Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - HANIYEH DEAD - with Ronen Bergman & Nadav Eyal

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

*** Share episode on X: https://tinyurl.com/3x9wjkv9 *** Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the political wing of Hamas, is dead. He was killed in Tehran yesterday, during a visit for the inauguration of Iran’s new president. To help us understand this major development, I am joined by Ronen Bergman and Nadav Eyal for a special emergency episode. Ronen Bergman is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine and Senior Correspondent for Military and Intelligence Affairs for Yedioth Ahronoth, an Israeli daily. Ronen recently won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on this war and the pre-war intelligence failures. Nadav Eyal is a columnist for Yediot. He has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.

We are experiencing an attempt by Israel to restore its deterrence in the region in ways that we have not seen before. We have seen this, an assassination of Mohammed Def. This week, Israel has assassinated the chief of staff of Hezbollah. Now, Israel has assassinated Ismail Ania, who is the leader of the political wing of Hamas. During these last few weeks, Israel has also attacked the Hodeidah court in Yemen. All of the things that I just mentioned happened over the course of the last month or three weeks. So you see the war in Gaza to an extent winding down, and the attempt by Israel is to say to the Iranians and all the rest, you're threatening us with a regional war. on Tuesday, July 31st here in New York City.

It's 4 o'clock p.m. on Tuesday, July 31st in Israel. As we drop this emergency episode, given news of the last 24 hours, in fact, two developments, one in which Fuad Shukar, a major player, a giant in Hezbollah, someone that the U.S. government has been trying to hunt down for 40 years, was killed. And then eight hours later, as I said, eight hours apart, Ismail Haniyeh, one of the giants of Hamas, a leader of Hamas, was killed in Iran. To help us understand what actually happened and what its implications are, we are joined by Ronan Bergman from Ynet and from the New York Times and Nadav Ayel from Ynet. Gentlemen, thank you for being here on such short notice. Thank you, Dan.

Thanks, Dan. Ronen, let's start with you. Can you tell us a little bit about the operation and what you know? Let's start with Hania and then go back to Shukr. As we speak, there's more and more music coming from Iran saying that he was targeted by a drone or by a missile, by a rocket, by all sorts of devices and weaponry that are coming from the outside into the room staying in an official, highly guarded, Iranian Revolutionary Guard guest house compound. And he was in Iran for the swearing-in of Iran's new president. For the inauguration, he came on Monday, and then the inauguration with many other ceremonies surrounding, including things that are connected to Hamas agenda and some kind of a mimic of a remake of the Holy Mountain

where he was, one of his last pictures were taken in a ferry outside of where he was staying. So he was staying. So he was there. He was in Tehran for already something like 36 hours. He was staying in a room in a compound where the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, are putting their most prestigious guests in one of the most posh rooms. It's like a small flat where he used to stay in one of the most posh rooms, it's like a small flat, where he used to stay

in all of the times he was coming to Tehran. And the Iranians are saying he was killed by a missile. I'm not sure that is true, but why would they say something like that? Someone would tell, like, what's the difference? He's dead. He's died under their protection in their guesthouse. I think it matters because of two things. One, if

he was killed from a missile that was fired, they say, from another country, it's at least slightly less humiliating than if he was taken from some whatever happened on the ground. It means that there was someone on the ground who put a bullet,

who put a bomb, who put a knife. So this is one thing. The other thing, which I think makes Israeli officials at this very hour quite concerned, is that Iran is trying to create some kind of balance, of equilibrium, saying if Israel attacked Iran, Iranian territory, with a drone, then we will strike back with a drone, with a missile, with a rocket. And yet to be seen, and we're still working on the reporting here, I'm not entirely sure that this was true,

but he died on something like 15 minutes after one o'clock Israel time. Ismail Ania, the leader of the political bureau of Hamas, was killed in an explosion under Iranian protection. What you're saying, I think, Ronan, is there was an explosion, but what's disputed is whether or not there was a projectile sent into Tehran from outside the country

or whether or not there was an explosion that was activated from within the home he was staying. So there was an explosion. We just don't know what caused the explosion. Then, of course, who created, who caused the explosion? How was it and how vulnerable and exposed the Iranians, Iranian's regime is now feeling? This guy, an hour earlier, just met with Khamenei, with the

Supreme Leader. He was there in front of everybody. And so maybe the entity that killed him, if they could kill him in that guesthouse, maybe they could kill Khamenei. Okay, I want to

come back to Haniyeh and his importance in the Hamas, the practical world of Hamas and then the myth of Hamas. I want to come back to that in a moment. But on this issue of where it happened, based on your reporting so far, Ronan, is it your sense that it was opportunistic, meaning they were able to get him in Iran for any number of reasons, and so they struck while he was in Iran, but if they couldn't get him in Iran but could get him somewhere else, they would have done that, or getting him in Iran was part of the point,

which is, as many have said, as Naftali Bennett said on this podcast a couple of weeks ago, that at some point Israel has to start making real statements about the head of the octopus, about Iran, not just fighting Iran's proxies. And there's no other bigger statement about targeting the head of the octopus than to conduct an operation in the capital of the head of the octopus. And it wasn't just about Hania. It was about Hh in Iran and sending a message. Like you just said, that this is a guy who hours before was with the Supreme Leader.

We can find you and come for you anywhere, including in Iran. So, first of all, at least from the Iranian point of view, as reflected in reporting by my colleague, Fanas Fasihi at the New York Times, it is seen as if Israel did that on purpose, not just in Tehran, but on that specific day to ruin their celebrations

of the new president. And maybe you can put this on top of the conspiracy theories that Israel was behind the killing of the previous president, which is not true, but anyway. The Iranians feel that Israel did, they're sure that Israel is behind this

and they did it on purpose to humiliate them. But let me add, not just about something about where it is taking place, but where it is not taking place. Because he was traveling between three, four places. One of them is Tehran. The second is Istanbul. And I think Israel would not be enthusiastic to have a fight with Erdogan.

And the third one is Qatar. And Qatar is running the negotiation between Israel and Hamas on the hostages. And they could react ballistically if Israel would, or someone would bluntly violate their sovereignty in performing such assassination on the territory and stop the negotiation. So, in a way,

if someone wanted to kill Haniya, and he heard that Haniya is supposed to come to that day in Tehran, that could be a few birds in one swoop. It's not in Qatar, it's not in Istanbul, and it's a specific known date that gives the operatives enough time to prepare on a specific room. One more question then I want to bring to Davin.

Can you describe what we know about the operation against Shukr, the senior leader of Hezbollah? Yeah. So Fuad Shukr is a longtime veteran operative and a military commander in Hezbollah, is one of the most important people that influenced the conversion of Hezbollah from a guerrilla or terrorist movement into a sophisticated, fierceful, and efficient military with highly capable weaponry and technology.

This process was run through decades. Israel met it the first time in the war with Lebanon in 2006, but it accelerated ever since. He was part of a small group that was in charge of this strategic military buildup. Most of the members that were involved are already gone. They were killed either by Israel or by the United States or by the Iranians because they were too wide. And he was basically the last one

staying. A man of the shadow, very calm, not someone that shows off, someone that is described as very meticulous, long-term runner,

and the person who was maybe the most accepted character by the Iranians on a professional level, because he was in charge of smuggling all the weapons, sophisticated weapons from Iran to Lebanon. And to some extent, Israel has met many surprises that he has given Hezbollah since the beginning of the low-intensity conflict with them. Israel found Hezbollah more equipped, with better equipment, so more and better than it thought before.

This is one of the calculus that Israel is making. Why not going now into a total all-out war with Hezbollah? And the brain behind this gap is, or was, Fuad Shukim. Okay. Nadav, I want to now get your take on each of these individuals and why they loom so large in the minds of not just the Israeli security establishment, but really the Israeli public, especially Ismail Haniyeh. I mean, every Israeli I've been in touch with overnight, overnight my time. And these are not people who are necessarily involved in the security establishment.

They all, I mean, Shulker they know a little bit about, but Ismail Haniyeh almost has like bin Laden, like I'm trying to put it in American context. I mean, we say that Sinoir is the bin Laden or Def was the bin Laden of October 7th. But when I talk to Israelis, they don't, there's Sinoir, there's Def, there's Haniyeya, there's Khaled Michelle. There's a few of these guys that loom so large, in part because long before Sinwar, people like Haniya was, you look at the horror of life with Hamas over the last number of decades, the second intifada. There were a few of these guys who were the innovators and leaders of this movement. And so can you talk a little bit?

Let's start with Hania. So Ismail Hania is really a figurehead of Hamas for many years, and he survived assassination attempts not only by Israel, but also by the Fatah at the time. Hania rose to fame- By the Palestinian- But what is the party that is the, today the Palestinian authority, the original PLO? And, and, and that used to control the Palestinian society. And Hania himself rose to fame because of his position near Ahmad Yassin, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, who's the founder of Hamas. And Hania was his bureau chief. You know, he was his chief of staff. And for many

years, he served Ahmad Yassin. And from there grew his prestige as a leader of Hamas. He was also expelled by Israel to Lebanon. And that expulsion that was made by the Rabin government back in the 1990s. So he's really an elder statesman of the Hamas movement, and he was a prime minister for the Hamas movement, and actually for the Palestinian Authority at the time that it was still accepted by a sort of national unity government. I'm talking towards the disengagement and also after the disengagement. Haniya symbolized the fracture within the Palestinian society between Fatah and Hamas because Abu Mazen, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, basically threw him out and he wouldn't leave office. And that was the moment that the Palestinians diverged to Hamas controlling Gaza

and the Fatah controlling the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Haniyeh himself was not heavily involved in recent years with tactical operation. So this man is no Muhammad Dev, he's not Ahmad Sinwa. And as far as I know, and maybe Ronen can correct me, Haniya also was not notified beforehand as to the date or the actual planning of October 7th. So he was not in Gaza, of course, at the time. He was residing already abroad.

Between him and Sinoir, there is a lot of bad blood. Sinoir is, of course, the leader of Hamas in Gaza. So Haniyeh went through from Turkey to Qatar. These are the areas that he operated as the head of the political bureau of Hamas, whatever that means, and we can talk about this if you want. And as far as I know, one of the first things that I was told by my intelligence sources is that Haniya and what we call the foreign Hamas, the Hamas out of Gaza, was not notified.

And if they were to be notified, the Israeli intelligence would have known about the October 7 attack. So one of the things that they kept under the wrap and sort of tried to secure intelligence and information was that Hamas in Gaza did not tell Hamas outside of Gaza that this is going to happen the way that it did. It's not that they didn't know that there is an idea of an attack that will ignite what Hamas calls the war of independence. And this is what happened on October 7th. This is a notion within the Hamas narrative

that has been going on for many years, that there would be an attack or an assault made by Hamas that will begin the war of liberation for the Palestinian people. So Haniyeh was very much into this, but Sinoir didn't want people outside of his close circle knowing of this. Having said that, Haniyeh is very much a speaker for the Hamas goals around the Arab world. This is the man who recruited the Arab world after the disengagement from Gaza, the Israeli disengagement from Gaza. This is the man who preached about the Israeli blockade.

And of course, this is the man who continuously incited for the murder of Israelis and has been a practical leader within Hamas' highest ranks for many years. And I'll just give you one quote after October 7, during October 2023, in which Haniyeh talked from Qatar, and he talked to the Palestinian people, and he said, we need the blood of our Palestinian civilians, and the blood of women and children, it only strengthens our resolve against Israel. And he said that this blood only brings out our revolutionary spirit against the Israelis. And the annihilation of Israel is inevitable. This is the kind of rhetoric that we've been seeing from Hania. And you're right, Dan.

Hania is a household name in Israel. So for many Israelis, this is, you know, a moment to, you know, it's a solemn moment in the sense that he's responsible for it. But just on this point, Nadav, like when we think of the Second Intifada, which claimed the lives of over a thousand Israelis, up to that point was, you know, now because of October 7th, the innovation and barbarism has reached a new level. But during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, when Israeli children and women and just regular civilians

were being slaughtered with suicide bombings on buses and cafes and pizzerias and discotheques, and that, Haneel was part of all, was a key architect of of course he he was right beside sheikh ahmad yassin and and i i remind our listeners that israel uh by the orders of prime minister sharon ordered the assassination of ahmad yassin uh in gaza during the second intifada the beginning of the second intifada And actually, Haniya himself got hurt in one of these assassinations attempt, was physically hurt at the time. And one of the reasons that this man rose to power is because, again and again,

Israel assassinated other people in Hamas during these times. And he was sort of, I don't want to say the last man standing, but if you look where he came from and his history, this is to an extent their elder statesman, right? You have Khaled Mashal, you have Ismail Ania, you have Ahmed Sinoir. And Sinoir spent so many years in Israeli prisons. It was Haniya and Khaled Mashal and Mohammad Def, of course, that Israel assassinated or we think that it assassinated. It's not for sure.

We did it a few weeks ago. But let's look at the bigger picture. I think the bigger picture is so important here. Look, we are experiencing an attempt by Israel in the recent month to restore its deterrence in the region in ways that we have not seen before. We have seen this, an assassination of Mohammad Def, the chief of staff of Hamas for many years, a person responsible for suicide bombings back to the 90s. This week, Israel has assassinated the chief of

staff of Hezbollah, Shukr, that we have just spoken about. Now, Israel has assassinated, according to various sources, Ismail Ania, who is the leader of the political wing of Hamas. During these last few weeks, Israel has also attacked in a substantial aerial attack the Hodeidah port in Yemen, in western Yemen. All of the things that I just mentioned happened military tools together with the war in Gaza. So you see the war in Gaza to an extent winding down. There are simply not enough targets there. The IDF is coming in and going out as it pleases from Gaza when it gets the info. And now the attention of Israel is being drawn, the attention of the defense apparatus is being drawn to the regional enemies and to the proxies across the region,

trying to mark this, trying to burn this to their skins, to quote one source that I've been speaking with, that what has been will not be again. I'm talking about October 7. I'm talking about this fracture of Israeli deterrence that has led Hezbollah to attack Israel on October 8, something that people don't understand enough. You know, this attack in the north, we have just seen the murder of 12 children in Soker Field in the Golan Heights as a result of this October 8th attack

by Hezbollah as a result of this war. And the attempt by Israel is to say to the Iranians and all the rest, you're threatening us with a regional war. We're ready. Here we are. You're not going to deter us. If we want to hit Damascus, we're going to hit Damascus. If we want to hit Tehran, we're going to hit Tehran.

This man, as Ronan just described, was under the hospice, hospitality, and defense of the Islamic Republic. And the fact that Israel would do this to a person that was invited to the inauguration of the Iranian president and will assassinate someone who is a guest, and there are also cultural codes in this area, to not give him that defense. While he is staying in Tehran, in an apartment owned by the Revolutionary Guard, as far as I know, this is Israel saying to the region, no, we're going to restore the idea that we can do to you and we can do to our enemies what we feel is necessary in order to prevent this violence and attacks against us.

You're not going to deter us with these kinds of responses. You know, 200,000, 300,000 projectiles flying out from Iran, missiles flying from Hezbollah. It's going to be a regional flood. It's going to be a regional flood. It's going to be a regional war. The Israeli defense apparatus is saying enough. And by the way, I have to stress that sometimes they're much more aggressive than Israel's government. So it's the IDF that was pushing for many of these operations

and the political leadership, including Netanyahu, and again, I'm saying this to their credit, were really hesitant as to should we go for it. It's the IDF who is pushing for a more aggressive approach in the north. So the jury is still out. We'll see how this develops. But this is a massively ambitious attempt by Israel to reframe the conflict and to restore its deterrence through, in practicality, not only assassinations, but also strategic attacks like the ones that we have seen in Yemen. And this can change everything in the region or can lead us to an escalation into a regional war. I want to ask both of you about that, the possibility of it leading to a regional war. Before I do, just one question for you, Ronen. I understand why Shuker was of high interest to the Israeli security establishment,

but I think what most observers don't appreciate is how much he's been a focus of the U.S. security establishment going back decades. And he's alluded the U.S. security establishment. So can you just just briefly provide that piece of history? Because it's it's being portrayed as very much an Israeli story. But many in the U.S. security establishment that I spoke to yesterday or some were commenting on this point that, wow, we've been trying to get this guy for a long time. And Israel seemed to not have a hard time getting him. So I think that from a certain age up in every American heart and mind and memory, collective memory, the images of U.S. Marines coming back home in coffins and body bags after the massive explosion of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 are very vivid. And people react and see this as a profound moment

in the history of the U.S. This is when the U.S. wanted to send a peace court to Lebanon, the MNF, together with France and other countries. But instead of bringing peace, they were severely, severely hit by something that was not known back then, suicide terrorism,

suicide bombers that are driving massive trucks. The one that hit the Navy barracks was like, I think, six tons of TNT. I have a friend who was a kilometer and a half from there in the Shin Bet headquarters. He said that there were parts of the building and bodies that fell on their hands. And Fouan Choukher

was part of the planning of this massive attack, double attack, because at the same time they also attacked the French base in Beirut. That attack changed history because it drove the foreign forces out of Lebanon and basically substantiated the control of Iran and Hezbollah over this country. And he kept on being part, on the screen,

if someone looked at the massive throats that Edward Snowden brought from the NSA, they are a joint project by Israeli and American intelligence by A200 and the NSA called Cat 1, Cat 2, Cat in the Basket, all sorts of code names about how to infiltrate Hezbollah ranks and codes and decrypt their communication. And you see that Fuad Shuker is profoundly present in all of these communications. In a very bad way, of course. Creating an army that is now a strategic threat to Israel. I now want to come back to what Nadav referenced earlier, the possibility of a regional war.

Ronen, do you think, and I'll ask each of you this question, I'll start with you, Ronen, do you think this increases the likelihood of a regional war, or does it actually have the effect of de-escalation via deterrence I'll I'll answer this with a major caveat and hesitation because I have only regrets when trying to forecast the the future I'm always wrong and this is because I'm an optimistic an avid optimist and I tend to let this sort of distort my ability to see into the future

so in order not to be in this position I will answer your question yes and no it does and it does not inflame the chances of a regional war and I'll say why why it puts the chances of a regional war. And I'll say why. Why it puts the region in a much more dire threat because Iran has already swore to revenge the killing

of Fuad Shuker in the Dakhia quarter in Beirut. This was enough for the Iranians to say, we will not stand down, maybe through Hezbollah, but we will retaliate. Then, on top of that, something, from their point of view, much more severe happened,

and they were deeply humiliated in the center of Tehran, in a guarded facility. Someone killed their dear brother and guest. And so they already spoke in very harsh terms about their reaction. This reaction, whatever that is, we know what happened on April 13th,

the massive attack with drones and cruise missiles. It can happen again. On the more optimistic side of this, this could be a real chance for Prime Minister Netanyahu to end the war. Well, to be clear, to end which war? To end the war with Hamas? To end this phase of the war with Hamas with a deal of the hostages and a ceasefire

because Israel now has the upper hand. Israel now killed the most important Hamas figure in the world, the leader of Hamas, not just in Gaza, in the world. So in a way, now, of course, we see Sinoar as the face of evil and the mastermind behind October 7. As Nadav said, the Israeli intelligence believed that Haniya didn't know. I think that there may be a day when we'll learn more about what he did or didn't,

but so far this is the view. And in any case, SINUAR is in Gaza. Haniya is not a lesser or less important figure. Israel, even if not admitting it, everybody believes that Israel killed him. So it's like a victory photograph that Israel cannot show off a bit,

but maybe can satisfy the government to say, all right, we had enough. We have our victory for the time being. It's not that we give Sinuapadon. We can sign the hostage agreement from a position of advantage. Yeah, a position of strength. Hamas is on the run and therefore...

Okay, so Nadav, what's your reaction to that? I think it's spot on. I think that Israel has an argument today to come to the Israelis and to the region and say, look, we've killed Mohammed Def. Most probably we've killed Haniya. We've killed the chief of staff of Hezbollah. There is no actual resistance of Hamas in the Gaza Strip that is threatening Israel on the southern border. We can go to a hostage deal right now. The problem is a problem of dynamics, and you should hear what Qatar said today. What they said is it's difficult to negotiate when one side assassinates the other. And it's a fair point, you know, it's a fair point that it's difficult to have this kind of development.

I think I said this on your show. Israel's position is, let's have a hostage deal, then we're going to come to you, Hamas, and we're going to kill all your leadership. And this is really the position of Israel. It's a very tough sell uh which by the way one that i to an extent support so i i i can understand the israeli viewpoint here as an israeli uh but how do you make something out of this that isn't a vortex of escalation. And this question, Dan, lies with the United States and with the Biden administration to a large extent. Will they be able to somehow reign in the region?

Because I think that what the Israelis have been doing in the recent month or so is trying to supplement for the lack of deterrence that the U.S. suffers from to an extent in the region. Look, the Israelis attacked Yemen in a way that was so impressive in the region, that echoed through the region many months after the U.S. led its coalition against the Houthis. And the Israeli Air Force did just one thing against one port. And I'm definitely not underestimating what the U.S.-led coalition has been doing against the Houthis. But in this region, it's also a matter of appearances.

So in order to prevent this escalation and to lead to this optimistic scenario that Ronen has just portrayed, which I think is very plausible, you need to have global leadership here coming into the region and trying to make something out of this mess after Israel had its achievements. And I think it's possible. I want to believe that the U.S. administration will try to do that because the other option is that we'll be down to an escalatory route and we don't know how will it stop. I keep hearing the same stuff that Ronan is being hearing.

Let's have three or four days of fighting, heavy fighting in the north. And then sometimes they tell me, and then the Americans will envelope it into some sort of ceasefire. This is the expression they use. I'm translating from Hebrew. And we don't know that it's going to happen. And also, the tendency of these kind of wars is that then there's civilian casualties on one side or the other. Then the other side needs to retaliate in a more severe way. Things get out of control. You don't control the scenario anymore.

Then there's pressure to go into a ground assault, to a wider ground assault, and so forth and so forth. And we saw this story in the Second Lebanon War. So, yeah, so American leadership is very much needed right now in the region in trying to, I would say, consolidate the Israeli achievements, lead to what the Israeli defense apparatus is saying is a prime interest of the Israeli strategy in the region. What they're saying is, and I've said this on your show, and this is an agreement between the head of the Mossad, the head of the Shabak, the Israeli chief of staff, they're all saying the same right now.

It's an Israeli interest to have a ceasefire and a hostage deal right now. This is the interest of the Israeli defense apparatus. It's not about the Israeli society. It's not about solidarity and all the rest. They're saying it's a security interest of Israel right now to have a ceasefire and a hostage deal because of various reasons. This is the position they presented to the prime minister. This is also the position of the defense minister of Garland. And now after these achievements, maybe it's more politically plausible. Okay. So I just want to summarize the two takes on the impact on the hostage negotiations. And I just have one other question for both of you. Just to summarize, the positive

case for impact on the hostage negotiations is that the government, the Israeli government, can now declare that they've won or they're winning, and they therefore can do a deal out of a position of strength. And in fact, they're able to get the concessions they're able to get from Hamas because Hamas is really under pressure and needs to bring the temperature down. And that is a result of these aggressive and quite impressive moves that Israel has been making. Def, Haniyeh, even Shukra, even though he's not Hamas, they see what Israel is able to do right in the heart of Beirut. They realize that Israel can be anywhere and everywhere.

So that's the positive case. I must interfere. Sorry. Go ahead. They realize that Israel can be anywhere and everywhere. So that's the positive case. I must interfere. Sorry. Go ahead. I was talking about not just Hamas concessions, but Israeli concessions. Because the point where we are now in the negotiation is that Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu, withdrew from things that were already agreed with the

mediating countries and agreed by Hamas and now Israel has put obstacles again on the negotiation. What I was saying is that I think that there's a chance that being in such a

powerful or a much more powerful position vis-a-vis Hamas, following all the recent blows in Gaza and outside of Gaza, this could give the Israeli leadership the space, the

breath, enough energy to give up on or go back to what was already agreed and go further to the negotiation right okay fair enough and then and then the concerning case potentially is that hamas goes into kind of lockdown in the negotiations in response to this, that they say, we're done talking. You're taking out our leaders systematically while we're trying to have a negotiation, and we're not going to continue that.

We're not going to reward your hits against our leaders, and therefore pencils down in the negotiations. Am I right that that's the kind of. OK. I. I want to talk about just this, the possibility then just coming back to the possibility of a regional war with Iran, And I'll ask both of you this. I'll start with you, Nadav, and then go to you, Ronan. If this is the beginning of a real head-to-head, very direct confrontation between the beginning phase of, or the beginning of a phase now of direct hits back and forth between Israel and Iran, I guess the real beginning was mid-April and now it's escalating. What does that look like as it escalates? How does it look like? Well, first of all, Hezbollah is going to respond and we're waiting for its response. We don't know the extent of the Hezbollah response, but Israel hit Beirut.

Basically, Hezbollah has said, if you hit Beirut, we hit Tel Aviv. Now, it's true that this is a targeted assassination in the Dakhia. And I think that Hezbollah understands that if they're going to hit Tel Aviv in a substantial way, or the Gush Dan area, the center of Israel in a substantial way, then Israel is not going to be as targeted at the Dakhia as it was. And Israel has shown what it can do in Beirut during the second Lebanon war in 2006. So Hezbollah needs to have a calculated response to this targeted assassination. And the question is, to what extent is it possible, technically, for them to do so? What's their desire? What do they want?

And this assassination in Tehran is, to that extent, and I'll be happy to hear what Renan has to say about this, this is a relief to an extent for Hezbollah because now they have a real axis and they have a real ambition here. You have two sides here that actually three together with Hamas that have just been hit or together the same week. So Hezbollah can now imagine or foresee a situation in which they coordinate a response with Iran. And that's a big thing. I should remind our listeners that, you know, when Iran attacked Israel,

this was after an assassination of an Iranian general in Damascus, a man who was handling the attacks on Israel in its northern border, or helping those attacks. But this was not a coordinated attack as such of full-scale proportion of the entire axis that Iran is leading. And the Iranians were very clear what they're going to do. I'm not part of the conspiracy theories that somehow they tried not to have too much damage. That's nonsense. They tried to do their worst. And Israel, together with the United States,

and together with its regional allies, we managed to block this. But this time, if you're asking me about a pessimistic scenario, the pessimistic scenario is that Hezbollah, Iran, and Hamas, together with other proxies like the Houthis that have just been hit in their port by the Israelis, are going to coordinate a massive response against Israel. And that's the worst kind of pessimistic scenario, if you're looking for one, Dan, that you can think of.

Then a massive response against Israel that will, in turn, will lead Israel to a massive response of its own, together or with the United States or with our other players in the region. The U.S. has said that it will help to defend Israel, but the U.S. will not coordinate any sort of retaliatory attacks by Israel against Iran and its proxies. So I think that what they label, the self-labeled axis of resistance, or actually axis of terror in this region,

they're now deliberating. And they are having their discussions of what kind of response they want to see against the Israelis. And if they're going to go for the big one, it's going to be war. It's going to be full, you know, full pledged regional war. I want to believe that they understand that this can get out of control, that they are to an extent fearful of the Israeli response and impressed by the Israeli capabilities. I know that the Iranians, and I know this from intelligence sources, Western intelligence sources, that the Iranians were highly impressed by the Israeli attack after their drone attack and missile attack against Israel. not far from Natanz and the people speaking with me told me you could really see through intelligence the way that the Iranians are thinking. At the beginning

they didn't understand what Israel was doing then they were starting to say hey they hit this specific place and they went unnoticed and they managed to hit a strategic a very important place strategically and they did that with a couple of missiles and

we didn't hit nothing you know with hundreds of projectiles and they did something so target so they can do much more than that and they told me these sources you could really see the the process of understanding the the israeli capabilities through that And these Western sources were saying, you know, they were so appreciative of the Israeli response after the Iranian attack. They said, in retrospect, it's exactly what Israel should have done.

You know, many people thought this kind of attack could lead to a regional war. But in this case, this is a much more dangerous spot. Now, there's another thing I should just throw into our conversation, and this is the question of effectiveness. And I would really want to hear Ronan on this because he wrote this amazing bestseller, Rise and Kill First, and I think it was a New York Times bestseller, about how effective are these assassinations to begin with in fighting terror organizations or these kind of terror armies like Hezbollah. Is it effective?

The fact that these people earned an assassination attempt and they're all evil people and they should be brought to justice or targeted because of their actions and mass murder. There is no discussion on this. But I'm sort of wondering, is this effective in hitting the capabilities of these organizations? Rolan, and then I have one other question for you and then we're going to wrap. I'll be a good Israeli and answer with a question. Let's say that tomorrow Israel is able to kill...

By the way, Ronan, that's a Jewish trait, not just an Israeli trait. We're now in the era of Jewish peoplehood. I knew that, but I thought maybe saying Jewish is not... This is a Jewish thing is not politically correct. Yeah, don't worry. I took it upon myself. So, I don't know. Anyway,

I'll answer with a question. If Sinoir is killed tomorrow by an Israeli strike, an Israeli assassination targeted killing, would that be effective? Sinoir would be very effective because Sinoir is really the actual leader of

Hamas. If Nasrallah, the same. You can ask counterfactual history riddles like if von Stauffenberg would have put the bag on the other side of that table and kill Hitler or if Yigal Amir would miss. So, it's very

of course history is also directed by people. But I think that the lesson, for Israeli intelligence at least, was that if you are not dealing with the leaders, the leaders have a different group. When you kill leaders, you will probably change history. You just don't know to which direction. It can be worse.

Anyway, if you go to the operational level, even the commanders, assassination by themselves is not, it's always, it's not enough. It needs to be part of a strategy. It needs to be part of an overall massive campaign of different fronts and different platforms. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. And sometimes Israeli leaders did this only to show that they are doing something because the public felt helpless against the threats and the horrors of terrorism.

I think that Israel has a difficulty with Hezbollah because it defined Hezbollah as the enemy. And I'm not calling for that, but it did not define the Lebanese state as much as not the Gazan state. They say they're very, very keen, the military spokesperson, to say the terrorist organization of Hamas.

So the differentiation, who is the enemy and what Israel is now allowing itself to do to that enemy or limiting itself. And so what Israel is left with as a main weapon is assassinations. And very hard to predict, but for example, Israel has killed numerous, in that sense I'm completely with Nadav, Israel killed numerous Hezbollah commanders since October 7th. People who were on the most wanted list for 30,

20 years. The operational dreams of Israeli officers and intelligence operatives for decades are... And on the U.S.? And on the U.S. are killed. Israeli officers and intelligence operatives for decades. And on U.S. And on U.S. And on U.S.

are killed. They are taken off the chart. Things that a year ago and more, Israeli officers can only dream of. And now they're off the chart. Now, did this stop Hezbollah from firing at the Israeli cities? No, it did not. But, of course, you can say it could have been much worse.

Very hard to assess, as much as it's hard to assess what Iran would do next. The only thing I can add, maybe to, I agree with everything Nadav has said, I think the only thing maybe I can add is that if we go into the time machine of the podcast, we go back, I heard that you have the equipment, right? You go to the time machine, call me back, the three of us, the rest of the team, and we go back a year and a half, and then we watch what happened ever since. Then you see that

you take Hamas aside, but all the other members of the Jabal al-Muqawama, the resistant axis, the radical front, Israeli intelligence, they showed restraint. If we would take the time machine,

go back, if Israel or Hezbollah would do to each other even a fraction of what they have been doing since October 7th, we would have, a year ago, we would have an all-out war long ago. So all sides,

including Iran, have demonstrated restraint and a lot of patience with containing horrible things that they are doing to each other and not deteriorating into war. And again, maybe it's just my optimism or wishful thinking, but I do believe that this kind of mindset will continue to dictate the coming history of the region. Last question.

And I mean it really is the last question, but I keep saying that. How well do you believe the Israeli home front is prepared for, if we are really in a new phase, what this new phase could look like? I throw it to, this is a jump ball. Either of you can. I'm not going to speculate. We have numerous reports by the defense community, by the state comptroller, that the home front isn't ready. So I didn't see any report saying that the home front is to any extent ready. And by ready, I mean I'm talking about electricity.

I'm talking about infrastructure. I'm not talking even on explaining to people that this is going to be a completely different war, that it's going to be thousands of rockets shot at Israel every day. So this is not my call to make if the home front is ready. It's the call of the Israeli administration. The Israeli administration itself is saying to itself, it's not about the media saying this, It is the state and state officials that are saying that they're not ready. So one of the things that I keep hearing from people in Israel, from within the government, is you want to have an all-out war with Hezbollah, with them shooting thousands of rockets against Israel? Well, you needed to have prepared for three years before the war.

I'll just give you one example of a story I published at the time. The government, the Netanyahu government, decided to build thousands and thousands of safe rooms in the northern border towns. So we're talking about towns that are going to get hit in a way that they might not have a sewage system by the end of the war. So they're going to be hit tremendously hard by Hezbollah. So we're talking about thousands of safe rooms that were supposed to be built in private apartments in these towns on the northern border. And I went to one of these towns called Shlomi. And the mayor told me that in his town,

he was supposed to get, just in his town, more than 1,000 safe rooms for apartments. And they built 32. This is the execution rate of the Israeli government in preparing. And this is the north. This is even not starting to prepare in places that we didn't think that Hezbollah has range to. So I think this is a calculation. Now, let me give you, Dan, the answer of the defense officials that I speak with,

because I want to be fair about this. First of all, they're saying, look, when we talked about safe rooms and preparing infrastructure, we didn't have the capabilities that we have today on two different levels. One level is our defense. Our defenses are much better. We can shoot down much more Hezbollah rockets than we could have done before, A. B, in terms of attack. Israel is under the conviction, the IDF is under the conviction that in the first 72 hours of the war of Hezbollah, it can hit Hezbollah in ways that Hezbollah cannot foresee. I can't say more, I won't say more, I don't know more than that, but this is the conviction of the IDF.

This is what's leading the IDF mindset. This is, I don't want to say that this is the concept, you know, the conceptia, as we say in Hebrew, but this is really the main paradigm. We can hit Hezbollah so hard in the first 72 hours that it will decrease its capability to hit the home front. This is an assumption made by the Israeli defense forces presented to the Israeli decision makers. So it's on them. It's on the Israeli defense forces. Now, this is the reason why on October 11, 2023, the entire defense apparatus, almost all of them,

besides, you know, one specific lieutenant general in the intelligence community, told the government that it needs to have a preemptive surprise attack against Hezbollah. And this was blocked by Gantz, Eisenkot, and mainly Netanyahu that didn't want it, okay, at the time. Because Netanyahu feared this kind of full-scale war with Hezbollah. And again, I'm saying this to his credit. This is difficult when the entire defense forces and your defense minister is saying, let's attack Hezbollah, and you as a prime minister, together with Gantz and Eisenkot, you're blocking this. And then, by the way, Netanyahu had a series of conversations

with various people within the Israeli society. I can say this because he didn't have this conversation with me specifically, in which he explained retroactively his decision not to preemptively strike Hezbollah. And he explained this by saying that a war with Hezbollah right now is something that Israel is not prepared to. And that was in October. He said that to numerous people in these conversations, including figures from the Israeli media. And he wanted to make sure that they understand this so he won't be portrayed as a defiantist or something. He wanted to make sure that we understand

that these are the reasons. So to your question, as far as the Israeli government is concerned, it's not ready. As far as the Israeli defense forces are concerned, they're saying we're never going to be ready. It's not about being ready. It's about acting now. We have the capabilities to hit them very hard right now. And we need to do this. And we, if we wait out to be ready, we're going to

lose. So we need to do it sometime and we need to take that risk. Very briefly, I think that the Israeli assessment of the different agencies government, state controller as Nadav mentioned but also some think tanks that checked the

level of preparations in the Israeli home front towards a possible all outout war with Hezbollah. It all came to very, very problematic conclusions. But those conclusions were coming from the calculation of Hezbollah capabilities. Heirs were known before October 7. And as I said before, the capabilities that were discovered after October 7th. And as I said before, the capabilities that were discovered after October 7th exceeds,

not just with Hamas, not just with how many tunnels and how long they are in Gaza, they exceed the quantity and quality of armament that Hezbollah is holding. And so if Israel was not ready to what they knew about Hezbollah before, of course they are not ready now.

I hope, I believe and hope, that what Israel discovered about Hezbollah during these last 10 months will be taken as a serious lesson when preparing for the war that most Israeli officials and professional military intelligence veterans, most of them believe one day or the other is inevitable. Ronan Bergman and Nadav Ayal, thank you both. I know neither of you have slept in the last 18 hours, so I appreciate you calling me back and hopping on this podcast.

I will let you guys get back to your day jobs. 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. Thank you.