Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Lessons from Gaza for war against Hezbollah? - with Haviv Rettig Gur

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Hezbollah is just an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in every way that matters. So a war between Israel and Hezbollah is the first direct, serious war between Israel and Iran. And that means that for Israel, this is a war for its existence. And so the Israelis will put into it everything they have and whatever it takes. With new arms transfers being announced from Washington to Israel and events heating up in the north on Israel's northern border with Lebanon and what lessons may be learned from the fighting in Gaza so far for what may come to be in southern Lebanon and beyond. I pick back up my regular conversation with Haviv Retigur from the Times of Israel. Haviv, good to see you.

Dan, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me once again. I'm in an undisclosed location as we speak, somewhere in South America. You are heading towards an undisclosed location somewhere in some part of Asia. You will not be on this podcast for 10 days or so, we will miss you. But you know, you're a mere mortal, and even you deserves a break. Yes, just the family is going on vacation. Yeah, it's, we're just going off the grid on vacation for a couple weeks. That's, sure, undisclosed location, because. Yeah, we're just going off the grid on vacation for a couple weeks. That's, sure, undisclosed location, because, you know, we're very important people, etc. Yes. Okay, so, but, Habib, we have some things to pick up on. We've got some maintenance to do on some

topics we've discussed in the past, and then I want to get into what's happening on Israel's border with Lebanon, and how lessons from the fighting in Gaza are informing Israel's planning for what may happen in Lebanon. But I want to start when I say maintenance, because you and I have talked a lot about the Biden administration's two-pronged strategy with Israel, which is supplying Israel with arms while also engaging in a major public political confrontation with Israel at the same time. And I thought those two couldn't be reconciled, that they were going to come into conflict with one another. That said, here we have an article from the Washington Post from two days ago titled, U.S. Signs Off on More Bombs and War Planes for

Israel. And the article, I'm just going to read briefly here. The Biden administration in recent days quietly authorized the transfer of billions of dollars in bombs and fighter jets to Israel, despite Washington's concerns about an anticipated military offensive in southern Gaza that could threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians. The new arms packages includes, and it goes through, the 1,800 bombs that are 2,000 pounds in size each, and then a bunch of 500-pound bombs, 500 of them, according to Pentagon and State Department officials. The 2,000-pound bombs, the Washington Post writes, have been linked to previous mass casualty events throughout Israel's

military campaigns in Gaza. The development underscores that while rifts have emerged between the United States and Israel over the war's conduct, the Biden administration views weapons transfers as off limits when considering how to influence actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So, Haviv, we had been told publicly there would be consequences if Israel went into Rafah. It looks like Israel is going into Rafah, that there was a red line. It looks like that red line is about to be crossed. Kamala Harris, our vice president, had been looking at maps and her maps told her that there was no way Israel could go in without massive, massive suffering, human catastrophe for the Palestinian civilians there. It looks like Israel is going in. One would think that while all this was happening,

you wouldn't hear an announcement about a major arms transfer. What's going on here? I think that the criticism of the Biden administration toward Israel, as we've discussed in the past, is a very specific criticism. It isn't a generic sort of how dare you fight a war or how dare civilians die in war or anything like that. It isn't a generic sort of how dare you fight a war or how dare civilians die in war or anything like that. It's a criticism of the lack of a day after plan, or I'll put it a different way, which is what I think is actually happening. And maybe I'm projecting Israeli biases onto the Biden administration, because this is profoundly, measurably in every poll what's happening among Israelis, is that there isn't trust in this Israeli leadership, specifically Benjamin Netanyahu,

but not just Benjamin Netanyahu. It extends into broader parts of his coalition, certainly to his right and others in his Likud party. There isn't trust that there is a willingness or a political capability to bring this war to a good conclusion, in the view of the Biden administration, what it considers a good conclusion, which is to say Gazans have gone through this terrible suffering, because that's the cost Hamas set for its removal. But once Hamas is gone, there's a better day for everybody. Well, if that is the Israeli intention going forward, then the Israelis in the Biden administration are in perfect lockstep. But if that isn't the Israeli intention going forward, then the Israelis and the Americans agree on the need to remove

Hamas and then disagree profoundly on just about everything. Now, the Israeli government has not said anything. Gallant famously talked about the four options for who rules Gaza after Israel. And the four options are basically Israel, Palestinian authority, Hamas, or the local Palestinian. I hope I got that list right. And he favors local Palestinians. There are various families, extended clans, and criminal organizations, and various other kinds of, it's weird to include them, but they are in fact a significant civil society administrative organ within Palestinian Gazan society that isn't Hamas at the moment that can be called upon to run things.

And we saw a few times when the Israeli army called on them to distribute aid in northern Gaza, for example. Those incidents, by the way, usually ended badly. The incident where Israeli soldiers found themselves opening fire on people trying to reach the soldiers after the gunmen accompanying the aid convoy themselves opened fire on people trying to reach the aid. That disastrous incident was part of this Israel trying to coordinate with the local criminal syndicate. So there are all these problems with the day after. Gallant has his four options. He doesn't quite know what to do. The Saudis and the Arab world is talking in the last really just week about a potential for building out a

Arab peacekeeping force in Gaza. Well, it sounds like the Israelis are worried about that Arab peacekeeping force because they want to have the capability over the next two, three years to continue to degrade Hamas within Gaza in pinpoint operations and intelligence operations? And would an Egyptian, Saudi, Emirati, Jordanian, Moroccan, I'm just throwing out, none of them have told me there's anything going on, but would such a force allow the Israelis to work under them in Gaza? We don't know. We don't know that the Israelis would want that to be the case. So, the Israelis right now have no real way of giving the Americans any satisfaction on that. So my sense is that this Washington Post article is written by people who don't quite understand that you cannot like Netanyahu over one thing, but there is really

no difference between Netanyahu and Gantz and Gallant, and by the way, pretty deep into the left in Israel when it comes to removing Hamas and going into Rafah. So I think that this is Biden, not so much divide and conquer the Israelis. One of the fascinating points about the announcement of these new arms was that it was given to Gallant. Gallant was visiting Washington this past week, and he comes back to Israel with this great triumph of this great gift of the bombs we need, right? A massive shipment of bombs that we need. And also 25 F-35s, the third F-35 squadron, essentially. We already have two squadrons, total of 50. This is the next 25 in the third squadron. That's an enormous thing for him to be able to come back and announce. Plus all those bombs.

Plus all those bombs. And it's the same week that Netanyahu's people boycotted Washington because of Biden's vote at the UN or refusal to vote against or to veto the UN resolution last week. His soft green lighting of the resolution. It wasn't a vote for, but he knew he was enabling the passage of the resolution. Right. So it looked to Israelis like Biden playing divide and conquer. We're with Gallant on this. And Netanyahu is

screwing up. Within the Biden administration, I think, you know, as you and I speak, as you speak to other American political experts, I'm the least knowledgeable person in the room. I just have that Israeli perspective. It looks to us as though Biden is saying, give us a day after. We want you to get rid of Hamas, but this is going to get stickier and stickier with us if we don't know a day after. We don't have a day after that you're planning that we can trust and we can back. It's beyond the scope of this conversation, but I will say I'm pleased the Biden administration has authorized this transfer, but it makes no political sense to me. They are in open warfare with the progressive base of their party over Israel, and the idea that they can mollify them

by picking a public fight with Netanyahu while authorizing these arms transfers is preposterous. So at some point, they need to pick a side and lean in hard and own it and be proud of it. And I think it's the right thing to do on principle and morality and on substance. And it's actually a political winner. Maybe the message here is, Israelis, please don't make it hard for us to back you.

Please stop with the embarrassing campaigns about whether Palestinians get to have self-determination. Please, let's just go to radio silence, finish the war and Hamas. And by the way, maybe we have to have this fight afterwards. But you're making it hard for us to help you. Maybe that's the message I'm suggesting. To your point about the policy doesn't change if Bibi's gone. For the first time, I've done one of these Ask Me Anythings on Instagram, because we get all these questions after every episode. So I just, on Instagram posted, send me the questions, and I'll try to answer them. And I answer them while I'm walking around the city, which is actually weirdly enjoyable. Instead of listening to other podcasts or audio books or doing phone calls, I just answer questions that come through on my phone. And one of the questions was,

how does the policy change if Gallant or Gantz becomes prime minister? And I said, it doesn't change. Netanyahu is very unpopular, but the war cabinet strategy for fighting and winning the war is not unpopular. So if you don't have Bibi, you don't have Bibi, but you still have Rafa. You still have the idea of going into Rafa. Yeah. And I said that, and the reaction to it was striking. It was like this was like a new idea. People have this idea that Bibi goes and the whole policy changes.

That's the perception over here, or at least in the U.S., and it couldn't be more disconnected from reality. Yeah, I'll say more than that. We have really good omnibus polling from Hebrew University, these immense polls that they're taking once a month. We know that Netanyahu is distrusted, and when Israelis are asked about Netanyahu, their view of whether the war is succeeding goes down. But if Netanyahu leaves, and then he's replaced by a gallant or a guns who are more trusted, have higher levels of trust in the general population, the Israeli public doubles down on this strategy and is more convinced that this strategy will lead to success. And so it's even more so. In other words, even if Netanyahu is switched out, everybody then expects this to work

and work faster and work better. Wow. Okay, we'll look for that survey and post it if we can find it. Haviv, I want to pivot now to what's happening in the north, and obviously lessons from Gaza for the north. But first of all, where do you think Israel is now in terms of its thinking about a possible war with Hezbollah in the north? You know, we've said for months, I'm sorry for all the repetition over the course of the last six months, but things don't change as quickly as the news cycle, or the podcast cycle rolls out. Yesterday, Galant, the defense minister was in the north. He said, we are expanding the campaign, we are upping the rate of attacks against Hezbollah targets. Israel has over the last two months, probably every 10 days or so, targeted a target slightly farther north,

slightly deeper into Lebanon. And that's been a message. The escalation is real, it's happening, and it will continue. And then Colin had a sentence that was really fascinating in his visit to the northern border. He says, Israel has turning from absorbing to hunting after Hezbollah. In other words, it had spent the first two, three months of this simmering back and forth, essentially showing, you know, Hezbollah sent cells of Palestinian commandos from the northern border to try to cross the border and carry out terror attacks. The Israeli army destroyed every single one. And then it tried anti-tank fire, and it had some small successes, but they lost something like 280 fighters to Israel losing something like

10. So it was not in general a success for Hezbollah. But now, Galant is saying that whole period of showing Hezbollah we can, we are aware, we are awake, we are watching, this isn't October 6, and we will catch everything they send at us, has gone. And now we are actively hunting, and actively pursuing, I think is the word he said. He said, we will get to every place in which the organization operates, and then he specifically said, Beirut, Damascus, and places farther away than them. So Israel announced, openly and publicly, that the war with Hezbollah is escalating,

and dramatically. There's a desire in the Israeli high command to finish off Rafah first. The American demand to have a very clear plan in place for moving the civilians out means that there's going to be a month before the Rafah operation happens, maybe two weeks, maybe six weeks, but somewhere in that sort of timeframe. And then the Rafah operation happens. Rafah is a small place. It's probably going to be pretty quick. I'm guessing, again, war, the enemy surprises you. It doesn't always go the way you plan. And then it is, I cannot game out, no matter how hard I try, avoiding the northern war. Hezbollah will not listen to the gentle protestations of the Americans and agree to move back to the Litani River in keeping with the 2006 UN Security Council Resolution 1701.

It won't do that. It won't give up its title as the vanguard of the resistance. And Israel will not be able to sustain this whole situation where 100,000 Israelis can't go home. I think it's down to 70,000 now. Some have gone home or just moved, but 70,000 Israelis can't go home now to the northern border because they're within anti-tank missile range of a Hezbollah that's targeting the windows of civilian homes. So that's not sustainable, and there's going to be a war.

Now, Hezbollah has watched what Israel has done to Gaza. When you say Hezbollah refuses to take the steps to avoid a war, having watched what Israel did to Gaza, and I know you're not in the head of Hassan Nasrallah in terms of understanding what exactly he's trying to achieve and what his motives are, and you're not in the heads of the mullahs in Tehran who are using Hezbollah as a proxy, but if they know which direction this is heading

and they now have a case study that they can look at in Gaza, what on earth are they thinking? who are using Hezbollah's apraxia. But if they know which direction this is heading, and they now have a case study that they can look at in Gaza, what on earth are they thinking? Why aren't they just taking these moderate steps, by the way, which you're describing, moving north of the Latani River? This is not forcing them to redeploy out of southern Lebanon entirely. These are small incremental steps to a war to avoid a massive confrontation with the IDF. Why don't they take them?

Yeah, I think that's an easy answer because in the Arab, I would say radical Muslim world, which is to say the kind of Shia radical axis of which Hezbollah is a part and radical Sunni axis of which Hamas is a part, in the discourse of that world right now. What's happening in Gaza is supposed to transform into a moment of opportunity. It's not supposed to be Hamas pushed back, Hezbollah pushed back, Iran on its back feet. Everybody goes defensive because this tiny little Jewish state can just smash everything at will. And the international community, which they of course don't care about, they massacre people at will, but nevertheless, is supposed to step in and rein them in. They're supposed to collapse from terror, they're supposed to collapse from their own internal contradictions, because we

all know Zionism is fake and their identity is hollow. So that discourse means that for Hezbollah to withdraw, even a tactical withdrawal, even just to be seen as not pushing the Israelis to the edge, to the moment of their ultimate inevitable collapse, is a concession on the fundamental story. And so I think the answer is simple. I think if Nasrallah backs off now, he can't claim to be the vanguard of the resistance of the grand Islamic, which he claims, not all Muslims claim, obviously, but he claims of the grand Islamic push to redeem Islam through the destruction of the Jews. And if he cannot claim to be that vanguard, then why is he demolishing Lebanon? Why does he exist? Why does he take Iranian money? Why is he overseeing so much of Lebanon's internal just failure as a state, he has to show that he can

push Israel. And he also has to show that the fundamental strategy of terrorizing Israel on all fronts isn't going to leave Israel better off in five years and all of its enemies shattered. He has to show that the Israelis are weak, and that they are what he calls the spider's web, this thing that looks daunting from the outside, but in fact, will collapse at the first touch. If Israel is in fact, absolutely determined and powerful and innately powerful, whether or not it loses the missile shipments from America will still come after them, and they will be destroyed if they face it, then the entire strategy is wrong, and everything they have built is wrong. And so, it's a sunk cost problem, either except that he can't fight Israel right now and maybe not for a generation and pull back, or double down on the strategy. And

someone who's done nothing but build out that strategy for three, four decades is going to double down on that strategy. So, his inner psychology, the basic strategy of the organization, the basic narrative of the resistance axis, as he calls it, forces him into this. He has no path out. He's climbed too far up that tree. Okay, so now what you're saying is Israel's getting ready for Lebanon. Hezbollah is getting ready for a war in southern Lebanon. What has Israel learned from its war in Gaza that informs how it could possibly fight a war in southern Lebanon?

Yeah, one thing is the civilian costs. The Israeli army that, we talked about this, that went into Gaza City, apropos the Washington Post being worried about those 2,000 pound bombs. The Israeli Air Force dropped those 2,000 pound bombs in Gaza City in an attempt to get at those tunnels. And it was an army that, as we said, for two generations hadn't really fought a meaningful ground war. And basically every major problem it had faced, it solved with its air force. And so it looked at these Hamas tunnels and said, if all I have is a hammer, everything's a nail, I'm going to solve this with that air force strike. The civilian death toll was very high. When the Israeli ground forces went in at the

end of October, their death toll was very high because all of the basic tunnel infrastructure was still intact, and the booby traps were still intact, and Hamas's fighting forces were still intact. And so it didn't work. By the time the army got down to Khan Yunus, it was a radically different army. It was an army that was absolutely sharp and capable and had developed new skill sets in attacking and tackling Hamas on its own terms, in getting into tunnels safely, in locating tunnel entrances and demolishing Hamas military formations from the battalion level all the way down to, you know, the squad. And it was an army that knew how to carry out that war with a much, much, much lower civilian death toll, military death toll, and a much higher Hamas death toll. And so the new Israeli army, the Israeli army that has just trained for five long months, how to fight the urban landscapes in which Hezbollah in the north has embedded in those villages, 150,000 missiles, how to fight in those urban landscapes that Hezbollah booby-trapped?

Hezbollah has tunnels. Hezbollah has the Redwan force preparing to cross the border. Well, it will probably be crossing the border while the Israeli army is inside Lebanon. It's a demonstration that it hasn't been defeated. So the Israeli army has to be prepared to absorb an October 7-style attack while the ground war is happening inside Lebanon. The Air Force is now a supporting force, part of the envelope of a ground war, rather than essentially the Israeli army, at least in the imagination of the generals. So, those lessons

have been learned. The second major lesson, I think, which is to say, ground wars. It's an army that didn't really seriously develop the skill set. And it's not even somebody's fault. It was a very well trained army, but training is never as good as experience. And it needed that experience. It goes into Lebanon battle hardened and experienced. The second point is time. Everything depends on time. Gaza is going slowly. Gaza is going with intense international attention. Gaza cannot be completely detached from the general Palestinian question. And so there's a lot of empathy for Gaza. I'm talking about decent people, not pro-Hamas

people who refuse to understand that Hamas has also massacred Palestinians and is a disaster for Palestinians. But in fact, there is a tremendous amount of global sympathy, even among people who think of themselves as pro-Israel, for the suffering of Gazans, for Palestinians writ large, for the future of Palestinian self-determination. That draws attention, slows the war effort, makes everything more difficult, makes everything tactically more complex. Lebanon has to be fast. It has to be fast. it has to be targeted, it has to be intelligence savvy. In other words, very, very targeted operations that take out Hezbollah's strategic capabilities very quickly, and it has to end in a very clear way. And the army in the north has done, roughly half the army

was sent to the north. I mean, it has been sitting there planning and thinking and working on all kinds of capabilities. One of the things, for example, that the army has been doing is carefully watching Hezbollah's piecemeal attacks of commandos, of anti-tank missile crews, of rockets, and just marking down every single launcher, every single location, every single tunnel they disappeared into, tracking very carefully. So there's going to be a whole set, maybe it's 1%, maybe it's 10% of Hezbollah assets on the ground that are going to be a whole set, maybe it's 1%, maybe it's 10% of Hezbollah assets on the ground that are going to be struck immediately in the first minute, and taken out of commission because we've just tracked them over this time. So we're going to

see something much, much faster. And I'll just say last point, while 70,000, give or take Israelis can't go home to the north, something around 100,000 Lebanese villagers haven't been able to go home to the south of Lebanon for the same reason they fear this war. That's a good thing for Israel, because it makes it a much, much cleaner battle space that allows Israel to go after Hezbollah much faster and harder. As much as the IDF is now battle-hardened and well-trained, I've heard from Israeli military planners that that is part of their concern about fighting Hezbollah is Hezbollah relative to Hamas, relative to the Hamas fighters. The Hezbollah fighters are much better trained and battle-hardened because unlike Hamas, many of those Hezbollah fighters are a organized, like a real infantry army, and they all have their own special operations units

and they have, I mean, it's really, it's a well-organized machine. And it has been fighting for the last number of years, really going back to about 2014, 2015, in the Syrian civil war to help prop up and defend Bashar Assad and his regime. So they've actually been fighting a real war, unlike Hamas. And that's what Israel will be confronting.

So Israel may be better trained from experience in Gaza, but Hezbollah is also comparable in that sense to being a better trained, battle-hardened military force. Yeah, I think two very good armies, one engaging in a guerrilla strategy and one the standing army strategy, developed into something very sophisticated and clever and, you know, multi-force operations from all kinds of different arenas all operating together in this very complex intelligence. The Israeli army knows how to work in these very sophisticated ways. But nevertheless, a standing army versus a guerrilla army, both of them battle tested, both of them with a deep conviction that this is existential, both of them meeting on that battlefield. And it's going to be a much, much more difficult war

than Gaza. That also favors a fast war with very, very clear and limited objectives, which is pushing Hezbollah back to the Litani, because getting bogged down in Lebanon is an advantage for Hezbollah, not for Israel. And Hezbollah will try to get the Israelis bogged down in Lebanon, and it will try to sustain rocket fire on Israel throughout, including to the last day as Israel pulls back. If whatever Israel declares its goals have been met and it pulls out, there'll be a rocket barrage just to say, you haven't destroyed us. So the Israeli destruction of Hezbollah's infrastructure has to look like a loss, even

if Hezbollah pretends it isn't. There's another point, though, that is to Israel's advantage. Hezbollah is just an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, in every way that matters. So a war between Israel and Hezbollah is the first direct, serious war between Israel and Iran. And that means that for Israel, this is a war for its existence. The war to pull Hamas out of Gaza is a war to take away from Iran, which wants to destroy us and is getting the capabilities to do so, that base in Gaza. So it feels existential. Hezbollah is literally a war with Iran.

And so the Israelis will put into it everything they have and whatever it takes. And if Hezbollah thinks that this is going to be some small psychological war, everybody thought that. Hamas thought that. Hamas supporters in the West thought that. Everybody thought this was about everybody feeling the right feelings, and the Israelis are going to be pushed back by the sheer enormity of everyone's anger at them. This isn't a psychological war. The old rules of guerrilla warfare, where you drag the standing army into a campaign that's bad for its public image don't apply anymore. These are enemies that have to be removed. They set the costs of their removal, but Israel has to pay those costs because they must be removed. Because otherwise Israel's existence is actually threatened, not even over the long term,

over the medium term. So it's going to be a bad war, a tough war, a painful war. Tens of thousands of rockets could fall in Tel Aviv. And as I said on this podcast, set Tel Aviv on fire. Hold on, Haviv, I want to stay on that, because with the warirmish with Hamas has resulted in attempts to fire rockets at Tel Aviv and there being Iron Dome. Why doesn't the same apply here? Because I hear military planners say this all the time, that the risk to Tel Aviv will be much higher in a war with Hezbollah than it will be a war with Hamas. And the risk to Tel Aviv will be much higher in a war with Hezbollah than it will be a war with Hamas. And the risk to critical infrastructure, you know, the nuclear assets in Dimona, the chemical plants,

the various essential services and critical utility assets around Israel are under much more risk with a war with Hezbollah than it was with a war with Hamas. Because Lebanon wasn't under the Israeli blockade. Israel and Egypt instituted an ineffective, but nevertheless not totally ineffective, blockade on Hamas in Gaza. Israel since 2007, when Hamas took over Gaza, and Egypt since about 2013, when Hamas thought that what Gazans really need is to get involved, to drag Gaza really into the Egyptian civil war between the Muslim Brotherhood and the army, and then the Egyptians actually closed down the Egyptian side of the border. Lebanon has not been under that blockade, and massive weapons shipments from Iran have been making their way to Hezbollah for many, many years,

a very great many of them intercepted by the Israelis, destroyed in Syria, in the Iraqi desert, in the airport of Aleppo. But obviously not all of it, some of it, some significant part of it got through. Hezbollah has smart, precision missiles. Hezbollah can target specific targets and smash into them a great many missiles. Hezbollah doesn't care about the damage that it does to Israel or the damage that it brings from Israel onto Lebanon. In other words, if it targets a nuclear reactor in Israel, then the Israeli response has to be very significant and maybe not limited to Lebanon. And Hezbollah is okay with that. And Iran is okay with that, unless it hits Iran in a serious way. So Hezbollah is a force that is capable of setting Israeli cities on fire, almost literally,

in a way that Hamas isn't. And so we have to assume that it will do it, especially if this is a serious war that Israel really does seek to actually neutralize to some significant extent, this enemy on the northern border. So if Hezbollah feels that its capacity to serve its function for its bosses in Tehran, if Hezbollah feels that that ability is now being threatened, then Hezbollah will, we have to assume, after October 7, we no longer assume we understand that the enemy is deterred. We have taken on ourselves a new humility. We only look at their

assets. Their assets allow them to do it, so we have to assume they're going to do it. That means Israel has to prepare. It has to prepare its critical infrastructure for the possibility of it being bombarded by missiles that cannot be stopped, or by too many to be stopped, and it has to prepare responses so that it demonstrates in the first such attack a tremendous cost to the enemy that will maybe deter the second, or if it doesn't, then it has to even up that cost the next time. There's this whole game that has to be planned out, and it has to be planned out now. It has been. It is in a very, very advanced stage of being planned out. Gallant doesn't go to the northern border and say, we are now moving to the attack.

This is going to go to anywhere Hezbollah is, including Beirut, Damascus, and farther afield. He doesn't go to the northern border and say that out loud, unless that is something the Israelis are prepared for. In terms of the timeline, probably post-Rafah. And there wasn't a blockade, so now Hezbollah has everything Iran can give it, and we face that first Israel-Iran war. And it's going to be the terrible tragedy for the Lebanese, is that it's going to be fought over them. Haviv, before we move to a question about Iran, if you can briefly explain, because it's just hard for people to visualize unless you've been to Israel or been up north, the difference between

Hezbollah being north of the Latani River versus south, what that actually means for Israeli community, northern Israel. I feel like many people are following events closely now do understand what it means for Israelis returning to their lives in the south if Hamas is not removed from Gaza. What does it mean for Israelis in the north? Just geographically explain it, explain the proximity, what it means for Hezbollah to be where it is now versus where Israel could learn to live with Hezbollah being. Yeah, I suggest the easiest way to do this is to go to Google Maps and search the Litani River. It's a river that is north of Tyre, or Tzul in Hebrew, and it is a river that is at various places anywhere between 8 and 20 miles from the Israeli border. Pushing Hezbollah behind the Litani River means getting it out of the

villages of South Lebanon. It means they are not on the border. It means they cannot threaten border communities like the towns of Metula, the city of Kiryat Shmona, the dozens of kibbutzim up there. They can't threaten them with very short range, very, very precise weapons like anti-tank missiles. And so it doesn't mean Hezbollah can't fire rocket salvos. I've traveled up there. When you're in those towns, when you're in Metula, when you're in Kiryat Shmona, when you're in some of these places, depending on the day, you can actually see the Hezbollah fighters organizing on the other side of the border. So I just want to get people to understand the proximity here.

It's right there. Yeah. Marjayoun is a village just north of Metula. You can look into people's windows in both directions and see each other eating breakfast. And Hezbollah had a major presence in Marjayoun in the 2006 Second Lebanon War. There were battles in many of these villages in southern Lebanon in the 2006 war, and they will be the centers of battle in the next war. These villages were also the places where the rocket launches all happened. These rockets are never, never placed in fields or mountainsides in order to ensure that Israeli retaliatory strikes to destroy the launchers don't hit villages. Every single one of them is in a home. Every single one of them is next to a mosque in these villages in southern Lebanon. And so, what you actually saw

in 2006 was the Israeli Air Force, you know, couldn't carpet bomb villages before a war, right? So, to get rid of that missile threat. So, what it did was, it circled over South Lebanon and targeted the launches. And so, many, many thousands of times, there'd be a rocket launch from the doorway of some home in some village, and then 10 seconds later, an Israeli missile would strike it. And you'd have these double plumes, the rocket launch and then explosion. The rocket launch explosion just scattered throughout the villages of South Lebanon. It's a horrifying thing. It's a very sad thing.

It's Hezbollah's fundamental strategy. The goal is, just as with Hamas, civilian deaths on their side. And it is presumably, it has some significant part of the next war is going to happen, except Hezbollah has, you know, a much, much larger missile arsenal and rocket arsenal than it did then. Pushing them back to the Litani means they can still launch rockets. We can still face exactly that kind of rocket war, but they can't launch the direct missiles, the anti-tank missiles, through people's windows, which is how several of the civilians in the last six months on the northern border were killed. A mother and son literally eating breakfast, and an anti-tank

missile from Lebanon literally coming in through their window as they ate their cereal. So that is what pushing Hezbollah past the Litani would prevent, and that's the Israeli demand to avoid a war. And by the way, it's also the UN's demand in Security Council Resolution 1701. Before we let you go, Haviv, you mentioned to me offline that people outside of Israel are not paying close attention to the speed with which Iran is developing its weapons programs right now, while we're all distracted with the war with Hamas. But Israeli leaders, the war cabinet, military planners, the intelligence community are paying close attention to what's happening with Iran's weapons programs. Can you spend a few moments on that? Yeah. I'm not sure the Israelis are paying

enough attention. One of the interesting things I have heard is that there used to be in the National Security Council of Israel until October 7, basically, a bi-weekly meeting of all the different security services on Iran, where everybody updated everybody, everybody coordinated what they're doing with everybody. And there hasn't basically been that bi-weekly meeting for the last six months. And the reason is that everybody is, of course, enormously and profoundly and laser focused on Gaza, on improving Israel's military capabilities on the ground, on thinking about the day after, on thinking about the diplomatic ramifications of the Gaza war,

and on planning that northern war. Not planning the northern war in the larger context of Iran, but planning the northern war in the very, very focused context of Hezbollah itself. And so Israel has actually, I think, maybe taken a step back from seriously thinking about Iran. Iran has been a fascinating actor in everything that's been going on over the last six months. On the one hand, if you talk to Hamas leaders, and they have said this openly and repeatedly, Iran has failed them. They thought they were launching on October 7, and they'd been getting all these pats on the back and support and money and training from Hezbollah, from Iran itself, that they thought Iran would swing into action for them. And then Iran didn't. And in fact, Iran proved to be actually quite worried that this could expand

to Hezbollah, lose them Hezbollah, by far their most powerful and loyal and successful proxy that is a major force multiplier for them in the region. So Iran has actually been very careful and very worried. And the rest of us said, well, Iran is scared, right? If they're not scared, why aren't they helping Hamas? I don't now think that's true. I think Iran is a little bit worried about what happens to Hezbollah. It is treading carefully everywhere in the region. It's letting the Houthis do their thing in the south. It's letting Hezbollah do its thing in the north. It's letting certain pro-Iran or Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq challenge the Americans in various ways, but it is avoiding very carefully, or usually avoiding, a couple times it actually struck

on its own, it actually attacked people in Kurdish region, etc., but it has generally avoided actually engaging in war itself. But that doesn't mean it's been sitting quietly. During the last six months, Iran appears to be pushing massively toward weaponization of its nuclear program, toward developing out its nuclear weapons capabilities. The US has been telling us, basically since 2007, that Iran, its weaponization efforts are paused, that the Supreme Leader has not given the order to build out a nuclear weapon. There are now some indications, the Israelis see it, and are starting to talk about it. And it's starting to drag the system back to a new focus

on Iran, that there's begun to be preliminary work on weaponization. The kind of work that doesn't specifically look like you're building a nuke, but is all the stuff that could look like you're building a conventional warhead, but in fact, you're building it out for nuclear capabilities. There's a new facility that's being built right now in Natanz next to the enrichment facility above ground that's going to be very, very deep, maybe 100 meters deep, maybe much more, heavily fortified and probably impervious even to American bombs, not just to Israeli bunker busters or whatever Israel can field, but actually to American bombs. In two years, they should have that finished.

We know from the IAEA that they probably have uranium for one weapon now, and for multiple weapons going forward by the end of this month, and more than that as time goes on. So, they are going to be developing and building out their nuclear weapons capabilities. And they are pushing faster now because of the distraction of Gaza and because of the potential distraction of Lebanon and pushing to make their nuclear weapon totally immune, not just to Israeli strikes, which it may well be already, but in fact, to any potential American strikes going forward. And then why wouldn't they build that bomb? Why wouldn't they have that asset? Why wouldn't they be able to threaten a nuclear exchange in the Middle East as a lever for bringing more pressure on Israel,

even by its allies, America, et cetera. Why wouldn't they do it? After October 7, the Israelis no longer ask, are they deterred? They ask, can we know really if they're deterred or not? And we have to assume that they are not. So we're seeing this immensely dangerous and immensely frightening push by Iran,

while everyone's distracted in Gaza and will be distracted probably soon in Lebanon, to create the immune, totally weaponized, you know, nuclear capability. We are in that space right now, with an America pulling back from the region. And that is where it looks like things stand. The Israelis haven't been following it closely. Minor point of criticism of the Israelis. I don't understand why the head of the Mossad, Didi Barnea, has been shuttling back and forth to Qatar to handle hostage negotiations with Hamas, when in fact, we need some major section of Israeli security apparatus to be focused laser-like only on Iran. That is something that worries me. That is something that we are headed toward. I had a conversation with Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of

Democracies on this. He is in Israel and has met Israeli officials, top Israeli officials, talking about this. This is a think tank in Washington that has dealt with this issue. Mark is about as close to anyone in the US think tank circles on Iran's nuclear weapons program and who's doing what internationally to stymie it. So if Mark is worried, I'm worried. Yeah. And he is, you know, in Washington, sometimes accused by State Department people and the like of being, I don't know what to call it, right wing Zionist. He has been called a Zionist. Dastardly, dastardly term. Yes. Is that the Iranian government actually, I believe, has sanctioned him. A few

governments have sanctioned him. As FDR said, I love him for his enemies. Yes. But what's really interesting is, I trust Mark on this for the expertise. I also trust Mark on this because his only argument is, assume the worst of the Iranian regime and they're rarely going to disappoint you. And I find that argument very convincing, independent of any other facts. And then the facts come in, and you're saying, well, what is this massive new facility in Natanz? What is this obvious new weaponization capabilities and push that the Israelis are seeing? I can't believe the Americans aren't. And so we have to start looking at Iran. If what is happening now

is that Israel is proving it can and it will, and through sheer grim determination, and no matter the international diplomatic cost, remove these enemies that are capable of carrying out October 7 going forward forever and ever, it will remove them from its horizons, and that's how it's going to guarantee the Israeli population safety, then Iran is watching its very expensive proxies on which it has spent so much of its resources and money, and also with which it is trying to take over, essentially, to become the hegemon of the Arab world. It's watching them be destroyed by Israel. Well, it's using that time to push forward on the nuclear question, to have that nuclear option so that it can play a whole other level of the same game. It's ultimately about Iran.

And if that's true, what matters here isn't that Mark said it. What matters here is that Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been saying this stuff about where Iran is going right now, and has been warning about it. And now the question is, are the Israelis listening? I don't suspect the Israelis are not wanting to be listening. I suspect them of being very busy, but they need to be refocusing on this. And the same is true in Washington. If Washington is not focusing on this, it's going to wake up to a very nasty surprise very soon. Haviv, we will leave it there. I will just say, and this is a topic for another day,

the administration does not have a strategy on Iran, or at least it's punting. It's waiting, perhaps, to a second Biden term is their hope to deal with Iran. They do not want to deal with Iran now. The problem is Iran wants to deal with Iran now. The enemy doesn't wait for you. Right, for your election cycle. That's the asymmetrical situation dynamic here. Haviv safe travels. And just again, housekeeping reminder to our audience, Haviv will not be on this podcast for the next 10 days.

So the Internet, please don't break again just because Haviv disappears. No broken Internet. We can't sustain it. Haviv will be back. We have a few great episodes lined up. In his absence, they will all pale in comparison to Haviv mania, but Haviv mania

will be back. Safe travels, my friend. I appreciate it. We have great episodes lined up. Seriously, even Haviv may listen to them if he has internet access where he's going. Haviv, safe travels. Thanks a lot. You too. That's our show for today. To keep up with Haviv Retigur, you can find him on X at Haviv Retigur or at the Times of Israel. 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.