The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus special Tuesday edition: a fragile ceasefire takes hold

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

The full version of today's Friday Focus is available to all members.  Rudyard and Janice begin today's special Friday Focus episode with the Trump initiated ceasefire that allows both Israel and Iran to claim some measure of victory. But does Trump have the power to make the truce hold? Bibi is learning that American help comes with a price, and the Israeli PM is no longer in the driver's seat. Pulling back to look at the bigger picture, Rudyard and Janice explain how America's involvement in this war is a game changer that has reinforced American power in the Middle East and beyond. Has this past week's events - including the notable absence of China and Russia in this conflict - challenged the idea that we are moving into a multipolar world? Have we underestimated American power in the 21st century? And finally, how will a weakened Iranian regime respond domestically to the penetration of its military and collapse of its nuclear program?    To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a special edition of Friday Focus for Tuesday the 24th of June. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, the chair of the monk debates, joined by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice, great to be in conversation with you to bring our audience the latest updates on this fast evolving situation in the Middle East. It certainly is. Rudyard literally changes by the hour, but what a last 24 hours. And that's exactly why we wanted to come back to our audience this morning with an update. We're just because events are changing by the minute we are recording this in the morning of the 24th of June. Janice, overnight, we've seen what can only be described as an attempt by the Trump administration to achieve a diplomatic trifecta, a stand down of the war that,

in a somewhat, let's face it, somewhat kind of brilliant way, gives every side something. It gives the Israelis an off-ramp on the basis of a successful campaign concluded with ballistic missiles degraded and Iran's atomic capacity shattered. It gives the Americans the ability to show their prowess and the bombing of these three nuclear sites. and it gives Iran a symbolic attack on a Qatar air base, an American air base, to preserve Persian honor. What do you make of it all? Roger, I'm going to use the word that you use, and we don't use this with respect to Donald Trump. But this was frankly a brilliant strategy, starting from the massive demonstration of firepower on Saturday, which was followed up almost immediately, rigid.

Literally, as soon as it was over, messages were going to Iran through a back channel. We do not want regime change. It is time now for this to end. then the president reaching out to Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel and saying it's time to stop and you can well imagine

this Prime Minister after that demonstration is in no position to say no he said yes and then Trump went to Qatar where Americans have been working very closely and said bring the Iranians in

and by 6 o'clock last night, he announced a ceasefire. Shocked many of his own advisors, but he announced a ceasefire. That is, frankly, virtuosity. Well put. Janice, will it hold? I guess the question is we've seen overnight some kind of dispute here about when exactly the ceasefire was going to start. who was going to abide by it when.

We've seen a horrible attack in Bershiba, four killed, and again somewhat symbolic into at least the afternoon, early evening, Israel time of a single strike against Iran to kind of put them on notice that for every missile attack, there will be an opposite, and reaction vis-a-vis Israel. So what do you make of that? How fragile do you think this ceasefire is? Look, there's no question, Roger, this is fragile,

but this is actually par for the course. In any ceasefire, the first 24 to 48 hours usually has some violations as people test the limits. And again, President Trump's, stepped out behind, you know, from behind the diplomatic veil. Use language. I don't know. Are we allowed to use it on this podcast?

We could say F-bomb. Okay. Let's say he dropped the F-bomb with respect to both Israel and Iran. They don't know. W-PF they're doing. And frankly, weighed in again telling them to stop. and neither country, neither leader, is in a position right now to defy the president. You know, Ayatollah Khomeini, after the attack, was able to send messages to his commander saying,

we need to retaliate, but don't cause casualties. We do not want a war with the United States. So it's very clear where the balance of power is right now. it is with the president of the United States. I think this heat fire will hold. And just to put a little end note here on the Israelis, Janus, clearly they knew that as soon as the American stepped in, especially given the scale and the scope of the American attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, they in a sense handed the campaign, the war over to the United States.

From that moment, Janice, was it not in America's purview to decide when this war would end? And Donald Trump's now made that decision. There's no question, Roger. You know, there's no free lunch. American help comes with a price. And don't forget, Nathaniel had been pleading with Donald Trump to do this for a week and had mobilized supporters inside the United States to make that case. Once the president agreed, which was apparently last Wednesday, that's it.

Netanyahu is no longer in the driver's seat. The big open question is how much did Netanyahu hand over? Did he hand over the management of the relationship with Iran? or does he go further and does Donald Trump use that capital to ends up fighting in Gaza as well? We'll have to wait and see on that one.

But Netanyahu is in no position now to defy an American president as he frankly did Barack Obama and Joe Biden over and over. Let's pull up as we like to with our audience to a couple higher order levels of analysis. The first level analysis, Janice, is how this redraws the region.

There are, as you've seen, commentary that the success, the stunning success of the Israeli campaign, capstoneed by this, as you say, demonstration of, you know, the unique military capabilities and power of the United States with the destruction of these three Iranian atomic sites. this, Janice, does it reshape the region in a fundamental way? And if so, in what direction? Well, I don't think there's any question, Roger, that the region is now reshaped. You know, let's go back for a moment to October the 6th, 2023. Israel was frankly buying off Hamas in Gaza and believing that Gaza was contained, despite Hamas's rhetoric, and woke up, shocked to its core, its security doctrine, in tatters by that attack.

A year later, took out the most important element in Iran's forward defense, which was Hezbollah. And Iran was not wrong that deploying a militia along the border with Israel, that could fire 100,000 missiles over the border was an effective deterrent of Israel to taking on Iran. That went. The government of Syria, Iran's longstanding ally, Bashir al-Assad, was toppled from within, and it then that the conflict became direct between these two powers, two rounds of it, until the latest round.

And Israel now emerges, like it or not, as the undisputed hegemon in the neighborhood. Iran will take a considerable amount. And Iran is the only country that can strategically challenge Israel. It is the only threat to its fundamental security. And it was going to take Iran some time to recover here. It's a fundamental game changer in the region. It puts the United States, and we should say this rather, at the epicenter now of security in this part of the world.

And so much for the decline of the United States, at least in the Middle East. Yeah, I want to, we'll get to that in a moment. Just to think, though, of how catastrophic Iran's, you know, 30 plus year gamut. has has been in terms of what it culminated in 12 short days. I mean, I've seen estimates, Janice, that the Iranian government has either spent or for gone somewhere in the order of half a trillion dollars in wealth to pursue its nuclear program and to arm these proxies that were meant to not simply contain Israel, but ultimately bring about either through attrition or open conflict, the destruction.

of the Jewish state. All of that is in utter tatters this morning. And while I guess, Janice, you're right, Iran will have a chance here, a pause. The regime will likely not change. I think the damage is so deep, the credibility so destroyed. My hearts and thoughts just go out to the Iranian people, the 90 million of them who've had to live under this regime for 30 plus years, who've had to deal with the economic consequences of this disaster strategy that the Ayatollahs have pursued, that have been subjected to the worst abuses of their human rights and political rights. I don't know, Janice, I know regime change is not in the offing right now, but it's hard not to feel, again, just for the Iranian people,

what they've had to suffer through the last 12 days, the last 12 days, the last 30 years and unfortunately Janice maybe what comes ahead often these situations is it not that a regime when it feels as weakened as as atayay atollah Khomeini must be right now often this is the moment where they crack down where they return to domestic repression uh in the face of their perceived weakness there's no question about that roger but there is another story too The regime change almost always fails when it comes out of the barrel of a gun. What are the big exceptions to that? You know, the end of World War II, where the allies occupied countries, Germany and Japan,

and then imposed five years of governance until they withdrew, and in many senses, never completely withdrew. That is not on in today's world in any way. And by the way, it's the last thing that Donald Trump wants. He ran against an end to regime change. So I don't, you know, I'm actually relieved that there was no attempt by outsiders, either Israel or the United States, took top of the regime. Ultimately, that has to happen only from inside. by Iranians. And I agree with you that the regime will now become more repressive. And it's going to

become more oppressive for two reasons. One is so weakened and humiliated. But also, let's talk about the fact that it is so penetrated. None of this could have happened without the mass penetrating literally every major security agency inside Iran. So you can just imagine that, the purges that will go on, the hunting for spies, the arrests of people on the slightest suspicion that they are Mossad employees. There will be an element of domestic repression that follows this defeat. And you're right, the Iranian people will be the victims of that. Let's focus on two other things as we try to provide our audience with some higher order analysis. was there a miscalculation, not just, you know, this isn't political statement, but with previous U.S. administrations, looking at this Iranian regime, and for whatever set of circumstances, perceiving a formidable foe, a foe that could destabilize the region, could thwart U.S. interests,

And in response to that, there was a policy and a sense of containment of Israel, a desire that Israel, we know the mantra, always de-escalate, that Israel back off its pursuit of its own security interests primarily through military means and through force. probably this was most evident in the early stages of the aftermath of October 7th where Israel was called off by the Biden administration in attacking Hezbollah. Hindsight is always 2020, but Janice isn't hasn't there in a sense been a bit of a miscalculation about the strength of this Iranian regime about the actual threat that it posed? and do we now need to rethink maybe, recalibrate in ways that de-escalation, the avoidance of conflict, which really became a mantra in Western diplomatic circles for the last decade or more really since the Iran-Iraq War, understandable for that very reason, is that mantra now being challenged by a Trump-Netanyahu doctrine that is much more comfortable with the use of force. And in this circumstance, that use of force potentially we still have to see there's more that can slip between cup and lip,

but that use of force may have yielded an incredible outcome, a transformation of the region in ways that are good, and the de-fenestration of a regime, Iran, that was responsible for horrific acts of terrorism, not just against Israel, but against America. other countries in the world was threatening Gulf states and, you know, regional allies of the West in the Middle East. This was a bad actor for many, many decades. And now that bad actor is in the Dunst's corner. We'll see you know for how long. But surely, Janice, maybe something needs to shift here in this, in the rhetoric of Western diplomacy post-Afghanistan. post-Arak? You know, Richard, I actually think it's more complicated for this reason.

Iran did succeed in building a proxy network that surrounded Israel, where they had the capacity to inflict massive damage on Israel. Now, where does the estimate come from? It does not come from the United States. It came from inside Israel, from its own intelligence agencies, who talked about hundreds of thousands of casualties. If there was a coordinated attack by Hezbollah, Hamas, reinforced by Iran, and these are pretty hard-nosed guys inside. And let's not forget, it was Israel's military and Israel's intelligence that a

two prior attempts by Netanyahu to do what the United States finally did. So what changed? What changed was the decision 15 months almost, or less than 15 months, it's nine months after the October 7th attack, which changed Israeli security culture. That attack changed everything to finally exercise the deceptive strategy that they had put in place for years and to blow up the beepers of Hamas operatives and then go after Hesvah, sorry, of Hesvala operatives, and then go after Hesvala. That was a significant change.

Until that happened, there really wasn't a viable strategy for Israel or for anybody else against Iran in this region. Because the casualty levels were too high. That's all true. But the relentless rhetoric of de-escalation. continued. And if Israel had listened to that and Trump had listened to that, we would not have upset the status quo ante as we have over the last 12 days. Again, we'll have to see, but in ways that we'll have to see very positive for the region and very positive for Israel.

I mean, we've seen the Israeli stock markets sore this week on the basis that it is a fundamental realignment of Israeli security in a very dangerous part of the world. Let's just end on a final point You're one other comment, which is worth making. Iran made the strategic miscalculation when it launched missiles against Israel and opened up a theater of direct conflict. There were two prior rounds, both in which Iran initiated both, all right? That was a huge miscalculation by the Iranian regime, huge. And that's what opened the door for all of this. So there's always a power.

pathway. And these are dynamic situations. And it was only after that that Israeli intelligence really changed its estimates. So I think it's important to remember. Yeah, I think funding and supporting Hamas was also a big mistake on the part of Iran in the final analysis. Let's just end, Janus, on, you know, something where I will admit, you know, some rethinking that, you know, the common, the conventional wisdom post the great financial crisis and the rise of China as a formidable geopolitical competitor to the United States created a theory more than a theory I think a belief on the part of many commentators include myself within them that the world was moving towards something called multipolarity that we were we were exiting the post-cold war era of american dominance into an

era of increased great power competition primarily between China and the United States, but Russia in there too, the so-called BRICS countries, you know, facing off against the West economically and otherwise. And I just wonder if it's worth, you know, all of us maybe reflecting on the last 12 days and especially the last 72 hours with the intervention of the United States into the Israeli-Iran war. And now potentially how this conflict will be resolved, in a sense the president ordering both sides to stand down. And both sides will see, but it looks like it,

you know, heating his calls. It would all suggest, Janice, that maybe those predictions of the demise of America's status as a hyper power were premature, China and Russia have been missing in action the last 12 days. Russia is a key ally to Iran. It provided nothing more than a few platitudes or words of support. China similarly benefits immensely from Iranian oil exports.

The Chinese sat on their hands. Iran was alone. The so-called axis of geopolitical resistance, China, Iran, Russia, seems humbled, seems denuded in the face of an American cluelessons. Colossus, at least in this moment, bestriding the world and bestriding the Middle East. Do we need to recalibrate? Do we need to have a reassessment of American power in the 21st century as a result of this war? You know, I frankly never bought into that argument.

But I do think it's important to recognize that this is American power in the Middle East, where it has more access than any of the other two. Let's just shift the angle of the camera now to Asia. And in the event of any future conflict over Taiwan, that would be a very, very, very different story where virtually any simulation of that conflict that I've seen, any tabletop exercise, underlines the difficulties that the United States would have in getting enough forces in enough time to prevent a whole series of very negative outcomes.

Russia is not a global power. Russia is a real threat to European security, but it has exhausted itself in this futile war against Ukraine and can't deploy anywhere now outside. its own neighborhood. So so much of the world, so much of the world security issues and economic issues throughout you are regionalized. You have to take into account the region in which these issues are unfolding. But overall, anybody who bets on the decline of the United States over the longer term, I think is making a very bad bet. The biggest threat to American security is its governance, its own institutions, and its polarized society, frankly.

Janice is always a fascinating conversation. I'm glad that we could bring this to our audience at a moment of, let's hope, culmination and the opportunity for peace, however, imperfect to evidence itself between Israel. Iran, the United States. And we will continue to talk possibly about a Middle East transformed and the implications of this, not just for the region, but for these bigger geopolitical issues, the balance of power between China, the United States, Russia, and the other competitors of the 21st century. So thank you for coming on the program today and finding some time for us. We'll look forward to our regular edition of Friday Focus. this coming Friday when we're supposed to have the show called Friday Focus on Fridays,

not on Mondays and Tuesdays, but world events have caught us up. See you on Friday, Roger. We'll talk then. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Friday Focus podcast. I'm Roger Griffith. The chair of the Monk Debates. I'm joined on this program each week by Janice Gross Stein,

the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice and I would love to hear your reactions on what you've just heard on today's program and also your thoughts and suggestions about future topics and ideas that we should be covering on Friday Focus. Please send us your suggestions now to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. This podcast is generously underwritten by the Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundation. Visit our website, www.com, to access hundreds of podcasts, dialogues, and debates on all the big issues and ideas shaping our world and driving the public conversation. While you're there, consider upgrading your membership for extra perks like ticketing privileges

to our live debates and gift memberships for friends and family. We'll talk to you again next week. Bye bye for now.