American Thought Leaders - The Cost of a Nuclear Iran and How Decades of American Diplomacy Backfired: Yoram Ettinger

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

“More and more Iranian-supported, anti-American, Islamic terrorist cells are established on U.S. soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel, and eliminating key American institutions and installations. This has been the ayatollah’s vision from day one,” says former Ambassador Yoram Ettinger.In the 1980s and 1990s, Ettinger held a number of high-profile positions within Israel’s government, from minister of congressional affairs in D.C. to director of its press office. A now retired insider and expert on U.S.–Israel relations, he regularly advises Israel and America’s legislators, and produces a weekly newsletter challenging conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs.“The State Department probably still is under the delusion that the U.S. has a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by human rights,” says Ettinger. “The choice is between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights.”In this episode, we dive into key realities of the U.S.–Israel relationship that are poorly understood, and the global threat posed by the Iranian regime.“The early pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, to a large extent, viewed themselves as the modern-day chosen people. They viewed this country as the modern-day Promised Land, and they considered the manner in which Moses governed the Jewish people to be the foundation for the system which they established: the separation of powers, and later on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” says Ettinger.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

More and more Iranian-supported, anti-American Islamic terrorist cells are established on U.S. soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel and institutions and installations. This has been the Ayatollah's vision from day one. In the 1980s and 1990s, Ambassador Yurim Ettinger held a number of high profile positions within Israel's government, from its Minister of Congressional Affairs in DC, to Director of its press office. And now retired insider and

expert on US-Israel relations, he regularly advises Israel and America's legislators, and produces a weekly newsletter challenging conventional wisdom on Middle East affairs. The State Department still is under the delusion that the US is a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by human rights. The choices between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights.

In this episode, we dive into key realities of the U.S.-Israel relationship that are poorly understood and the threat to both countries and free nations more broadly, posed by the Iranian regime. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Kira Mettinger, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you. I often hear the Israeli-U.S. relationship as characterized by Israel having this inordinate influence over American decision making. How do you view the U.S.-Israel relationship? Well, the U.S.-Israel relations have two sets of foundations. The first one has to do with the US culture, US political system,

which are based largely on biblical values and biblical legacies. Mostly what the founding fathers refer to as the mosaic legacy. And it goes back to the arrival of the early pilgrims in 1620 before the first Jew arrived to this country, before the first Jewish community was established here. It had to do with the fact that the early pilgrims and the founding fathers To a large extent viewed themselves as the modern-day Chosen people they viewed this country as the modern-day

promised land and they considered the manner in which Moses governed the Jewish people to be a foundation for the system which they established the separation of powers later on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights This is one set of foundation

the more modern set of foundation has to do with the critical role played by Israel in advancing the strategic interest of the US in the Middle East and beyond. It has to do with Israel's capabilities, mostly technological, defense and commercial capabilities, which have transformed Israel into the number one innovation center for the U.S. commercial high-tech and for the U.S. defense high-tech. In addition, ever since 1967, Israel was transformed from a misperceived burden and liability upon the U.S. into a strategic asset and more so a force multiplier for the U.S., a dollar

multiplier for the U.S. and in very concrete terms, battle-tested laboratory for the U.S. defense industry and U. industry as it has been for many many years Israel receives very critical military systems without which we wouldn't be able to make ends meet and for which we are immensely grateful however this is not a one-way street relations where the US gives and Israel receives. It's a mutually beneficial two-way street whereby Israel receives those military systems and use it in the most intense manner, way, way beyond the manner which American military forces are using American military system and as a result of that intense use of the F-35 and the

F-16 and the F-15 and the missile launchers and the missiles and the tanks and our personnel carriers etc. we, we have concluded a multitude of lessons all of which we share with the American manufacturers, which integrate those lessons as upgrades into the next generation of the American military hardware. I visited the plant in Fort Worth, Texas, Lockheed Martin plant, which manufactures the F-35 and the F-16. And one of the plant manager indicated that there is an Israeli team on location receiving every single day lessons learned by Israeli pilots.

Operational lessons, maintenance and repairs and those lessons are integrated. For instance, the cockpit of the F-16 is roughly 50% based on Israeli lessons. The firing control of the F-16, 75% developed based on the Israeli lessons. And he said that there are hundreds, hundreds of such upgrades, which are derivative of the Israeli lessons. When I asked him if he could attach a dollar value to those upgrades his response and it's a quote mega billion dollar bonanza to the manufacturer I asked him how

do you arrive at such an amazing number is it based on some facts? And his response was that the Israeli lessons shared with the manufacturer saves Lockheed Martin between 10 and 20 years of research and development. And anyone who knows anything about the cost of research and development of combat aircraft knows that by itself amounts to many billions of dollars. However, that's only the first stage of the benefits accorded by Israel to the manufacturer of the F-35 and the F-16 because due to those upgrades, it has enhanced the competitiveness of the F-35 and the F-16 in the global competition, in the global market, and that has generated much

more export, which again amounts to billions of dollars. I never visited the Boeing plant in St. Louis Missouri the F-15 which again we receive from the US and we use in Israel but I assume that similar mega billion dollar is also the share of Boeing in this mutually beneficial two-way street type of relations. And we enjoy, we benefit from hundreds of American military systems, each one we use intensely in what I would call this structure of battle-tested laboratory. And that underscores the fact that it's a two-way street, not a one-way street type of relationship. So one of the things I've been hearing a lot about lately about the US, let's call it the military industrial complex, is that it's bloated. There's too much money being fed into middlemen, places

that it actually doesn't need to go, it's not pared down. What you're describing, it could be characterized as money coming from the U.S. taxpayer into Israel that then goes into the defense industrial complex. Would that be an accurate way to portray it? First of all, money does not reach Israel. We get credit to buy American products, and we get those American products and we return much more than the value of the products which we receive. We're talking about in defense industry which employs about three and a half million people in addition to subcontractors and the Israeli contribution of the Israeli lessons shared with the manufacturers not only save billions of research and development

costs not only increase exports by billions of dollars, but also expand employment in the United States. In fact, we cannot buy Israeli products with a credit which is extended by the U.S. We must buy American products, but that's only part of the contribution by Israel to American defense, national security. We provide the U.S. with unique scope of intelligence, intelligence on countering terrorism, which has spared many American lives, intercepting Islamic terror attacks on Americans in Syria, Americans in Jordan, Americans in Iraq. We provide Americans intelligence on enemy and rivals military systems. We confront enemies in the Middle East who use Chinese and Russian and British and French and Italian and other military systems following every clash

we share with the Americans our own findings about those military systems which once again has enhanced the quality of the American military product, but also has spared American lives. In fact, a former head of the US Air Force Intelligence, General George Keegan, who was very enthusiastic about expanding intelligence cooperation between the two countries claimed that if the U.S. were to procure on its own the intelligence which the U.S. receives from Israel, then the U.S. would have to establish five CIAs. This is one heck of return on investment, C.I.A.s. This is one heck of return on investment, which is four or five hundred times of what we get annually in what is wrongly referred to as foreign aid, while in fact it's an American

investment in Israel. We are located in a very critical area. The late General Alexander Haig, who was Supreme Commander of NATO, later on Secretary of State, suggested that for him Israel constitutes the single American on board, cannot be sunk and is deployed in the most critical area between the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, between Europe and Asia and Africa, situated in an area which is the number one epicenter of anti-American terrorism and anti-American drug trafficking. And the late Alexander Haig suggested that if there would not be a Jewish state in the Middle East, then the U.S. would have to manufacture a few more real aircraft carriers, deploy them to the

Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, in addition to a few ground divisions deployed to the Middle East, all of which would have cost the American taxpayer between $10 and $20 billion annually, all of which is spared by the existence of Israel and the capabilities of Israel in the Middle East. We have done the same thing when it comes to the commercial high tech corporations have established in Israel research and development centers leveraging the very unique brain power in Israel which has sustained American leadership, global leadership in the area of high tech. Recently, the CEO of Intel said, if not our research and development centers in Israel, we, Intel, would have been decimated by the global competition.

CEO of Microsoft said that by the day, Microsoft becomes increasingly an Israeli company because of the impact on of the research and development centers in Israel on Microsoft own product and the same applies to irrigation where we collaborate closely with American companies. The same applies to agriculture, the same applies to health and medicine. There has been very, very tight collaboration between

American and Israeli institutions and companies. Israel obviously has benefited from the number one country in the world, but at the same time, our unique challenges have produced multitude of innovations, groundbreaking applications, most of which we have shared with Americans, maintaining Americans global leadership in the area of high tech, which employs many, many millions of Americans. How would you respond to, and there are a number of prominent voices

that believe this, that it's actually America's relationship with Israel that's keeping America in the region? Well, the U.S. has been interested in the Middle East before there was a Jewish state, but more than that, Islamic terrorism, which is centered in the Middle East, has targeted the USA irrespective of US relations with Israel, irrespective of US policy. Islamic terrorism and other enemies of the US do not consider Israel to be the number one influence on their policy. They view Israel as the vanguard of the US in the Middle East. They view Israel and rightly so as the most effective US beachhead in the Middle East. Iran's ayatollahs refer to Israel as the little Satan while

referring to the US as the great American Satan which tells us about the priorities. There's no zero-sum game between US relations with Israel and US relations with Arabs namely supposedly ostensibly the US is losing Arab favors the more it gets closer to To Israel the fact is that the US has maintained very productive relations with Israel and at the same time very productive relations with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and all

these countries in fact have considered Israel to be an asset rather than a liability for the Saudis and the Emiratis and Bahrain and also Egypt and Jordan. Israel has been regarded as a power of deterrence in the face of the threat posed by Iran's Ayatollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. The Saudis and the Emiratis in Bahrain have the machetes of the Ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood at their throat. And they look around and ask themselves, who can we rely on? Well, sometimes they can rely on the U.S. depending on the tenant in the White

House. Does the tenant try to appease the ayatollahs or is the tenant facing the ayatollahs very decisively? So the U.S. sometimes is reliable as far as they are concerned, sometimes not so reliable. They have written off the Europeans because the Europeans have lost their will to flex a muscle against Islamic terrorism. Every single relatively moderate Arab regime has the machetes of terrorists at their throat. The only country upon which they can rely to an extent has been Israel and therefore American ties with Israel are not at the expense of American ties with the Arabs because the Arabs realize Israel serves as a major line of

defense of the Hashemite regime in Jordan, the pro-American Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel has developed pretty close defense ties with Saudi Arabia. The same goes for the king of Morocco, who highly respects Israel's capabilities in combating terrorism. And the bottom line is that when it comes to facing Islamic terrorism, US and Israel and the pro-US Arab countries are facing a mutual enemy.

Sometimes people imagine, and I've certainly believed this at one point in my life until I learned more, that the U.S. has always been incredibly pro-Israel. It's not always the case. I wonder if you can give me a picture of the last, since 1948. of the last, since 1948. In 1948, the State Department was the number one enemy, not opponent, but enemy, of the idea of establishing a Jewish state. At that time, the CIA and the Pentagon sided with the State Department while President Truman was debating, was wavering, was still on the sideline before he decided to support Israel. We had the same thing before the Israeli decision to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Israel destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in

1981. Israel, US imposed on Israel severe punishment suspending the supply of critical military systems including combat aircraft. And in fact, it took the US 10 years to admit that Israel was right and the US was wrong. And it took place after the first Gulf War of January 1991. There was a major event here in Washington of the Defense Establishment. The keynote speaker was then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. I was at the event because at that time I was at the Israeli Embassy in charge of our relations with the U.S. Congress.

And I still remember the first sentence by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, thank you Israel for bombing the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which spared the U.S. nuclear confrontation in 1991. How many trillions of dollars were spared by that gutsy Israeli bombing of Iraqi nuclear reactor? How many thousands of lives were spared because of that Israeli operation? And there are many, many other examples. examples, one of them is the Six Days War. Before the 1967 war, Israel had all the intelligence information that Egypt and Syria and Jordan are planning a surprise attack on Israel. The Israeli Prime Minister flew to the U.S. met with then President Lyndon Johnson, shared with him the information.

The advice by the U.S. to Israel was, do not preempt because if you shall act alone, you may remain alone and we are not going to extend a hand to you. Israel defied the US pressure, preempted, and devastated the Egyptian and the Syrian military forces. At that time, Egypt was on its way to become the supreme Pan-Arab power jointly or assisted by the Soviet Union. The devastation of the Egyptian military by Israel denied the Soviet Union a major, major groundbreaking historic achievement in the Middle East spared the US a major

economic and national security blow because back in 1967 US was heavily dependent on Persian Gulf oil. Moreover, on the eve of the Six Day War of 1967, more 70,000 Egyptian soldiers were stationed in Yemen aiming to invade Saudi Arabia and topple the pro-US House of Saud, which would have been a major, major catastrophe to the oil market and the economy of the West at large. All of that was spared by Israeli defiance of U.S. pressure. Israel bombed the Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, and again, the U.S. was not very happy with that, but one can only imagine the impact of the last, or the civil war of the last 10, 15 years in Syria if there would have been also nuclear capability involved in that Syrian war. The bottom line is that on occasions, on occasions, there are frictions between the two countries.

Every American president, but for the current one, pressured Israel, sometime punished Israel. But from 1948 through 2025, independent or not withstanding the ongoing US pressure on Israel and the occasional frictions between US and Israel, the strategic cooperation has expanded beyond the wildest optimistic assessment of 1948, 1988, 2008. No one would have expected U.S. and Israel to act so closely. And the reason we have acted, we have collaborated so closely in spite of occasional disagreements is because of the realization, the American awareness of the unique Israeli capabilities in the area of civilian high tech and defense-tech, the unique fighting capabilities by Israel, the unique Israeli achievements in a variety of commercial areas such as agriculture and irrigation and

medicine, etc. And as we know, when you're confronted by very intense challenges, you also develop very intense or very impressive capabilities, most of which we have shared with the U.S., which we have seen all along as our number one ally. Just very briefly, you mentioned in the 80s you were an Israeli diplomat working with Congress. Tell me a little bit about your background today. For 10 years, I established and headed a Middle East research unit in the Israeli Civil Service. After those 10 years, I was sent to serve as Israel's consul general to the southwestern states based in Houston, Texas.

That's when I got to know pretty well small town America or what some call fly over America, which not too many Americans know, let alone Israelis. I went back to Israel, I was the head of the government press office, which is in charge of Israel's relations with the foreign media in Israel, which introduced me to the very, very amazing, in a negative sense, amazing way of the foreign media to operate in Israel. How do they cook stories?

How do they respond? How do they report stories in order to maintain good relations with the different Palestinian terror organizations in the area. Then I was sent back to the U.S. to be at the Israeli embassy in charge of our relations with the U.S. Congress, which was the most educational and also instructive time of my life, becoming educated on the American legislature, which is by far the strongest legislature anywhere in the world and co-equal to the executive. And that also paid my attention to the very, very major, impressive impact of American constituents on American legislators. And since the end of my civil service, which was at the Israeli Embassy in the U.S., I

have established my own operation, continuing ties with the U.S. I have established my own operation, continuing ties with the U.S. Congress. And part of it are my three to four annual visits to the U.S., which brought me to this studio. What do you think of President Trump's and the current administration's posture on Israel? Well, it seems to me that if you want to understand President Trump's policy on Israel and other parts of the world, the first thing to note is that just like his first term, he has literally expelled the State Department from the center stage of forging US foreign policy and national security policy. During the first administration by bypassing the State Department he achieved the four peace accords between

Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and South Sudan. He understood, I believe, that following the State Department way of thinking about the Middle East would only lead him to more and more failures, because the State Department introduced scores, if not hundreds, of plans to resolve the Palestinian issue, to expand Israeli Arab peace. And they failed on all of them because of their detachment from the real Middle East. The second element, which …

Can I just jump in very briefly? Tell me a little bit more about that. You're talking about a posture that's been in the State Department for a long time. So just explain that to me a little bit before we continue. Well, we can look back to 2011, when the turbulence on on the Arab street was heralded by the State Department as an Arab Spring. It was an Arab tsunami, but Arab tsunami doesn't fit the alternate reality created by the State Department, which means peace around the corner, and if we only talk with the enemy, peace will come, if we only reason and appease the enemy peace will come and therefore they refer to the tsunami on the Arab street which started at the end of 2010 and still going on throughout the Middle East as Arab Spring, Facebook revolution, youth revolution, etc.

The U.S.-led NATO military offensive against Qadhafi in 2011 under the contention that Qadhafi has brutally mistreated the opposition in Libya. Well, they just missed a small point that, indeed, Qadhafi was brutal in treating Islamic terrorism, which attempted to topple him. And it was that Qadhafi who desisted from terrorism since 2003, transferred his nuclear infrastructure to Tennessee by the way where it's there until today but for the State Department the most important thing was violation of human rights because the State Department was probably still is under the delusion that the US is a choice between Arab countries that abide by human rights and Arab countries that do not abide by

human rights. They are not yet attached with the fact of life that the choice is between pro-American Arab regimes that violate human rights or anti-American Arab regimes that violate human rights. And that military offensive against Gaddafi has transformed Libya until today into a chaotic state, major arena for anti-American Islamic terrorism, an arena of civil wars with the involvement of Russia and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, France, Greece, all a result of policy by the State Department which had nothing to do with Middle East reality. You can look at the way the State Department ushered in the Ayatollah's regime to topple the Shah of Iran, who was America's policeman in the Gulf. And that was, if you study the telegrams those days,

the documents which were exchanged between the US embassy in Washington, the US embassy in Tehran. Ambassador was William Sullivan. The US embassy in Paris, which was a site of Eritola Khomeni's exile in Washington, that has led to the State Department and President Jimmy Carter to conclude that Ayatollah Khomeini is expected to be an Iranian addition of Gandhi. That's the term that they used.

And President Carter announced to a meeting of world leaders in the islands of Guadeloupe ten days before Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Tehran. President Carter told the global leaders you can rest assured Ayatollah Khomeini is going to be preoccupied with tractors, he said, not with tanks. And obviously we know that those assessments of Ayatollah Khomeini had nothing to do with reality. They were consistent with the alternate reality developed by the State Department, which has always claimed that there is no need to fight terrorists. We can reason,

we should negotiate, and diplomacy is preferred to military when it comes to terrorists. You can look at the State Department that welcomed Bashar Assad as a potential moderate. Well, because he was working in Britain, and he was a successful ophthalmologist, and he was president of the Syrian Internet Association, and he was married to a British educated woman, though aren't those qualifications for potential moderate leader and American senators and

American State Department officials flew to Damascus. They welcomed Bashar Assad and they expected, they expected moderation to prevail. Obviously, we know it had nothing to do with reality. The same thing applied to Saddam Hussein, a very infamous meeting between Saddam Hussein and the American ambassador to Kuwait and Baghdad, April Gillespie, who basically transmitted the assessment of then Secretary James Baker and the establishment of the State Department. And when Saddam Hussein asked Ambassador Gillespie what would be the American reaction if Iraq would decide to use military in order to return province 19, that's how they refer to Kuwait, to the motherland in Iraq.

And April Gillespie's response, which was the State Department view, was none of our business. It's an inter-Arab issue. I don't think there could be a more green line than that to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. And I can only imagine how bewildered he was when suddenly the U.S. attacked him after the State Department gave him a green light to invade Kuwait. And then I can add more and more, but you have the issue of Yasser Arafat.

Was welcomed into the community of law-abiding entities, but the State Department referred to Yasser Arafat as a terrorist turning a peacemaker, and basically ushered Yasser Rafat way into the Nobel Prize for peace. One of the most ruthless terrorists in modern times, receiving the Nobel Prize of peace, endorsed by the State Department.

And obviously, 1948, the State Department did not want a Jewish state. The State Department claimed, first of all, that Israel had no means to face an all-out Arab assault. Well, we proved the State Department wrong in 1948, while the US was boycotting, embargoing, embargoing any shipment of arms to the area. But this has been State Department track record

in the Middle East, wrong and wronger and wrongest and when a president comes and realizes that State Department is not a reliable source of policy policy enhances U.S. interest. A very similar feature of Trump's, President Trump's worldview is the fact that he does not see the U.N. as a positive element in international relations, contrary again to the State Department which highlights common denominator between the US and the UN. President Trump has understood that the UN is fundamentally anti-western, anti-American. The same attitude he harbors towards most international organizations, one of them UNRWA, and he has suspended support of US to UNRWA due to UNRWA's role in

furthering hate education among Palestinians which has become the most effective production line of terrorists in our part of the world. And then obviously, President Trump, unlike the State Department, is aware that terrorism is driven by fanatic ideology, the State Department believes that terrorism is driven by despair. And you don't deal with despair by military means. Despair you deal through financial and diplomatic means. It seems to me that the current administration is much more realistic in that context as well.

I think the challenge for both Americans and Israelis is to highlight the reality of the Middle East, in particular the world at large, and expose wishful thinking, oversimplifications, misrepresentations, highlighting reality would serve the strategic interests of the US and of Israel, and at the same time, to substantially expand the already impressive cooperation between the two countries commercially and defense-wise. You mentioned Iran briefly, but let's talk about that a little deeper. One topic which has come to my mind recently is discussion about a potential stopping of the

nuclear site in Iran, basically getting rid of it, kind of what happened in Iraq before. Some people say that that's paramount to inciting war. How do you view that? While the West is preoccupied with nuclear Iran, the West is missing the point that non-nuclear Iran is already the chief epicenter of war and terrorism in the Middle East, in East, North, West Africa, and throughout the American continent from southern Chile all the way to the U.S.-Mexico border and increasingly on U.S. soil itself. It seems to me that the concern should be primarily with the existence of the regime rather than denying the regime nuclear capability.

Today without nuclear, Iran is in a process of an attempt to topple the pro-U.S. Hashemite regime in Jordan. They do it in conjunction with proxies in Iraq and Syria. They do it in conjunction with Muslim Brotherhood terrorists who are very, very well entrenched in Jordan. They do it together with some Palestinian terrorists in Jordan. And should they succeed in doing that, which does not require nuclear capability, they are going to transform Jordan into another platform of anti-American terrorism, Islamic

terrorism, which is going to engulf Saudi Arabia from the north, Jordan, from the east, Iraq and Iran, from the south, Yemen, threatening not only Saudi Arabia, but the entire Arabian Peninsula, the entire bloc of pro-American, all-producing Arab regimes at the same time, transforming Jordan into a platform of Islamic terrorism would trigger ripple effects into Sinai, which is already a platform of Islamic terrorism, and from Sinai very swiftly inside Egypt, where General Sisi fills the machete of the Muslim Brotherhood at his throat and with a chaotic Jordan rather than pro-American Jordan as it is today, this could be the end of the pro-American Sisi regime and returning the Muslim Brotherhood to the helm in Egypt.

Therefore, while it's extremely important one epicenter of instability, of terrorism, of war throughout the world, not only limited to the Persian Gulf. You mentioned this idea of the machete being at the throats a few times in our discussion. Just to clarify, you mean that the group that's holding the machete is basically ready to try to instill some kind of regime change? It's aspiring to do it. The Ayatollahs of Iran base their on their constitution, which reflects a 1400-year-old ideology. And this 1400-year-old ideology mandates them to topple every single, what they call, apostate Sunni regime. Namely, they have held a machete at the throat of the UAE and Bahrain and Kuwait and Saudi

Arabia and Oman and in fact Egypt and Jordan and all the way to Morocco, part of their very, very deeply entrenched fanatical religious belief, which back by the way to a battle that took place in 680 AD the Battle of Karbala for Westerners this is next to irrelevant who cares about 680 AD the ayatollahs of Iran care very much the Shiites The ayatollahs of Iran care very much. The Shiites mostly care about it very, very much. And many of your viewers probably are aware of annual processions by Shiites in areas

where there are many, many Shiites, not only Iran and Lebanon and Iraq, but also in Los Angeles and Chicago and London and Paris, where bare-chested men walk on the main street, flagellating themselves with iron bars to remember the treacherous Sunnis who massacred the Shiites back in 680. The leaders of Iran, the ayatollahs of Iran, have based their entire policy on memory. And the memory is very, very strong. Therefore, the president of Iran repeats on a weekly basis, sometimes on a daily basis, the slogan of the front of Ali is going to defeat the front of Yazid.

Now, Westerners say, who cares Yazid, Ali? Well, if we want to understand the motivation of the Ayatollahs and other radical Shiites in the Middle East and beyond, we should realize when the president of Iran talks about the front of Ali, he talks about the Shiite front which was betrayed in 680 and the front of Yazid is the front of the Sunni caliph who murdered the the Shiite leader. As far as the Iranians are concerned, 1500 AD is very very critical. That's when the Shiite religion became for the first time the official religion in Iran. They view 1979 as a major, major milestone and they look back and they say from very miniscule Muslim element, here we are in 2029, 2025. We are a major regional and global leader

and all that without nuclear, without nuclear. And what I'm aiming at is that the Western world has tried to approach the Shiites of Iran through Western lenses. Let's talk, let's discuss, let's arrive at an agreement, let's negotiate. And Westerners don't realize negotiation for Westerners is a step towards reconciliation. Negotiations for the Ayatollahs as it is for Hamas and Hezbollah and for the Houthis and other Middle Eastern terrorists.

Negotiation is a time to regroup, to bolster capabilities before you launch another attack at your rivals. And going back to their vision, according to the Shiite, according to the Ayatollah's constitution, they are mandated to take revenge of the treacherous apostate Sunnis and then, and then bring the Western infidel to submission and especially the great American Satan. Now many Americans will take it very lightly as a delusion on the part of the ayatollahs and many Americans have ignored the fact that the ayatollahs have entrenched themselves in South America and Central America since the early 1980s in the tri-border area of Argentina and Paraguay and Brazil and in the tri-border area of Chile and Bolivia and Peru. Why do they strike very close cooperation agreements with every single drug cartel,

cartel in Latin America, especially Mexico? Why do they provide predator unmanned aerial vehicles to Venezuela. Why do they provide sophisticated equipment to construct underground tunnels between Mexico and the USA as they have done in Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon? They have done that because they view, and rightly so, They view Latin America as the soft underbelly of the United States and therefore they also have established large numbers, some say scores, some say hundreds of sleeper cells on U.S. soil. Last year in 2024, then the director of the FBI, Chris Ray, appeared four times in four separate hearings on Capitol Hill, two in the House, two in the Senate, in the Homeland Security Committee, and in the Appropriations subcommittee on Homeland Security.

And each time he highlighted the fact that more and more Iranian supported anti-American Islamic terrorist cells are established on US soil with the aim of eliminating key American personnel and eliminating key American institutions and installations. This has been the Ayatollah's vision from day one. So you're telling me here it's not just Israel, because don't the Ayatollahs have a specific vision of the elimination of Israel as

part of their ideology? If there would not be Israel in the Middle East today, the ayatollahs would still be mandated by their own vision, which is not despair-driven. It's domination driven and that domination driven fanatic religious vision mandates them to bring the Western infidel and primarily the great American Satan to submission irrespective of whether there is Israel or there is no Israel. Their efforts to do away with Israel have to do with their obvious awareness that Israel is the vanguard of the US in the Middle East. They view Israel as the most effective outpost of the US in the Middle East.

And in order to undermine U.S. strategic posture in Latin America, they collaborate with every anti-American Latin American regime. And in order to undermine U.S. strategic posture in the Middle East, they try to undermine every regime, every country which they view as an ally of the U.S. That's the reason they want to do away with Israel. That's the reason they want to topple the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates and certainly also the Sunni regime in Bahrain. The Iranian regime actually does fund Sunni groups as well, right? Not just Shiite. The habit in the Middle East has been to leverage any opportunity to advance your goal, even

if it means joining forces with your enemy or your adversary. The Ayatollahs have collaborated with the Muslim Brotherhood for a reason. The Muslim Brotherhood follow an agenda, a constitution since 1928 and the Muslim Brotherhood are Sunnis. But since 1928, they have attempted to topple every single national Muslim regime. They believe in establishing a universal Muslim society based on what they call the only legitimate religion in the world, Islam, and the core values of the Quran. And if it takes joining forces with the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood to bring down the Sunni regime of Saudi Arabia, the Ayatollahs are very happy to do that.

It doesn't mean that they accept the Muslim Brotherhood as legitimate, but they accept the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood as a contributing tool to advance their own goal. That's the reason they have supported Sunni Hamas in Gaza, while they support the Shiite Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both are very effective tools for them against Israel and against Egypt and against other Sunni entities. I'm not sure that what you're describing is generally understood. I mean, here in the US, certainly in Canada. Most people do not realize how deep is the Shiite, the Ayatollah's vision, and how megalomaniacal is that vision. Most people don't realize that the Ayatollahs have spread their arms or the Ayatollah's

octopus, not only throughout the Gulf and not only throughout the Middle East and not only in the Horn of Africa and North Africa and West Africa but all over the world, in Europe and recently mostly in Latin America. Most people do not realize that the ayatollahs of Iran are deeply deeply entrenched in a vision which transcends by far, by far, monetary benefits. The Western vision is that, or the Western norm is that money talks. As far as the ayatollahs are concerned, well, money may talk, but it's the ideology that walks.

And we have seen it in the last 46 years of the ayatollah's regime in Iran. Since they toppled the pro-American Shah of Iran, the West and especially the U.S. have showered the Ayatollahs with hundreds of billions of dollars. Not only has it moderated the Ayatollah's anti-American zeal, it has bolstered the Ayatollah's machinery of anti-American terrorism, anti-American drug trafficking, anti-American money laundering, and anti-American proliferation of advanced military systems. And as I indicated, more and more in the backyard of America's own soil, namely throughout Central and South America. What is your solution to this problem? You're describing a seemingly intractable problem. This has tried for 46 years to solve the Ayatollah's threat through diplomacy.

And diplomacy backfired, and diplomacy became the chief engine of the Ayatollah's bolstered might. For the last 40 years, different presidents tried to deal with the Ayatollahs through economic sanctions. President Trump, during his first administration, even implemented maximum pressure, crippling economic sanctions, which almost brought down completely the Iranian economy. But we know now that economic sanctions by definition are reversible. It can work as long as there is a particular president, but then comes another president with another worldview and the economic sanctions are reversible. And after the failure of the diplomatic option and the failure of the economic sanctions, it's time to consider and implement the regime change option.

More than that, when an American president rules out regime change option and attempts to implement again the diplomatic option, but this time arriving at a better agreement, the message to the domestic opposition in Iran is it's hopeless. Because if the mightiest power in the world does not dare aspire for and implement regime change who are we the domestic opposition in Iran to rise against the regime of the ayatollahs and therefore as long as the. refrains from advancing the regime change option, there will not be any uprising in Iran, and the oppression in Iran is going to continue against the interests of most Iranians and against the interests of Western democracies.

To be frank with you, there isn't much of an appetite in the United States for a regime change. That's with this administration, from my view, and not with the populace either. There's been plenty of examples of US attempts at regime change that basically ushered in even worse regimes. And in fact, arguably Iran is actually an example of exactly that. Well, I'm aware of the lack of appetite, but I'm also aware of the threats to global, even existence of many, many countries in this world, as long as the current Ayatollah regime is in power.

You can produce regime change in Iran through the power of cyber capabilities by the US, you can produce regime change in Iran following even the example of Israel versus Hezbollah where we managed to liquidate most leaders of Hezbollah, most leaders of Hamas. But more than that, let's assume that I'm underestimating the cost of regime change. There is a reality that Iran is very, very, very close to becoming a nuclear power. The cost of facing a nuclear regime in Iran would dwarf the worst case scenario of the cost required to produce a regime change in Iran right now. And therefore, whether there is appetite or there is no appetite, I think this challenge

calls for leadership, which is much more interested in the long-term sanity of the globe, in the long-term national security of the United States, than the immediate-term convenience of military and political leadership. Philosophically, the argument would be, we've tried these sorts of things before. We've tried them repeatedly and they've failed. We just don't do things that way. There must be another way. President Trump rightly stated that his goal is to bring an end to war and terrorism. You cannot bring an end to war and terrorism without taking care of the epicenter of war and terrorism, which is the regime of the Ayatollahs in Iran. I would compare it to fire, which erupts in California or somewhere else

and the fire department comes and they attempt to extinguish the fire and there is an order there. Guys extinguishing the fire completely is very costly, creates many many problems. Let's contain the fire, let's limit the fire to a certain area. The same applies to the battle of the US against terrorism. You cannot contain terrorism because a fire which is contained is definitely going to erupt again and may consume more and more lives and more and more properties. As long as you allow the regime to remain, you must not delude yourself

that they will moderate themselves. You allow them to be contained and they are going to erupt in much more ruthless manner. There is a rule in the Middle East when you commit yourself to any gesture towards patience, of appeasement, of gestures towards terrorists is rightly viewed by terrorists as a sign of weakness. And weakness only wets their appetite. It does not change their appetite. It does strike me though that there does seem to be quite a bit of interest among the Iranian people themselves in having a different government. We've seen eruptions of that multiple times over the last several years. So maybe you don't need to pursue regime change

yourself. Let the people make their decisions for themselves. There was an attempt of uprising during President Obama's tenure, and the president left them hanging high and dry. There was an attempt mostly by women during the Biden's presidency. And once again, they were left hanging high and dry. Today, they, most of the population that does not want the ayatollahs, when they hear voices out of the US,

we don't have the appetite for regime change, it resembles a very robust headwind which is defeating those who want an uprising against the regime. A call in the West for regime change would produce that tailwind which they aspire for. And therefore, there must be a credible threat of regime change hovering above the head of the Ayatollahs that maybe would generate the tailwind that the domestic opposition requires. What is the cost to the U.S. and to the world of a nuclear run? Devastation beyond the Gulf, beyond the Middle East, global devastation. There's no doubt

in my mind that the Ayatollahs do not aspire for nuclear capability in order to brag about it. For them, the guiding force is their ideology. And their ideology, which by the way is not only in their constitution, it has been reinforced in their school curriculum. It has been underscored every Friday during the sermons in the mosque. It is being repeated every single day through their official media. And the message of that vision is very, very clear. Toppling all Sunni regimes and bringing the West to submission, they tried to topple the regime in Morocco. They are very heavily involved in civil wars in Yemen, in Iraq,

in Syria, increasingly involved with terror organizations in Latin America, with drug cartels in Latin America, doing their utmost to erode U.S. strategic posture. And the question remains, why would the West, why would the West display in a way indifference, watching the actual progress of the Ayatollah's threat. In 1979, no one took them seriously. Today, they have surged from second or third Middle East power to a prime global power. Why should anyone doubt the notion that nuclear capability would provide them with unprecedented dramatic tailwind to fully accomplish their vision of global domination? Well, Yoram, this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion. A final

thought as we finish? A final thought, as I have always believed, is incumbent upon Western policymakers to refrain from sacrificing the inconvenient, frustrating reality on the altar of very convenient, very appealing alternate reality. Because alternate reality has led the world to disasters as we saw in the pre-Second World War, as we have seen in the pre-ascension of the ayatollahs to power in Iran, the Western world would be better off sticking with inconvenient reality than falling

into the suicidal trap of alternate reality. Yura Metinger, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you very much. My pleasure and my certainly deep satisfaction. Thank you all for joining Yoram Ettinger and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.