What's the Iran strategy? - with Nadav Eyal and Matt Levitt
HOUSEKEEPING NOTE:
I’m pleased to announce a major live recording of Call Me Back in New York City on September 24th. The event will be held at the Streicker Center, co-sponsored by UJA Federation of NY, and my guest will be Amir Tibon on the official launch date of his book The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel's Borderlands.
In his new book, Amir tells the gripping story of the Tibon family’s ordeal at Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7 and the heroic rescue by Amir’s father, retired General Noam Tibon. Woven throughout the book is Amir’s own expertise as a longtime journalist in Israel and in Washington, the history of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, and the conflict between Israel and Gaza.
The story has previously been featured on 60 Minutes and it is also being developed in a feature film by Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz.
We are excited to bring this program – with our partners at The Streicker Center and UJA Federation of NY – to the Call Me Back audience. To register, please go to streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor
TODAY’S EPISODE:
Tensions have been high in Israel over the past week, as Israelis brace for a response from Iran and Hezbollah, following last week’s assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran and Fuad Shukr in Lebanon.
This attack was anticipated to have already taken place, and may happen at any moment.
To help us understand the extent to which Israel and the U.S. have prepared for this new phase, we are joined by Nadav Eyal and Matt Levitt.
Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediot. He has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.
Dr. Matthew Levitt is the director of the Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. During his tenure at Treasury, he played a central role in efforts to protect the U.S. financial system from abuse and to deny terrorists, weapons proliferators, and other rogue actors the ability to finance threats to U.S. national security. He later served as a counterterrorism advisor to the special envoy for Middle East regional security. Previously, Matt was a counterterrorism intelligence analyst at the FBI, where he provided tactical and strategic analytical support for counterterrorism operations, focusing on fundraising and logistical support networks for Middle Eastern terrorist groups. He is the author of several books and monographs, including Hamas: Politics, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (Yale University Press, 2006), and Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon's Party of God (Georgetown University Press, 2013). He is the host of the podcast series, Breaking Hezbollah's Golden Rule.
Matt Levitt’s Books:
Hezbollah: The Global Footprint of Lebanon’s Party of God
Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NE: The U.S. doesn't seem to have a strategy to confront, to tackle, to deal with Iran in the Middle East. Basically, since Trump decided to withdraw from the JCPOA, and this includes, of course, the Trump administration and the Biden administration, I don't think that the Americans have any strategy. How are you going to confront a country that's very much dedicated to the idea of exporting the revolution in order to entrench itself within the region and become the superpower, not only of the Middle East, but of the near East? And all the rest in the region are looking at this and saying, you know, the Americans aren't serious and they are not here to stay.
DS: It's 3:00 PM on Thursday, August 8th in New York City. It's 10:00 PM on Thursday, August 8th in Israel, as Israelis anticipate what tomorrow, a new day, will bring. Before today's conversation, one housekeeping note. I'm pleased to announce a major live recording of the Call Me Back podcast in New York City on the evening of September 24th. The event will be held at the Streicker Center, co-sponsored by UJA Federation of New York. And my guest I'm pleased to announce we'll be Amir Tibon on the official launch date of his book called The Gates of Gaza: a story of betrayal, survival, and hope in Israel's borderlands. In his new book, Amir tells the gripping story of the Tibon family's ordeal at Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7th, and the heroic rescue by Amir's father, retired General Noam Tibon. Woven throughout the book is Amir's own expertise as a longtime journalist in Israel and in Washington. He also chronicles the history of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, and then of course the conflict between Israel and Hamas. The story has previously been featured on 60 Minutes, and it is also being developed into a feature length film by my friends and previous guests, Avia Sakharov and Lior Raz. To register for this live podcast recording, please go to the Streicker Center website. You can go to https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor and we will link to that Streicker Center registration in the show notes. Now to today's conversation. Tensions have been obviously very high in Israel over the past week as Israelis brace for an Iranian and Hezbollah response following last week's assassinations of Haniyeh in Tehran and Shukr in Lebanon. There are numerous questions about if or how Israel and Iran might be heading for a regional war. The Iran Hezbollah attack was anticipated to have already taken place in Israel, and by the time we release this episode, it might have already taken place. But as of now, based on multiple sources we are speaking to, it is assessed that the Hezbollah attack will occur early next week. Of course, that is entirely speculative and it could be sooner or it could be later. So what I want to focus on in today's episode is Israel's strategy for Iran and also the U.S. strategy for Iran, to the extent that these strategies even exist. Our guests are Matt Levitt and Nadav Eyal. Our listeners know Nadav well. He's a columnist for Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's largest circulation daily. He's been covering Middle Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio and print and television news. Dr. Matthew Levitt is the director of the program on counterterrorism and intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department and he later served as a Counterterrorism Advisor to the Special Envoy for Middle East Regional Security. Previously Matt was a Counterterrorism Intelligence Analyst at the FBI where he supported counterterrorism operations. He's the author of numerous books, which we will link to in the show notes, Nadav Eyal and Matt Levitt on what's the Iran strategy? This is call me back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, longtime friends of the call me back family Nadav Eyal and Matt Levitt. Thanks guys for being here.
NE: Thank you for having us.
ML: Thanks for having us.
DS: There's a lot I want to get to today. As I said in the intro, things are tense in Israel, as tense as things can get, meaning Israelis have this incredible capacity to strike a balance between being tense and being remarkably relaxed and sort of blasé, even in tense moments. But nonetheless, things are tense as Israelis and people follow events in the region brace for a possible attack from Iran, from Hezbollah, from Iran and Hezbollah, from other Iranian proxies. At the time that we're having this conversation, there still has not been an attack, although there's increasing speculation leaking out as to when that attack may be, it sounds like it could be quite soon. And I want to talk today about A, anything you guys know or are anticipating in terms of a possible attack, but then raise the lens a little bit and try to understand what actually our Israel strategy is with Iran, what U.S. strategy is with Iran. Does either country actually have a long term strategy rather than just this escalatory ladder? And then just also about Israel's preparedness for this period it is in, this new phase it may be entering. So just to start things off, I wanted to start with you, Nadav. How would you describe the mood and preparations for what appears to be this new phase in Israel right now.
NE: I think that people in Israel are extremely anxious. This is not the level of anxiety that we've seen back in April after the assassination of Mohammad Zahedi in Damascus by Israel. And this waiting period for the Iranian response and then the attack by Iran. This time it's different. First of all, because it's not only Iran, right? It's about Hezbollah, it's about Iran, there is a sense that this might be a coordinated attack, although, and I guess we're going to talk about this, there is more and more intelligence leaking out that it's plausible that Iran will postpone its response while Hezbollah will strike first. But there's a lot of psychological warfare here. You see how the Iranians and Hezbollah are just spreading all kinds of fractions of data. And Nasrallah has said that on his speech, that this period of waiting for the Israelis. That's part of the response. So he clearly stated that he is trying to psychologically pressure Israel.
DS: It's its own form of torture. Nasrallah tweeted something out in Hebrew, right? He said, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week.
NE: And they're right about this. And the same goes, by the way, for Beirut, because I speak with friends in Lebanon that are not naturally, are not Hezbollah. And I speak with journalists and they're telling me. You guys in Israel, at least you have your shelters, right? You have bomb shelters in Israel. Nobody cares about what's going to happen for us here. So I'm hearing the anxiety on the other side, but this time for Israelis, you know, it's after 10 and more than 10 months of war. There's a lot of social and political fraction within the Israeli society. There are demonstrations. We saw the events that we spoke about in your podcast, those army bases, the demonstrations, the takeovers. There's a lot of criticism within the Israeli society. Israeli politics is right now in a natural mood, which means it's, it's extremely toxic and tribal. And together with this waiting period and a waiting period for Israelis is really, Israel is so dedicated, even in terms of its defense apparatus, to be first in the water, to be preemptive. This is the entire DNA of the defense apparatus of Israel. So the idea that you need to sit and wait and see what happens, and it very much reminds me of an era that I only read about, and that's the 1967, just before the 1967 Six Days War, when Israelis were waiting for a decision to be made either by Gamal Abdel Nasser, then the leader of Egypt, together with Syria, saying, I'm going to open war against Israel, it's going to be the defining war. It's going to be the war that will end Israel. We're going to throw all the Jews to the sea. And Israel was waiting, and then it decided on a preemptive strike. And that was the six days war. But I remember reading what people said about that waiting period. People were fearful for their physical lives, for the survival of the state. They were talking about the real possibility that they'll be wiped out by the Egyptians and the Syrians, something that in retrospect sounds so fantastic. So no, people in Israel today, they're not feeling being wiped out, but you know, they go to shopping malls, some of the shopping malls would be, you know, much more emptier during the evenings and the nights. People don't want to be outside. They don't know when it's going to happen. People who do have flight tickets to their vacations, their August vacations, are happy that they can go with El A, all the other airlines cancel their flights. You need to brief your children again that they'll need to go into the shelter if this attack will come or when this attack will come. And also there's this lack of clarity. Will Hezbollah at the end make this as a biggest attack as they're talking about maybe be against Tel Aviv, against the Kirya, that's the major base of the IDF, the center of Tel Aviv.
DS: The defense ministry.
NE: Defense ministry and the main base of the IDF.
DS: Military headquarters.
NE: Yeah, in Tel Aviv. And then this might hit also civilians because it's within a civilian area, or is this going to be a much more restrained response that at the end, we're going to say, huh, you know, is this what we were waiting for, or Dan, and that's a real possibility, I'm not willing to rule it out. I'm sure that the Israeli defense forces and the Israeli Air Force is saying, just give us the word and we'll preempt this. Just allow us to preempt this. And then I'm also quite certain, and this is not only speculation that Israel might have said something to the United States about this, that if it knows that something is going to go ahead, and then you need to have the backing of the United States in order to have an effective enough preemptive. And I'm not sure that this administration will give them this green light for another attack by Israel, another response by Israel. But all of this speculation is only adding to the general anxiety in the region. And I need to stress this anxiety is on all sides, the Iranians, the Lebanese, and the Israelis. It's just that we're focused at the response in Israel. But what I'm hearing from the other side, they're very much anxious themselves.
DS: Matt, I want to ask you about the different players, Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, maybe the Houthis, Hamas obviously has a stake in this, so I just want to spend a moment just so our listeners have a full understanding of all the players. And obviously the U.S. has a stake here, but there's also Russia and China. Just to give a couple of practical examples, my understanding is Iran in recent days has asked Russia for air defense Assets, Putin's national security advisor was just in Tehran in the last couple of days and obviously Iran has supplied Russia for its war against Ukraine with drones. So there's a lot of sharing of military assets. I'm less clear about what China is actually up to. So, maybe you could just summarize for us what you know in terms of their Russia and China's interests here as the situation escalates, not just the U.S. that's focused on it from outside the region and, you know, how it's playing out.
ML: So first of all, it's a pleasure to be back on the show. Look, there are the obvious parties here and then there are the other parties. The two main other parties in terms of great power competition are obviously Russia and China. Of the two, Russia is much more involved. As you said, Russia has become a military partner with Iran or Iranians are providing drones in particular to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine. I've had the opportunity to go and inspect Iranian drones that have crashed in Ukraine and hold it in my hands along with the exact same type of Iranian drone that has crashed somewhere in the Middle East, and it's exactly the same thing. Um, as you said, senior Russian officials have visited Iran in the past few days, and there is concern that on the one hand the Russians might provide the Iranians still more sophisticated systems to be able to defend against an air attack and any war between Iran and Israel obviously is very much an air war and on the flip side, there's also reporting that the Russians have been telling the Iranians like don't do too much, don't hit civilians in Israel, don't escalate too much. China on the flip side is not terribly involved. It has all kinds of economic interests. China convened Palestinian factions recently in an effort to bring them all together rather ill advised effort if you ask me because it's centered on the premise of incorporating Hamas into whatever the next government system comes next in Gaza incorporating Hamas into the PLO with the assumption that so long as the Palestinian political body is broken there won't be a possibility of moving towards peace. I argue the opposite that so long as you include in this the actor Hamas that is most dedicated, violently dedicated to opposing peace, you won't achieve that peace. But that's all China is going to do in this. China is not going to send forces, they're not going to send weapons, they're not going to provide money. They want to, you know, Kind of increase their footprint. They're more concerned about the impact economically of the Houthi attacks. The one actor you didn't mention is the Europeans. And this particular instance, the Europeans actually have an important role to play, especially in Lebanon and vis a vis Hezbollah. You know, if Germany and France were to communicate to Lebanese actors that if Hezbollah does something against Israel that drags Lebanon and Israel both into a war that ultimately the civilians in each country do not want. Uh, remember that Lebanon has been suffering from a severe economic crisis, that they should not anticipate that the Europeans are going to come in and rebuild the electrical grid again, this type of thing. Those Lebanese political actors can and will communicate to Nasrallah just how bad the situation will be if he drags Lebanon into a war. Hezbollah, other Lebanese, they all see what happened to Gaza in that war, they don't want that to happen in Lebanon. That ultimately has been the most significant mitigating factors to why Hezbollah has not done even more than it has done over the past 10 months and, and that remains for that matter, Iran, as much as it wants to retaliate against Israel, as much as it has not become a Zionist does not want Hezbollah to get involved in too big of a full scale war with Israel because it wants Hezbollah's rockets powder kept dry because it sees Hezbollah's rockets as Iran's best deterrence against Israel or anybody else attacking their nuclear program at a time when, let's be blunt, over the past 10 months, they have really ratcheted up the pace of their nuclear program. And by the way, they also see it as the best second strike capability, should anybody do something against their nuclear program. So at the end of the day, I have to say, I have a very, very, very cautious, I won't even call it optimism, but hope that we're on the cusp of something other than full fledged regional war. I don't think the Iranians want to start something that's going to draw a huge response In their border that's the red line for Iran, you know, they just lost a president to helicopter crash they just had a very embarrassing episode where presumably the Israelis snuck a bomb into an IRGC safe house and killed the Hamas leader like that's super embarrassing, but it's most disconcerting to them because they fear that it signals to domestic audiences that aren't favorable to the regime that they are vulnerable and that they're not 10 feet tall. And so I think that Hezbollah is absolutely going to respond and the hope is that they respond in a somewhat limited way that does not involve the Kirya, does not involve targeting civilians or hopefully they don't by mistake hit the wrong place as they did in Majdal Shams and kill a bunch of civilians and it enables us to scale down in the moment. The flip side to this, as Nadav said, is compared even to when I was in Israel three weeks ago and had conversations with senior officials, that mute has changed. And right now, I think if Israelis get intelligence that Hezbollah is about to do something big, the Israelis are likely to preempt. And how does that fit into an escalatory cycle? We're not quite sure either. And the final thing I'll say is even if we're able to navigate this immediate crisis, we're still not out of the woods because among other things, Hezbollah's rockets still remain, but even more so in the near term, the most likely thing I think to lead to war between Israel and Hezbollah, if we are able to get out of this immediate crisis, It's not the rockets, it's Hezbollah ground forces. I was recently in Metula, you know, picture me in a flak jacket and helmet, I looked foolish.
DS: Was this your Mike Dukakis moment?
ML: It was embarrassingly a Mike Dukakis moment. It really was, you know, the glasses, the whole thing, but it's very, very obvious to me, speaking to residents, speaking to the IDF in the North, people are petrified of an October 7th style attack from Hezbollah. Remember that that plot was originally a Hezbollah plot line. And the wall, the red line forces are basically five kilometers away from the border now, they have other forces that are right there. And Israelis are only now coming to terms with the fact of just how precarious their situation was on October 8th. There were some 600 IDF people across that whole border. Not all of them combat. And this is something that is really terrifying to Israeli residents of the north. And the displaced residents will not go home until this issue is solved.
DS: I do want to ask you, we tend to think of Hezbollah as just such a directly and totally controlled organ of the IRGC and of Iran as though it has no independent agency. And I, generally when we do geopolitical analysis, we sort of, we talk loosely as though that's the case. And I more or less think that's the case, although I do recall in one of the earlier episodes that you've been on this podcast, you're like, eh, it's not so simple. Yes, Hezbollah is a proxy, but that doesn't mean that its leadership doesn't have often a diverging agenda, that it doesn't have its own political survival interests, it's got its own dynamic inside Lebanon. And I've been hearing again, just from various sources inside Israel, that there's the sense that Hezbollah has a more forward leaning approach to how it wants to respond to Israel and in Israel, right now, which is not exactly where Iran is and Iran is sort of reigning in Hezbollah and there's even talk that Hezbollah may do X and Iran may do X minus meaning Iran wants to do something less. Whereas that's not how we tend to think of Hezbollah. We just think that Hezbollah is going to do whatever Iran wants. So can you just explain a little bit about that dynamic?
ML: So look, it's like a marriage and over time kind of the relationship can fluctuate. Maybe it's not the case that Iran says jump and Hezbollah historically always says how high. But it is also the case that Hezbollah and the Quds force have become much much closer and integrated over the past few years, and right now I don't see a delta between them. I see Iran having an interest in saying look Hezbollah you do more of the retaliation we might do less of the retaliation. There's a lot of international pressure on Iran right now, not to do too much for fear that that could really move things into an escalatory cycle towards regional war. Remember that Hezbollah has its own interests right now. Before Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran, Fuad Shukr was assassinated in Beirut. And if you are Nasrallah and you are sitting at the head of the table for Hezbollah's Jihad council, you now have three big empty chairs over the past few years. Imad Mughinyeh is gone. Mustafa Badreddine is gone. Killed by his own, by the way. That's another story. Fuad Shukr is gone. There are a bunch of people that Nasrallah can't really rely on. There are basically only two people on the Jihad council he really can rely on. And one more than the other, Emad Akel and Ali Karani. And he wants to retaliate. He feels he has to retaliate. And I think the Iranians, they're coordinated on this. And I think the Iranians are saying, okay, maybe instead of a big attack by Hezbollah and us and the Houthis and Shia militants in Iraq and in Syria, maybe it'll be more concentrated Hezbollah attack and maybe we'll do something here or there. Look, the Iranians have even said publicly now we're going to respond in time and place of our choosing. Over the past few years, Iranian external operations, assassinations, abductions have spiked tremendously. I just published an interactive map tracking these around the world, just published it yesterday on our website, washingtoninstitute.org. And that's something that whatever happens in the next few days is definitely going to continue to spike. Iran is going to seek to target Israelis even more than it has been over the past few weeks and months.
DS: Okay, Nadav, I want to ask you about something Matt referenced, which is, suppose Iran doesn't want a regional war. Every analyst I know who follows Iran is telling me Tehran doesn't want a regional war, at least not right now. Okay, they may be right, they may not be right, let's assume they're right. Their ability to prevent a regional war while still taking some action, so if they believe what they interpret as a measured response as opposed to a dramatically kind of escalatory response could be two different worlds. So take the response that they launched in mid April, 300 projectiles, cruise missiles, drones, the whole portfolio of tools that they launched against Israel. Virtually none of them got through. Israel's multinational defense system suppose 10% had gotten through suppose 5% had gotten through we could have been in a whole other world We could have been in a regional war. What I'm being told is some focus of the response that Israel's anticipating is hitting is military bases, an Air Force base, an intelligence base, like an 8200 headquarters. All of these assets are north of Tel Aviv. It doesn't matter what kind of preparatory steps Israel takes. If an 8200 unit is hit and a number of 8200 personnel are killed, these are the, among the most premier elite talent in Israel's military and the IDF's personnel arsenal, if you will. And if a few of them got killed, so you can't say, well, civilians weren't killed. That would be a huge moment for Israel, and it would be symbolically an extraordinary setback if 8200 personnel were killed directly by an Iranian strike. That is not far fetched. I hate to say it I mean, I hate to say this for Israel and I hate to say this because I know a number of 8200 personnel. So I the idea that you know, if that were to happen, I don't think Israel could say oh, they just they just turned the dial a little bit Iran, but they didn't go full bore I think Israel would not be able to avoid a major response. So how do you think about that? This sort of possibility that Iran really doesn't want this to escalate beyond something moderately symbolic in its response and the reality that it easily could.
NE: Well, first of all, one of the things that happened during war is that the law of unintended consequences is always at operation. So you know, you start shooting projectiles and rockets and missiles and drones, you never know, it can be from an interceptor rocket that was shot by Israel that people get hurt. And this is something that happens all the time. And the louder the response, the bigger the unintended consequences can be. So this is the very basic. Now, as to the assumption you just made, Dan, It is Israel that has created now an equation of military versus military targets. Basically, Israel delivered a message to Hezbollah and to Iran, and the message was, we hit military targets. If you hit civilians. If civilians are going to get hurt with this, and probably Israel doesn't mean one or two civilians, it means them targeting civilians or hitting places that are heavily populated, knowing that civilians in large quantities are going to get hurt, then it's going to be war. Then we are going to respond to this disproportionately or we're going to have a heavy hand in our response, whatever you want to call it. So this message was delivered loud and clear to Hezbollah and to Tehran by both regional actors and through the United States and through a European country so that they'll understand that Israel has hit, as Matt said, you know, the chief of staff, the number two in Hezbollah, Faud Shukr, he's number two in Hezbollah, he's like the chief of staff of Hassan Nasrallah. This is the man Israel hit. Ismail Haniyeh, who's responsible as part of the Hamas leadership for the massacres of October 7th. Mohammed Deif, who's the chief of staff of Hamas. These are the people that they're trying to avenge their deaths. And the Israelis are saying, don't drag civilians into this. Now, what are the Israelis really saying? They're saying, if you're going to hit civilian targets in Israel, well, there's not going to be any electricity in Beirut the day after, or this is at least the threat. So we're going to hit the infrastructure that we can hit according to international law when we are at war with a neighboring country or with a country at all. And that includes infrastructure that supports military installations. For instance, in some cases, the electricity grid. So what we're seeing here is that the Israelis are creating the equation of army versus army. So if they're going to shoot at the 8200 base and kill a few personnel, this is going to be within the equation of a military target being hit. Now, is this going to be huge? Is it going to lead to severe number of casualties on that base? Well, that's one of the questions that Israel will deliberate as to its response. But I want to again underline something that Matt said that referred to something that I said. Israel isn't in the mood of waiting to see some kind of a terrible attack or surprise attack, sneak attack, either aerial or ground, by the way, and I wouldn't rule out some sort of a ground attack from Hezbollah, from Iran. I published at the time a story about the IDF preparing for the possibility of Iranian led proxy militias trying to infiltrate Israel's eastern border. So I remind our listeners that Israel's, you know, widest, longest border is to the east to the kingdom of Jordan. Also, you know, going through Syria, and on the edge near Eilat with Egypt. So this is the longest border and the IDF could not possibly defend this entire border, you know, mile by mile. So you really need to have their intelligence. You need to have their technology to preempt any attack there. This is the place if you want to infiltrate Israel, you know, coming from the East, from either Iran or Iraq, these militias, or even crossing through Syria, if you're Hezbollah, this is the area, through Jordan that you would want to infiltrate Israel in terms of the Israeli response. And I'm only saying this because I published this because the IAF is very much focused on tackling such a scenario. So yeah, I wouldn't rule out a sort of a ground incursion of sort, or at least a raid of sort, led by either Hezbollah or by Iranian infused militias coming from Iraq or from other places. And at any rate, if details of this plan would be exposed by the Israeli intelligence that's working much more brightly than it did before October 7, let's put it this way, not that it's a, you know, a high bar to set, then Israel would strike first. Israel will strike first, and I don't think that they're going to wait for a determined green light from the White House to do so, because they're not going to get one, and they know that. But if, to your question, if this is going to be a military target that Hezbollah hit, that Iran hit, and it's going to be rather targeted, it's not going to destroy the entire Kirya area in Tel Aviv, that it's just huge in compared to the size of Tel Aviv as a city. If this is what they're going to do, Israel will respond, but it's going to be a measured response. And to the underlining assumption, yeah, this is what I'm hearing from Israeli intelligence is that they don't think that Iran wants war. Now, again, every time I say Israeli intelligence, I need to say after October 7th, we have seen this intelligence fail, but the very adamant, and you hear this also from Western intelligence. You hear this from the United States, Matt just said that, that the Iranians don't want this to spiral out of control. If it will spiral out of control, Israel will hit hard at Iran. It has a tremendous amount of targets, soft targets to hit there. And what Israel did in its previous response to the April attack, that's crucial to understand because this was so much discussed and deliberated within the Israeli leadership. What should we do? And what they chose is the most targeted, measured and limited response, yet lethal in the sense, as my friends in DC are telling me, you could really see the Iranians thinking through their discussions after the Israeli attack. I'm talking about that attack against a radar station not far from Natanz, Matt can correct me if I'm wrong, by I think two missiles shot by an Israeli aircraft hundreds of kilometers away. And the Iranians, you could see that at the beginning, they didn't understand what Israel did. And then they said, ah, you know, they hit that spot. And then they said, wow, we sent like 400, 500 projectiles, we hit nothing. They sent two missiles and they hit a strategic place. And that means they can do this again. And my friends in DC, not in, in Jerusalem are saying you could really see how the Iranians are starting to grasp the power of the Israeli Air Force and whoever ordered this attack knew what he was doing in terms of the way that Iran and Tehran will understand what Israel is capable of, and this deterrence of sort, which we will see now, if it worked, is what Israel is trying to think will help us prevent a regional war, by the way of the Iranians sort of restraining themselves of doing something incredibly stupid.
DS: What you're saying is Israel doesn't want a regional war, at least right now. I think that's what you're saying. Obviously, you're saying Iran doesn't want a regional war. Through the steps Israel has been taking so far, is it signaling its willingness to enter a regional war? And as it relates to the north, is there a sense that a regional war is inevitable with Iran? An Israel Iran war is inevitable according to Israeli decision makers and Israeli military planners, it's inevitable. Now we can debate the timing. Israel doesn't want it now. They expect Iran to have a limited response because Iran doesn't want a regional war and Israel can decide about a limited response to the limited response. We're now talking about days, weeks, months ahead. Is the reality that from Israel's perspective, a regional war is inevitable? And Israel at some point will be in that image you painted on the eve of 1967, June 1967, where it was a matter of time before Israel had to take this preemptive strike that it took before the Six Day War. And Israel is going to be in a similar situation again, which means Israel will probably be at war with Iran.
NE: I want to differentiate between Hezbollah and Iran. It's an assumption within the Israeli sphere that a war and a terrible war, a big war with Hezbollah is inevitable. That's an assumption within the defense apparatus in Israel, basically since the second Lebanon war. And Israel has been preparing through this war. And to an extent, the Israeli defense apparatus has been looking for this confrontation. And this is, of course, the October 11 decision by the Israeli cabinet that rejected the recommendation of the IDF and the Israeli Air Force to preemptively attack Hezbollah. That's four days after the massacres of Hamas, after the, uh, invasion of Hamas on October 7, the Israeli cabinet convenes and on the table is a suggestion by the IDF. Planes are basically in the air ready to attack. Israel has prime intelligence as to locations, weapons and arms of Hezbollah. Hezbollah isn't ready for that attack, isn't assuming that Israel is going to attack. And then the Israeli cabinet, a lot because of Netanyahu. And I'm not saying this to either flatter him or the opposite or criticize him. I'm just saying this is factually the case that Netanyahu didn't want this to happen. And Netanyahu even joined into the government, Benny Gantz and Eisenkot and made sure that they'll come into that meeting. They weren't even sworn in so that they'll be able to, together with him, prevent this attack because he needed to say no to the Israeli defense forces.
DS: Hold on, Nadav, this is important. You've told me this story and I've, there was a general full cabinet meeting in the days after October 7th. Gantz and Eisenkot had indicated that they were going to join the government and there was this war cabinet that was going to be created, but they actually hadn't been sworn in yet. And Gallant, the defense minister, was making the case for striking a preemptive strike in the North against Hezbollah. Netanyahu was uncomfortable with it. He wanted to, he was concerned that Gallant may be able to persuade the cabinet that it was a good idea. So in an effort to have the counter argument, he brought Gantz and Eisenkot into the cabinet meeting to make the case against Netanyahu's own defense minister, Gallant, to make the case against Gallant on striking the North and Gantz and Eisenkot agreed with Netanyahu and they made their case. That's how concerned Netanyahu was about a war in the north.
NE: It's not only Gallant. It's the Israeli Defense Force, the entire Defense Force. Look, in these kind of cabinet meetings, you have the chief of staff sitting there. There's the head of the Israeli intelligence, who's also a general. And you sometimes have the head of the division that we call Aman Mechkar, and that's the intelligence research division. At a certain point in this meeting, because it was so vigorously debated, Eisenkot, who's a former chief of staff, stands up, physically stands up. He goes physically to the chair of the head of the Israeli research division, who's not a general, he's a lieutenant general. And he tells him, sort of orders him, you know, this is a man who served underneath, Eisenkot, ‘you tell the cabinet what you really think, not what's the IDF position, what you think, what is your professional opinion?’ And the only personnel in that room who's wearing uniform who said, we shouldn't do that, we shouldn't attack Hezbollah now, was that Lieutenant General, the head of the research division of the intelligence division of the IDF. And so it was a dramatic meeting. And right after that meeting, that as you mentioned, you know, Netanyahu wanted Gantz and Eisenkot inside the room in order to, to prevent Garland and the, and the IDF from preemptively striking Hezbollah. Right after that meeting, the Prime Minister goes into a series of off the record briefings. I didn't get one, so I can tell you about these briefings, with media figures in Israel and officials trying to explain how terrible would have been a war with Hezbollah and how unready Israel is for war with Hezbollah and why it was the sound decision to make, to make sure that the IDF doesn't preemptively strike against Hezbollah. Now, if you ask Gallant today, or you ask the chief of staff today, Gallant for sure, the chief of staff, I don't know, but I presume they'll tell you that was a mistake. Israel could have preemptively stricken Hezbollah. And that was, Dan, the 1967 Six Days War moment that Israel had during that war. This is their argument. Now, I'm not sure it's true. I'm just making the argument. They're saying if we would have, you know, used our intelligence and aerial capabilities, we had, I'm not going to go into the details of our intelligence, but let's say that the IDF was very much certain that it's going to take Hezbollah by surprise on so many levels and so many fronts of its power, its military power, and its command center, that it would have changed the Middle East. And they blame, of course, the cabinet, Netanyahu, Gantz, and Eisenhower for not making this decision. If you talk with Eisenkot and with Netanyahu, they would tell you that would have been a disaster for Israel because this would have opened an immediate another front in the north. This would have become the main front that Israel is fighting at because Hezbollah is much more of an enemy than Hamas. And then we wouldn't have won against Hamas. We would have been left with both Hamas and Hezbollah. To this, Gallant will respond to you, I'm litigating the entire conversation here, Gallant would say, according to military doctrine, if you have two rivals, you first take down the more powerful one. You need to take down the more powerful one, or else you'll be exhausted fighting Hamas and then you'll be left with Hezbollah. I just, this is a deliberation for the history books and for the papers Matt is writing and will write in the future and I'll be avidly reading as time goes by. I just want to say something about this because of your prior assumption. War with Hezbollah is inevitable. A regional war is not inevitable as far as the Israelis are concerned. We should never go there. It is the Israeli strategy and has always been to never have a regional war. It's always not its best interest because it doesn't want everybody to swarm in. It's just one country. It doesn't have enough of a powerful alliances, definitely not military alliances in the region. It has allies, but not military alliances of sorts with Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They're not going to fight for us. Okay, they're going to coordinate with us their aerial defense, but these people are not going to fight for Israel together. This is not NATO, right? So Israel doesn't want a regional war. And I'll tell you another thing, Dan, if you ask my friends in the intelligence community, they'll tell you, you know, people think that the Iranians are what they are today, but there'll be tomorrow morning a revolution in Iran. We'll see these massive demonstrations that we have seen in recent decades. Come again and again and again, this time more powerful. Would this be a surprise to anyone considering that Iran is a failed state on many levels? No. So from that reason, your strategy with the Iranians needs to be postponing, postponing, and postponing, and always preventing them of having nuclear military capabilities, and that's not basically the strategy that Israel has. According to its limitations, you know, the U.S., and this is something we should debate, I think, or talk about, the U.S. has much more capabilities in dealing with Iran than the Israelis have in doing it alone.
DS: Okay. I want to talk about that because I have some strong views on the U.S. role here. But before we get into that question, Nadav, I do want to ask you, Matt, do you think as an outsider who's sort of an insider, meaning you're astute and close observer now and an analyst of Israel's capabilities as it relates to Hezbollah and Iran, can Israel do this alone? If things were really to spiral out of control. What I mean by that is let's just assume that Iran slash Hezbollah intended to have a limited response and not escalate beyond there. But that goes awry. So suddenly we're in some kind of regional war or Israel decides at some point, it has to take like the equivalent of a pre-1967 measure, not immediately, but sometime in the foreseeable future. In either scenario, Israel knows it's at war with Iran. And by being at war with Iran, presumably it's also war with Hezbollah. Can Israel do that? And I'm oversimplifying it because each of those two scenarios I just described have their own set of considerations and implications. But for just for the sake of this conversation, I just want our listeners to understand what Israel is capable of.
ML: So these are two very separate things. I'd put a regional war in one side and a war with Hezbollah in another side. Let's deal with the war with Hezbollah first. A war with Hezbollah would be a war like Israel's never seen before because Hezbollah has 150,000 plus rockets of different types and precision guided munitions and the drones. All of these sophisticated programs, by the way, were the things that Fuad Shukr was specifically responsible for. It would be equally bad, if not worse, for Hezbollah and for Lebanon. Israel would emerge victorious. Israel would potentially suffer more casualties than its suffered in typical wars. This would be a war not fought in someone else's territory alone. And that's why for years I mean i've gone up to Israel's northern border every year for years and years and every year i've been briefed on just how many more missiles they've gotten and just how much stronger red line forces have gotten that i've said so what are you waiting for every year I come and you tell me how much more powerful they are, they're not collecting the stuff as paperweights. They're collecting it to eventually use against you. And every year the briefing I got was look, the political and military command instruction is keep the calm. It was kicked the can down the road. And so now the big post October 7th reality across the Israeli political spectrum is that Israelis are no longer willing to live with a gun to their head, not from the South and not from the North. So, Israel would emerge victorious, but I think if Israel had its druthers right now, given the entire dramatic story that Nadav just told us, right, that moment has passed. The debate now is, do you take the opportunity, if you can call it that, of this extremely tense moment to revisit that conversation and strike Hezbollah now? They are more prepared, Hezbollah, than they would have been on October 8th. Or do you try and navigate through this, give yourself two to three years to let your reserves catch a breath, they're exhausted. Give yourself an opportunity to restock your munitions, particularly of very specific types of munitions, and then do what has to get done in a couple of years. The downside to that is you already have the IDF fully deployed, right? You already have the reserves called up. You already have Israelis displaced from the north. And therefore that four to five, two to five kilometer buffer zone, stepping down from that and coming back a couple years later into full fighting mode is very difficult. When I was there three weeks ago, the overwhelming, not unanimous, but the overwhelming takeaway I had was there are some in Northern Command who really want to do this now. There are some even in the general staff who want to do this right now. Israelis in the North want to do this right now, but overall everyone else did not. And in the three weeks since I've been here, since I was there in Israel, uh, that seems to have changed. And so now the question is, if and when Israel gets intelligence about what Hezbollah is going to do to retaliate for the assassination of Fuad Shukr and their role in the larger Iranian response, including the assassination of Haniyeh, do they act preemptively? Do they only take out the launchers that are in question, or do they do something more? Short of that, short of a preemptive strike, if Hezbollah strikes, do the Israelis send up interceptors and attack the launch sites and then much more? That to me is a given. The Israelis are not just going to play defense. They will play defense and offense at the same time. And then do they stop or do they do something more? That's the question in the moment. Israel has never asked America to fight for it ever. And they don't want American soldiers fighting their fight. They are very, very grateful for what the Biden administration has done. Two aircraft carriers in the Med. Now we have naval assets in the Med and closer to Iran, we've got more air fighters that have been sent to the region the past few days to help Israel defend itself from a potential multi front aerial assault like we saw in April. But if it comes to Israel attacking, they don't expect and I don't think they want the United States involved in that. The exception is, if it ever gets to the point beyond this issue of Iran's malign regional activities to Iran's nuclear program. If it gets to the point where Israel, maybe, and the United States concur that Iran is that close to actually crossing the threshold, however you define it, do the U.S. and Israel do things together? They have in the past. The assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, Hezbollah's arch terrorist in 2008, was, we now know, a joint Israeli American operation. I should note that many, many Americans in the intelligence community were clapping their hands vigorously when Fuad Shukr was killed because he was there involved in the marine barracks bombings, the embassy bombings that killed many CIA personnel. There's one other thing I want to throw out here, though. Away from the doom and gloom. And that is, there are a lot of people who are saying that for all of the talk about the Haniyeh assassination in particular, throwing Hamas, ceasefire, pause, hostage prisoner swap negotiations to the wind, actually, the opposite is happening. There's a tremendous shakeup within Hamas. First, they announced that Mohamed Ismail Darwish, a complete unknown Hezbollah's banker money man from Lebanon and now spends his time in Qatar is going to be the interim leader. Then they say, no, no, no, actually, you know, now it's going to be Sinwar. When everybody knows that Sinwar is in the tunnels in Gaza and is incapable of actually playing out that role, which means whoever his deputy is going to be is probably going to do it. Sinwar is under huge pressure. Sinwar, I'm told, wants a deal. If Netanyahu still wants to avoid war with Hezbollah, that incentivizes him to want a deal. Cause Nasrallah has made it clear, I'm not going to stop shooting until Sinwar agrees to a deal.
DS: And why does Sinwar want a deal? Assuming your sourcing is accurate. Why does Sinwar want a deal?
ML: For a variety of reasons that comes down to two main things. One, the impact of Israel controlling the Philadelphia corridor is really biting. It took some weeks after the Israelis did that for their weapons and cash to run out, but now it has, and if you can't restock the weapons and the cash and Gaza's a cash economy, like cash is no less important. They can steal a humanitarian supplies, but if Hamas sends money into Gaza, they're doing this through hawaladars, through money exchangers. They're not sending an actual cash. If I want to send money to you through a money exchanger, Dan, and you go to the local money exchanger and give the right password and say, give me the $10,000 for Matt, and the guy has literally no cash to give you, there's no liquidity in this cash economy. You're not getting any money. Hamas is feeling tremendous pain in that regard and Haniyeh's loss comes in the heels of much more significant tactical operational losses in Gaza, Muhammad Deif, Marwan Issa. The fighting capability, the remaining battalion commanders Hamas has are the ones who are coming to Sanwar I am hearing and pressuring him even if it's only a deal that gets to the first phase for 40 something days, they want a breather and so there's an opportunity if that happens I could see both Iran and Hezbollah doing something but doing less or not doing something and saying look, our strength is what finally convinced the evil Netanyahu to agree to a deal. I'm not saying that is necessarily going to happen, but that is another way in which this could play out, either before a strike or if there is a limited strike right afterwards, because the dynamics that existed before the assassinations of Faud Shukr and Ismail Haniyeh, in terms of pressing both Hamas and Netanyahu towards needing a deal, those remain.
NE: I do agree. I would add another thing to this entire discussion, and that is that to an extent Hamas is trying to deliver on its promise for the flood of Al Aqsa. This is what they wanted. They wanted a regional war.
DS: So the flood of Al Aqsa, meaning the war on October 7th, that was what they called it, the flood of Al Aqsa, that Hamas was going to flood Israel.
NE: It's going to be the war of independence for the Palestinians, yeah? And what they wanted is Hezbollah to join in. Hezbollah did join in on October 8th, just one day afterwards, but also they wanted to bring Iran into this. So if there was a strategic planning by Sinwar to make this a regional thing, and he actually said that, you know, by naming it, by labeling it the flood of Al Aqsa. So Iran is very much in the story. He succeeded in that. And I think that to an extent, of course, the Israelis would have been extremely happy if the Americans would have been much more aggressively by their side, even more than the Biden administration was at the beginning of the war. So, you know, Hamas is bringing Iran over and the Israelis would have very much wanted to bring the West with them. And this is what Prime Minister Netanyahu meant in that speech in front of Congress when he talked about barbarity, and civilization. This was his attempt. So this is all very much on the record. This is not me analyzing this. This is not a sort of psychology of decision makers. Oh, no. What Hamas wants is to Iran to be part of this. And what Israel wants is to for the West and for the United States as the leader of the West to recognize that this is the big battle of our time and they need to stand by Israel much more than they do right now. And I think that to an extent, it's not within the talking points of the American political strategic elite that sees China and the threat from the East. And of course, Putin and Ukraine as the major issues and the war in the Middle East is seen as a nuisance of sorts, as a waste of time, you know, just get the deal done, finish the war. And by the way, this is very much, and I'd like to hear your thoughts about that, Dan, this is very much the position of both parties, or at least of both people running for president. It's like Trump is saying, you need to wrap up the war. You need to finish the war. He's telling Israel, you need to finish the war. And basically this is also what the White House is saying, in different ways, in different routes. It's different. I know, I know it's different, but for both sides, it doesn't seem like this is the event. So what the Israelis are saying to their allies is this is the event. And I'm not trying to convince anyone. I'm just portraying the position of Israel there and asking you guys, as both of you are Americans, then you know, better than me, how things work, probably in DC. Do the Israelis have a chance in convincing that this should be really very much refocused or it's all going to be, you know, just get the war over, get the deal, uh, we don't care.
DS: I think there's a few things going on here. We're going to address what I think the Trump approach is to the war another day. But I will say that at least leaders I've spoken to in the Gulf, some of whom are very involved with the hostage negotiations, they have told me that their counsel to the mediators is Hamas better get a deal done now, because who knows if Trump wins and is the next president, who knows what you're dealing with. That is to say, he says, let's wrap the war up. But he also makes clear that in pursuit of it wrapping up he's willing to give Israel whatever it needs to wrap it up, which means it gives Israel the capacity to have a very forward leading, very aggressive approach in its quote unquote wrapping up, meaning he's going to be far less sensitive to what the Europeans think. President Trump will be far less sensitive to what the UN tries to do. He'll be far less sensitive to what Democrats in Congress think Israel should do. So, even if he wants it to wrap up, he's comfortable with Israel taking a very, very, you know, full throttle approach in service of that, which is much different from what a Harris administration would likely do. The Harris administration would be far more sensitive to what Europe thinks, far more sensitive to the UN, certainly far more sensitive to what Democrats and Congress think. So that's one big difference. And I would say the Harris administration, what is very disconcerting for me, and these are early days in her presidential campaign, so there's still time to course correct. But I think what you're seeing in the Harris, what could be the case with the Harris administration is a major divergence from the Biden administration. I have my fair share of criticisms of the Biden administration, which you and Nadav and I, Nadav, you and I have discussed on this podcast. But, I never questioned whether President Biden had a core connection to Israel. He, as I say, you know, he felt Israel in his, you know, he had like a heart for Israel. Even though I disagreed, I thought his administration tried to be a little too cute sometimes between providing Israel more or less with what it needed from a military support standpoint, both in providing munitions and deploying various military assets to the Middle East and what he said publicly. And he'd sometimes think he could message one thing publicly and while he's still providing all the military support Israel needs. I've been critical of that approach. I don't think it works, but I never questioned where Joe Biden stood on Israel. I have serious questions about where Kamala Harris stands on Israel. And if I'm having those questions, I got to believe those who don't have Israel's interest at heart, who are watching events. are interpreting the things she said. For instance, just to provide a few data points. One, after her meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu a couple weeks ago that you were in Washington for Nadav, she issued this statement, ‘Israel has a right to defend itself, but,’ and I always say, you know, and I've, it's dangerous whenever a politician states something and then says, but, because you always brace for what's coming after the, but, and of course, after the, but was a litany of criticisms. So that was worrisome. And then it was followed by, I don't know if you followed the events with her vice presidential selection, I have been really concerned about how she handled it. That is to say she did not have to pick Josh Shapiro I'm, not suggesting for a moment that Governor Shapiro was someone she had to pick and by not picking him, she's an antisemite. That's like a line that, I don't buy that. I think it was a mistake politically for not to pick Governor Shapiro But again, that's also probably a conversation for another day what I found so disheartening is there was clearly, as it looked like Governor Shapiro was the frontrunner to serve, to be selected by Vice President Harris, late last Thursday, Friday, this campaign organized by progressives to disqualify Shapiro. I mean, when you read some of the stuff that was circulating, ‘Genocide Josh’, they were calling him Genocide Josh. It was shocking. If you look at all the people who celebrated him not being selected, they're all the people who are most exuberant. Ilhan Omar, Jamal Bowman. I mean, these leading lights, quote unquote, of the anti Israel mob in Congress. And she never confront, you know, her staff put out a statement saying something like, you know, the concerns about Josh Shapiro being Jewish were never a factor. They, they, they put out some statement from a staffer. That's the wrong way to do it. By the way, I don't begrudge her. She can choose whoever she wants. She probably has many reasons why she chose one person over another, but she should have said front on, I see incendiary rhetoric coming from activists in our own party who are saying that Josh Shapiro should not have been chosen because of his positions on Israel and because of his positions on some of these antisemitic protests on U.S. college campuses during the last school year. Let me be clear. Josh Shapiro's positions are my positions. There is no daylight between the statements that Josh Shapiro has made and events since October 7th and where I stand. And she could have just confronted it head on. Just last night she was speaking, or just yesterday, she was speaking at a rally in Michigan and her speech was interrupted by these pro Hamas activists. Now we've seen these at Biden rallies all the time over the last, you know, since October 7th. And it's the first time we've seen it at a Harris rally. Now, clearly She had not prepped on how to respond to such a situation. So in that moment, you saw her instinct. You saw her response. It was like an MRI of how Kamala Harris thinks about criticisms of Israel right now, because you just saw her raw response. What was her raw response? In fact, here, let's play it. ‘You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I'm speaking.’ So when you see what she says there, she doesn't confront their criticisms of Israel. She doesn't tell them that what they're saying is wrong and irresponsible, and it has no place in today's Democratic Party or no place today in the Harris-Waltz campaign. What she said is, what you're saying is going to help Trump get elected. In other words, she sees Israel through the lens of, is it going to help my election or is it going to help Trump's election? Not about where she stands, what she thinks is right. What she thinks is the principal position. Israel for her is another political volleyball that just bounces back and forth, and she needs to think about how she's going to handle it. She at one point called for a ban of fracking. Now she's not for a ban on fracking because she knows it'll hurt her campaign in Pennsylvania. She once was for single payer system for healthcare when she was running for president last time. Now she's against it. I can go through all these issues. She was for this, now she's for that, because she's making calculations about how all these issues impact her election in 2024. It turns out Israel is just another one of those issues. And what she's clearly trying to do is keep the democratic coalition together, prevent those cracks that emerged because of Biden, cracks from progressives. So she's trying to tell them, you know, don't worry, I'm okay, I'm more or less, you know, with you, or at a minimum, I'm not going to confront you. And I think that message Nadav is extremely dangerous in terms of how observers in the Middle East, who, as I said, don't have Israel's best interests in mind, are viewing what a potential Harris administration could look like and, uh, policy could be like. And I see Matt wanting to sort of jump in there, so I, I don't want you to actually hurt yourself as you're jumping out of your chair, so, uh, I'll turn the mic over to you.
ML: Look, this is going in a direction I didn't anticipate we'd go in, and I'm a very non-partisan person who's worked in Democratic and Republican administrations, last in the Bush administration. But I have a completely different read from you, Dan.
DS: Bring it.
ML: I am very worried that a Trump administration is going to tell Israel, this is not what I need, end it now. Which is effectively what he's already said, like that Netanyahu's a loser because he hasn't ended it now, he hasn't moved fast enough. He has other interests that are largely isolationist anyway, and I'm not convinced that a position of like, you know, do whatever you need to, he can say that now when he's not in the White House, I fear that his position is going to be very different if he were to get back to the White House. And as for Harris, look, it is early days. I don't share the extent of your concern. And I think that actually what she did at the rally was really, really smart. That's not the opportunity to start arguing with someone. She, like a classroom teacher, raised an eyebrow, gave him a look, shut them down, went right back to her talking points and kept things focused, and politically, it's actually a really smart decision to unite the party. Move beyond the period where people when Biden was the candidate were thinking maybe they weren't gonna vote for him, they weren gonna not vote for Trump and just remember at this rally. Are you saying you want to vote for Trump? No, okay. So let's move on that to me does not reflect a lack of support for Israel. I think we're going to find actually that her policies are going to be quite consistent with Biden's on Israel, which does have in it a significant point of concern about what the average Gazan is going through right now, which I think all of us should be concerned about, but it hasn't translated into a, you know, Israel, that's it. So my take is different, I don't want to get into a partisan conversation about it, but I do think that at the end of the day for the all the issues that we were talking about in the core of the podcast, this is largely irrelevant because Israel doesn't have the luxury of waiting till November. Right, the thesis is going to hit the oscillator on this one way or the other before then.
DS: I want to respond, because I didn't think you were going to take this conversation where you took it, which is fine, because you didn't expect me to take it where I was going to take it.
NE: I'm just going to enjoy this as an Israeli. I'm going to enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
DS: Meanwhile, for our listeners who can't see the video, Nadav is just popping popcorn right now. He's just popping popcorn and sitting back and enjoying this. He's like, I'll let the two, I'll let the two gringos like-
NE: This is probably, the most civil discussion ever made, you know, between the, sort of, uh, Harris/Trump, uh, foreign policy, ever.
ML: It's the first time I've been called a Harris, uh, surrogate, that's, uh, but, okay, sure.
DS: Yeah, he's not a Harris surrogate.
ML: I can play whatever role you need me to play in your podcast, whatever you need.
DS: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I want to say a couple things. I get asked all the time, how do I think a Trump presidency would be towards Israel in the Middle East, and my response is the following; of course, I don't know. And trying to make predictions about Trump is tricky, but with any candidate for office, which Trump is the best indicator of future performance that contradicts what people say about the capital markets, the best predictor of future performance is past performance. And I say that when I'm looking at a Senator who's running for president, I say, well, what was the record on Israel when they were a Senator? So, with Trump, we have this incredibly unique set of data, which we actually have data on how he served as president. So if you look at how he served as president, he had a similar approach that he articulated, Matt, as you point out, he was looking for a more restrained leadership role, if you will, for the U.S. and the world. He certainly was the architect of the Abraham Accords. He backed and architected very aggressive action against Iran, not the least of which resulted in the killing of Qasem Soleimani. He invested heavily in the defense budget. We all know, moved the embassy to Jerusalem, you know, backed the Israeli sovereignty of the Golan Heights. He took a number of steps and had a maximum pressure campaign generally towards Iran. So I don't know if he would do all those things again, and I don't know what all those things tell us about what he'd do in the future, but at least there's a record there to point to, and I do think a lot depends on who Trump's advisors are. And Trump as president, he tends to be a president who relies very heavily on the people around him. And if the people around him, whether they be Mike Pompeo or Robert O'Brien or Tom Cotton or these other names that are speculated about who could be in senior national security roles, these are people, some of whom at least served in his last administration and had a heavy influence on a number of the policies I'm talking about. As it relates to Harris. You may be right. You may be right that she's making the right moves. I think it is, at best, she's a blank slate on the Middle East and on Israel. Folks I've spoken to who work on this issue in the White House and in the administration say she's generally not involved in their deliberations. She's just not part of it. She's not interested in being part of it, and they're not interested in having her be part of it. And when she is part of it, her instincts are on a little worrisome. They're not where Biden's have been on these issues that we're talking about, but there may be a moment for her between now and November to speak out in a way that I would hope she would. She has not yet. And I think if she only just keeps talking about the issue the way she has been talking about it. I will not be reassured, as someone who's very concerned about the U.S.-Israel relationship, and I think she looks weak. In other words, she needs to confront this stuff, because it makes it look like she, you know, doesn't have a steely spine. So I actually think it is in her political interest to address this, and I think that, as I said, observers in the Middle East are watching her and wondering. And when there's that kind of ambiguity about what the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship will look like, I think that never serves Israel's interests. But I want to come back to something you just said, Matt, which you said it all doesn't matter because us having a speculative conversation about what happens after November is besides the point. What matters is, like the next three or four months, which is to say the big closing questions for you both, and I'll start with you Nadav. Does Israel have an Iran strategy and if so, what is the end game? And does the U.S have an Iran strategy and what is the U.S end game?
NE: The Israeli, uh, Iran strategy is very much based on buying time. And that's very true for the entire project that is the state of Israel and the Zionist idea within the Middle East. The idea is we once had great relations with Iran. We might have great relations with a new Iran that is not the Islamic Republic once again, but we need to make sure that they don't possess nuclear weapons and we need to somehow limit and tackle, confront their proxies across the region before they do some immeasurable harm to Israel's ability to live in the region. This is the strategy. The problem with Israel is the tactics employed. I don't think that Israel managed beyond postponing the Iranian nuclear program, which was extremely successful, I don't know of any kind of operation like that in history, Israel has been fighting its secret war against Iran, and it's been recruiting the international community, it's been supplying intelligence to Western intelligence to show the Iranian nuclear ambitions. But beyond that, trying to rein in and limit the strengthening of the Iranian proxies across the region, it has not succeeded because it doesn't have, I think the power to do so. And this brings me to the United States. Look, I'm going to allow Matt, uh, this is really his field to talk about the U.S. strategy. What I am going to say is about how it looks like from the region, from the Middle East. And what I'm saying right now is in agreement with Saudis, with Emirates, with my friends over there, when we sit together, either journalists or myself with people I interview, this is in agreement. The U.S. doesn't seem to have a strategy to confront, to tackle, to deal with Iran in the Middle East. Sometimes, it has some wishful thinking. One wishful thinking is we're going to have normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and this somehow will, you know, overbear, will just tackle the Iranian influence in the region. And this is the way we're going to do it. And then when Iran and its proxies and Hamas do everything in their power to derail this normalization process, then the U.S. says, okay, so we need to stop this war and then go after our aim, which is again, the normalization in the region, but they do not have a strategy. I don't understand what the U.S. is trying to do. Basically since Trump decided to withdraw from the JCPOA, I'm not saying that the JCPOA was a great decision as of itself. I'm not going to, we're not going to deliberate this. This is going to be like three chapters. But what I am saying is that since Trump left the JCPOA, and this includes, of course, the Trump administration and the Biden administration. I don't think that the Americans have any strategy. And if you ask my Saudi friends, they'll be telling you now the U.S. is fighting the Houthis in Yemen. Well, we have been fighting the Houthis in Yemen. We might have been unsuccessful, but we tried to do that. And then you, you Americans came and you stopped us from doing so. And now you need to shoot the Houthis yourself. So this is what has happened to the U.S. either tactic or strategy in the region. How are you going to confront a country that's very much dedicated to the idea of exporting the revolution, of having its axis of resistance or axis of terror across the region, devoted to the idea of killing civilians, regardless, you know, Muslim, Sunni, Israelis, it doesn't care in order to entrench itself within the region and become the superpower, not only of the Middle East, but of the Near East. What are you going to do with this country? And I don't think that as a person living in Israel, as a person that talks with other people in the region, that are part of the moderate alliance that the U.S. is trying to structure. We don't think that the Americans have any idea how to tackle the Iranians. I think, and I've said that on your podcast before, that it's not a strategy. It's sort of a Harry Potter approach, you know, we want this to happen and therefore it shall appear. And if we, we stress that this is what the United States wants, this is what will happen. And of course, there's always the fear of using force or even being seen as willing to use force and the immediate expressions of no boots on the ground, which I do understand from a domestic political viewpoint of an, you know, an average American. I understand why American politicians are saying that. But I also understand why the Iranians and all the rest in the region are looking at this and saying, you know, the Americans aren't serious and they are not here to stay. That's the most important thing. And this is my viewpoint from the region, but I'm really looking forward to Matt's answer, how it is really, you know, being structured in DC.
DS: Matt, last word here.
ML: Look, I've been to several Gulf countries since October 7th, including the ones you mentioned, and I hear much the same. I think it's absolutely true that the U.S. does not have a consistent policy towards Iran. Part of it has to do with our less than four year cycle and our inability to plan out over a multi year process, which is what this needs. Part of it is that there are very, very few things on which there's bipartisan agreement in this country. One of them is end to Middle East wars. And that makes it very difficult to figure out how to contend with a problem that is a very large one, it's actually multiple problems. And finally, we have decided, together with the Europeans, and largely together with the Israelis, over now several administrations, that of the multiple problem sets that Iran presents, the big one we were going to tackle, because it was the biggest problem was the nuclear problem, whether we did it well or unwell, leave that aside for a moment, but it was focused on the nuclear and it had the unintended consequence of leaving Iran's other malign, especially regional activities untouched, largely untouched, we'll sanction here or whatever there. And now we are where we are 10 months into this regional war. So on the one hand, Iran has stated very publicly that it has a, there's a new equation and there will be an Iranian, not just a proxy, but proxy, an Iranian response to any time Israel or anybody else does something, which is why, you know, people are thinking Iran will maybe have to do something after Haniyeh. And that is certainly something that the Israelis are trying to undo and push back on and end this effort, which they've successfully deployed and tested over the past 10 months of uniting the fronts. And if one part of the Iranian proxy network is at war with Israel, they all step in. On the other hand, I do take some level of comfort from the aftermath of the Iranian rocket and drone onslaught against Israel in mid April. I think that there has never been a greater successful commercial for A, just how big a regional threat Iran presents to everybody, right? Iran struck Iraq many more times than it struck Israel. Uh, the Jordanians were very, very concerned because all these rockets were flying over Jordan. That's why the Jordanian foreign minister just went to Iran, basically saying, please don't, you know, uh, everybody saw Iranian rockets flying over the Haram Al Sharif temple mount and for the need and the efficacy of regional air defense. And so I think one thing we should look for in the last three months of the Biden administration, whether or not it'll be successful, whether or not it's a good idea. But I think one thing we should look for is they're going to try and push for movement towards normalization of some sort, some type of, of deal and whether or not it succeeds. I think that's a good idea. Pushing that idea forward, keeping people in the region focused on the idea of kind of uniting the moderates against the shared threat they face from Iran. Uh, I also think that is the thing that is most likely to get Israelis who are either very right of center and are not at all in favor of any type of two state solution or are just, as the majority of Israelis are, traumatized since October 7th and saying, what are you talking about two state solution right now? Doing things that will, you know, enable some type of Palestinian self governance in Gaza that Israel feels isn't a threat to it. There are opportunities over the next three months to move the ball in a better direction, whether or not it actually gets there. And I think we should anticipate that the Biden administration is going to be very, very aggressive on foreign policy activities, not limited to the Middle East, but including the Middle East, over the next three months.
DS: All right, gentlemen. We will leave it there. Obviously, we'll probably have to pick back up on this conversation in the days and weeks ahead, depending on events in the region. But until then, Nadav, Matt, thank you for joining us.
NE: Thanks very much. Thank you for having us.
ML: It's a pleasure, especially to do this with Nadav.
NE: Thanks. Me too, Matt.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Nadav Eyal, you can find him on X @nadav_eyal. And you can also find his work at Ynet, and Matt Levitt is @levitt_matt. And you can find his work at WINEP, that's the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.