School of War - Ep 135: Rich Goldberg on Israel‘s Northern Crisis

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

Rich Goldberg, senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to talk about the expanding war between Israel and Iran. ▪️ Times      •      01:40 Introduction      •      03:30 Where things stand     •      15:25 Israeli expectations      •      24:44 Retaliation       •      31:39 Iran’s strategic concept     •      36:16 American interests     •      44:20 Projection     •      50:36 Once Iran has nuclear weapons Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

Given events over the weekend in Israel, it seems like we might be, emphasis on might, at one of those inflection points that alter the strategic pattern of conflicts. In this case, the broader regional war underway in the Middle East between Israel on the one hand and the Iranian axis on the other, with America playing the uncomfortable role of Israel's friend, but also its restrainer. Events are moving quickly. We recorded this update and analysis of what's going on in the region and what we might expect on Monday evening. Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous.

The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. The people who not see these buildings down. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. For maps, videos, and images, follow us on Instagram, and also feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean.

Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome back to the show Richard Goldberg. He is Senior Advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He served on the NSC in the last administration. He's been chief of staff, foreign policy aid to Senator Mark Kirk. He's been chief of staff and done other important jobs for Governor Rowner, Illinois. He serves. in the Navy, in the naval reserves. He's been sanctioned by the Islamic Republican of Iran. He's a friend and all-around stand-up guy. Rich Goldberg, how the hell are you? I'm great. I'm upset that I've never been sanctioned by the Russians. Other people in town get sanctioned by the Russians.

I don't know what I need to do. I mean, I've done things. I've done things, but I don't know that maybe they like me. And that scares me. Well, you make some progress on the, I mean, we're going to talk about Israel mostly, but like feel free to feel free to make some progress on that front here on School of War. I'm embarrassed to say I'm unsanctioned. I'm comprehensively unsanctioned.

If anybody listened to this show, that that is absolutely true. You are asking. Well, I mean, I'm affiliated with all kinds of organizations that have been sanctioned, but no one has put my name on a list and I'm starting to take it a little personally. Is this your second or third time here on School of War? This is definitely a repeat. I think second at least. We did economic warfare.

That was a good one. I like that conversation. Well, welcome back. Thank you. I was about to say to discuss an evolving crisis in Israel in the north, though it kind of, I mean, it sort of feels like it's just one long crisis there, but things have gotten acute in the last few days. So on Saturday, just for those who have not been following the news closely, there was a

Hezbollah strike on a community in northern Israel, the Golan, Majdel Shamps that killed 12 children, a combination of small children and teenagers who were playing soccer. And events have been moving fairly quickly. We're recording this, I should say, at about 420 in the afternoon, Eastern time here in the United States. I say that just this will go up sort of pre-dawn tomorrow, but obviously a lot can happen in these situations in 12 hours. Give us a sense, rich, of where things stand in Israel, what the status of decision-making is, where the decision currently lies and, you know, best guess is on scenarios for what we're going to see in the next few days.

So I think important for everybody to reflect on the fact that Hezbollah entered this multi-front war that Iran is waging on October 8th. So October 7th, we had the massacre from Hamas into the Gaza envelope. October 8th, you start seeing Hezbollah firing into northern Israel. And they do this in multiple ways. They have anti-tank guided missiles. They have various kinds of rockets. In their arsenal, they have short-range ballistic missiles.

They have seen actively used drone warfare against Israel in various ways. And the Israelis have taken casualties. There have been over 20 civilians killed, including in this most recent horrific massacre on the soccer field. There have been roughly the same number of IDF soldiers killed as well on the northern border. And so this is an active war front where because of the constant bombardment and more importantly, the threat that Hezbollah's special forces, they call them the Rodwan forces, who have operated all along that northern border of Israel for months, if not years now, threatening the potential for an October 7th-like invasion massacre,

the northern border communities, all those communities on the border have been evacuated. So, you know, anywhere up to 100,000 people no longer in their homes, evacuated at their close to the Lebanese border. You then have communities in the Golan Heights that are not evacuated, but are under threat of rocket or drone attack at any given moment. In fact, we just saw that play out, tragically, on that soccer field. And then you have other major cities in northern Israel that are also under threat. And we've seen Hezbollah start reaching down a little further south.

We've seen areas where they're going after either IDF command posts or they'll release drone footage to say, hey, we can reach out and touch Haifa if we want. We've just been over the port, and here's the footage of our drones that were over there a few hours ago. So this is an active front. The Israelis have been responding, I would call it in a tit for tat manner. I don't think they would describe it that way. They put a pretty good spin on this, that they've methodically been taking out leaders of the Rodwan forces, leaders of the missile forces, the drone forces of Hezbollah one by one. But the way they do it is, if Hezbollah attacks, you can expect in a few hours a retaliation by the Israelis.

And the Israelis will go after a certain target that's on the target list. if they find a high value target that's time sensitive, they will act on that. We've seen them do that. The most interesting, obviously, that we saw, and I will include sort of Syria into this entire front. I think people think about this just as far as Hezbollah and southern Lebanon, but there is a Syria front to this as well that is included because Syria is the logistics hub, the support hub that the Iranians provide to Hezbollah to bring in the weapons that they will fly into Damascus. and then drive over to Hezbollah in Lebanon. And you did see a major escalation by the Israelis and going after a pretty high-level IRGC

set of senior leaders who were meeting in Damascus, which prompted, if everyone remembers, the Iranian missile attack against Israel later in that week. But the reason why I bring this up is this has been a tinderbox. This has been a slowly escalating conflict since October 8th. where Hezbollah looks at the chest board and says, we have effectively shrunk the state of Israel. We are in an environment here

where we can continue to very incrementally escalate. We'll pull out a weapon system that goes a little farther. We'll push a drone a little farther south. We'll hit a target that, ooh, that went boom. A few people got killed or injured. There's a little bit of a crisis around it, but not quite enough for the Israelis to say, okay, it's time for us to take the gloves up.

We're going to escalate. We're going to go to war. And by the way, you have two other things going on at the same time, a war still in Gaza against Hamas, and the Israelis not wanting to have this two-front war, all-out war at the same time, and an American president who's already putting Israel under enormous pressure to get a ceasefire in Gaza, let alone opening up in a much larger way of front in Lebanon against Hezbollah.

That's not on the table for the Americans. That has not been on the table since October 8th. when the Israelis reportedly wanted to have a preemptive strike against Hezboa early on in the conflict to take care of a lot of the threats that you see now playing out, the capabilities that may have been out, not fully secured personnel that hadn't been moved to safety and secure locations. The Israelis were contemplating this. American president got on the phone and said, don't you dare open a front in Lebanon. We'll support you in Gaza, but not in Lebanon. Okay, so that's a lot of things to hold in your head. Add on to that,

the global munition shortages caused by the war in Ukraine, stressing the Israeli military, stressing the American defense industrial base and the ability to provide certain systems at any given moment to the Israelis, especially those that you might need in a large-scale operation in Lebanon, think artillery shells, think tank shells, plus the political pressure of potentially even withholding weapons

that you do have to give the Israelis over what was going on in Gaza and the president's decision to try to push Israel towards a ceasefire deal against Hamas. And then you have a moment like this, where truly as the world's sort of thinking, oh, we're getting ready for a ceasefire in Gaza. And if you get a ceasefire in Gaza,

Hezbollah is going to declare victory because they're going to say, hey, we entered the war on October 8th. We've been firing on Israel to help our brethren in Gaza. Israel did not defeat Hamas. Hamas still exists in Gaza. The IDF has declared that it will be withdrawing its military from Gaza as part of a ceasefire deal.

So the thinking inside the White House and maybe inside some Israeli quarters is once the war in Gaza comes to a conclusion, major operations are over, the IDF agrees to leave certain areas as part of a ceasefire deal. Hezbollah stops firing as well,

and everything goes quiet. And that's where everybody sort of thought the trajectory was, certainly from Prime Minister Netanyahu's appearance before the Congress and statements with the president and meeting with hostage families. and then Hezbollah, which is always in my view, one school bus, one soccer field away from pushing over to a crisis from where we already stand.

And now we have that. Now we have that. Now we have the images of 12 kids bloody, just torn to bits on a soccer field. And what does Israel do now? Now, that's the context. So you asked the question is, what are the decisions in front of us? what could be happening? What is the thinking in Israel right now? And obviously, we might wake up and you might listen to this podcast and something's already happened, maybe not. But as we sit here today, a lot of the fundamentals haven't changed. In other words, if you already in your mind had a strategic calculation that the president of the United States is pressuring us not to escalate against Hezbollah. And you see Secretary Blinkin's public comments saying we're for Israel's right to self-defense, but we don't want to see any escalation right now. And you see the Lebanese government officials saying they're being assured by the American officials that Israel won't escalate in a way that will lead to all-out war.

And you haven't seen any major change in munition deliveries and weapons deliveries and the global issues in the defense industrial base with respect to Ukraine. You could imagine that Israel still is looking at the same strategic pathway. But it has to respond. It has to respond because this is a Druze community. The Druze citizens of Israel, the Druze members of the Israel defense forces want to know that they are Israelis, that the state will defend Druze who live in Israel. And this is a major moment for Israel to prove its loyalty to the Druze community of Israel in the same way the Druze have shown to Israel for so many. years serving in the IDF, dying for the IDF, et cetera. And so this is now the balance you're at. What can Israel do that is escalatory enough to demonstrate a red line was crossed and that

Hezbollah will pay a price while actually not crossing an American red line, perhaps targeting certain leaders, perhaps targeting certain areas of Beirut where Hezbollah is a stronghold that would potentially escalate to something like all-out war, even if it's for a short duration. And then the last piece I'll throw out there kind of back to us, long-winded, is to say, can you actually achieve that balance and achieve some sort of strategic objective? Or is this all politics and trying to balance interests? And you're not going to change the status quo. You're not going to change the dynamic in your response in a way where people can move back to

their homes because they're less afraid of the security threat just north of them in Hezbollah. You're not going to change the dynamic of the potential that there will be an all-out war at some point to deal with this large metastasizing threat armed by the Iranians with 200,000 rockets and missiles and drones. Will you actually change that dynamic? I'm not so sure. It is possible it could hasten a ceasefire deal. That's a possibility. If there is a feeling of pressure in Lebanon that this could escalate. If there is a feeling of pressure by the Iranians or Hezbollah that they've crossed the line, it is possible this could escalate. They don't want to lose their capabilities in a war with Israel today. Maybe they would push Hamas to say yes to the deal on the table. That's a line of thinking

that's out there. But I think we have to see what Israel chooses to do, where it attacks, how it attacks, how long it attacks for, what Hezbollah does in response. We should assume there will be a Hezbollah a response to whatever Israel does. And if you see Israel attack areas in Beirut, if you see Israel go after senior leaders, senior leaders of Hezbollah, then I would imagine you will see a harsher response from Hezbollah, which would then trigger a much harsher response from the Israelis as well. Israel should assume that it will have to fight in all-out war if it takes certain escalary steps. If it signals in advance as it is doing so that is seeking to avoid an all-out war, I think we should assume the steps it is planning to take are already predetermined to avoid such an

escalation. I want to zoom in on a point you just made that the Israeli decision space, if you'll forgive, the fattish way of putting that, is between, on the one hand, you know, there's a floor set by political demands from the Drew's community. I'm putting it a little bit more crudely than you did. So something has to be done and it can't be a mere gesture. And a ceiling set by American policy driven by an American desire to, quote unquote, prevent escalation in the region. What are the sentiments amongst Israelis broadly beyond the Druze? Is there a reason why the Israeli authorities or Prime Minister Netanyahu himself might prefer to avoid a full-scale northern war? That is to say, it might not just be as a result of American pressure.

But my impression is there has been a desire to delay that on the Israeli side. Like, factor those considerations in. What is the Israeli public expecting here? And is it, is it, are they hawkish expectations? Are they expectations that are functions of concern about what the consequences of a northern war would be? And paint a picture for us there, if you would. And just help us understand.

I think that there are contradictory thoughts, involved here. On the one hand, I think there's a very hawkish sentiment right now from the Israeli public writ large to respond in a very forceful way. There is a feeling of incredible love and camaraderie between Jewish citizens of Israel and the Drew's citizens of Israel. They fight together in the IDF. They're friends. This is real personal to Israeli Jews to see the Drew's community suffering in this way. And they sort of feel like this is a triggering event. What does it matter if it's a Jewish kid on a soccer field or a Drew's kid on a soccer field or somebody else on a soccer field? This is Israel. This is our sovereign territory. This could have been anybody else.

And it can again be somebody else at any given moment. Next time it'll be a school bus. Next time it'll be something horrific. When are we going to act is what they would say? How long must this go on for? How are we forfeiting our sovereignty to a terrorist organization directed, funded, trained by the Islamic Republic of Iran? A country can't go on like this. Henry Kissinger, by the way, said exactly this in 1982, right before the Israelis launched a major operation against the PLO and Lebanon. And so there is that sentiment there. At the same time, I don't think the Israeli public truly understands what could come in an all-out war with Hezbollah. I don't think they understand what the capabilities are that Hezbollah has in its arsenal after 18 years since the last major war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 of nonstop weapons shipments from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

We're talking not just rockets, not just missiles. We're talking precision guided munitions that have been brought in by the IRGC, put on otherwise dumb rockets, missiles, and converted into precision guided munitions. that have been brought in by the IRGC, put on otherwise dumb rockets, missiles, and converted into precision-guided munitions that can be launched in the hundreds, maybe the thousands. There's no firm count on what their arsenal is

on the PGM side. It could be hit critical infrastructure. You can hit the airport. You can hit a major municipal need, something in civil society. You can hit a hospital. Who knows what they could hit with PGMs? Aboner?

Yes, they have the ability to reach that with some of their Iranian provided capabilities, certainly on the short-range ballistic missile side. And certainly on the drone side, we've seen the drones capable of traveling far, far distances. Look at what we know the Houthis have from Iran that was just used against Tel Aviv, traveling all the way from Yemen. And so we understand, and we've seen Iraqi and Syria launched drones that have gone all the way down to a lot on the southern tip of Israel. So that's itself also a threat. But, you know, the sheer amount of destruction that is possible, the casualty figures that are possible, if Hezbollah ever decides, either on order from Tehran, order from their leader, Hassan Nasrallah to unleash the full arsenal, I mean, this is nothing like Hamas.

Nothing like Hamas. The numbers on their force side, maybe, you know, 50,000 fighters, 50,000 reserve forces, a few thousand of the special forces. But when you're talking about rockets and missiles and drones, I mean, this is a threat at least 10 times more lethal than Hamas ever was at its peak. And I don't think Israelis are prepared for what that means on the home front, what that would mean for the Israeli economy, obviously their own lives and physical security as well. So that's the balancing act there. Now you ask the question of, you know, what else is Israel sort of thinking, what's the prime minister of Israel thinking about right here what's driving this? this balancing act. Well, certainly, if the IDF tells you, Mr. Prime Minister, we need to finish the war in Gaza. We have multiple other fronts still. We need to replenish. We need to rearm. We need to

get some rest for our soldiers. And then maybe next year, we could do this the right way. We could actually have an operation that could push Hezbollah 10 miles north of the border, whatever the buffer zone needs to be. They can actually degrade. their rocket missile capability. They actually threaten their leadership areas in Beirut. And we would be able to have the support of the world restored. At least the United States might be on board. They wouldn't be pressuring us to stop and threatening not to defend us if we do something

escalatory before the November election. That can weigh on you and say, okay, okay, well, what can we achieve right now that's achievable? What can restore some modicum of at least a feeling that we're doing something? not make things worse, if anything, you know, defend the status quo, but try to be pushing back. So if that's your calculation there that the IDF generals are telling you, this can go better next year, we will have more munitions, we will have more focus, we will have more rest, we might have U.S. support that we don't have now. That could weigh on you to say, okay, what can be done today that at least sends a message,

imposes a cost on Hezbollah without forcing an escalation towards all-out war. Now, I would argue that you don't necessarily have to imagine committing to the all-out war. You do need to be prepared for the contingency of all-out war to go down the path I'm going to suggest. But I think there is evidence that I have seen that Hezbollah, the Iranians as well, do not yet want the all-out war with Israel. They like this status quo of pushing the Israelis in a very incremental manner, literally shrinking the state of Israel, weakening the state of Israel, forcing political turmoil of their inability to respond, squeeze by the American, squeezed by the international community, not actually defending its interests in a robust way that you would expect. And then being able to, you know, let's put a little more pressure on from Iraq and Syria now. let's put a little more pressure around from the Houthis in Yemen.

And this feeling of this multi-front ring of fire really comes to the forefront. You start seeing it. You start feeling it. And so if the Israelis were to break out of that cycle, and in some ways, I know people don't like the term hyper-escalate because like, what does that mean in this context? How would you choose what a hyper-escalation looks like, an unexpected escalation to a point where Hezbo and Iran say, whoa, whoa, they're actually committed to a potential all-out war. They are crossing red lines for the first time that we thought we had set. So now we need to respond in some way. Does this just all cycle out to the all-out war you have?

Or does Hezbollah at some point seek a de-escalation? Do the Israelis exact whatever punishment they can over a certain amount of days and then seek the de-escalation themselves very quickly through various diplomatic channels? Does that put enormous pressure to get the deal done in Gaza? with Hamas as a way to short-circuit any road to all-out war, which may yet happen just from the escalation. We'll see. So I think those are the differing opinions inside the security establishment. But in the end, if the president of the United States says he's not with you in an environment like this and the IDF says, we'd like to wait, it's hard to imagine taking

the course that risks that all-out warfare. Yeah. I want to focus in on. on this question of Hezbollah restraint, relative restraint. Because it, to me, is one of the most interesting dogs that has embarked since October 7th. I'm not sure I'm using that phrase correctly. Sherlock Holmes fans can correct me. But one has the impression that Hamas has been disappointed, that Hamas believed that other elements of the Iranian axis, Iranian-backed axis, would come in with them in a more emboldened way after October 7th. that obviously didn't happen. And there does seem to be, as you point out, relative restraint on the Hezbollah side.

There's a sense that their significant capability is almost better as potential rather than actual capability. That once you fire the shot, you fired the shot. And you're going to kill a bunch of Israelis. You might knock down a skyscraper or two in Tel Aviv. You might cause a lot of damage. And then you've caused a lot of damage. but realistically, you're not actually driving the IDF and the population of Israel into the sea. That's not happening.

You might make some minor territorial gains with Red Wan along the northern border. You'll lose them eventually. You can't sustain that. And so it's better as a sort of ever-present fear, a factor that you might attempt these things, than actually doing it. And then, and this is interesting to me, and I'm curious to know your view here, there's obviously the fear of Israeli retention. and punishment in Lebanon, which we've spent a few minutes here talking about how devastating such a war might be in Israel. How devastating might it be in Lebanon? What are the Israeli capabilities? If this thing really, you know, went all out, what might we expect?

Well, this actually takes you to the Dahlia doctrine, which dates back to 2006 during the Second Lebanon War, the war between Israel and Hezbollah. And Israel pounded away at Lebanon incredibly from the air. I mean, just took a massive toll on a lot of Lebanese communities, infrastructure, including in the Hezbollah stronghold neighborhood of Dahlia in Beirut. And this idea coming out of it was there's a lot of,

a lot of ink spilled on this, that Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, says he was surprised by how much firepower the Israelis used, how much destruction the Israelis used, Israeli's exacted on Lebanon, and this has been in the psyche of Lebanese leaders and Lebanon government and Hezbollah ever since. That's been the operating paradigm that Hezbollah fears that level of power coming at Lebanon, that the Lebanese government's able to put some pressure on Hezbollah as well, even though it doesn't fit into that, you know, holding the same thought that Hezbollah actually controls that government presently politically. So I'm not really sure how people continue to have that thought process. But that's been the strategic paradigm. here is that the reason why you don't have an all-out war, the Israelis don't want to have the consequences of 200,000 missiles and rockets coming at them. But more importantly, there's restraint

on the other side that Hezbollah doesn't want to lose all of its people, all of its popular support by causing mass destruction in Lebanon because of its actions, and therefore neither side will cross any red lines to get to that escalation point. In my view, post-October 7th, this is like another one of these conceptuals, you know, that the Israelis talk about that was totally broken on Hamas and I think it's totally broken on Hezbollah as well. Because ultimately, Hezbollah is going to do whatever the Supreme Leader orders at the end of the day in Iran. He says it's time to unleash. It's time to fulfill the vision and take down, you know, northern Israel or central Israel. They're going to do it. I'm not going to say no. And more importantly, the preservation of the

threat, the fear that the Israelis exude of avoiding the escalation, I think the Supreme Leader likes. I think he loves this dynamic where he's like, wait a second, now I've normalized direct missile attacks on Israel, as he did earlier in the year. So I'm on the battlefield myself now as Iran directly. Plus, I have this massive arsenal built up on the north that the Israelis are clearly afraid of. Otherwise, they would have escalated already and started going after those capabilities. Clearly, they're afraid of this front. So I can keep, as a Supreme Leader, I can keep modulating. IRGC can keep modulating and moving around Israel and weakening Israel in different ways. And it does take a psychological and economic toll on the Israelis over time. So,

so I do think they're, you're right. If the Israelis were to say, enough is enough, we're going to employ the Dalia Doctrine. We are going to start bombing away at Beirut, bombing away at all the communities where Hezbole has a stronghold, going after the infrastructure, going after military capabilities, obviously, anything that they can consider dual use between civilian and military as well. Yes, there would be a lot of destruction in Lebanon. And I think the Lebanese know that. And in their core, they don't want that to happen. But let's not mistake the ideological hold that the Islamic Republic of Iran has here in calling the shots. And let's not mistake Hezbollah's decision to have incremental escalation to normalize states of warfare

that would otherwise be considered states of warfare in order to keep its capabilities and keep projecting that threat into the future. One last dynamic change I would just mention here, which I'm not completely sure how this plays out in a long term. And I kind of wish the Israelis themselves would reset their own strategic picture, their own strategic paradigm, in response to what the Iranians did. But for many years, we believed that Hezbollah was the deterrent to Israel going after Iran's nuclear program. That Supreme Leader is building up this massive force, 200,000 missiles and rockets, PGMs. You come after a nuclear facility. We're unleashing Hezbollah all out. And Israel doesn't want that to happen. Well, now there's this thought process of,

well, Iran's normalized direct missile attack on Israel already, direct UAV attack on Israel already. what happens if it's the other way around now? What if Iran's the deterrent for attacking Hezbollah? They both now are working together. So there is this separate piece here that I think we should think about is we're very focused on the northern front today. We've been focused on Gaza for months before that. We've been focused on their fronts, whatever they flare up. Let's remember the main front is actually inside of Iran, a ticking timeline on a nuclear weapons program.

And that plays into all of this with the chief caller of the playbook, the offensive coordinator back in Tehran. I think you and I both wrote not long after October 7th. I wrote, I'll let you put your own views in your own words, but that I was concerned about a direct line response back to Hamas and Gaza for all sorts of obvious reasons, some of which we've seen come to pass, some we haven't. And that actually there was space in the immediate aftermath of October the 7th, political space, diplomatic space, obviously space with Israeli public. opinion and preparedness to do something about either Hezbollah or Iran, some combination of those two more significant threats. And I worry, you know, some of the dilemmas that we have now are, you know, we're predicted by people like Galant in the war cabinet back there at the start. But let's talk for a minute about Iranian grand strategy, if you will. You sort of made reference

to the Iranian concept here a few times. And you and I have had conversations that we have not recorded on this. It's not possible in 2024 and not likely to be possible in any meaningful time horizon that the Iranian axis, you know, Hezbollah, Hamas, terrorists operating out of the West Bank under whichever banner, the Houthis, Syria, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, who did I leave out, the Iraqis, the paramilitary forces in Iraq? They're not going to get online and drive Israel and Israelis into the sea. That's not in the cards. So, what's the goal here? How are they proceeding? You use this phrase, ring of fire. Is it something like make Israel a less attractive place for Jews to live, to live, and get them to leave? Like, what is,

what is the actual Iranian strategic concept here and how are they pursuing it? Two things here. Number one, I very much like the phrasing that our mutual colleague, some of our listeners will know, Mark Dubowitz, the chief executive at FDD, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, he says, this is the weapon of mass distraction from Iran's pursuit of a weapon of mass destruction. I like that framework. I think that that works. I think that's right. And to sort of put a finer point on that and some of the details, what has Israel been doing for several years now very effectively? They've been taking the fight inside of Iran through clandestine means, covert operations. You've seen sites blow up.

You've seen drones attack sites from within Iran. Obviously, the Mossad has human assets. They have the ability to get operations done instead of Iran. They have cyber warfare that is conducted against Iran. Iran has its own cyber warfare that's conducted against Israel, of course, and against the United States. But I think Iran sort of got tired of this. saying, why are we playing defense here? We have all these assets on the board, which are our terror proxies.

It costs very little in relative terms for us to arm, equip, train these assets. They can foment conflict and chaos. It's going to keep the United States busy. And more importantly, it's going to end up surrounding the state of Israel on its borders to have to fight wars on multiple fronts. While we start taking the pressure off from Israel now being destroyed, of being able to conduct these operations inside of our own borders on a sustained basis, while we move forward with our missile program, while we move forward with our nuclear program.

And at some point, when we are ready, when we're entrenched throughout the region, when we feel like we have taken control of certain strategic areas, used to be that you would just think that they're talking about ground lines of communication. We think of Syria into Lebanon, Iraq, being able to go straight across. Now we're talking about sea lines of communication, you know, strategic waterways, being able to shut down the Red Sea whenever you want via the Houthis with missile attacks. This is starting to look like grand strategy. And you hook your, you know, future onto China, onto Russia. You align and deepen your partnerships with the great powers that are challenging the United States, become an even more attractive asset to them as you are building this.

infrastructure throughout the Middle East. At some point, you cross that nuclear threshold and you join them as a nuclear power that is opposed to the United States. And at that point, Israel is surrounded and now is not just facing asymmetric warfare on multiple borders. They're also facing not just a conventional missile threat from Iran, but potential nuclear threat as well. That is what I think grand strategy is here. And then, of course, Iran doesn't just play local games. They don't just play home games in the Middle East, they also operate abroad. Hesbola is in Latin America. Assassination plots go on in Europe and the United States, as we have seen in the news. So I think they have global ambitions while consolidating their power and their immediate ambition

of at least being in Middle East a hegemony that challenges the United States, gets rid of the United States and then partners with the great powers in the rest of the global conflict against the West. I think that's a pretty compelling outline. I mean, just to put it in very general terms, generating situations in the future where increasingly it is Iran that has options and Israel that has few to none. And America, ideally is absent. So has very few options at all in the region. The amazing thing to me is the way in which the United States seems, frankly, to be a party to, the prosecution of this strategy where you might think we would naturally resist it through our desire to avoid escalation or prevent you you made this great point over the weekend on social media,

but to prevent a regional war as though there's not a regional war underway right at this moment despite being low grade on certain fronts. Speak to that element of things. Speak to the American calculus. These are rational, highly qualified people in the White House and State Department in Pentagon. They have impressive degrees from impressive universities. Many of them are political scientists have informed. What are they thinking? What's their point of view here? This is sort of a regional version of our problems of grand strategy on a global scale where we decide that we're going to have a Middle East policy and we're going to have Indo-Pacific policy and we're going to have a European policy and we're going to have a Western Hemisphere policy. If anybody can explain

me what that one is, they'll give you a lot of money because there is none. But there's always different strategies and policies. And nobody decides to have one meeting to say, okay, does our Russia policy fit with our China policy, fit with our Iran policy and what's Venezuela is doing, what they're doing with North Korea? Right. So that's how we get picked off by all of our adversaries in my view today. But that's just how the U.S. government sometimes operates. And there's fiefdoms and there's parochialness and, you know, all kinds of reasons why we have this kind of siloed foreign policy oftentimes. And certainly today, as we see this access of, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba coming together, challenging us.

I hope this stopped as soon as possible and we actually have grand strategy in our policy. But zoom in to a regional level. This happens in the Middle East in the same way where we don't have a Middle East strategy sometimes. I actually think we did under the last administration, which was unique and it changed from both Republicans and Democrats in the past. We've retreated to the- You don't think Obama had a Middle East strategy? I think Obama had a Middle East strategy. Well, it would just give it to Iran and balance out the Sunnis.

You might, yeah. You and I, you and I might deprecate it, but I think there was a strategy. Sorry, I didn't mean, please. The Nixonian equilibrium, as I'm told, we were supposed to achieve. Sure, sure, sure. I suppose that's true. They had a thesis of the case that there's, you know, too much power with Israel, too much power with the Sunni, Gulf, Arab states.

Iran just feels threatened because of it. And so naturally, like a cornered. animal is acting out. And if you just give it more respect and balance the power in the region, you will suddenly have an equilibrium. Yes, and then we'll be able to pivot to China, of course. It's wonderful. Yeah, it's Biden who've been picking up the pieces. They, I mean, they tried to reengage on that front. They wanted to revive the JCPOA after what they viewed as a misguided. I think I think you're right. Then it all fell apart. It all fell apart.

So perhaps let me let me take what you just pushed back on and hone my state. that is we now have a siloed foreign policy in the Middle East because of the chaos sown by the Iranians that we gave them the money to sow. And so now you have a Yemen strategy and you have a Lebanon strategy and you have an Iraq strategy and you have a Syria strategy. And you don't actually have a Middle East strategy where you say, okay, all of these strings are being pulled out of Tehran. So what we really need is the right. strategy and policy towards the sort of parent company of all of these subsidiaries, and then make sure that we're treating the subsidiaries, such as they are clients, subsidiaries of a terrorist

corporation. When we decide that we're going to legitimize some of their proxies, bring them into peace processes, bring them into political processes and governments and all that, the way out in Yemen is to make sure that we bring the huthies in, right? That's the strategy there. That's why you don't actually put the Houthis back on the foreign terrorist organization list, and you take them off to begin with when you come into office. That's why you put exemptions on the sanctions that you put for PR purposes on the Houthis because you're criticized for not putting them on the FTO list. That's why you keep playing zone defense in the Red Sea instead of actually escalating

and going after the Houthis in a significant way. Iraq, right? The fear of upsetting the apple carton there because, oh, well, we can't get tough on the Iranians there. We can't get tough on the Iraqis with their Shia militia. and being in bed with the Iranians, because otherwise they might ask us to leave. And so we just need to make sure we're in a posture there as well, of legitimizing, bringing into power,

bringing into influence the militias that are funded by Iran and, by the way, the Iraqi government with our own money as well, who then turn around and attack U.S. forces, send drones into Israel, et cetera. Syria, you have just, obviously, not just because of the Iran policy, but because of Obama's failure. during the civil war and allowing Assad to stay in power here and having complete chaos in Syria and allowing the Iranians to fill that vacuum over the last number of years. Lebanon believing that the Lebanese armed forces are somehow a force for good still Lebanon,

even though they ultimately take orders from Hezbollah because Hezbollah controls the government. So we still send hundreds of millions of dollars into the LAF every year while Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad run a coordinating cell with the IRC in Beirut. preposterous. So all of these policies are done in silos. I would argue during the Trump administration is sort of the opposite of how Obama had a view of let's give over power, let's give over influence and resources to the Iranians, and somehow that will improve the situation. As we saw the region starting to fall apart, we reunified a policy of saying, okay, let's not have siloed policies, let's have an Iran policy, you know, maximum pressure on Iran, maximum support to our allies and see where that leads us, roll or run back to their borders in the region as best

as possible, drain the resources for their terror proxies, promote peace and stability, and got the Abraham Accords. We've fallen away from all of that. So that's why I think we are where we are today. We refuse to go after the head of the octopus, as the Israelis would say. And that is a problem not just for the United States, not just for Israel, but I think for the world because if you're looking at this in grand strategy, if you're looking at this from the global stage and China seeing Iran as a strategic partner, Russia seeing Iran as strategic partner,

Venezuela seeing Iran as a strategic partner. There is this powerfully held desire. And this is not a Republican or a Democratic or a left or a right thing because I think there are people in both parties who feel this, a powerful desire to avoid escalation. on one level for its own sake, because war is bad and we would like to prevent a wider war that might affect American interests, but two, because there is pretty widespread agreement, I am among those who agree to this point, that the Middle East is not the primary theater of conflict for the United States and that we need to be careful about the requirements that are imposed on us there considering what we have coming down the pike at us in the Pacific,

let alone we have an actual European war simultaneously that we are supporting a party in. But then this desire to avoid escalation as the mechanism for making our life easier in the Pacific or Europe, depending on what you want to look at, is to me the fundamental fallacy, the fundamental error, as evidenced by what we see happening before us, the notion that if we broadcast our desire to keep things tamped down, that will lead to things being tamped down despite data point after data point after data point to the contrary, suggesting that in fact if we flipped our approach and projected strength and suggested to your point, Iran, if you keep messing around, there will be serious consequences and we will be first in line to deal them out to you, that would actually then generate the outcome that we want.

And the friends of escalation avoidance, whether in this administration, whether Republican form, policy experts have never been able to explain to me is how the manifest consequences of their preferred course of action, which right now is a regional war, granted at a low boil in many places, but a boil nevertheless, which threatens at any moment to boil over. We may be at that moment right now. It's too soon to say how that improves our hand when it comes to staring down Beijing or Putin for that matter. I don't get it.

I don't get it at all. I mean, let's just take a China perspective, okay? We're preparing for a massive conflict with China potentially. We want to make sure we have the military that we need to either deter or win that conflict if it should come. And we want to make sure we have the economic statecraft in place as well to increase our leverage and decrease our vulnerability. I think everybody would agree with that statement. So then I look at different parts of the world and how they play into it because China's, not just in its own backyard. China is everywhere. China also imports or exports to everywhere.

And so when I look at the Middle East, I say, okay, does our policy, is it good if one of our closest historic oil-producing allies of a region that is supplying our top adversary with its energy needs moves out of our orbit and into China's orbit? Is that good or bad for us? I think that's bad for us. If our policy on Iran drives that to happen, then we have the wrong policy on Iran. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons and is therefore able to deter the United States from taking any actions against potentially, let's say, China's energy supplies from the Middle East, is that good or bad for us from an option set perspective should we get to an all-out conflict with China? I'd say it's bad for us. So we should absolutely ensure that.

Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. If you're saying, okay, we need to prioritize our resources so that we can defend ourselves and deter that conflict from ever happening in the Indo-Pacific and focus on China, and we need to empower our allies to take more of the burden of the security threats in other regions, does it make sense to have a policy that weakens those allies and makes it impossible for them to actually take on that security burdening role? Does that allow you? allow Israel to do better to alleviate our resource constraints if they're facing an eight-front war against Iran because our policies are such that we're making Iran flush with cash, not fearing American military power in any way, and therefore allowing them to march through

the Middle East and weaken the key ally you're expecting to take care of this region while we focus on the Indo-Pacific. So this is one big way of saying, absolutely, you are correct. We need to ensure that we have a grand strategy here. Adversaries, wherever they are, that can weaken the United States, that can weaken our allies and therefore distract the United States when our allies get cut off at the knees and distract us from actually being able to achieve the objectives that we may all share in the end of Pacific, mean that you need to adjust the strategy to ensure that you are weakening those adversaries and strengthening those allies. I'll make one last point. I've been searching for a metaphor for so long of how to respond to this idea of all other threats are secondary to China. China is our top threat.

We can all agree. But two, three, four, five, and six need to just take a back seat. We can't be the ones focusing on them. We don't have the resources. We just can't do it. It's only focus on China. I thought for a while the right metaphor was maybe like a doctor. And, you know, somebody's gotten infected.

in their leg. And the doctor said, don't worry about the infection. We got to treat this thing on your head. And then they came back to the doctor and said, well, now I have this infection in my arm. He said, oh, don't worry about the infection in your arm. We got to treat this thing on your head. And then the patient, like, dies of septus or something, you know, from the infection in the arm and leg while the thing on the head actually didn't kill them. Right. So that was one I don't love it. I think I kind of like played with it for a while. Now I thought about a better one. that's like a really much better image. It's Monty Python

when that night keeps getting like different limbs sliced off of him while threatening that he's still going to take you down and defeat you. And it's like, we're that night talking to China.

We're going to defeat you and we're not going to worry about anything else. And then Russia's going to take this limb. And then the Iranians are going to take this limb. And the North Koreans are going to take this limb. And Venezuela and Cuba have taken our last leg. And now we're just this body. stump, staring at the Chinese, saying, we are going to defeat you because all of our resources

are pointed at you. And it's absurd. It's absurd. Yeah, that's a fun one. You made, I think, a really important point sort of in passing, and I want to be respectful of your time here. So I'll ask you to expand on it. It'll be my last question. But the connection between an Iranian nuclear capability and American strategy vis-a-vis China, namely, God forbid, if there is a war in the Pacific, One might imagine a blockade of mainland China or certainly some sort of effort one way or the other maybe short of a full scale blockade to restrict the movement of war-making materials to China. Obviously, that would implicate energy resources out of the Persian Gulf, stuff that would move through the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca, and then up into the Pacific. The existence of Iranian nuclear weapon plus an Iran aligned with China, which you make a strong case. is in mutual Iranian Chinese interest and others have written on this subject.

Mike Durand at the Hudson Institute had an excellent essay on this about a year ago, I think. That would severely complicate our ability to enforce such a blockade or sub-blockade, you know, interdiction, whatever it is that we want to do, whatever war plan we have. These things are not, in fact, unconnected. These things are related. These countries talk to each other. they want different things out of the world. Iran's vision of the future is different from China's vision of the future,

but those visions do agree on one thing, and that's we're a problem and they want us out. And we will have to leave for another time, and we can do a whole other episode talking about our actual interest in being in because I think it's reasonable to listen to all of this and to think, well, what the hell does it have to do with us here in America anyway, and there are good answers to that question. At that point, the link between the Iranian nuke, rich,

and war plans vis-a-vis China, I think is actually an essential point. It hasn't received enough. Well, listen, I touched on an energy hypothetical, but there's an entire force posture that changes once they have nuclear weapons. It just has to. Alongside their advancing missile programs,

we start thinking of other potential threats and contingencies that a China-led axis can use using an Iranian nuclear weapon the same way that Russia will deter us in certain ways and already does with their nuclear forces. The Iranians will add that dynamic as well towards Europe and eventually the continental United States as well. Their ability to wreak havoc so chaos on a much broader scale than you already see today because they're going to say, well, what are you willing to do? What are you going to do to us now when the Houthis do

certain things in the Red Sea? What are you willing to do now when we just take control of Baghdad and Iraq falls to Iran? What are you going to do now when Israel is under much, much broader multi-front attack and there's an all-out war? Are you really willing to intervene here? the Chinese then use those moments to make their moves with the distraction on steroids that the Iranians are able to create. I think for all of those reasons, you know, plus the economics day craft piece, people that understand that sanctions relief, for one is sanctions relief for all, the way that money flows, the way that commerce can happen, the way sanctions evasion works. If you say, hey, let's just throw an appeasement pack up the Iranians and keep them quiet for a while

so we can work on China. The Chinese are going to use that sanctions relief corridor for their benefit. The Russians are going to as well. If you say, okay, let's take off some sanctions from Venezuela to see if the election can turn out well. Yeah, that worked out. You know, while we're also relieving some pressure on the Iranians and the Iranians and Venezuela are in bed together. And the Russians are also in Venezuela. So the Russians are benefiting from the sanctions relief over here and the Chinese figure out how to cap what.

So all of this, again, if we are making policy in silos, we're going to lose. We're absolutely going to lose. Yeah. There was a great teacher of international politics and strategy taught at Claremont for many years named Bill Rood. And he was fond of saying, and there's a collection of his writings, I believe, called by this name, you run the show or the show runs you. And by the way, that is my answer to the question for those who ask, well, what the hell is any of this business of ours anyway? It does not feel like we are running the show right now.

It feels a bit like the show is running us. Rich Goldberg of FDD. I always benefit from our conversations. You're a really smart guy. Thanks for coming on and updating us on where things stand. Thanks for having me. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.