The Current - What do Israel and the U.S. want from the war with Iran?

Episode Date: March 6, 2026

It's been almost a week since the U.S. and Israel launched co-ordinated strikes on Iran, and Iran is continuing to hit back with attacks on Israel, on U.S. bases and on countries in the region. More than 1000 people are dead and tens of thousands more have been displaced. We talk to Rober Malley, a lecturer and senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson School of Global Affairs, and the U.S. Special Envoy to Iran from 2021 to 2023, and Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a professor of political science at the Missouri University of Science and Technology about what the United States and Israel hope to achieve in Iran.

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N-E-T-H-R-I-S-com. Netris, much more than just a payroll software. This is a CBC podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. It has been almost a week since the United States and Israel launched coordinated strikes on Iran. Iran is continuing to hit back with attacks on Israel, on U.S. bases, and on countries in the region, including most recently Azerbaijan. More than a thousand people are dead.

Tens of thousands more have been displaced. Yesterday, U.S. President Donald Trump said he wants to be involved with the choice of Iran's next leader after joint strikes killed that country's supreme leader. Robert Malley is a lecturer and senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs. He was also the U.S. Special Envoy to Iran from 2021 through 2023. Robert Malley, good morning. Good morning. You wrote in the New York Times that this war is, in your words, the logical conclusion of how the United States has dealt with Iran.

What do you mean by that? Well, first of all, of course, you know, the responsibility for this war is President Trump. Iran has a lot of responsibility for us being where we are today. But what we said in the article is that there's a long legacy of hyping the Iranian threat, of viewing it as an existential threat danger to the United States, and of ultimately saying that the only way to deal with it is going to be by changing the regime one way or the other over time. And while Iran has certainly engaged in destabilizing operations that is engaged in terrorist acts, It has done a whole host of things that are deeply, deeply dangerous and objectionable.

It never rose to the level of the kind of threat that the American political class depicted. And so when we say it's a logical conclusion, when you have a threat that you hype, when you discard diplomatic means of resolving it, then over time the one solution that one person appears to grab onto, and that person was President Trump because of all of his unique and often disastrous characteristics, he was able to make the case. Almost a week into this, do you have a clear sense as to what the U.S. goal in Iran is now? I don't, but I don't think anyone does, and I'm including in that American officials themselves. This is a moving target.

Every day, every hour, we hear a different justification for the war and a different rationale for what the objective is. So it's all the way from dealing with a nuclear program, dealing with a military arsenal, changing the character of the regime. We just don't know. And I think, again, the characteristic of President Trump is such that at some point he will declare mission accomplished

and he will retroactively describe the mission that he says he's just achieved. Where will that leave Iran then? Not a good place, I fear. I mean, the optimal scenario that some of the war strategists in Washington or elsewhere may be thinking of is we'll get a new government,

a government that is prepared to deal very differently with the region, very differently with its people, very differently with the rest of the world. That is fantasy land. I think the most likely scenario is chaos, violence, instability, with the regime probably still in place, but if it's not in place, then you may have a massive civil war. Let's not forget that neighboring Iraq, when the regime collapsed,

you had hundreds of thousands of troops, American troops there, and still you had a civil war that America was not able to contain. Imagine here where you have a deeply entrenched regime with deeply loyal partisans with awash in weapons, how can that possibly lead to a positive outcome if the regime collapses amidst a bombing campaign? Just finally on the United States,

how much of a gamble is this for Donald Trump? He ran on getting the U.S. out of foreign wars. Polls suggest that many Americans, the majority of Americans perhaps, do not want this war. You have gas prices that are rising as well. How much of this is a gamble? for his presidency.

Well, I mean, it's a gamble in the following ways that he just doesn't know. What is it going to cost in terms of the economic well-being of the American people, the world economy, and, you know, human lives, American lives, and all of that could be a drag. This was not dictated by political reasons. I think, in fact, this shows President Trump's view of himself, which is sort of beyond politics, that he could do anything and never pay the price. But it's very hard for me to see any American who's been more likely to vote

for President Trump or his allies after this war. And I could think of many Americans, including those you mentioned, who voted for him because he campaigned in part on the notion that he would be a president who would end wars, not begin them. So I can think of many Americans, Democrats and Republicans, who will turn away from Trump and Trumpism. So politically it seems like a very self-defeiting move,

but right now my thoughts are not on the politics. It's on the lives that are being lost in the region and the instability that this is. is likely to generate. What about Israel? What do you think Israel's motivation is here? Israel is much more simple. I mean, this has been a long-standing goal,

not just of Prime Minister Netanyahu, but of success of governments, which is to, if not, get rid of, at least deeply, deeply weakened and bloody this regime so that it is not capable of presenting any kind of threat to Israel. So this is a lot,

it's also dangerous, it's also playing with fire, but it is something, it's a view and a goal of long-standing. And from Israel's perspective, or the government's perspective, whether the regime in Iran is toppled by a coup, whether it simply disappears, whether there's chaos and fragmentation, all of those outcomes meet the goal of weakening Iran.

And I don't think they care that much about what happens within the borders of Iran so long as Iran does not represent a threat to Israel outside those borders. How much influence do you think Israel has had over the U.S. decision to be involved in this war? So again, we've heard a whole host of different explanations on the part of American officials, some of which actually oddly attributed the war to Israel's determination to strike. I don't think Israel played a decisive role because President Trump had every ability and opportunity to tell Prime Minister Netanyahu do not strike Iran because that's going to endanger our interests, our assets, and our men and women in uniform.

He didn't say that, so ultimately it is President Trump's decision. What is true is that, as I said, this is a case that Israel has been making for years, decades, to a success of American presidents. And I suspect Prime Minister Netanyahu dangled in front of President Trump this opportunity to be a historic president who could finally do what so many American presidents have dreamt of doing. And that comes back to my answer to your first question. There's been built up in America this notion that the biggest danger that we face is Iran, is theocratic regime in Iraq. and now we have a president who's able to avenge all of the pain that that regime has inflicted on Americans. I need to let you go. Let me ask you two very quick questions. One is you talked about how your focus is on those on the ground. The finance minister of Israel, Bezalel Smoltrich, said that the southern suburbs of Beirut, in his words, will look like Han Yunus in Gaza.

What does that tell you about how this war is being waged? Well, I don't think I need to add to that comment. I mean, there's a Israeli method of waging war, which is. is mowing the lawn and at this point it's not just mowing the lawn, it's mowing the earth, it's making sure that nothing can live. I mean, we've seen that in Gaza. We're seeing that in Lebanon. We haven't spoken about Lebanon, but, you know, Hezbollah has now entered the war and Iran and Israel is responding in ways that are destroying southern Lebanon. And we may well see that and we may be seeing it in Iran itself. You know, we have an Israeli government that is not particularly attentive to the laws of war or to the lives of human beings.

You were the lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Do you see an off-ramp to this war? Do you see the beginning of an end or a way out of this? I think all wars end sooner or later, either with the defeat of one party or because both parties are exhausted or in this case because President Trump, as we were saying earlier, may at some point conclude this war is a drag. I've achieved what I needed to achieve. I killed the Supreme Leader.

I've destroyed Iran's military arsenal. I can declare, and I have that ability because I am President Trump, that everything I wanted to do was done. And if Iran at any point tries to restart its nuclear program, restart its ballistic missile program, I could strike them again. So I think that's, right now,

the ball is really in that sense in President Trump's court. At what point will he decide enough is enough? And that's why, you know, some people are puzzled by Iran's, the Iranian regime strategy right now, which is basically to lash out, not just at Israel and the U.S., but at its neighbors, including some of the neighbors that were trying to avert this war.

But that's very simple. Iran's calculation is they need to externalize the costs. They need to make sure that America pays a price. And for America to pay a price, it needs its allies among Arab countries to come to President Trump and say, we need to stop because we are hurting. So yes, Iran is losing some friends. But from the regime's perspective, what good are friends if you're going to die anyway? the best they can do is come to your funeral.

So they would rather lose some friends and survive and then try to patch up the friendship after the war. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. Robert Malley, thank you very much. Thank you. Robert Malley is a lecturer, senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson School of Global Affairs. He was also the U.S. Special Envoy to Iran from 2021 through 2023 and was the lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

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Watch free on CBC Gem. This week, there were reports that the United States and the CIA in particular are working to arm Kurdish forces in the hopes of creating a popular uprising in Iran. For more on this, we're joined by Merazad Burjad Burjardy, who is a professor of political science at the Missouri University of Science and Technology. Merzad, good morning to you. Good morning. Thank you. I know that you have family in Iran. How are they doing?

So far okay. I talked to them and bombs are dropping all around them, but at least so far they are doing fine. What are they telling you about what is happening on the ground? One of the questions that's hard to answer is because of an internet blackout, but also just the chaos on the ground, that it's difficult to actually hear what's going on. What are they telling you? Right. So besides the bombing, they are saying that, you know, traffic is terrible getting out of the places like Tehran to head toward the north, for example.

almost an impossible task and there is no guarantee of what might happen to them, you know, during that travel. Also, of course, there has been exuberant price hikes in terms of hotels and so forth in what are considered to be some of the safer areas. You see in a place like Tehran where you have some 10 million people, the concentration of population is such that attacking a military installation perhaps means also that the next door neighbors living in high rises, etc., will also be impacted by that bombing campaign, particularly if it becomes sort of a carpet bombing campaign that, you know, we have seen in some places.

The hitting of some hospitals and emergency centers, et cetera, has also added to the burden. What do you make, I said in the introduction, that there are these reports. and they're from numerous news outlets now, that the U.S. government and the CIA in particular are working to arm Kurdish forces in hopes of creating a popular uprising in Iran, that there could be U.S. intelligence that would be provided as well as weapons, training, and perhaps a no-fly zone. Yeah, I'm afraid that might be true based on what we are hearing,

both from the White House as well as some of this Kurdish group. And I consider that an unfortunate development. You see, to me, since the U.S. and the Israelis are not willing to have boots on the ground, they are leaving this part of the job to, you know, the Kurds, thinking that the Kurds have a long history of fighting the Iranian regime, also a long history of, you know, siding with the United States in various conflicts. But, you know, I think that's an unfortunate development in the sense that, as the French philosopher Walter once said, Lord protect me from my friends. The United States has not been a great friend to the Kurds,

and basically they have been dispensed with whenever the need dictated it. Indeed, yesterday, the First Lady of Iraq, who is a Kurd, put out a statement reminding the world that the Kurds were left in 1991 after the U.S. First Gulf War and then in Syria. And, you know, I think following up on what Rob Maui was saying, of course, President Trump is capable of calling it quits at any time, you know, for his own domestic political consideration. And then the question becomes what happens to the Kurds, you know, afterward. But anyhow, the thinking seems to be that they can make the Iranian Kurdistan into a free zone area, that from there they can, you know, wage other, continue their responsibility. struggle, perhaps the thinking is that if that proves successful, then in other

restive provinces of Iran, such as Balochistan and so forth, they can do the same thing as a way of encircling the government in Tehran. The fear from many people who are watching this, and you've hinted at this, is that this could lead to civil war, that you have Iranians essentially fighting against Iranians? Absolutely. I think that's the worst nightmare, right? this can open up a whole new chapter in this in this conflict with Iranians fighting Iranians and also you know we are dealing with an Iranian opposition that even before this thing was highly divided and polarized and now this whole question of the entry of the Kurds what does it

mean you know are they after seeking independence for themselves once the guns fell silent or are they being used as a fifth column of the enemy, etc, is going to motivate, I guess, many Iranian nationalists to also try to oppose what the Kurds might be doing. On the other hand, I think the Kurds are making the argument that none of the other opposition groups has really any physical presence on the ground. And we know aerial bombardments by themselves are not going to bring about regime. change. So their argument is that, you know, we are the ones who can start this project. That regime change issue is top of mind for many people, in part because when he announced the military action on the weekend, the U.S. President Donald Trump talked about that, and he specifically addressed the Iranian people. Have a listen to this.

When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations. America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force. Now is the time to seize control of your destiny and to unleash the prosperous and glorious future that is close within your reach. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said something similar. Is your sense, is it realistic, if you put the issue of arming the Kurds aside, is it realistic to think that the Iranian public will rise up in that way or would be able to run? up in that way?

Yeah, I think, you know, this is nice rhetoric from President Trump, but frankly, I don't think that's a realistic plan. Look, we are talking of an unarmed population that is confronting a government, a regime that is feeling existential angst and demonstrated just last month that they are capable of killing thousands of people because they want to stay in power, right? This sort of the resilience of the government deeply entrenched. having the support of the religious segment of the Iranian population are not factors that can easily be dismissed in terms of, you know, wishful thinking about, you know, what might happen. So, in my view, the chances are quite good that depending on when this war ends, we might have a state that is tormented yet triumphant.

It might be weakened seriously, but not to the point that they are not able to. carry out the day-to-day responsibilities of a government. I just have a couple of minutes left with you. How worried are you? You've hinted at this. Rob Malley talked about this as well, that the U.S. President, perhaps for domestic political concerns, because of the price of gas and polls and what have you, will say, we're done and we'll just walk away from this.

Right. President Trump is not known for consistency, right? He is impulsive in terms of his decision. To put it politely, yes. Yeah. So, you know, already we are seeing some of the global impact, right? So the price of gas and oil has gone up. He has had to reverse his decision regarding sanctioning India for buying Russian oil.

So I guess Mr. Putin is sitting in Kremlin, you know, laughing handsomely at what's happening right now in terms of this conflict. And, you know, we see what's happening to the stock market. So the question really is that the threshold of pain. Will it come sooner for the Iranian government or will it come sooner for the Trump administration that has to really think about what their choices are? Frankly, I think that they did not really pay serious attention to the day after. They underestimated the ability of the Iranian state to pick up a fight and continue this thing. Perhaps the early success, the easy victory in Venezuela might have misled to.

in terms of thinking that this can be a cakewalk. And it's not looking like a cakewalk right now. Merzad Bura Geri, good to speak with you. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Merzad Bura Geri is a professor of political science and the Dean of Arts and Sciences at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

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