Holding Pattern(s) – with Jonathan Schanzer
Israelis are stuck in a tense holding pattern, each day waiting for a response from Iran, or Hezbollah, or both - an attack that was expected to occur last week, then later forecasted to occur over Tisha B’Av. And yet, each day… nothing.
What is going on — in Tehran? In Jerusalem? And in Washington D.C.?
At the same time, there is a similar pattern in the hostage negotiations. Today, senior officials from Israel, the U.S., Qatar and Egypt met in Doha to resume negotiations for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal - talks, as we are learning, that will continue into tomorrow.
Israel seems to be on the brink of major developments - and yet, Israelis are left questioning: when will they occur? And against that backdrop: is Israel on offense, or is Israel on defense?
To help us assess all of this from a broader strategic perspective, our guest is Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, who is senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
Jon previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he played an integral role in the designation of numerous terrorist financiers. Jon's latest book is "Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War". His other books include: "State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State", and "Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine".
Jonathan has studied Middle East history in four countries. He earned his PhD from King’s College London, where he wrote his dissertation on the U.S. Congress and its efforts to combat terrorism in the 20th century. He speaks Arabic and Hebrew.
To watch the FDD Morning Brief, hosted by Jon: https://www.fdd.org/fddmorningbrief/
Register for Call me Back Live at the Streicker Center in New York: https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
JS: The Israelis are getting attacked right now on seven fronts kinetically. And I don't think that's discussed enough in our media, which we can talk about how flawed it is, but you know, it's Gaza, it's West Bank, it's Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Iran itself. And that, by the way, doesn't even get into the cyber realm, the campus stuff, the law fair, right? I mean, you could probably point to 10 or 12 different fronts that Israel's fighting on, but kinetically, they've spent a huge amount of time and effort and they have exhausted their troops to some extent or another fighting in Gaza and now they have other fronts to deal with.
DS: It is 4:15 PM on Thursday August 15th in New York city. It is 11:15 PM on Thursday in Israel as Israelis wind down their day following a week that included tisha b'av and another shabbat coming up in which Israelis wait. And the waiting is what we will talk about today. Israelis seem to be stuck in a tense holding pattern. Each day waiting for a response from Iran or Hezbollah or both. An attack that was predicted to take place last week and then forecast to occur over Tisha B'Av, and yet each day, nothing. What is going on behind the scenes in Tehran, in Jerusalem, and in Washington, D.C.? And also at the same time, there is a similar sentiment surrounding the hostage negotiations. Today, senior officials from Israel, the United States, Qatar, and Egypt met in Doha to resume what was billed as a crucial round of negotiations for a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal. Talks, as we are learning, that will continue into tomorrow. Hamas is actually not directly in attendance. All this is to say that Israel seems to be on the brink of major developments and yet Israelis are questioning when will they occur, and all against the backdrop; is Israel on offense or is Israel on defense? I've heard arguments on both sides from different Israeli friends and sources I speak to, but I wanted to sit down with someone who could kick this around with me who could take a step back and have a bigger more strategic geopolitical perspective and that person is Jon Schanzer, who is a senior vice president for the Foundation for Defense Of Democracies, a past guest on Call Me Back, longtime friend, and a former analyst on terrorism finance, covering Hamas and Al Qaeda for the U.S. Department of Treasury. Jon, thanks for being here.
JS: Pleasure, Dan. Good to be with you.
DS: So, holding patterns. It feels like we are in a holding pattern right now. It feels like this is not the first time Israel has been in a holding pattern since October 7th. So before we talk about this holding pattern, on the one hand it feels like a very vulnerable and uncertain moment, and a stall if you will, a stalled situation. And on the other hand it's actually pretty familiar.
JS: Yeah, absolutely. I would argue that this war since October 7th has been marked by multiple holding patterns, most of which have been imposed upon Israel by the United States. I think we can look back at the early days after 10/7 and you'll recall that, uh, Israel was sort of frozen, didn't know exactly how to respond. And they waited until President Biden and his team arrived in Israel. They prepared a proposal for what their war would look like. The Americans gave their feedback and then the Israelis were sort of off and running. Notably, by the way, that, that war plan initially included plans to attack Hezbollah. The administration refused. And put them in the direction of Gaza and then things started to move in that direction and things move quickly, if you'll recall, for a while it looked like Israel was just blitzing through the Gaza strip. They had conquered something like, you know, 80 or 90 percent of the territory and then we had our next pause. The next pause was Ramadan. And that was also imposed by the U.S. and by the way, the rest of the Arab world, the international community was really imploring Israel not to push forward in Gaza during the month of Ramadan, the holy month, with the idea that this could perhaps spark some kind of wider religious conflict. And so the Israelis waited again, then we come out of Ramadan and the Israelis are ready to go. And then they're told, no, you need to stop because we need to assess here in the U.S. and perhaps elsewhere, whether there's a humanitarian crisis that's brewing, a famine. You'll recall there that the Israelis were asked yet again to pause. Now since then the Israelis I think had been much smarter. They’d taken a more incremental approach. They were being told not to go into Rafah. They slowly ease their way into Rafa, into the Philadelphi quarter. And that's what they've been doing ever since. And I would argue they are now winning the war in Gaza. I don't think people talk about it that way, but I do believe the Israelis are pretty close to delivering a fatal knockout blow to Hamas.
DS: The holding patterns that I remember the most were the, like, kind of January to April. So that covers Ramadan, that covers concern from the administration, from the U.S. administration that Israel wasn't going to be able to deal with the humanitarian situation in Rafah. They couldn't conduct a military operation there without moving a big chunk of the civilian population, which the administration warned would take three months, four months. Remember Vice President Harris said, I've seen the maps, I've seen the maps, there's no way to move this civilian population without and conduct a military operation without risking hundreds of thousands of lives, she implied. You know, I've seen the maps. Well, I don't know what maps she was looking at because it took Israel about 10 days to move close to a million people when it decided to do the operation and being in Rafah has been an extraordinary strategic victory. Just being there, being right there on the Egyptian border, what Israel's been able to expose in terms of the tunnels and whatnot has been very important. So while you're right that Israel's in a much stronger position then, that period to me seemed like not just a stall and not just a holding pattern, but those like approximate three months were a real setback.
JS: They were a setback in the sense that the Israelis were on the five yard line, and they were sitting there on the five yard line from look, maybe we'll call it February. Maybe we'll call it March, you know, probably until May of this year. And again, that was around the time where I think maybe one of the few decisions that this government made where they, I think they openly defied the United States from what I can tell, and they moved in slowly. And then they took over the Philadelphi corridor, which basically enabled the Israelis to cut off Hamas's supply lines. And that's where we began to see the shift in momentum that I think we're still watching now. I think that shift was punctuated with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran a few weeks ago. But I also think that we can say with certainty, I mean, just hours ago there were reports that came out that the Israelis had destroyed another 50 tunnels underground. Every interaction that the IDF has with Hamas, it appears that the Israelis are getting the better of the terror organization. Their senior ranks are thinning out, their fighting ranks are thinning out. I think this war could have gone far more quickly had the U.S. not been throwing up these roadblocks repeatedly. But these pauses have become, I think, part and parcel of the war, because the Israelis have allowed themselves to essentially consult with the U.S. at every major intersection and every major intersection often involves a yellow or even a red light. So this holding pattern I think is one that has been dictated primarily by the Israelis. To me, it looked like they were almost like they were a boxer up against the ropes, just deflecting and blocking, you know, punches from the adversary. The adversary here, of course, being Iran, this Israeli government did not look like it was making any decisions a part from winning in Gaza. So in other words, things were spinning out of control in the North. We saw the Houthi drone attack on Tel Aviv. Obviously, we had the Iranian assault back in April of those, you know, hundreds of missiles and drones. It really didn't look like the Israelis were making decisions. And then all of a sudden we saw that flurry of offensive activity, right? It starts with the assassination of Fuad Shukr in the heart of Dahiya in Beirut, a senior Lebanese Hezbollah commander.
DS: It's not just that he took out Shukr, it's that they did it in Dahiya, which is itself like a Hezbollah stronghold, right? That they went right into the belly of the beast.
JS: Oh yeah. This was on Hezbollah's turf. It was a strong statement that they had pinpoint lethal intelligence right in the heart of Hezbollah land. And then, to add insult to injury, then they used pinpoint lethal intelligence to take out Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, in the heart of Iran, in an IRGC compound, where it turns out that they had placed an IED or some kind of explosive in Haniyeh’s apartment months prior, meaning that they had penetrated the IRGC compound. It was remarkable. And then there was the cyber attack that took place. Now the Israelis have not acknowledged responsibility for it but you know, this was a cyber attack on the central bank of Iran, I think, you know, it's a reminder to all of us here that the Israelis have quite a number of unspent rounds that they can fire at the regime in the realm of cyber.
DS: And Mohamed Deif and the Yemenite port, one of the architects of October 7th, and basically the equivalent of like the Hamas military chief of staff.
JS: Correct. Hodeidah got hit. That was shortly before the Shukr and Haniyeh assassinations. I mean, the guy that ran the military, he literally presided over Hamas from its transformation as a tactical terror threat to Israel to a force that brought the region to almost full scale war. He presided over that. And so it was a major setback for Hamas, but you get a sense right now that the Israelis are on offense to some extent or another. And I do think that between that And the U.S. efforts to broker an agreement with Hamas, possibly also Hezbollah, maybe Iran, which worries me, and we can certainly talk about that. So there's the diplomatic activity. There is the deployment of significant military assets to the region right now by the United States as a means to try to ward off Iran from attacking Israel. And so you put all of this together, and it's not a surprise to me that the regime in Iran would maybe want to pause and assess whether moving forward with a strike of its own would be smart, or whether to work by proxy. Or whether to continue on the negotiation track, maybe with the opportunity to extract more financial concessions from a Biden administration that is addicted to giving Iran concessions. There's lots of options that Iran has on the table right now. They have multiple strategies that they can potentially choose.
DS: Let's go through each party's strategy here. Let's focus on Israel's strategies, Iran's strategy, or strategies, and then U.S. strategies. So let's just start with Israel.
JS: So Israel, I think it's a story of three strategies, or maybe lack thereof. Look on the southern front I think the Israelis knew exactly what they needed to do and they're doing it. As we've already discussed, they're close to crushing Hamas. I think it's a matter of weeks if not months. I'd like to see them get Sinwar, Muhammad (Yahya) Sinwar , the guy who essentially duped the Israelis and pushed the region to war on October 7th, the architect of the 10/7 slaughter. It would be great to see him captured and maybe his brother too, Mohamed Sinwar, he's also considered to be a significant player here.
DS: But when you say Israel's close, how do you quantify that? Because I tend to agree with you, but I hear mixed interpretations, particularly from U.S. military personnel and experts who say, well, based on the way they assess what Israel does based on U.S. standards and U.S. metrics for success, it's not as clear that Israel is having as much success as we may think.
JS: You know, it's interesting you raise that, Dan, because, you know, I was reading today there were articles that were coming out that the U.S. has assessed that Israel can't do much more in Gaza.
DS: Well, that I think, by the way, is an information campaign by some in the U.S. to put more pressure on Israel to get a ceasefire done. That to me felt like a real orchestrated campaign, that whole article, but that's probably a separate subject.
JS: Well, I think so, but I also think that it represents the thinking in Israel to some extent or another. In other words, Israel knows that what they're going to continue to do, at least for now, is to surge into Gaza with specific intelligence provided to them by Hamas detainees or from SIGINT or HUMINT or whatever it is that they have, they go in and they take out a handful of Hamas fighters. Maybe they try to take a shot at Sinwar and then they leave. And they can do this over and over again. It's sort of what they do in the West Bank, by the way, on an ongoing basis, there's no reason why they can't do this in Gaza. And there's no reason why they can't continue to do this in Gaza. There's no sort of end date for what Israel is doing there as long as it's providing security to the people of Israel, which is All the IDF is trying to do.
DS: The difference though in the West Bank, I agree with you post, you know, kind of 2000 from like 2003/2005 on, through today, that's exactly the operating approach that Israel has with regard to the West Bank. But there they have some kind of Palestinian civilian authority that's running day to day civilian affairs, which makes it easier for Israel to go in and out dealing with security matters. In Gaza, they don't have that.
JS: And that's what the U.S. is pushing for, right? They'd like to see whether it's, uh, you know, the Palestinian authority get in there and take the wheel or, you know, some kind of international organization or coalition that would take control so that rebuilding could begin. And that's really where the U.S. has been focused, I think, and why we're seeing some of this information campaign being trotted out. But as for the metrics themselves, look, I think we can all agree, it's more art than science and trying to determine whether you know, you're fighting a spent force or not. But let's just be clear, the Israelis have killed somewhere between 10 to 20,000 Hamas fighters since this thing began, let's just call it 15, round number. That's out of the 30,000 fighters that were initially assessed to be the Hamas fighting force. So let's say you've taken out 15,000 fighters, there's another 7 to 10 that have been injured in the fighting and that are not coming back onto the battlefield. And there's another several thousand that have been detained by the Israelis. They're right now sitting in Israeli jails. They are, as I understand it, listening to Hatikva at full blast during waking hours. And they're still providing information to the Israelis. In the meantime, we've seen the thinning out of the senior ranks. Haniyeh's gone. You know, obviously we talked about Mohammed Deif, he's gone, the most senior military commander of Hamas. Marwan Issa, who is Deif’s deputy, was killed in March. Saleh Al Aruri, another senior guy, political and military, which by the way, I think underscored that there is really no dividing line between the political and military so called wings of Hamas. But Al Aruri was killed in January. That pretty much leaves a handful of nobodies in Doha, and it leaves Sinwar and his brother in the tunnels of Gaza, and there's a leadership crisis that's going on here right now. Sinwar just consolidated control over Hamas, and it's amazing that he would be able to do that, that the rest of the organization would agree, because he's gonna try to run Hamas from underground, while the Israelis are hunting him actively, and he is on the run, he will not use a phone, he will not use a computer, he has to send notes to people to have his orders executed. DS: When you look at the Hamas leaders that have been taken out, there's a conventional wisdom which I think is overly simplistic, which is that, well, when those guys get wiped out there's a whole nother generation right behind them that's ready to like, you know, succeed them and take over those positions. And I try to remind people, not so simple. Many of these leaders have been in these positions for years. If you look at the influence Mohamed Deif, as you said, to use him as an example, has had on the militarization and the professionalization of the Hamas military. That's not like, oh, he's done, we just pop in someone else to run that operation. Look at Shukr, I mean, he's not Hamas, he's Hezbollah, but he's been plotting attacks against Israelis and Americans. I mean, go back to the 241 Marines killed in 1983, murdered by Shukr. I mean, he was one of the architects. These are people who've been working on these terror projects for decades. It's not like they get removed and there's a whole bunch of people who can take over.
JS: No, correct. And I think the other thing to note is as it turns out, and I don't think the Israelis fully understood this, I don't know if we did, but that Philadelphi corridor was crucial for allowing Hamas fighters to leave the Gaza Strip to go get trained in places like Iran and Turkey or Malaysia. And then they get brought back into the country with new skills and new abilities, new military abilities, right. And this is how Hamas built up its force over time. That's not possible anymore either. And that's where I think the Philadelphi corridor component looms large for Hamas. It's not just that they can't bring in new rockets and new ammo and new weapons or cash. They also can't let their people get out and come back in with new skill sets. So when I look big picture at all of this, I see that the Israeli strategy of just besieging Gaza has worked, but now here comes the complexity. I think there's one question that comes out of this strategy wise that maybe I didn't see coming. I'm not sure the Israelis did, which is; did they focus too much on Gaza and not enough on all the other fronts? And just to be clear, the Israelis are getting attacked right now on seven fronts, kinetically. And I don't think that's discussed enough in our media, which we can talk about how flawed it is, but you know, it's Gaza, It's West Bank, it's Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran itself. And that, by the way, doesn't even get into the cyber realm, the campus stuff, the lawfare, right? I mean, you could probably point to 10 or 12 different fronts that Israel's fighting on, but kinetically they've spent a huge amount of time and effort and they have exhausted their troops to some extent or another fighting in Gaza. And now they have other fronts to deal with. And so when you look at the two other big ones, let's just say. For the sake of argument that Israel can continue to hammer back at the Houthis and hit back at the Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria that they don't pose significant threats and that the West Bank is still largely under control. Let's make that argument. I don't know if all of those are true, but that seems to be the conventional wisdom. Then you've got to just ask yourself, what is Israel doing vis a vis Lebanon and what's it doing vis a vis Iran? On Lebanon, I would argue there is no strategy. And I say that obviously, uh, with a heavy heart because this is the big one as far as I'm concerned. I've been watching the potential for a war in the north since October 8th. The israelis have lost territory, they've had to clear out a strip along the north of their country where people cannot live. Hezbollah has scored a significant victory.
DS: Scored a significant victory because they've basically gotten Israel to, at least temporarily, hopefully just temporarily, shrink its borders.
JS: Yeah. And Israel obviously has always, its doctrine is to fight wars on the enemy's turf, not on their own, but they have lost territory to an Iran backed terror group. And there is no clear way out of that right now. They don't really want a full scale war. We're hearing on a regular basis that the Israelis would like to wait six months to maybe a year and a half to reload, to recoup, and to get ready for another battle. And I don't see a way forward right now to tackling that problem. And that, I still think, it's probably the most likely scenario if there's another major conflagration to break out, It's probably there in the north. And again, I just don't see answers. It doesn't mean that Bibi’s a terrible prime minister, it doesn't mean, it just means that the IDF doesn't seem to be able to provide him with answers. He doesn't have an easy way to fix this problem, it's a multi front war that israel's dealing with and I don't personally see a strike, I've not heard one articulated yet in terms of how israel plans to address the threat from the north.
DS: Let me ask you before we move to Iran, there was this debate inside the cabinet, the security cabinet, and I think maybe even the full cabinet in the days after October 7th with some, including Defense Minister Gallant, according to reports, according to Nadav Eyal, who's on this podcast talked quite in great detail about this cabinet meeting that happened where Gallant and others from the security establishment were making the case for going into the North, taking on Hezbollah before responding directly to Hamas after October 7th, and they were ultimately overruled by Netanyahu, backed up by Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, who agreed with Netanyahu that you have to focus on the threat of the terror organization that launched the war before you can deal with another front. And while Gallant was arguing that this is our time to strike a preemptive strike, it's almost like Israel's pre six day war, June 1967 moment, go on offense against the bigger threat, and we can get back to Hamas and Gaza later. But this, if we don't deal with Hezbollah now when they're not expecting us to strike, will rue the day. And I guess my first question is, where do you come down on that? Do you think Israel's rueing the day right now for the reasons that you're describing, that there doesn't seem to be a strategy now?
JS: I think Israel made a mistake in not attacking Hezbollah and not taking them out when they had an opportunity.
DS: You mean in the days after October 7th?
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
DS: Wow.
JS: I mean, you gotta remember, you know, Hezbollah started attacking Israel on October 8th, right? It was one day after the 10/7 attacks and the Israelis start taking incoming from the north as well as the south. You have to also recall that Israel has never looked at Gaza as an existential threat. It's not even a strategic threat. As they've always seen it, it's a tactical threat. I think the Israelis have proven that they can siege Gaza and win if the U.S. lets them. Lebanon is a much thornier problem, right? You're talking about a terror group up there. Hezbollah has 200,000 rockets. They can fire 4,000 or so a day in heavy salvos. They have forces that are well trained. They've trained alongside the Iranian and the Russian militaries. They have precision guided munitions. They've got underwater drones. They're rumored to have potentially even chemical weapons. They have a lot of things that they can bring to bear on this battlefield. I think really it was a question of whether the Israelis understood when October 7th happened, that they were embarking upon a long war. I've been starting to call this the ‘10/7 wars’, plural. Because I do believe that multiple wars were launched on or around that day. And Israel really has no choice but to fight all of them. And not fighting your most challenging threat first, I think is a mistake. They could always clean up with Gaza later, but I think we're now seeing what happens when you defer your tough choices.
DS: Do you think Israel, the IDF, had the capacity in the days after October 7th to do what you described?
JS: Well, yes and no. And I think that's part of the problem. Again, getting to the, the pauses that we talked about, these sort of intersections where Israel stopped at a red or yellow light, you know, the Israelis waited until Biden arrived in Israel. It was lauded as an important moment in the U.S. Israel relationship. And I don't think I take issue with that. But I would say that, you know, we know now that Biden spoke to the Israelis in that room and said, don't start wars that you can't finish. In other words, he told them, don't fight in Lebanon. We will give you the weaponry that you need in order to finish off the war in Gaza. Of course, we know what happened after that, they began to withhold some of those weapons and they began to warn the Israelis not to advance. And all the pauses that we talked about from March and April and May, you know, it got complicated, but had the U.S. decided to convey the necessary weaponry, the 500 pound bombs and the precision kits and the 2, 000 pound bombs, the Israelis could very well have taken out Hezbollah. The problem now is that Hezbollah has been importing weapons at a pretty fast clip from Iran. We know that they have been building up over time. There've been multiple reports suggesting this, that Hezbollah is a fiercer force now than it was on October 8th, when it started firing at Israel. And that is part of the indecision that we see, the lack of strategy that we see on the part of the Netanyahu government.
DS: Okay. Now let's talk about Iran and what Israel's choices are with Iran and what the U.S. choices are in terms of dealing with Iran.
JS: Yeah. And I think it's probably also important to just note what Iran's choices are because they actually have many. Iran can do a number of things right now. One is they can play out the diplomacy game and try to extract additional concessions from the U.S. This is a game they've been playing for a long time, dating back to the 2013 interim nuclear deal, the JPOA, the joint plan of action. Which led to the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, billions of dollars in sanctions, relief and concessions, you know, cash and pallets, as we all know, from the Obama administration. And a lot of the people in the Biden administration, it's the same staff, it's the same crew. And they are, they're still pursuing a deal. They still think that Iran can somehow be a responsible actor on the world stage or in the region.
DS: Even now, you think they believe that even now, Jon?
JS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, 100%. And, you know, I mean, there are all these rumors about Obama still being behind the scenes and still trying to angle towards certain policy outcomes. I can't speak to that, obviously, personally, but I've heard it from enough people who seem to know that he's still part of the mix and his people are still part of the mix. And so I think that the Israelis are aware of the fact that Iran And the U.S. still have this dynamic that has, for whatever reason, they've not reached the end of this. They continue to hold out hope that we can somehow still arrive at a soft landing with the Iranians. I think it's insane to think that way, especially now as we watch, you know, seven fronts on fire in the Middle East. It sounds just not grounded in reality. But I do think that the Iranians see that as one strategy. Now, the other strategy is that they allow for a soft landing to the negotiations, they make a deal with Hamas, Hezbollah, everybody agrees to stop fighting, and then Iran prepares for the next round of this war, which could be in six months, it could be a year, it could be in two years, but we know that it's coming, and the Iranians don't mind necessarily waiting if it puts them in a stronger position. Other strategies would include what we call the Ring of Fire, which would be essentially unleashing their proxies, however many of them they want to unleash at any given time. We've not actually seen heavy salvos from all of the different fronts into Israel. Iran, itself, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza. That's a strategy they have not yet deployed yet, but they can. But this would be part of a war of attrition, which is exactly the kind of war that Israel doesn't want to fight, but we could potentially see that. The proxy strategy, we know they are quite comfortable with this, fighting Israel to the last Arab. That has been their strategy. And then I think there's the last part of this, which, you know, my colleague Mark Dubowitz has talked about quite a bit. And we're all, I think, still concerned about, which is that, you know, Iran may choose to use all of this as a distraction from its ultimate goal of making a dash to a bomb. And I think there is real risk. We've got a report coming out at FTD very soon that looks at the risks of Iran making a dash for a bomb in the next six months while we have a lame duck president who appears to be conflict averse. I think the Iranians understand that there is an opportunity here to pursue this strategy. It comes at risk, but right now they have not really accrued any costs for the war that they have been waging on these seven fronts. I am hard pressed to find a moment other than over the last two or three weeks, and maybe this is a good segue to what Israel is or can do, but the Israelis are finally holding the Iranians to account. Whether the U.S. has given the green light for Israel to do so or not, it seems like we haven't, by the way, it seems like Biden has been quite upset with Netanyahu for taking certain risks. But the Israelis are beginning to impose costs on Iran. The question is, does that change Iran's calculus, knowing that you have an obsequious United States or at least a fearful one and knowing that they have multiple options on the table in terms of strategies that they can deploy.
DS: Can you talk a little bit about this report that just came out the director of national intelligence in the U.S. came out with a report about that raised an alarm bell at least with some members of Congress that I spoke to who were briefed on the report that while not getting into the specifics of the report, the report did point to, and this was reported in the press as well, the lack of confidence the U.S. has now in what they understand Iran is doing with regard to being in a position to get to breakout moment in its nuclear weapons program, that we don't have a good sense of timing and they could be much farther along than we realize.
JS: Yeah. I mean, let me just say upfront, I'm not a nuclear expert. We've got really good people at FED that track this stuff closely. But what I think we can say to sort of simplify the report was the U.S. is now no longer stating with certainty that Iran is or is not pursuing its nuclear weapons program. A sentence that was kept in multiple times in multiple national intelligence estimates now all of a sudden is not there where there's sort of a declarative statement about Iran's intent and its abilities. So that's a major problem. And then there's the other part of this, which is that we see the regime, officials from the regime, speaking really openly and boldly about their nuclear program. You know, once upon a time we were hearing from the so-called experts in Washington that, oh, well, you know, the Supreme leader has a fatwa, a religious edict out there that has banned the Islamic Republic from building a nuclear weapon. They don't seem to be beholden to that fatwa right now. And they appear to be almost thumbing their nose at the West while we watch this crisis play out, while we watch the seven fronts burn, while the Iranians continue to, by the way, target American forces and bases in Syria and Iraq, we are not seeing any costs imposed on the Iranians. And again, you know, I think turning back to the Israeli strategy, I think we are now beginning to see the beginnings of one where they're saying, okay, you know what? You're not stopping. And clearly, you know, our restraint is not working. I would argue also that the U.S. restraint on Israel, their attempts to constrain Israel It's probably emboldened the regime. And so the Israelis, there was only a certain amount of time they were going to wait here before they started striking back. And I do think that the pinpoint intelligence, I do think that the threat of cyber, maybe we could even argue that back on April 19th, when the Israelis sent a glide bomb into Iran and took out a major radar installation that was supposed to provide some defensive coverage for some of those sensitive nuclear sites, that the israelis are starting to send a message. But my fear or my concern right now, Dan, is that i'm not sure the Iranians believe that israel has a lot more of those in the tank that they can operate at will repeatedly and do damage to the regime. As long as they feel that the regime is protected, that things are still safe enough, they're going to continue to test the wills of Israel and the United States. And that of course gets to where we are here in the U.S. and I've got real concerns there. So look, things were, I think, pretty good early on with the Biden administration. I think we can all acknowledge that whether you love the president, hate him, indifferent, he sent significant assets to the region. He gave the Israelis the weaponry that they needed against Hamas. We can again argue whether Hezbollah was the right target, but they came to a decision and Israel did what it needed to do. And it appeared at least early on that maybe Iran was going to allow for the fighting to continue in Gaza without getting involved. As I think we saw the attacks in particular on the U.S. build, you gotta remember there, I think something like 165 attacks so far against U.S. forces, 11 responses by the U.S. 11.
DS: Since October 7th?
JS: Yes.
DS: Wow.
JS: 11 responses. Now, some of them have been multiple strike packages, et cetera, but we have not responded to the vast majority of attacks on our forces. My colleague Brad Bowman at FTD has done a lot of work on this. We've got a map. We've tracked it out. We did not establish deterrence on our part, and then as we started to get into those concerns that you and I talked about at the top of this program, where we talked about Ramadan and we talked about humanitarian challenges and famine concerns, the U.S. began to withhold weaponry and to criticize Israel and to, in some ways, it opened the door to the ICC and ICJ legal lawfare assaults on Israel. What this did is it gave the Iranians and their proxy allies, the sense that they could fight Israel and Israel would have one hand tied behind its back. And that is essentially what's happened, I would argue, since the spring.
DS: I mean, it worked to some degree. I mean, it created the sense that Israel was tied up diplomatically, internationally, legally. And that for the first time, I know you talked about that early period after October 7th from the Biden administration, which I was someone who praised the Biden administration and still do about how they handled their early moves, cause the most important thing they did in my view, Jon, is they projected that there was no daylight between Israel and the U.S. that more than anything. And then particularly those months after January, between when the U.S. for the first time didn't veto. That kind of greenlit that resolution in the UN Security Council, the resolution that, for the first time, did not link a ceasefire to hostages being released. It was when Senator Schumer, Senate Majority Leader, goes to the Senate floor and basically calls for the downfall of Israel's government. It's so outrageous. And then the, the accusations of a famine, concerns the, the maps about Rafah, Israel can't do Rafah, and, and all these criticisms of Israel and disproportionate response. And Harris saying that she hears the protestors, the student protestors, she hears them. She hears their emotions. She sympathizes. She empathizes with their emotion. I mean, I can go on and on. You add all these things up and it projected that suddenly there was major daylight between Israel and the U.S. And I think strategically that has been an enormous setback for Israel. And it is why I think Hamas and Iran to some degree and Hezbollah have been on the march on and off for the last few months.
JS: Yeah, I would take it maybe even a step further. I 100% agree with everything that you just said, but let's build this out a little bit. Number one, if you're the U.S., if you're the Biden administration, and you're trying to prevent a regional war, then what you need to understand is that if you throw your support behind Israel and you provide them the weapons that they need, and you deploy the assets to the region in order to threaten the regime, and you make sure that you're baring your teeth and growling at the regime. That is probably your best chance at stopping a regional war from breaking out. If you do the opposite, which is what we're watching right now from the Biden administration, where they're asking pretty, please, if the Iranians would just stop engaging in this just failed paradigm of negotiating with Hamas supporters like Qatar and Egypt, and then expecting a different result. In other words, we look right now very hapless. We look like we are lacking in strategy. If we really wanted to avert a war, we would be looking more offensive in nature, more aggressive in nature. I'm not saying that I want to see a full blown war with the U.S. getting dragged in, quite the opposite, but I think the credible threat of force, additional sanctions. What about political pressure, diplomatic pressure? What we see, this is by the way, you know, getting back to the kind of Obama administration, the Biden administration, it's a hallmark of both. You criticize your friends and your allies and you let your enemies off the hook. And that is not how you're going to get the outcome. The last thing I'll just say on this is that for the U.S. it's a compounded strategic failure for this reason. The Iranians are, I don't know if an alliance is the right word or axis, there's an alignment that they have with the Russians and the Chinese. And when we look like we cannot control the Middle East with the junior partner in this three way alignment, if we look like we're not standing by our longtime friend and ally, Israel, amidst a seven front assault, what is the message that that sends to the Russians? What is the message that that sends to Beijing? They are looking right now and thinking, we can probably push a little harder on Ukraine. Maybe the Chinese are thinking about an invasion of Taiwan. We hear that it might be two years away, but maybe they put it on an expedited timetable. Strategically, we look hapless right now as a superpower.We do not look like we have our act together. And that is actually the thing that concerns me more than anything, that if we want to still try to dictate the terms on the world stage, if we want to preserve the U.S. led world order, this case with Israel becomes a crucial test case, and right now it looks like we're failing it.
DS: If you are an average Israeli, sitting in Israel, going to another Shabbat this weekend, bracing for an attack, you know, Haviv Rettig Gur, our friend and frequent regular, a regular on this podcast, posted that amazing tweet where he reposted what Nasrallah posted, where Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, posted in Hebrew, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Basically telling Israel part of their terror campaign is their psychological terror campaign. And we don't know. We'll just keep you waiting. And all these Israelis were reposting and saying, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. What is that? The cable guy? What is that when I'm starting my diet? What is that when my kids are going to start studying for his test? It was hilarious. Israelis have an extraordinary sense of humor about these things. That said, if you're an average Israeli watching what's playing out, going into another Shabbat, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. And you have family in Israel. I have family in Israel. We talk to them all the time. They oscillate between this question, are we on offense or are we on defense? And I know it's not a simple question to answer and you've been trying to answer it in a kind of front specific, of all these fronts, a front specific way, but just generally speaking, if you're an Israeli, do you, Jon Schanzer, feel like they are leaning forward or just frozen?
JS: I think on balance, they are leaning slightly forward, but again, you got to look at it, right? They're really on offense in Gaza. They're really not on offense in Lebanon, and they might be on offense vis a vis Iran. And that's the only way to look at it right now. What we don't have, and this is honestly, this is my biggest criticism of the Netanyahu government. There are a lot of people that hate him for lots of different reasons. I'm only looking at him right now as a wartime leader. And what I think is missing is a cohesive strategy that he can articulate to his own people and to the American people for that matter. I mean, I have to say that speech that he gave, great as it was, the speech before the joint session of Congress. He's an eloquent speaker, and he's, you know, obviously, he's a son of Philadelphia, uh, as I like to say. He spent a lot of time here. He understands the United States.
DS: For our listeners, Jon's revealing his own bias, his own-
JS: I am. Yeah.
DS: Jon too is a son of Philadelphia. He's not, he's not just-
JS: But you know, I think we need to understand though, Dan, that he had an opportunity to articulate what his strategy was. Here's how we're going to finish Gaza. This is what we're going to do next. We need your help in the fight against Iran. And it's a global battle. He touched on little parts of that, but we are missing that grand strategy, that big picture. And I don't know, by the way, there are plenty of people who say, okay, well, you're, you're criticizing Bibi, who can do it better? I don't know the answer to that, but that is not an excuse for Israel's prime minister for a wartime leader to not articulate a strategy along those lines I'm, not saying he needs to give away the crown jewels and tell the iranians every part of what he needs to do, but I do think that we're missing some of this picture that I think would make israelis feel better as they brace for war and perhaps the rest of the region. They’re on pins and needles too. the Bahrainis, the Jordanians, the Saudis, they're all nervous. The White House is nervous. We need to start to get a sense from both Washington and Jerusalem where this thing's going and I think that really needs to be hammered home in the weeks ahead.
DS: All right, Jon. We will leave it there, before we go I want to encourage our listeners to also find you your morning brief, which is now three times a week, right? Monday Wednesdays Fridays at 8:30 AM?
JS: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and I think your listeners need to know that my wife and mother on the same day admitted that they were cheating on my morning podcast because they listened to yours instead. So, and I told them that if they're going to cheat on me, you know, I, I'm happy that it's with you, Dan.
DS: I will say we have a highly, highly sophisticated audience and they choose well. As much as I love the morning brief, which I rely on, I'm pleased to know that, that our audience is loyal, including members of your own family, to the Call Me Back podcast, but I really do encourage folks to listen. It's streamed on YouTube. It's streamed on X. You can also download it as a podcast. You go to the FTD website, it's always there, or you just use your social media platform or podcast platform of choice. And, um, three days a week, 8:30 in the morning, you get a quick download on everything you need to know that happened overnight, since this war, wars, as we've said, began. And then the last housekeeping note is for those who want to attend our first major live audience podcast recording, September 24th at the Streicker Center with Amir Tibon from the Haaretz newspaper in Israel, who has written this Extraordinary book about his October 7th trauma and ultimately small victory in terms of his family being saved by his father on October 7th and the history of life on this kibbutz, his history of the Hamas Israel conflict and where things are going. He's a very thoughtful guy and his experience, which has been chronicled on 60 minutes, but there's much more detail in this book. He and I will be having a live podcast at the Streicker Center discussing it. And you can go to the Streicker Center website. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. And that is all for today. Jon Schanzer, thanks for being on. Hope to have you back soon.
JS: Thanks, Dan. Pleasure.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Jon Schanzer, you can find him on X at JSchanzer, S C H A N Z E R. You can also follow him at, at FDD, Foundation for Defensive Democracies. And I highly recommend you tune in, subscribe for The Morning Brief, which is a great product. 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.