Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Israelis anticipate the response — with Haviv Rettig Gur
Episode Date: August 5, 2024*** Share episode on X: https://tinyurl.com/2twexkc9 *** Is the region ready for an Israel-Iran war? Is the U.S. ready? What is the state of readiness of the IDF for such a war? Is Israeli socie...ty ready for such a war? Could such a war be avoided? What would de-escalation look like? Most Israelis we have spoken to over the past few days have struck a balance between (tensely) trying to anticipate Iran’s next move and expressing confidence in Israel’s capacity for this new phase. One of those Israelis joins us for this episode. Haviv Rettig Gur of the the Times of Israel returns to the podcast.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I don't know what more Iran has to do to countries that frankly nobody cares about, like Syria,
like Lebanon, like Yemen, before the world takes seriously the massive destructive capacity of this
regime. But this situation now, in which America and Europe cower in fear and incompetence,
and the enemy feels they can march in this way across the Middle East and destroy us
in its own good time and its own slow and steady pace,
that is not tolerable. We have reached a point where we have concluded that they haven't left
us options. Our only option is to call their bluff in the hope that they're not calling our bluff
and that we actually have the capability to see this through. it's six o'clock p.m on sunday august 4th here in new york city it's one o'clock a.m on monday
august 5th in israel as israelis transition to their new day and i'm pleased to bring back to
this podcast for one of our check-ins,
Haviv Retikur from the Times of Israel, who joins us from his home just outside of Jerusalem.
Haviv, good to see you.
Dan, it's good to be here. How are you doing?
I'm okay. A little stressed these days because of developments in your neighborhood, in your
neck of the woods, but we'll talk about that. Just to summarize where we're at, late last week, according to some sources,
Israel made a bold move by assassinating Ismail Haniyeh in Iran, in what is like the Blair House
of Tehran, during the week-long inaugural ceremonies of Iran's new president. It was a highly symbolic attack that some are observing was a huge hit to
Iranian pride, a major embarrassment to Iran's leaders and Iran's security establishment.
And the question is, is that move going to force Iran into a counter move that could just quickly
have both countries racing up the ladder of escalation that
could possibly lead to a regional war. So some of the topics I want to hit with you today, Haviv,
is one, is Israel interested in a direct war with Iran now? And is it ready for what that could look
like, meaning a regional war? And where is Iran? Does Iran want that now? What's the state of
Israel's readiness, not only for the war, but for protecting the home front? And then where are Israelis in all of this? And then obviously,
we can talk about the US role. So a lot to get to. I want to start with just the mood right now.
You've just come out of Shabbat. This was a Shabbat where on Friday, every Israeli I spoke to
was wondering what their world would look like by the time they came out of
Shabbat. What's the mood you're sensing right now among Israelis? Does this time feel different?
I think there's certainly some of that. I talked to friends in Yafl, in Tel Aviv today,
and they expressed a certain anxiety, a certain concern, but there's a lot less than people think.
The malls are full, the markets are full,
the people are, you know, went to work. There was the same traffic on the way into Tel Aviv in the
morning. There's a sense that, you know, a shoe is about to fall. And we are in that moment between
moments. It's a very liminal moment. The Iranians are going to try and do something that shows that,
you know, we thumbed our nose at a
regime that claims wants to be an empire, and it has to show that it is like any dictator,
not somebody that can tolerate that and can exact costs from us. At the same time that there is this
sense that the shoe is about to fall, I think that Hezbollah and Iran have spent the last 10 months convincing Israelis
that they're definitely going to maintain this war, this long, permanent, sort of low-intensity,
constant, never-ending war against us until we're destroyed. And the problem with telling
the other side that you're going to continue until they're destroyed is that you don't really have anywhere to escalate from there. If you are an Israeli and you think that Iran will
never stop and this only ends with their defeat or your destruction on their terms, they have given
you an interest, a fundamental existential interest in escalation. Escalation doesn't serve them. They want low intensity,
permanent conflict. Escalation serves you, because then you can begin to exact massive
costs from the other side and not just pay massive costs yourself on their schedule.
So there is in Israel today a twofold sort of a definite sense that we're going to see how they
respond. Are they going to respond in a way that we can contain and move on until the next round? Or are they going to actually escalate massively
because they feel their regime and their pride is desperately hurt, and that is having geopolitical
costs that they can't tolerate. And so they're going to respond in a way that's escalatory.
So there's an acceptance among Israelis that this is an enemy that is undeterrable. This is an enemy
that is implacable.
And therefore, we have to tolerate what we tolerate and move forward in whatever way
the enemy demands of us.
Does the Israeli public, and I hate to generalize too much with this, but I strenuously resist
doing that, but I'm going to violate that here.
Does the Israeli public generally support or understand the government's moves? And I'm
going to lump a few things together. One, the hitting the port in Yemen in response to the
Houthi attack. Two, getting Mohammed Def in Gaza. Three, getting Shukr in the Darya area of Beirut.
Four, getting Hania in Tehran. If you add up those four hits all in a matter of, what, three weeks? It's an astonishing
level of assertiveness, taking out high, high, high value targets and symbolically valuable,
not only operationally high value targets, meaning these are all people who have,
or places that have operational implications for the war on Israel, for the multi-front war on
Israel, but they're symbolic hits. Meaning in many populations in the Middle East, people know these are household names.
Mohammed Def is a household name among Palestinians. Shulkerah is a household name among
many Lebanese Shiites and certainly the Hezbollah grassroots. Obviously, Hania is well known
throughout the region. So these are hits that have practical implications
and symbolic implications. So they're impressive. But in another moment in history or in another
part of the world, if this were another country doing these things, you would think these would
be controversial decisions. Are they controversial in Israel? There's been no controversy whatsoever.
There is a sense, you know, that the enemy strategy, and this is something the
enemy talks about a great deal, the Iran strategy, Hezbollah, the strategy is a war of attrition,
a long war of attrition based on a profound belief that they have about us, that we are
fundamentally fragile, and then ultimately we will disband and disappear. And that depends on
a willingness on their part to sacrifice massively.
And it depends on our unwillingness to sacrifice and our great, you know, cowardice and ultimately
weak society. And so they expect this to this exacting of costs from us to be the great strategic
boon that will eventually lead them to this ultimate victory over us. And again, Iranian
officials talk about this routinely and exactly in those terms. And so this is a well-known point that all Israelis are
basically aware of. The last three weeks, as you say, has felt like we're finally taking the war
back to them. I'm always afraid that my own sensibilities will bias my assessment of other
Israelis. So let me go to polls. We have fairly good, consistent polls over the last 10 months,
in which Israelis, even as they roughly four or five months ago turned against or became
pessimistic over Gaza, remain supportive of a war with Hezbollah. They don't want the vast,
massive, incredibly costly war in which everybody throws everything they've got at each other,
which is a war that will potentially take out the Israeli electric grid and the Israeli water system
and set cities on fire and all of that and cause, you know, tenfold that damage in Lebanon.
But they do want an exacting of massive costs on the enemy for emptying out Israel's north,
for bombarding towns and villages to the point where entire kibbutzim, 10, 12 kibbutzim are destroyed
and a third of the homes of Mitzulah are basically demolished by constant rocket fire over 10 months.
They want an exacting of costs. And so there's popular, not just support, celebration. I mean,
we don't have some of those silly public spectacles of handing baklava out to people
to celebrate the enemy's fall. A few Israelis
tried to do that after the killing of Haniya, and most Israelis just thought that was kind of
a silly little copycatting of Hamas people after October 7, handing out baklava to people in the
street in Gaza. We don't do that celebration, but if you go by social media memes and humor,
there was a lot of celebrating. And there's a hope that we will continue to exact
massive costs. My frustration with Israeli strategy, or with the lack of Israeli strategy,
as I see it over the last 10 months, is that we've been fighting on Iran's terms in multiple
Iranian theaters that Iran imposes on us to cause terrible harm to everyone except Iran.
And so we talked about this about April 13, 14, the missile attack.
Finally, Iran comes out from behind the curtain. And finally, Iran has to step up to the plate.
I don't just not fear the Iranian response. It might be horrific. It might be tragic. In 1982,
we took out Qasem Naim, the Secretary General of Hezbollah. And a month later, they bombed the
Amiya Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, killing 47 people and wounding 200. They went for a Jewish community center on the other side of the world as revenge. So that's
the people we're dealing with. That's the kind of mind we're dealing with. So, you know, it might
be terrible and a tragic response. But here's the thing. If I have to fight Iran on Iran's terms,
I have to have a bloody war in Lebanon. I have to have a bloody war in Yemen,
or I die. That's the Iranian terms being imposed on me. Why not impose all those costs not on the
poor Lebanese and not on the poor Yemenis? Why not impose those costs on the Iranian regime directly?
I have heard speculation that there is some concern, or at least some questions,
that specifically hitting Hania was going to negatively
impact the prospect for a hostage deal. Now, I, for one, full disclosure, I'm skeptical of that
for a variety of reasons, not the least of which what I've heard from some Israelis who are close
to the negotiations process, that at best, Hania was incidental in the negotiations. He was a bit
player and actually not a very constructive force.
So getting him out of the picture doesn't make a difference.
The other view is it just puts more pressure on Hamas.
And we have seen Hamas's willingness to negotiate when it feels that it needs to bring the temperature down.
And the pressure mounting on Hamas quite intensely as it has over the last number of weeks,
really for the first time in a number of months, I guess beginning with the Rafah operation is when pressure really started
to pick back up on Hamas. Taking out Hania was part and parcel of that. But I'm just curious
your reaction, because I want to give a fair hearing to any views you may be hearing that
actually hitting Hania is a problem for the negotiations. From families of hostages, you hear all the
different opinions. And in part, because the deal on the table only really focused on the subsection
of the hostages. We were talking about the so-called humanitarian release, the women and
the sick and the elderly and all of that. And they were going to be released in the first six weeks.
And in those six weeks, the IDF pauses but doesn't leave Gaza. And then they negotiate the next phase two in which the
IDF leaves Gaza and everyone basically assumes that part won't happen. So today I watched a
statement by a mother of a soldier, of a male soldier held by Hamas, who is not going to be
released in phase one of the proposed deal, who doesn't want the proposed
deal, because there's no chance in hell that her son will get out. And there's no chance that
phase two will ever happen or happen within a reasonable amount of time where she can still
hope that he survives. And so she wants the all or nothing deal and to pressure Hamas until Hamas
has no other choice. That's a mother of a hostage. That is as much a mother of a hostage as the
parents of the hostages who would get out in that six-week deal. I'm not going to step in there and
tell them who's right. Also, because we've talked about this many, many times over 10 months, and
generally, I think you and I agree that Defense Minister Gallant's theory of the case back in
October was that massive pressure is the only way to get hostages out in any real numbers.
I think that's basically still in force. And if we had had that massive pressure and hadn't
operated for months at a time in Gaza at 50% capacity, maybe we would be there today. That
is all water under the bridge in the sense that I can't change it. The fact is, if Hamas wants a
deal, Ismail Haniyeh couldn't have stopped it if Sinoir wanted a deal, for example. And if Sinoir doesn't want a deal, Ismail Haniyeh doesn't have all that much leverage over him from Doha to prevent the deal. Sinoir is desperate, Sinoir is surrounded by enemies, Sinoir is under siege, and Sinoir decides whether or not the deal happens. If Hamas wants a deal, that deal is still possible. Hamas knows how to negotiate with or without Haniyeh.
Have you thought at all about how Sinoir may respond? I mean, he may want to accelerate the
negotiations because he needs some kind of temporary ceasefire because he realizes how
much Israel is on the march. Or he could decide he needs to strike back at the Israeli government, foment more internal dissent
inside Israel, take a symbolic act against Israel the way Israel has, it may be perceived to be
taking a symbolic act against Hamas. And that's a scary thought when you think about the tools he
does have at his disposal, as I've heard speculated, including access to hostages.
His only leverage is hostages. Hamas launched a rocket volley in response that
itself said was in response. And it hit, you know, it was directed at Kiryat Gat. It couldn't launch
anything at Tel Aviv or any real numbers. Hamas's capabilities are really profoundly shattered. It's
been unable to do anything serious in Gaza for many months now. And so the one thing he has is
those hostages. And that could go two ways. One way would be smart and clever, and he's totally incapable of doing it.
And the other way would be traumatic and tragic and horrifying, and also terribly, terribly
mistaken for Hamas.
The first way that would be smart would be to suddenly become very liberal and generous
on a hostage deal.
Becoming very liberal and generous on a hostage deal would really put Netanyahu in a bind
and really increase the opposition to Netanyahu saying, sign a deal, including within the military, not just in the
streets. That's not something Sinoir is capable of doing just in terms of his personality and his
basic instinct and Hamas's own narrative, in my estimation. The second way he could do it,
and I think this is what you were hinting at, and it's horrifying to talk about, but I'll just be the one to say it, you know, bluntly, so we can discuss it, is he could kill
a hostage on a video and release the video. If he does that, he does certainly exact political
costs from Netanyahu. There will be tremendous blame brought to bear on Netanyahu. I don't think
it'll matter all that much, because the political system is arranged as
it's arranged. And the Israeli public willingness and desire and need the political forces within
Israeli society demanding retribution and demanding massive additional and new and sustained
pressure, the pressure on military commanders to show successes against
Hamas will also increase. And so he won't lead to a breakthrough in any talks. He won't give Hamas
the one thing they need, which is calm or a ceasefire or a respite of some kind leading
potentially to an end to the war. And he will redouble and triple and quadruple the willingness
of Israeli commanders on the ground to show that they're exacting costs or that kind of a step. So, you know, he's not capable of doing
the clever thing. He is capable of doing the monstrous thing that is his basic way of operating.
Not for nothing do Palestinians call him the butcher of Han Yunis. And it's his only leverage.
Hamas is really quite shattered. Hezbollah and Iran have huge room to maneuver.
Hamas has very, very little. And we've seen that just in the last few days.
Haviv, it's been a long time since Israel has been in a regional war with a formidable enemy or
set of enemies. I'm thinking of 1948. I'm thinking of 1967, the Six-Day War, June of 67. I'm thinking of the Yom Kippur War, fall of 1973, where Israel
was facing multi-front war. Each moment, it could have been existential. Obviously, on the eve of 67,
the Israeli government felt that they could be facing an existential situation, which is why
Israel had to make a move. In the case of 73, Israel didn't have an eve of the war. They were
completely surprised. They didn't have an eve before the war to see what was coming. They were completely
surprised. And at least for the first couple of weeks, it felt to most Israelis like everything
hung in the balance. Is there a sense that this moment is comparable? Because I will tell you,
just from afar, me watching it, it feels like one of those moments. It feels like we are steps away from something escalating into something that resembles one of these multi-front wars that will feel regional.
No point in my lifetime, as someone who follows events closely in Israel, I have, as you know,
close family and friends in Israel. I've never felt in any of the conflicts Israel has had,
as long as I've been an observer of Israel,
which is like a close observer, which is like 30 to 40 years, the past 30 or 40 years,
they are tactical struggles. The second Intifada, obviously the second Lebanon war was, I guess,
had major strategic implications, but at no time did I look at it in that moment and say, well,
should I be comparing this to 73? Should I be comparing this to 67? This one, to me, feels different. This moment we're in right now feels like
a number of parties in the region are moving up the ladder of escalation, and we could be waking
up in a matter of days or weeks to a moment that feels like an existential moment. Obviously,
the sense is heightened by the experience of October 7th. What's your reaction
to that? Do you think most Israelis are comparing it to those past wars or the feel in the country
resembles those past periods? I think we are closer to that kind of serious threat, serious war that
actually could have existential implications than we've been in 50 years. The question I don't have an answer to is, are we actually close?
I think that we face enemies who have been pursuing for 15 years now, a very clear strategy
they talk about openly. And we've done almost nothing to prevent that strategy, to disrupt it,
to, you know, we've bombed a lot of missile shipments to Hezbollah. So we cut the rate of shipping of missiles by half. But for a decade, they've still been for
a decade shipping missiles to Hezbollah. We've taken certain steps and they have not been serious
steps. The way it was described to me by an Israeli analyst and official is that the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard basically has two fundamental
missions. One is to safeguard the regime, and the other is to export the revolution. Exporting the
revolution fundamentally focuses on us. That's the primary immediate goal of exporting the revolution.
Eventually, it'll go everywhere, but this immediate moment is about us. We have allowed
Iran, the Revolutionary Guards, to be 80-20,
this person said, on exporting the revolution. And we have not actually exacted the kinds of
internal domestic costs or dangers. We, the West, allies, anyone in the Middle East,
that would actually force their bandwidth to return domestically and not spend their entire
time building out these pro their entire time building out these
proxies, building out these capabilities and preparing this permanent low intensity war that
they expect eventually to destroy us. And so yes, absolutely unquestionably, we face a moment where
a serious war is at hand. The frustrating thing for me is that we have tremendous strength and
agency and we have not used it. The good news of the
last three weeks, and I really can't emphasize enough how good news it is, I have been a little
bit frustrated, tremendously frustrated for quite a few months. And you and I have talked about this
with the sense that Israel was reactive and not initiating and not seriously tackling this great
threat in the region, it looks like
Israel has made a strategic decision. And that strategic decision that it has made has been
either we now disrupt capabilities leading us into this war, or the enemy brings us all to a war it
planned, prepared for, thought about carefully, and on its own terms, schedule, and with its entire
logistical apparatus intact.
And so we are now going after this circle of enemies that are all really essentially one enemy.
And we're going after them in a serious way. And the more we can do to pull Iran out from behind the shadows and the curtain that they're hiding behind, the more we actually limit the war.
Some escalation is to Israel's benefit if it doesn't go all out and
actually become devastating. No escalation is to Israel's tremendous detriment and danger because
it means Iran sets the schedule and Iran sets the level of destruction at every turn. I'll give you
a specific example. We bombed the Hodeidah port under the Houthis in Yemen. That was a devastating response to 220 missile in a country whose currency in a piece of Yemen, whose currency is not usable
in international markets. So we cost the Houthis a devastating cost. But the main reason we bombed
Hodeidah port, the oil port there, was as a message to Iran, because Bandar Abbas is closer,
Iran's main export facility is closer than Hodeidah port of Yemen.
And Galant said that practically explicitly. He said the entire Middle East is watching
Hodeidah port burn. The Iranians convinced us we have no choice. And so everyone's worried about
the danger of what Iran can do escalation wise. I think it's time for the Middle East to worry.
I say this very hesitatingly because this
is a government like 70% of Israelis I don't fully trust. If this government is doing what I think
it's doing, and if all of these things that you laid out for us are a sign of what is to come,
rather than a one-off, you know, show of force without strategy behind it, then the Middle East
should be more worried about what
Israel is capable of than what Iran is capable of. Let's talk about Israeli readiness for a war
with Iran and the IDF's readiness. As we've talked about on this podcast in the past, both with you
and other guests, the entire military doctrine going back to Ben-Gurion and the founding of the
state was predicated on when Israel fights wars, it should mostly be
fighting away games, not home games. Meaning even if Israel's attacked, the war needs to be moved
from right off and outside Israeli territory as quickly as possible onto other countries'
territories, sovereign territories, A, B, not fighting wars anywhere near, I guess it's the
first part of the doctrine, Israeli civilian population areas, and see short wars, short, quick, rapid,
that Israel does not have the capacity to do what the U.S. does.
In virtually every war it fights, even wars it loses.
As I saw firsthand when I was working for the U.S. government during the Second Iraq War,
where I watched the Pentagon move 150,000 troops halfway, you know, 8,000 miles away from,
you know, across the globe, set up a whole with these bases, one of which, which I worked at at
CENTCOM in Doha at Camp Asalia, which is the, the Ayudet Air Base just outside of Doha in Qatar.
I was just stunned when I showed up there. And then February of 2003 with, you know,
it was like a city was built around this U.S. base to accommodate
these tens of thousands of American military personnel. The U.S. has this capacity to do this.
Israel has never had this capacity to do it. And there was never planned to have this capacity to
do it. And suddenly Israel is in the kind of war it's never really been in since at least the War
of Independence, which is 10 months in, in Gaza, multiple fronts opening up. Again,
as we're talking about signs of a possible regional war, is the IDF ready to fight a war against Iran?
As you said, there have been these intertwined doctrines, some of them by Ben-Gurion,
one of them called the Begin Doctrine, no nukes anywhere in the Middle East, except Israel's
undeclared nukes, allegedly, according to foreign
sources. I haven't seen the nukes, but in Israel, they're a big state secret that everybody knows
about. Apparently, we only fight away games, we fight fast, and we don't allow nukes in the Middle
East. And our enemies have therefore built out a strategy that is essentially the opposite of those
three things. Forcing the fight onto our territory,
both in the south and the north, that was fundamental. And it's two decades, at least
on Hezbollah's side, it's at least a decade and certainly a little bit more in the planning.
Forcing the fight onto Israeli territory, forcing long wars that are costly. We are a small country,
a small population, a small economic base,
incredibly successful and prosperous, but nevertheless, small. We can't sustain these
kinds of things forever and ever. And forcing a nuclear standoff. Iran, according to the IAEA,
now has the fissile material for 15 bombs. We're no longer asking how long it'll take it to develop
that amount of material, right? Can it launch it yet?
Can it put together a bomb yet? We don't know. Presumably not. Possibly yes. Iran is trying to challenge us on all these fronts. And the question is, does Israel now know itself how to counter a
strategic environment, a strategic conundrum that is the opposite of everything that its own basic
fundamental doctrines have been for decades and decades and decades. Look, the very fact, okay, that we now
live in a world in which we have to face the exact kind of war our entire strategy for decades has
been premised on not fighting is a signal of our success. It's not that they didn't try fast wars
of maneuver in the desert with tanks. They did. It's not that they didn't try terrorism. It's not that they didn't try fast wars of maneuver in the desert with tanks. They
did. It's not that they didn't try terrorism. It's not that they didn't try, you know, all kinds of
home games and slow wars and all these other things. We were able to prevent it. We have
destroyed two Middle Eastern nuclear programs over the decades. And now we face an enemy that did
nothing but build itself to not be the thing that we know how to deal with. And so now we have to face this new strategy. The irony of our success is that it drove the great enemy that we face today
to shape itself to the things we haven't yet faced. And we have to build out an answer. And if
we can't meet it, they have discovered the way to defeat us over time. And so we have to meet it.
And we have to find new doctrines that serve this new kind of enemy.
The army started the Gaza war without a good idea of how to fight it.
And the army today has shown that it is capable of defeating everything Hamas can lay,
every trap, every problem, every tactic that Hamas has thrown at the Israeli army
over the last 10 months in Gaza.
The army has met and defeated.
And as a learning organization, the state of Israel, its security services,
have proven to be astonishing. The killing of Haniyeh, the killing of Shulker, all these
different operations. The killing of Def, that to me is really extraordinary. This guy has been
impossible to find. Right. The other piece to it, and I want this to be part of the answer,
but I have no idea. And I turn to you, Dan, and people like you and in your orbit to find out. We face these
enemies. If we face them alone, then we have tremendous capabilities, but nobody has any idea
if we can do it. We don't, I think, have an idea if we can really pull it off. But if we face it
with allies, I think there's no question. Do we have that strategic depth? diplomatic isolation campaigns unleashed on Iran, they have had some effect in slowing Iran down.
And in some cases, which the Obama administration, the one thing they got right, although I didn't
like the outcome, those efforts did help bring Iran to the negotiating table.
We're in a new world now. This is different. The idea that we can look at the period sort of
between 2015 and 2020 and say, we need to go back to that.
I think that's over. Iran has made the decision to activate proxies, to escalate the path to a
regional war in the region, and to accelerate its nuclear program. Those three things are happening,
and they're happening right before our eyes. And oh, by the way, they're happening
in close coordination with Moscow and Beijing. Those three countries, Iran, Russia and China's
interests are all aligned here in reigning in American hegemony, especially in the Middle East.
So we are not in the 2015 to 2020 period or 2012 to 2020 period. We are in a new period.
Iran is on the move. And America needs to think about
this, not just, oh, can we slow Iran down? Oh, can we de-escalate the possibility of a war between
Israel and Iran? This is America's problem too. Now, what that actually means is a conversation
for another day operationally. I just can't imagine Israel can make the decision to go to
war with Iran without America fully involved. Now, what is fully involved with me? I'm not
saying American boots on the ground. I'm not saying maybe American boots in the air. I mean,
you know, quote unquote. But the way America has supported Ukraine in the war against Russia,
which is getting Ukraine the military capabilities it needs, often too late, by the way,
parenthetically, but getting Ukraine the military capabilities, training Ukrainian military forces
in constant touch with Ukrainian leadership, rhetorically supporting Ukraine's case and
Ukraine's defense. I don't believe that would be sufficient in a war between Israel and Iran
in terms of America's support of Israel comparable to America's support of Ukraine. I think America will have to be more directly engaged. And so, again, I just think we in the
United States here and you and Israel need to rethink that because that violates in many
respects, as you're alluding to, the nature of how Israel thinks about itself, its own defense,
and the U.S.-Israel relationship. I will say separately, but it's connected to this. I think
right now, the U.S. government is sending very mixed messages. If you look at President Biden
spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, the readout from that call clearly leaked Biden
White House was to convey that Biden was, you know, finger wagging at Netanyahu and telling
him that these moves against Hania and Shukra and other steps
Israel's taking that you and I are applauding here are escalating into a dangerous place
and blaming the Israelis for this situation. And I think that is highly, highly irresponsible
if that is actually what transpired on that phone call between Biden and Netanyahu and that the
administration went a step further and leaked it out,
as they seem to have done to Barack Ravid at Axios.
I think that is very dangerous because it sends a message that the U.S. is opposed
to these moves that Israel's making
and that if things do spiral out of control,
the U.S. will blame Israel,
which is exactly what everyone from Sinoir to Khamenei
to Nasrallah want. They want
Israel to be blamed for the escalation. I will say, Haviv, what blows me away is that every step
of this war since October 7th, the U.S. has at times, sometimes very aggressively, sometimes
sort of passively, warned Israel against the strategy Israel was
pursuing. In most cases, not all, but in most cases, Israel has gone forward with the strategy
they wanted to pursue, and Israel proved right. The U.S. warned Israel at the front end of the
war, learn from our experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, these are difficult wars to fight.
You're going to have 10 times the casualties that you anticipate or that you're forecasting. The U.S. was wrong. The casualties, every casualty in the war in Gaza since October
7th has been horrendous. They've been a fraction of what the U.S. government, the U.S., the Biden
administration had forecast. The U.S. said you can fight this war, but you can't go all the way to
Rafah. There's a massive civilian population in Rafah. You have no plan to get them out of Rafah. And there's going to be massive, massive civilian casualties when you try
to fight the war all the way to Rafah. Israel went to Rafah. They waited too long, in my view.
And I think it caused real damage for the war. But they went into Rafah. And they did it only
after moving about a million people in a matter of 10 days to a different part of Gaza, despite
the administration saying, you won't be able to do it. And if you do try to do it, it's going to take you three to four
months. They told Israel not to respond to Iran launching 300 projectiles in Israel on Israeli
sovereign space in the middle of April, which if 10% of those projectiles had broken through the
multilateral and multinational defense capabilities that stopped them off, 10%, if 5% had broken through, it would have been a catastrophe for
Israel. So Iran had to have known they were risking imposing a catastrophe on Israel.
And the Biden administration tells Israel, take the win, don't respond. Can you imagine how Israel
would look right now in the region if it did not respond? And one of the prescriptions that the Biden administration, and specifically President
Biden, has given Israel in not doing what it's doing in Gaza is you can do targeted operations.
You don't need a military presence in Gaza. You don't need to fight the way you're fighting it.
You can basically leave Gaza. And then when you need to go in and out and take out a particular
targeted operation here and there, you can do it. And that will
impose less wear and tear on your own country and your own military and your own population.
And it will impose fewer casualties on Gaza's civilian population. Well, let's look at what
Israel did in Tehran, assuming Israel did do this operation in Tehran. They took out Hania
in the most targeted way
one could imagine. They didn't blow up an entire neighborhood. They didn't blow up an entire
building. They had a bomb planted in one apartment in one building that took out one Ismail Hania,
and I think a guard as well. And that's it. It's the most targeted operation you could imagine.
It's really more targeted than I've seen anything the U.S. do in recent years. And that's it. It's the most targeted operation you could imagine. It's really more
targeted than I've seen anything the U.S. do in recent years. And yet the U.S. is angry at Israel
for having taken that step. Isn't that exactly what the U.S. had been saying Israel should be
doing and the kinds of operations it should launch? So if the United States is saying Israel can't do
that either, what the U.S. is saying is Israel can't do anything. Just think of the scenarios
I just walked through. Every one of those the U.S. had a problem with. And when Israel does something that is in line with what the U.S.
had been prescribing, it gets criticized for that too. So I am very concerned about the message this
is sending to the region right now. Now, that said, just to be balanced here, my sense is based on
folks I'm talking to, the Pentagon has been very strong.
The Pentagon, the Pentagon bureaucracy has been very strong in working with Israel, as has CENTCOM.
I think the CENTCOM commander is in Israel right now or is about to arrive in Israel.
Secretary Austin actually has been quite good in getting Israel what it needs. So the machinery
is working, but the messaging is horrendous. i worry about what the message that the messaging
sends to the region and i think that in and of itself has the potential to escalate things
so i am very concerned about the u.s right now in this exact moment i gotta tell you to face this
enemy to understand that complete non-escalation is the enemy's strategy. And so there has to be some escalation
to exact costs from the enemy for the strategy that has emptied Israeli towns, emptied Israeli
cities, killed Israelis, destroyed Israeli infrastructures. There has to be a cost,
or it will continue forever. And this is the new normal. And if this is the new normal,
we are losing. And so there's going to be an escalation. And if the best the Americans can muster at the political level is mealy-mouthed failure to
communicate any serious strategy of any kind, it created a sense in Israel of sort of flightiness
and incompetence, which is not a good sense to create in the Middle East. If you're America and
want to be treated as America and want to want to have want to be able to influence things without conflict, you need to have people believe that you're
fundamentally competent and serious. And so a lot of the stuff you're saying, it really hurts
America's standing. And it hurts America's capacity. Biden said to Hezbollah or to Iran,
don't. And then they did. They did all the things he said don't about. And now what? Well, if there's no
response, if there's no cost, don't say don't, because then you just undermine yourself. Better
to look disinterested than incapable. I believe that we deal in this discussion with worst case
scenarios. In other words, Hezbollah can launch tens of thousands of missiles
and destroy the Israeli electric grid, ideally for Hezbollah. Everything less than that is
Hezbollah's incompetence, serious Israeli responses and preparation. We have to assume there's going
to be some incompetence and some serious Israeli response and preparation. After taking out General
Zahedi in Damascus, right, which was the trigger for the
Iranian missile attack, that's the Iranian Revolutionary Guard General in charge of Syria
and Lebanon. He's the man who gives the orders to Hezbollah to bomb Israeli cities. We took him out.
After that, and then that missile strike that then failed to penetrate the missile defense systems,
Iran looked vulnerable and incompetent. And now it has to prepare a response, which by the way,
I think will take quite some time. I might be proven wrong in the next two hours, but
everyone's expecting it on Shabbat. Everyone's expecting it on Sunday. Everyone's expecting it
on Monday. It might take a little longer than that just because they can't have it look ridiculous
like the missile strike looked back in April 14. And so we have enemies that have proven themselves
to be much less competent
than our worst case scenarios that we're banding about and preparing for would suggest. I think
Israel can fight these enemies. I think it'll be terribly painful. I think a serious intervention
with all kinds of non-kinetic capabilities by Western powers, especially and primarily, always the United States will prevent
rather than cause more escalation. If Iran thinks that Bandar Abbas is going to be destroyed
in a serious altercation, it will not enter those altercations. It doesn't believe that. And it's
right not to believe that the Israelis might destroy it, nobody else will. And so it's terribly
frustrating to me. Because the incapacity of the
West to understand that Israel has been placed in a position, it's very nice for Joe Biden to say,
don't escalate. Joe Biden doesn't have towns and houses destroyed, and he's not holding back the
military. Well, most Israelis want to end the war in Gaza, mainly out of distrust of the government.
Most Israelis want to go to the war in Lebanon, because the alternative is to let them for 10 months demolish
our cities without a response. So here's the thing. We don't have 100 different options here.
Our enemies are not leaving us 100 different options. This is the escalatory problem Hezbollah
is encountering. Hezbollah has this amazing strategy it's planning.
Back in June, I know you talked about this on the podcast, back in June, Hezbollah Nasrallah,
the head of Hezbollah, gave a speech in which he said, Cyprus, if you enter this war, we're going
to go to war against you, Cyprus. And everybody started scratching their heads. Why is Hezbollah
suddenly declaring war on Cyprus? And the answer was that Hezbollah is preparing a massive drone
strike on Israeli Air Force bases to prevent the Israeli Air Force from being able to launch and operate in a preemptive strike or even in a response to a Hezbollah escalation to take out the Israeli Air Force from the battlefield is a major goal of theirs.
And so the Israeli Air Force has an entire battle plan with which it trained earlier this year or last year with Cyprus to land in Cyprus and conduct operations from Cyprus. Now, does that mean
Hezbollah and Iran's orders is going to now go to war against a European Union member state? Is that
really a Hezbollah plan? They believe that scaring the EU into believing that that's a potential
scenario is enough to keep the EU out of the game. And so that tells us so much. It tells us,
first of all, that Hezbollah is preparing for a full-on war in which it needs to destroy the Israeli Air Force because it intends to actually create vast
costs on Israel that Israel cannot afford. And it means that it is willing to telegraph that fact
out there to the West. And it means that it believes that the West will cower and run away.
I don't know what more Iran has to do to countries that, frankly, nobody cares about,
like Syria, like Lebanon, like Yemen, before the world takes seriously the massive destructive capacity
of this regime.
But this situation now, in which America and Europe cower in fear and incompetence, and
the enemy feels they can march in this way across the Middle East and destroy us in its
own good time and its own slow and steady pace,
that is not tolerable. We have reached a point where we have concluded that they haven't left
us options. Our only option is to call their bluff in the hope that they're not calling our bluff
and that we actually have the capability to see this through.
Haviv, just wrapping things up, one question. If Israel's headed for a regional war with Iran at the center of that regional war,
isn't that what Sinoir wanted all along, is to catalyze the region on fire?
Does he ultimately win?
Yes.
That was the strategy.
That was the goal.
They built the battlefield.
They built the strategy.
Sinoir intended, Hani himself said it out loud, the destruction of Gaza, to draw Israel
in in a way Israel could not
avoid going in. And the only way to get to Hamas was to go through cities, hoping that that would
catalyze regional war. In Gaza, the pain was tremendous. The cost to Palestinian civilians
was tremendous. The cost to Israel is quite high. And it looks at the moment like we're going to
succeed. Certainly Hamas is worried that we might be succeeding.
What's good for Sinoir might not necessarily be good for Iran.
Sinoir wants a regional war.
Massive costs on Israel right now to save Hamas, to make his own sacrifice and his own
strategy of the destruction of Gaza pay off in some significant way.
Iran was doing great. Iran
was building capabilities steadily. Iran was preparing the destruction of Israel in slow,
steady ways that exacted almost no cost from Iran itself. And so by forcing the issue,
Sinoir forces a regional war. It's exactly what he wanted. it might be the thing that saves Israel. Because if we can pull
off a victory now, or at least an Iranian failure now, which is not identical to an Israeli victory,
but nevertheless is a big deal, that's a failure, an Iranian failure that might not have been an
option for us 10 years from now when Iran had built much more in terms of capabilities to
destroy us. So yes, we have to fight a war they started on their terms,
and we have to win it, or at least not lose it. Last question, Havif. I know we're talking openly
and kind of loosely about the possibility of a war with Iran. May not happen. God willing,
it won't happen. But it's hard to forecast not only a war with Iran, but what the outcome of
a war with Iran would be. But what's your sense about what Israelis need to
see at the end of a war with Iran? What is an Israeli victory in a war with Iran?
That we're still standing and safe when the dust settles. That's it. That's victory. Because what's
Iran's goal? Our destruction. So that tremendous advantage of only having to survive flips to our side in this particular scenario.
The dangers for Israel are enormous, and we are focused on them, and it is correct to focus on them.
But the dangers to Iran are astronomically huge. the Iranian axis and all of its various allies, including Hamas, thought that that kind of protest
movement and kind of political divide weakens us and leaves us tremendously weak, is that those
kinds of protests within Iran would be a desperate threat to the regime. They would be about toppling
the regime. They would be about changing the fundamental political order. But they didn't
notice that the protesters in Israel carried Israeli flags everywhere they went.
That the demand was over a debate over the powers of the Supreme Court to limit the parliament or whether or not the parliament should have other powers or who exactly has checks in ballot.
This was not an anti-regime protest movement.
This was deep, deeply a fundamental culture war debate about the structure and nature and purpose of Israeli democracy. And so when the war came, they were astonished at the closing of the ranks and how every failure of every state institution to take care of the displaced or of the wounded was made up for by the very activist organizations founded to protest the government suddenly became military units instantly.
So I submit to you that every pretend strength that these tyrannies that stand against us claim in us are real strengths.
And that all we have to do to win is survive.
I hope you're right.
I have to think more about that before the next time we speak, because two things may be true.
It may be a
failure for Iran, for Iran to have a war with Israel, and Israel still standing at the end of
that war. I take your point. It also may be a huge problem for Israel that at the end of that war,
Iran's regime is still intact. Iran's military, however damaged, is still intact. Iran still has
the capacity to support proxies in the region, and its program for doing so is still intact. Iran still has the capacity to support proxies in the region, and its program
for doing so is still intact. And that its nuclear program is not more than just a little delayed,
or experiencing a moderate setback. The question for me is, from Israel's perspective, is if Israel
goes through a war that is ugly and bloody, and imposes enormous pain and suffering and casualties
on Israel.
At the end of it, if the Iranian regime is still intact,
with all those capabilities that I just summed up still basically intact,
even if damaged, I'm not sure it's such a win for Israel.
You're right.
The kinetic answers are disastrous, and we may survive,
and we may inflict massive costs that even win us 20 years of quiet.
They're too far away.
We're too far away.
We're hopefully too powerful.
They're definitely too big for a kinetic war between these two countries to be the thing
that solves the problem once and for all.
Ultimately, it's political.
Ultimately, it's about regimes.
Ultimately, it's about international pressure.
I wish there was an international community
that could swing into action and act, but there isn't one so far.
There isn't. So, yeah. All right, Paviv, we will leave it there. Thank you,
as always, and I look forward to being back in touch soon.
Thank you.