The Dispatch Podcast - When A Weak Iran Goes Nuclear | Interview: Michael Singh

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Jamie Weinstein is joined Michael Singh, the managing director and Lane-Swig senior fellow at The Washington Institute, to explain how the Trump administration can take on a weakened—but potentially nuclear—Iranian regime. The Agenda: —Preventing a nuclear Iran —Iran’s “ring of fire” strategy —Iranian proxies operating abroad —A maximum pressure campaign —Regime change —How to build a nuclear warhead —America’s red line —Relations with Russia and China —Is Iran apocalyptic? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Calling all Booklovers. The Toronto International Festival of Authors brings you a world of stories all in one place. Discover five days of readings, talks, workshops and more with over 100 authors from around the world, including Rachel Maddow, Ketourou Isaku and Kieran Desai. The Toronto International Festival of Authors, October 29th to November 2nd.

Details and tickets at festivalofauthors.ca. During the Volvo Fall Experience event, discover exceptional offers and thoughtful design that leaves plenty of room for autumn adventures. And see for yourself how Volvo's legendary safety brings peace of mind to every crisp morning commute. This September, Lisa 2026 XE90 plug-in hybrid from $599 bi-weekly at 3.99% during the Volvo Fall Experience event.

Conditions supply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. My guest today is Michael Singh. He is the managing director and Lane Swig Senior Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is also a former head of Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council under George W. Bush. And he is the author of a new policy report, policy steps to prevent a nuclear Iran. Recommendations to the Trump administration how to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. And that is the topic of our conversation. We get into depth about how he proposes the Trump administration can do that, how

close Iran is to developing a nuclear weapon, and what the consequences might be of other policy options. So I think we'll find this very informative. So without further ado, I give you Mr. Michael Singh. Michael Singh, welcome to the Dispatch podcast. Thanks for having me. I want to talk about this new policy report you have or recommendations to the incoming Trump administration on how to prevent a nuclear Iran. It opens with this. The Iran that confronts President Trump in January 2225 will be more voting. than any time since 1979, but also closer than ever to possessing a nuclear weapon.

I'd like just to set the table a little bit. Explain to me what the Trump administration will be dealing with in terms of Iran, or at least explain what Iran is dealing with as the Trump administration comes in both externally and internally. Sure thing. You know, the Trump administration is really sort of inheriting sort of the effects of two different things, which, on over the past four years. I mean, first, and I think most obvious, we've had 18 months, almost 18 months of war in the Middle East. And, you know, there's a lot one could say about that war. But I think the bottom line for this conversation is that Israel outperformed expectations with respect to really decimating Iran's proxies in the region, especially proxies like

Hezbollah, which was seen as sort of a crown jewel in Iran's threat network in the region. but also devastating Iran's own defenses. We had more than one direct Israeli strike on Iran itself in response, of course, to Iranian attempted strikes on Israel, which have left Iran really exposed. It destroyed Iran's air defenses, reportedly destroyed Iran's missile production capabilities. So you have this Iran, which is really sort of laid bare in a sense that confronts the Trump administration. But at the same time, you know, President Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018. That was the predicate for President Biden coming in in January 2021 and saying, hey, let's rejoin this deal because this was really sort of the crowning achievement of President Obama's foreign policy. Well, it didn't work out. Iran didn't want to see the United States come back to the nuclear program, which is the nuclear agreement.

And as a result, Iran was inextrably, continuously expanding its nuclear capabilities over the past four years. And so whereas, you know, at the end of the Trump administration, the first time around, Iran had, you know, what we call a breakout time of 3.5 months. Breakout time being sort of how long would it take Iran to have one nuclear weapons worth of highly enriched uranium. So at the end of the first Trump administration, that was three and a half months. So, you know, in theory, at least, Iran makes the decision to assemble a nuclear weapon. You have three and a half months before it even has the fuel necessary. Well, that time is down to less than one week now, just a couple of days, perhaps. And so Iran is really sort of right at the precipice of having nuclear weapons, as we might say,

a screwdriver's turn away. And so you have this paradox that I describe in the paper, where Iran is vulnerable, yet also incredibly close to having nuclear weapons. And I think that's a dangerous combination because you have a weak state that could go nuclear and maybe has an incentive to go nuclear. I want to dig into each of those points, but I think I want to begin on Iran's capabilities.

As long as I can remember, I'd go on a security junket to Israel. They'd take you up to the north. You could see, you know, we could see loosely where Hezbollah was located. They would tell you, depending on what year, it would be 50,000, and then 100,000, then they might have 150 or 200,000 missiles lying there. And this was the risk that Israel faced in the north if they got in a confrontation with Iran.

And it was a severe risk. I mean, the idea of 100,000, 200,000 missiles, you know, could upend, you know, daily life in Israel for a long time and caused much, much destruction. This strategy was called the Ring of Fire. It seems like that has been totally decimated in many cases. I guess my question to you is, what is Iran's defenses to an attack by the United States or an attack by Israel on this nuclear program? What is the consequences that would follow at this point? What do they have at their disposal that they could retaliate with?

Well, let me just say first, Jim, you're right. That ring of fire strategy that Iran had in place, that this was a serious threat to Israel. And I think we can say that over the past 15 months, it really failed. And I think it failed for a couple of reasons. Number one, there was this balance of deterrence between Iran and Hezbollah. So, you know, life was severely disrupted in northern Israel, as well as in southern Lebanon, obviously, when you had this kind of prolonged period of Israel and Hezbollah kind of, you know, sort of firing short-range missiles, drones and things like that at one another, but only within certain limits that both seem to generally respect. And then you had that sort of really remarkable

pager and beeper and walkie-talkie operation that Israel mounted, where suddenly, you know, somebody in Israel pressed a button. And you have really sort of, you know, a significant percentage, it seemed, though Hezbollah's just sort of taken off the board, essentially. And it seemed as though Hezbollah never really was able to recover from that blow. And Iran was never able to recover from that blow. Something else happened, though, which was really the product, I think, of Iranian arrogance, Iranian miscalculation, Iran decided after Israel struck it a couple of times to basically go conventional, you know, to abandon this idea of operating through proxies, or at least to supplement it, let's say, and try to strike Israel directly, perhaps underestimating just how good

Israel's defenses supplemented by the United States were. So it lobbed these sort of big waves of missiles and drones and cruise missiles at Israel, and it was ineffective, really did nothing. to Israel. And Israel, of course, retaliated directly against Iran. And what happened in Israel's second retaliation was that, you know, whereas the first time there was sort of a symbolic retaliation by Israel, that was in April of 2024, where Israel was just trying to send a message, like, we can hit you if we want to. The second time around in October, Israel actually followed through on that warning. And it, again, reportedly destroyed Iran's air defenses, has destroyed Iran's solid missile capabilities.

And so the reality is Iran doesn't have strong defenses against an Israeli or U.S. attack. Iran would be forced to rely on a counteroffensive, a counter strike. But we would have to do that sort of bereft of many of its missiles. And so what would it choose to do? It might choose to use short-range missiles. Now, it can't hit Israel with short-range missiles. And so maybe it would target, for example, American partners in the Gulf. maybe it would try to target American soldiers or American interests in places like Iraq.

It does still have some proxies. It has the Houthis in Yemen. It has Shia militants in Iraq. It would try to activate them, presumably, against whatever Israeli or American targets it could find. And then, of course, it still has a terrorist capability around the world. You know, what's been in the news in the last week or two where this reminder that Iran has been plotting against not just President Trump. but people like former Secretary of State Pompeo and John Bolton, well, Iran could choose to act on those types of terrorist plots as well.

So Iran has the ability to retaliate, but I would say a significantly degraded ability to retaliate. Let me ask you about the potential of attacks around the world. Obviously, Iran has shown the ability years ago to attack in Argentina, the planned attack at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C., that failed and was unraveled. they are supposedly threatening officials that they believe were responsible or were part of the operation that took out Soleimani. But they have not been able to, you know, to actually take out any of those officials in the U.S., maybe because of security. But in the post-October

7, the post-Hesbola decimation world, are these proxies capable of operating in the United States any better than they were before? Are they in perhaps worse position than they were before October 7th themselves? Look, I wouldn't underestimate Iran's ability to mount terrorist attacks around the world, in part because it has the experience, obviously, and you just mentioned some of the past cases, even though they're now several years in the past, but it's relatively inexpensive to do so. You may have seen in the news, Jamie, that Iran was able to successfully recruit spies within Israel, within Israel's Iron Dome crews. So what that really shows is that there are opportunities around the world, even in a place like Israel where, you know, Iran is obviously

seen as an enemy and is quite hostile. Iran still was able to sort of recruit agents, it seems, at least allegedly there. So I think we have to take seriously the possibility that Iran could go back to its old ways of sponsoring terrorism around the world, a strategy which It never fully abandoned. You mentioned a few plots, but some of Iran's more recent plots have really focused on attacking Israelis or attacking Iranian dissidents overseas. And those have been much more recent, sometimes conducted directly, sometimes conducted through proxies like Hezbollah. And Hezbollah still, as far as we know, retains itself a presence around the world and an ability to conduct terrorist attacks. Remember, before 9-11, more Americans die. Biden has Bolot terrorist attacks than attacks by any other group. Those attacks that you're referring to the more recent ones against Israelis, correct me if I'm wrong, they often take place in places like Thailand or Eastern Europe. Are there reasons that they haven't been successful in kind of more Europe, central Europe, old Europe, as maybe

George L. Bush would have called it, or the United States? I think part of it just comes down to security. You know, the Iranians and other terrorist groups so be looking for soft targets, and it's probably just easier to target Israeli or American interests in places like Thailand or in parts of Eastern Europe or elsewhere around the world, then it would be in the United States itself or Western Europe, which are now both more vigilant against these kinds of attacks. I would say we could also speculate, although it's hard to say for sure, that Iran may feel it has more sort of equities at stake with Western European countries or with the United States.

So sort of prefers to operate in third, sort of third areas, as it were, in other areas, perhaps to minimize the diplomatic blowback. And remember, Iran has done these things and really hasn't suffered the diplomatic blowback. Europe has continued to negotiate with Iran, continued to sort of have diplomatic relations. And so it may feel as though that strategy has largely been successful. I'll only get to the recommendation in your report. But before I do, I just want to get you your view on this. There was a theory at the time of the April attack and the October attack by Iran on Israel, that they were doing this as a symbolic show of response.

To me, it didn't ever really make sense that they would demonstrate weakness deliberately. But is there any truth to that, that their response and attack against in April and October were never intended to create great damage in Israel? Well, you know, this is something that Iran analysts still hotly debunker. and there's, of course, no real answer to it. I think that it's likely that Iran mounted these large attacks, probably thinking that Israel would intercept quite a few of their missiles and drones and so forth, but hoping that by saturating Israel's air and missile defenses,

some of the missiles and drones would get through. You know, there was an Iranian message while the first wave of, in April, while the first attack was still underway, while the missiles are still in the air and had reached Israel, there was an Iranian message that it had fired six or seven missiles at Israel. And it sort of raises the question, well, why would you say you fired six or seven when you fired, in fact, two or three hundred? And I think the obvious answer is they only expected that many to get through

and wanted to project a level of accuracy that, in fact, they wouldn't be able to achieve. So my guess is the truth is somewhere in between. I would imagine they thought they would actually destroy targets in Israel, whether that's military targets or others, and underperformed even their own low expectations of themselves. You know, the Iranians understand, I think, how capable Israel is. Remember, even before October 7, 2023, you had near daily exchanges between either Iran or its proxies and Israel in the air, across the Golan Heights, over the Lebanese border. And so it's not as though Iran was ignoring Israel's capabilities. But I think even so, they still managed to underestimate

Israel's capabilities, in part because they were utilizing a new tactic, a new tool against Israel. Your report goes through the options. It ultimately concludes that the strategy you would recommend is kind of a maximum pressure campaign to get Iran into a new, tougher nuclear deal while preparing for a strike if that fails. Go through your reasoning behind that office. Well, I think it's important to bear in mind, Jamie, that, you know, Iran has a strategy of sorts that it has been employing since really, I mean, you know, maybe not since 1979. It's evolved since then, but certainly for years. And many people term that strategy forward defense. I think we might have a less kind name for it. But really, it entails what we've seen over the past 15 months and before that, which is sponsoring terrorist groups and other types of, proxies in order to sort of take the fight to their adversaries. You know, keep the likes of Israel or Saudi Arabia preoccupied with conflicts on their border or with threats on their border. So keeps the Saudis preoccupied with the Houthis in Yemen, keep the Israelis preoccupied

with Hezbollah in Lebanon, keep American forces in Iraq, preoccupied with these sort of Shia militants and others in Iraq itself, in order that they don't focus on. Iran, in order they don't turn their attention to Iran itself. The sort of the catch with this kind of strategy is that, you know, while you're operating, while you Iran are operating through proxies, you can really never be assured that your adversaries, Israel, the United States, the Saudis will repay you in kind, that they'll also attack your proxies as opposed to brutality against you. And so if you want to deter them from doing that, having nuclear weapons makes a lot of sense. And so having nuclear weapons fits in with this very pernicious

strategy that Iran has been pursuing for years. So even though Iran hasn't actually accomplished nuclear weapons, we worry that Iran has a strong incentive to do so. Now, this strategy is rooted in the system in Iran, in the type of regime that Iran has, which is really founded on anti-Americanism for sure, anti-Israeli sentiment for sure, and many other things, but also suspicion of its own institutions. And so Iran has never tried to develop, for example, conventional power. It's always operated through these kind of rag-tag militias and terrorist groups, in part because this is a regime which came to power fighting the likes of the Iranian army, you know, the sort of the Shah's forces. And so there is a worry that I think has also

grounded in our own experience around the world dealing with other regimes, that in order for Iran to really give up any piece of this strategy, whether that's support for proxies, pursuit of nuclear weapons, you would really need to see a fundamental shift in strategy. And that fundamental shift in strategy is really not compatible with the current regime and its ideology. So without a significant political shift in Iran, call it regime change if you want, you're not going to see to shift in strategy. There have been some American policymakers who felt that sort of American outreach, you know, nuclear deals and so forth could induce this kind of political shift in Iran, that we could somehow, you know, sort of cause changes inside the Iranian system. I personally

don't believe that, and I think that that has, you know, largely been disproven by events. So regime change in a way is really the only sort of lasting answer to this. But the problem with that answer is that regime change is not something that we frankly want to engage in or even necessarily know how to engage in. That was obviously the point of the Iraq War, an incredibly unpopular war now, an incredibly unpopular policy initiative, especially amongst folks in the Trump administration, who, you know, don't like military interventions, period. And certainly we've heard from President Trump and Vice President Vance

don't want to see another military intervention in the Middle East. And so that leaves you with needing to sort of do what you can to buy time in hopes that that change will happen from within, that that change will happen indigenously in Iran. And I argue that in order, basically the key thing there is, you know, yes, you can support the Iranian people and you should. You should avoid strengthening the Iranian regime through any of your policy measures, but really you have to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And your tools to do that are the same tools you've always had, their economic

pressure, their diplomacy, and their military force. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple. It's 100% online, no medical exam, just a few health questions. You can get a quote in as little as 10 minutes. You can get a

quote in as little as 10 minutes, same-day coverage and policies starting at about two bucks a day build monthly, with options up to $3 million in coverage. With a 4.8 out of five-star rating on trust pilot and thousands of families already applying through Ethos, it builds trust. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash dispatch. That's eth-h-o-s-com slash dispatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. 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 So 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.

Go to 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. Let's talk about how close they are. You mentioned it at the top of our interview. In a report, you show a chart saying they are now a week away from breakout, and maybe you could help explain what breakout exactly means. You write in the report, at this point, Iran could have sufficient weapons grade enriched in uranium for a nuclear weapon in just days

and can produce a usable nuclear weapon in six months or less, a timeline that may not even matter if it can avoid detection or hide its weapons-grade uranium from inspectors and foreign intelligence after producing it. Explain what that means. I mean, as you're saying, within six months, they could have a nuclear weapon that they could use, or would they have to have missiles to deliver them?

That would that take longer? Or in six months, could they conceivably, have a weapon that they could detonate on, you know, Israel or Western Europe or whoever they decide to do, Saudi Arabia. And what did you mean by it wouldn't matter if we could even detect it? Sure. You know, look, to get a nuclear weapon, you really need three things. You need, number one, the fuel. You need the enriched uranium or plutonium that's at the heart of that weapon. Number two, you need to be able to take that fuel, which in this case, comes out of the centrifuges in gaseous form and turn it into a warhead. You know, you turn

that uranium into metal, you put it inside a warhead, and you put it inside a device that will initiate a nuclear explosion. By this point, most people have seen Oppenheimer, and so they're at least a little bit familiar with this process, which makes talking about this a lot easier. And then third, you need a delivery vehicle. You need some, obviously, you don't want the weapon to blow up where you are, you want it to blow it far away. And so you need either a missile or some other way to deliver the warhead to your target. Now, we had always said for years that essentially we felt that Iran had seemingly mastered the weaponization process. That was the focus of a lot of diplomacy over the last 20 years, trying to figure out exactly what Iran had done on the weaponization

question. But it seems as though they've essentially figured out what they need to know. on the missile question, as far as we know, Iran has nuclear capable missiles. Now, Israel has taken out a lot of those missiles, but probably not all of them. And of course, you don't meet a lot when it comes to nuclear weapons. And so the one piece they didn't have, what we used to call the sort of long pole in the tent was the nuclear fuel. And that was really in a way the part which was most difficult, not difficult in the sense that it's a complex scientific problem, difficult more in an engineering sense. and that in order to enrich uranium, you need centrifuges that work properly. Oftentimes you need hundreds, if not thousands of them. You need to take this natural uranium, and you need to send it through various processes to sort of churn out the highly enriched uranium at the end. And that was always sort of how we measured, how far away Iran was from this nuclear weapons capability.

The bottom line is that Iran now has largely figured out that step as well. they've largely done what they need on that front as well. And so Iran has this very significant stockpile of highly enriched uranium, not to weapons grade, but very, very close to weapons grade, just a step away. And the worry is that if they chose, they would be able to turn that uranium into weapons grade uranium in just a matter of days. And then, of course, they have all three pieces for the nuclear weapon. And then the key is to put them together. We don't really know with precision, how long that putting together process would take Iran, in part because we have so few data points about this. Some people will tell you it will take two years. I personally don't

believe that. We heard General Millie in recent years say that he believes Iran could have a crude nuclear device in just three months after enriching the uranium. The reason I say that that timeline may not actually matter that much is that once you have that weapons, grade uranium. You're not talking about something that takes up a lot of space. If they put it in the trunk of a car, drive it somewhere else in Iran, and we don't catch them. The real risk is they'll have a clandestine facility where they'll put everything together, and we won't actually know that they've done any of this until they have the weapon, you know, until they conduct a test or something like that. And the reason that this is even more alarming right now is that as Iran has been

expanding its nuclear activities, it's also been stepping back, decreasing its cooperation with international nuclear inspectors. And if you read the reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency, they basically say, look, we can't guarantee you that we've accounted for all of Iran's nuclear materials. We're not confident that we would actually catch Iran in the act of doing all of this. So that's very concerning. It basically means you could turn on the television tomorrow, and you'd see the news. In fact, Iran has nuclear weapons. This was my fundamental question coming out after reading the report.

And this is kind of the nut of the question. Is it given how quickly they could get a nuclear weapon, given the fact that we might not be able to even monitor it, given that they're the most vulnerable to an attack that they've ever been with the decimation of a lot of their proxies and maybe their air equipment to stop planes coming over. Why is the recommendation to engage in negotiations that might give them more time to get to the step where they have a nuclear weapon or able to hide a nuclear weapon from expectors and not the recommendation and attack on their nuclear facilities to gravely set back or destroy

if the U.S. or Israel can the nuclear program? Right. Look, to be clear, I think that there's a very good chance that we will need to mount military strikes or that Israel will do so whether we want them to do it or not. And so you'll see in the report, that I argue that we really need to start preparing for this now. However, I don't think we necessarily need to do it on sort of, you know, in month one of Trump's presidency. And the reason I say that is, for all that I've talked about sort of the urgency of this problem, I also think that Iran itself has a conundrum, which is that if it undertakes this process of breakout and then trying to assemble a nuclear weapon, and let's say it just takes three months, the Iranians will be

in this period of maximum vulnerability because they know that this is going to be a red line potentially for American military action. They also know that we're watching them carefully and obviously experience has told them that they're probably thoroughly penetrated, say by the Israeli intelligence apparatus as well as others. And so the Iranians themselves have to worry as well. And if we are making visible preparations for a strike or if Israel's making visible preparations for a strike, it can only accentuate that worry. And that becomes a form of pressure on Iran that may make them think twice about taking this step. But you can't keep that pressure up forever. And so the question is, what do you do with that pressure? I would say,

number one, you double down on it. You accentuate it. And President Trump is, you know, obviously someone who's very enthusiastic about this sort of thing. You do it by adding economic pressure. Iran is already in dire economic straits. And you do it by building. up diplomatic pressure. And again, one of the reasons that President Trump has an opportunity is that our European partners, the so-called E-3, that's Germany, France, and the U.K., are actually already in this process of building up diplomatic pressure on Iran. In October of this year, the so-called snapback mechanism of the JCPOA, the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, expires. meaning that will be the last time, the last moment where a member of the E3 could utilize this

napak mechanism to bring back all of the UN, all those international sanctions on Iran, sanctions on Iran's missile program, sanctions on Iran's oil and gas industry and so on and so forth. The Iranians don't want to see that happen, and there's a possibility that any of those E3 members could do it. And so what I've argued is, look, we would rather resolve this without war. I think that's something that you'll hear from actually Republicans and Democrats these days. But we have to resolve it comprehensively. We also don't want to punt the problem. We don't want to contain a nuclear arm to Iran, though some people will argue we could do that. And so the sweet spot I think right now is try to use this multifaceted pressure in this, frankly,

very narrow window to get Iran to stand down, to get Iran to swallow a difficult compromise while you're preparing for the possibility that this will fail and that you may have to take more drastic measures. And yet you note in your paper that the history of stopping regimes from getting nuclear weapons with agreements is not so great, North Korea, whereas the history of stopping them with military force, Syria in 2007, Osirac in 1981, is much better. So how confident would you be even in a tough agreement, that would stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon? I think the question really is, what does the agreement look like? So I was actually part of the policy process that looked at our options on Syria's nuclear

program in 2007. I was senior director for the Middle East at the National Security Council at the time. And our recommendation to principles at that time, to U.S. government principles, was that the U.S. should strike this program. Ultimately, we didn't do that. President Bush didn't accept that recommendation, but the Israelis should. struck the program and it was destroyed and destroyed apparently permanently. And so I'm not one, frankly, who thinks that we should swear off military action against these types of programs.

But again, I'm not particularly eager for war. And I think that if we could have an agreement where Iran is clearly having to choose between keeping its nuclear program and that regional strategy I mentioned, or frankly, this, I'm sorry, having to choose between sort of giving up is what I mean to say, giving up that nuclear program or facing the most severe consequences, you know, military strike. Then we might be able to have an outcome which is acceptable to us. I think the problem that we've faced in the past is that when it comes to these nuclear agreements, either with North Korea in 1994 or with Iran, we have not required these countries to give up their nuclear programs. We have instead sort of taken what I consider a sort of, you know, an easier

compromise, an easier diplomatically compromise of saying, well, you keep your nuclear program and we're going to try to build in confidence building measures or verification measures, which will assure us that you're not going to use it for nefarious purposes. I think unfortunately that's naive. In North Korea's case, we see it didn't work. I think in the Iranian case, you would have had ultimately the same outcome. I don't think you can really say about the Iranian regime that you can somehow trust them with this very extensive advanced nuclear program, not to ultimately turn it into a nuclear weapons program. So they'd have to give that up. And I think an agreement where they're not asked to give it up is not an agreement that we should

contemplate. I would like to kind of delve in. We did it a little bit to the consequences of the strike on Iran's nuclear program, what would happen after? And we discussed some of the weapons that Iran still has, even if they're greatly diminished. Do you think that they would use whatever they have to strike back? Would they attack? I mean, if it was a statement, because as you mentioned, the Trump administration doesn't seem interested in regime change, that we're not going after regime target, we're not trying to overthrow your government, we're taking out your nuclear program, but if you take a step to attack us on our own soil, American soil, or, you know, destroy oil wells in the Middle East, we may reconsider that. Do you think they would use every weapon that

they have at their disposal, every proxy they have at the disposal as a response, or do you think it's potentially they would do a symbolic response? You know, I think we would have to assume in our planning that they would use every weapon at their disposal. I think it would be irresponsible to do otherwise. And so if you had this scenario where you have military action, whether frankly it's by the United States or Israel. We have to remember that, you know, Israeli military action will draw in the United States as well in some way, shape, or form. We would, I think, want to do two things. Number one, we would want to move, obviously, to protect whatever interests we have and whatever partners we have in the region. And these days, a lot of those partners are

are not going to look upon this kind of approach, frankly, very positively. They'll, again, they too will prefer some kind of diplomatic accommodation, and there might be some tension between the U.S. and those partners. But I think you'd also see the U.S. military try to essentially take these capabilities out of Iran's hands. And that's why, frankly, when you think about U.S. versus Israeli military action, you know, I think a lot of folks in Washington would like to see Israeli military action because they see it as sort of an elegant solution to the problem.

You know, it gets the program gets destroyed, but we don't have to be the ones doing it. Do the Israelis have the capacity to do it on its own? Right. And so I think that's a key question. Does Israel have the capacity to do it on their own? Not just to destroy the nuclear program, but to destroy Iran's retaliatory options. I don't know the answer to that. You know, obviously the Israelis have been thinking about this problem for a long time. and so they will have sought to develop the ability to do it.

I think what we can be sure of is that the United States has a greater capability to do those things. And so, you know, it's not sort of so straightforward to say, well, we'd really prefer to see Israeli military action here. How do you think Russia and China would respond to a strike, whether it's the United States or Israel, if they would respond at all? So obviously, Russia and China would condemn any strike on Iran. I don't think, though, that you're going to see Russia and China become involved somehow in this kind of conflict. There's nothing that would suggest that they're prepared to do that.

Russia became obviously involved in Syria in 2015 and intervened in a way which really limited President Obama's options there. And that was in part because we sort of invited the Russians to do that. Russia is in a very different place now, and obviously it's very focused on Ukraine. And so in the current context, at least, it's hard to say how this might change over the next two to four years. But in the current context, at least, you wouldn't think that Russia would have the capability to do this. China, I think, also would not have a desire to do it. China, I think, would not want to see a U.S.-Iran conflict. Frankly, doesn't, I think, want to see a U.S.-Iran diplomatic agreement either. But I don't think you'd see Iran, China, in

intervening militarily. I do worry about if you project further into the future, if we say, okay, you know what, all these options are bad, which frankly is a totally understandable point of view. I do worry that in the future, you could see, for example, Russian or Chinese military activity inside Iran, whether that's, you know, a base or a presence of some kind that then ultimately sort of severely restricts what the U.S. or Israel could do. And so we do have, for lots of different reasons, a window of opportunity, perhaps, to do something. And of course, I lay out my report, what I think that something should be. It should, I think, be a sort of effort at diplomacy that's really backed up by military preparations. But I worry that whatever you want to fill this window

with, the window will close in the future. What is the UAE and Saudi Arabia advising the administration behind the scenes? What is their preferred option to deal with? the threat of the nuclear Iran? You know, I think that a lot of folks in the region, Saudi Arabia, UAE and others, maybe everybody but Israel, essentially, long ago basically decided, look, no one's going to do anything about this problem. They'd heard a lot of talk about it. They've seen big fluctuations, obviously, in American policy. And I think that they had basically resolved that, you know, if Iran was going to get a nuclear weapon, it was going to get a nuclear weapon. and they needed to basically prepare for that possibility.

And so you've seen them do two things. Number one, you've seen them actually engage in this process of rapprochement with Iran. I think it's not a very deep process, and I think it's one which is really designed to put a ceiling or a lid on potential conflict with Iran. And it's motivated in part by what they see as sort of the U.S. failure to come to the raid in certain situations like in 2019, when you had an Iranian attack on, Saudi oil processing facilities. But they've also moved ahead in strengthening their own capabilities. And in the Saudi case, at least, that includes potentially not in the too distant future trying to develop a significant nuclear capability of their own. And this is something which is an interesting part of the mix now, is that as Iran thinks about how it's going

to move forward, I think it really has to take seriously the possibility that Saudi Arabia would match whatever nuclear moves it makes. I think what all this means is that, you know, unlike in, say, past years, you're not going to have our partners in the region, again, putting aside Israel, pushing the United States to go to war with Iran. They've taken a different approach to Iran. I think they worry that they would bear the brunt of any Iranian retaliation. And frankly, they worry about our own staying power, whether we would really be there for them if this all goes south. And so, And so it's a slightly different context, a slightly different situation than we've faced in the past with these partners.

You mentioned in the report in the interview that the only permanent solution to Iran's nuclear program is regime change. But I think correctly note there is no will, understandably in the United States, especially within the Trump administration, to do that with U.S. forces, which I think makes sense. my question to you is how stable, though, is the Iranian regime? What would happen internally if the U.S. or Israel mounted attack that took out their nuclear program? And if it did fall, what would come after? Are we sure that it would be better? So these are obviously questions which are tough to answer. When it comes to the stability of the regime, look, I think there's good reason to think that this is a regime which has, you know, A, been tremendously weakened,

not just by the events of the past 15 months, but by, you know, sort of by its own failings over, frankly, multiple decades, political, economic, and security failings. We saw in just the past couple of years, obviously these very significant protests, the so-called woman life freedom protests against the Iranian regime, where you have ordinary people going out in the streets, risking their own lives to protest against the regime. There's plenty of indications that Iranian society, but especially young people, really reject the legitimacy of this regime and are no great fans of it. You combine that with the economic weakness. Look, this is a regime which is ruling over an oil-rich country and yet can't keep the power on in the country. You've

had blackouts. You've had energy shortages and so forth. None of this is a recipe for stability. What we don't know, though, is how long does this regime have? You know, it may be honest, sort of, you know, driving down a dead end street, but how long is that dead end street? We just don't know. Nor do we know, frankly, what would happen inside Iran in the aftermath of an Israel-Iran conflict or a U.S.-Iran conflict. Some of it depends on what does that conflict look like. I do think, for example, that the Israeli strikes in October, which destroyed Iran's air defense capability, were humiliating for the regime. And that kind of humiliation, again, can't add to the regime's prestige or stability inside Iran or anywhere else. So it would depend, I think, on

exactly what happened and what the context was. When it comes to what would follow this regime, I think one great worry that people have is that a successor regime in Iran, whether it's because the regime is toppled or frankly even just because the Supreme Leader passes away, which eventually will happen, of course, is that basically a successor regime would be a military regime, ruled by the Revolutionary Guards, who are the most powerful force or faction inside Iran. I would like to think, though, that if you look at the bulk of the Iranian population, you know, you have a population which there's every indication. They want something quite different from that. That doesn't mean they'll get it. You know, we have to be realistic.

There's lots of examples around the world of, you know, sort of people coming on to the streets, expressing their democratic aspirations and then frankly having those quashed by security services and having authoritarianism reinstalled. But I think what it does mean is we need to sort of do what we can to help them. And I don't think that's incompatible with either pursuing the strategy I mentioned or frankly with lots of other things we can do. I mean, we've shown in the past that we have the capability of both supporting people and dealing with regimes at the same time. And these aren't necessarily conflicting policy activities. One question that the paper doesn't really dive into, but I think it is kind of fundamental

is how apocalyptic is the regime? Obviously, there are those who believe it's more rational that they want to preserve their power. The IRCG wants to preserve its wealth. There are also those who, you know, point out that this is a religiously minded regime, the Vila Faki, waiting for the return of the Mahdi. Would they try to preempt that by starting a, you know, cataclysmic war? What is your view of the regime and their ultimate goal?

You know, personally, I think that if you look at the IRGC, if you look at most of Iran's leadership, you see a sort of ruthless pragmatism. You don't see anything you might call a religious group of people. But I don't know that that's really even the most pertinent question. I think that this is a regime which is out for its own interests. and out for its own survival, first and foremost. And so one of the reasons I would worry, for example, about this regime having nuclear weapons,

is the same reason I worry about, you know, for example, the regime we see in Moscow. If they really worried that their survival was threatened, would they have a first-use policy with their nuclear weapons? Put aside the sort of question of religious radicalism or the kind of messianic nature of the regime. I don't think we necessarily need to even go down that road to worry that, you know, this is a country which could have a first use policy for nuclear weapons. It's certainly a country which supports groups like Hamas, as we've seen, which, you know, frankly, is in the grip of radicalism and wants to kill for killing's sake and doesn't care, frankly, how many Palestinian civilians die along the way. We've seen that in the past 15 months. that Hamas's activities wouldn't be possible without Iranian sponsorship.

And so you have a regime sitting in Tehran, which whether you want to consider it motivated by religion or not, is very happy to use a group like Hamas, which is a radical group, to further its own ends, to attack its enemies. You have a regime which is willing to act recklessly break every norm of state conduct. And I don't think it necessarily really matters what the motivation for doing so is. I think we have to worry about how it impacts us and our partners. Finally, it's four years from now. It's January of 20209. It's the end of the Trump administration.

What is your prediction? Do you think that Iran has a nuclear weapon, that we have stopped the nuclear? What is the likely outcome of this? Will we have to see an outcome in the next four years? Do you believe that there will be an outcome by the end of the Trump administration one way or the other? Look, I don't think Iran will have. have a nuclear weapon at the end of these four years. I think that we have the tools to stop them. I'm sure that President Trump does not want to see Iran get a nuclear weapon on his

watch, and I'm sure the same is true of Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel. And so I'm optimistic that the U.S. and Israel working together and working with regional partners can stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. It's really just a matter of will, not capability. You know, could Could there be a different outcome? Could we, you know, continue kicking this can down the road as we have for the past couple of decades? Yes, of course. But I don't think that we will stand by and let Iran get a nuclear weapon. We did that with North Korea. I think it was a major mistake to do so. And I think it's left us far less secure. One of the reasons President Trump is talking about an Iron Dome for the United States is that American policymakers in past years failed, failed to stop North Korea from getting those nuclear weapons. And so now we're we're going to have to invest a tremendous amount in missile defense and other ways of defending against this weapon that, frankly, we could have stopped ever from materialize. I don't think we'll repeat that mistake from Iran because we don't have to. We have the tools to stop. Michael Singh, thank you for joining the dispatch podcast. Thanks very much.

You know,