The Opinions - Tom Friedman: ‘This Is One of the Most Remarkable Dramas in the Middle East’

Episode Date: June 18, 2025

As tensions between Iran and Israel escalate, questions are mounting about America’s role in the conflict and how President Trump should navigate the crisis. In this episode, the deputy international editor for Times Opinion, speaks with the columnist Tom Friedman to discuss Trump’s next moves, Iran’s regime and Israel’s intentions in the Middle East.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. The rest of the show's production team includes Derek Arthur, Kristina Samulewski and Jillian Weinberger. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times Opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. I'm Dan Wakeen, an international editor for the New York Times Opinion section. Last week, after Israel launched a missile attack aimed mainly at Iran's nuclear infrastructure, opinion colonist Tom Friedman wrote that the conflict, quote, needs to be added to the list of pivotal, game-changing wars that have reshaped the Middle East since World War II. Of course, how it will reshape the region is still very much in play,

as is what the United States' role should be. To talk this through, I'm joined by Tom now. Welcome, Tom. Great to be with you, Dan. So to start, I'd love for you to explain why you think this particular conflict is likely to be historic. In other words, what exactly is at stake for the region in this back and forth of missile attacks between Israel and Iran? And we're taping this on Tuesday, late morning, so things may well change by the time this publishes.

Well, I point to two things. One is the fact that since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the hostility between the United States and Iran and between Israel and Iran has been one of the most important shaping dynamics in the Middle East. And that conflict has never risen. It's always been under the table. It's never risen to this point of open warfare between Israel and Iran now, attacking each other's countries with missiles, and doing it in a way that suggests that this war will not end without one of two things changing.

One, the regime in Iran, I think that's less likely, and the other Iran's nuclear program. And so if either of those change, it's a fundamental earthquake in the region and so many different relationships will flow from it. The second reason that it's important is that Iran's relationship with the Arab world is also at stake. since 1979, Iran has been engaged in something that is close to a colonial enterprise, in effect, indirectly controlling Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, four Arab capitals. And by doing so, prevented them from falling into any kind of Western camp, any kind of embraced with Israel. In the case of Lebanon and Syria, prevented them from getting on a track to more consensual Western democratic-style government. And so that also is at stake here.

So I can't think of anything I've covered in recent years that is more important than this conflict right now. And how does that relate to U.S. interests? Well, in two ways again, Dan. One is that obviously the Cold War between the United States and Iran since 1979, since the Iranian Revolution, has been one of the most important dynamics in the region and really prevented a more regional integration. and if this conflict we see now in any way ends with regime change in Iran, and I'm not predicting it, but it is in the realm of possibility. And we see the end of the U.S. Iran enmity, that would be huge. at the same time, we've already seen the weakening of Iran

and the weakening of its proxy allies, particularly Hezbollah, has allowed the emergence of a new government in Lebanon with two outstanding leaders, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and the president, Joseph Aboud, and giving Lebanon a chance to actually come together again and repair itself and restore some semblance of its pluralistic democratic roots,

and now the same in Syria. And what is good for Syria and good for Lebanon tends to affect Iraq as well. So there's a lot of potential positive changes that could come about if people in these other countries can take advantage of them and find their own way to more consensual politics. Now that the dead hand of Iran has been removed from the neck of Lebanon and Syria and loosened in Iraq. How much do you think of what Israel is doing is related to? eliminating the nuclear threat or actually carrying out regime change? Well, carrying out regime change through an air war is very difficult.

And even stripping Iran of all its nuclear capacity will be difficult just with aerial bombing. I think that is the number one goal of what Israel is doing, but it's certainly hoping that if Iran is humiliated militarily and stripped of its nuclear capacity, that that could trigger an uprising by the Iranian people or different forces in Iran. Now, to that I would say a couple things. One is, be careful what you wish for, because the thing we have learned from all the uprisings in the Middle East in recent years is that the opposite of autocracy, at least in the Middle East, is not necessarily democracy. We saw the decapitation of Marmar Gaddafi in Libya. It led to basically disorder.

We've seen a similar thing in Yemen. We saw a similar thing in Syria. And so just because you get rid of the mullahs doesn't mean that Thomas Jefferson and friends, and the Iranian equivalents are there at the ready to govern what is a country of 85 million people spread over a vast landmass made up of many different minorities as well,

not just Persians. So I think one should be very humble about that. I don't think anyone should go in with the expectation or aim of regime change. If it happens, and it happens in a positive way, that would be great for Iranians first and foremost and for the region. But I think one should be very careful

of mission creep here. and focus entirely on the effort to use coercive diplomacy to get Iran to abandon its nuclear program once and for all. You just published a column earlier this week that outlines two very different approaches guiding Iran and Israel right now. Can you go into a little detail about what those two approaches are? Well, you know, the Iranians and their proxy, Hezbollah, have always practiced a strategic phenomenon that I call out-crazy,

because they do some crazy stuff. They have been reportedly behind the assassination of Rafiq Hariri, the very fine former Prime Minister of Lebanon. They were behind backing Bashar Assad's murderous putting down of his own people. They are reportedly behind the U.S. embassy bombing and the marine bombing and a whole spate of also attacks on Lebanese journalists. And so these guys play by the local rules. And local rules are no rules at all, and they always think that they can out crazy you.

They help drive the American Marines out of Beirut by blowing up the marine compound with a suicide bomber. The one party they've never been able to out crazy are the Israeli Jews. And you can't out crazy Israel, because while the perception among the Iranians and some of their fellow travelers is Israel is a colonial implant, it is actually not a colonial implant. The Jews are indigenous there, which is to say that. that they're not the Belgian Congo. They have no Belgium to go back to. And so when you try to out-crazy them, they will out-crazy you back.

And that's sort of what you're seeing play out right now. The other strategic framework in the region, which you see over and over again from the Israeli side, is once and for all. So Israelis, after any kind of major Palestinian attack, want to say, we're going to finish this problem now once and for all. That was the mantra of Netanyahu when he went into Gaza after the heinous Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 23.

The only way you get rid of a problem once and for all is either you get rid of all the people, get rid of every last Palestinian, or get rid of every last one of their organizations by occupying them for 50 years and changing the culture, as America did in Japan and Germany after World War II. Otherwise, once and for all doesn't really work. At the end of the day, Israel still needs to find a compromise with Palestinian, and Palestinians need to get their act together to find a compromise with Israelis. But you can't understand what's going on in the Middle East right now if you don't understand that in the Israel-Iran theater,

we're seeing the strategy of, you cannot out crazy me playing out. And between Israelis and Palestinians, we're seeing the flaws of a strategy of, I'm going to finish you off once and for all. So it seems like you think the U.S. can, you know, take a strutely, position in trying to stabilize the region. But should it is the question. And if so, can you walk us through what the Trump administration should do? Well, you know, Trump didn't start this war, but I do think the war, as the 1973 war, enabled Henry Kissinger to deftly shape the

outcome in a way that produced a diplomatic outcome. I think the same is true here. I think Trump has been basically saying to the Iranians, I gave you a chance to negotiate, it, gave you 60 days, you weren't serious. Now, you may want to come back to me because, as you can see, my friend Beebe is crazy. He's crazy. I don't know what he's going to do.

And so he's been using basically Bibi as a club to beat the Iranians back to the table. Is it too late? Are they not willing to come? I don't know. But I think that's what the dynamic is going on right now.

Israel's bound and determined to strip Iran of all its nuclear bomb-making capabilities, including the Fordo in Richmond plant very deep inside a mountain. How they do that with American help or without American help, that's what's being negotiated right now.

What I think the Trump administration should do is give Israel the 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs and the B2 bombers to deliver them and the training of the pilots to deliver them and give Israel that capacity so it can fundamentally threaten Iran by saying that we could destroy, you know, 30% of your television and radio infrastructure, and you need to let the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Commission, into Fordow. You need to turn off all those spinning uranium processing machines, and you need to get out of the nuclear bomb business in a verifiable way. That, to me, would be the best outcome here.

Coercive diplomacy, give Israel the club for real coercion, but negotiate so it doesn't have to use it. That to me is the ideal outcome that President Trump should be working for. Whether he sees that, whether he wants Iran to have any nuclear capacity to be, even for a civilian program, whether he is afraid to have the United States involved directly in military conflict or not, I think that's all to be determined. But this is serious judgment time for Trump. Does he take out the Iranian nuclear program in Fardo by himself, as with the U.S. Air Force? Does he let Israel do it? Does he let nobody do it? I mean, is there any way that Israel could do that on its own,

take out the nuclear capabilities under the mountain in Fordo? We don't think so, and I say we don't think so, because Israel has demonstrated certain capacities in the last week that a lot of people didn't anticipate, the ability to pick off different senior Iranian military leaders from, you know, hundreds and hundreds of miles away. What is Netanyahu's bottom line? I don't think he has one.

And he's kind of riffing as he goes along as well and calculating his interests and harms and benefits of the war. And right now I think he's decided that the benefits will vast overweigh the harms and he's going to do everything he can, I think, to take out the foredo nuclear facility that will require, I think, eventually troops on the ground. That's hard to believe they can do it from the air.

But that's where I think that's going. And there's a lot of attention being paid to President Trump's role or potential role in this. Do you think that's exaggerated? Are people putting too much hope on what he can achieve? It's so hard to know, you know, Dan, Trump oscillates between President of the United States and a commentator on the presidency of the United States. And, you know, one minute he's telling Iranians to get out of Tehran, the other minute he's saying,

well, boy, these guys could really fight it out as if he's, as if he replaced Pete Higgs on the weekend commentary show on Fox. And so you just don't know what comes out of Trump's mouth, whether it's actually strategically planned to send a message, whether someone just put a B on his bonnet and he demanded to go, it could be all of those things. And so it's just not clear to me what the Trump policy is. I have no sources in this administration. I find sources are useless in this administration from afar because everybody's trying to figure out what Trump is going to say, do or tweet, including his secretary of state. Tom, do you think that any good can come out of this conflict?

for the region and for the world? Well, it's a very good question, Dan. And I would just go back to where I began, which is that the Iranian Islamic regime has been a terrible regime, first and foremost, for the Iranian people. It's corrupt. A couple of years ago,

it arrested 20,000 of its own people, killed and executed 500 of them, in an uprising, detained a woman, for not having her head fully covered and then beat her so badly that she died in custody. That's what we're talking about here. It's a regime that has funded militia in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq that work against all the democratic processes in these countries.

And it's a regime that basically has overseen the devastation of the Iranian economy. And this is a, Iran's a serious country. 85 million people. And so if somehow this regime could go peacefully or relatively peacefully and be replaced by a more consensual government in Iran, that would be wonderful. But if it can't, it could be disastrous because Iran is a country that doesn't implode. It would explode. And shards would fall all across the region and all across the oil market.

And how it would be reintegrated or restabilized? I don't know. So I'm trying to be very humble in my analysis. and advocacy. I think we should focus on getting rid of its nuclear capacity to make a bomb

and threaten its neighbors and leave the rest to what the Iranian people decide on the ground. And finally, how do you think Iran perceives the role of the United States here?

You know, I've watched a few interviews from Tehran and, you know, the polling there is that about the regime's popularity stands at about 20%,

you know, it's mostly rural. But if you'd like to educated Iranians, I think they're torn, between Iranian nationalism, which doesn't want to see their country destroyed, that very much believes in Iran's greatness and potential to greatness, given its incredible human talent. And then you have another group, I think they're much smaller, no more than 20 percent, who believe that the Islamic Republic is the greatest thing to ever happened to Iran,

and will stand and fight for it until their dying breath. What will happen here? I just don't know. I mean, if it weren't my own country, I would actually pop, pop, Pull up a chair, put up my feet, and watch this because this is one of the most remarkable dramas in the Middle East in my lifetime, and I'm 71. Thanks so much, Tom. It's been great talking to you. Wonderful. Thank you, Dan. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Veshaka, Christina Samuoski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzik. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amon Sahota. The fact-check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski. The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.