Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - DESTROY, DELAY OR DISMANTLE? - with Nadav Eyal and Karim Sadjapour

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

Watch Call me Back on YouTube: youtube.com/@CallMeBackPodcastCheck out Ark Media’s other podcasts: For Heaven's Sake: https://lnk.to/rfGlrA‘What’s Your Number?’: https://lnk.to/rbGlvMFor sponsorship inquiries, please contact: [e-mail] contact us, sign up for updates, and access transcripts, visit: https://arkmedia.org/Ark Media on Instagram: https://instagram.com/arkmediaorgDan on X: https://x.com/dansenorDan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dansenorToday’s Episode:Will the U.S. play a direct military role in the destruction of Iran’s nuclear program? Over the past few days, President Trump has been reinforcing his support for the Israeli offensive and his position that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. Most assessments suggest that the IAF does not have the capability to completely destroy Iran’s nuclear program. If that’s the case, what’s the end-game? Should Iran’s nuclear program be destroyed by the US, delayed by Israel, or disassembled by Iran through a deal?On today’s episode, we dive into these critical questions with senior analyst at Yedioth Achronot and Call me Back regular, Nadav Eyal, and Iran foreign policy expert and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Karim Sadjapour.Karim is a first-time guest. In addition to working at Carnegie, he is a contributing writer to the Atlantic. He was previously an analyst with the International Crisis Group, based in Tehran and Washington. He has lived in Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East (including both Iran and the Arab world) and speaks Persian. Karim is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, teaching a class on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East.Nadav and Karim discuss what the mood is inside Iran, what military options are on the table, and possible outcomes of the war.CREDITS:ILAN BENATAR - Producer & EditorMARTIN HUERGO - Sound EditorMARIANGELES BURGOS - Additional EditingMAYA RACKOFF - Operations DirectorGABE SILVERSTEIN - ResearchYUVAL SEMO - Music Composer

If Khamenei went back in the time machine to last week and he was offered to take the deal that Trump had been offering him, which was zero enrichment, knowing the consequences of what has happened, I'm not even sure he would have taken that deal, such as his level of dogmatism. But his options are much worse than they were last week, because in my view, the deal that's going to be offered to him right now is not as good as the deal that was going to be offered to him last week. And I expect that what he's going to try to do is to neither say yes nor no to a deal, but to send his diplomats out to express interest in talking and then try to prolong the situation. It's 10 a.m. on Tuesday, June 17th here in New York City. It's 5 p.m. on Tuesday, June 17th in Israel as Israelis wind down their day to the extent

that they're winding down their days at all these days because they're up much of the night as well. Yesterday, we released a brief news round up where I discussed all the major developments that had taken place in the previous 24 hours, of which there was no shortage. To hit some quick headlines before we get into today's episode, Israel just announced that it has killed Iran's new wartime chief of staff and the country's most senior military commander Ali Shadmani, who had only been appointed to his position four days ago, after Israel had killed his predecessor, Golam Ali Rashid. On Monday, following days of Israeli strikes, the head of the International Atomic Energy

Agency, Rafael Grossi, said it's likely that all of the 1,500 centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant had been damaged or completely destroyed. So far, the IDF has destroyed 40% of Iran's missile launchers, according to a senior Israeli official. This is why we've seen a reduced number of missile launches over the past two days. In fact, last night was the first without Israeli civilian casualties since the war began last week, early Friday morning. On Monday, President Trump left the G7 summit in Canada early due to the events in the Middle East. He also issued an evacuation order for residents of Tehran

leading to hundreds of thousands of cars fleeing the city. President Trump has been publicly reinforcing his support for Israeli actions and his position that Iran cannot have nuclear weapons. However, it remains to be seen whether he will commit to US direct involvement. If the US does not join in a direct way, a major question that faces us is how could this end? Most assessments suggest that the Israeli Air Force does not have the capability to completely destroy Iran's nuclear program. If that's the case, what's the endgame? Should Iran's nuclear program be destroyed by the US, delayed by Israel, or can it be disassembled by Iran through

some kind of deal? Here to discuss these critical questions are senior analysts for Yediut Akhranot and call me back regular, Nadeem Ayyal, an Iran foreign policy expert and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Kareem Sajjapur. Kareem joins us from Washington, Nadav from Tel Aviv. Gentlemen, thank you both for being here. Thank you for having us. Thank you, Dan. Nadav, I want to start with you. What is the significance of the most recent announcement from Israel about killing Iran's new wartime chief of staff, Ali Shadbani? We are seeing Israel doing to Iran what it did to Hezbollah. This is the same kind of framework that we have seen with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

I'm talking about the 2024 summer to the fall of 2024, in which Israel managed to basically decapitate the military leadership of Hezbollah and to lead to disarray within Hezbollah to the defeat of Hezbollah. And right now it seems to be on the same track. We need to remember that Hezbollah is not Iran. Iran is not Hezbollah. Iran is a much more organized body. It's a country.

It's a big country. It's a civilization. It has many resources that Hezbollah doesn't have. But in the bottom line, they had a chief of staff, Israel killed him. I didn't even bother to learn the name of the new chief of staff. Israel killed him too in the next 48 hours. Israel is now flying over from Western Iran to Tehran with absolutely no limitations in terms of air defenses.

It's not only having premium kind of intelligence that it has already gathered that led to the first strike. It's also having real-time intelligence, Dan, that it didn't have at the beginning of the war because it's flying so freely over Iran at this moment. It also took out about a third of the Iranian missile launchers, ballistic missile launchers. It's taking out some of the inventories of the ballistic missiles. And right up to now, besides, of course, these attacks of the Iranians against population centers and bases here in Israel that are causing a massive devastation, there's absolutely no question about it. Compared to any missile attacks in Israel or rocket attacks

and missile before, you can't mark any sort of achievement of the regime during this war. The IDF is now briefing that Iran's military leadership is on the run. They're not just saying that. They mean that some of them are trying to flee their command centers, and that's also a significant development. Now, the IDF has not finished what it aims to do in terms of the surface-to-surface ballistic missiles or the nuclear arena. These plans are ambitious.

The cards are, of course, with President Trump to decide whether or not he wants to join for the final strikes or blows in this campaign, or he's going to leave it to Israel, even if he does not join. If the US stays out, Israel has some contingencies. And after I said all that, I completely relate to what you said at the beginning. The question is, how does this end in a strategically meaningful way? And I'm not hearing any clear path neither in Jerusalem or in Washington right now. They're very content by what they're seeing but they still have no

idea how this changes strategically in the long run the course of the Islamic Republic and the region. Can I just ask one question? You said that Israel has free range over Iran. I've heard two different things in recent days. Sometimes I hear that as it relates to Iran and sometimes I hear it as it relates to Tehran. I hear they have free range over Tehran, but not necessarily the whole country. Am I hearing a distinction without a difference? Is it the whole country? There are areas in which it's more complex. Basically, the Israeli Air Force can attack

in any place in Iran, but it's very much focused on specific areas, which as I mentioned are Western Iran to Tehran. It faces no real challenge at this point in terms of air defenses. That's the short answer. When they decided on this operation, they assumed that there would be many more people killed in Israel's civilians as a result of ballistic missiles. The assessment given to the cabinet was between 800 civilians to 4,000 civilians dying as a result of Iranian ballistic missiles. And they also assumed then that we might lose some of the fighter jets of the Israeli Air Force. This was an assumption that was made in Israel. In that regard, I just talked with a cabinet minister last night who was part of course

of the deliberations of the decision made by the cabinet. And he told me that, and this is a man who's been in politics for many years, he's never seen anything like it. Israel is basically the IDF, the Israeli Air Force, is right now doing everything they plan to do, absolutely everything, and they're doing it in a schedule that's much quicker than what they anticipated. Again, after saying all this, I want to hedge, formally hedge, and say, this could go wrong. Stuff could go wrong in this operation.

It's a war. Enough to have two ballistic missiles that hit the wrong place in Israel, and we'll have a mass, mass casualty event. For instance, Israel's refinery is not working. It's on the record. It was hit by the Iranians. So Israel has enough oil and it prepared itself to this war. There is no shortage of fuel in the country, but it's just an example. Things can go wrong and in wars they usually do. Okay, Kareem, you're listening to what Nadav is saying and you're obviously following sentiment inside Iran, tracking sentiment within Iranian society. What is your sense of sentiment, mood, attitude to this catastrophe from Iran's perspective?

Well, it's very complicated and it's evolving, Dan. So in contrast to Israeli society, which it's almost been normalized for Israelis to be experiencing missile attacks over decades, Iranian society hasn't experienced these days since the Iranian-Iraq War, which ended in 1988. For most Iranians, this is new and they are still kind of spectators. The anticipation that perhaps this would trigger them to rise up is way premature.

They don't see themselves yet as participants. I think the first 48 hours after Israel's attack last week, several senior figures of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and repressive apparatus were killed. This is a very deeply unpopular regime. I suspect they best have 15 to 20% popular support. I think a lot of people didn't have any sympathy and were happy that these oppressors were taken out. I think as the war has evolved, it started to deeply disrupt people's lives, especially in the city of Tehran. President Trump tweeted last night

that all residents of Tehran should evacuate. He tweeted that when it was the early hours of the morning in Iran. And not everyone has a second home. It's difficult for people to get gasoline if they want to get on the highway. Even if they can get gasoline, there's pure gridlock. People always ask, well, has it made people rally around the flag or has it pushed people against the regime? My general view in these situations is that it tends to amplify people's existing political views. So if prior to this war, you were a supporter of the regime, you now have even more

ammunition against Israel, against America for supporting Israel. And if prior to this war, you were an opponent and critic of the regime, you see it's just another example of the Islamic Republic following their own ideological interests and never prioritizing the well-being and security of the Iranian people. So I think it's essentially further polarized Iranian society. That's interesting, Kareem. I wonder if there's a middle ground. In the middle ground, I'm referring to, I mentioned this on Scott Galloway's podcast

over the weekend, that I do wonder, like, say the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, if you're a middle level officer or junior level officer and you have been indoctrinated to believe that A, the Iranian military capabilities are supreme, worthy of the ambitions that Iran has for hegemony in the region. And you've been indoctrinated to believe that the Zionist entity is weak and temporary, as one former Iranian president described it, a one-bomb country, one nuclear bomb could wipe out all of Israel. And it was just a matter of time.

There's the clock in the center of Tehran with the countdown to 2040 when Israel is to be wiped off the map. If you've been led to believe that Israel is just so fragile, and then you watch what Israel has accomplished and you're that mid-level or junior level officer, you could be in the camp that has been, you know, rah rah Iran and I feel strongly about Iran and I believe in Iran and I'm loyal to the supreme leader and I believe everything I've been told and it's worthy of this fight because it's a fight we're going to win. And then you just watch what Israel has done to Iran over the last few days, which is by any standard, I think, pretty humiliating.

Then does that make you, you could argue that person falls into the category of the true believer who's only going to become more of a true believer because of the war. Or you could say that true believer is going to lose confidence in what he's been led to believe in. Yes. I need to, I need to drop off because we just got a sort of an alert that we're going to have a siren soon. Okay.

So I'm going to, I'm going to drop off. By the way, Nadeav, our listeners are now accustomed to our podcast guests having to do exactly what you're doing. So I actually don't even need to explain it anymore. So I'm going to turn mute and turn the camera off and let's see how much time we have. Okay. All right. Stay safe.

Karim, back to you. So one thing we obviously know, Dan, it's, as I said, a deeply unpopular regime. And so for that reason, its unpopularity has been an enormous strategic liability because many members of Iranian society, including regime insiders, have been willing to collaborate with Israel. So many of Israel's most audacious operations inside Iran are as a result of these infiltrations. A friend of mine who are as a result of these infiltrations. A friend of mine who was a long-time professor in Tehran told me the beginning of the revolution in 1979, the regime was about 80% ideologues and 20% charlatans, people who were just kind of financially, politically motivated.

He said it's not the opposite. Now the Islamic Republic is about 20% ideologues. Only one in five perhaps are true believers and 80% are charlatans who are just financially perhaps politically motivated. Obviously the Supreme Leader, his coterie are true believers, but I'm not even sure if Revolutionary Guard, that second, third tier that you're talking about, are true believers anymore. The big question though for people inside the regime is, okay, what comes next? I think this is not only a society but a system in which many people are just waiting for the Supreme Leader to die.

He's 86 years old. He's been ruling since 1989. He's arguably the longest serving autocrat in the world, someone totally incapable of changing his ideology and worldview. And I think for that reason, most people in Iran, I just see so far as spectators. They're watching what Israel is doing. They're watching how the government is reacting. But certainly under aerial bombardment, I don't think people feel they're in a position to control their own destiny at the moment.

I want to talk about wins and losses on each side. So from Israel's perspective, and I'll provide my take and maybe Nadav when he emerges from the latest siren and hopefully no rocket attack, missile attack, but it sounds like there's something happening. When he emerges from that, he can augment what I'm listing off here. But from my perspective, what I think Israel has accomplished is one, it's punctured this notion that a military confrontation with Iran must be avoided by Israel at all costs because Israel cannot afford getting into an escalatory war with Iran.

I mean, that was certainly the view before Israel started tackling Iran's proxies. But, you know, that was certainly the view when, when Hezbollah was staring down at Israel from the North, when Hamas was still largely intact, when the Assad regime was in power, a proxy state of Iran's, and those are that whole proxy system that at least the most prominent part of the proxy system for Iran has been Taken apart so the risk of an escalation with Iran went down obviously over the past year but There was still concerned about what does a war with Iran look like well

We're seeing it now and Israel's demonstrated It's punctured this this notion that Israel cannot afford to get itself in a military escalatory situation, a war with Iran. A. B. It, as Nadav said earlier, before you had to hop off, has free range over Iranian skies. C. It is completely, sounds like jammed up or destabilized the command and control structure of the Iranian military and security apparatus. D. It has taken out most of Iranian, if not all, air defenses, and many,

although not all, of its offensive capabilities, its ability to launch ballistic missiles. It's taken out a lot of them, but obviously not all of them. And it has done, from what I said in the introduction, real damage to the nuclear program in Natanz and elsewhere. The negatives, or the losses so far from Israel's perspective, I think, are they still don't have a great solution

with how to deal with these missile barrages from Iran. That is to say, if Iran launches 10 projectiles, Israel's air defense programs, interceptors can largely protect Israel, but when Iran launches orders of magnitude more of projectiles and in a single barrage, some are just going to get through. And we've seen that when then some get through, they can do real damage, tragically real loss of life in Israel and real tremendous physical damage. That's a setback for Israel. And then lastly,

there's the big question about Fordow. If this is really a war about ending Iran's nuclear program, as long as Fordow is intact, one would think this is not a success. Israel cannot claim it's at a successful stage. It has achieved successes, but until Fordow is addressed, shall we say, this cannot be checked off as a total success. That's my assessment of where things are at. How would you, if you're looking at it from Iran's perspective, how would you tally up the wins and losses

from the last few days? Well, it's difficult to think of any Iranian wins. Iran has been significantly outmatched militarily. They're outmatched diplomatically, they're outmatched financially, technologically. In every respect, this is a regime which is outmatched. That's not surprising because it's behaved as an economically failing police state over the last four decades and most of the best Iranian minds have left the country. In terms of its human capital, it's a nation which

has enormous human capital, but it's a regime which doesn't have very good human capital. There's a concept that came to be during the Soviet Union called negative selection, which is if you're hiring people based on their ideological field team, you're always hiring incompetent people, and then those people are hiring incompetent people. So I can't think of any notable wins for the regime, but as you alluded to from the outset, I think the big question is how does this play out months from now? Because this is a regime which has seen humiliation before. I remember the early days of the Iraq war when I was based in Tehran,

they were terrified that the US had just defeated Saddam's army. This is of the second Iraq war, of the 2003 Iraq war. Exactly. So, you know, the US had defeated the Iraqi army in three weeks, an army that Iran couldn't defeat over an eight-year period. But they bided their time and eventually they came back and their only task was to make life hell for the United States and Iraq and they succeeded. So this context is a little different now because you have an, as I said, an 86-year-old supreme

leader. But what does this do to the nature of the regime and the stability of the regime? I've studied the Middle East long enough to know that any predictions made in real time have very little value. I could paint a scenario for you whereby one year from now it's a regime which is led by men who will take an even more aggressive approach towards nuclear weapons than Ayatollah Khamenei in a post-Khamenei Iran. I could also paint for you a scenario whereby you have a group of leaders who come to power who decide, you know, this death to America, death to Israel culture of 1979 is totally useless. We need to put our national interests before revolutionary ideology, much like the Chinese decided to do in the 1970s. That's totally plausible as well. But remember

Kissinger once saying that both wars and revolutions, they're defined by what they build, not what they destroy. In some ways, this Israel war will be certainly remembered by Israel's enormous military superiority over Iran But I think it will also be remembered by you know, how things play out six months one year and beyond That's very interesting what you said about whether or not Iran their cooler heads could prevail that decide that we're gonna go the path of the Reproach mounted a model similar to the reproschement between China and the U.S. in the seventies. I guess my question there is can Iran do, and it's an imperfect analogy, so I don't want to overstate the analogy because there are a bunch of dynamics that were unique to that situation in the seventies.

That being said, we'll try. Could Iran accomplish what you're describing as a possibility, as a possible path while still giving up their nuclear program. Meaning it seems to me like that is such a tough pill for the Iranian leadership to swallow, to say, because that is, I'm not an expert in the psychology of the Iranian leadership, but it seems that they built up this nuclear program of such symbolic significance that to agree to anything that involves giving up their nuclear program is such a symbolic and national and nationalist

capitulation that even if they were open to some kind of transfer transition to a normalized relationship with the US and even with the Middle East and integration and You know non-belligerency giving up the nuclear program because I think at this point nobody's gonna trust them having a nuclear program So giving up the nuclear program, because I think at this point nobody's going to trust them having a nuclear program. So giving up the nuclear program is just a bridge too far. Well, there's zero percent likelihood they're going to have a rapprochement with the US as long as Ayatollah Khamenei remains supreme leader. So that's a given, you know, he's not going to change his long-time disposition at age 86.

I'm talking about, you know about once he's left the scene, post-Khamenei Iran, what is possible. There's enormous popular demand among Iranians to be, again to quote Kissinger, to be a nation rather than a cause, to be led by a government who's organizing principle is not death to Israel or death to America, but long live Iran, a patriotic nationalist government. Now, I think any type of government like that, the first thing you would do is you need to normalize relations with the US. You want to have relations with the greatest economy in the world, the greatest military in the world, rather than gratuitous conflict with it.

I think there would be certain prerequisites for Iran to normalize relations with the U.S. One of them would be to cease support for all of these regional proxies. In my view, those regional proxies are not in the national interests of Iran, national interests being that which advances the economic prosperity and security of the Iranian people. So you have to give up those proxies. And then second, there would need to be some type of a cessation or a freeze on the nuclear program. But I think, Dan, even popular views about the nuclear program have evolved inside Iran. Because remember, for decades decades the regime was saying that this is driven by popular demand. This is a program that has elicits enormous national pride. I don't hear anyone saying that anymore. I don't even hear regime officials saying anymore that this is the program

which is a great source of national pride. In fact, this program, this nuclear program, has been an enormous strategic liability and a financial albatross for this regime. If you crunch some of the numbers, both in terms of the sunk costs of Iran's nuclear program and the opportunity costs and all the ancillary costs of this program, the price tag is easily $500 billion. When you're talking about lost oil revenue, economic isolation, the most sanctioned nation in the world or number two after Russia, the costs of this program have been astronomical. For what in return? It provides around 1% of Iran's energy needs. It hasn't deterred Israel.

So it's a nuclear program, which has been enormously costly. It doesn't provide energy nor deterrence. So I don't actually think that if you had, you know, strong patriotic nationalist leader, um, I think it would be possible that they make the case to their people, listen, this program actually is not advanced the national interests of Iran. It's been a huge liability and albatross for us. We're going to put it on ice for now.

And by the way, look at our neighbors in the UAE. They have a nuclear program, which cost probably a quarter of what we've spent. And it actually provides 25%, if not more of the country's energy. You know, that's the Rolls Royce of, of nuclear programs. We have the Pekan that was an old Iranian, that's the Rolls Royce of nuclear programs. We have the Pekkan, that was an old Iranian automobile, the Pekkan of nuclear programs. So I think that's a possibility, but again, none of these things I'm talking about are going to happen so long as this supreme leader is in power.

By the way, Nadezhda is now back. Nadezhda, I assume you're... So they shot another barrage of ballistic missiles. These barrages are becoming more limited, more smaller in the number of missiles they're shooting, but they're still getting the effect of getting the country into shelters or at least near shelters. And the reason they're doing that, Dan, is because they're trying to basically save some of their ballistic missiles because they don't have a lot of them and

they're trying to ration them and They to your point earlier They want to just disrupt Israeli life by just forcing the country every few hours into bomb shelters Which they can do with ten ballistic missiles or they could do with a hundred so why not do with ten exactly right? Okay, Nadav. I was asking Kareem. we were both sort of stacking up what Israel's wins and losses have been relative to Iran's wins and losses, if you were just to try to jot up a scorecard over the past few days. But there's one that I didn't hit that I wanted to wait for you to return, which I would say

a win, which may have been, I think, is surprising to some people, some observers from abroad, at least, is the unity of Israeli society behind this war. And it's quite extraordinary. I mean, you have, for instance, Yair Lapid, the formal head of the Israeli opposition, fierce critic and rival of this government. And he wrote, he penned a piece for the Jerusalem Post, which I can link to in the show notes where he just makes it clear that he stands shoulder to shoulder with the government on what it's trying to do with Iran. Hearing him talk about stands shoulder to shoulder with the government on what it's trying to do with Iran.

Hearing him talk about standing shoulder to shoulder with this government on anything these days is quite jarring. And interestingly, in one of these chat groups, I see these different chat groups, WhatsApp chat groups of the protest movement, the group that has been organizing against the government every Saturday night. They protest in Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv for those who are listening. You see these images of tens, hundreds of thousands of times of Israelis protesting the streets. So these protest groups organize it and they, I saw the Jerusalem Post piece.

People are taking screenshots and sending it to me from the protest group chat saying, look, they're circulating the Yair Lapid piece in the protest group chats, basically sending the message as it relates to the war with Iran, there are no protests, we're unified. And I would chalk that up to certainly a win for Israel, but you're on the ground. Can you describe the sentiment? So definitely, you know, Lapid supports this, the opposition supports this, there is a consensus in Israel today, and how should I put it, Dan, many of the leaders of the protest movement are basically flying now to Tehran on a daily basis twice a day. It's the pilots, right?

It's the same pilots that have been demonized, been presented as traitors. It's the same pilots on which some parts of this coalition said, we don't need the pilots. We don't need this Air Force. They have been blamed for not being loyal enough for saying that they're not going to go into their reserve service and fly if the country changes its face after the judicial overhaul. And they were then accused after October 7 that this led to the deterrence of Israel eroding. And because of that, October 7 happened. And of course, on October 7, they all reported to duty, more than 120%. And now they are the ones leading this assault in Iran.

So what you see here, Dan, is to a large extent, the Israeli society unified to begin with. And again, this goes to something we talked about since October 7 on this podcast, and that is the way that there is a loss in translation, a misreading of the Israeli society and these protests. They are seen by people abroad sometimes, whether it's in the West, in America, whether these people are right-wingers or left-wingers or Islamists. It doesn't really matter. These protests are seen as the Israeli society fracturing under pressure, you know, the spider web theory of Hassan Nasrallah.

Everyone like yourself who has been in Tel Aviv during these protests knows that this is a very patriotic and to an extent a conservative movement within the Israeli society that portrays itself, you might not agree, as defending the conservative, the traditional values of Israel. And because of that, this is not kind of a radical burn the flag. These are flag barriers. And this is the mistake made by Yahya Sinwar, made by Hassan Nasrallah, I think made by the Iranian regime.

They've been fooled. Nobody told them that demonstrations in a country like Israel is a show of participation within the framework of the state and not an uprising against it. Why? Because in Iran, if you go to the streets and you protest, you have a different flag. You can have the, Karim knows this better than me, you can have the flag of Iran before the revolution,

of the Pahlavi family. You can have the flag of the Islamic Republic. You can have the flag before the Pahlavis. So no, in Israel, you just have one flag and everybody, Delikud, the government, Netanyahu, the protesters, there are still this tribal idea, I'm saying tribal not in terms of politics, but really tribal idea, like the tribes' fire, and that idea is that this region doesn't want us. There's an agreement there. Sometimes people blame each other, you other, the lefties blame

the right wing, the right wing blames the lefties, that, oh, you don't understand that or you're cooperating with them. But at the end, everybody understands what kind of neighborhood it is and that basically Israel is very unpopular in this neighborhood. As I said at the opening, what's potentially on the list of options right now? They range from either the US unleashing B2s and whatever other resources they have that Israel does not have to destroy Iran's nuclear program or giving Israel some tools. I'm not sure exactly what those are, so Israel can do this on its own, but they would be tools that Israel doesn't currently have. So let's just say ramping up US involvement in a meaningful way to completely destroy

the program, which basically means hitting four dough, or reach some kind of deal with Iran, use the pressure that Israel has put on Iran to bring Iran back to the table and try to get it to capitulate in a way that Kareim and I were talking about earlier that involves really disassembling its own program. Nadev, can you talk about the upside and downside of each of those paths? First of all, the question is what you can actually get them and that's something that I think Karim could answer better than me as to the Islamic Republic itself and what would be plausible to receive from them in terms of even if they capitulate.

What's the plausible realist scenario? And I'll give you one example. Of course, for the Israelis, they want Iran to reach an agreement while Iran is still in the midst of this conflict and the IDF is putting pressure on the Iranian army in revolutionary regard. That is the best case scenario. The Iranians sit down with the West, they accept whatever offer made by President Trump, but the IDF still reserves the right during the negotiations to pressure them militarily. That's the best case scenario for the Israelis.

And then they sign an agreement and they lose maybe all of their enriched uranium. I should say Israel did not attack the enriched uranium because of several reasons. One of them, it doesn't want to create a dirty bomb. Another reason is that it's extremely difficult to do that. You need to basically blow this up from the ground. You never know. If a mountain collapses on these containers, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will lose the enriched uranium. Israel is not trying to take out the enriched uranium, but maybe part of that agreement is that this enriched uranium is leaving Iran to begin with. So this is one scenario. Another scenario, which I think is more plausible, is a cessation of hostilities.

The Iranians signal to the Trump administration they're willing to reach an agreement. Israel, its IDF tells the government, look, we have achieved whatever we aimed to do. We're now stopping. We managed to take out much of their nuclear ability and their ballistic missile ability. And now it's up for President Trump, the international community, to do whatever they decide. And the third option is, of course, that the US joins in, and then the US is wrapping it up, which is for Israel the best case scenario. Because then even ending this conflict, it's not its responsibility anymore. You know, it's off the table and we know that Fordow will be taken care of, something that

is much more problematic if we think about Israel doing it alone. I have to say something about that. Israel has contingencies also to the possibility that the US won't join at all. And it has ideas how to tackle all the challenges at hand. I suspect this includes forlorn. But if the US would say no, and we don't know when, you know, the president can say tomorrow morning, yeah, let's do it. And then you can say, let's not, and we don't know. So it's the schedule determined by the president. Out of these three alternatives, there is a fourth one, and this is that this drags on. And I think that for the Islamic Republic, that is the best alternative. This drags on,

it gets complicated, the US doesn't join in, it doesn't become an Iran-Iraq war, I don't think that both sides can allow it, but it becomes something more dragged on, and then there becomes a pressure on Israel saying, hey, you wanted to take aim at the nuclear program, you did that, you caused your damage, what now? Is this like an endless war? And then people will add, of course, critics of Israel will add. What now? Is this like an endless war? And then people will add of course critics of Israel will add like Gaza Is this gonna be like for you like Gaza and that's a worry the Israelis have out of this four options I think two are great for Israel that the US will join and that or that it won't join

but Iran will negotiate under fire. And one is not that good, but it still works rather well. Israel finishes whatever it aims to do. Then the Iranians maybe come from a very reduced position to negotiating with the US. And the last one is a disaster for Israel, because then the Iranians can break to a bomb later and the rest. I'm not sure that the disaster one is still there because Israel's achievements right now in Iran are so substantial.

Can I just ask you one follow up before I move to Kareem? Is there a concern? I don't have this concern by the way from Israel's perspective, but I do wonder whether or not there's concern within the Israeli system that if the the U.S. has to step in to kind of finish this up, so effectively Israel will have cleared the path to make it possible for the U.S. to just come in at the end and wrap it up and achieve something extraordinary, not only for Israel but for the United States and the West by taking this country that even before it had a nuclear program was a tremendous threat to the West and to the United States and has blood on its hands of so many Americans, American

civilians, American military. So there's no question that the U.S. has an interest in putting an end to Iran as a threat to the world on the one hand. On the other hand, is there a concern that as it relates to Israel's relationship with the United States, this idea that the US had to step in and wind up a war that Israel started? No, you know, Israeli decision makers are not too worried about that. Why?

Because right now what they're reading from the president is that basically he's in FOMO. Dan, this is the reading we're getting. He's seeing these tremendous things happening in the Middle East. He's seeing that Iran, unlike what he was told by the defense apparatus, is a paper tiger until now. Again, I don't know what the future holds. They might surprise us, but why didn't the

US do this? Why did we need to negotiate? Now, this is not me analyzing the president. This is what the president said on his airplane. You probably saw that in which he said, I'm not in the mood to negotiate with them. Why does he need to negotiate with them? He wants them to capitulate. Now, if the regime just capitulates tomorrow morning

and says, you know what, we don't need enrichment, we don't need sovereignty, I don't know any Iran expert, serious Iran expert that believes that they're going to do that because they're saying this as of itself will threaten the regime because it will look so weak after so many years in such a consensus in Iran. We need to say this. Nuclear energy, I'm saying this based on conversations with the Israeli defense apparatus. The issue of nuclear sovereignty, the nuclear project in Iran, is as a consensus in Iran as the nuclear issue, according to foreign sources, in Israel is. It's a consensus. It's not related only to the Mullah Zayatullah regime. It's a matter of national pride. This is according to the

Israeli defense apparatus inspections and understanding of public discourse, social networks, other intelligence, polls within Iran. So if they give it up tomorrow morning, what happens to the regime? Is it plausible that they would just say, you know what, whatever, you get all the centrifuges, you get all the enriched uranium, we don't want anything like that because we want to survive? I'm really placing this question because I'm not an Iran expert, I don't know, maybe again, Kareem would probably be a better judge to that. Kareem, what's your reaction?

Well, let me just offer two mild edits of what Nadav said. Number one, how many over the last 36 years that he's been in power, you can really count on one or two fingers the number of times he's agreed to meaningful compromise. The last one was the JCPOA, and it's only when he, in my view, faces existential angst. He thinks that the existence of the regime is at stake. There's a credible military threat. There's a united diplomatic front. He's provided a face-saving diplomatic exit. Right now, I don't think he sees a face saving diplomatic exit because he's being asked, he's going to be asked to pursue the Libya model, which didn't end well for Colonel

Gaddafi. In fact, I even think that if Khamenei went back on a time machine to last week and he was offered to take the deal that Trump had been offering him, which was zero enrichment. Knowing the consequences of what has happened, I'm not even sure he would have taken that deal, such as his level of dogmatism. But he's now in a situation in which his options are much worse than they were last week because in my view, I haven't spoken to President Trump about this, but my sense is that the deal that's going to be offered to him right now is not as good as the deal that was going to be offered to him last week. He's not only going to be asked to zero enrichment and capitulate his nuclear program. I expect that there will also be, it will be demanded of them and you change your conduct

in the Middle East. You stop supporting these proxies, you cease your missile production. And I expect that what he's going to try to do to get himself out of this situation, to get to the option four that Nadav talked about, which is a prolongation of this situation, is to neither say yes nor no to a deal, but to send his diplomats out to express interest in talking and negotiations, get Steve Witkoff and Foreign Minister Adakchi in the same room, and then try to prolong this situation. At the moment, I don't see, despite all of the dramatic events that have happened in Iran over the last five days,

I haven't seen two things which are prerequisites for regime collapse. Number one is elite fishers. We've seen elite assassinations, but we haven't actually seen elite defections and fishers. Number two, as of now, we haven't seen any popular protests. There may be enormous popular discontent, but we haven't really seen, apart from some scattered people chanting on their balcony, Dattukhamani, we haven't seen that.

And as I said, it's probably because people at the moment are spectators. You can't expect them to commence anti-government protests amidst aerial bombardment. But that is important, because if he feels that his rule is intact, his regime is stable, he may say, you know, we can wait this out. We can prolong this. You know, that's the big question. I said, you know, historically you can count on, even from the time of Khomeini, from 1979 to the present, it's a regime which

is rarely compromised, but it's that combination of existential pressure coupled with a credible diplomatic. Let me say one more thing then before I stop, because Nadav wasn't in the room when we were talking about the nuclear program. It's my view, Nadav, that this isn't a program that actually has widespread national support the way the regime portrays it, that this is a source of enormous national pride. Why is that? Because they've been saying for two decades this is a program that provides enormous national pride, it's technological achievement akin to landing on the moon. They've said this before.

technological achievement akin to landing on the moon. They've said this before. And what is this program brought to Iran? It's cost the nation at least 500 billion dollars in terms of sunk costs, opportunity costs, sanctions, isolation. And for what? For a program which provides around 1% of the country's energy and hasn't provided any deterrence whatsoever. So I actually think that the pretext the regime gives that we can't give this up or we can't compromise because people wouldn't allow it, you know, that's totally false. And if in fact, if you had a- That's really interesting that you make that point, Karim, because it means that the Israeli defense establishment assesses the support that this program has, you know, much more highly than it

really is or, you know, your expert opinion is that it is. They're actually, you know, they're taking much more measure of precaution as to how popular it is. Well, it's a simple question, which is why? Why would it be such a source of enormous national pride when, again, it's been an enormous strategic liability, it's been a financial albatross, and none of the achievements of this program are tangible or palpable for people. I think you've given people the option, you want to spend $500 billion on a whole host of other things that are palpable. I don't think nuclear energy is something that people are even talking about. In fact, when you were away, Nadeva, I said to Dan, I don't even hear government officials talking about this the same way they used to. Five, 10, 15 years ago, they would boast that this is a

great source of national pride, but I haven't heard them then saying that as of late. So Iran is ripe for a person, whether it's a man or a woman, a patriotic leader who comes and says, listen, this death to America, or revolutionary ideology, death to Israel, revolutionary ideology of the last 46 years has brought us nothing but ruin, economic isolation, and political isolation for the people. It's time to make Iran great again. And these are the ways in which we can do it. And one of the first things we need to do is normalize relations with the United States and to spend our money at home rather than on these regional proxies and spend our money on first-rate technological advancements

not technologically third-rate nuclear program which hasn't provided us any energy nor security. Okay in wrapping up then I just want to ask you guys a basic question I talked at the beginning about whether or not we're headed for total destruction of Iran's nuclear program, delaying Iran's nuclear program as a result of the damage Israel has done and will continue to do, but not total destruction because that delay would mean that they didn't get Fordow or some kind of negotiated dismantling. And we can debate what, as this discussion has revealed, what dismantling actually looks like. But if I had to just boil it down to that destroy, delay, or dismantle, where do you

think things are headed? I'll start with you, Karim. You know, I remember on the eve of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Tom Friedman wrote that the best place to understand this war is not in Kiev or Washington or Moscow, it's inside Putin Putin said, right? That's what we're trying to essentially determine. What is this one person thinking? I think in this instance, a lot of it is how President Trump is thinking about this issue.

And I did not read, you know, had you told me six weeks ago that this is the outcome that we were headed to, that's not what I would have expected. I thought President Trump was going to continue to give prime minister Nitin Yahu a red light and say, we want to pursue negotiations to, to resolve this. So the big question now is, will he bring the United States into this war, you know, involve the U S air force and destroying Fordo, or is he willing to provide that weaponry to Israel? I know that's not Amazon Prime that is going to arrive in two days.

That could be a five, six month process, but certainly over the last 48 hours, he seems to be moving closer in that direction than he is the direction of wanting to do another deal with Iran. Nadev? Yeah, I think that we're closer to destroying the program. I think that if right now Israel gets an order from the US, from the president, to stop right now, whatever the reason, I don't think it's going to happen, right?

I'm just theoretically saying when the dust settles, it will turn out that Israel destroyed much more than people acknowledge right now. And I'm not saying, I'm not speculating. There are stuff that are going to come out in the next 24 hours, 48 hours, or the Iranians are going to describe it to discover it only after the war has ended. But even now, it's very substantial. And let me tell you something that is the most substantial that Israel has done

according to officials in the Israeli cabinet and not only in the Israeli cabinet. I was late for this conversation because of another senior security official that spoke with me. It's about the scientists, about the scientists that Israel assassinated. It's much more important than what it did in some places in Isfahan. Israel got every scientist on the list. When you spoke with me, I think even I remarked about this in our first conversation, I spoke with a former security official who told me, hey, I looked at the list of the first strike and the first night and I saw

some names missing, names that I know that are really important. And then came the car bombs yesterday or the day before in Tehran, and Israel got everyone it wanted. And this is very significant in the launch. It's more significant than a specific installation. It also has a cooling effect then, because people know that they're going to be targeted and that Israel is going to come for them. Now look at the precedents that we have.

We have Iraq and Osirak and we have the North Korea reactor in Syria. In both cases, these regimes saw this as a national project. It wasn't, of course, as sophisticated as the Iranian centrifuges project. I don't want to compare those. Reactors are much more easier to destroy, but in both cases, it was a national priority. Then Israel destroyed that national priority. Then the regimes basically said, you know, they either denied or they said we're going to do it. Nothing happened because it's such an undertaking for any country. And the fact that Israel proved that it can now have full aerial control over Iran means that even if Israel just stops now, you know, cessation of hostilities, Iran comes to the

negotiating table, I think something has definitely changed in the Middle East and with the incentives of the Islamic Republic to go through this process again, then be humiliated again. Because let me tell you something right now in terms of the Israeli consensus, not only the defense apparatus, but also the political sphere. I'm seeing now a video by the chairman of the opposition explaining to the public why we decided to attack now, as though he was part of the government. So this is how Israel is united about this. If the Iranians try to do this again, they'll be attacked again.

And that's very important, this message across the region. And I'm even hearing more than that, Dan. I'm hearing pressure with other countries in the region, other Arab countries in the region, on the US, not on Israel, to come and finish the job so the message would be absolutely clear to the Islamic Republic that what has been will never be again. The era of the Islamic Republic is a threatening regional power sending its proxies to bomb Aramco in Saudi Arabia, sending its proxies to attack the UAE, by the way, fighting a war in Yemen, you know, of course, building all the proxies around Israel. That era is

over. And this doesn't even need to have an American involvement in this point. It needs to have Israel and the countries around Iran steadfast in that regard and willing to go at it if needed again. But it's true, I agree with Karim, the only way to make sure that this is the case is through the US. I want to have one small edit to what Karim said. The type of bombs that Israel needs can only be carried by the B-2 bombers, which can only be flown by American pilots. Now, there were different ideas about that, but right now, these kind of bombs that could

be as effective in order to take care of some things, at least in a regular, aerial, classic, effective way. We are really living through a momentous moment in the history of the Middle East either way. It can still change. The war isn't over. We opened this up on your show, Dan, by saying what Israeli generals are saying. This is going to be difficult. This is going to be hard.

We don't think it's going to be just one blow, one strike. And from the people I speak with, there are more surprises installed. Okay, we will leave there on that cliffhanger. I will just add, I want to pick up on something Kareem said, that this is a strange situation in a US geopolitics, US foreign policy, US national security, where it really is what the president and really just the president wants. Normally we're used to administrations where there's a whole system involved. And I think there's a tendency with the press over here and in Israel to cover this as though

it's a normal administration. So you see like this piece in Semaphore about, you know, in the mid-level, Bridge Colby is proposing problems inside the mid-level, Bridge Colby is proposing problems inside the mid-level of the Defense Department. I'm not minimizing that role, the Undersecretary of Defense for policy, but again, it's covering it like it's a normal administration.

It's true, there can be disagreements within the administration, which can have impact on policy, but I think you're hard-pressed to find an administration where at the end of the day, it's the president, and it's what's in the president's head and the president decides. And the president is really minute to minute

on this issue talking to about five people. Suzy Wiles, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, John Radcliffe, and to some extent, Steve Witkoff, five people. So it's like what's in the president's head and those five people. And it's a very, very small circle. So I just wanna put an exclamation point on what you said, Kareem. It's like trying to understand what the president wants day to day. If you can understand that, you understand

what's going to happen with this policy. It's not a whole system that's working. And I would say, I believe where I, you know, we can revisit this in another episode. I think he's been struck by how successful this has been. And he's increasingly of the view that he can be a part of the ultimate success, which is putting a full end to the program with very little cost to the United States, very little risk to the United States and the biggest success in terms of removing Iran as a threat to the US and to the West and to the world. The biggest, the best shot the US has had since 1979 and with very little cost. So if we're all making predictions here, that's my prediction. Kareem, Nadav, thank you for this and look forward to having you both back on soon. It was a great conversation.

Thanks very much. That's our show for today. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with others who might appreciate it. Time and again we found that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the Call Me Back community, so thank you. And to offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates, or explore past episodes, please visit our website, ARKmedia.org, that's A-R-K media.org, where you can deepen your understanding of the topics we cover.

Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alain Benatar, sound and video editing by Martin Huérgaux and Mary Angelis Burgos. Our director of operations is Maya Rakoff. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semmo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan C. Norton.