983 were during the Reagan administration, but that was the first time suicide bombers used vehicles to hit someone with the support of a nation-state. The nation-state that was supporting them, Iran, claimed that they had nothing to do with it. In my view, the Reagan administration was like a deer caught in the headlights. It was completely new, and they didn’t handle it very well. But by the end of the administration in 1988, when they were trying to interfere with the oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Reagan took down their whole navy and oil platforms in the Persian Gulf, so he was on to them.
The subsequent presidents, however, never did anything about Iran’s aggression: H.W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and then Biden. Iran was never ten feet tall, and you’re absolutely right about that; we just lacked the will. The first president who really confronted them since Reagan in 1988 was when Trump took out Qassem Soleimani and held him and his predecessors accountable for much of what I just told you they did to us.
Iran has been a weak tiger for a long time. Their conventional military has always been weak: air force, navy and ground forces. The only thing that had strength was their rocket and missile forces and the proxies they funded so generously over the years to carry out their dirty work in the region. But their rhetoric has always exceeded their capabilities by an awful lot.
Credit goes to the Israeli military and political leadership as well. But from your vantage point, is this the story of an amazing partnership between the US and Israel?
For the sake of full disclosure, I know that Prime Minister Netanyahu is a controversial political figure and has been for many years, but I think he is the right man in the right place at the right time. I’d actually go so far as to compare him to Roosevelt and Churchill, who are obviously revered for their World War II capabilities. People have a way of rising to meet a challenge. I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been clear-eyed about all of this.
He certainly has enormous guilt over October 7, and who wouldn’t? But he has had to put that aside to deal with what is in front of him. He said right from the beginning, “I’m going to deal with Hamas,” and when his defense minister wanted to go after Hezbollah, he said, “No, we have to finish things with Hamas, and then we’re going to take away the principal surrogate for Iran,” which is truly Hezbollah. He decapitated them, and guess what? Because Hezbollah could no longer provide the ground force to protect Assad in Syria with its tens of thousands of capable fighters, as they had done for years, the opposition forces were able to overwhelm him and Iran lost their strategic platform. That’s all due to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s steadfastness.
But his goal from the outset was Iran, because he knew they were the anchor. That is completely different from our American presidents, who time and time again refused to confront the Iranians even though they were the principal supporters of the proxies who were destabilizing the Middle East and causing such outrageous harm. He saw it from the beginning. I don’t think he’s going to stop in Iran until he’s absolutely convinced that they’re on their knees without much left.
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