The Dispatch Podcast - Israel’s Endgame In Iran | Interview: Nadav Eyal

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

Adaam James Levin-Areddy is joined by Israeli journalist Nadav Eyal to explain Israel’s surprise attack on Iran and its effect on the future of the region. The Agenda:—Degrading Iran’s nuclear capability—Regime change in Iran—America’s role—5-D chess from Trump?—How the ayatollah sees the world—The failure of Islamic republics—The Axis of Terror’s miscalculation—Ballistic missiles vs. cruise missiles The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dispatch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and regular livestreams—⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. This is Adam. As you can tell, Jamie is out. He's on vacation for this week. And you might have also noticed that today is Saturday, not Monday. This is because we're recording this conversation now, and we thought that any delay in releasing it will make the content obsolete. This is the third day of Israel's war with Iran. At the late hours of Thursday or early hours on Friday, depending on where you are,

Israel launched its surprise attack on Iran within the next few hours targeted multiple nuclear sites and military targets, as well as assassinated, multiple figures in Iran's military leadership and nuclear scientists. In retaliation, Iran lobbed ballistic missiles at Israel, hitting a few civilian targets and killing three citizens. We are here at Saturday morning with Medav Ayal.

Nadav is joining me directly from Israel. Nadav is a friend of the pod and the senior political correspondent for Yaddiot Ahonaut, Israel's biggest daily newspaper. Nadav, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, Adam. How many hours of sleep did you get over the past three days? Not much. Incorherent.

Yeah, I hope I'm not going to be incurring during this podcast, but mainly because both the night of the attack itself, right, we sort of saw this coming, or at least some of us did, and the journalist sort of did, And then at 3 a.m. the idea of decided to wake the entire country with a siren because they feared an Iranian reaction. So nobody got a lot of sleep that night. And then last night was the uranium response. So we saw basically between 100 to 150 ballistic missiles short at Israel. And some of them actually hit. And there were loads of sirens across this country, including the place that I am at right now, which is in between Tel Aviv and Haifa, not far from the. the coast. I want to ask you about the timing. You said that a lot of the journalists cite coming. It's actually funny. The indications for that came to me from the fact that we were supposed to meet

and then you tell me, well, actually, I'm in Israel now because we are expecting the big one. And when we were talking, you privately said that when I was trying to get an estimate of how long do you think you'll end up staying in Israel, you indicated about two weeks. And interestingly, two weeks is the timeframe that the Netanyahu government has given this operation. Was that a coincidence or is that a framework that people have been working on for a while? Yeah, I'm not going to congratulate myself for seeing this coming. I think many, many people around the world did. And I think that at the moment, you know, that President Trump decided to take out,

to pull out, non-essential staff and diplomats from the region, And it was quite clear that something's going to happen, right? But I think that it's essential to be here at this point. I reside this year in New York, as you know, but I'm a very active journalist and writing about Israeli society, and I feel it just won't be right if I'm not in Israel at this kind of time, which is historic, and I do hope will end as quickly as possible. As far as the IDF is concerned, they can probably accomplish what they aim to do in a few days. But there are always complications.

For instance, the type of Iranian response. And when the Islamic Republic will decide that they are also willing to let this thing go after the IDF finishes its initial missions to try and to a large extent, I don't want to say destroy, but at least take the Iranian nuclear program a few years back. It's a very modest aim, and they feel that they're already there, and in a couple of days, two to three days, they'll absolutely be there. So this is the big question for me right now. What you're describing, and this is the official claim from the Israeli government, the goal of this attack is to degrade.

raid Iran's nuclear efforts. Obviously, the entire Netanyahu vision for 15 years has been refocusing Israel's security concerns around Iran's nuclear capabilities. And in some ways, this is the culmination of 15 years of his political activity. But what we're seeing, and with the understanding that launching this kind of attack can provoke a severe response from Iran has already started to do so, but we'll see how far it will go. But also, changing the entire paradigm of how Israel engages with Iran gives the sense that this could be a more ambitious effort. And there are, there's already chatter about, is Israel actually trying to topple the Ayatollah regime? People are referencing the, the operations name, the rising line,

as a reference to the pre-revolutionary Iranian flag that had a lion at its center, is there a layer in, and also I should mention a few members of the Israeli Knesset have, at least not definitively, but have said that should Iran attack severely, it will give us permission to go after political leadership in Iran. So with all those pieces together,

should we take Israel's claim at face value that it is only seeking to degrade nuclear capabilities, or is there a longer-term plan, larger plan involved? This can develop to many, many venues, but basically it's the modus plan. Look, let's just say that Israel tries to overthrow the Iranian regime. First of all, it's not exactly a regime. The Islamic Republic is not kind of a top-down dictatorship,

with one dictator Ali Haminaid, a supreme leader standing at the top. No, it's an authoritarian, actually a totalitarian state. And there are many layers in the state that enjoyed the government and have a stake at ruling the country, and it's much more difficult. Even if Israel decides to strike the political leadership of Iran,

to strike energy installations, which are basically the only thing that gives Iran or the main thing that gives Iran its revenues. Even if it does all of these things, it, you know, it bombs symbols of the government. It bombs, you know, bases of the Basi-G. Baci-G is like the police that is attacking the Iranian people in the streets, trying to limit their freedom of expression, their freedom of speech. attacking women in the street for being modest enough in the eyes of the Ayatollahs, even if he does all that, will the regime collapse? Will it be overthrown?

And the answer I'm hearing from experts on the Iranian issue is that most probably it won't. It might, but it most probably won't. Nobody in the world has a good plan how to topple this kind of a regime through basically aerial strikes. And between you and me, we don't know if any example like that. The best example I can think about is Serbia and the 1990s NATO bombing campaign against Milosevic, which led to Milosevic government falling, right? But Milosevic was one person, and it's not that the entire regime or the entire system fell, right? So they're very realistic about this as to what kind of aims that can be materialized.

Are you supposed to even measure to even weigh in moving forward? No, the simple answer is if we get Natanz and we get Ispahan and we get Fordu, Purdue is the base of the Iranian nuclear program that is built down into a mountain. And the Israelis didn't really touch this base. It did boom around the base, but they didn't manage to get into the base because basically, technically speaking, the Israeli Air Force can do this in an effective way, unlike probably the American Air Force and the American Navy. And they didn't do this. And it's really interesting. One could speculate maybe they're not doing this

because they want to leave something for the Americans to do in the end. I don't know yet. But if Israel would get this done in a week or so, it would be absolutely happy to stop. And why is that? Because they know very well that the Iran-Iraq war lasted for eight years.

The price was one million people who died, Iranians and Iraqis. And the regime can, as far As far as they are concerned, they can start shooting ballistic missiles 30, 40 a day for a year or something like that. They don't have this amount of ballistic missiles, but even 10. And make life in Israel harder, not unbearable, but harder. And because of that, I think that the simple answer is that if the IDF gets the stuff it wants done, together maybe with some American involvement, Israel would rather this to stop now.

If the Iranians will break every red line, attack with brages of rockets, civilian population centers, leading to mass casualties in Israel, civilian, not army bases. They killed tonight, they killed three Israeli civilians. They didn't kill any one soldier. It was a decision, Israel suspects, of the supreme leader himself, to divert some of the ballistic missiles, to make sure that they attack residential areas in Israel.

That's the suspicion in Israel. If this is what they're going to do, all bets are off, and Israel will probably hit energy sites. But again, with this lead to the government of Iran falling, only the Iranian people can lead to a revolution in Iran. Israel can bomb Iran. The U.S. can bomb Iran, but it's up to the Iranians to actually do something about it.

I don't think that any fantasy about regime change includes Israel single-handedly taking down, decapitating the regime and ushering in a new utopian future. The question is whether Israel is even planning, envisioning a world where it creates the conditions on the ground that will allow resistance in Iran that is oppositional to the the Ayatolle regime, including potentially a coalition of non-Persian minorities that have been coalescing in some parts of the country to actually take arms against the regime, which is more akin to what happened in Syria at the moment that Chisbalah was taken out of the picture. Yeah, well, I think that right now in Iran, besides the Mujahideen halk, that is not exactly

legitimate to the Iranian public in general, not only. to the regime and internationally speaking is very problematic. I don't know if any sort of armed group that can do that. And, you know, it's not Hezbollah. The Islamic Republic is a framework. Now, is it a successful framework? Absolutely not. The Islamic Republic is a terrible failure.

And I, for one, would not be surprised if we... A terrible failure in terms of providing civic services, at least. Yeah, insecurity, civic services, GDP, you know, life expectancy, education, Iran's place in the world, industry, whatever you want to measure there. You know, they're not supplying the goods to the Iranian people, which is a tragedy because Iran is a civilization. I know the civilization rather well.

My family lived in Iran. Two generations of my family lived in Iran. Our family roots are not Iranian, but they lived in Iran during the 1960s, when Israel and Iran had great relations. My grandfather was a civil constructor there. My grandmother was a teacher there. My mother grew up there. Iran is, and Iranians have great relations on a personal basis with Israel.

And they're an extremely talented and really one of the foremost civilizations that survived from antiquity. So it's really a tragedy that what they got is this kind of regime. But to think that this regime, again, will fall as a result of the bombing and sort of overplay the criticism that we're seeing by Iranian opposition that goes, yeah, Israel, go, go, yeah, I see these posts. My impression speaking with Iran experts is that this is not the feeling in the street in Iran. Somewhat like in Israel, the idea of nuclear power is something that relates to national identity. It was the Shah, the king of Iran, that began the nuclear power. Of course, the nuclear power program during the Shah was really civil, civilian. And he was the guy who signed the NPT, the non-proliferation treaty.

It's the Ayatollahs that started playing with the idea of having a nuclear weapon, although they deny it. So it's a different story. So can a revolution happen in Iran, a counter-revolution? Absolutely. Can the regime be toppled? Absolutely. Will Israel bombing it really hope that? I don't know. I'm skeptical, but not because of my opinion, but because of the Iranian experts or experts on Iran I'm speaking with. And needless to say, being attacked by a foreign power doesn't necessarily create solidarity with the foreign power, rather a tendency to rally around the flag. It's probably more complicated. than that, but at large, it makes sense for whatever sentiment, anti-Aatollah sentiment there may have been before the attack, it may have diminished over the past couple of days. Yes, I think that generally speaking, the regime sees these elements as the other way around, as you said, Adam, that they grow stronger as a result of the attack and not weaker.

I think, you know, we're spending this speculation that this war can lead to an actual change in Iran, I think it's justified because the Iranians are now seeing firsthand that not only their country is isolated, but it doesn't even supply the goods in terms of security. You know, they were so focused on violence, right? And right now what they have is Israeli Air Force flying from West Iran. to Tehran with absolutely no one to counter it. This is a regional power. Basically, it has no air defenses and no air force.

Everything is being destroyed by the Israelis. And until this moment, I'm not saying that it's not going to happen, but Israel didn't lose one fighter jet in the process. That's quite amazing. Again, a huge failure. So the main issue is, can you end this without the, becoming a societal war in which

the Mullahs sort of enlist the entire society like they did with the Iran-Iraq. And the more prolonged it is, the more difficult it is to stop. And Israel has a very tactical aim in this war. And it's been in a war since October 7th. So nobody here is really

interested in like a year and a half of them shooting rockets, where I have nightly sorties over Tehran. Nobody thinks it's a great idea here in Israel, including, I think, I suspect the prime minister. He wants to have a quick win, like every politician wants during a war, right?

Not some promises, you know, towards the future of how the government might fall. Where does the U.S. come into this? How much does Israel? There's a lot of talk in the, in American politics about whether or not Israel is trying to drag the U.S. into the war with voices on the right, I would say not just the right, specifically the MAGA coalition, splitting between the hawkish pro-Israel side and the new isolationist Tucker Carlson. I am not dying for Israel's side. and it's not clear from where I'm standing whether Israel even wants the U.S. to take a part in this or does it prefer it being a defensive silent partner?

So Israel wants the U.S. to take part. I'm saying this, it's a sort of clear-cut thing based on my sources. Israel, first of all, the U.S. is taking part of it in it, in the sense that it's coordinated with the U.S., It was greenlighted by the U.S. president by President Trump. If President Trump wouldn't have greenlighted this strike, it wouldn't have happened to begin with. There are issues here. So to your understanding, the ambiguity about whether Israel decided to scuttle the negotiations

on Netanyahu's decisions as opposed to with coordination with Trump and the latest stage of the negotiations was just a ruse. You're saying it's definitely the latter. This was an intentional ruse by, coordinated by Netanyahu and President Trump. I don't think that there is any doubt, factually speaking, I'm quite struck by how at the beginning of this, the U.S. media was like playing with this idea. Israel would have never gone to the strike if the U.S. was serious about having negotiations in Oman on Sunday, being possible for Israel. Israel is flying American fighter jets and bombers.

It needs American replacement parts. It needs American ammunition. It knows it can last for months, or maybe more. It needs the U.S. support internationally speaking. What happens if, you know, the Iranians break every red line and attack Israel or try to invade Israel? It needs the U.S. support. Israel is isolated today in the world.

than ever after October 7 and the response to Israel's war in Gaza, and of course it needs the U.S. Now, by greenlighting this, you know, if Israel would have found itself in a place in which the U.S. president would have said, hey, you know, I'm really against this, and I've just called the Israeli prime minister and said to him, stop it immediately or not sending you spare parts, not sending you ammunition. How much time would it take to Israel? to stop this operation. I guess, you know, 48 hours or much less than that.

And he didn't even do that. You know, all I do is listen to the president. The president said, he knew about this in advance. He knew about this in advance while his administration was saying that they're meeting on Sunday. So there is no other possibility by,

but you said, the word that you used was a ruse. The president was very clear that they have 60 days. The 60 days were over, and then at day 61, Israel attacked. And there are many, many other aspects and indicators. For instance, just listen to Steve Witkoff's speech in a fundraiser in New York the night before the attack. Wednesday night, he gives a speech there, talking about how enrichment is an existential threat not only to Israel.

And then he says something which I found in real time. Amazing. He says, and ballistic missiles program of Iran, that's also an existential threat to Israel, which is something you would hear only, you never heard that before for an American official. And, you know, Whitkoff is the closest you can get to President Trump. So to me, it's not only to me. It's absolutely obvious that the Americans were there. Also, you need to coordinate in terms of airspace. personnel leaving the region as something that the president made clear is going to happen in terms of intelligence. And, of course, if you're the Israeli prime minister, you want the U.S. to commit to helping us defend ourselves, which is what's happening right now. It's on the record. So was it coordinated with the U.S.?

Yes, it was. It's a good-coop, bad-coop policy. It's absolutely clear that this is the case. I think it's incredibly smart by the U.S. to go down that route. Why? Because here you have the Israelis risking themselves. The U.S. wants to get an agreement. They're staying out of it.

No boots on the ground. Taco Carlson can, you know, be extremely happy about this. No American fighter jets pilots right now flying over Tehran, although we took all their air defenses. And if the Iranians want an agreement, say the president, says the president, they can have an agreement. You know, this is optimal for the U.S. Do the Iranians understand like the rest of the world and you and myself that the U.S. was part of it? Of course they do. But what are they going to do? They're threatening to

hit American interests across the region. Well, if they do that, I think that's going to be one mistake too much for this regime, because as you know, the response from America is going to be substantial and devastating to the regime. And I suspect they're not going to do that. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the platform that helps you create a polished professional home online. Whether you're building a site for your business, your writing, or a new project, Squarespace brings everything together in one place.

With Squarespace's cutting-edge design tools, you can launch a website that looks sharp from day one. Use one of their award-winning templates or try the new Blueprint AI, which tailors a site for you based on your goals and style. It's quick, intuitive, and requires zero coding experience. You can also tap into built-in analytics and see who's engaging with your site and email campaigns to stay connected with subscribers or clients. And Squarespace goes beyond design. You can offer services, book appointments, and receive payments directly through your site.

It's a single hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So what role does Israel expect the U.S. to play or hope the U.S. will play? First of all, the hope in Israel is that the Americans will join this strike at a certain point for the final blow. And the final blow, I guess, is against Fordeaux. because the Israeli Air Force can't penetrate it on its own.

It will be, no, it's not that the Israelis can't take care of it, but the U.S. can do this much more efficiently. And that's the reason why Israel would have wanted the U.S. to join. Now, it's up to the president to make that call. Only President Trump can make that call. And he, by the way, the difference in capabilities to take that site down, Is it in, is it material or is it intelligence? No, it's not intelligence.

It's not intelligence. Israel is actually supplying much of the intelligence that is held throughout the West, including in the U.S., although the U.S., of course, has its own intelligence abilities that are superior to those of Israel, but Israel has excellent intelligence as to what needs to be done in fordu and in other nuclear sites. But this needs to be done in a way in which you wouldn't be able to salvage. the centrifuges from within the mountain, and it needs to be devastating.

And if you do it the wrong way, the inefficient way, you might blow your chance. And because of that, the Israelis would want the U.S. to join. But they also take into account that it's a sovereign decision of the United States of America to be made by the U.S. president, and they might not want to do that. And then my guess, as an Israeli, just my guess,

is that the Israeli Air Force would do the best it can? So if I understand correctly, the offer on the table for Iran is disband that side on your own, or we're going after it, and if you escalate further, there is a chance that maybe the U.S. will do it for us. No, the threat on Iran is as such. First of all, there is no offer made as far as Israel is concerned. I mean the implicit offer. if they understand the logic the way you describe it.

Yeah, I know, but the offer is on the record by President Trump. I think that if the Iranians would have said, right now, right now, Adam, we, you know, St. Whitkoff made us an offer, which they didn't even bother to respond to. You know, the U.S.A. made an offer to them of how to tackle this nuclear crisis, and they didn't answer before the talks that were due to be made in Oman on the Senate. So if, you know, the supreme leader, instead of having these kind of very kind of rhetorical speeches, attacking Israel, attacking the U.S., we just say we accept the U.S. offer and we're seeking the end of this confrontation, I think there's a possibility that the U.S. president will call the prime minister and say, call off your strikes because I want to have an agreement with them. This was my offer to begin with. But it's very much not on the table. As far as the Iranians are concerned,

they still didn't respond to the humiliation leveled by the Israelis against them. So as far as Israel is concerned, there are no offers on the table. Israel is taking away much of Iran's abilities not only in the nuclear side, but also as to their air defenses that don't really exist anymore

and they're surface-to-surface ballistic missiles that are being short at Israel, and it's taking more abilities, and the intelligence level, and it's killing their nuclear scientists and their chiefs of staff and the rest. And Israel will do that until it achieved its goal to try and downgrade

their nuclear capabilities and military capabilities, and at a certain point, the IDF will tell the Israeli cabinet, look, what you have set us to do, The aims that you have said, we have fulfilled. It's going to happen, I guess, in three to four to five days. And now it's up to you, the ministers, the government, to tell us what to do. Now, Iran is a big country. It has a huge military.

The revolutionary guard, this could take a decade. There are a lot of targets in Iran. If you are Israel and you want to continue this war. But I don't think that Israel would want that. What Israel will want to do is to say, that's it, we're done. The U.S., do you want to take care of her do? No, you don't. Okay, we'll do our best.

We think our best is not good enough in this regard, but we will do that. We are done, and we are seeking now a cessation of hostilities. You don't shoot at us, we don't shoot at you. We have done what we came to do. And then, again, the American administration will come and say to the Iranians, now let's strike an agreement. Of course, they'll have much less centrifuges to sort of deliberate about, to negotiate about.

They'll be in a degraded situation. Now, again, they can choose. One choice would be to say, you know, diplomacy is off the table. You send the Israelis your attack dogs, and they attacked us, now we don't want to discuss anything, and we might be breaking for a boom.

You know, if I would to advise to them, I would definitely advise against this kind of an approach. This would only lead to more sanctions and who knows, maybe Israel can attack again in six months. And other possibilities for the Iranians to

sort of sit back and do the thinking. They're very calculated and say, yeah, maybe we should sign an agreement. You know, they never made the final decision of them to develop nuclear weapons. They're now paying a price for playing with the idea.

for encouraging their defense apparatus to start developing and enriching and all the rest. What did it, you know,

what kind of revenue in terms of security did that ring to Iran's security or defense? What did they achieve? And the answer is they were exposed in the region

as much weaker than they are because they basically decided to have a confrontation with Israel. Now, would this attack, Adam, would have happened? Would it have happened? If October 7 still would have happened, but the Iranians wouldn't have attacked Israel

twice since October 7 simply on their initiation. I'm talking about the April and October 24 attacks. That's without counting all the proxy-led attacks that were in... No, I'm just talking. about the direct on the record Iranian TV says Supreme Leader decided to attack Israel

with hundreds of projectiles shot in Israel bigger than any one attack during the Ukraine-Russia war twice. I'm not sure that Israel would have had both the intelligence the certainty the support of the US

if the Supreme Leader wouldn't have crossed the Rubicon of attacking directly and on the record Israel. That was a huge step by Iran. Israel never took that step before. But if you want to measure this war, you know, the fucker cartons of the world, they want to accuse Israel for being too aggressive or everything. This began with the Iranians, both with the proxy policy. But after that, after the proxy policy erupts into mass attempted ethnic cleansing of Israeli citizens with the October 7 Hamas attack, or Hezbollah joining the war, another Iranian

proxy, the Iranians decide to actually attack Israel because it killed Hassan Asrallah. It's just an amazing series of mistakes that could be another chapter in Barbara Tuchman's March of Foley by the Iranians. I want to spend two more minutes on this question of what the Iranian regime is thinking. There is a, it's, I think, a little difficult for me to wrap my hand around how the Ayatollah regime sees the world and sees its geopolitical interests. Because sometimes it seems to be a very standard great power theory of, of geopolitics, where Iran recognizes its role as regional hegemon, tries to protect it,

recognizes Israel as a strong power, recognizes the vacuum that was left after Saddam Hussein, and plays around that with the mere facade of an irrational, millinarian, theocratic government that uses the, almost the aesthetic propaganda of destroying the great devil America and the small devil Israel. but really

seeing power balance, organizing the power balance of the region. And at other times, it seems like, as often is the case with totalitarian regime, that they truly are driven by their millinarian fantasies

about eradicating the liberal world order, eradicating the Zionist entity, and that these fantasies take precedence over their own self-interest, their own infrastructure, their own population, How do you weigh this and how do you view the past two years in terms of Iranian actions in this regard?

So, you know, like these regimes act, it's always a balance. And it was always a balance since the inception of the Islamic Republic between the pragmatists and the ideologues. And even if you look at what was labeled... When you say ideologues, you mean the Shia theocrats. They're all Shia-theocrats. They're all the level of control and leadership are Shia theocrats. But some of them are more open to the world, more liberal Shia theocrats, than hardcore ideologists. But, you know, to get elected in Iran to the Magdalas, to the parliament, you need to be basically a Shia theocrat supporting or supportive of this framework.

If you're going to, you know, it will be illegal, and candidates each time to an election are being just ruled out by the regime because if you want to preach for women's rights or for a liberal democracy, they're not going to allow it, right? So everything, but I would, right, of course, but I would say the difference as I see it is between the, you know, in the same way that you have to be a member of the Nazi party in order to join the Third Reich. in governance. But you have the Shia theocrats who recognize a concept of power in the Middle East and try to gain advantage over it. And then there are the others

who really believe all the propaganda films for the past 50 years about the elimination of Israel who view those posters that we see in squares in Tehran showing missiles being launched at Israel, Israel being consumed,

in a mushroom cloud, all these, all these end of times visions, and they even use the phrase, the end of times, and take it literally and see the precipitation of the end times as the true mission on earth of this regime. And I think, trying to understanding where, we know that Hamas means what they say about their millenarian fantasies. Of course, you can say that there's a pragmatist faction to Hamas as well, but we know that the suicidal aspect of Hamas is sincere.

And I think taking that into account, you're raising your eyebrows. Well, this is an interesting argument because I would say that not taking that enough into account was part of Israel's folly and treating them overly as just another liberal player. But with Iran, I have no idea where the balance of power is. So if you can help me put that in order. So definitely within Iran, there is. much more room for pragmatists to begin with. And the history of the Republic has shown,

and that's one of the reasons it survived because it knew when to stop and not commit suicide like Yaha Hussein-War did on October 7 with Hamas. This is a prime reason I think we discussed that the Israeli intelligence didn't see this coming. You do not assume that your rival is going to commit complete suicide. And if I try and bring this to the history of the Islamic Republic,

I would take you to the end of the Iran-Iraq war. So I remind you that it was the initiation of Iraq, this war led by Saddam Hussein. And to an extent, it was supported by the West because the Islamic Republic was such a menace to begin with. But at a certain point, the Iranians, after losing the first part of the war, They managed to push out Iraqi forces, but it becomes too much in terms of, you know,

the economy is ruined. They just had a revolution after a revolution. They had a war, and Khomeini is dying of cancer, and he needs to make a decision. And the decision he makes is to agree to a ceasefire, and the ceasefire is at the same borders that Iran and Iraq had before the war. And he talks about that decision and he uses an expression, which is a really famous expression for any student of the Islamic Republic. And that expression is, I have drank from the cup of poison. And he explains that he needed to make that decision so for the best of the republic and the regime. And so, and that also goes to other

decisions he made just before he died, basically saying, you know, this is a theocracy. He didn't use the word theocracy. But if the state says something, it's more important than religious leaders. So this is how, you know, all theocracies turned into fascism. So he actually says, you know, fascism is much more important than religious addicts. If there's a religious edict that you can't ruin this mosque, no, you know, because the state needs it and the state is much more important to religion than any religion tenets. This is how religion is being swarmed and destroyed by fascism. And this is another example.

And this is the reason the Islamic Republic survived. If you look at any given point, for instance, their agreement to be supervised by the IAEA, this is something that many people in the West don't understand. So the Iran is in violation of its NPT, non-proliferation treaty agreement, right? It's in violation. But in the same time, it's still supervised by the IAEA.

So all of these places that Israel attacked, including the places that attack, Natanz, Ferdul, Isfahan, they have cameras that are live broadcasting to the IAEA in Vienna of what's happening there. And the reason that the Islamic Republic sort of had this, balance between trying to break the rules but staying within the framework of the rules is because they are pragmatists. And this is the reason that they didn't end up like Hamas or didn't end up like Hassan Astrala, at least for now, because they knew when to stop.

And because it's a country. And it's a very organized country. It's not a terrorist organization. It's not the DNA of a terrorist organization. And they understand, and they are also susceptible, but much more susceptible to outside pressure or to military strikes than any other kind of terrorist organization. They can do what Hamas did, which is basically, oh, we're losing our uniform and we're all civilians now,

and every time Israel kills a Hamas person in Gaza, he's another civilian because you never saw a Hamas person in uniform in Gaza since the beginning of the war. All civilians suddenly, no, you can't do that. In Iran, Iran is a big country, has a police force, the Revolutionary Guard, it has the Army, it has the Navy, and so forth.

And because of that, I will tilt in my answer to saying that it's much more pragmatists and it understands. And the viability of the regime, the survival of the regime is really the most important ideal for the Islamic Republic. I will push, I will just push back on the clear distinction between religious fanaticism and fascism, because fascism by its nature can easily devolve

into a Hamas-like death cult without necessarily following standard religious creeds. The logic of fascism leads to self-destructive, suicidal

and civilization-breaking a civilization destroying mindset. So I don't think that necessarily being a fascist override on top of an Islamic theocracy means that they are less suicidal. But we'll leave that philosophy to another time. I understand what you're saying.

I just don't think that if you can actually put there the demise of the regime on a skate with attacking Israel, they'll choose the survival of the regime. And some would say, Yach Yashinawa would have chose that too. He just made, you know, a miscalculation, which is a good argument. You're saying that Iran's attacks on Israel before this week over the past two years, those were miscalculations. Absolutely. I think that was a huge miscalculation by the regime. And to a large extent, what we're seen since October 7 is a huge miscalculation by the axis of resistance or the access of terror.

They don't understand the Israeli society at all. It's a lost in translation. You know, many times we keep on hearing about the master negotiators, the chess players, the strategists in Tehran, you know, all these kind of cultural notions which are not very happy about when they're too complimentary. I don't congratulate myself, you know, as a Jew, when people start talking about how Jews are so wise. And I don't think that we should give these kind of compliments to other people.

people, but the idea that, oh, no, the Iranians, they think ahead. Well, look at their country. They're not thinking ahead. You know, they're not, I don't think it's a good thing to make every American administration in the last 30 years, you know, batshit crazy, angry against the Islamic Republic. I don't think that's a great idea, you know, even if you just negotiate the hell out of them. And this is what the Iranians have been doing. Strategy is about being in a better place.

You know, it's a certain time from now. That's what strategy is about. And it's not about just sort of surviving and making your people suffer. You can argue that in the Middle East, mere survival is an achievement for a regime. Yeah, I don't know. You know, look at the regimes in the Middle East. Look at Saddam Hussein or Bashar al-Assad. Yeah, you can, you know.

I don't think that even in terms of survival, that's a good thing. Look at what happened in Iran in 2009. Look at the demonstrations that we had in the recent decade. The Islamic Republic is constantly threatened. It's in a constant mode of pre-revolution or pre-counter revolution. Nobody would be surprised around the world. If tomorrow morning, not tomorrow morning, because we're in the middle of the war,

Iran will erupt in sort of a general strike against the regime. The regime is hated and despised by many, many Iranians. So, no, I don't think that's a good idea. The best idea for them in order to survive would have been to reproach with the West and to let go, to an extent, symbolically speaking, from a nuclear program, they can break from that to an atomic bomb.

And they already have the best achievement there, Adam, And that achievement is they have the knowledge. And the knowledge is something that no one in the world, including the U.S. and Israel, no matter how many scientists Israel would strike, nobody can take away from them. They know how to enrich. They probably know how to start assembling a bomb. And that's it. To go into war about this, to have sanctions leveled on your country,

to have your economy devastated for 20 years. because of enrichment of uranium, not because of a bomb, it's not like North Korea, because of enrichment of uranium is, again, I think, a folly. I'm sure that you'll speak with Iranians, they'll say it's a matter of sovereignty.

They're the only Shia country in the world, as far as they are concerned. They have many enemies, but who's going to, you know, who's going to invade Iran tomorrow morning? What do they need that for? Who are they scared of? Saudi Arabia?

seriously, Iraq that is right now controlled by people who are very friendly towards the Iranian and it has now a Shia majority. What are we talking about? Is it worth it? But again, this is their calculations to make, which is why I'm still baffled, because if it is just a miscalculation, it seems like a catastrophic miscalculation. I don't know. Let me ask you about Israel. How is the mood with the Israeli public right now and how are people even to the extent that you can

gauge the temperature, what was the reaction to the attack even happening? So first of all, you know, I don't want to anecdotally, I don't see, I didn't see Poles yet,

so I don't want to be the judge of that. Generally speaking, there was a huge support in Poles is to the consensus that the Iranians can have nuclear weapons or nuclear capability to manufacture weapons. Whether or not the Prime Minister managed to convince the people in Israel that this is now the critical moment to strike, we'll see in the polls.

Generally speaking, there aren't many subjects in our public discourse that are that of a consensus. Now, if all of this is going to blow up miserably into a never-ending war, the sword that we're having with Gaza right now, or with the hooties, this time with Iran, which is much more of an adversary that has power and has means to threaten us,

if this is what's going to happen and Netanyahu started something, he doesn't know how to end, the Israeli public is not going to, going to be very forgiving. But right now, the Israeli public goes, we understand why they're doing that. Specifically, not because Netanyahu said so, Nathaniel is very unpopular in Israel. It's not my opinion, it's just the fact. But the truth is that the military brass in Israel have completely supported this action. And that's the reason why people trust it, not because

of Netanyahu. Did the fact that the, I think it was one of the, nuclear agencies in the UN reported on Thursday morning that in what to mean was a very uncommonly clear statement that Iran was violating its commitments about not seeking weapon-grade enrichment have an effect on the Israeli perception of this attack, or was this just something that Israelis have accepted for the past year has to happen? No, I don't think that anyone,

really believed that it's happening until it did, right? Historically, everything led to this moment, right? But nobody really believed that until it really did. Even myself, you know, at the night beforehand, I had many indications that it's going to happen, and, you know, one of the elements I traveled to Israel. But to think that we're actually at war with Iran right now is something I find hard to grasp too. You know, this is an undertaking that Israel never wanted to go through.

This isn't a huge success. The success would have been to not go to war with Iran and somehow managed to have a plan that will limit it, an agreement that will limit its nuclear program. It's a failure of the entire world. And it's also, to an extent, you know, our own, that we need to do that. Of course, the operation is a huge success. And the type of success, at least in the first 24 hours,

that armies can only imagine. What Israel did in Iran is, again, going to be a chapter to be registered in history from the psychological warfare that led the Iranians to believe that this is not going to happen. Although, you know, the U.S. was pulling its staff from the Middle East.

So what else kind of warning could you have to the way that the Mossad had a small base of drones installed within Iran? The way that Israeli Air Force were a small country of 10 million people now controls basically the entire air space of the Islamic Republic. This was supposed to be a regional power.

But at the end of the day, you know, that's the problem with wars. You know how you start them, but you never know how they end. And this country, the society has been in a war in a really long time. I think people are tired. They understand that this is something that needs to be done in terms of the Iranian threat. They would have been really happy if the U.S. would have done that for us. or for the will. We're running against time, but I do want to give something for the war buffs in our listeners

and just going to give us a quick rundown of the different approaches to attack between what Israel is doing and what Iran is doing. And I'm keeping this in mind because there's a lot of chatter in American media about civilians in Tehran being hit or around Iran being hit. and that, as usual, being used to describe Israel as being indiscriminate or careless with its attack, as opposed to the lobbying of ballistics missiles from Iran that is being described as more of a military-focused attack targeting the Kiriyahu or other Israeli headquarters. So if you can just give us a sense of what is actually happening on both sides from a pure military perspective. First of all, Israel is attacking and you can see through the pictures,

what Israel is attacking and what the Iranians are attacking. It's true that the Iranians, you know, the Israelis have been focused on nuclear installation, air defenses, killing military leadership, all legitimate ains. I didn't hear until now any, into any sort of European states say, oh, the Israelis have been indiscriminate in hitting Iran. They haven't been. They don't even use this type of ammunition. You know, look at the warheads of ballistic missiles that are short at.

These type of missiles, if they land in a ballistic missile being shot at Israel by the Iranians, these type of ballistic missile warheads, you know, it takes half a warhead to destroy an entire school. They're definitely no direct. You see the photos, the images coming from Tehran. You see that Israel hit, you know, the penthouse, the second penthouse on the north side. of a tower in which a commander of the IRGC that's responsible for nuclear development lived. This is the type of difference.

You see the images from a neighborhood not far from Tel Aviv, and that neighborhood has seen a devastation that we have never seen in the history of Israeli wars. It's like nine apartment buildings that have been devastated, completely. Okay. We have right now three civilians dead. We have no soldiers dead in this country. This is the difference. Now, do our Iranian civilians also dying? Iranians say they are. I don't know. Very probable they are, but the Iranians are definitely targeting residential areas. And the pictures are out there in the social networks for everyone. to see. I didn't see residential areas targeted per se in Tehran, and I think that's a big difference. From what I'm hearing from my sources, the Iranians are going to target residential

areas again and again because they understand that Israeli bases are much more defended. And Israel, of course, was expecting the attack because it initiated it with this preemptive strike. So it also prepared its bases. So you can imagine that their ability to take a toll in the basis is much more limited. It's the understanding of Israeli sources that it's the supreme leader himself that has ordered part of these ballistic missiles to be targeted possibly against the civilians because they're trying to take a toll from the Israelis. And they understand that in a democracy or in any country, by the way, if you hit civilians, they might pressure the government to stop.

And we're looking, you know, we're recording this on the evening in Israel. The assessment here is that it's going to be a very difficult night in terms of the launching from Iran. And I just want to clarify for any confused listener at the difference of the artillery being used, many Americans who may have not paid attention to the region and are not that familiar with difference in artillery, think, well, how did Israel succeed at intercepting hundreds and thousands of rockets from Gaza, and yet one night of attacks from Iran led to three people being dead in central neighborhoods? I think the understanding that, first of all, the rockets from Gaza

are not even in the same scale of warfare that we're discussing now, but with other attacks from Iran even, emphasizing the drones and cruise missiles, which take a long time to arrive from Iran to Israel, allow for a variety of options for interceptions with Israel's complicated defense system. And ballistic missiles, on the other hand, they're basically like giant, sloppy catapults being lobbed across the world. They are faster than cruise. missiles and drones, they are, they cause way more damage. For both of those reasons, they are harder to intercept and more terrifying. Iran so far has launched hundreds. Israel has been able to intercept most of them, but there have been several hits, and each of those has left

a mark. Israel is taking, has taken substantial hits last night. Both, uh, you know, military installations, the idea if you're saying that it had seven or ten soldiers that got hit, and not too bad, you know, none of those were, was killed or is in serious condition. But you can see the pictures, the images of these apartment buildings that collapsed. We never seen anything like it, okay? This is nothing compared with rockets. Rockets and ballistic missiles are not the same. and as you just said.

So it's a challenge. This challenge is going to be substantial in the coming days. And the Iranians are really trying to show that they can take a toll from Israel for that decision. And we'll need to wait and see how this mainly can wrap up. It's not about how Israel succeeded in the first trial. It's really about how this could end. And I think that it's up for the president, to the president of the United States, to decide how he intervenes and how he ends this. And it's, as always, a combination of use of force, or at least a credible threat of use of force and diplomacy.

So just final question before you go. That's, I think, the question that most Americans are thinking. How likely is this to drag us to World War III, Nadav? Oh, I don't think we're close to World War III. You know, what's World War III in this regard? You will need the Chinese to join in. I don't think so. And it doesn't matter what I think.

The Chinese are definitely not signaling that now this is their opportunity. Now that when Iran is losing, they'll join in to a war against because this is what they care about, that the Iranians will have the capacity to have enrichment, not nuclear weapons. And then if not China, you have Russia. Russia has... Who have been dependent on Iranian technology during their latest attacks on Ukraine. My impression is, first of all,

Prime Minister Netanyahu was supposed to speak with Vladimir Putin. If Putin is taking the call, I don't think he's going to formally join the Iranians. It's a matter of an interest. You know, if Russia and China, Russia and China want to make this into a global war, you know, everything is possible,

but there are no indications like that, even though I understand that some parts of the American far, far right, are really looking for the signs, right? But I don't see the signs. I'm not just, I'm not downplaying the possibility of a global escalation. I think the world is in a very precarious condition right now. I think it would be an even more precarious condition if it won't understand, if authoritarian countries won't understand

that they cannot continue with eating away of the stability and security of the order that was installed after 1945. And this is what the Iranians were trying to do, through proxies, through enrichment, and through the rest. And in that regard, you see that European countries are siding with Israel. That's very difficult, considering how isolated Israel is after October 7 and the criticism as to the devastation in the civil toll in Gaza, Palestinian.

But they are siding with Israel. Siding with Israel's, citing with Israel in varying degrees. Germany is full-throatedly supporting Israel's efforts to degrade Iran's nuclear efforts, France in a slightly more moderate way, and apparently the UK was not even informed about the attack. They weren't, but the Prime Minister of the UK has, during our conversation, announced that he's moving military assets and fighter jets to the Middle East. So why is he doing that? I hope he's not going to attack Israel, right? So I guess, but this is a message, I think, to the Iranians, and the message is because the Iranians are threatening.

They're threatening to hit American interests, Western interests. And that's, I think, that the message to them is, hey, you know, don't push us. If you push us, we'll join against you, but we don't want to do that. And that's fine, as far as Israel has been concerned. Nadav, thank you so much. I hope you get some rest, and I hope tonight is not horrific. Thank you so much, Adam. You know what I'm going to do.