The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Yossi Klein Halevi: why the West must support Israel's war against Iran

Episode Date: June 16, 2025

Rudyard is joined by celebrated American-Israeli author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi to talk about the ongoing war between Iran and Israel. Yossi explains why this attack has almost unanimous support within Israel and how everything changed after October 7th: a collapse in the illusion that they could live next to a genocidal regime whose stated goal is to eradicate them. Israelis, he says, will not make the same mistake twice. Furthermore, Jews have learned from the past that when your enemy threatens to destroy you, take them at their word. Yossi goes on to explain how Israel hopes to trigger an uprising in Iran against a widely detested regime. How do you activate the disaffected silent majority? Will the people of Iran feel emboldened to take to the streets in this rare opportunity? And finally, Yossi has a message to the West: there should be no moral confusion or ambiguity. This should be a moment when the West rallies behind Israel. And if the US, Canada, and Europe aren't prepared to actively support Israel, at the very least they should not undermine its efforts. 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.

If you're not going to actively support us, don't undermine us. We are doing this job for ourselves, first of all, but we're also doing it for the West. And sometimes I wonder if the West really wants to be safe. Welcome to this special edition of Monk Dialogues. Rudyard Griffiths here, your chair and moderator. Real pleasure to welcome onto the program today, someone that we've consistently gone back to at the Monk Dialogues to understand Israel, to understand this remarkable moment facing the Jewish state.

He's Yossi Klein-Halevi, internationally celebrated author, speaker, and podcaster, extraordinaire. Yossi, great to be in conversation with you. Great to be with you, Richard. Always good to be back. One of the reasons I was so keen for our staff to reach out and try to get you on the program this week, and thank you for finding time for us in an extraordinary circumstance.

is your longstanding belief that Iran and the threat that Iran represented to the Jewish state had to be resolved. It had to culminate in something like what we are seeing this weekend, what is now underway, war between Israel and Iran. Take us back to your thinking 20 odd years ago, Yossi, when you began articulating the case for why Iran was an existential threat, why specifically the threat of an Iranian bomb, an atomic weapon, was something that the Jewish state not only had to take seriously, but something that the Jewish state could not live with.

There's a longstanding principle in Israel that goes back to Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the 1970s, that the Jewish state would have no meaning, almost no right to legitimacy, if it allowed enemies with genocidal intentions to develop the means to fulfill them. And Manachem Begin was the prime minister who presided over the destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981 at El Syrac. and established what became known as the Began Doctrine. In 2007, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was more on the left, adopted the Began Doctrine and destroyed the North Korean-provided Syrian nuclear reactor. And so what we're seeing playing out today in Iran is part of a very long,

standing Israeli policy that goes back many decades. For me, the decisive factors really were, first of all, the Iranian obsession with destroying Israel, the fact that Iranian leaders have made this a central pillar of the identity of the Islamic Republic. The destruction of the Jewish state is not incidental. In some ways, it defines the Islamist movement generally and the Iranian Islamist regime in particular. This is a regime that has a doomsday clock mounted in a central square in Tehran. that's keeping track of how many days are left until Israel's destruction.

And it's based on the calculations of Chameh, the supreme leader, as he calls himself, of the Islamic Republic, who in 2015 predicted that Israel had 25 years left before it would be destroyed. And so you have a clock mounted in Tehran and copycat clocks around the country, keeping track of how many days are left until January 2020, 2140. And so this obsession with the destruction of Israel is something that is very familiar in Jewish history. We know that when there are enemies whose goal it is, whose main goal it is to destroy the Jews, take them seriously. And in the last century, we have faced, the Jewish people has faced three existential threats by totalitarian regimes or ideologies that defined the Jews as, as, as their greatest obstacle to world domination.

The first, of course, was Nazi Germany. The second was the Soviet Union, Soviet communism. And the third, the latest iteration, is radical Islamism. And after going through one wave after another of existential threat by totalitarian ideologies, we've learned to take that seriously. And the last point here is October 7th. I think that for most Israelis, the Iranian nuclear threat is no longer framed through the Holocaust, which is really receding in many ways into history.

The much more immediate experience is October 7th. And what we experience in the Hamas massacre of October 7th was the collapse of our illusion that we could continue to live normal lives next to a july. genocidal regime in Gaza that continuously told us they were going to do in October 7th. And so what we, we woke up on October 8th with the determination that we are not going to make the same mistake twice. And if you have a regime that tells you, we plan to destroy you, and they are five minutes from achieving a nuclear bomb, then that's a, the wake-up call. If anything, we waited almost too late for this moment. Yeah. Let's talk a

little bit more about that, because I think it's something Yossi that audiences here in North America don't either understand or appreciate as much as they should, that after October 7th, Israeli security doctrine changed, that there was a, let's call it an appreciation, unfortunately, a renewed appreciation for the real risks that fanaticism in its various forms directed against Israel represented. And therefore, the tolerance of risk decreased. Do you think, Yosey, that was a big part of why Thursday's attack happened? Is that simply after October 7th, there is a different doctrine operating.

It may not be fully expressed, fully articulated, but something changed on that day. And what happened on Thursday, you can draw a line of causality directly back between last Thursday and that horrible morning of October 7th. October 7 was so decisive in understanding what's playing out now that I would call this the October 7 doctrine. And what collapsed on October 7, again, was the illusion that we could somehow continue with normal life, a thriving economy, a contentious but lively society, thriving arts, that all this can somehow go on while we are surrounded on almost every border by Islamist, and Islamic. Violationist entities. And with Chisbalah in the north, we had a kind of a balance of terror. We have enough missile power to deter you.

You have enough missile power to deter us. With Hamas, the way that Netanyahu played this disastrously was to encourage Qatar to pour in massive funds into Gaza, which went straight into the Hamas, war machine, the massive network of tunnels that Hamas built under Gaza, something like 400 kilometers of tunnels under this little strip, was paid for by Qatar and facilitated by the Israeli government under the disastrously mistaken idea that we could buy quiet. And what we learned was there is no balance of terror and ultimately there's no way of buying

quiet because sooner or later a genocidal regime is going to act under threats. And so what's playing out now in Iran is the very belated Israeli wake up and that we now realize that you can't manage existential threat. And if there was any, if there was any temptation, among Israeli policymakers before October 7th to finesse the Iranian threat, to say, you know what, we can maintain a balance of terror because we, after all, are also a nuclear power. Today, that's almost completely gone from Israeli thinking. And what you have, to an extraordinary degree today, is virtually wall-to-wall support for the Israeli strike in Tehran.

From the Israeli left, through the center, through the right, there is virtual unanimity that Israel had no choice. And this is the very definition of an existential war. Let's shift to here now and what you think may happen next. We're seeing after Israel's remarkably effective commencement of, I think, Yossi, we could say the next phase in a war that really began over a year ago with the first large scale. Iranian missile attack of last April, 24. We're now 72 plus hours into this. It seems as if the IDF now has dominance of Iranian airspace, especially over Tehran.

We're seeing, unfortunately, Iranian missiles, a few of them making it their way through, Israel's missile defense systems. What's your feeling here, Yose, is this, is this culminating? There are reports that I've read that the IDF is saying they are now five to seven days ahead of schedule, ahead of where they thought they would be today. So I don't know. If you take that as fact, where does that mean where we are right now? And is this, in a sense, going to move towards something more decisive faster maybe than people originally thought?

So first of all, I would just widen the lens and place what's happening now in the context of the last year and a half of war. And what began on October 7th was not the Hamas-Israeli war or the Chisbalah or Houthi-Israeli war. It was the Iranian-Israeli war. And until now, that war has been largely fought via Iran-Iran. proxies. Now we're fighting the war directly with the source of the conflict. And so I think that that's really important to understand how Israeli strategists are framing this conflict. And this is really what's playing out now in Iran is the culmination of this year and a half war. Now, I don't know what the strategy is. You know, this can go in several directions.

One is the U.S. can step in and force Israel into a ceasefire. If the U.S. decides to turn off the supply route of ordinance, then we'll be able to continue this war, perhaps a few more days, another week. Right now, there are no signs that President Trump is planning to do that. But as we all know, he's erratic. And we don't know. And there are competing camps within his administration. There's the isolationist camp. And there is the old Republican interventionist camp. And they're all sitting around the table. And there seems to be a stalemate between these two groups. Another way that this can play out is that we're given enough time to severely weaken the regime.

I think we're well on the way to achieving that. And with the hope that this would trigger an uprising within the Iranian population. Now, we know that the regime is widely detested. But we also know that as in any revolution, the percentage of activists of people willing to go into the streets is limited. The question is, how do you reach, how do you activate the disaffected silent majority? And if this war goes badly enough for the regime, if the regime continues to lose credibility, then I think we're, this is the best chance that the Iranian people have had to cast off this regime. And I hope that we'll be given enough time. And, and you know, these insipid calls for

mutual restraint and ceasefire, and to my deep regret as someone who loves Canada and has deep family connections in Canada, it's coming from the Canadian government as well. a complete lack of understanding of the opportunity of this moment and of the threat posed by radical Islamism. And there is in the West, in a large part of the West, an inability to recognize threat and an unwillingness to confront threat. Now, Israel isn't better or worse than any other Western country. the only difference between Israel and other Western countries is we don't have a choice. We're living in the middle of radical Islamist, the radical Islamist art line. And we have been declared their enemy, their number one enemy.

And so for us, it's a simple matter of existence. But that creates an opportunity for the rest of the West to, if you're not going to actively support us, don't undermine us. We are doing this job for ourselves, first of all, but we're also doing it for the West. And sometimes I wonder if the West really wants to be saved. And, you know, we look back at the various opportunities, different presidents, might have had to stop North Korea for achieving a nuclear bomb, flash forward 15 years or so from the inflection point that Israel has now stepped into with Iran. And we have a North Korea equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles that can threaten not only the West Coast

of the United States, but the West Coast of Canada too. So I take your point, Josie, that Israel is doing it for itself, but the threat of a nuclear Iran, And the neutralization of that threat is a boon for global peace and global security. There's a crucial difference here between Iran and North Korea. North Korea doesn't have regional ambitions. Well, maybe it hopes to conquer South Korea at some point. Iran has regional ambitions. It already controls and has effectively destroyed four Arab countries.

Iran, it was controlling Syria and Libya. And so you have, and to some extent, Iraq. And you can see that wherever Iran has penetrated, the social structure has unraveled. And the economy is unraveled. Iran is the kiss of death. And its ambitions are regional, if not global. And so the threat of Iran, and of course, the Middle East with its oil reserves is such a strategically significant area. So that when you factor in all of this, this should be a moment when the West rallies behind Israel. And there's no moral ambiguity here. This is not the war in Gaza. And I understand, you know, I understand the criticism of the war in Gaza to some extent.

It's been devastating. And the consequences of that war have been horrific. I think there's a very good argument to be made for why Israel needs to fight that war. But I also understand the criticism. Here, the moral clarity of Israel's position is. so is so overwhelming that it frankly amazes me that so much of the West is missing what's happening. Yeah. So let's just talk a little bit. Penultimate question here is about the moral confusion of the West. Because one thing I've been trying to understand, and maybe you can help me

with the COC, is that with regards to, let's say even Canadian attitudes towards the war in Ukraine, Ukraine recently went into Russia, deep into Russia, used drones, just like Israel used drones in the opening salvos of this attack on Thursday. In the Ukrainian case, those drones were used to attack Russia's strategic nuclear bombing force. Again, parallels here between the two countries and the two conflicts. Canadian politicians, leaders and others lauded Ukraine for that attack, for all of its attacks on Russia, who, like Israel, Ukraine has been the subject of relentless aggression and attacks by an outside party, just like Iran has relentlessly attacked Israel through its proxies. And let's remember, as of last April, attacked Israel directly with its ballistic missile forces.

Yet, Yossi, we have a situation where our leaders celebrate Ukraine. As you say, they see it as an unambiguous good that Ukraine is fighting back and doing so directly. That same moral clarity, which I will salute them for showing towards Ukraine, is not extended to Israel. So I ask you, is the answer to this, Okam's razor, that we go back to anti-Zionism, that what's behind all of this It's just a different set of rules, a different set of understandings applied to the Jewish state versus any other state in a similar circumstance. Well, there's certainly a double standard that's applied to Israel. And Ukraine is really a classic example. But I think the problem goes deeper, which is that the anti-Zionist movement and radical Islamism,

generally, has succeeded to a remarkable extent in placing a question mark over the legitimacy of a Jewish state. In a world where there are 57 Muslim states, I don't know if you have any of them that could really be considered a democracy. And yet there's no question about the legitimacy of any other country on the planet except the Jewish state. And even if all of the accusations, all the lies and half-truths of Israel's enemies were true, it still would not explain why Israel is the only country in the world among all the beautiful countries that exist. And yes, I'm being ironic.

that only Israel's right to exist is somehow conditioned on its moral behavior. And I won't speculate about the reason for this, but I will tell you that I personally refuse to defend Israel's right to exist. There is no phrase that I detest more than Israel's right to exist, even when it comes from, really, from well-meaning friends. We support Israel's right to exist. You know, I was speaking with a group of German journalists who were visiting Israel. And one of them said, we in Germany were very pro-Israel. We support your right to exist. And I said, well, you know, in Israel, we're very pro-German.

We support your right to exist. And so there was nervous laughter. And people began to realize that maybe they were setting the bar a little too low for what the Germans being pro-Israel. And so, no, I will not be grateful for an affirmation of my right to exist. Criticize. Criticize Israel. And we deserve criticism.

And like any other country, and certainly some of our policies really need to be to be scrutinized. But how do we get so quickly from critiquing Israel's policies to critiquing Israel's existence? Yeah. That's the question that for me is the question for Israel of this time. Final question, Yossi, what are remarkable 600 plus days? I mean, from that, as you say, probably the biggest low of Israel since its founding on October 7th through to the war in Gaza. And we agree with you. There's lots to criticize in that war.

but nonetheless, there's been been success in terms of the denuding of Hamas as a military threat. Then the turn north and the remarkable defenestration of Hezbollah, something that people simply thought couldn't be done. That's literally the right word. Yeah. And now the turn towards Iran. And in 72 hours, reports that over a third of Iran's ballistic. missile force has been destroyed, that the command and control staff, you know, from intelligence chiefs through to nuclear scientists, through to top military brass eliminated, and the airspace

now controlled over Tehran. What does this say to you, Yossi, that the child of Holocaust survivors? This is a challenging moment, surely for Israel, but boy, Yossi, there must be a feeling in your country of just the accomplishment, the delivering on your raison d'etre, which is to create a nation that expresses Jewish power and does so, you know, in service of your community and in service, I'll say it, of your right to exist. This, I don't know, I just, I'm not Israeli, but I can only imagine what this feels like to go from that low of October 7th to today. I think you've summed it up precisely. The deepest trauma of October 7th, even more than the atrocities and the mass casualties

was the fact that that happened within the borders of the sovereign Jewish state, that we were not able to protect our own people. And this is a country that in 1976 and commandos, halfway across, Africa to rescue 100 Israelis who had been hijacked in Antibbe Airport, and yet we couldn't save 1,200 Israelis who were literally a few meters away from army bases. And that is the profound psychological blow of October 7. Everything that's playing out now is our attempt to, from, from, from. of all, reassure ourselves and reassure the Jewish people around the world that the covenant

that the state of Israel made with the Jewish people, that we would provide the bottom line refuge if needed for Jews anywhere in the world is still holding. And so I think that really beyond the strategic considerations, this is really a test- case for for the promise that Israel made to itself and and to the Jewish people. And never again means never again. Never again means never again. Yose Kline-Halevi, thank you so much for this conversation at a time, a remarkable time for your country, for you.

We just think of you, your family, everyone there in Israel. Hearts and prayers go out to you. And we look forward to continuing these conversations. Thank you for your friend. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating.

Thank you again for listening.