NASRALLAH DEAD, HEZBOLLAH CRIPPLED - with Nadav Eyal
To help us better understand the dramatic developments in Lebanon, Nadav Eyal joined us for an emergency episode of the podcast.
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NE: The tide has changed and what Israel has done to Nasrallah, the leader of the most well-funded and well-founded terror organization in the world and to its entire central command, is something that is simply vibrating through the region and has changed the region already. Sometimes, you know, these kinds of operations, they carry tactical weight. There's always someone to replace. Not in this case.
DS: Once again, we interrupt our special series, Conversations, as we approach the grim one-year anniversary of October 7th. We interrupt the series in order to drop an emergency episode following the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah for the past 32 years. With me is Nadav Eyal from Yedioth Ahronoth. Nadav, thanks for being here.
NE: Thanks for having me, Dan.
DS: Nadav, before we dive in, it's worth spending a few minutes on what we've really witnessed, not just over the last couple of days, but what we've witnessed over the past two weeks. We had the beeper attack. We had Operation Northern Arrows, which in the span of a few hours destroyed half of Hezbollah's munitions arsenal. And then we had the elimination of Hassan Nasrallah, as well as what seems like much of the high command of Hezbollah. Now each of these operations is in and of itself just extraordinary and almost like a brilliant military and intelligence masterclass. So can you just briefly describe each one of these three operations that we've seen over the last couple of weeks?
NE: So briefly describing them, we had the pager operation in which Israel managed to simultaneously hit thousands of Hezbollah operatives using the pagers which were probably produced, according to foreign sources, by the Mossad or by a company hired by the Mossad and had explosives within them. And after that, we've seen the operation in which over eight hours, the Israeli Air Force destroyed the stockpiles of missiles and rockets held by Hezbollah, seriously undermining its most strategic asset, which is the ability to shoot at Israel hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles every day. And a few days later, in the last 24 hours, we're seeing the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, the strike on Hassan Nasrallah, but it's not only Hassan Astrala. It's the entire command center of Hezbollah and basically Hezbollah's chiefs of staff who were killed together in a secret bunker in southern Beirut in an airstrike that delivered 80 tons of ammunition, which managed to enter the bunker, which was a few floors below surface, and do this in a rather surgical way, and unlike some what reported around the world, with limited casualties of the civilians that were living in the area, not knowing that they are actually living underneath them, Hezbollah has placed its central command in order to use them as human shields. So these are the three operations that I just mentioned, but I can go through the names of the people that were high senior commanders: Hassan Khalil Yasin, who was the intelligence, the high intelligence officer for Hezbollah, Ibrahim Muhammad Qabisi. He's the leader of the missile branch of Hezbollah. Yeah, Ibrahim Aqil. He's the head of operations and the leader of the Radwan force, the commando force of Hezbollah that was supposed to invade the Galilee. And he was killed together with the head of their aerial unit, Muhammad Hussein Sarour. I can go on and on and on. But these people that I'm talking about are the leadership of Hezbollah. And what we are seeing here in the last 14 days and specifically with the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of a US designated terror organization, a man with American blood on his hands, and mainly, by the way, the blood of Syrian Muslims on his hands, dozens of thousands of Syrians. One of the reasons we're seeing scenes of celebration around Syria as a result, and not only in Syria, but across the region.
DS: I've gotten more messages since October 7th from friends and officials in the Sunni Arab world, particularly the Sunni Gulf, celebrating what Israel did to Nasrallah.
NE: So I'm getting the same kind of messages. And the reason for that is that strategically the tide has shifted. We have been talking on your show and I've been making two points. The first point is that Israel is trying to restore the deterrence it did not have on October 7th when it was attacked by Hamas. On October 8th, when it was attacked by Hezbollah. In April, when it was attacked by Iran and by the Houthis in between. And the tide has changed. And what Israel has done to Nasrallah, the leader of the most well-funded and well-founded terror organization in the world, and to its entire central command, is something that is simply vibrating through the region and has changed the region already. This is a strategic change. Sometimes these kinds of operations, they carry tactical weight. There's always someone to replace. Not in this case, very much like Osama bin Laden, but even more powerfully than Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden, when he was assassinated, when the US took him out, he was already a symbolic figure. He was isolated. He was a hunted man. This is not the case with Hassan Nasrallah. Hassan Nasrallah, when he died in his bunker, was still leading an organization of dozens of thousands of highly trained fighters worth billions and billions of dollars, defended by the state of Lebanon, a legal party in Lebanon, sitting in his bunker and with the ability to order strikes against Israel's strategic installations and infrastructure in a matter of moments. This was the Hassan Nasrallah that entered this war and he made the biggest mistake by entering this war and aligning himself with Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, who has led to the death of the leader of the Axis of the Resistance, as they label it. And I've been getting messages and been talking with Lebanese people who are, you know, sources who are telling me Lebanon is changing. We fear on the one hand the possibility of another civil war because now Hezbollah, who was the main armed force in the country, it looks like it's disintegrating. But on the other hand, they were so happy. One of these people told me that he got personally more than a thousand text messages and WhatsApp messages just congratulating him for the death of Nasrallah. And this is a man who has never voiced support for Israel. And the second point that we were making Dan is that Israel prepared itself to the war in the North, to a war with Hezbollah. And this proved itself. These sources that told me that. You know, I could not do the verification, the due diligence for the actual intelligence plans. I'm not exposed to everything. But they kept on telling me, those IDF, not only IDF sources, look, we've been preparing for this war. Trust us with this. We know what we're doing. We have a plan. We actually have numerous plans, we're gonna surprise them.
DS: Can we get granular on that? Because… tell me what it takes to pull this off from an intelligence and military perspective.
NE: First of all, Israel knew where Nasrallah is, because he's not always in the bunker. It's about knowing who's gonna be with him at a certain and specific point of time. And let me speculate. It's not only about him being in the bunker, but also at what level of the bunker he is. At what floor he is. So there was a technical challenge here. There was an intelligence challenge here. And of course, at the end of the day, there were Air Force pilots that needed to do this in a very sophisticated way and drop the ammunition on a time span of about eight seconds so that they will penetrate, so that the bunker will actually collapse. And I have to tell you, and you heard that from other people, the Israelis knew that Nasrallah was dead immediately. And even for that, I still don't know how my sources knew that for sure. And I have my suspicions and speculations, which I'm not going to voice right now, but I think this was a much more intelligence operation than just a surgical bombing. I think that we obviously, now seeing what has happened to Hezbollah in the last 14 days, we obviously know that it has been penetrated by the Israeli intelligence. It's the same intelligence that has failed Israel towards October 7th, that has managed to penetrate Hezbollah. And by the way, this is one of the reasons, because Israel was so focused at the North, so focused on Hezbollah and the next, third, Lebanon war, and they never thought that Hamas would be able to invade Israel and to commit what it did. But on the other hand, and we should say it now, they were very well prepared to this war with Israel's sworn enemy. And that's a big thing.
DS: Nadav, one former senior government official told me that one of the challenges Israel faced, it learned too brutally on October 7th, was that because Hamas and Gaza were collectively such a primitive society, and there was a deliberate decision clearly by the leadership of Hamas to keep the signal electronic communications of its administrative branch in Gaza so low-tech, so analog that it was actually very hard for Israel. You know, 8200, shemona matayim, it's Israel's version of NSA, had a much harder time in Gaza penetrating, and obviously getting human resources, human assets in Gaza was also extremely challenging. Whereas as you deal with more modern societies, as you deal with more advanced governing structures like Hezbollah in Lebanon and even more so like the Islamic regime in Iran, the communications are very developed and advanced and they're electronic and Israel is well equipped to penetrate very modern societies and governing structures and military systems. And that's partly why Israel's intelligence in Lebanon, in Hezbollah, and in Iran, as we saw with the attack against, the hit against Haniyeh in the heart of Tehran, it's partly why Israel was able to pull those off.
NE: Well, first of all, there's truth to this argument. And here's what's accurate. It's accurate that Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, really kept it secret. And he kept it secret also from his allies. And if he would have communicated to Iran or Hezbollah that he's going to go for the October 7th, it's very probable that Israel would have heard about that. There's no doubt that Hezbollah being much weaker now, it's not going to, it’s not going to evaporate, right? It's going to survive in some form, but this brings Israel closer to its war aims at the South.
DS: How so?
NE: Well, first of all, for Sinwar, the entire thing was to flood Al-Aqsa, the idea of the Flood of Al-Aqsa. And what he's getting is the flood of the Israeli Air Force and the destruction of Hezbollah main leadership. Look, if it was up for Hezbollah, you would have seen thousands of rockets landing in Israel already, thousands in the last 24 hours. The reason it's not happening is not because Hezbollah has taken a decision. It's because it simply cannot do anything that it promised to the Axis of Resistance to Tehran. It was decapitated by the IDF and by the Mossad. So what Hamas has just lost is its strongest ally. What Tehran has just lost is its strategic leverage against Israel, its long arm in the region, and maybe its defender of interests along the Mediterranean. And what Israel has gained is the very real possibility to try and reshape the face of the Middle East in a way that tilts away from fundamentalism. I'm hearing from Lebanon talk about the possibility that the army of Lebanon will go down and deploy on the southern border of Israel, which is something that Israel has been demanding. It's not that Israel wants to have an occupation or to control parts of Lebanon. All that Israel is asking is for Lebanon to be a real state. And that means that its army is going to take responsibility on the southern border with Israel and prevent terrorists, i.e. Hezbollah, from shooting at Israelis or planning their abduction or planning a mass murder on the border. And what I'm hearing from Lebanon is that this is very much an option right now because Hezbollah is so weakened. So this is a tremendous opportunity for change, but for this change to happen, there needs to be a few things in operation. One of them is that Israel needs to finish and do whatever it can in order to weaken Hezbollah. It's not over yet and Hezbollah is still a powerful force to be reckoned with. I want to underline this with all the euphoric statements that we hear from Israelis. Hezbollah is still there. It's still getting a lot of assistance from Iran, and Iran is a regional power, and they are very much dedicated to try and somehow bring it back to life and make it fight Israel during this war. On the other hand, if we use this time for some sort of breakthroughs in the region, now that the Arab moderate states are seeing that Israel is restoring its deterrence, there could be a real change, including Sinwar saying, maybe we should actually go for a deal now, because he just saw what happened to Nasrallah. And by the way, on the other hand, many people in Israel would say, hell no. Compromise now with Yahya Sinwar? No. We're willing maybe to allow him to leave the Gaza Strip unharmed if he returns our hostages. That's the only compromise. Nobody's going to stop the war now. Don't stop it when we're winning.
DS: So I want to stay on that point. Because you and I talked offline and you made a point that all these calls for ceasefires were misguided. That the international community should have been focused on getting Hezbollah to move back, back north of the Litani River as it was mandated to do so under UN Security Council Resolution 1701 after the 2006 Lebanon War. And for the last 11 months, there's been little to none of a serious effort to pressure Hezbollah. Yes, there's been some behind the scenes moves and whatnot, but there hasn't been a full thrall. The international community was not mobilized to pressure Hezbollah. And that failure to focus on Hezbollah the way Israel was keeping an eye on Hezbollah and thinking about its next move on Hezbollah is as responsible or as much of a driver to this moment as anything.
NE: Absolutely. Look, I was amazed when I saw the Biden-Emmanuel Macron declaration saying after the “escalation” in South Lebanon. In other words, after Israel was having one success after the other, that now they're calling for 21 days of ceasefire. Look, Israel has suffered from Hezbollah since the beginning of the war. The only reason that Israel didn't do these things earlier is because it was focused in the South, focused in Gaza. But 80,000 of Israeli citizens are displaced persons. They're living in hotels. We spoke about this on your show. I think that the first time we spoke about this, Dan, was like in June. And there is a clip of myself talking with you saying, where is the international community? What's the excuse now? There is no occupation of Israel in South Lebanon. There is a recognition by the UN Security Council that Israel has withdrawn. There are no legitimate territorial claims there of Lebanon or Hezbollah. Hezbollah has opened the 2006 war, the Second Lebanon War. It has decided on October 8th to launch another war against Israel, joining Hamas. Now the international community looked at the Hezbollah attack on Israel as a byproduct, an uncomfortable byproduct of the war on Hamas in the South. And all they cared about in Paris, to an extent in London, and to an extent, of course, in DC, is that the war in the South will end, there will be a ceasefire and then Hezbollah is going to climb down the tree and stop attacking Israel. What about those civilians? Israeli civilians in the North that need to work and live and, you know, be with their kids on the border and have kids there, knowing what Hamas did to the kids in the kibbutzim. What would have happened to them? Would these people in DC or in London or Paris take their kids and live two miles from a Hezbollah outpost, a designated terror organization devoted to the destruction of Israel, publishing videos about how it occupies the Galilee, kidnaps its citizens, and basically does another October 7th, supportive of the October 7th massacres, would they take their kids over there? So their entire idea, their entire strategic plan was let's get a ceasefire in the South and then everything's going to be solved and we'll tell the Israelis some sort of bluff. Maybe the Israelis will bluff themselves and their people and they'll return back or they'll never return back to the North. Who cares? What the Israeli defense system and defense forces said very clearly, and by the way, from the beginning of the war, and sometimes they got pushback from the political sphere, including from Netanyahu, the Israeli defense forces were saying from the beginning of the war, we're not buying any bluffs as to Hezbollah in the North. That's the real threat. We're going to tackle it. We're going to take them down. We're going to escalate. And this can never be solved unless we're pushing them away from the border. And by pushing, we mean it's either going to be a diplomatic solution that you can actually enforce, which we don't believe you're going to get us, or it's going to be by war. This is what they said from day one. This is the reason why on October 11th, as you know, Dan, the Israeli cabinet actually deliberated on the possibility of preemptively striking Hezbollah. And that decision was postponed.
DS: So just to rewind the tape here, and you've talked about this several times in our conversations on this podcast. October 11th, the Israeli cabinet meets, certain players in the Israeli government and security apparatus, particularly the leadership of the IDF and then Defense Minister Yoav Galant are arguing Israel should not focus on an immediate response in Gaza. Instead, it should launch a preemptive strike against Hezbollah in the North, a version perhaps of what we're seeing playing out in recent days. And he was, Gallant and this IDF leadership, was overruled by Prime Minister Netanyahu, by Benny Gantz, by, I guess, Gadi Aizenkot, basically by the War Cabinet, the other members of the War Cabinet. Was that a mistake? You seem to suggest that may have been a mistake to have not launched this war earlier.
NE: I'm going to say, I think it's during war, sometimes you have to decide between a bad option and a worse option. And sometimes it's touch and go, you don't know. And I don't know if it was a mistake. If you would ask me a month and a half ago, it looked like a mistake because Hezbollah got what it wanted and our civilians weren't in the North. Now it looks like the right decision, right? Why? Because Israel sort of finished off with Hamas regiments in the South. Hamas still exists. And now it was off to take on Hezbollah and maybe it couldn't have happened at the beginning of the war. And let me tell you why. Because Israel has been working very hard to reach this moment during the war. So it's not like Israel wasn't doing anything. I spoke with a senior military source just before your show. I talked with him about what the Northern Command has been doing in this last recent year. They haven't been sitting waiting for Hezbollah to attack. They've been attacking Hezbollah continuously. And one of the reasons that Hezbollah cannot usher the type of response, the type of attacks that it wanted to, is because the IDF Northern Command has been working to tirelessly dismantle all of those bases, and by the way also underground bases, of Hezbollah across southern Lebanon. And they've been doing this meticulously during the war. So Israel was also preparing. If you think about the pagers operation, there were certain things that were done in this recent year that were very meaningful for the Israeli ability. So to your question, you know, there are certain decisions that the Israeli cabinet took during the war that I'm not going to judge them for. I'll give you another one of those. It was about the decision when Hamas was violating the first hostage deal. And it was saying, we're not going to release the women soldiers that we have, but we're willing to release bodies and maybe two or three more Israelis who were elderly. And the Israeli cabinet needed to make a very difficult decision of whether they accept or do not accept that offer by Hamas, which was violating the terms of the agreement. And on the one hand, you had the lives of those who would be released. And on the other hand, the Shabak and the IDF were saying, if we're not going to, if they are bailing out on releasing our female soldiers, we will never see them again. What do you do, Dan, at this kind of decision? So in retrospect, it was a mistake, I think, not to release those that they offered us to release because these men died. They were killed, murdered by Hamas during their captivity and they were alive. They were grandfathers. I know their families from the kibbutzim. But on the other hand, the cabinet got the council of the Shabak and all the, you know, professional sources that were saying, look, this might mean that Hamas will make those female soldiers disappear and we'll never hear about them again. And we know what's happening to them. So there are certain decisions during war that if we don't want to be simplistic and populist, we need to say that they're difficult and they're bad. And any decision you make is bad. But with this, with Hezbollah, it's a happy end for the Israelis as of now, as of now, because what we have been seeing in the last two weeks is suddenly this entire feeling of no breakthrough. You know, Sinwar is still sitting in his bunker, which is an amazing thing. Sinwar is still there in his bunker, probably alive, probably alive. But the leadership of Israel's archenemy and its archenemy himself, Hassan Nasrallah, a man who is responsible for at least two wars and dozens of thousands of people who have been murdered or killed, that this man has died. And that really puts a lot of weight on the Israeli politicians and decision makers and mainly Netanyahu. It's now up for them. You know, the IDF has just showed them what they can do. The Mossad has showed them what they can do. Now, it's the turn of decision makers and policy makers to try and use this and amplify this to a real change at the course of the war, because there's a danger here. And if you want, we can speak about that danger. And the danger is…
DS: I want to ask you just about, because I just don't want to move off Nasrallah. Is there an argument, I mean, I've heard this argument, so I just, I want to put it out there. Is there an argument that as difficult and menacing a rival that Nasrallah was, Israeli intelligence seemed to understand him, and not that they could reason with him but that he was more practical say than Sinwar and certainly after the 2006 Lebanon war he did say publicly that had he known what Israel's response would be and what the implications would be for Hezbollah he wouldn't have authorized the taking hostage, the kidnapping of the three Israelis, that precipitated the war. So that he was, and there was a sense that they kind of knew how Nasrallah operated. He was actually, well, he was a horrible person responsible for so much bloodshed.
NE: He was the devil we knew.
DS: Right, and he was practical about his own survival. And so there was a way that that could be manipulated. And now Israel doesn't know who will replace Nasrallah. Maybe no one will replace him. Maybe this organization, as we know it, is completely decimated. But how do you respond to that? Was there a case to be made for leaving Nasrallah alone but destroying all of his capabilities, but kind of leaving him intact? I heard this from some folks who were very plugged in before this operation against Nasrallah was conducted.
NE: First of all, it's an argument to be made, right? You can absolutely make this argument that killing the leader of an organization that has a deciding vote on the route that the organization will take, that's a dangerous thing to do during war because you don't know who's going to replace him. And at the end of the day, Israel is not going to occupy the entire state of Lebanon and re-educate the Hezbollah popular grassroots movement in Lebanon, which is very powerful. That's not going to happen, right? So this is not, you can't equate it to Hitler in the bunker because there is no intention to denazify Hezbollah. It's impossible, unfortunately. So that's an argument to be made, but let me answer you after speaking with people after the decision was made. The reason here was very clear. It was Nasrallah who made the decision that Hezbollah would join this war and he attacked Israel. This is the second time that he's been attacking Israel and launching war against Israel. He is Israel's most shrewd and sophisticated enemy. He was. He understood the Israeli society, Israeli politics, the fears of Israelis better than anyone else. And this, and actually this was reported that there was a meeting on Wednesday of the cabinet and of some officials, and during the meeting some ministers, including Smotrich from the Israeli far-right, right? But also Likud ministers objected to taking out Nasrallah. And let me tell you something. Again, like I said before, it's very easy for me to sit here and now criticize it in retrospect, but I don't know what's in retrospect. In retrospect, it's like three years from now. And I can see why they thought that maybe that's the argument you're making. I'm not sure about the arguments that they were making because let me tell you as an understatement, they're not exactly advertising themselves as people who objected to the killing of Nasrallah. And I don't think it should have leaked, by the way, because I think people should be able to voice their concerns in such a delicate discussion without it leaking, although I'm a journalist. But the bottom line is that for the Israeli defense apparatus, it was absolutely out of the question to consider any other option but taking him out. Because of his personal abilities, not because he's the leader of Hezbollah, not because of any formality or symbolism, not because of revenge. It's very important. But because he was an effective leader against Israel, in war against Israel, devoted to the idea that Israel will be destroyed. This is the man who said that Israel is as weak as spider cobwebs. You know, this was the type of metaphors that he used. And it was such a powerful metaphor that Israel will collapse like a spider's net. And look what happened. He joins the long list of people who have said these things about Israel in the past and look at the White House statement today, Dan. I think you can absolutely see through this statement how President Biden, who describes himself as a Zionist, how he is overjoyed by what has happened. He seemed to be absolutely content. The statement opens with talking about Nassrallah as the leader of a terrorist organization responsible for the death of hundreds, the murder of hundreds of Americans. And it continues on to describe how he launched the war against Israel. And just down there in the statement, they say that their policy is having a ceasefire in the South, which is a completely different story. And in other words, you know, at the end of the day, when Israel is winning, people understand the message. And I think that the defense apparatus definitely understood that. And that's the reason why they were pushing so hard since the beginning of the war, saying to the politicians, look, we failed on October 7th. We know that you don't trust us now, but believe us. Look at what we've been doing. Give us the green light and we will deliver. And this is what has been happening in the last two weeks. And there are no guarantees for the future. You know, Hezbollah can still shoot thousands of rockets at Israel, it can still take down the Israeli electrical grid. Iran can…
DS: Well, I want to stay on that. What should Israel anticipate in terms of Hezbollah's response to all of this, if anything?
NE: Well, first of all, they are doing their best and they're not succeeding right now.
DS: Hezbollah are doing their best.
NE: Hezbollah, their command and control, it's dead right now. Their military leadership is a military leadership of people who have not been trained to their positions, sometimes being replaced like three times during the war. I don't know if you saw this, you saw this kind of high-tech ad as a sketch, as a parody after he died, basically saying, and this is a classic kind of tech in Israeli tech industry, I'm saying this to you as the startup nation guy. And so it says, a dynamic organization in a challenging sphere, looking for CEO, CTO, development and so forth and so forth with a picture of Nasrallah, right? So they can still shoot. They still have an inventory of rockets and missiles to shoot at Israel in their dozens of thousands. Their main problem is getting from the inventory to the launchers. And another problem is that Israel destroyed many of the launchers and then they need to traffic them to specific locations. And when they do, Israel sees this. So to a large extent, what you're seeing down here is the result of drone intelligence and many other intelligence factors that kicked in during this war for the first time in history, actually. And Israel is using this substantially in order to, you know, cripple Hezbollah. So they can still shoot, to your question, thousands of rockets. They can also attempt military ground incursion into Israel. And the Israeli Northern Command is first and foremost worried about this, about a ground incursion of the sort that we have seen not in the Israeli south on October 7th, but any ground incursion to Israel would be a big win for Hezbollah in terms of propaganda. This is what they're looking for because right now they're so deflated in terms of their regional status that they might do anything. Look, Hezbollah began its career, its track record with suicide bombings and it developed from there. If they could return to suicide bombings and kill as many Israelis and frankly as many Jewish-Israeli targets around the world right now, they would do this in order to restore some of their lost prestige. So Israel is expecting that too. And of course, there's the Iranian issue. The biggest decision to be made in the region is by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Khamenei needs to make a decision now. Is Iran joining the war against Israel formally and starting to shoot at Israel on a daily basis now? Now that he has lost his right arm, what is he going to do? He, of course, promises revenge, but the Iranians are extremely calculated. And if Iran's going to attack Israel, Israel is going to hit back at Iran. I'm telling you this, according to my sources, this is not going to be the type of targeted, you know, specific assault, a smart move as Israel did before, in April. Now, this time it's going to hurt and the people of Iran are going to know of it, say my sources. And another thing that's on the table and the Israeli government would need to decide on is the possibility of a ground operation in Lebanon. The American administration is really pressuring Israel not to go for it. And their arguments, by the way, are extremely in terms of just cost effectiveness, they're saying, look, you're winning right now. Why should you drive your soldiers…
DS: And by the way, the administration has been saying that basically, I think almost since October 8th, like anytime Israel has a successful tactical operation, it's a version of Joe Biden's take the win. And actually he's been wrong almost every single time because when Israel hasn't “taken the win,” but pressed its advantage, it's yielded something much more strategically important like we're seeing right now.
NE: Yeah, well, about the 21 days, that's absolutely true. I should say that according to all the sources I speak with, Israelis and Americans, the prime minister did consider seriously taking the 21 days.
DS: I know, but I'm just saying we heard the same argument after Israel defended against the April...
NE: Rafah is a good example. Rafah is really a good...
DS: And the Iranian attack against Israel in April when Israel was told not to respond. And that was extremely important that Israel responded the way it did.
NE: And it did respond in a way that my American sources were saying, we said that you shouldn't have responded, but we really were very impressed with what you did because it was so direct. And this is, by the way, the markings of the Israeli Air Force. Now, if you let the Israeli Air Force do what they do, and it goes through the process of the Israeli Air Force, which is actually a tech company, you know, within these…
DS: In airplanes.
NE: So they go through the process and they would convince the government with whatever they think is the right way to go. And this is why the April counterattack by Israel was so direct.
DS: Counterattack against Iran.
NE: Against Iran, yeah. Now, Iran's supreme leader might choose different paths. Let me tell you what's the path that's very worrying for the Israelis. This is the path of the war of attrition. So let's think about the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted for eight years. With the Iran-Iraq War, Iran suffered major blows and remained in that war for years. Now it can shoot at Israel and have less of an impact on its economy, on its army, because at any rate, it's not that they're going to, at least as far as we know, they're not going to send like 20 divisions through Syria to fight Israel in a ground war. They're not going to do that. They know that then the US will join the war and they're going to lose. But they might, for instance, encourage their proxies like the Houthis, who already began doing that in the last 24 hours, or the militias in Iraq, who also began doing that, and Hezbollah to just continue shooting at Israel. And we already saw, you know, people running to the shelters 48 hours ago, people running to the shelters in Tel Aviv today. And this is all they need to do. Now, I think that they're looking, for instance, at Israel's credit ratings. So one thing that happened during the last 24 hours was extremely positive. Hassan Nasrallah is dead together with the central command of Hezbollah in a daring Israeli Air Force raid. And the other thing, which is less meaningful, but still meaningful, is that Moody’s decided to downgrade Israel's credit ratings, you know, with a very dire report about the Israeli economy, basically criticizing the government in ways that we haven't seen before from any credit agency in recent times. And if the Iranians go through the route of a war of attrition and Hamas is still there, Sinwar is not dead as far as we know, and the war in Gaza… well, it's not finishing, but there's no way to go beyond killing Sinwar right now and getting the hostages back. It's not that there is a regiment there that Israel needs to take care of. Then what? Then what? So the smartest move for the Iranians to do would be to slow things down. And why do they need any change? What will the Israelis do now? Occupy the entire state of Lebanon and go to Beirut again? They won't. Even if there will be a ground operation, I suspect it's going to be limited, targeted. And I hope, according to my sources, they're saying that it's going to be extremely surprising. I don't know what it means. But if they keep on this attrition thing, if you're fighting, you know, a developed country with a Western society, like Israel, this could be extremely damaging for the Israelis. So this is why this window of shock and awe that was led by the Israeli military success should lead the international community now to be involved. And let me tell you what they can do. There is a clear solution to the Northern Front and that is the full implementation of 1701, which is a UN Security Council decision made after the 2006 war. this is the way to go, then it could be enforced. The Israelis are also saying, look…
DS: But the point is, I just want to stay on this, whatever the exact geography is, the theory behind the buffer being from the south of the Litani River to Israel's northern border is it's a big enough space that if Hezbollah's munitions and launchers are, and it's forces are not there, it's hard for Hezbollah to launch whatever capabilities it has against Israel if it's not right there within what Israel hopes to have as a buffer.
NE: Less of a launching issue and more of a raiding, a ground incursion issue. So you can say to the people… this point is so lost with international media. It's just amazing. This is all about civilians needing and wanting to go back to their homes. I spoke with this military commander today.
DS: Israeli, in northern Israel.
NE: Israeli military commander today, and he's speaking with the people living in those kibbutzim, moshavim, villages, towns. He's talking about, he said to me, we know stories of people committing suicide, families are disintegrating, people are living in hotels.
DS: Yeah, these are ghost towns. Kids have not been in schools now for a second school year.
NE: No, they are in schools. They are in schools because Israel is building them schools now.
DS: Yeah, but not in their schools where they were.
NE: Yeah, and they lost their homes. And this is what it is about, and about giving them the sense of security that their houses will not be raided. Women are not going to be raped and abducted. And we're not going to see another October 7th. This era, and we talked about this at the beginning, you know, months and months ago, the era in which you can have a genocidal organization on your border devoted to the idea that it can destroy Israel and it can train and watch you and prepare, and you can see their drills in which they actually prepare themselves to killing their neighbors a mile away, this is not something that the US would accept. I don't think Israelis should accept this. I am an Israeli. I will not accept this. Israelis were willing to go to war for that. And until the international community gets that, what they will see is an escalation after escalation, including a ground operation in Lebanon, I suspect, until they will pressure the Lebanese sphere to do so. Now, one of the arguments they're going to make, Dan, which is related to one of your questions is, who do you want us to make an agreement with considering that Lebanon is a failed state and you just killed Hassan Nasrallah?
DS: And as Israel learned firsthand after UN Security Council Resolution 1701, it can't rely on any party in Lebanon to enforce any mandated UN ceasefire or whatever. There's no one in Lebanon to deal with this.
NE: Exactly. And this is one of the reasons why some of the Lebanese sources I speak with are talking about civil war. Some of them are saying maybe it's the Lebanese army who's going to take control. They're talking about maybe the return of the Hariri family. They're talking about a French force, which can absolutely do that. By the way, the French are so big on their connection to Lebanon and they have all this thing with their colonial past. I don't know if you're aware of it. You're familiar with Françafrique? You know, they always play with these things. Well…
DS: Now's the time.
NE: Yeah, they want to bring peace to the region. I'm sure. I'm absolutely positive. I'm serious now that if the French government would say, you don't need to have a UNIFIL force there. We're going to have the French army in between Israel…
DS: Deploy forces into southern Lebanon.
NE: You know, I'm going to write a front page op-ed article. I'm going to talk with my sources. I'm going to say, look, I think it's a fantastic idea because I know how the French Republic, and it's a compliment, treats threats on its soldiers there. So there are loads of things to do. And by the way, this is the reason I mentioned that White House announcement because it was a step in the right direction of saying, hey, yeah, the Israelis got this thing right.
DS: This was a good thing.
NE: Yeah, this was a good thing. Let's build on that.
DS: It's an understatement, it's a good thing, because after Al-Qaeda, Nadav, I don't know an organization that has more American blood on its hands than Hezbollah, the Radwan Forces, and its leadership personified by Hassan Nasrallah. I can't think of another organization responsible for more American slaughtering.
NE: And also think about Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and the rest. They saw Israel in its weakness on October 7th, and I'm sure they were asking themselves. What's going to happen with this country? People around the world were asking themselves. I was on US TV shows in which Israel was presented to me as a country that cannot defend its citizens, which it actually didn't. In a terrible failure on October 7th, nothing's going to erase this. Killing no one will erase what has happened on October 7th and the need to return the hostages. But now they're also seeing that this wasn't an institutional bug. This wasn't a signature of Israeli decline. This was something that could be corrected in terms of its deterrence. These lives will never be returned and the damages done to Israeli psyche, you know, will not be met in a hundred years from now. But in terms of Israeli military power and clout in the region, in terms of our allies, and the people who are texting you and texting me who are saying, yeah, we're on your side and you're winning. Look, the United States joined forces with Israel really as an alliance only after 1967. And it was because the US that Israel is a force that needs to be reckoned with, right? Because it's going to be something that can resist the USSR in the region. First and foremost, it’s about surviving, but then it's about winning.
DS: Nadav, I've been saying since October 7th, that if you look at the reason why so many Sunni Arab countries were ready to normalize with Israel over the last few years, including Saudi Arabia in the lead up, obviously before October 7th, it was not because they all had become Zionists. It's not because they felt a sense of charity to Israel. It's because they wanted to piggyback onto Israeli strength and Israeli know-how. They saw Israel as a military and intelligence juggernaut, which is extremely important since they shared a common enemy, namely the Islamic regime in Iran. They saw Israel as a regional economic superpower and a global technology superpower. They had a Silicon Valley in their backyard. Israel provided so many assets to other countries in the Middle East, and those countries wanted to partner with Israel. And the risk of October 7th, among other things, was it risked presenting Israel to the region as a paper tiger. You thought it was really strong, but it's not. And now, I think with the last few weeks, and depending how Israel leverages the successes of the last few weeks, I think you could start to see those countries… I'm hearing it from some of those countries. Some of the same officials that have been texting you and me in these Arab countries are saying, whoa. We thought maybe Israel was not all that, and we're reminded the reasons we fell in love with Israel, for purely selfish reasons, are as alive today as we thought in the last few years, basically from, I think, around 2015 on. And so I think that more than anything, in addition to restoring deterrence and to enabling Israelis to move back to their homes and all these benefits that you've articulated, reestablishing Israel in the region as a country that other countries want to do business with, partner with, ally with, normalize with, is an extremely important effect of what we're witnessing. We will leave it there, Nadav, but we will be back in touch soon. Until then, thanks for this quick callback.
NE: Thank you so much, Dan.