School of War - Ep 95: Richard Goldberg on the War in Israel & American Strategy

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

Rich Goldberg, senior advisor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies and co-host of Jewish Insider’s Limited Liability podcast, joins the show to talk about the war in Israel, Iran’s objectives, and America’s. ▪️ Times      •    01:41 Introduction      •    02:22 Sit Rep 10/23     •    12:05 Confused messaging from Washington     •    20:21 Too clever by half     •   24:54 Owner operated proxies?     •    32:40 What does Iran want     •    35:51 Volatile Israeli politics     •    40:52 Dancing to the enemy tune     •   42:51 The cost of being America’s ally     •    44:25 Deterrence Follow along  on Instagram Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

The war between Israel and its enemies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and ultimately Iran continues this week. We'll start with an update on the state of play from my guest, Rich Goldberg, one of the smartest analysts on these issues out there. And then unpack the strange role the Biden administration is playing in the conflict, unpack Iranian interests in decision making, and talk about how what's happening in the Middle East may not stay in the Middle East. Let's get into it. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of the way. 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 these buildings down to. 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. 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 am delighted to welcome back to the program today, Richard Goldberg. He's a senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction at the White House National Security Council in the last administration. He's had a variety of roles in the Senate and Illinois State Government and the House. house before that he's a colleague and a friend and now joins an august group of multi-time

guests multi-time appearances on school of war though i wish the circumstances were better rich thanks for thanks for joining thanks for having me do you do you get swag do you give out swag i know not yet not yet you know we're still a young operation but i don't i think two is like too low of a bar that's we've got to get people to at least three or four or five okay all right but we'll we'll we'll get there it's you mike galliger we got a few now we got a few now who are at two It's always Gallagher. He's always chasing me. Okay, take, if you would, just a minute or two.

We're recording this at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, East Coast time on Monday the 23rd, and this will go out tomorrow morning, so admittedly a lot can happen between now and then. But just give us a quick overview of the situation with the war in Israel. Yeah, I mean, I think everybody's been tracking the horror that is the massacre of 10-7 and beyond. and you've seen steady air campaign by the Israelis in Gaza at first just emptying their target bank of known targets of Hamas infrastructure, leadership, et cetera, now widening that to go after various other pieces of the infrastructure that have maybe been on the wish list for a long time, but held off for various reasons. Now that civilian population centers have been told to move, maybe less risk of coalitions,

lateral damage in certain areas, time-sensitive targets that have become available as people who are in any way in the leadership of Hamas come up on the radar. We've seen the Israelis target members of the so-called Political Bureau of Hamas and Gaza. Just keeping in mind that the way these terror organizations work is they have one piece of their operation that is the terror piece that we think of, they call it a military brigade. They also have a political structure as well to actually do diplomacy, raise money, be the face, the friendly face of terrorism to different parts of the world to their allies like Turkey and Qatar and others. And so we obviously, the United States don't make that distinction in our law. Hamas is a terrorist organization

designated in its entirety, same with Hezbollah. In Europe, this is an argument that sometimes does play out, not for Hamas, but for Hezbollah. They actually only designate the military wing of Hezbollah. So anyways, my point is that this is a line that wasn't really crossed before by the Israelis showing the policy objective really is eradication of Hamas, not just sending a message to Hamas. And so that continues in Gaza at the moment. While two things are happening, one, trying to figure out the broader strategy ahead for the IDF, do they want to have any sort of confrontation on their northern border with Hezbollah before they go into Gaza. I know Aaron you've written about this extensively, some very thoughtful pieces.

I think that's still a thought process that's going on there. Do they want to at least deter the northern front and have confidence that it is deterred if they are to do anything on the ground in Gaza in the future? And today, if you look at the surrounding picture, I would have to say they cannot have confidence that their northern border is deterred, which could be delaying any entry into Gaza. Of course, there's also the hostages and more than 200 hostages held in Gaza by Hamas, many of them, dual passport holders, the Americans, the Brits, others involved in potential hostage negotiations through the Qataris, leveraging all of our emotions, pressure from the White

House not to go in and do anything until those talks have been exhausted for the potential to release more hostages. So that's the picture down in the south there in the north, and to sort of zoom out broader into my statement that the Israelis do not have deterrence achieved, really on any front at this point, other than perhaps their southern border simply because of the force buildup there and the nature of Gaza, though rockets are coming across on a daily basis in large droves. And there's always the potential for further infiltrations, though the Israelis do feel at this point. They've lost. locked down all the different tunnels that were still being used. And there may still be

Hamas people who got in on 10-7, still floating around the population that still need to be hunted down. But on that northern border with Hezbollah, which of course is a much larger potential threat to Israel, a much larger force, missile force, rocket force, precision guided munitions, cruise missiles, et cetera. That is active. It's not like we're all waiting to see if there's going to be a northern front. There is a northern front already active. The question is, will it escalate further? And so we've fallen into this new normal. We're on a daily basis, Hezbollah fires anti-tank-guided missiles, rockets, maybe even tries to infiltrate the border in the north. And IDF soldiers are dying. There's actually casualties happening on an almost daily basis.

We saw too during the weekend. If towns throughout the north are being evacuated in Israel, there's mass mobilization in the north. And there's all these rhetorical statements from Israeli leaders saying don't escalate, don't escalate. If Hezbollah escalates, you know, we're going to send Lebanon back to the Stone Age. We may even target Assad in Syria, you know, et cetera. So that is not a border that is calm at this point. The Iranians obviously have a lot of influence there over Hezbollah. They have not, it seems, at this point, been able to or desire to push Hezbollah into a full scale war. where they would deploy all that missile arsenal, that rocket arsenal that we talk about. But what are the Iranians doing in the meantime?

They're setting little fires all around the Middle East and almost testing the fences to see what the will of the United States is and what Israel's willing to do as they also calculate what their next step will be. So we're in a bit of a staring contest. And I fear that the Iranians actually feel rather emboldened by it. We have multiple attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria over several days now, going unresponded to by the U.S. military, hitting U.S. forces in northern Iraq and Erbil in the Kurdish areas, al-Assad at our airbase there in Iraq, and the garrison at Al-Tanaf in Syria, suicide drones, rockets, et cetera. No response yet from the United States, very strange, not even like an empty building where an Arab militia might be.

operating out of, let alone an IRGC commander or officer outside of Iran. So that's happening. Yemen, where the Houthis are, this is another owned and operated terror proxy that the Iranians have built up over several years in their proxy war against Saudi Arabia and UAE. This is a force that is almost like a Hezbollah replication in Yemen, also with missiles, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, UAV capabilities. And inside a de-escalation pack with the Saudis now for months,

the Iranians able to always have the potential threat of turning the Houthis away from the Gulf and towards the Israelis. And in fact, seeing a nine-hour firing of cruise missiles and drones towards Israel from Yemen, and just a few days ago, intercepted by the United States Navy. Ooh, yeah. So all of these things happening with really no receipts. response. We're just in the status quo with the administration leaking out stories of trying to restrain the Israelis, not wanting a confrontation on the northern border, not wanting Hezbo

involved, not wanting Iran involved, trying to get the Israelis to go lighter into Gaza, think about the consequences of a ground invasion, open up humanitarian corridors into Gaza, which arguably might undermine Israel's military posture after promising they would not allow humanitarian aid in. So this is the picture I think we're entering at this moment. Everything could change in a moment's notice. But I think that's the picture I'm seeing in front of me right now. Your hoo-ya reminds me that I neglected to mention in your biography that you are a reserve United States Naval officer. I don't know if you admit that in polite company.

But well done to your colleagues out there in the Red Sea. I don't like to make Marines feel bad. So I don't talk about it. I don't talk about it in a company like this. So there's a lot to unpack in that great sort of tour of the map you just gave. I want to start with the American angle for a second, and then we'll go back to the Iranian angle. And it may be surprising that I'm mentioning both things as though they are downstream with the same consideration. But I am for a reason, the consideration being constraints on Israeli options right now.

And in the American context, you mentioned this question of deterrence in the north. If you'd asked me a week ago what the emerging picture was of what the American role in all this was going to be, it seemed to me to be the case about a week ago. And we were saying, the United States and the administration was communicating that we were going to deter Iranian direct involvement and sort of biological extension, Hezbollah direct involvement so that Israel could settle business with Hamas and Gaza. And there were pros and cons to that. I'm personally of the opinion probably more cons than pros, but nevertheless, that seemed to be the situation a week ago. Sitting here on Monday the 23rd, the situation seems considerably worse. That is to say, it's not only that the United States' position is to deter one set

of Israel's adversary so it could focus on the adversary that directly conducted the attack on the 7th of October. It now seems that we are working to deter even a... settling of accounts with Hamas, principally through this question of hostage diplomacy and insisting on time for hostage diplomacy to take place. Talk a bit, if you would, about your assessment of the Biden administration's role in all of this. You know, speak to its logic. Like, the way I just laid it out makes it sound like it's a policy being constructed by crazy people, but they appear to think that they're doing it for the right reasons. Why are they working so hard? First of all,

do you agree with my premise that they are working to construct? Israel's freedom of action. And second of all, why do they think that's in America's interest? Well, it certainly appears from their leaks to the New York Times over the weekend and two successive stories that they certainly want somebody to believe that they are trying to constrain the Israelis. And so obviously there's a lot of rumors and reports and leaks out of what Tony Blinken said, the Secretary of State when he was in Israel and what Biden may or may not have said and obviously unprecedented senior American officials met for hours with the Israeli security cabinet like going over their war plans and their strategy and their strategic objectives.

And this isn't sort of like, hey, we have your back. Let us know if you need help. It's like, no, we're in your business. And no, you can't do that. No, you can't do that. Yes, you can't do that. Yes, you can't do that. And so there is the sense of that going on.

At the same time, there's no indication of a denial of a request for military assistance at this point. All munitions that have been requested have been transferred, green lighted, J-dam's, small-diam munitions, resupply on the Iron Dome to the extent that that is a capability and possible right now based on manufacturing capacity. More expected to be shipped. A major request to the Congress for a supplemental to continue to provide more and more assistance with the idea being this could be protracted. This could be a long time and there will be a need for U.S. resupply. So if this was a true constraint, obviously, you would see some interruption in that assistance. So to the extent that they're sort of trying to have it both ways for multiple audiences,

I do feel the politics of this taking over more than perhaps the reality of it. There's no question in my mind. They continue to try to have two different realities, two different policy sets that contradict each other, but they don't want them to. One is an Iran policy where we have reached some sort of nuclear understanding with Iran. We're still going to try to keep that door open. It's the only reason why you would allow the UN missile embargo to expire last week and not trigger the snapback of UN sanctions as if you're trying to keep the door open.

You know that that will close the door to a nuclear deal. The Iranians will respond in some way on the nuclear front. You may have to threaten military action against their nuclear program. So we don't want to do that. We want to sustain that possibility and that arrangement with the Iranians over here. But we're going to try to deter them to stay out of this war around Israel so that we can keep that policy over there and then just resupply Israel to focus on Hamas. And so why do they then signal these things into the New York Times? One may be to appease their own base, which is many parts of that left-wing base clamoring for.

a ceasefire or you need to do more to protect Palestinian lives or, you know, so they say, oh, you know, we're telling them to go easy. We're telling them, don't, don't move too fast, keep humanitarian, follow the rule of law. I mean, what a lecture to Israel, really, at this point, follow the rule of law and law for me, my God. But that's what they're messaging out there. I can only imagine that's to their base. And then also some signals to the Iranians of, hey, we really are trying to stop this from impacting you. You need to do your part. We're going to keep the carrots open and out there,

but we are sending another carrier strike group, the Eisenhower, not just to the eastern Mediterranean, as we had previously thought, but perhaps now into the Gulf, if you sort of read what the statement is on where they're quote-unquote redirecting the Eisenhower to, obviously it was already an option and won't be there for days. But that seems to be the picture that they're creating,

in their own minds in the Biden administration. Now, the reason why I feel like that is very fraught with contradiction is that you are messaging to the Iranians a fear of escalation. You're also messaging to the Iranians a fear of having to use military force against Iran if they were to move forward on their nuclear threat or in other circumstances. And at the same time believing that you're somehow restoring deterrence on Israel's northern front by threatening Iran and showing Iran your willingness to use force. So which is it? You're willing to use force against Iran or you're afraid to use force against Iran. If you're afraid of snapping back the UN sanctions because they might go to 90% in Richmond, then you're afraid of Iran. You're afraid of

escalating. You're afraid of using military force. You're afraid of threatening military force. So this is fraught with contradiction to me, and that is not good signs for Israel's northern front. And again, I go back to, they're also attacking U.S. forces. Now, I understand that maybe inside Brett McGurk's head and Jake Sullivan's head, these are two senior officials in the White House who control Middle East policy in the president's ear, this is just Iranian bait. And we don't want to take the bait. We're not going to show them. We're not taking the bait. We're not escalating.

and they're just going to get the message that we're not escalating. But we're willing to. I don't know. Are we willing to? I mean, a contractor died, had a heart attack. I guess, you know, if you just have a heart attack during an Iranian attack, it's not an attack. But now we see in the last few hours the Pentagon putting out statement saying, we have no direct intelligence that shows Iran has directed these attacks on U.S. forces.

I mean, these are just Iranian proxies. Like, who else directed them to start opening fire on a daily. basis against U.S. forces. And it just completely undercuts the narrative we heard from day one, which was we have no direct intelligence linking Iran to the massacre on October 7th. It's just not credible at this point. And so that's what I see, trying to keep these two policies separate, even though they're contradictory, and in their own mind thinking they're doing the right thing and trying to give Israel space, appease their own base, and potentially still, you know, resupply a military mission against Hamas.

Now, all of that's very interesting. I have one more policy question in my mind, and that is, is it United States policy to support the destruction of Hamas today? I don't know that it is because there is a tension also in saying, go easy in Gaza, keep the channel open with Qatar, allow Qatar, the Turks to keep housing and sponsoring Hamas. Once we see those policies changing, then I think I'll come around to saying, yes, U.S. policy has aligned with Israeli policy,

which is the destruction of Hamas. Yeah, a week ago, I would have been more open to the notion that the Biden administration, setting aside the obvious point about, or the obvious difficulty raised by Qatar that you just pointed to, that a week ago, the Biden administration seemed open to a freer hand for Israel, in Gaza itself at least. But now I think it's getting nearly impossible to say that. And I, you know, you, you discuss the way in which it's like a contradiction that as of right now, we've not, we've not declined any requests for material support. We have this big supplemental request going to Congress for additional support for Israel. There's a contradiction between that on the one hand and what you and I both think are these constraining moves that the United States is making with regard to Israel. To me, it's, it's the kind of contradiction that the administration is probably patting itself on the back for because it's so clever in their mind. It's it's it is the embrace you know again this is the bear hug notion it is the embrace which allows for the restraint if you if you really started to use a heavy hand in constraining Israeli behavior by for example starting to say no some of the requests for munitions that would be politically difficult here at this moment in the united states it would certainly cause political problems that by administration doesn't face right now and two i mean if you really pushed it too far you sort of start to force the Israelis to really confront the possibility of a world where their relationship with the United States is much weaker.

Whereas now they have to confront a world where actually the relationship with the United States is such that President Biden just gave a, you know, roaring pro-Israel address from the Oval Office a few days ago. And yet at the same time, their hands are increasingly tied. It's like, well, right. I mean, there is an irony here. I don't know, I think that's the right word. I mean, to use it in this context anyways.

Might be the wrong word. A literature person will skin me for this. But the irony in my view is that. that the Israelis have always known that the Iranians fear the United States more than Israel. Now, they don't fear that we're going to be doing clandestine things and blowing up things and using drones inside of Iran that's not going to happen. The Mossad does that. But they do fear U.S. military hard power, and you see them always run away from it.

They never want a direct confrontation. And the back of their mind, risk calculus for the Supreme Leader has always been, well, what if this is actually going to trigger a U.S. military action? What if they actually respond? That's why the killing of Soleimani was such like a traumatic thing for them. It was like, oh my gosh, you know, this guy, we thought he was a paper tiger or Trump. Like he actually did something. He's crazy.

He might hit the nuclear program too. And as we know, apparently he asked for briefings about it. So that element out there is sort of funny to me because the Americans are putting themselves in a position of vulnerability. and signaling so much weakness to invite further attack on themselves that you may actually be putting the United States in position to actually have to retaliate against Iran in a more likely scenario than what would have been a few weeks ago. And so I don't know if the White House has really calculated this,

but they are moving assets into a place where there will be a force posture for something to happen. And the Iranians will have to take that, into account. Now, they will continue to just climb an escalation ladder rung by rung to see when it is that they've hit something that they can't go further beyond. I don't know where that will be, but they certainly have a window maybe in their own mind between now and when the Eisenhower arrives, where assets are more focused on the eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea. you know, if they wanted to escalate something, this would be the window.

But it is also possible that, you know, what's the risk calculation for the Ayatollah? You know, what does he think is too far where even this president with these mixed signals and a carrot and stick approach, you know, may be boxed into something where, you know, a carrier strike group actually gets employed? I don't know the answer to that, but I do find it funny that in, in this, way of trying to constrain the Israelis and de-escalate and take credit for de-escalation, most likely in the end. He is inviting escalation, and that's very dangerous. Yeah. Switching to the Iranian side of this question for a moment, this is a listener-suggested question or set of questions. Mailbox.

Exactly. Mailbox. I do listen to the listeners. And another shocking admission, this comes from a listener who is an alum of the Obama administration. It may be shocking. I have friends. I have friends with whom I disagree and who served in the last administration, and you served in the current administration. I had friends.

I had friends. No, I still do. I still do. Just kidding. I have friends in this administration. And I'm going to ask this question in a way that indicates that I disagree with its premises, but I actually think a lot of smart people believe something like this. And I want to hear if you're willing sort of serious answer to this.

You know, what is the level of control that Iran has over its proxy? You know, there was another version of this, by the way, which 10 years ago or so was very common was there basically no such thing as al-Qaeda. You know, there are lots of, it's an ideology. There are people sort of associated with it, but there's no kind of central control. Well, with Iran, you can hear similar versions of the argument. Does Iran provide funding to Hamas, of course, you know, does it have deep and to an undeniable extent, greater degree of influence with Hezbollah, sure. But, you know, proxy management, alliance management, that's a tricky business. hearing the United States, you know, graduates of the international relations, relations schools

that we have in this country know that allies can be almost as much of a problem, if not sometimes more of a problem than enemies. You know, is it possible Hamas just got out of hand here? Is it possible that Hezbollah, is it really, you know, it's only listening to Tehran to the extent that it needs to get the next check? And other than that, it really has kind of a free hand. You and I obviously, I think, both disagree with the picture I just painted. But what is the serious case that Iran really does? have more than just influence here, that it actually is in some ways in the driver's seat with this network proxy.

So just to be cautious and I'll speak, you know, just broad 30,000 foot of things you would look for and think about. But there are varying degrees of what I would call like owning control, right, owning and operating a proxy versus having intense influence, ability to direct. coordinate, supply, train, equip, you know, all these things. And when interests align, unless there is some really, really, really big pushback and reason to say no, because of other interests, they can really get what they want. So when you see proxies in Iraq attacking U.S. bases, U.S. forces, that is direction from Tehran.

I mean, that's just, that's unquestionable. because there's IRGC commanders roaming Iraq, roaming Syria, roaming Yemen, roaming Lebanon, and they're giving direction to these proxies. These are their people. They recruited them. They pay them. They're on the IRGC payroll. So the idea of like, oh, we're waiting to see the Ayatollah's statement to order this proxy in Iraq

to attack Urbiel. I mean, it's ludicrous. They just have standing orders. And, you know, if somebody says, you know, tell so-and-so to move the salt shaker, it means, you know, activate this proxy. The Houthis are very, very dependent on Tehran more so than a few years ago. A few years ago, you could have made the case of, you know, big influence but not owned and operated. Over the course of that Yemen war, they became very owned and operated.

And so to see the Houthis launch cruise missiles against Israel, knowing what could come back on Yemen, that really wouldn't be done without IRC direction. It's just not possible in my view. Then you get over into the Israeli border areas, and you get to the big three, Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad. Now, Hezbollah has been an Iranian proxy arm for decades. We know that. We're marking the anniversary of the Beirut embassy bombing as we record. And we know that this is, you know, completely an arm, aligned ideological of the Islamic revolution.

It's their army. It's Iran's army on Israel's border. That is not to say that they don't have counter pressures at time from the Lebanese population in the complicated politics that is Lebanon, as they have moved over years to take effective control of the Lebanese government, even if you don't see that on an obvious take, you know, colleagues of mine like Tony Bedron have documented this for years. And courage you're reading his writing on this. they have effectively defying the Lebanese armed forces that does nothing except collect checks from the U.S. taxpayer for what I'm not sure at this point. So, yes, you know, Nasrallah can be pushed, can do things at Iran's request. It depends on how hard Iran squeezes. And there are moments where I think we've seen, especially in recent years, times where you

kind of feel like the Iranians are pushing Nasrallah, but threats, to retaliate against Lebanon, create a counterpressure where he gets squeezed by the Lebanese. And in the end, there is this balancing act of, you know, being popular in Lebanon and being allowed to stay there and not having an uprising or a civil war as something like that rise up versus, you know, taking your orders from Tehran. And so at this moment, given the complicated nature of the multi-front assault, the idea that Iran has been signaling a desire to launch a multi-front confrontation to throw the Israelis back on their heels for some time. I see Lebanon's activities on the northern border, sorry, Hezbollah's activities on the northern border, still taking pretty close direction from the Iranians. The threats from Israel, the threats from the United States, the carry a strike group off the coast. probably adds a lot of pressure on Nasrallah from the Lebanese side.

But in the end, if the Iranian say it's time, you know, the revolution demands it, you know, I expect they would do that. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, owned and operated completely. Nobody disputes that. This is, they're completely dependent on Iran. Hamas, then, is the real question that you're asking and the crux of what happened on 10-7. And to be clear, since 2021, the IRGC has. has run in intelligence, fusion operations center in Beirut, where they coordinate Hamas,

Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad together for operational plans and sharing intelligence. I would bet that cell had some element of activity involved in the plot. And we have heard reports, just in the last few hours, I heard in Israeli General, General Edelstein, make a statement saying that, you know, there are IRGC cells in Gaza, that they're aware of. We've heard of IRGC sales in the West Bank before. So the idea that there isn't at the IRGC operational level, some coordination with Hamas, to be able to cook something like this up to prepare at least the supplies, the equipment, the money, maybe the timing defies logic in my view. Iran is not just the mothership that sort of generally writes a check and

says, hope you do well in your future operations, something like this would have had tactical and operational involvement. Yeah. And the Iranian strategic interest in 10-7 just taken in isolation seems pretty clear to me. In addition to dead Jews always being, I think, in the interest, the self-perceived interests of these. And to be clear, because the question that comes back is, well, then, you know, what about all this? You know, we don't have intel on anybody, you know, being involved.

or we have contrary intelligence of people being surprised, you know, according to public statements. That doesn't necessarily surprise me. You know, there's the IRGC, you know, lieutenant who is put in charge of this operation at some point in the last year who has been working quietly compartmentalized so that nobody picked up signals intelligence, didn't like get on a VTC on a daily basis to update the IRGC commander and say, okay, time to update the Supreme Leader. Let's all get on the Zoom, right? Like we're searching for things that I think the intelligence community should already know wouldn't be there.

And we're doing that on a purposeful basis. Right. Right. So the Iranian interest in 10-7 just taking in isolation seems pretty clear to me, namely delaying potentially for a good deal of time, Saudi-Israeli normalization, a goal which is only advanced by Israeli retaliation against Hamas for all sorts of. obvious reasons. Looking at the situation starting today, you know, imagine waking up and being how many or a senior Iranian decision maker today, what is the most Iran could hope for out of the coming weeks? Obviously, the destruction of the state of Israel is a goal of Iranian policy, but that seems unlikely to say the least. Are there goals that approach that, that Iranians might

seriously be contemplating? Like, look at it from their point of view. If they play their hand as adroitly and intelligently as possible, and let's say maybe the Americans and the Israelis make some mistakes. What's the most they could help to get out of this? Best case scenarios, if I go around the entire board for them. The U.S. and Israel, in the end, come out of this deterred on a status quo basis, afraid of any conflict on the northern border of Israel and what that would mean, what that would bring. Towns across the northern Israel remain evacuated. People live in fear. Amas is not actually eradicated. They do survive in Gaza to live another day and to plan a future massacre.

All the towns surrounding Gaza, people don't want to return there either. People live in fear there. So Israel is a terrorized, you know, knocked down a peg country that is deterred on its borders by Iran. The United States has proven an unwillingness to use force. It appears deterred as well. and the Iranians feel emboldened to move forward on the nuclear side, clandescently or not, is a piece to consider there. There is still some level of operation that the Israelis in this time period, a kickoff in Gaza

that inflict additional damage to their PR throughout the Arab world and enough that it's just so hard for the Saudis to ever see their way to normalizing any time soon. and so they've effectively somehow killed further Israeli normalization with Saudi Arabia. Maybe it's so bad that they really take it to the Emirates and the Bahrain, and they force some sort of interruption in the Abraham Accords. So far seems unlikely to happen, even that piece, but this is their best case scenario. And then they weaponize all of this to destabilize Jordan. They are destabilizing the West Bank in this process.

maybe they've baited the United States at some point if they kill somebody in Iraq before we've tried to restore some modicum of deterrence and the U.S. is forced to respond. Baghdad starts erupting at their triggering calls for the U.S. to leave. You know, there's an American body politic that's just like fed up with this because things have gone poorly and what are we doing here anymore? We should bring people out of Syria. We should bring people out of Iraq. Isolationist sort of rhetoric takes over.

These are all really good things for Iran come out of it. Now, that's a lot of pieces that I don't see fully coming together. Sure. It's possible, but that would be the full board of like what they would hope to achieve at this moment. Well, can I get you, let me add or propose that one thing to that list and get your take on it, which is you potentially destabilize Israeli politics as well. Israeli politics hardly been, you know, super copacetic over the course of the last year. There were clearly some very serious failures that allowed 107 to,

occur or at least to be as damaging and deadly as it was. It's not hard to imagine a situation where failure to exact some some kind of, some kind of, you know, recompense for this and adjust the strategic situation in a favorable direction for Israel leads to really intense backlash occurring in an already extremely volatile domestic political scene in Israel. So, you know, And to me, that's why the fact this is all taking so much time and that American policy seems to be contributing to it taking so much time is among the leading reasons why that time is so damaging because it's really – I agree with that. They're going to come back. You're seeing it already. You're seeing it already. It's already. It's already. Obviously, the hostage dynamic is difficult, emotional. And with time in space, without any military operation to unite the country, gives a lot of people time to start protesting and throwing fingers. pointing fingers and, you know, putting TV ads and whatever.

And then the far right's going to come back and say, well, I'm not being consulted. You know, Benghvir is already sending a letter saying, I'm not in the security cabinet with Gans. You know, this is outrageous. I'm the national security minister. So everybody's stewing now. And nothing's actually changing from the status quo. So I agree with you. That is throw that into the element of Israeli outcomes that would be very bad.

I will say one other thing. All the outcomes that talked about, you talk about the Saudi piece and, Jordan and Iraq and, you know, West Bank and all these things. The reason why these are still like sort of jump balls up for grab is because U.S. policy is to just say to these leaders, hey, we got this. We'll just put messaging out to pressure the Israelis. We'll get humanitarian and relief in. No, I'm sorry. Saudi Arabia needs to take some responsibility here. And I understand they have to maneuver the street and what is actually happening here and what's on Al Jazeera.

But my God, this is an opportunity to brand Hamas as an Iranian proxy. They already did that to Hezbollah. The population hates Hezbollah. They hate the Houthis. But they don't know that Hamas is Iran. So even in your coverage on Al-Arabiya, for God's sake, just brand this, the Iranian Hamas. You know, lean into the messaging of the difference between Palestinians and those that are just doing the bidding of Tehran. try to create some monochem of separation here to give yourself the room to maneuver.

Jordan, the king, has turned into just this anti-Semitic firebrand and just, I mean, why do we allow that to happen? It's not good for Jordan. It's not good for the king. He thinks he's playing smart politics to save the kingdom. It's actually going to backfire. He looks so weak. He looks so weak. And he's doing nothing to counter and say, this is the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is radicalism. This is, you know, it's just all on Israel, which puts him in a position that if Israel moves forward, he just looks worse. The West Bank. Who is getting tough with the PA and saying, this is it? You know, and here's all the conditions if you don't do certain things. PA security forces need to deploy en masse. You need to put this stuff down. It can't just be on the IDF.

There's no conversations, no accountability, no responsibility in these partners. That is a major strategic mistake on our part. Yeah. You probably don't remember this, but I think our first in-person conversation some years ago, I walked into an office at FDD where you were sitting and we were chit-chatting and you dropped the term Oudal Loop. And I think you were the first person, the first person that I heard used that phrase outside of the Marine Corps for me. And it is, we've actually talked about it in other episodes of the show. But for those who are not familiar, it's John Boyd, observe, orient, decide, act as a way of thinking about how humans make decisions and compete, essentially, make decisions. in competitive situations. The basic idea is you want to make the other guy dance to your tune. You don't want to dance to his tune.

And if you find yourself in a situation where you're dancing to the other guy's tune consistently, it probably means you're losing. You can see it in racket sports, you know, when one player is running forward and running back and running forward and running back just to respond to the other guy, it probably means they're about to lose the point. For the business types who listen to your podcast, which I imagine are plentiful, or plentiful, this is the difference between ending up in a flywheel or in a doom loop. Yeah, my concern looking at the situation today is that Iran's Oodaloup or, you know, however,

whether it's, you know, 99.9% by Iranian design emanating from decisions in control in Tehran to, let's say, 70%, 60%, a lot of its luck, whatever. The loop of the network of Israel's enemies seems to me to be tighter and more efficient than the Israeli loop of decision making in return. it does seem to me like Israel is dancing to its enemies tune for a variety of reasons. And I don't know if I could attest today that American policy is wholly helpful and helping it break out of that. That's why I wrote, you know, you made this reference to it earlier, a piece a couple of

weeks ago, you know, advising the Israelis not to go into Gaza in a large ground operation, not as others have written in the same vein purely for humanitarian reasons or because it will be a quagmire and so forth, but because in my opinion, they should preempt to the north or do something in Iran. I just see very, I'm pessimistic. I'm pessimistic this afternoon and I'm looking for reasons to be less pessimistic. I feel increasingly like I'm watching a bunch of idiots play that board game diplomacy that you probably played when you were a kid, that World War I game.

I was more of an Axis and Allies kind of guy. Oh, okay. I never really got into that, but my brothers have me play diplomacy for some reason. And it's like we're just all going to the, you know, the back room during diplomacy round. and like, we're going to go talk to the Qataris now. Well, actually, the Iranians just went to go to talk to the Qataris now. Like, I wonder what's going to happen next. Oh, somebody just did that.

Oh, let's go talk to so-and-so. And it's just like, this is a ridiculous way of conducting foreign policy and national security in my view. It's like a bunch of silos like put together as if, you know, the sum of the parts will somehow add up to a strategy. Yeah. So, yes, I'm very worried. I just, you know, historically, America's grand strategy. in places like the Middle East has been to project our power and promote our interests through our allies.

We have allies and local partners and friends who share interests. Perhaps they share a worldview. I think in Israel's case, you could more or less most of the time say both. And we support them and they enlarge America's influence. And to me, when viewed through that lens, the way in which the United States ought to behave right now seems pretty clear and is distressing. to see us instead work in ways that consistently empower our allies or partners' adversaries and constrain our allies.

And it does. I mean, the darkest way to look at it is we are promoting potentially an end state here where Hamas is not eradicated, where, as you put it well, I think, you know, it's in fact Israel and the United States who demonstrate that they are deterred rather than the other way around when it comes to Hezbollah and Iran. So to be America's friend means, to sum it up, that you just got to. take a 10-7 every now and then. That's just going to be the price of this.

Sorry. And listen, there is one Axios report that is out there, we should note, that says, basically, this is all just a delay because the U.S. wants to just get more platforms and system into the region before things kick off, just to have that added level of a trend. They want one more CSG. They want to move that into Israel. You know, they just want a little bit more out there before stuff hits the fan. and they'll support it hitting the fan,

and they think this adds to their deterrence once that happens. It's possible. And the rest of it's just politics and management of the Democratic caucus and media and things like that while they're waiting for assets to move. Possible. Yeah. I would love that. I obviously don't love any of this,

but if that were the scenario that's actually happening, okay, maybe, maybe that maybe we're not analyzing this correctly. The problem is all of the signals they're putting out while we are waiting for those assets give you the contradictory signal and certainly give the Iranians a lot of confusion. Well, TikTok. TikTok. To be continued, Richard Goldberg, you were one of the smartest people out there on these issues. We didn't even really get into some of the elements of this issue that you are genuinely the

expert on, but perhaps. Like the Philippines. Yeah, I mean, just to switch theaters. I mean, we've got war in Europe, war in the Middle East, and China driving right at one of our allies in the Pacific right now as we speak in the South China Sea. And, yeah, I mean, it's, I was trying to close this off there to be respectful of your time. No, no, no, this is like, it's all connected here. I don't think people should go to bed and be like, oh, something just happened to Philippines.

We might have to activate our treaty because China's like ramming boats. Yeah. Against some, some island that like we like need to defend because it's actually really important in the grand strategy of how we actually deter China in the South China Sea and beyond. With actual battering rams, have you seen the picture of the Coast Mart ships? with battering rams attached, which to me as a visual just demonstrates the sort of, you know, bizarre world cleverness of Chinese policy and the Chinese approach to these issues. Because you got this sort of, I mean, it's basically ripped off from like American aesthetics,

the way that our Coast Guard ships are painted is the Chinese, quote unquote, coast guard ships with the same sort of white and orange or red paint scheme. And then a battering ram. It's to your point that you made earlier that, you know, American policy in the Middle East, which seems as though it's designed to prevent escalation may in the end actually trigger escalation to some kind of regional war. You could step back and say that globally, we are entering a similar scenario where again and again, we are desperate for de-escalation, and again and again, we are taking steps to try to get our adversaries to see the light and keep our allies

from overreacting and causing trouble in our view. And the ultimate result potentially is going to be the opposite of what we want. And 2023 could end up being a very serious year, indeed. And this is the plea for grant strategy, I think, which is missing. And it's true of both parties at times when we take office. There are people who just work on Iran policy or Israel policy or China policy or Russia policy. And that's all they care about. They don't view the big picture. And they have an ideological perspective that they bring in. And so that's going to be the policy set And like, that just has to happen. And there's no indication of what if I do here is going to impact here or here.

And are people working together? Is this connected in any way? And in this administration, what I find is there is this view that you can project weakness. You can allow for a failure of deterrence in one of these silos, in one theater of the world. And it somehow will not echo and create weakness projection for the United States and a failure. of deterrence in another theater. As if Afghanistan wasn't enough to teach us about this, we have to learn a lesson again this week vis-a-vis Iran.

This has to change. Rich, thanks much, man. We'll have you back soon. We'll get you that set of steak knives or whatever the swag. Oh, I got to sell your podcast like five more times, though. I think that's how it works. Talk soon. Thanks.

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