PBS News Hour - Full Show - Inside the U.S.–Israel alliance and how it led to war with Iran

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

The war against Iran is a fight that Israel has wanted for decades. How did Netanyahu convince President Trump to act? Can a war launched together be ended together? And is there a limit to the U.S.-Israeli partnership? Compass Points moderator Nick Schifrin discusses these questions with Ronen Bergman of The New York Times, one of the premier investigative journalists in the Middle East. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Israel and the U.S. at war together. The war against Iran is the fight that the Israeli leadership wanted for decades, and today much of this country supports. But many eyes here are on Washington, an unprecedented military and intelligence partnership, but also the unpredictability that comes with President Trump. Can a war launched together be ended together? And is there a limit to U.S.-Israeli partnership coming up on a special edition of Compass Points? Hello and welcome to a special edition of Compass Points from Israel.

This is a nation at war, besieging Iran in the name of trying to foment the collapse of the regime, and besieging Lebanon, trying once and for all to extinguish Hezbollah control in Beirut and along Israel's northern border. And it's absorbing constant Iranian attacks after nearly two and a half years of being at war since the October 7 terrorist attacks that has strained this society. We focused recently on Washington's perspective on this war. To understand the view from here, my conversation tonight with Ronan Bergman, Of the New York Times, one of the region's premier investigative journalists. Ronn Bergman, thanks very much. Good to see you again.

Same here. Welcome to my house, our house. Thank you for having us. How do you think this war began? The short answer, I think if it wasn't for October 7, we would not be sitting here now discussing a full-scale war between Iran and Israel. Because it's hard to underestimate how much October 7th changed Israel and has since changed the region. And it's hard to underestimate the vision. vision of Yichu Sinoa, the former head of Hamas, not just to get Hamas to a total surprise attack.

He said, if we're able to recruit the other parts of the resistance, so Iran, Chisbalah, the Houthis, the Palestinian Islamic jihad, all of these, we will be able to eradicate, to collapse the state of Israel, or at least withdraw the state of Israel decades. back in their advancement. At the end of the day, it led not to the success, not to the military victory of the front, but the downfall of Hezbollah,

which was the main obstacle from the point of view of Israel, why not attacking Iran earlier? The idea of Iran was to put 100,000 plus rockets on Israel's northern border, so therefore Israel would not attack Iran. Exactly. But once his banal was not there, September 24,

or was, you know, much reduced and beaten, and we without their legendary leader that was taken out by Israel on the 27th of September. And then, I think, happened the two first miracles that Netanyahu performed. First, he got the president's blessing to go to war in June. Then he did the second miracle, which was to get the U.S. and the bombers to strike the three Iranian nuclear site. Then shortly after these threats were removed and obliterated, Netanyahu secretly orders

the military, this is in October 25, to start getting ready to remove the existential threat once more. That had ostensibly been removed. Yeah. And this has been going on very secretly when Netanyahu is even also using the most draconian means of electronic surveillance on Israeli officials to make sure this is not leaked. Time will tell what was used and how it was used.

And then Netanyahu visit Trump on New Year's Eve in Malaga. In Marlaga, yeah. And this is where he is starting to speak with the president about the possibility of the two military striding together or at least the president will give his blessing to Israel attacking, and at least the U.S. would help in defense. The biggest dream from Netanyahu's point of view, I think the biggest fulfillment, the biggest achievement

that he could have hoped for in his political and international diplomacy career would be a joint U.S. Israeli strike on Iran. And this is exactly what he's gotten. And for the third time, the third magic, the third time, is able to take the American president to exactly where he wanted the American president to be. Now, to be fair, I think that there wouldn't be an American war with Iran if it wasn't for Netanyahu, but also there wouldn't be a U.S. war with Iran if it wasn't for the protest. This is why I think history...

The protest in Iran. The protests in Iran. The thousands of dead. The president sent a red line after tens of tens of thousands of people. line after tens of thousands are killed and said, we'll come into your aid, and he never does, at least not immediately. Yeah. Netanyahu ordered the military to get ready for a strike between April and June. And then the protest happened, and they were thinking about a small-scale strike on January 15 or 16.

In fact, a U.S. officials said there was a small, medium, and big option, basically, and the small option was what they were going to go for, try and prove to the protesters that they knew who was being, who was attacking them and that we could get them. So Israel wanted this, General 15, Israel wanted until January 22. Then generals came to the president and said, well, you know, if you want to do it, let's do it bigger. We need until the 28th. While this is happening in parallel line, the new chief, the current chief of Sankom, Admiral Cooper, with the Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Zamir,

we're meeting and coordinating and planning a very detailed, full-scale war with very detailed separation of who is doing what. And the U.S. saw that Israel is taking upon itself more and more tasks in the overall with bringing the intelligence and the Israeli intelligence, you know, with Iran being for so long, an Israeli target, the Israeli intelligence was excellent. And once they saw that at Sincom, Admiral Cooper, as far as I understand, he could come to the president and say,

I support the plan. So the president of the United States had the constant pressure or convincing from Netanyahu. He also had the professional generals. Right. Saying we're ready. Who said we're ready and recommend they adopted. They've been working for decades.

I've been told. So take us to right before the strike, Masad gets intelligence about the Supreme Leader's presence, but also there was a convincing of not only the Prime Minister, but also the President, that if you do this strike, if you get the leadership, that could collapse the state. What was that? This part of intelligence that is also taking a role or believing it could take a role in shaping history, which sounds to me like these conspiracy movies from the 80s that we thought we left behind because it sounded a little bit childish,

but never late. And I think this will be researched in future history of intelligence seminars and PhD doctoral thesis for many, many years. Because when Israeli military intelligence and Mossad, assessed the chances of the regime to fall. So having, titling the whole attack with the goal of toppling the regime.

Both said, it's not going to happen during the war. It's going to happen afterwards. Maybe it will take months. It's all dependent on the Iranian people. We cannot predict. It can maybe help. And then, a few months before, or two months before, Mossad changed their assessments.

They came with a plan that had few components of not just assessment, but something that could promote, that could actually reignite the protest that died mid-January after they were butchered. The intelligence gets changed for political reasons? No, I don't think it's political. I think that initially, you know, people are people. maybe someone wants to be the next chief of Mossad. People with great ambition,

people were also inside Mossad and outside Mossad were also quite affected by the success of the Pager operation, the Wauki-Toki operation. Against Hezbollah and some other operations that were attributed to Mossad. Not necessarily Mossad was behind it, but I enjoyed the good prestige. Sure.

But I think that it was also the CIA and American intelligence that saw what Mossad and other Israeli parts of the other parts of the defense establishment and military intelligence did to Hezbollah. I remember speaking with one senior

American official. He was I cannot say impressed. He was like mega impressed by what the Israelis did after. So I thought that he's going to say that Israelis bombed, like criticize them for killing Nasrallah without permission.

He said, nah, they decimated Chisbalah. They decimated Chisbalah. Americans were impressed. Very much impressed. And I think most of the people, and impressed with good reason. But it's one thing to destroy target, even to send pages that are boobit trap to many.

And this is one thing, but it's a very different thing. to instigate, to ignite protest that would lead to the toppling regime, that would lead to someone that you sort of like or you can moderate, that would take the regime instead. And I think what was presented to President Trump by and the people around it, by Mossad and by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who adopted the plan for whatever reason, was there, it could be seen by the president as a remake of what happened in Venezuela.

Exactly, exactly. And we saw the president reflect the idea that the regime could collapse. He called on the very first day the people of Iran to rise up. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. He then said he wanted to be directly involved in choosing Iran's future. And so he bought into this, right? So did the CIA, so did everyone.

At least I think that they did not voice a... vocal objection. I assume that, you know, after my great colleagues at the New York Times, Mark Mazetti, Julian Burns, and myself published that, in time, we will hear more and more voices that said that, no, we objected that strongly. Well, because I did talk to U.S. officials at the time who said this is not likely to lead to an immediate collapse. I mean, there was people internally who doubted this outcome. I need to be devil's advocate. Let's say that they doubt, then if they doubt, if this doesn't happen, then what's the plan? What this war is all about?

I'm not talking about who, like Netanyahu, how much influence here, the Trump to go, but what is the war plan? Because if you say, I'm going to run, the initial plan was five days, both militars, okay? So, and then what? What's this is all? And I asked Israeli officials, then what? And they said, so we were expecting Mossad to topple the regime.

Mossad said, if you kill the supreme leader, this will destabilize the regime in a way that we can take from there and collapse the whole thing. And I think that they attributed too much to the supreme leader. And so at this point, we've just kind of dictated how the war began, right? And how the prime minister finally found a president willing to pursue this version of the war. At this point, however, it seems that President Trump is calling the shots. And I've talked to Israeli officials who said, well, we had planned to wage war during Passover the next couple weeks. But at the same time, the IDF says, well, we may be told to stop tonight, and so we've got to keep going. So at this point, it's kind of Trump's call.

Yeah, I think that Netanyahu's impact on the war was very small. It took the leadership from Netanyahu because this was all planned. This is one. The second thing was what could be seen as a victory. And I think that at the end of the day, you can identify three events that could signal a clear victory for US and Israel. One is that Iran would declare total surrender to the demands they made in the negotiation. So like total cessation of enrichment on Iranian soil, limitation of the range of the range of of the ballistic missile to 500 kilometers,

and the Iranian stop of fueling the process. OK, this is one victory. The second victory is a regime change, toppling of the regime. Maybe not the regime change, but replacing the regime with someone Trump was thinking he can work with. Now, the president said, we had three candidates. And they were all killed.

And they were all killed. Now, I must say, I'm not. I went through the list of people killed. I spoke with many Israeli officials who were in the loop and authorized the three attacks because they attacked the supreme leader compound. They attacked a meeting of the senior Supreme Security Council and another meeting at the Ministry of Intelligence.

All together, 40 high-ranked officials. I cannot imagine who of the 40 would have been someone... Would have been someone who could do the US... Maybe except Shamakhani, the National Security Advisor, who is known to... to be corrupt or something. I don't know. But besides that, these are like hardcore IRGC, intelligence. So I don't know what happened. So is there an Israeli assessment or belief that there could be an Iranian Del Sides-Rodriguez, could be someone who would do the U.S. bidding? I think that maybe part of Mossad plan was the ability to

support this faction or the other inside the regime, and maybe this is some kind of distortion of what you heard from the Mossad. So no surrendering of Iran to, American demands. No regime change. The third possible act that could lead to victory, it's tactical, but it has strategic meaning, would be the confiscation of the 430 kilogram of uranium. Right. So 1,000 pounds, almost highly enriched uranium, enrich up to 60%, one step below weapons grade 90%. And once enriched to 90%, which is a very low and small scale operation, you need a basketball court and few cascades of centrifuges to do. that and a few weeks of time, they have 11 or sufficient 40 before 11, 11, 11 boats. If they were decide to break out and pursue that.

But basically, they have the ability, the know-how, the machinery, the redundancy of everything that was destroyed in the previous war, and they destroyed quite a long, is enough for them to produce a bomb. If you take the enrich uranium, with the destruction, that it was inflicted so far, you really decapitate the whole nuclear project for a very long time. If the Iranians still have it,

the vivid risk is still there. But once you don't have any of these, no surrendering of Iran, no regime change, no uranium, then all the rest, all the declarations of victory that we will soon probably have from Israel and the US,

it's going to be all about how to, You know, how do sell, how to phrase the word, to frame the scenario. We already saw speeches from Netanyahu that is reversed engineering his declaration or his definition. Suddenly, you don't hear any more about the existential threat. It's over. He gave a speech unbelievable. People didn't understand what he's saying. He said, threats come and threats go.

but we will keep Israel safe for generations to come, not because what he said, like, removing the third, no, no, that's not important anymore. We will keep Israel safe for generations to come if we become a regional and sometimes a world superpower. We've reached a situation where after October 7th, when we were on the brink of collapse, we are now a mighty power, almost global, together with our ally, who's the global superpower, shoulder to shoulder, this is already an enormous achievement in the face of all the threats that will come against us.

Now, I thought that we are already at least original superpower, but he says it's only in the last few months, it takes it to him. But the whole vocabulary is changed, no ultimate victory anymore. We might have another round. This is because he understands, Benjamin Netanyahu understands, there's a chance that this is going to end with the future. out any of the real goals. The real victories, right.

Yeah. And he needs to adjust to this possible reality in order to declare victory. And so let me end with where we began in part, which is October 7th. So this war is largely supported by Israelis today. Israelis are absorbing Iranian attacks in ways that would not have been believed pre-Octobering. pre-October the 7th. How is Israel coping right now with this war? And how will it respond to, let's just call it, an ambiguous end to this war?

I think that Netanyahu indirectly gave the answer to your question when he said, we're going to have the elections in time. In time is October 26. Right. So meaning the Israeli Prime Minister needs to announce the election three months ahead of time. There needs to be elections before. October so in the next few months or weeks. There were people, including around Netanyahu, that expected this whole war to go very

differently. And they even thought about disassembling the Knesset, the parliament much ahead of time. So have a big victory. Netanyahu is the king of the world, making also maybe the Saudi deal or something, quick elections, he wins, he goes, you know, he can continue. And they even had the date, July 7, much earlier. When he said, we are going to have elections as scheduled. So October 26, I think this is where he basically confessed that this is not going well.

And I think that the Israelis, while being misled in the previous round with Iran, so they believed that the threat was removed. Existential danger is removed and obligerated. I think that now there is a lot of criticism, much more. He sees the polls. The polls are not improving. The Israelis realize that this is going nowhere. They don't understand why this is happening.

And they thought that this is going to end with their regime change. And in fact, it might end just with another war at some point in their future. Yeah, there's a famous Israeli equivalent to Saturday Night Live, where they had the late supreme leaders saying goodbye before it goes up to the sky to the Israeli public. And the text was that now you'll get another Ayatollah looks exactly like me with the younger groove. So this is what they're getting. So they say, why?

So why have we suffered so much? And I think more than that, after two and a half years, nothing is done. Nothing met a closure. October 7th, Hamas, Hezbole, Lebanon, Iran. So Hamas still controls Gaza. Chisbalah is still the most important

military and political power in Lebanon. Much weaker, but still there. But the Israelis just got a reminder that it's there. You know, Netanyahu thought that at least he would be able to shut down, close one of the fronts. So he also supported opening another front

with Chisbala, and Chisbala fired back and the Israeli suddenly reminded, but a really strong reminder, that Hezbollah is still there. Hamas in Gaza, Hezbole in Lebanon, the clerical regime in Tehran, they killed the leader, they have another Ayatollah with the younger groove. So nothing is done, nothing is closed, nothing is finished. I think this will have an impact, a very strong impact on the coming elections. Netanyahu has the strongest propaganda, disinformation, disinformation. machine that was created in the history of this planet.

They are repackaging everything to fit him. I'm not sure. I think this is one too much even for them. But in zooming out, it will also mean that the region, like we talked about after the seventh, but the region is still in flux. The region has been changed but not transformed yet. It's clear that even when you have the best intelligence,

the best if, the best combination of the two, even when you are able to send the pages or kill the supreme leader the the most the chief villain it's still not enough and it will never be enough unless you will have the closing diplomatic negotiating deal or leg to this a political end game a political end game and this will never end we will just have more and more rounds you know the Israeli military announced or the Israeli Minister of Defense said that we are going to get a belt, a security zone in Lebanon that is being established now and they are hearing up as we speak as we sit here now in Tel Aviv. They are hearing up to finish this before the president orders a ceasefire. And I said, I cannot believe I'm still living in this. It's like a dream because I remember when I was in fifth grade.

It was June 1982, and I saw the Secretary of the government announcing Operation Peace to the Galilee, establishing a security zone along the northern border to distance the cannons of the enemy away and ensuring peace for the inhabitants of the northern of Israel. And it's just going in the loop and we learn absolutely nothing. and that's a depressing end, but that is the end, so thank you very much. And that's all the time we have here. We'll see you again here next week.