Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - A new (and bolder) approach to Iran? – with Mark Dubowitz

Episode Date: August 19, 2024

*** Share episode on X: https://tinyurl.com/bdze4khv *** Mark Dubowitz reports from Tel Aviv after over a month in Israel discussing Israel’s emerging (and bolder) approach to Iran. Mark is the CEO of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). In his role, he has advised the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and he has testified more than twenty times before the U.S. Congress and foreign legislatures. A former venture capitalist and technology executive, Mark holds a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. To read Mark’s recent piece in the Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/israels-approach-to-iran-may-be-getting-bolder-f4c2c5f2?st=26ve823zvaeilzf&reflink=article_copyURL_share FDD’s Iranian Protest Tracker Map: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2023/01/27/mapping-the-protests-in-iran-2/ Register for Call me Back Live at the Streicker Center in New York: https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor

For the first time in a number of years, they were not able to include in their report their standard line. And the standard line was that Iran is not undertaking any nuclear weapons activities that would provide Iran with the ability to develop, to produce a testable nuclear device. That line, which has been in multiple DNI reports to Congress and as part of their annual threat assessment, was not there. And instead, what they said is actually Iran is undertaking activities, nuclear weapons activities, that would allow Iran to develop and produce a testable nuclear device if Iran so chooses. It is 8 o'clock a.m. on Sunday, August 18th in New York City. It's 3 o'clock p.m. on Sunday, August 18th in Israel, in Tel Aviv, where I'm joined today by my guest, my longtime friend,

Mark Dubowitz, who I'll be bringing into the conversation momentarily. Before we do that, a couple of housekeeping notes. First, if you haven't already, please be sure to register for our live recording of the Call Me Back podcast in New York City on September 24th, evening of September 24th at the Stryker Center, where I'll be having a conversation with Israeli journalist Amir Tibon from Haaretz, who has a riveting book coming out, actually, the day we record our podcast about his October 7th trauma and just extraordinary story about being saved in his kibbutz, he and his children and his wife being saved by his father, retired General Tibon, and then just a longer look at how Israel got to October 7th and where it is going post-October 7th in its relationships with threats on its borders. So that's September 24th.

We'll have a link to the event in the show notes. Second housekeeping note, we are strenuously avoiding any conversation on this podcast the last couple of days about the ongoing hostage negotiations that have been going on the last few days. We, like many of our listeners, are learning a lot and seeing a lot, but don't feel comfortable to comment exactly on the minute-to-minute developments. We will be doing an episode later this week on where the hostage negotiations stand once we feel that we have a clearer picture of what is going on. What we are developing a clearer picture, however, on right now is the growing threat from Iran, the growing threat from its nuclear program, the growing threat from its nuclear program, the growing threat from its proxies, the proxies it backs against Israel, the ring of fire around Israel

that is basically architected and financed and armed and supervised, coordinated by Iran. And that is the focus of today's conversation, because we have with us, as I said, Mark Dubowitz, who joins us from Tel Aviv, who's spent the last number of weeks in Israel working on the Iran issue. He's had a number of high-level conversations with officials in the Israeli security apparatus that has informed his latest thinking and a piece he has in the Wall Street Journal this weekend called Israel's Approach to Iran May Be Getting Bolder, which he co-authored with his colleague, Ruel Mark-Gorecht, from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Ruel was a longtime CIA operative and worked specifically on the Iran file for the CIA and works hand-in-hand with Mark. Mark is, as I said, the CEO of FDD. He's been there for about two decades. He is one of the most, not only thoughtful, but plugged in observers and analysts on what actually is happening with Iran and with U.S. policy towards Iran and Israeli policy towards Iran. He's someone I check in with regularly and whose work I follow regularly because not only is he an analyst, but he's also an advocate for nudging U.S. policy, at least in a certain direction. And he's worked with Democratic administrations very closely and Republican administrations very closely. And for all his good work, he has been awarded by being sanctioned by Iran since 2019.

He's been sanctioned by Russia. He is under, to this day, various forms of threat from the regime in Tehran. For that and many other fine attributes, we are honored to welcome Mark to the podcast today. Mark, thanks for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Dan. Mark, we're going to get into what you've been learning in your conversations in Israel over the last few weeks and what you've been advocating for in all your conversations around the world. But before we do, I just want to set the table in terms of the state of the threat of Iran against Israel. It's sort of just assumed that there's this threat against Israel, but you actually chronicle and monitor every incremental change in that threat. And I want

to start with the nuclear program, because in the last couple of weeks, the Director of National Intelligence released a report that was, I thought, quite alarming about what the U.S. intelligence community is learning now about the state of Iran's nuclear program. So can you just paint a picture of where you understand it is now? Yeah, Dan, it certainly was a bombshell report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, something that at FDD we've been sounding the alarm on for many, many months. And for many months, you know, this has gone unnoticed. And I think one of the reasons, and I've said this quite often, is that for Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran,

October 7th was his opportunity to enable Hamas, Hezbollah, and his other proxies to launch a weapon of mass destruction so that he could advance his weapon of mass destruction. And it's been quite successful because there hasn't been much discussion, certainly until recently, about his expanding nuclear weapons program. There's been much discussion and legitimate discussion about Gaza and Lebanon and Hamas and Hezbollah. And certainly the shadow war between Israel and Iran, which has been going on for decades, has come out of the shadows and particularly on April 13th of this year when Khamenei launched a direct attack against Israel with 321 ballistic missiles and

cruise missiles and drones. But as this has gone on, as this war is now almost a year old, what hasn't been noticed is Khamenei's expanding nuclear weapons program. And we can go into the details of how it's expanded, but I would add that it was really just until recently in this report that came out, which was really a bombshell report that all of a sudden everybody, at least for a few days, has noticed that Khamenei is now on the cusp of having nuclear weapons. The report was the Director of National Intelligence, so it's the most senior body of the U.S. intelligence community. Correct.

And so it's the Director of National Intelligence that released this report. I think they briefed Congress, they briefed the relevant intelligence committees in Congress, and they basically said something is changing. So what is changing? What did they say is new? Right. So they is changing? What did they say is new? Right. So they finally released the report. By the way, we're sitting on this report until Lindsey Graham, who had co-authored two laws

requiring the U.S. intelligence community to brief Congress, started raising holy hell publicly and saying that they were in violation of U.S. law. And he would start holding up nominations and holding up any kind of budget transfers to the office of the Director of National Intelligence. So this isn't something they voluntarily gave Congress. And the reason that they probably sat on this is because it was, as I said, quite a bombshell. What it said is that really for the first time in a number of years, they were not able to include in their report their standard line. And the standard line was that Iran is not undertaking any nuclear weapons activities that would provide Iran with the ability to develop,

to produce a testable nuclear device. That line, which has been in multiple DNI reports to Congress and as part of their annual threat assessment was not there. And instead, what they said is actually Iran is undertaking activities, nuclear weapons activities that would allow Iran to develop and produce a testable nuclear device if Iran so chooses. Huge change. And Dan, this is a huge change because the national intelligence estimate, which is the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community, since 2007, has said explicitly every year that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. There's no evidence that they're developing a nuclear warhead. And so huge change. And what it requires now is once the report's out, now the question is, well, what's the Biden-Harris

administration going to do about this? And we can talk a bit about that, but it was quite a revelation. And I don't want to get too technical, but can you just technically explain what it means from your understanding, what technical advancements or technical progress has Iran made that would make us so concerned? Yeah, I mean, we should step back for a second. You know, what does Iran need for a deliverable nuclear weapon? Well, first and foremost, they need the missiles to deliver a nuclear warhead. They have the largest missile inventory in the Middle East, long-range missiles capable of really reaching not only the Middle East, but Europe. And they've got an intercontinental ballistic missile program that they're working on with

one objective, and that is to have nuclear-to-missiles that can target the United States. So that's the missile side of it. The other component is the enriched uranium. Iran today has accumulated significant stockpiles of enriched uranium. They've gone from a small stockpile enriching at what's known as 3.67%, which is civilian use, to 20% to 60%. They're effectively now about 97% to 99% of what they need for weapons-grade uranium. And the third element of it is a warhead, an actual nuclear device. And so even though there's been now a longstanding view

that Iran has perfected the enrichment side of the house and has the deliverable missiles. As I said, it's been a longstanding view that they haven't actually begun work on the warhead. But this report reveals that indeed they have. And this reflects concerns, particularly in Israel from the Israeli intelligence community, that Iran has begun preliminary work. And that preliminary work is not clear. It may involve computer modeling. It may involve metallurgy work, which is really the science of working on metals that are needed to develop a warhead. And there's a whole science that goes into figuring out how do you actually develop the metals that can withstand a nuclear blast and a nuclear initiation system. So this preliminary

work has begun. And that, again, is a contradiction to the 2007 national intelligence estimate, and certainly the DNI's multi-year now threat assessment that Iran was not actually doing this. Okay. Now I want to pivot from the nuclear program to the other threat or the threat towards Israel, which is loosely defined as the ring of fire strategy. Can you describe what the ring of fire strategy is? The conventional view of the ring of fire strategy is that Iran uses proxies and has essentially built up these proxy terror armies and is surrounding Israel on almost every border, right? And these are the proxies that, Dan, you've been talking about in your show for many months,

obviously Hamas in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, both those terror groups making inroads on the West Bank, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hezbollah and IRGC forces in Syria, Iraqi Shiite militias, the Houthis in Yemen. And these are the terror armies that Iran over decades has built, financed, armed, trained, and enabled. And Iran has been on the attack for many years against not only Israel, but against our Gulf allies and against U.S. forces in the Middle East using these proxy armies. October 7th, I think, was a flagrant example of how it can use its terror army, in this case, Hamas, to devastating effect. The day after, October 8th, it launched through Hezbollah attacks on Israel in the north. And this is sort of the

conventional view of Ring of Fire. But I think there's another element of Ring of Fire, which is the nuclear fire that gets very little attention. And that is that if you really study Khamenei, as I have for now two decades, when he talks about the elimination of Israel, which he has set for 2040, you know, that is in Palestine Square in Tehran, there's a clock that is ticking off the years, months, days, and hours to the elimination of Israel. And he has set a strategy to eliminate Israel. The nuclear weapons piece of this is critical to this.

And Khamenei never talks about developing nuclear weapons. He denies that he wants nuclear weapons piece of this is critical to this. And Khamenei never talks about developing nuclear weapons. He denies that he wants nuclear weapons. But there are other people in Iran, senior officials who talk about the nuclear weapons program. And Dan, what's of concern is not only this DNI report about computer modeling and initial weaponization work, but now you've had former officials like Salahi, who was the chief of the Iran Atomic Energy Organization, coming out in recent weeks and saying that Iran has crossed all thresholds for developing nuclear weapons. And a former Iranian foreign minister talking about we have everything we need to develop nuclear weapons. So more and more, we're getting a sense out of the regime that they are interested in nuclear weapons. They're prepared to develop nuclear weapons.

And then we have to understand how do nuclear weapons fit into this ring of fire strategy. And what I think is very important to understand is that I don't believe the regime is preparing itself to use nuclear weapons against Israel, though one must never exclude that possibility and one must take that seriously. But why they want nuclear weapons is they want to back up their conventional ring of fire with the threat of nuclear escalation. Once they have that nuclear umbrella, they're in a much stronger position

to use conventional forces to move in for the kill shot against Israel. And they're counting on the fact that a US president, doesn't matter, Republican, Democrat, you know, Harris, Trump, Tom Cotton, Nikki Haley, you name it, faced with nuclear escalation and the threat that Khamenei would introduce tactical nukes into the battle space would force a Israeli prime minister and the IDF to stand down. And how do we know that could happen? Well, that's exactly what's happened in Ukraine as Putin has threatened nuclear escalation. And the Biden administration

until very recently has been unwilling to provide the kind of long range missiles and weapon systems that allow the Ukrainians to take the fight to Russia beyond Ukraine's borders. Okay. Now these next couple of questions are really just to set the table to what's potentially an emerging rethinking of Israel's approach to Iran, which I want to get to. But just one other question I need to put on the table. The United States entered the JCPOA in 2015. You were opposed to the U.S.-led efforts on JCPOA. And then President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA. And I think you were opposed to the U.S. pulling out of it. So can you just explain, by the way, this conversation could be its own episode, so I don't want to get totally bogged down in it, but can you just briefly explain why you were opposed to getting in it and then why

you were opposed to getting out of it? And then we'll move to what's going on in Israel. So I wasn't opposed to a nuclear deal with Iran. I was opposed to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the JCPOA, for a fundamental reason, because of the fatal flaw of the agreement. And that is that all the restrictions that were imposed on Iran by that deal would disappear over time. So the restrictions on Iran's ability to enrich uranium, stockpile uranium, develop advanced centrifuges, build out enrichment sites, build out heavy water reactors, really build an industrial size nuclear program, were all permitted to Iran as long as it was patient. So it really had patient pathways to nuclear weapons. And I thought it was a very

dangerous deal where Iran could actually emerge with a significant nuclear program with no restrictions by the year 2030, which is now five years away, and would get over a trillion dollars in sanctions relief, which would fortify the Iranian economy against our ability to use pressure and provide them enormous resources to fund those proxy forces that we talked about earlier, and really expand this ring of fire against Israel and certainly against the United States and our allies. So I thought the deal was fatally flawed. I thought it was poorly negotiated. And I thought that the United States, which had at that point real leverage, it was built up over a number of years through sanctions by Congress and by,

you know, the Bush administration and the Obama administration, really threw away that leverage for a deal that at the end of the day would provide Khamenei with not only an industrial-sized nuclear weapons program, but one that was internationally recognized and internationally legitimate. That's very important for us to understand, that he would emerge with the ability to go for the bomb, and you'd have a legitimate program, making it much more difficult for the United States or Israel to bomb a legitimate program that was intellectually recognized. And that was at a scale that would be very difficult, given how many sites he would have to destroy after 2030 in order to neutralize the program.

So I opposed the agreement. 2018, President Trump decided in order to neutralize the program. So I opposed the agreement. 2018, President Trump decided he wanted to withdraw from the agreement. And I understood the rationale for that. But my view at the time was that actually America could stay in the agreement, reimpose all of the sanctions that were being lifted under the agreement, but do so on what was called technically in the time non-nuclear grounds. I meant because Iran continued its support for terrorism and its missile proliferation and human rights abuses and other illicit activities, you could actually reimpose all of the sanctions that were being lifted under the JCPOA, put enormous economic pressure

on Iran while staying in the deal. And you could use America's role inside the deal and mechanisms inside the deal in order to continue to isolate the regime politically. And if anything, force Iran out of the deal while the United States stayed in with its partners. President Trump went the other way. I think my advice, which I gave to a number of senior Trump administration officials at the time, may have made policy sense. It didn't make a lot of political sense for the president. And he decided to withdraw from the agreement. But it's important to add, Dan, that most of Iran's nuclear escalation, and we can get into the details if you're interested, has occurred since Joe Biden was

elected as president and decided to abandon the maximum pressure strategy of his predecessor and adopt what I would call a strategy of maximum deference or maximum concession. I'm often told by critics of the Trump administration approach to Iran that the major advancements in Iran's nuclear program happened after President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA. Therefore, there's like they draw this cause and effect analysis on the U.S. decision to pull out of the JCPOA and where Iran's nuclear program is today. But you've told me in conversations, not on this podcast, just offline, that actually, yes, the U.S. pulled out of the JCPOA, but it was paired with this maximum pressure campaign that disincentivized Iran from making major advancements in its nuclear program. And then that changed when Biden became president. So can you just describe both the sort of second half of the Trump administration and

then what happened when the administration came into office? Yeah, Dan, you're right. I mean, the conventional wisdom for political reasons and other reasons, people tend to gloss over. And it's important not to gloss over. The conventional wisdom is Trump withdraws from the agreement. Iran escalates its program. And here we are today as stones throw away from Iran developing nuclear weapons. But if you actually plot out the political timeline and the nuclear timeline, which we at FDD have done in detail, you see something then really interesting. And that is

that the Iranians waited for a year till May 2019, after Trump had withdrawn from the agreement, before they began some really incremental steps in expanding their nuclear program. And then Trump killed the IRGC Quds Force commander, Qasem Soleimani. And the Iranians were shocked because no U.S. president had been prepared to do that. Dan, as you've talked about on your podcast, you know, Soleimani was Iran's most experienced, hardened, and strategic battlefield commander. And he'd been really responsible for building up that entire ring of fire strategy over many decades. So the regime was shocked that Trump did this. In fact, Trump went through with this against the advice of a number of officials at the Pentagon and within the administration,

arguing that if he did this, it would cause, you know, World War III. And of course it didn't because the Islamic Republic was so shocked by this decision that it stood down. It stopped expanding its nuclear program for 10 months. And then Joe Biden was elected. And from the time that Biden was elected, the program expanded by leaps and bounds. And it's expanded because the regime looked at the Biden administration and understood from the Biden administration that they weren't prepared to use pressure. They were going to look for a way to go back into the JCPOA, offer sanctions relief in order to incentivize Iran to do that. And that the regime really was taking no risk in expanding its program. So it decided to move ahead. And it did. It expanded to 20% enrichment, 60%. It went all the way up to 84%. It installed thousands of advanced centrifuges

in its enrichment facilities. It began experimentation on weaponization, as we talked about. And we are today where we are because the regime senses, I think rightly so, that there is no cost to be paid for its nuclear expansion. And so, of course, this is a debate that will go on and on in Washington. But I think it's really important to understand from Khamenei's perspective, it wasn't the withdrawal from the agreement that precipitated nuclear escalation. It was his perception after Joe Biden was elected that he faced no consequences for that nuclear escalation. Okay.

So you've given me a lot of perspective from Washington, and now I want to get perspective from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, where you are now. How would you characterize Israel's approach to the growing Iranian threat, the ring of fire, the nuclear program? Let's just take the whole thing as one monolithic threat that has all these various aspects and programs. What has been Israel's approach in dealing with Iran over the last couple of decades? So I think the best way to describe Israel's approach to Iran's ring of fire is to douse the grass. I mean, the Israelis call it mowing the grass, but I, just to continue the metaphor a bit, you know, if that grass is on

fire, the ring of fire, then the Israelis have gone in periodically to put out the fire. And they've put out the fire by fighting these proxy forces, engaging in tactical operations inside Iran, going after nuclear scientists, going after Iranian centrifuges, drones, missile production facilities. So, you know, really impressive tactical operations, covert action, assassinations, and then a fight with the proxies. Every few years, another fight with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, 2006, the war with Hezbollah, and strategy, which I think tactically was interesting and sometimes operationally quite breathtaking, but was a strategy mostly on defense. Because at the end of the day, if you were really to look back and think back about this, you would say that Ali Khamenei's strategy was essentially,

he'd spend 80% of his time thinking about how to kill Israelis and Americans, 20% of his time thinking about how to defend his regime against the United States, Israel, and his own people. And so Khamenei was on offense and the Israelis were on defense. I think former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Dan, who you know and you've spoken to many times, you know, called this the octopus strategy, where the head of the octopus sat in Tehran, essentially immunized against US and Israeli attacks. And he would use, the octopus would use his tentacles, these proxies to fight the Israelis. And as Naftali Bennett understood when he was prime minister and speaks about today, that's a losing strategy. There's no way you can

win that war. And so that has been the approach of Israel for decades. And I think, unfortunately, it got Israel into the predicament, the strategic predicament it has been in for the past couple of years, which is surrounded by this ring of fire, watching this nuclear weapons program expand, and tactically striking when it can, but strategically falling into the trap that Khamenei has set for them, which again is his got to deal with Cuba. We just got to solve for Cuba. We've got to fend off threats from Cuba, as opposed to taking a step back and saying, we have a Moscow problem. Right. We have a Moscow problem. In fact, I mean, Ronald Reagan came into office precisely with that understanding. We have a Moscow problem. We have a problem with the Soviet Union, with communism, with the Red Army, and with

thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles aimed at our cities. We don't have a problem with Afghanistan, necessarily. We don't have a problem, necessarily, with Nicaragua. Those are proxy fights, and we need to contain the Soviets around the globe. But what we really need to do is strike at the head of the octopus, which was in Moscow. If you're interested, we can talk a little bit about that strategy and how that strategy applies to the Islamic Republic. Yeah. Yeah. So the Reagan administration had a series of national security directives issued by

the National Security Council under the explicit direction, guidance of the president of the United States, President Reagan. There was NSD 68. There was NSD 75. These were directives. There were other initiatives as well that made it clear what U.S. strategy was in dealing with the Soviets. And you, Mark, have made a point going back a number of years, this is not just a 2024 issue for you, that that's the model. That should be the model for the U.S., these national security directives from President Reagan. That should be the model for what the U.S. does with regard to Iran. So can you talk a little bit about that? And then we'll go back to Israel.

So the remarkable insight that Ronald Reagan had coming into office is that he understood that the Soviet Union was economically bankrupt, ideologically bankrupt, that the Red Army was spread around the world and therefore vulnerable, and that the Soviet system was vulnerable to pressure. And he gave a speech, it's called the Westminster Speech. He gave it to the British Parliament early in his first term, where he really explained that Marxism-Leninism, because of its internal contradictions, because at the end of the day, it was an ideology that was hostile to life, to incentives, prosperity, to happiness. And Reagan explained that Marxism-Leninism would collapse because of its own internal contradictions. And it was inevitable, as he said, that it would end up on the ash heap of history. And Reagan gives the speech, and then he works with his longtime friend, former campaign manager,

and now CIA director, Bill Casey, and with the NSC to develop a comprehensive strategy about how to ensure that the Soviet Union does end up on the hash heap of history. We're not going to live with the Soviet Union for the next hundred or thousand years. We're going to bring it down. We don't know when we'll bring it down, but we know we need to weaken it. We need to restrain it. And we need to put external pressure on it. And we also need to find people who are living inside the Iron Curtain who are willing to oppose the Soviet Union. We need to support them.

And that becomes the Reagan strategy. And it's a strategy that Casey implements over the next number of years, the support from the president and the Pentagon and the White House. And it's a remarkable strategy. And it's a successful one because it's probably seven years after Reagan gives that speech to the British Parliament that the Berlin Wall comes down. And a couple of years later, the Soviet Union collapses. So a strategy of not just course of containment, but containment in a way that will exacerbate the internal contradictions and weaknesses of the Soviet Union, the Soviet empire. And I think there are a lot of lessons for what we can do against the Islamic Republic.

I bought a book called Victory by Peter Schweitzer. Schweitzer at the time was a young grad student at Stanford in the early 90s. He got access to the US and Soviet archives at the time and wrote a book about Reagan's victory strategy. But this was an interesting study of really what Reagan did. I bought about 100 copies of that. And I gave copies of that book to a number of people in the incoming Trump administration. And I gave them to a lot of folks in Israel. And I said, read this. And as you read this, think about the Islamic Republic of Iran. Obviously, it's a different regime. It's a different era. But there are interesting lessons to be learned. Okay, so Reagan gave that speech

at Westminster on June 8th, 1982. And as you said, seven plus years later, the Berlin Wall comes down. That is relative to how Israel thinks about strategy. That is long term. In other words, issuing a speech in a direction in 1982, and then results come seven, eight years later, and they could have come much later than that. I mean, the U.S. had a long-term approach, and the understanding was it was going to transcend changes in government. That is not how Israel thinks. And I just want to come back now to Israel, because you're pushing for Israel to have this approach, not just the U.S., and Israel's been pretty short-term in its thinking, and you've been critical of that. Yeah, Israel doesn't have an Iran strategy, or until recently hasn't had an Iran strategy.

It's had tactical operations. And again, I want to be clear, Dan, and I think you share this view. I mean, some of them are just breathtaking in terms of their operational sophistication, their lethality. And I think they've really put the Islamic Republic on the back foot, including recently with the strike in Tehran at an IRGC VIP safe house where they took out Hania, the political head of Hamas, according to foreign reports. So there's no doubt, and there's many other examples of that, that tactically the Israelis have been quite impressive, but they've had no strategic

plan about what to do about the Islamic Republic. Khamenei, on the other hand, has a strategic plan, which we talked about earlier, right? He wants to eliminate the state of Israel, a clear objective. He has a plan about how to do that, a ring of fire plan backed up by nuclear weapons. And his goal, and he talks about this, is to drive the best and the brightest and the most flexible Israelis out of Israel because Israel becomes an unbearable place to live because of all these wars and acts of terrorism and leave behind a kind of a rump of people who no longer can defend the state. He also wants to drive a wedge between the United States and Israel, drive the United States out of the Middle East. And then he can go in for his kill shot. So Khamenei's strategy in some respects is to turn Tel Aviv into Kiev. He sees what Putin has done to Kiev and turning Kiev into an unbearable place to live. It's very much like it's a war of attrition against the Jewish state and his conventional forces, his ring of fire, his expanding nuclear weapons program are all part of that strategy. So Khamenei has a strategy and he's deliberate, he's focused,

he's relentless, he's brutal, and he's one of the most astute practitioners of power politics in the Middle East, if not in the world. I can't say the same for the Israelis, but I think it's starting to change and we can talk a bit about that. Okay, so let's talk about that. So you've been in Israel for the last number of weeks, you've been meeting with various officials, you've been advocating for change, you're sensing change. You wrote about this in your Wall Street Journal piece with various officials. You have been advocating for change. You're sensing change. You wrote about this in your Wall Street Journal piece with Ruel. Tell us what you're hearing. So for a long time, the Israeli security establishment and the political echelon have resisted the idea of what's known in Washington as regime change. They resisted the idea of regime change in the Islamic Republic, partly because of their Lebanon experience, where they try to orchestrate regime change in Lebanon, which ended in tears,

partly because they saw the U.S. experience with Iraq and Afghanistan. And so there's been this sort of mental freeze. And anytime you start talking to Israelis about toppling the regime in Iran, it's that same kind of mental freeze American officials have anytime you talk about the same thing in Washington. And, you know, for too long, this has been the sense that we can't do that. We're too small. Well, 10 million people. Yes, we have an impressive intelligence community. We impressive covert action. Iran is a country of 85 million people. We're a country of 10 million people. United States could do this, but we can't. We're too small. So we can't do regime change because of historical experience. We can't do regime change because we're too small and the enemy is too big. And also, we can't waste our resources on this promise that the Islamic Republic will

go down. We need to spend it on these very important tactical operations. And we need to spend it, it obviously on force buildup to ensure that we have a military that can confront the Islamic Republic. Those have been, I would say, the three main objections to adopting this strategy. The answer, of course, to all of those objections is one, this isn't regime change a la Iraq or Afghanistan or Lebanon. This isn't hundreds of thousands of US and Israeli mechanized troops invading Iran. No one would ever advocate for that. Israel, by the way, you may be small,

but you're also a technology and covert action superpower. And Islamic Republic is not the Soviet Union. So, you know, when you talk about the Reagan plan, America was confronting the Soviet Union. Israel, you can confront the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic is not 10 feet tall. It is also ideologically bankrupt. Its mosques are empty. The majority of Iranians despise the regime. It's economically on its knees. And it's also stretched. It's also stretched throughout the Middle East. So it also has the same internal contradictions and weaknesses that you can intensify in doing so weaken the enemy, restrain the enemy. And again, if history is kind to you the way it was to Reagan, you can bring down the Islamic Republic.

So the openness to that approach has changed over the past recent months. And we're starting to see the Israelis adopt a posture of toppling the regime that I think will finally give it a strategic direction that may give it a fighting chance against Khamenei and the IRGC. And do you think absent that change, Mark, Israel is just in a worsening situation in terms of its security posture in the region? Do you believe that's the only way to go? I'm not arguing, Dan, for stopping what Israel's doing. Israel needs force buildup. They need to build an IDF capable of defending and attacking. They need to ensure they have the air force, the ground forces.

They need to have, obviously, a strong intelligence community that's capable of detecting threats and responding to them. They need to do the same kind of covert action, the assassinations, the explosions, the things that go boom in the night. I'm all in favor of that strategy. But again, it's not going to deal with a fundamental problem. And the fundamental problem is that Khamenei is waging a war of attrition against the Jewish state. And so once they're done with Gaza and Hamas, and then they are coming to confront Hezbollah, and now the Houthis are firing drones and missiles at Israel, and the Shiite militias will get going. I mean, what we will expect over the next 5, 10, 15 years is this grinding war of attrition against Israel. And Khamenei is happy to fight until the last dead, Palestinian, Yemeni, Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese, and Pakistani, and Afghan. I mean, he'll just keep throwing bodies at this war. And he's only sensitive when Iranians start dying.

And that's why I think it's important for the United States and Israel to strike at Iran, at the IRGC, and take out Iranians, because that's where he's more sensitive. But getting back to that 80-20 rule, if he's spending 80% of his time thinking about how to kill us and 20% of his time thinking about how to defend his regime, we're going to lose. We need to shift that percentage. And maybe it needs to go to 20-80 to really collapse the regime, but it certainly needs to go to 60-40, 50-50, right? He needs to be spending more of his time figuring out how to defend his regime. Okay. I want to ask you, Israel tends to view the threat from Hamas in Gaza as obviously borderline existential threat, as Israel experienced on October 7th.

That is to say, had Hamas not been stopped on October 7th, Hamas could have kept moving north. And yet the Israelis tend to view the threat from Hamas as tactical, whereas everything you're describing is more of a strategic threat. Meaning, yes, Hamas poses a major threat, but we can manage it at a tactical level. But I just want you to explain what all these threats mean, specifically the one from Hamas, what I would just loosely define, and you talk about these anti-Zionist threats, meaning threats from various players in the region that just reject Israel's right to exist. They believe that Israel's existence in the region that just reject Israel's right to exist. They believe that Israel's existence in the region is a cancer that needs to be cured. And what the viability

of these threats against Israel is without Iranian support and aid. In other words, if you remove the Iranian threat, what it means for these anti-Zionist forces in the region. If we remove the Islamic Republic, then I think these other threats don't go away. And Hezbollah is still there. Hamas is still there. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the militias, the Houthis, they're still there.

But their lethality is significantly undermined because now the question is, where are they going to get their weapons, their money, their training, the coordination that the IRGC and Quds Force provide. They'll still be there and they'll still have to be dealt with. But you're removing a nation state with massive resources supporting them. And again, it's worth reminding the listeners.

I mean, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country of 85 million people. It has the second, third, fourth largest oil and natural gas reserves in the world. It's a country, so it has diplomats and embassies all over the world. I see that the UN, it's treated in the international community by too many as a, quote, respectable member of that community. And it gives it enormous political, economic, military, and diplomatic leverage. And so if you remove the Islamic Republic and replace it with a moderate Iran, an Iran that looks more like the UAE or Saudi Arabia today than the Islamic Republic, then you can start to drain the swamp of these vicious proxies that so threaten Israel and the United States. By the way, that moderate Iran, if you remove a nuclear weapon from the regime, and even if a new moderate Iran still wants a nuclear program, sure, then it's a civilian nuclear program. And that becomes a very different factor in geopolitics. The obsession that Khamenei and the regime has with destroying Israel, where they are devoting

billions of dollars, massive resources, prepared to be under decades of international sanctions, denying their people a decent life, all with a strategic objective of eliminating the Jewish state. All of that goes away. And so you're left with proxies who no longer have the same resources and the same training and the same training and the same coordination that they do today. It makes a profound difference. And I think that takes us to this final point, Dan, about the Iranian people. And it's really, really important to emphasize, and I don't think I gave this enough of an

explanation. In 2009, millions of Iranians took to the street in protest against the fraudulent reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the then Iranian president. And they were out saying, you know, where's my vote? Death to the dictator. And President Obama, are you with us or are you with the dictator? And President Obama made the strategic decision at the time that he would engage with the Ayatollah and not support the Iranian protesters. They were crushed in 2009. And it's interesting, Obama just two years ago came out publicly and

said how much he had regretted the decision that he had made not to support the Iranian people. Well, those protests went underground and we didn't see anything for about eight years. And in 2017, they erupted again, this time because of severe economic conditions inside Iran. And instead of saying, where is my vote? Iranians were now saying, where's my paycheck? And so you saw economic protests, you saw political protests, and then you saw this huge protest in 2021, 2022, called the Women Live Freedom, where Iranian women took to the streets, taking off their hijab, asking for social freedom for the end of gender apartheid. And there were four or five months of protests. The regime, again, killed, jailed, tortured Iranian women and Iranian men who were

supporting them. All the while, the regime understands that this is a significant threat. Ali Khamenei actually even said at the end of the 2009 protests, he said, these protests brought us to the edge of a cliff. He understands he's at the edge of a cliff because he's facing millions of Iranians who want to see the end of the Islamic Republic. And I think it is, it behooves us as Americans, certainly behooves the Israelis and others to support the Iranian people. And there are literally dozens of things, Dan, we can do today that are actionable,

that the Israelis could do, that the Americans could do to support Iranians who are on the streets every week. We have a protest tracker at FDD if you're interested in taking a look. You'll see there have been over 7,000 protests since September 2022. Because Iranians take to the streets, it gets no attention. They get no support, but they're there and they are, in a sense, our best allies in the Middle East in helping bring down the Islamic Republic and draining this toxic swamp of Khamenei and the IRGC and their support for these lethal

ring of fire. So, Mark, why don't you give us some specific examples of ideas you have for what Israel could be doing to help Iranian people? Yeah, Dan. So, I mean, there are dozens of ideas you have for what Israel could be doing to help Iranian people? Yeah, Dan. So, I mean, there are dozens of ideas that Israel could actually be deploying, that the United States could, our Gulf allies, Europeans. You know, specific things are really important. For example, when the Iranians take to the streets, the regime has been shutting down the internet. When Iranians can't communicate, they can't mobilize. If they can't mobilize, they can't protest. If they can't protest, there's no chance for the kinds of strikes, labor strikes that you saw that were very helpful to Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, when he brought down the Shah in 1979 during the Islamic revolution. So you can imagine, I mean, there are technology solutions that could help

Iranians communicate. I mean, someone should ask Elon Musk if he will extend his satellite internet service Starlink, which is currently available in 100 countries, whether he would extend that to Iran. Other technology platforms that the Israelis as a technology power, certainly the United States, could help develop that would help with communication. The second is I referenced labor strikes, which were very important in bringing down the Shah, and which were very important during the Cold War, when you saw Reagan supporting the solidarity labor movement in Poland, for example. If you are an Iranian and you are prepared to go on strike, you're obviously going to risk your well-being, and you may be jailed or tortured or worse. But you're also going to go on strike, and you're not going to get paid because there are no independent labor unions inside the Islamic Republic. Well, what about setting up a labor strike fund where you

raise the money outside of Iran? And certainly the Mossad or CIA or others could get that money into Iran, into the hands of people who are part of the opposition. And you could pay Iranians to go on strike and stay on strike. The Iranians today, as a third idea, they face a brutal crackdown from the Iranian security services, the Basij. Well, what about a doxing for justice program where the Israelis or the Americans get their hands on information about where these security forces, who they are, their names, their photos, where they live. Let Iranians take justice into their own hands. I mean, let them be able to respond to the brutality of these security forces by going after them directly. The security forces are also moving through these streets and putting

down these protests. What about using cyber to get into the databases and blind these security services or provide detailed information on where they're going to the opposition. You could get into training them in terms of running protests and avoiding the opposition. You know, there's many ideas. I think the most controversial one that I've spoken to folks about, and it's one that one has to carefully consider, is the opposition is not armed. So they are facing these brutal security services who are well-armed. And they are, every time they go out on the streets, they end up getting injured or killed or jailed or tortured. What about arming a vetted opposition and providing the kind of weapons that allow Iranians to defend themselves?

And again, I'd point out this is probably the most controversial of the ideas. But there are many ideas, and certainly FDD has come up with and published some of these ideas. I'm positive that smart people in the Israeli and U.S. intelligence services could come up with many other ideas. And most importantly, in speaking to Iranians themselves, both inside Iran and in the Iranian diaspora, is to talk to them and find out what does the Iranian opposition need in order to be better prepared to take on the Islamic Republic and ultimately consign it to that ash heap of history that Reagan talked about so many years ago. All right, Mark, we will leave

it there. Thank you, as always, for your time and your insights and your on the ground reporting, on the ground meaning in Israel. We will put in the show notes the information for following that protest tracker in Iran. But for those who want to look for it, you can just do an internet search for FDD Iran protests, and you'll find it tracker, I guess, include the word tracker, and you'll find it. But we'll also put a link to the show notes. Mark, thanks for being here. No, thanks for having me, Dan. And really congrats on a great podcast and appreciate what you've done to keep all of us so well informed during these very

difficult 10, 11 months. Thanks, Mark. You and your colleagues at FTD have been an enormous source of information and insight, even when you're on the podcast, but even when you're not on the podcast, you guys indirectly helped me prep for these episodes. So keep up the good work. All right. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. That's our show for today. To keep up with Mark Dubowitz, you can find him on X at M Dubowitz and also at FDD, which is the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And as I mentioned, we'll put a link to the show notes for that tracker that Mark and I discussed. And we will put a link in the

show notes to the Striker event that I'll be doing with Amir Tibon, where we'll be recording a live podcast on the publication date of his new book. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.