School of War - Ep 149: Mark Dubowitz on the Iran-Israel War

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of Foundation for Defense of Democracies, joins the show to help us understand breaking developments in the war between Israel, Iran, and Iran’s regional proxies. ▪��� Times      •      01:41 Introduction      •      02:24 Iran’s missile attack     •      03:56 Iranian intentions     •     06:34 Options     •      11:27 Iranian concerns     •      14:59 Ring of fire     •      19:10 Near term calculus      •      23:49 Regime change     •      28:52 Reagan strategy     •      32:55 A “good” deal Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

A lot's been going on in the Middle East in the last few weeks, and then in the last few hours, things accelerated significantly. Israel is on the ground in southern Lebanon. Iran has fired a massive salvo of ballistic missiles at Israel. And as we record this episode on the afternoon of Tuesday, October 1st, Israel, apparently with the support of the United States, is contemplating its response. Mark Dubowitz helps us understand what's going on. 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 stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran.

The people who not see these buildings do. 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 the School of War.

I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Mark Dubowitz, who is the chief executive officer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He's a colleague and a friend and one of the smartest people I know on a range of issues, but especially and very relevantly for this special episode that we are recording here on the afternoon of Tuesday, October the 1st at about 320. 20 p.m. Eastern time. Iran. Mark really knows most of what is worth knowing about American strategy towards Iran, the long conflict and competition between the United States and Iran, Israel and Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iran, etc. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today.

Aaron, it's great to be here. And I think it's my first time in your show. So I'm really proud to be there. I thought you were going to have Mike Gallagher again, but it's good to know that. I was going to actually, I was going to work through everyone at FD. We get to the research assistants, the admins, you know. And we'll go with it. That's good. No, no, no. We're grateful to have you here. Thanks for making the time. I mean, as a testament to how fast things are moving, and we're going to put this episode up right away.

But when we were first exchanging texts about recording this afternoon, Iran had not yet struck. The Iranian ballistic missiles were not yet in the air. So maybe that is a good place to start. Tell us what just happened and put it in a little bit of context for us. And then we'll go from there and start to unpack the implications for the future. Yeah, Aaron. So the Islamic Republic, for the second time, fired hundreds of missiles at Israel.

The first time, as you recall, and your listeners would recall, it was April 13th when they fired 321 ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. And today they fired, we don't know the exact number. It's maybe 200, 300 missiles, including ballistic missiles at Israel. Many of them were shot down the shrapnel, which is obviously very dangerous, landed on Israel. And I saw that there was one Palestinian who was actually killed. So the Islamic Republic continues to kill Palestinians as well as Israelis. But otherwise, it was well defended against by Israel's multi-layered Erdafan system

with a cooperation in the United States and our other regional allies. So this is the, I don't think it's the climax. It might be the climax, but it's yet another point of intensity after a pretty intense few weeks, which I would characterize these few weeks as being driven by Israel's decision. to go north, which began with a strike that kind of, I mean, unless you're professional following these things, not that many people paid attention to, but an Israeli special ops strike at a Hezbollah facility in Syria several weeks ago. And then everyone started paying attention when Hezbollah Pagers blew up, and then the

walkie-talkies blew up, and then they hit Ridwan. And of course, finally hit the boss man himself, the Nasrullah, the head of Hezbollah. So this is on some level, the Iranian response to all that IRC officials were killed. in these Israeli strikes in Lebanon. What do you think Iran's intentions were and do you think that they've achieved them with this strike? Is it like April where there was telegraphing and signaling and it seemed intended to be kind of a limp gesture on some level?

Or maybe you reject that characterization. Just help us understand what Iran's up to. So this war against Israel actually began on October 8 when Hezbollah launched missiles drones at Israel following the brutal October 7th invasion by Hamas. And Hezbollah has been fired. these rockets and drones and UAVs at Israel ever since. And there are over 9,000 projectiles,

fired at Israel since October 8th. And the past month is obviously where everybody's been paying a lot more attention to the North, but it's very important to understand that, you know, hundreds of Israelis had been killed and maimed and over 60,000 driven from their homes in the North. Israel had to take back its northern border and restore sovereignty in the North.

And so Israel began to accelerate the pace of its operation As you said, they actually took out a precision-guided munitions facility in Syria. It's really special force of Shaldaq, by helicopter, went in there and blew up that facility. It was going to be one of the largest PGM facilities that Iran had in the Middle East. So it was really a devastating blow to the Iranians. Didn't get a lot of attention. But then after that, what got a lot of attention is, you say, all of these other really important operations. Page is blowing up, the decapitation of the Rodwan Special Forces.

command structure by Israel, the taking out of really thousands of missile launchers, missiles, drones, and rockets. And then the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, one of the world's most dangerous terrorists, a man with much American blood as well as Israeli blood on his hands, never mind the blood of Syrians, Lebanese, and other Middle Easterners. So I think all of this is an important backdrop to understand what has been going on. And I think the Iranian response this time, I mean, Haminae was so humiliated by the the past month and all of these operations and to see his most dangerous and important proxy terror army degraded severely by the Israelis, he had no choice but to respond. I think the response

was limited in that respect. I mean, even though firing hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel is certainly a massive provocation. And the Israelis are not going to stop. I mean, Israeli fighter jets will be in the air in the Middle East tonight. That was the statement by the IDF press spokesperson. And I think in the air means not just in Lebanon or in Gaza or in Syria. That means close to Iran or inside Iran in the coming hours and days. So what are the range of options for the IAF, for Israel, for the United States? Because we were just discussing before we started recording Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor to President Biden. And this is the administration that I've been critical of repeatedly for its, we'll just say, half-hearted support of.

Israel throughout this last year, not to mention before, he actually had a pretty strong statement suggesting that this was an escalation by Iran and there was going to be, there were going to be severe consequences. I think this is exact words in implying American permission, if not perhaps, I would be surprised if it was direct involvement in the sense of American bombs being dropped, though I think we could make the case that that would be in the American interest, but perhaps intelligence support. What are the options? What's the shape of what you think might come? Well, I would hope that the United States would be the one of imposing your consequences on the Islamic Republic,

not only for attacking Israel, but for attacking U.S. troops in the region. I mean, Iran-backed, militias, Aaron, as you know, they've launched over 170 attacks against our forces in the Middle East since October 7th. And there have been maybe 11 responses. And the responses have been quite kind of half-hearted. I mean, they've sort of telegraphed to the IRGC and these militias, you know, get out of Dodge. We're coming. And then days later they come and sort of some hapless militia members who happened to remain to keep the lights on ended up being the beneficiaries of Iranian bombs, or I should say American bombs. But that is not enough. I mean, the clear indication to Haminae is that the United States will not strike Iran directly. We won't strike

Iranian assets inside Iran, which may be a bridge too far for many. But we won't even go after Iranian assets in the region, right, taking out those spy ships that are helping the Houthis, who are currently attacking U.S. Navy ships and have shut down the Red Sea. So I would just hope the United States would impose severe consequences. We can have a whole discussion about what the Israelis can do, should do, will do. But at the end of the day, for the Israelis to be fighting the Islamic Republic of Iran alone, I think is, you know, I think we should not be. be subcontracting U.S. national security to a country of 10 million people with a tiny air force and a certainly capable Air Force and intelligence community, but fighting a country

of 88 million people with a significant army, the largest missile inventory in the Middle East, and this ring of fire, this terra proxy army that they surrounded both Israel and U.S. forces with. So I'm of the view. I'm curious to know if you agree with this, that actually sitting here in October of for the first time, really, over the course of this conflict, exposed. And it's exposed because of the degradation of Hezbollah's capabilities specifically. My impression is that from the start, Israelis have been rightfully concerned about what the effects of sort of

a barrage, volleyed fire of this impressive, reportedly vast Hezbollah into rocket arsenal, what those effects were going to be. The sort of tenor of the conversation, you know, this building's going to be knocked down in Tel Aviv, et cetera, et cetera. It struck me, sort of reminded me of,

if you read, you know, how Brits talked about the coming continental war in the late 30s and the way that air attacks would work, there was a sense that cities were just going to be flattened,

which in a way turned out to be true, that the Israelis had the same sense, that there was a reason to be cautious about going north because there would be real consequences on the home front that might just be unavoidable. Well, you know, over the course of the last month,

not to say before that in a more limited way, the Israelis seemed to me to have made a pretty serious effort to degrade those capabilities. I remember, you know, I was chuckling. You may have been as well a couple weeks ago when the pager attacks occurred. And a number of newspapers ran the story. I think Tom Friedman, of course, had a column. This was a tactical success, or operational success. There's no denying that. It's pretty cool. But there's no broader strategic purpose. Like, what's the point of all this? Well, it was clearly a shaping operation or part of shaping operations, designed to lay the groundwork for ground incursions, and defang, defang Hezbollah.

However many of those rockets are gone, I mean, who's even left to give the order to shoot them or to receive the order to shoot them? It's hard to imagine how they're even operating right now. So all which, my point is, this gun that was pointed at Israel's head has been sustained, the number of bullets in the chamber or in the mag have been substantially reduced. And now that was Iran's, that was Iran's deterrent. Now Iran has to rely on its own organic capabilities and the Houthis, who I don't know, they don't really scare me.

Easy for me to say, I'm not bobbing out in the Red Sea, you know, just waiting for them to take another swing at me and not allowed to retaliate. If I'm the Iranians, you know, I would be quite concerned, quite concerned about my economic targets that are vulnerable, about the nuclear program. What do you think they should be most worried about? Aaron, I think you're right. I think I'm maybe more cautious on this. I think there's a temptation and I've, you know, fallen victim to this as well after

or just, you know, the horrors of October 7th and even the grinding war in Gaza that the past month has been, it's been a good moment for the good guys, right? It's really quite uplifting to see the Israelis back on their feet, you know, not dying on their knees, but fighting on their feet. Unbelievably impressive Israeli intelligence capabilities, you know, capabilities that had really collapsed on October 7th. The Israeli Air Force really doing tremendous damage, as you say, to his Bala. The IDF, by the way, has severely degraded, if not destroyed Hamas's military capabilities and their governance capabilities. So it's been a good time for the good guys, but, you know, this too shall pass, as they say. I remember being a young venture capitalist

and running into the office of my partner, Barry, and I would say, I just made a great investment and he would say, well, that too shall pass. And then I run into his office a month later and say, well, I just made a terrible investment. And I'm really, feeling terrible about costing the firm so much money. And he said, not to worry, this two shall pass. And he was a, you know, a wizened venture capitalist. He'd gone through many cycles. And it was very, it was very helpful advice. And it always stuck in my head that this two shall pass because this two shall pass in the Middle East. I mean, Chaminet has been in power. He's the longest serving dictator on the planet. He's been in power for 35 years. You know, you don't survive the Iranian

Game of Thrones inside Iran by not being wily and ruthless. And you don't actually run what I think has been a really impressive strategy against Israel and the United States for 35 years, unless you're ruthless and you're strategic and you're patient. So he's taken some real blows over the past month. And certainly there's a lot of vulnerabilities that have been exposed. But I am watching and being very careful about celebrating these successes because I don't think Fizbala is destroyed. There's still tens of thousands of fighters. They still have most of their short-range rockets. They still have most of their precision-guided missiles.

They still have a precision-guided missile factory in Lebanon. I mentioned the one that got destroyed in Syria. Well, there's still another one in Lebanon. So they still have quite a potent arsenal. And I think this is, as, you know, as Churchill said at the end of the beginning, but I think there's still a lot of hard fighting ahead in the north, still hard fighting in Gaza. And Hamine demonstrated today that he is willing for the second time to fire directly on the Jewish state. And he is also the cusp of developing nuclear weapons. And I think that is the area that he's not getting any attention.

And this is this whole war that has been going on for 11 once has been a weapon amassed. distraction while Khamenei builds his weapon and mass destruction. Let's talk about that because I tend to agree with you that that should be at the top of everyone's list of considerations and for all the liabilities that Israel has to deal with in the months and years to come. I mean, it's degraded Hamas. Congratulations. You now have Gaza to think about to at least arrange for the governance of on some level, whatever that may mean. Depending on the nature of the Israeli presence in southern Lebanon, whether it's persist or out, and I think there's a military case to be made that you might need it to be persistent if you're going to allow people

in northern Israel to return to their homes. That's a whole other kettle of fish that's going to be very unpleasant in the time to come. But yes, I think you're right. I agree completely to my point about maybe the Iranians feeling a little vulnerable right now. Well, the obvious thing to do would be to demonstrate a new capability and to make a run for the bomb to consider a test, perhaps, and just fundamentally change the calculus while there's still time. And Aaron, before we even get to the bomb, because we need to get to the bomb, but I mean, there was a deadly terrorist attack today in Tel Avivian. Two terrorists coming from Hebron and the West Bank came into Tel Aviv and killed, I think it's four or five Israelis. Three or four of them are critically injured.

You know, is that by chance? Was that coincidence? Or is this another demonstration that there is another front? It also gets very little attention. And that is Judean Samaria, the West Bank. where there would probably be more divisions in the West Bank, IDF divisions in the West Bank over the past four or five months than they have been in Gaza, trying every single day and every night to counter the terrorist threat emanating from terrorist organizations, including

Hamas, that are sitting in the West Bank. The Iranians are flooding weapons into the West Bank. By the way, this is something that gets no attention. They're flooding weapons into Jordan. The Iranians have set their sights on taking out the hash from the West Bank. monarchy in Jordan and flooding weapons and drugs. And obviously Jordan is 80% Palestinians. So you can imagine the astramites going down, Jordan turning into another version of Hamas-controlled Gaza or Hezbollah controlled Lebanon. And then the Israelis have got a security nightmare on their hands because that is the longest border that actually Israel has. And it's a very difficult border to defend. So the ring of fire has taken a dowsing, but it is still flaming. And Haminae is, is

eminately capable of turning up those flames and multiple borders. I think Israel is in a much stronger position today than certainly they were on October 6th and certainly than they were a month ago. But one has to keep our eyes on the ring of fire and all these multiple borders. And then, yes, the game changer, Khamenei today is in a position to break out to multiple nuclear weapons. He has enough fissol material for 15 nuclear bombs that he could break out in five months. You could break out to one in probably five or six days.

And he's nearing completion of his nuclear weapons program. And that, again, as I said, we can discuss that really could be a gain changer. Yeah. Well, you know, I just actually had a piece about this. But the complacency with which the American policymaking apparatus seems to me to be treating the Iranian nuclear issue is shocking. I mean, it shouldn't be shocking after all these years, but it still shocks me. It's mostly among Democrats, though I think there are people on the right as well who have made their peace with the notion of a nuclear Iran and that they would rather accept that and then deter and manage.

You know, there hasn't been a nuclear war yet since 1945. So we're just going to put Iran in the bucket of one more rogue nuclear state to keep in the box. And to me, that seems like a catastrophic alteration of the balance of power in a critical region, no matter how much so many American politicians want to get out of the Middle East, we may not be interested. in the Middle East, but the Middle East seems to be interested in us decade after decade. And the notion that our security, American security, is going to be improved by a nuclear Iran, which is in cahoots with Russia, in cahoots with China, is now supplying an insane turn of events as a supplier to Russia of weapons for its war in Ukraine, boggles my mind how someone can believe that.

So here we are. It's, you know, we're in the immediate aftermath of this Iranian strike. The Americans and the Israelis are talking right now. seems to be some sort of retaliation in Iran in the works. You've got energy targets. You've got nuclear targets, which the unclassified conventional wisdom is that that operation is not possible without American support on some level, whether it's just, you know, there's right a ways Americans can support without putting the bombs on the targets themselves.

You've got regime targets. The Israelis just went after Hezbollah at the regime level, amazingly successfully, by the way. What do you think the calculus is? How do you think they're thinking about these things? both the Israelis and the Americans. So I think that I'd call it the near-term calculus because I think the threat of a nuclear breakout or sneak-out is near-term. And then I think the sort of medium to long-term calculus, and that is the importance

of bringing down toppling the regime in Iran. Let's deal with the latter, and then we'll move to the former, because I think the sort of medium-long range, if the U.S. policy-making community, as you've suggested, has resigned itself to an Iranian nuclear weapon, and the United States is not willing to do what multiple presidents have promised, including President Biden, and that is to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. Then what we really are is in a sort of more Cold War framework, where you had Ronald Reagan coming into office and dealing with the reality that the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear

tin missiles aimed at our cities. And Reagan understood that a hot war with the Soviet Union was not possible. Okay, so that's the, okay, well, we'll step back from that then. And if you want to talk about the short-term calculations, you know, walk us, walk us through what you think those might be. Yeah, I mean, maybe we'll get back to the long-term calculations. Because I actually, I really believe that there's been a fundamental shift in Israeli strategy. I think toppling the regime in Iran is now a central pillar of Israeli strategy. And that's very recent here. That's recent months. And I think that the Israelis are really thinking over the horizon that if

Iran does get nuclear weapons, then they really have to shift to a regime change strategy. And this is not invading Iran, but this is leveraging the millions of Iranians on the streets who've been on the streets since 2009 and leveraging them to undermine weak and restraint. And if history smiles on, unasked, the way it smiled on Reagan to bring down the Islamic Republic. The short-term calculation is, yeah, no, Israel cannot allow Iran to go nuclear. It's not only because there's a possibility that they would use nuclear weapons. against Israel. It's even if they don't, the Hamerone will threaten the use of nuclear weapons. He will do what Putin has done, which is threatened to introduce tactical leaks in the

battle space. And the Biden administration's response to Putin's threats of nuclear escalation has been his unwillingness to give the Ukrainian military the long-range missiles they need to strike Russian positions, the Russian military that's mobilizing the Russian-Ukrainian border. Now, you can imagine, given current trendlines, what would happen if Khomeini had nuclear weapons? What are current trend lines? Current trend lines is you have an administrative. that has been calling for de-escalation, de-escalation, de-escalation, an administration not willing to use American power, a wing of the Democratic Party calling to cut off military support to Israel. And Chaminet sees us, he understands us, and he sees an opportunity to widen the gap between

the U.S. and Israel. And so if the Israelis allow Chomeney to get nuclear weapons, he will threaten escalation in any American president, including maybe even your former boss, Tom Cotton, Aaron, We'll say to the Israelis, wait a second, we can't risk the nuclear escalation in the Middle East. Stand down. Stand down. And tell the IDF to stand down. And that becomes a severe operational constraint on the IDF in any scenario where they're facing the ring or fire.

So they can't let that happen. And they're going to have to go after Iran's nuclear program. And they've been planning for this for years. And I'll just finish with this and say that if they do it and we are not surprised by how they did it, then it was a failure. But if anything the past month has demonstrated, the Israelis have been developing surprises, not only for Hezbollah and Hamas, but developing surprises for Ayatollah Hamanae. The phrase regime change is a not entirely happy one in Washington, D.C., principally because of Iraq, principally because of the use of that phrase to describe Operation Iraqi Freedom.

You have, you know, I can't remember the actual number, but, you know, more than an thousand troops on the ground, a massive display of American military might, toppling Saddam, and then, of course, everything that followed, and which ultimately resulted in, I think there's a stronger case that for the long run sort of success of American operations in Iraq than in Afghanistan, I think in Iraq actually, by 2007-2008, we had largely righted the ship and then proceeded to essentially give it away, is my own personal view. But it definitely took the wind out of the sales of those arguing for an aggressive American policy. the Middle East and it certainly rendered the phrase regime change itself toxic.

Why? What's what's the case for reintroducing it into polite society as it were? Yeah, I mean, I don't actually talk about regime change when I talk about this because, and that's why I talk about the Reagan strategy, right? I don't think this is 500,000 mechanized U.S. and Israeli troops invading Iran. That is not the strategy. The strategy is, is maximum support for the Iranian people and maximum pressure on the regime. Maximum pressure was a strategy. I think that was quite successfully tried by the Trump administration. I argue they only did it for two years. They kind of ran out of time.

Maximum pressure was really only economic warfare, though they did, you know, Trump killed Kusim Soleimani, so which we all should always be grateful to the former president. But if it's maximum pressure using instruments of American power on the regime, and if it's maximum support for the millions of Iranians who despise the regime, you know, the makings of a strategy. And that was very much Reagan's strategy against the Soviet Union. We have been absolutely negligent.

And I'd say this has been a bipartisan failure. We have not supported the Iranians every time they've taken to the streets. I mean, in 2009, millions of them were on the streets in North Tehran, say death to the dictator. President Obama, are you with us or are you with a dictator? And Obama decided to engage the Ayatollahs. And the Green Revolution got crushed. And Chaminet actually was caught briefing his security services. And he said to them, you know, we almost barely survived that.

were on the edge of a cliff. And Obama decided not to help the Iranian people push them off the edge of the cliff. Well, the uprisings, the protests, went dormant, but they came back in 2017 when actually because of economic conditions, partly caused by economic sanctions, blue-collar workers now, not the middle-class Tehranis, but the blue-collar workers throughout the Islamic Republic took to the streets protesting not where is my vote, but where is my paycheck? And again, 17, 2018, 19, 20, these economic protests, again, crushed by the regime that kept reappearing. And then finally, women life freedom, where after the brutal killing of Masaamini by the

RGC's security forces by the Basij, where she was bludgeoned to death for not wearing her hijab properly, somebody actually hacked into the database of the Ministry of Justice. And the Iranian regime was telling their people that she had done. died of natural causes. Well, somebody got her health records and her death certificate and released it to two Iranian journalists. And that was then put out in public. And that was a spark for women life freedom. And hundreds of thousands of Iranian women, as well as their fathers and brothers and husbands and sons took to the streets to protest against the Islamic Republic and its gender apartheid. And again, that got crushed. But again, besides sort of virtue signaling

tweets from the world's leaders, nothing was done to actually support these people. Now, that is just, I mean, that's geopolitical malpractice, right? Against our most dangerous enemy, we have millions of people willing to take to the streets and we've done nothing to support them. That's the strategy. It's not Iraq or regime change strategy. It's not Afghanistan. And it's not the Lebanon strategy of the Israelis in the early 1980s.

it's supporting the people on the streets and using them to weaken and restrain and undermine. And again, if history smiles on us, topple the regime in Iran. So I think people may not remember. I mean, you made several references to Reagan. I mean, American Cold War strategy, almost from its inception, was originally understood and at various points throughout the Cold War consistently understood as a kind of regime collapse strategy. That is to say the way George Kennan originally puts it in the late 40s is, you know, we want our goal is for the power of the party, the Communist Party and the Soviet Union,

to to wither away, for it to be diminished and for it to collapse because of its own contradictions and that we are going to contain, we are going to contain the Soviet Union's expansionist impulses essentially while we wait on some level and in other levels we encourage the circumstances which will cause it to collapse to come together. And Canon contemplated that occurring over quite long time horizon, as indeed it did. And then there are debates today, as I know you're aware, about what our ultimate long-term goal with the Chinese Communist Party should be. You have people like Matt Pottinger and Mike Gallagher, who've been on this show articulating a regime collapse strategy, a strategy that ultimately aims at the loss of power

or the fundamental change in character, which was another sort of canonism of the party. You can still call it the Chinese Communist Party so it doesn't, so long as it doesn't act like it acts today anymore. Any of people on the other side of that question who sound more Nixonian, they want more of a Daytona strategy, they're comfortable with the ongoing sort of balancing of the United States from China. When it comes to Iran in this question, we have a presidential election coming up. I'm sure this is much on everyone's mind in the region, whether it's the Iranians, whether it's the Israelis. You know, how does that intersect with this issue? A president Trump versus. is a President Harris in this new, robust Israeli approach to Iran and the region. Help us understand the iterations and the possibilities or the contradictions here. Look, I think that President Harris and certainly with her national security advisor,

Phil Gordon, who's been very active in Middle East policy for many years, has written a book, but actually talking about how regime change in the Middle East has failed. I think what you're going to see is you're going to see engagement with the Islamic Republic and the restraint of the Israelis. I mean, they will be imposing significant restraints on Israeli activity. I think the Israelis know that, which is why they know they have until January 20th to do what they need to do against the axis of resistance, as Hamini calls it. And they may think this is the time that they're going to have to do something about Iran's expanding nuclear weapons program. Because if it's Kamala Harris, who's got no Middle Eastern experience, no foreign policy experience, Phil Gordon and the left wing of the Democratic Party,

being pulled by Bernie Sanders or AOC in the squad, you may see a very different U.S. policy, which will make many people look back fondly on what Biden had done in supporting Israel. If it's a Trump administration, I think it's my guess, and again, it's always difficult to know with Trump. But I think when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is a unique enemy in the eyes of the former president. It is the only enemy in the United States who's actively trying to kill him. And that tends to focus minds. So even though Trump, I think, would probably do a nuclear deal with Iran in a Manhattan minutes.

And we can talk about that if it happens because I think, Aaron, that actually is a significant political risk because if he did a deal and if the deal was even worse than the JCPOA, my guess is most Republicans would line up in support of President Trump. And maybe even half the Democratic caucus would as well because they'd rather see a deal than war. And then, of course, you'd have a nuclear deal. And I think those who would oppose such a deal, including me, We'd be politically boxed out, given the significant bipartisan support for such a deal.

But if President Trump resists that inclination, goes back to his policies of his first term, imposes maximum pressure, and now provides maximum support to the Iranian people, now you have the makings of a Reagan strategy, a victory strategy against the Islamic Republic. And I think that strategy is defined by pressure, by coercive containment. And also a strategy that ultimately, I believe the president, even though he's not a believer in regime change, I think he is a believer in supporting people who are willing to take back their country, particularly if it means no American boots on the ground. So I'm more optimistic about a Iran strategy under Trump and under Harris.

I hope to be pleasantly surprised if Harris went in another direction. But I really believe that it's ultimately the Israelis in a sense or alone. And they have to plan as if they're alone. And if they get American support, they can be pleasantly surprised on the upside. And if they don't, and they've been assuming that they're going to get it, they're going to be unpleasantly devastated on the downside. So I think they're moving in that direction as if they're alone. And they've got four months to wrap it up and inflict as much damage on the Islamic Republic

as they can. And then plan for that medium to long term, which is, again, the maximum support strategy of helping Iranians take back their country. Can I get you to really articulate your stance against a deal here? Because let me deal you a hypothetical that I think will draw you out and make explicit some of your basic principles in terms of how you think about this problem. What if it was a quote unquote good deal or better deal than the JCPOA? There were actually meaningful restrictions on the nuclear program that were going to last.

And sure, there are all kinds of concessions, bad concessions, concessions that we know because the Iranians are bad people, you know, they're going to use the money they get, et cetera, for bad things. But the nuclear program is legitimately, let's say, shut down for as long as you could, you know, as you could do in any kind of diplomatic arrangement, you know, for a generational period. What would be wrong with Donald Trump pursuing an outcome like that? Yeah. The regime is a bad regime and most Iranians are good people. So I always keep that in mind and that real distinction because I think it also, informs policy. But when it comes to a deal, look, I was in support of a deal back in 2013. I was

in support of a deal in 2015. I was just opposed to that deal because I thought it was fatally flawed for a number of reasons. But the fundamental reason is because that most of the restrictions on Iran's nuclear program were going to expire or going to sunset in a very short period of time. and Iran was going to emerge with an industrial-sized nuclear program with near-zero nuclear breakout, an easier clandestine sneakout, and hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, thereby empowering the regime, immunizing it against our ability to use economic pressure and giving it all the resources in need, not only to find its terror proxy armies around the region and its terror networks around the globe, but also be able to fortify the regime against our pressure

and against pressure from Iranians inside the country. So I'm always in favor of a good deal. I'm always in favor of permanent restrictions on Iran's nuclear program. I think a good deal today has to be longer. It has to be stronger, but I also think it has to be broader. I think it can't just narrowly focus on Iran's nuclear program.

I think it needs to contemplate all of these other areas of Iranian malign activity, whether that's in the same deal and side deals or whether we do a deal and we are serious, actually, about countering these other areas of malign activity, I'm open to all those possibilities. You may remember, I was actually opposed to Trump withdrawing from the agreement. As much as I thought it was a fatally flawed agreement, I thought that we should stay in it. We should use our authorities to put all the sanctions back based on Iran's malign activities.

It's terrorism, it's missile proliferation, it's human rights abuses. Squeeze the Iranians really hard economically inside the deal. and force them out of the deal. And then we could use the international support that we had and mechanisms in the JCPOA to really tighten the noose on the Islamic Republic and then actually use American power and Israeli power to counter Iran's other malign activities. So again, maybe a complicated position politically. It put me in the middle of the street, which is the only place in Washington, you actually get run over. But again, I think if a Trump administration, and I think it's going to take a Trump administration to negotiate a good deal,

I don't think a Harris administration will, because I think a Harris administration is still trapped by a fundamental and erroneous assumption. And that is that you can get a good deal through confidence-building measures, through engagement, through articulate diplomats. And it's just a question of sitting around the table and spending enough time reaching a common understanding with the Islamic Republic. I think that's why we got a fatally flawed agreement in the first place under Obama. it is about leverage.

And the leverage that we have against Haminae is multifaceted. And if we use it smartly and we cast a shadow over the negotiating table of power, I think we can negotiate a much, much better deal. So I would support a much better deal. I'm deeply skeptical that we'll get one under Harrison. I'm, you know, I'm still skeptical. We'll get one under Trump, given the president's inclination to get, you know, to get the art of the deal and then to call it the best.

deal have negotiated and and ultimately that deal may not be any better than the JCPOA. Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a pleasure speaking with you, your appearance on this program, long overdue, but not the last time. Please come back soon and keep us surprised of how things are going in the Middle East. Aaron, thanks so much for having me. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.