June 19, 2025 • 37 mins
Newt talks with Behnam Ben Taleblu, Senior Director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Iran program, who provides insights into the significance of Israel's bombing campaign, the historical context of the conflict, and the potential involvement of the United States. Their discussion centers on the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran, marked by Israel's surprise attack on Iranian targets, including nuclear sites, and Iran's retaliatory missile strikes on Israeli cities. Taleblu discusses the ideological and technical challenges within Iran's regime, the impact of Israeli intelligence and military strategy, and the broader implications for regional stability and US foreign policy. They conclude with a discussion on the possibility of regime change in Iran and the role of the Iranian diaspora in rebuilding the nation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On this episode of News World. On Friday, June thirteenth,
Israel launched a surprise attack on dozens of targets inside Iran,
including nuclear sites, and killed many of the Iranian military's
top leaders. Israeli strikes have killed at least two hundred
and twenty four people in Iran and injured hundreds more.
On Monday, Iran struck back with a barrage of ballistic missiles,
(00:27):
hitting several Israeli cities and killing at least twenty four people.
But the question remains, will the United States joined the conflict?
Here to discuss the Israeli Iranian conflict, I'm really pleased
to welcome my guest, benham Ben Talablue, senior director of
the Foundation for Defensive Democracies Iran program, which, whether it
(00:47):
is something I pay constant attention to, the Foundation for
Defensive Democracies is a remarkable institution. Ben, I'm welcome and
thank you for joining me on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's a pleasure to be back with you, sir. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
This is an amazing time that we're chatting. Can you
help us understand the scale and significance of Israel's campaign
and why it is different from past campaigns.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, first and foremost, this is the longest ever. We're
in day five right now of the overt Israeli Ron
shooting war, but this is the longest ever campaign on
Iranian territory since the nineteen seventy nine revolution that follows
the nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty eight Iran Iraq War
that was actually the longest conventional war of the twentieth century.
(01:42):
It's something that is often forgotten in history books. Since
the nineteen seventy nine revolution, Iran has carried out a
shadow war, a proxy war against Israel that really came
to a head and the post October sevent mid least,
when it crept out of the shadows twice, once in
April and once in October with direct ballistic missile attacks
from Iranian territory to Israeli territory, something we never saw
(02:05):
even during the Cold War, meaning a non nuclear weapons
state fire nuclear capable ballistic missiles at a nuclear weapons
state and then lived to tell the tale. These attacks
by Israel on June twelve, June thirteen were coordinated, they
were synchronized. They took out the military brain trust of
the Islamic Revolutionary guardcore the regime even in day five,
if you asked me, is still phased, is still struggling
(02:28):
to respond and Israel if we're looking at the military
performance of this, and I'm happy to get the politics
and the nuclear side as well, if we're looking at
the military performance to this, they have taken the regime's
greatest quantitative assets, it's ballistic missile arsenal, which is the
largest in the entire Middle East, and quickly attriting it
and cutting it such that the regime is facing a
(02:49):
user lose problem as well as of course what to fire,
because the Israelis have actually created a drone base on
Iranian territory that is targeting Iranian ballistic missiles as soon
as they pop up on their launchers before they can
be fired. So it's turned the regime's quantitative advantage on
its head, and the longer this conflict goes on, the
million dollar question will increasingly become what role will Uncle
(03:12):
Sam play? What role would the US play in all
of this? And what role can the Iran people play
in all of this?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
The Israeli campaign clearly had been planned for months and
they'd thought it all through, and they have remarkable penetration
of Iran. I've been watching a TV series you may
have seen called Tehran, which is basically the Mozad operating
literally inside Iranian territory with help from Iranians who are
(03:38):
either opposed to the regime or for some other reason
are willing to work with the Israelis. And apparently, if
I understand it, one of the pieces of this campaign
was that actually built the equivalent of a drone factory
inside Tehran and launched drones from inside Tehran against various
(03:59):
Iranians assets in a way which is almost like science fiction.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Like science fiction but also part of the reality of
I would really say the two decade chasm that we've
seen between the state in Iran and the street in Iran,
because let me tell you, sir I know you've mentioned
this before, the people in Iran are no fans of
the government in Iran. But also the people in Iran
are quite patriotic, quite nationalist. I myself of the first
generation American of the Iranian ancestry and born and raised
(04:27):
here in the States. Sometimes it's quite obviously Iranians are
among the most nationalistic of any peoples in the region.
So one could say how would this happen in an
exceptionally nationalist population where the conventional wisdom is that if
there was an attack, they would always be a rally.
And it is because of the chasm between the state
and the street. It is because of the fact that
the regime is Islamist and the people is nationalists, because
(04:51):
the regime is old and the people are young, and
these two things are like water and oil. And the
Iranian people have been saying this loud and proud in
their multiple iterations anti regime protest, even dating back in
two thousand and nine, when they said, not Gaza, not Lebanon,
my life only before Iran. And you've seen Iranian policy
go exactly one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction,
(05:12):
sacrificing the Iranian national interest and the public good and
the health and welfare of the average Iranian on the
altar of exporting the nineteen seventy nine revolution to the
Eastern Mediterranean. I have to tell you there was a
story in Axios this weekend that reminded me of something
a actual former Iranian intelligence minister had said. It was
(05:32):
an intelligence minister from the mid twenty tens who was
saying this in twenty twenty one, and he was saying
that the level of Mosad penetration in Iran is astronomical,
And he was saying this in twenty twenty one, so
imagine what it must be in twenty twenty five. And
he essentially intonated that at that time, no regime official
should sleep safely at night because of this level of penetration.
(05:56):
And he actually blamed it, he himself a cleric, he
himself an eye, he himself an intel minister. He blamed
it on the regime's ideology and its warring factions, and
it's creating of a state within the state, and just
looking from the outside, the regime has been policing cyberspace,
the regime has been policing hijabs. But the gross incompetence
of the regime, coupled with the population's willingness to contest
(06:19):
this regime at any cost, is exactly how, in my view,
you get the Israelis to be able to build its
own base right under the nose of the Ietolas.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I'm curious about this because there's an argument apparently underway
that the establishment, including the intelligence community, had given the
Iranians pretty high level of capability, But there were analysts
who deeply disagreed and said, look, this kind of a
regime can't be very competent because it's not going to
(06:48):
be able to reward merit, and it's not going to
be able to promote people purely based on merit because
it'll be so busy first of all, being corrupted financially
and second worried about abs loyal to the Ayatola. And
it does seem that in many ways, starting with a
remarkable Israeli campaign in the spring where they gain total
(07:10):
air dominance to an embarrassing degree for the Russians, prove
that American technology was simply generations ahead of the Russian
air defense systems. But if you come all the way
through this, it does seem like there's a certain lacking
level of just plane everyday competence in the Iranian system
(07:31):
right now.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Certainly, And if you're starting at a baseline negative number,
once that negative number meets an exogenous shock like four
point thirty in the morning, your entire military commanding heights,
your entire strategic brain trust being killed in a missile attack,
then you're going to be performing even worse. So it's
going to take quite a bit of time to get
out a hole. And that's what I mean when I
(07:54):
say I think even in day five of this conflict,
the regime itself is quite shattered. And you mentioned this
ideological versus technical versus competency Paradigmond problem, and these things
are found these warring with one another in various elements
of the Iranian system, in the political establishment, in the
military establishment, in the security services, even within the clergy.
(08:16):
You see this tug of war between politics and competence,
and this is a regime that actually rewards loyalty rather
than that competence. There is a phrase in Persian. I'll
say it came from the Cultural Revolution in the nineteen
eighties when the Homaanists were purifying the universities and everything else.
The phrase was takva not tavona, meaning righteousness not competence.
(08:40):
They would reward righteousness, they would reward loyalty, and like
any other authoritarian regime that is remotely afraid of anything military,
they engage in coup proofing, just as next door neighbor
former Saddam used to do. And this is a very
toxic combination. If you are unpopular and you're also trying
to literally fight technologically superior adversaries like the Israelis or
(09:02):
even the Americans. So this was all a witches brew
in my view.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
From that perspective, I've written several things arguing that the
real goal has to be a regime change, not just
taking out the nuclear system, because if they take out
the nuclear system, but the regime says in charge, eventually
they'll rebuild it. So if you're really serious about getting
to a peaceful, long thirty forty to fifty year coexistence,
(09:29):
you really have to find a way to break the
entire system of the Mollah dictatorship. What would your take
on that be.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I think we have to have at this point in
time the courage of our convictions to say that two
words that are perhaps the fifth rail of politics in Washington, DC,
which is regime change. As we speak, there's a huge
Republican I don't want to say civil war, but a
huge Republican internal struggle over the soul of the party,
over what kind of Republican state craft we're going to
see in the twenty first century. I think Donald Trump
(09:59):
has done a good job balancing these two competing visions
and value sets of isolationism versus internationalism. They're both organic
in the American policy and body politique. But as it
relates to Iran, there aren't many places in the Middleast,
with the exception of Israel, where you can marry your
head and your heart. And given that, politically, voters in
(10:19):
this country have been voting to do less in the
Middle East and not more. Since the Bush Too administration,
every president has come in Obama, Trump bied in Trump
again trying to actually deliver on that promises and getting
stuck back in. I think the only real way you
create the political space to do that and deal with
great power competition is if you flip the script on
the iatolas. Because there's no straight line in the world
(10:42):
where you appease the ietolas and counter the CCP. You
have to deal with the most urgent state threat there.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Trump has been shifting. He's always said pretty clearly there
cannot be an Iranian nuclear weapon. They did a lot
of dances and met and all that stuff for sixty days,
but the bottom line was always if we have a deal,
it's going to mean no nuclear weapons. And now I
noticed in the last few days he's moving towards basically
(11:09):
saying to the Iranians, you know, it'd be very smart
of you to surrender before you're annihilated, which is a
pretty bleak direct statement. And my sense is that this
growing awareness that the nuclear program was much bigger than
we expected, the effort to build next generation ballistic missiles
(11:33):
that would have been extraordinarily dangerous to Israel are much bigger,
and I think for a lot of US, and I
think for almost all israelis the pictures of Iranian missiles
hitting Tehran and the simple thought what if one of
them had had a nuclear warhead pretty much has hardened
(11:54):
the line of both Israel and the Trump administration. At
least that's my sense. That we're now into struggle that's
probably not going to end with the Iatola still being
in charge.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I think we could go based on the very fast
moving facts of the Crown, we could be going in
that direction. I still think the President means what he
says when he intonated ever since, even before entering office,
when he was campaigning in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, that
he quote buys bad deals and makes them into good deals,
and that he tried to fix the Iran deal first,
and that he spent some time trying to negotiate it
(12:28):
now again in term two. I do think in that
world the president may see is really military action and
is really military prowess as actually a source of leverage.
To tell comedy. Listen, I'm the only thing that is
standing between you and certain death coming from these Raelies.
So dismantle or die. Dismantle or watch your program be
dismantled for you, or potentially even wash your regime be
(12:50):
dismantled for you. I mean, this has great implications for
the future of US foreign policy in the region, for sure,
as well as for the future of the US Israel
relationship based on how such a thing would be done.
But I certainly see the President trying to maximize all
of his options here, both on the diplomatic front, to
drive an exceptionally hard bargain, to make the IE tool,
(13:11):
to know that there is no way out but through.
To basically get the second Supreme Leader of Iran to
do what the first Supreme Leader of Iran did, which
is to realize what he's losing, as Komeni did in
the end of the Iran Iraq War, to drink the
proverbial poison chalice, but Also, I think the president actually
has to have what the forgive me the nine to
eleven Commission report warned about, which is imagination, and we
(13:34):
have to see this as an imagination issue. We have
to dare to imagine a fundamentally different Iran that doesn't
perpetually sucker the US in with a missile issue, woul
drone issue, with terrorism issue, a nuclear issue, that we
get to drive the conversation, and that fundamentally we will
always be reacting to something so long as this regime
is there and in power.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I mean assumes to me. Well, Trump has not talked
about regime change. The standard he's setting for an agreement
is almost impossible for this regime to achieve. It's pretty
clear that Trump is going to insist that they dismantle
all of It seems to mean that for the regime,
(14:33):
for the dictatorship, it may literally not be able to
handle the stress of that agreement.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
That certainly is one view and is one reason why
many believe that Hamine has rejected obviously the dismantlement's lingo,
and it is also why he's held firm on something
like uranium and richmond, which, by the way, Iran has
not stopped doing for a single day since August two
thousand and six. I mean, that's the thing that really
got us into this crisis. Believe it or not, there
was a time when Europe and Russia and China and
(15:01):
America were passing multiple UN Security Council resolutions, all united
in the belief that there should be no enrichment in
the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly so long as they
were violating their safeguards agreements. But here we are nearly
two decades later and facing literally the exact same problem.
I think that is one theory, and another is that
I think you can get the Iatolas who fundamentally love
(15:24):
life more than you and me. You know, there's this
picture even among some of our friends, more republican or
more hawkish foreign policy circles, that see things through the
prism of ideology. And absolutely you have to understand the
revolutionary and Islamist and authoritarian ideology of Iran's clerics. It's
Islamism and Marxism and third Worldism and all of those dangerousisms.
(15:45):
But we shouldn't be ideological about ideology. And what I
mean by that is, if you speak to people who've
come from Iran. More recently, you will see that a cleric,
a theocrat is actually one of the most corrupt, opportunistic
peoplelog and ends as well as a means to an
end for those types of people. And I think in
that kind of world, if they are really put to
(16:06):
the choice, if Trump really grabs their jugular, maximum pressure,
could work, could deliver. You have to put the adversary
in the position to have to make a mistake, to
drive them to choose between again their economy or the bomb,
or a dismantling or dying, to make it a lose
lose no matter what. And the art of the deal
is constantly making your adversary settle for the least bad
(16:28):
option with as little cost to you as possible. So
I think there was potential there for that. But nonetheless,
we are where we are now, and I think Trump's
leverage has significantly increased, but less we forget, ideology is
still powerful. There is a world in which the regime
does not want to take the Nathan Donald Trump, even
though technically they already have because for seven years they
said no negotiations with Trump, and then spring twenty twenty five, Okay,
(16:52):
we'll negotiate with Trump so long as it's indirect.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And now, of course they're saying, you know, we'll be
glad to igo share with Trump if it was just
get as well as to stay up. Suddenly he's becoming
more desirable by comparison. One of the things I was
struck with, and I know you must have seen the
same thing, was the video of the Israelis hitting the
Iranian state broadcasting system. You may know since you speak
Farsi what she was saying at that moment, but had
(17:18):
a little bit of a throwback to Bagdad Bob, you know,
we can hang tough. This is not that bad. And
suddenly the studio gets bombed. Did you think that had
any significance? And do you think that it sent any
signal to the Iranian people about what was going on?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
It absolutely had immense significance, both technical and political, because
this is a TV station that is the state broadcasting
arm of the government of the Islamic Republic that brings
the regimes, views, values, and interest onto the TV screens
and multimedia of Iranian citizen v This is a TV
station I think was sanctioned under the Obama administration, if
(17:57):
I'm not mistaken, So way back in the day. It
coordinates with the Ministry of Intelligence and Islamic Revolutionary Guard corp.
It airs tortured and false confessions of everybody, from Iranian
reformists to regular citizens to even dual nationals. It's parated.
It really is spewing the invected and is synonymous with
that kind of corrupt revolutionary resistance ideology. And you are right,
(18:20):
if memory serves me correct. She was going on the presenter,
I think, was going on a ti rate about resistance
in America and then had to obviously flee the scene
because of the strike. But there's also an equally chilling,
powerful video from a little bit later on of that
strike that was also making its way around on Persian
social media. And it was from a distance seeing that building.
(18:41):
It's the Irib Islamic Republic of Iran broadcasting. It was
that building in Tehran viewed from a distance, potentially from
a camera or drone, who knows, with the call to
prayer in the background, and the entire edifice of this
one building, nothing else but just this one building burning
and with black smoke rising. And that is the kind
of stuff that in the medium term, not right now,
(19:03):
because bombs are still falling, and Iranian citizens, regardless of
their political orientation, are all in survival mode, particularly the
nearly ten million that live in the capital Tehran. But nonetheless,
this is the stuff that can stiffen the spine of
anti regime Iranians. And you know, if I had one
second to advertise to the Israelis, you know I'm not
here in the strike world. I still think there was
(19:24):
room for a lot more maximum pressure. But the Israelis
need to be translating these targets, emotionally, translating these targets
for the Iranian audience. Why is it important that the
Israelis have struck Irib? Why is it important that these
rallies have struck the commander of the Aerospace Force. It's
not just because this guy had his finger on the
trigger of the missiles going to Israel. It's because that
(19:44):
guy in January twenty twenty fired on a civilian airlinerer
killing over one hundred and seventy innocent people. Israel is
also dismantling the apparatus of repression, and that's why this
strike on Irib the television is very politically and technically
significant in my view.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
To take a point view reference. In twenty twenty two,
the US to part of the treasure this is under
Biden released the press really saying they're designating the IRIB
in its subsidiaries not as objective media outlets, but rather
as a critical tool in the Iranian government's mass suppression
and censorship campaign against its own people. They went on
(20:25):
to say IRIB has produced and recently broadcast televised interviews
of individuals being forced to confess that their relatives were
not killed by Iranian authorities during nationwide protests, but died
due to accidental, unrelated causes. And I assume that related
back to about two years ago when they killed five
hundred people for being part of an effect demonstrations exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
It was the post twenty twenty two to twenty three
women life freedom movement that was triggered by the killing
of an innocent girl in Tehron who was twenty two
years old, was Massa Gina Amini for not properly wearing
her her job. She was beaten by security forces and
then sustained major mortal wounds that led to her death
just a few days later in a hospital in Tehran.
(21:12):
Actually separated from her family and protests began that fall
twenty twenty two and mushroomed into the biggest ever anti
regime protests we saw since the nineteen seventy nine revolution.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
This is a regime where a young lady who didn't
totally cover her hair, if I'm mon correctly, she had it,
but it wasn't totally covered somehow infuriated the guards and
they beat her to death, and then that led to
a huge public outrage, which they then suppressed, I think
with about five thousand arrests and five hundred killings.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And they followed that. There was a less advertised story,
but we actually had FTD. We created a tracker of
it because living and working in Washington, there's plenty of
NGOs talk about women's rights and human's rights. We noticed
there was a whole string of attacks on young schoolgirls,
almost something out of the playbook of the Taliban, but
by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And
(22:04):
they were basically chemical attacks, causing tons of basically young
teenage and preteen girls who are going to school to
get sick. And this, in our view, was a direct campaign,
a state campaign against the next generation of Iran's best
and brightest female youth, and this I think was some
crazy deterrent basically WMD use by the state against society
(22:27):
to instill fear. So yes, they married that campaign of
killing and arrest and detention with this CW campaign as well,
which is really horrifying.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
This is one of those rare regimes. They're not quite
as bad as the Syrians we used to be, but
they're very close. This is one of the worst regimes
in the world in terms of how it oppresses its
own people well at the same time threatening off of
its neighbors. Now I've noticed this with Hamas and Hezbollah
and now with the Iranians, that the Israelis really focused
(22:58):
on taking out the leadership and seem to have an
amazing level of intelligence about where they're going to be.
They wiped out, I think virtually all the Hesbalal leadership
in one meeting. They wiped out virtually all of the
Iranian Air Force leadership and one meeting. I mean, how
do they do all that?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
They did all that, I think through a combination of
I'm no espionage scholar, but through a combination based on
what's been reported, through a combination of human intel and
assumedly signals, intel, so tech and human sources, probably being
able to follow some folks around, being able to tap
into the electronic systems. And again, these are the folks
that are at the commanding heights of the Islamic republics,
political and military establishments. As we mentioned earlier, these are
(23:39):
folks who are not necessarily promoted for their capability. They're
promoted and rewarded for their loyalty. There's a couple exceptions
here too, very lethal, very nasty individuals, but also very
very capable and competent, and I always do fear a
very competent adversary. I think the Commander of the Aerospace
Force Hodgizada and the Armed Forces General Staff Bobbery. These
(24:01):
were people known to Iran watchers to be a little
bit unlike their colleagues, were actually technically and politically savvy,
not that much evidence of financial or political corruption, but
real true believers and a capable, ideological but lethal adversary. Nonetheless,
they still were obviously able to be surveilled, and the
Israelies went after them to induce this surprise effect, to
(24:24):
induce this shock that when you saw the reporting about
all of these IRGC folks in one place or all
of these nuclear scientists too, which is a separate story
targeted in Tehron at the same time. I think it
was four thirty in the morning, if I'm not mistaken.
It was very reminiscent of what we all watched on
the news back in September twenty twenty four with the
Pajer gate and the Deeper gate in Lebanon, and that
(24:46):
just goes to show you how effective the intelligence arem
of Israelis and how critical intelligence is to even a
conventional war fighting campaign.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
So the Israelis hit them and I think pretty powerful
initial round, but the Iranians do fire back. The Israelis.
I'm actually a little surprised because they've been faring its
civilians when I would have thought they'd have been much
better off to try to hit the airfields. I mean,
if they could slow down the tempo of the Israeli
Air Force, and the best way to do that is
(25:32):
to kill the planes on the ground. But they're going
for Tel Aviv for Haifa. What do you think is
their rationale for basically doing area bombardment that has almost
no strategic effect but just causes pain.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Well, I think that is the intention to cause pain.
But also on day one, I think on Friday, the
regime's first ballistic missile wave that followed the first rone
wave essentially did try to go after some air bases.
But even in the Persian press, which hyperbolizes a lot
of stuff, they ended up saying that the following waves
were essentially all targeting population centers, and they mentioned Haipha,
(26:10):
they mentioned Tel Aviv, and they mentioned a couple of
other suburbs, particularly round ut Gun for example, But they
mentioned that this was basically targeting cities. Occasionally, IRGC leadership
and what is left of the military leadership or who
became the new military leadership would say, oh, please leave
these cities. But ultimately the regime was trying to break
the will of these Raelis to fight, and also to
(26:32):
break the will of these rallies to actually stay in Israel.
I mean, these are folks who don't believe in Zionism.
They don't actually believe that Israelis are Israeli. They believe
you need to scratch them. They're probably European or South
American or Arab or something else. So they're also trying
to induce strategically in the long term, the same kind
of shock waves that they hoped that their proxy would
have set off back on October seven, which is to
(26:54):
land a blow on Israeli society and foster reverse immigration
away from it. I mean that is a bit longer term,
but they were trying to draw blood and specializing in
Iran's long range strike capabilities. I got to tell you,
the regime does believe like you talked about mass, the
regime does believe that quantity has a quality of its own.
(27:15):
But these are qualitatively more impactful systems than we've seen
in the past. Yes, less have made it through, but
that is just because of how well layered Israel's air
and missile defenses. But there are apartments, city blocks, tons
of civilian centers. This is a massive counter value campaign
that the Islamic Republic of Iran has engaged, and it
(27:36):
really should be further exposed and shed light on one day.
But the regime was trying to get even and draw
blood and also to try to erode the will of
these Raelies to continue their military campaign. Because the Israeli
military campaign is focused on basically defanging Iran's long range threat,
going after the missiles, the drones, but also the launchers
(27:57):
and the support infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
When you look at all the the as well as
are gaining, but they have not delivered a knockout punch.
The Iranians are less and less capable, but they're still
hanging in. How vital do you think it is for
the US to use its very very large bombs against
the Fodo Nuclear Site facility? Or do you think it's
(28:20):
possible that by just continuing to erode the regime, at
some point the aswel As could force the Iranians to
actually dismantle it themselves.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I don't think alone the Israelies will force them to
dismantle it themselves, but I do think alone these rallies
will be dismantling large chunks of it themselves. It depends
on what the priorities are for these relies in their
targeting campaign. To keep going after bases, to go after
future supply lines, to go after the existing arsenal, to
go after elements of the shorter range arsenal. There's a
(28:53):
whole host of military variables for these rallies. And just
because these Raelies don't have the B two bomber or
the thirty thousand pound massive ordinance penetrator, bunkerbuster bombs doesn't
in my view, mean that they can't do other damage.
Perhaps they could bring in special forces, some kind of
above ground below ground team, or they could train to
hit the same spot. Given that they've taken out the
(29:14):
air defenses and they have more freedom of maneuver and
operation in Iran, they could train to drop their own
more limited bunker busters, like the two thousand pound bombs
in the same spot and try to have them burrow
deeper and deeper. You can also disable some of these
facilities by going after their support infrastructure, airways, shafts, vans
and even electricity. You can cripple it that way as well.
(29:37):
But there's no doubt if you're talking about a knockout
punch that is much more likely going to have to
come in my view from Uncle Sam, if you're going
to quite literally try to collapse the architecture of this
four door facility, which is about three hundred feet underground.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
A couple of years ago there was an amazing Israeli
Special Forces rate in Syria where they took out a
Raneum nuclear facility that they were building in Syria. I mean,
they went in very precisely, did the job and got
back out with no casualties. Do you think that fordoh
is too far inside Iran and just physically too big
(30:15):
to have that kind of a commando approach.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
With the surprises these relies have had up their sleeves
in the past few years, you can really never say never.
But if these rallies have this aerial overmatch or superiority
we should say, against the Iranians, and they can translate
that into a few more pockets in the land, there's
a heck of a lot more they can do that
could allow them to basically bring in through an uncontested
air corps door across them add least special forces to
(30:41):
do this. Oh And by the way, a dividend of
this is if these rallies are trying to much more
narrowly tailor their campaign, there would be no civilian casualties
in this sort of scenario, would be more of a
one and done situation. So if you create the military space,
this could become a political option. Conversely, you mentioned how
else America might get involved. I still do there's a
chance that America might try to leverage Israel's increasing military
(31:04):
successes into trying to get Combina to accept this dismantle
or die paradigm. And the reason I'm mentioning that while
you're asking me about four Dough is because right now
we don't know what's going on at four Dough. I mean,
I've been in a lot of wargames. They've usually had
me to roleplay the Iranian side. Whenever my side is hit,
I try to squirrel away as much uranium as possible.
(31:26):
So we don't know enough about diversion god forbid, potentially
happening there. And we don't know if the machines that
were already spinning and thus far are still stable and
assumed to be spinning in four Dough, which has been
hit by these Raelies but not penetrated. We don't know
if the machines that used to be producing sixty percent,
which is a hop, skip and a jump to weapons grade,
just made that final hop, skip and a jump and
(31:47):
went to ninety percent. And that's a huge intelligence question.
And no matter the military successes these Raelis have against
the rest of Iran's missile and military infrastructure, if they
get the counter proliferation element of this larger campaign wrong,
there will be more issues, shall we say politely, to
have to deal with do.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
You have any sense of whether the regular military has
been particularly degraded. And what I'm thinking of is, if
you have absolute air superiority, you can bring in with
see you one thirties a pretty large number of troops
who could in fact occupy and take over fourdo and
methodically destroy it. And the question will be how rapidly
(32:28):
and how coherently the Iranian military would be capable of responding,
even in their own country, given the fact that they're
now operating under complete Israeli air supriority.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Well, given that we'd be talking about the conventional military,
which is larger than the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps but
really under serviced and underfunded, there's certainly the chance that
they would have to engage them, because they would probably
have to defend either the airfield or the base or
whatever facility these reelis which try to come at or
drive at, or fly or land at, So there probably would,
(33:02):
in my view, be a firefight. How significant it would
be is really more of a crystal ball question at
this point in time. But I think if the military
successes these really have elsewhere are high and the messaging
is good, this could be really more of a lay
down your arms. We have no qualms with the people
who are trying to protect their country. But if you fight,
you're not trying to protect your country, You're trying to
protect the Iatola's nuclear enterprise. And there is public diplomacy,
(33:27):
public messaging space both for Israel and America to exploit there.
Because one way we can prevent this from being a
civil war is if you do get some of the
security services to flip right.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Min you could end up in Assyrian civil war kind
of problem where you have two or three or more
factions fighting for control. Let me ask one last thing
about all this are ware to point where we really
have an opportunity to profoundly reshape the region by eliminating
(34:00):
the primary sponsor of terrorism or is that an overreach?
With where we.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Are, I think we're getting closer towards the first opportunity
to get rid of that state sponsor of terrorism. But
that requires again, so many politicians to have the courage
of their convictions. There's so many easy punts. Unfortunately, I
see across the Atlantic in the West trying to say no,
regime change is only local. We can't have anything foreign imposed.
No one is asking for anything foreign imposed, and I'm
(34:28):
not here to beg for charity or whatever on Americans.
It is in first and foremost and only, by the way,
but foreign policy is not missionary work. That's the Henry
Kissinger couoth that I really loved. By the way, but
if you have the opportunity to deal your adversary a
blow and then also do good by your own ideology,
and then to bring into power someone who also shares
your ideology, and then you have the luxury of living
(34:50):
up to your style of government, which is all about
representative government, and you realize there's a people over there
who for one hundred years have been trying to have
representative government. This isn't imposed, this is foreign supported, and
that is why Iran is not Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. That's
my view of it. But I understand absolutely there's a
(35:10):
million and one things that can go wrong. There's a
million one issues opposition wise, there's a million one issues
in terms of resource scarcity and political capital and attention.
I understand all of those things, but I also understand
that we do have to finally find a way to
flip the script on the iatolas, because it would be
in my view strategic, political, and moral malpractice to decapitate
(35:33):
the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism and leave an
eighty six eighty eight million person nation smoldering as a
failed state, and that would risk losing one of the
things that Iran is that really nowhere else in the
region is which is both pro American and pro Israeli,
and that's an asset that the US and particularly is
Real cannot afford to lose.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
My guess is, if we had a stable government willing
to work with the rest of the world, that the number,
for example, of stunningly successful Iranian Americans who would have
an interest in helping rebuild the country they came from
would represent a source of both entrepreneurial knowledge and sheer
(36:15):
capital That would be breathtaking because the diast was pretty
big and pretty prosperous, and if they had a place
where they were safe and they were welcomed, we could
have a pretty prosperous Iran within ten years. Amen, listen, ben,
I want to thank you for joining me. We are
going through wild times. Do we have to call on
you again in the not too distant future just because
(36:37):
of all the changes our listeners can learn more about
your work that Foundation for Defensive Democracies by visiting your
website at FDD dot org. And I really want to
thank you for taking the time in the middle of
all of these activities.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Thank you so much, sir. It's a pleasure and looking
forward to continuing the conversation with you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Thank you to my guests, Benham, Ben Talablue. You can
learn more about the Foundation for Defensive Democracies on our
show page at newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by
Genglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan.
Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
(37:20):
at Ginglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Nutsworld, I hope
you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with
five stars and give us a review so others can
learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld
can sign up for my three freeweekly columns at Gengishtree
sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Nut Gingrich. This is
(37:41):
Newtsworld
On this episode of News World. On Friday, June thirteenth,
Israel launched a surprise attack on dozens of targets inside Iran,
including nuclear sites, and killed many of the Iranian military's
top leaders. Israeli strikes have killed at least two hundred
and twenty four people in Iran and injured hundreds more.
On Monday, Iran struck back with a barrage of ballistic missiles,
(00:27):
hitting several Israeli cities and killing at least twenty four people.
But the question remains, will the United States joined the conflict?
Here to discuss the Israeli Iranian conflict, I'm really pleased
to welcome my guest, benham Ben Talablue, senior director of
the Foundation for Defensive Democracies Iran program, which, whether it
(00:47):
is something I pay constant attention to, the Foundation for
Defensive Democracies is a remarkable institution. Ben, I'm welcome and
thank you for joining me on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
It's a pleasure to be back with you, sir. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
This is an amazing time that we're chatting. Can you
help us understand the scale and significance of Israel's campaign
and why it is different from past campaigns.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Well, first and foremost, this is the longest ever. We're
in day five right now of the overt Israeli Ron
shooting war, but this is the longest ever campaign on
Iranian territory since the nineteen seventy nine revolution that follows
the nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty eight Iran Iraq War
that was actually the longest conventional war of the twentieth century.
(01:42):
It's something that is often forgotten in history books. Since
the nineteen seventy nine revolution, Iran has carried out a
shadow war, a proxy war against Israel that really came
to a head and the post October sevent mid least,
when it crept out of the shadows twice, once in
April and once in October with direct ballistic missile attacks
from Iranian territory to Israeli territory, something we never saw
(02:05):
even during the Cold War, meaning a non nuclear weapons
state fire nuclear capable ballistic missiles at a nuclear weapons
state and then lived to tell the tale. These attacks
by Israel on June twelve, June thirteen were coordinated, they
were synchronized. They took out the military brain trust of
the Islamic Revolutionary guardcore the regime even in day five,
if you asked me, is still phased, is still struggling
(02:28):
to respond and Israel if we're looking at the military
performance of this, and I'm happy to get the politics
and the nuclear side as well, if we're looking at
the military performance to this, they have taken the regime's
greatest quantitative assets, it's ballistic missile arsenal, which is the
largest in the entire Middle East, and quickly attriting it
and cutting it such that the regime is facing a
(02:49):
user lose problem as well as of course what to fire,
because the Israelis have actually created a drone base on
Iranian territory that is targeting Iranian ballistic missiles as soon
as they pop up on their launchers before they can
be fired. So it's turned the regime's quantitative advantage on
its head, and the longer this conflict goes on, the
million dollar question will increasingly become what role will Uncle
(03:12):
Sam play? What role would the US play in all
of this? And what role can the Iran people play
in all of this?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
The Israeli campaign clearly had been planned for months and
they'd thought it all through, and they have remarkable penetration
of Iran. I've been watching a TV series you may
have seen called Tehran, which is basically the Mozad operating
literally inside Iranian territory with help from Iranians who are
(03:38):
either opposed to the regime or for some other reason
are willing to work with the Israelis. And apparently, if
I understand it, one of the pieces of this campaign
was that actually built the equivalent of a drone factory
inside Tehran and launched drones from inside Tehran against various
(03:59):
Iranians assets in a way which is almost like science fiction.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Like science fiction but also part of the reality of
I would really say the two decade chasm that we've
seen between the state in Iran and the street in Iran,
because let me tell you, sir I know you've mentioned
this before, the people in Iran are no fans of
the government in Iran. But also the people in Iran
are quite patriotic, quite nationalist. I myself of the first
generation American of the Iranian ancestry and born and raised
(04:27):
here in the States. Sometimes it's quite obviously Iranians are
among the most nationalistic of any peoples in the region.
So one could say how would this happen in an
exceptionally nationalist population where the conventional wisdom is that if
there was an attack, they would always be a rally.
And it is because of the chasm between the state
and the street. It is because of the fact that
the regime is Islamist and the people is nationalists, because
(04:51):
the regime is old and the people are young, and
these two things are like water and oil. And the
Iranian people have been saying this loud and proud in
their multiple iterations anti regime protest, even dating back in
two thousand and nine, when they said, not Gaza, not Lebanon,
my life only before Iran. And you've seen Iranian policy
go exactly one hundred and eighty degrees in the opposite direction,
(05:12):
sacrificing the Iranian national interest and the public good and
the health and welfare of the average Iranian on the
altar of exporting the nineteen seventy nine revolution to the
Eastern Mediterranean. I have to tell you there was a
story in Axios this weekend that reminded me of something
a actual former Iranian intelligence minister had said. It was
(05:32):
an intelligence minister from the mid twenty tens who was
saying this in twenty twenty one, and he was saying
that the level of Mosad penetration in Iran is astronomical,
And he was saying this in twenty twenty one, so
imagine what it must be in twenty twenty five. And
he essentially intonated that at that time, no regime official
should sleep safely at night because of this level of penetration.
(05:56):
And he actually blamed it, he himself a cleric, he
himself an eye, he himself an intel minister. He blamed
it on the regime's ideology and its warring factions, and
it's creating of a state within the state, and just
looking from the outside, the regime has been policing cyberspace,
the regime has been policing hijabs. But the gross incompetence
of the regime, coupled with the population's willingness to contest
(06:19):
this regime at any cost, is exactly how, in my view,
you get the Israelis to be able to build its
own base right under the nose of the Ietolas.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
I'm curious about this because there's an argument apparently underway
that the establishment, including the intelligence community, had given the
Iranians pretty high level of capability, But there were analysts
who deeply disagreed and said, look, this kind of a
regime can't be very competent because it's not going to
(06:48):
be able to reward merit, and it's not going to
be able to promote people purely based on merit because
it'll be so busy first of all, being corrupted financially
and second worried about abs loyal to the Ayatola. And
it does seem that in many ways, starting with a
remarkable Israeli campaign in the spring where they gain total
(07:10):
air dominance to an embarrassing degree for the Russians, prove
that American technology was simply generations ahead of the Russian
air defense systems. But if you come all the way
through this, it does seem like there's a certain lacking
level of just plane everyday competence in the Iranian system
(07:31):
right now.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
Certainly, And if you're starting at a baseline negative number,
once that negative number meets an exogenous shock like four
point thirty in the morning, your entire military commanding heights,
your entire strategic brain trust being killed in a missile attack,
then you're going to be performing even worse. So it's
going to take quite a bit of time to get
out a hole. And that's what I mean when I
(07:54):
say I think even in day five of this conflict,
the regime itself is quite shattered. And you mentioned this
ideological versus technical versus competency Paradigmond problem, and these things
are found these warring with one another in various elements
of the Iranian system, in the political establishment, in the
military establishment, in the security services, even within the clergy.
(08:16):
You see this tug of war between politics and competence,
and this is a regime that actually rewards loyalty rather
than that competence. There is a phrase in Persian. I'll
say it came from the Cultural Revolution in the nineteen
eighties when the Homaanists were purifying the universities and everything else.
The phrase was takva not tavona, meaning righteousness not competence.
(08:40):
They would reward righteousness, they would reward loyalty, and like
any other authoritarian regime that is remotely afraid of anything military,
they engage in coup proofing, just as next door neighbor
former Saddam used to do. And this is a very
toxic combination. If you are unpopular and you're also trying
to literally fight technologically superior adversaries like the Israelis or
(09:02):
even the Americans. So this was all a witches brew
in my view.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
From that perspective, I've written several things arguing that the
real goal has to be a regime change, not just
taking out the nuclear system, because if they take out
the nuclear system, but the regime says in charge, eventually
they'll rebuild it. So if you're really serious about getting
to a peaceful, long thirty forty to fifty year coexistence,
(09:29):
you really have to find a way to break the
entire system of the Mollah dictatorship. What would your take
on that be.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I think we have to have at this point in
time the courage of our convictions to say that two
words that are perhaps the fifth rail of politics in Washington, DC,
which is regime change. As we speak, there's a huge
Republican I don't want to say civil war, but a
huge Republican internal struggle over the soul of the party,
over what kind of Republican state craft we're going to
see in the twenty first century. I think Donald Trump
(09:59):
has done a good job balancing these two competing visions
and value sets of isolationism versus internationalism. They're both organic
in the American policy and body politique. But as it
relates to Iran, there aren't many places in the Middleast,
with the exception of Israel, where you can marry your
head and your heart. And given that, politically, voters in
(10:19):
this country have been voting to do less in the
Middle East and not more. Since the Bush Too administration,
every president has come in Obama, Trump bied in Trump
again trying to actually deliver on that promises and getting
stuck back in. I think the only real way you
create the political space to do that and deal with
great power competition is if you flip the script on
the iatolas. Because there's no straight line in the world
(10:42):
where you appease the ietolas and counter the CCP. You
have to deal with the most urgent state threat there.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Trump has been shifting. He's always said pretty clearly there
cannot be an Iranian nuclear weapon. They did a lot
of dances and met and all that stuff for sixty days,
but the bottom line was always if we have a deal,
it's going to mean no nuclear weapons. And now I
noticed in the last few days he's moving towards basically
(11:09):
saying to the Iranians, you know, it'd be very smart
of you to surrender before you're annihilated, which is a
pretty bleak direct statement. And my sense is that this
growing awareness that the nuclear program was much bigger than
we expected, the effort to build next generation ballistic missiles
(11:33):
that would have been extraordinarily dangerous to Israel are much bigger,
and I think for a lot of US, and I
think for almost all israelis the pictures of Iranian missiles
hitting Tehran and the simple thought what if one of
them had had a nuclear warhead pretty much has hardened
(11:54):
the line of both Israel and the Trump administration. At
least that's my sense. That we're now into struggle that's
probably not going to end with the Iatola still being
in charge.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I think we could go based on the very fast
moving facts of the Crown, we could be going in
that direction. I still think the President means what he
says when he intonated ever since, even before entering office,
when he was campaigning in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, that
he quote buys bad deals and makes them into good deals,
and that he tried to fix the Iran deal first,
and that he spent some time trying to negotiate it
(12:28):
now again in term two. I do think in that
world the president may see is really military action and
is really military prowess as actually a source of leverage.
To tell comedy. Listen, I'm the only thing that is
standing between you and certain death coming from these Raelies.
So dismantle or die. Dismantle or watch your program be
dismantled for you, or potentially even wash your regime be
(12:50):
dismantled for you. I mean, this has great implications for
the future of US foreign policy in the region, for sure,
as well as for the future of the US Israel
relationship based on how such a thing would be done.
But I certainly see the President trying to maximize all
of his options here, both on the diplomatic front, to
drive an exceptionally hard bargain, to make the IE tool,
(13:11):
to know that there is no way out but through.
To basically get the second Supreme Leader of Iran to
do what the first Supreme Leader of Iran did, which
is to realize what he's losing, as Komeni did in
the end of the Iran Iraq War, to drink the
proverbial poison chalice, but Also, I think the president actually
has to have what the forgive me the nine to
eleven Commission report warned about, which is imagination, and we
(13:34):
have to see this as an imagination issue. We have
to dare to imagine a fundamentally different Iran that doesn't
perpetually sucker the US in with a missile issue, woul
drone issue, with terrorism issue, a nuclear issue, that we
get to drive the conversation, and that fundamentally we will
always be reacting to something so long as this regime
is there and in power.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
I mean assumes to me. Well, Trump has not talked
about regime change. The standard he's setting for an agreement
is almost impossible for this regime to achieve. It's pretty
clear that Trump is going to insist that they dismantle
all of It seems to mean that for the regime,
(14:33):
for the dictatorship, it may literally not be able to
handle the stress of that agreement.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
That certainly is one view and is one reason why
many believe that Hamine has rejected obviously the dismantlement's lingo,
and it is also why he's held firm on something
like uranium and richmond, which, by the way, Iran has
not stopped doing for a single day since August two
thousand and six. I mean, that's the thing that really
got us into this crisis. Believe it or not, there
was a time when Europe and Russia and China and
(15:01):
America were passing multiple UN Security Council resolutions, all united
in the belief that there should be no enrichment in
the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly so long as they
were violating their safeguards agreements. But here we are nearly
two decades later and facing literally the exact same problem.
I think that is one theory, and another is that
I think you can get the Iatolas who fundamentally love
(15:24):
life more than you and me. You know, there's this
picture even among some of our friends, more republican or
more hawkish foreign policy circles, that see things through the
prism of ideology. And absolutely you have to understand the
revolutionary and Islamist and authoritarian ideology of Iran's clerics. It's
Islamism and Marxism and third Worldism and all of those dangerousisms.
(15:45):
But we shouldn't be ideological about ideology. And what I
mean by that is, if you speak to people who've
come from Iran. More recently, you will see that a cleric,
a theocrat is actually one of the most corrupt, opportunistic
peoplelog and ends as well as a means to an
end for those types of people. And I think in
that kind of world, if they are really put to
(16:06):
the choice, if Trump really grabs their jugular, maximum pressure,
could work, could deliver. You have to put the adversary
in the position to have to make a mistake, to
drive them to choose between again their economy or the bomb,
or a dismantling or dying, to make it a lose
lose no matter what. And the art of the deal
is constantly making your adversary settle for the least bad
(16:28):
option with as little cost to you as possible. So
I think there was potential there for that. But nonetheless,
we are where we are now, and I think Trump's
leverage has significantly increased, but less we forget, ideology is
still powerful. There is a world in which the regime
does not want to take the Nathan Donald Trump, even
though technically they already have because for seven years they
said no negotiations with Trump, and then spring twenty twenty five, Okay,
(16:52):
we'll negotiate with Trump so long as it's indirect.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And now, of course they're saying, you know, we'll be
glad to igo share with Trump if it was just
get as well as to stay up. Suddenly he's becoming
more desirable by comparison. One of the things I was
struck with, and I know you must have seen the
same thing, was the video of the Israelis hitting the
Iranian state broadcasting system. You may know since you speak
Farsi what she was saying at that moment, but had
(17:18):
a little bit of a throwback to Bagdad Bob, you know,
we can hang tough. This is not that bad. And
suddenly the studio gets bombed. Did you think that had
any significance? And do you think that it sent any
signal to the Iranian people about what was going on?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
It absolutely had immense significance, both technical and political, because
this is a TV station that is the state broadcasting
arm of the government of the Islamic Republic that brings
the regimes, views, values, and interest onto the TV screens
and multimedia of Iranian citizen v This is a TV
station I think was sanctioned under the Obama administration, if
(17:57):
I'm not mistaken, So way back in the day. It
coordinates with the Ministry of Intelligence and Islamic Revolutionary Guard corp.
It airs tortured and false confessions of everybody, from Iranian
reformists to regular citizens to even dual nationals. It's parated.
It really is spewing the invected and is synonymous with
that kind of corrupt revolutionary resistance ideology. And you are right,
(18:20):
if memory serves me correct. She was going on the presenter,
I think, was going on a ti rate about resistance
in America and then had to obviously flee the scene
because of the strike. But there's also an equally chilling,
powerful video from a little bit later on of that
strike that was also making its way around on Persian
social media. And it was from a distance seeing that building.
(18:41):
It's the Irib Islamic Republic of Iran broadcasting. It was
that building in Tehran viewed from a distance, potentially from
a camera or drone, who knows, with the call to
prayer in the background, and the entire edifice of this
one building, nothing else but just this one building burning
and with black smoke rising. And that is the kind
of stuff that in the medium term, not right now,
(19:03):
because bombs are still falling, and Iranian citizens, regardless of
their political orientation, are all in survival mode, particularly the
nearly ten million that live in the capital Tehran. But nonetheless,
this is the stuff that can stiffen the spine of
anti regime Iranians. And you know, if I had one
second to advertise to the Israelis, you know I'm not
here in the strike world. I still think there was
(19:24):
room for a lot more maximum pressure. But the Israelis
need to be translating these targets, emotionally, translating these targets
for the Iranian audience. Why is it important that the
Israelis have struck Irib? Why is it important that these
rallies have struck the commander of the Aerospace Force. It's
not just because this guy had his finger on the
trigger of the missiles going to Israel. It's because that
(19:44):
guy in January twenty twenty fired on a civilian airlinerer
killing over one hundred and seventy innocent people. Israel is
also dismantling the apparatus of repression, and that's why this
strike on Irib the television is very politically and technically
significant in my view.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
To take a point view reference. In twenty twenty two,
the US to part of the treasure this is under
Biden released the press really saying they're designating the IRIB
in its subsidiaries not as objective media outlets, but rather
as a critical tool in the Iranian government's mass suppression
and censorship campaign against its own people. They went on
(20:25):
to say IRIB has produced and recently broadcast televised interviews
of individuals being forced to confess that their relatives were
not killed by Iranian authorities during nationwide protests, but died
due to accidental, unrelated causes. And I assume that related
back to about two years ago when they killed five
hundred people for being part of an effect demonstrations exactly.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
It was the post twenty twenty two to twenty three
women life freedom movement that was triggered by the killing
of an innocent girl in Tehron who was twenty two
years old, was Massa Gina Amini for not properly wearing
her her job. She was beaten by security forces and
then sustained major mortal wounds that led to her death
just a few days later in a hospital in Tehran.
(21:12):
Actually separated from her family and protests began that fall
twenty twenty two and mushroomed into the biggest ever anti
regime protests we saw since the nineteen seventy nine revolution.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
This is a regime where a young lady who didn't
totally cover her hair, if I'm mon correctly, she had it,
but it wasn't totally covered somehow infuriated the guards and
they beat her to death, and then that led to
a huge public outrage, which they then suppressed, I think
with about five thousand arrests and five hundred killings.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
And they followed that. There was a less advertised story,
but we actually had FTD. We created a tracker of
it because living and working in Washington, there's plenty of
NGOs talk about women's rights and human's rights. We noticed
there was a whole string of attacks on young schoolgirls,
almost something out of the playbook of the Taliban, but
by the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. And
(22:04):
they were basically chemical attacks, causing tons of basically young
teenage and preteen girls who are going to school to
get sick. And this, in our view, was a direct campaign,
a state campaign against the next generation of Iran's best
and brightest female youth, and this I think was some
crazy deterrent basically WMD use by the state against society
(22:27):
to instill fear. So yes, they married that campaign of
killing and arrest and detention with this CW campaign as well,
which is really horrifying.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
This is one of those rare regimes. They're not quite
as bad as the Syrians we used to be, but
they're very close. This is one of the worst regimes
in the world in terms of how it oppresses its
own people well at the same time threatening off of
its neighbors. Now I've noticed this with Hamas and Hezbollah
and now with the Iranians, that the Israelis really focused
(22:58):
on taking out the leadership and seem to have an
amazing level of intelligence about where they're going to be.
They wiped out, I think virtually all the Hesbalal leadership
in one meeting. They wiped out virtually all of the
Iranian Air Force leadership and one meeting. I mean, how
do they do all that?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
They did all that, I think through a combination of
I'm no espionage scholar, but through a combination based on
what's been reported, through a combination of human intel and
assumedly signals, intel, so tech and human sources, probably being
able to follow some folks around, being able to tap
into the electronic systems. And again, these are the folks
that are at the commanding heights of the Islamic republics,
political and military establishments. As we mentioned earlier, these are
(23:39):
folks who are not necessarily promoted for their capability. They're
promoted and rewarded for their loyalty. There's a couple exceptions
here too, very lethal, very nasty individuals, but also very
very capable and competent, and I always do fear a
very competent adversary. I think the Commander of the Aerospace
Force Hodgizada and the Armed Forces General Staff Bobbery. These
(24:01):
were people known to Iran watchers to be a little
bit unlike their colleagues, were actually technically and politically savvy,
not that much evidence of financial or political corruption, but
real true believers and a capable, ideological but lethal adversary. Nonetheless,
they still were obviously able to be surveilled, and the
Israelies went after them to induce this surprise effect, to
(24:24):
induce this shock that when you saw the reporting about
all of these IRGC folks in one place or all
of these nuclear scientists too, which is a separate story
targeted in Tehron at the same time. I think it
was four thirty in the morning, if I'm not mistaken.
It was very reminiscent of what we all watched on
the news back in September twenty twenty four with the
Pajer gate and the Deeper gate in Lebanon, and that
(24:46):
just goes to show you how effective the intelligence arem
of Israelis and how critical intelligence is to even a
conventional war fighting campaign.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
So the Israelis hit them and I think pretty powerful
initial round, but the Iranians do fire back. The Israelis.
I'm actually a little surprised because they've been faring its
civilians when I would have thought they'd have been much
better off to try to hit the airfields. I mean,
if they could slow down the tempo of the Israeli
Air Force, and the best way to do that is
(25:32):
to kill the planes on the ground. But they're going
for Tel Aviv for Haifa. What do you think is
their rationale for basically doing area bombardment that has almost
no strategic effect but just causes pain.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Well, I think that is the intention to cause pain.
But also on day one, I think on Friday, the
regime's first ballistic missile wave that followed the first rone
wave essentially did try to go after some air bases.
But even in the Persian press, which hyperbolizes a lot
of stuff, they ended up saying that the following waves
were essentially all targeting population centers, and they mentioned Haipha,
(26:10):
they mentioned Tel Aviv, and they mentioned a couple of
other suburbs, particularly round ut Gun for example, But they
mentioned that this was basically targeting cities. Occasionally, IRGC leadership
and what is left of the military leadership or who
became the new military leadership would say, oh, please leave
these cities. But ultimately the regime was trying to break
the will of these Raelis to fight, and also to
(26:32):
break the will of these rallies to actually stay in Israel.
I mean, these are folks who don't believe in Zionism.
They don't actually believe that Israelis are Israeli. They believe
you need to scratch them. They're probably European or South
American or Arab or something else. So they're also trying
to induce strategically in the long term, the same kind
of shock waves that they hoped that their proxy would
have set off back on October seven, which is to
(26:54):
land a blow on Israeli society and foster reverse immigration
away from it. I mean that is a bit longer term,
but they were trying to draw blood and specializing in
Iran's long range strike capabilities. I got to tell you,
the regime does believe like you talked about mass, the
regime does believe that quantity has a quality of its own.
(27:15):
But these are qualitatively more impactful systems than we've seen
in the past. Yes, less have made it through, but
that is just because of how well layered Israel's air
and missile defenses. But there are apartments, city blocks, tons
of civilian centers. This is a massive counter value campaign
that the Islamic Republic of Iran has engaged, and it
(27:36):
really should be further exposed and shed light on one day.
But the regime was trying to get even and draw
blood and also to try to erode the will of
these Raelies to continue their military campaign. Because the Israeli
military campaign is focused on basically defanging Iran's long range threat,
going after the missiles, the drones, but also the launchers
(27:57):
and the support infrastructure.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
When you look at all the the as well as
are gaining, but they have not delivered a knockout punch.
The Iranians are less and less capable, but they're still
hanging in. How vital do you think it is for
the US to use its very very large bombs against
the Fodo Nuclear Site facility? Or do you think it's
(28:20):
possible that by just continuing to erode the regime, at
some point the aswel As could force the Iranians to
actually dismantle it themselves.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I don't think alone the Israelies will force them to
dismantle it themselves, but I do think alone these rallies
will be dismantling large chunks of it themselves. It depends
on what the priorities are for these relies in their
targeting campaign. To keep going after bases, to go after
future supply lines, to go after the existing arsenal, to
go after elements of the shorter range arsenal. There's a
(28:53):
whole host of military variables for these rallies. And just
because these Raelies don't have the B two bomber or
the thirty thousand pound massive ordinance penetrator, bunkerbuster bombs doesn't
in my view, mean that they can't do other damage.
Perhaps they could bring in special forces, some kind of
above ground below ground team, or they could train to
hit the same spot. Given that they've taken out the
(29:14):
air defenses and they have more freedom of maneuver and
operation in Iran, they could train to drop their own
more limited bunker busters, like the two thousand pound bombs
in the same spot and try to have them burrow
deeper and deeper. You can also disable some of these
facilities by going after their support infrastructure, airways, shafts, vans
and even electricity. You can cripple it that way as well.
(29:37):
But there's no doubt if you're talking about a knockout
punch that is much more likely going to have to
come in my view from Uncle Sam, if you're going
to quite literally try to collapse the architecture of this
four door facility, which is about three hundred feet underground.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
A couple of years ago there was an amazing Israeli
Special Forces rate in Syria where they took out a
Raneum nuclear facility that they were building in Syria. I mean,
they went in very precisely, did the job and got
back out with no casualties. Do you think that fordoh
is too far inside Iran and just physically too big
(30:15):
to have that kind of a commando approach.
Speaker 2 (30:18):
With the surprises these relies have had up their sleeves
in the past few years, you can really never say never.
But if these rallies have this aerial overmatch or superiority
we should say, against the Iranians, and they can translate
that into a few more pockets in the land, there's
a heck of a lot more they can do that
could allow them to basically bring in through an uncontested
air corps door across them add least special forces to
(30:41):
do this. Oh And by the way, a dividend of
this is if these rallies are trying to much more
narrowly tailor their campaign, there would be no civilian casualties
in this sort of scenario, would be more of a
one and done situation. So if you create the military space,
this could become a political option. Conversely, you mentioned how
else America might get involved. I still do there's a
chance that America might try to leverage Israel's increasing military
(31:04):
successes into trying to get Combina to accept this dismantle
or die paradigm. And the reason I'm mentioning that while
you're asking me about four Dough is because right now
we don't know what's going on at four Dough. I mean,
I've been in a lot of wargames. They've usually had
me to roleplay the Iranian side. Whenever my side is hit,
I try to squirrel away as much uranium as possible.
(31:26):
So we don't know enough about diversion god forbid, potentially
happening there. And we don't know if the machines that
were already spinning and thus far are still stable and
assumed to be spinning in four Dough, which has been
hit by these Raelies but not penetrated. We don't know
if the machines that used to be producing sixty percent,
which is a hop, skip and a jump to weapons grade,
just made that final hop, skip and a jump and
(31:47):
went to ninety percent. And that's a huge intelligence question.
And no matter the military successes these Raelis have against
the rest of Iran's missile and military infrastructure, if they
get the counter proliferation element of this larger campaign wrong,
there will be more issues, shall we say politely, to
have to deal with do.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
You have any sense of whether the regular military has
been particularly degraded. And what I'm thinking of is, if
you have absolute air superiority, you can bring in with
see you one thirties a pretty large number of troops
who could in fact occupy and take over fourdo and
methodically destroy it. And the question will be how rapidly
(32:28):
and how coherently the Iranian military would be capable of responding,
even in their own country, given the fact that they're
now operating under complete Israeli air supriority.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Well, given that we'd be talking about the conventional military,
which is larger than the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps but
really under serviced and underfunded, there's certainly the chance that
they would have to engage them, because they would probably
have to defend either the airfield or the base or
whatever facility these reelis which try to come at or
drive at, or fly or land at, So there probably would,
(33:02):
in my view, be a firefight. How significant it would
be is really more of a crystal ball question at
this point in time. But I think if the military
successes these really have elsewhere are high and the messaging
is good, this could be really more of a lay
down your arms. We have no qualms with the people
who are trying to protect their country. But if you fight,
you're not trying to protect your country, You're trying to
protect the Iatola's nuclear enterprise. And there is public diplomacy,
(33:27):
public messaging space both for Israel and America to exploit there.
Because one way we can prevent this from being a
civil war is if you do get some of the
security services to flip right.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Min you could end up in Assyrian civil war kind
of problem where you have two or three or more
factions fighting for control. Let me ask one last thing
about all this are ware to point where we really
have an opportunity to profoundly reshape the region by eliminating
(34:00):
the primary sponsor of terrorism or is that an overreach?
With where we.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
Are, I think we're getting closer towards the first opportunity
to get rid of that state sponsor of terrorism. But
that requires again, so many politicians to have the courage
of their convictions. There's so many easy punts. Unfortunately, I
see across the Atlantic in the West trying to say no,
regime change is only local. We can't have anything foreign imposed.
No one is asking for anything foreign imposed, and I'm
(34:28):
not here to beg for charity or whatever on Americans.
It is in first and foremost and only, by the way,
but foreign policy is not missionary work. That's the Henry
Kissinger couoth that I really loved. By the way, but
if you have the opportunity to deal your adversary a
blow and then also do good by your own ideology,
and then to bring into power someone who also shares
your ideology, and then you have the luxury of living
(34:50):
up to your style of government, which is all about
representative government, and you realize there's a people over there
who for one hundred years have been trying to have
representative government. This isn't imposed, this is foreign supported, and
that is why Iran is not Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan. That's
my view of it. But I understand absolutely there's a
(35:10):
million and one things that can go wrong. There's a
million one issues opposition wise, there's a million one issues
in terms of resource scarcity and political capital and attention.
I understand all of those things, but I also understand
that we do have to finally find a way to
flip the script on the iatolas, because it would be
in my view strategic, political, and moral malpractice to decapitate
(35:33):
the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism and leave an
eighty six eighty eight million person nation smoldering as a
failed state, and that would risk losing one of the
things that Iran is that really nowhere else in the
region is which is both pro American and pro Israeli,
and that's an asset that the US and particularly is
Real cannot afford to lose.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
My guess is, if we had a stable government willing
to work with the rest of the world, that the number,
for example, of stunningly successful Iranian Americans who would have
an interest in helping rebuild the country they came from
would represent a source of both entrepreneurial knowledge and sheer
(36:15):
capital That would be breathtaking because the diast was pretty
big and pretty prosperous, and if they had a place
where they were safe and they were welcomed, we could
have a pretty prosperous Iran within ten years. Amen, listen, ben,
I want to thank you for joining me. We are
going through wild times. Do we have to call on
you again in the not too distant future just because
(36:37):
of all the changes our listeners can learn more about
your work that Foundation for Defensive Democracies by visiting your
website at FDD dot org. And I really want to
thank you for taking the time in the middle of
all of these activities.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
Thank you so much, sir. It's a pleasure and looking
forward to continuing the conversation with you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
Thank you to my guests, Benham, Ben Talablue. You can
learn more about the Foundation for Defensive Democracies on our
show page at newtsworld dot com. Newsworld is produced by
Genglish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan.
Our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show
was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team
(37:20):
at Ginglishtree sixty. If you've been enjoying Nutsworld, I hope
you'll go to Apple Podcasts and both rate us with
five stars and give us a review so others can
learn what it's all about. Right now, listeners of Newtsworld
can sign up for my three freeweekly columns at Gengishtree
sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm Nut Gingrich. This is
(37:41):
Newtsworld
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