Netanyahu Gets His War on Iran

OTN Ep. 106: Netanyahu Gets His War on Iran

Speakers: Alex Kane, Daniel Levy, Ellie Geranmayeh

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Hello and welcome to On the Nose, the Jewish Currents podcast. My name is Alex Kane, the senior reporter at Jewish Currents, and I'll be your host today. On Friday, June 13th, just days before what would have been the sixth round of US-Iran talks over the Islamic Republic's nuclear energy program, Israel carried out a series of punishing airstrikes targeting, for the first time ever, Iran's nuclear energy infrastructure. Israeli strikes have scuttled US-Iran diplomacy, at least for now, and have since expanded to target Iranian state television, the energy industry, and high-rise apartment buildings. Israel's bombing, at the time of this recording, has so far killed over 220 people in Iran, and in response, Iran has launched drones and missiles at Israel, which have killed over 20 Israelis. The escalating conflict has prompted thousands of Iranians to flee their homes, brought thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters, and threatens to grow even deadlier.

To discuss the Trump administration's position on the conflict, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war goals, and where the region might be headed, I brought on two experts. Daniel Levy is president of the US Middle East Project and a former member of Israel's negotiations team under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. And Ellie Geranmayeh is the deputy director for the European Council on Foreign Relations Middle East and North Africa program. Welcome to On the Nose, Daniel and Ellie.

So my first question is: Why now? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long threatened to strike Iran's nuclear sites, saying “all options are on the table” repeatedly. This has gone on for many years, but he has never done so until Friday, June 13th. Why do you think he launched the airstrikes now? Let's start with Daniel.

Okay, let's be clear. There is no evidence whatsoever that has been shared or that has been accepted by any intelligence agency outside of Israel's own, that the claim made by the Israelis—of the imminent crossing of a certain line—necessitated this action. This was another war of choice, international aggression, and violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another country by the Israeli regime. That, I think, just has to be put out there right at the beginning.

So I look for the explanation elsewhere. First of all, you have an Israeli prime minister who has been part of a very successful hyping—not only internationally, but here, let's go domestically—of the Israeli scene into thinking this is a threat that absolutely has to be dealt with. It's an Israeli prime minister who is still trying to recover politically from post-October 7th, who has been behind in every poll and who is now kind of walking toward the starting line of an election season. Although the election isn't for another 15 months, people who follow Israel know that once you get into the opening of the Knesset year that leads to an election, the tendency of things to be accelerated is very often in play. Netanyahu looks at this, sees the Iran question and doing something militarily against Iran as one of the last dice that he could roll to try and recover and set himself up for a potential political victory—and that he might have been running out of time to do that, because if the talks between the US and Iran were considered to be making progress, then the American stop sign was more likely than the American go sign.

And therefore, I think Netanyahu thought this is the moment. And what I understand probably happened is not that there was some kind of hand in glove American-Israeli scheme from the get-go, but that the frustration of an administration that does not tend to have patience or depth of strategic management of a negotiating file or understanding of that file, that Netanyahu could feed in to a frustration on the US side, and his argument apparently carried the day: “Mr. President, if we do this, they will come back to the table and you can get this negotiation to the finishing line” or some such argument, having successfully already altered the terms of the negotiations.

And, I can't explain it also without referring back to Gaza, the midst of a genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. I'm not saying that we had hit the tipping point in terms of external intervention to prevent that. But things were moving not in the direction Israel wanted it to, in terms of some kind of galvanization of more of a sense of “you have to stop.” This obviously has also been a distraction on that front, and it has the West right back in the happy place that Israel wants it to be in, which is somehow portraying the aggressor Israel as the victim, which is talking about Israel's right to self-defense, even though, again, it started this. So all of those things—if you saw the G7 statement, all of those things come together.

Ellie, let me go to you on this question that Daniel brought up. There's some analysis out there that suggests that the US-Iran talks weren't serious—that they were just a ruse by the Americans and the Israelis to lull Iran into thinking that they were close to a deal, enabling Israel to carry out a surprise attack. What do you make of this analysis? And more broadly speaking, how do these strikes relate to and impact the US-Iran nuclear talks?

So this is a key question that a lot of folks in the Iranian leadership are asking themselves right now as they decide how they posture on the escalation going forward. It does seem, from everything that is being leaked by the White House in the last few days, that they are still trying to distance themselves from this narrative—at least that's the messaging they want Iran to understand. Particularly an in-depth New York Times piece, which essentially, I think, in my view, concludes that Netanyahu placed the fetter completely in front of Trump, said, “We're ready to go, we're going to lose this operational window. And look, the Iranians are being slow to accept this concept of zero enrichment,” which President Trump had really bought into in the last few rounds of the negotiations. And the Israelis seem to have argued, “Look, with a quick punch in the gut, the Iranians will capitulate on this.” And Trump seems to have drank the Kool-Aid on that after the meetings that he had at Camp David, leading up to this and the discussions he had with Bibi.

Now, it does seem to me that the Iranians, after flexing their military muscle, that they are open to a political off-ramp. They are messaging this through the Middle Eastern folks, through Turkey, Erdogan, through Putin, all of the folks who have sort of privileged direct access hotline to Trump. And it's frankly been, at least in the public narrative, it doesn't seem that Trump is taking up on this offer to find that political off-ramp. And to me, that suggests now, President Trump has again been sold the Kool-Aid by Netanyahu that you just have to finish the job, hit For, one surgical strike only, and we will essentially move into a whole new set of preconditions for the talks, which is more dismantlement. Libya model: surrender. You know, the president has said to the Iranians, unconditional surrender time.

So my sense is that the president still wants a deal. He is being mistakenly sold on the idea that this is going to be a quick military operation as opposed to war, which anyone who has studied Iran and the Middle East knows that that is far from the likely outcome. And he is edging very close—and by the time your podcast comes out, we may know the answer to this—to carrying out what he believes to be a one-off strike against Fordo. Now, I think what's very important for your listeners to understand is that if Israel was really after dismantling Iran's nuclear capabilities, my guess would have been that by now, they would have hit Fordo much harder than they have. And frankly, they may have given Iran enough time now to move anything that's of significant value in Fordo out. And so, a strike by the US at this stage—yes, it's politically a very significant move. Psychologically, it would be a major blow to the Iranians, because the Iranians will see this as a declaration of war. But also, I think it's a great scheme by Bibi to drag the US into a war with Iran because Iran has vowed—and I guarantee you will—strike back immediately to direct US interests somewhere. And this will drag the United States president, six months into office, who promised not to engage in forever wars, back into another war in the Middle East.

Yeah, I think there's a consensus, that extends beyond Ellie and myself, that we are very close to Netanyahu successfully pulling Trump into direct action. The two things I would say on that are, number one: Netanyahu is doing everything to undermine the hanging-by-a-thread possibility of there still being a return to negotiations. Partly, I think, by exaggerating the extent to which Iran is desperate. I think Iran all along has been willing to negotiate, but Netanyahu is using the line to the president: “If they're telling you, get back to the negotiations, it's because they're losing, they're desperate, they're weak. And if they come back to the talks, it has to be on the basis of absolute capitulation.” He's again trying to set a bar that he knows is what will kill any prospect of the talks, and he's trying to tell the president it's a sign of weakness. And I think the message is, “Mr. President, I did this. We didn't ask for your help. We've now teed this up, that we've taken the ball right up to the hole. All you have to do is nudge the ball into the hole. You get the glory, and you also change the perception of other files that you're working on. Then people will start to rush to do all those more deals with you.” I think it's all a fallacy, but I'm just saying that's how Bibi is trying to play this. Iran didn't fall for the bait. They didn't attack American targets. I still think Israel probably has the possibility of false flag operations in its pocket should it need to deploy those, but that's where we are now. The second thing is: It's President Trump. So this can all change on a dime. We at least have to acknowledge that.

Is the goal not only to destroy Iran's nuclear infrastructure—if that is even possible given that the intellectual know-how of Iranian scientists is deep, but the infrastructure obviously could be destroyed. Is the goal beyond that, as you see it, for a total decapitation of the Islamic Republic here? Is the goal regime change?

Look, it's really important to understand that with Netanyahu, he has been talking about Iran being on the cusp of nuclear weapons since the 1990s. We are always a year or two away, then weeks away, then hours away, apparently now. And he has repeatedly called on the Iranian people to rise up. It has failed repeated times because of the various factors of Iranian ability to repress protest movements, but also the lack of a viable internal or external opposition that is coherent enough and mobilized enough to bring that about. But it's not lost on most Iranians that Operation Rising Lion uses the imagery of a lion, which is the sign of the Pahlavi family that reigned in Iran before the 1979 revolution. There is a sense emerging now that Israel is working in coordination with Reza Pahlavi, the son of the absent previous monarch, to establish a viable external opposition that would take over in what is being portrayed now as a very smooth 100-day transition of power.

But I don't think, for analysts at least, anyone is fooled by the idea that trying to use these military operations to bring about regime change. We're not talking about a non-state actor like Hamas or Hezbollah or the Houthis. We're talking about a nation state of 90-million-plus people that has multiple sea and land borders. The whole region is concerned by this trajectory of destabilizing Iran. None of them are necessary allies of Iran, but there's a deep concern that the successive attempts of regime change by force that we have seen in this region has failed on a catastrophic level. And there is no reason—we have no evidence to think that Iran will be a success story at the moment. And if you add to it the fact that yes, clearly, the IRGC ranks have been hugely penetrated by Israeli intelligence. I mean, what they achieved on the first day of a shock-and-awe operation was frankly unparalleled in the history of Iran and perhaps other countries as well. But Iran still has a grip, domestically, on the security situation, in terms of inability to repress. And five days into this conflict, I haven't seen any signs of a mobilized internal protest movement emerging. Yes, there's a lot of discontent across the board, and people are not disillusioned that the core problem is the Islamic Republic of Iran and why they're in that situation. But I haven't seen a mass mobilization of protests. I haven't seen a mass support of allegiance to Pahlavi. We haven't seen emerging cracks within the military establishment over this issue of the factors. So I think if Israel can persuade the US to mission creep into regime change, which I think is very possible, frankly, it's going to be something that overshadows Trump's presidency for the remainder of his term. And it's going to be, I think, a very destabilizing trigger in the entire region.

One thing we also have to think about is that this may push Iran to do something that it is not heretofore done, unlike the spin that Israel tries to put on it, which is the decision to weaponize a nuclear program. So it could have that effect. I'm not even sure that's something that Netanyahu doesn't want to see. That, again, may be a way of keeping America in this war if Iran withdraws from the NPT, et cetera. And the thing that I would perhaps counterposit to the regime change talk is we may well be misreading this part of it. I think the Israelis may actually know that there's not some realistic scenario of a regime waiting in the wings which says, “Abraham Accords, America, being part of Pax Americana, Pax Zionista—where do we sign up? It sounds fabulous. We're the guys to turn the clock back to pre-’79.” I'm not sure anyone's actually dumb enough in the Israeli system to think that happens. I don't think Israel wants neat regime change. Israel's model is having collapsed, failed, chaotic states which are in turmoil with themselves, where you encourage all kinds of ethnic groupings. That's the playbook. We see it in Syria, for instance, in Lebanon, and I think that's probably how we should understand what they might be trying to do in Iran, which is part of a broader project—which I do think they believe. I think it is not realistic, but Israel is a place rather bereft of realists and rather overly blessed with messianic lunatics right now in decision-making positions—which is hegemony in the region. And the message they are sending is: “It's futile to resist. Deal with the fact that we are pursuing total victory against the Palestinians. We will crush them mercilessly, cruelly, and the rest of you come under our warm blanket of this nice Jewish genocidal state in your region.” I think it is horrendously dangerous, most proximately to Palestinians, to the rest of the region. It has a carryover effect with Israel now the global brand leader of how technology can be deployed for cruelty and how you run roughshod over every vestige of international legality. I also think it's super dangerous for Israelis.

Two more questions. The first is that the Israeli strikes and Trump's support for them came after a Middle East trip in which Trump made a series of decisions that were seemingly or in reality at odds with Netanyahu. For instance, he struck a deal with the Houthis and basically said, “We're going to stop bombing them as long as the Houthis stop firing at our ships. And if they fire at Israel, it's not our problem.” Do you see this posture that he has now as a total reversal of the posture that he had last month? And if so, why do you think he's made such a zigzag decision?

First of all, I don't know. If I'm going to speculate, I actually think you pointed to something really important there, which is the alarm bells in Israel that Trump's visit set off. And I think that may have been part of the decision inside Israel that “we have to go much more aggressive in trying to pull the Americans in.” Because America under Trump was going in a direction that I don't think the Israelis predicted. It is not a direction that led to Israel feeling pressure on the Palestinian front in the immediate sense. There's still the veto at the UN, there's still the arms, there's still the money. But they saw a US that looked at the region and said, “The Gulf—we do fabulous deals. If I go to Israel, they're going to ask me for things. It's the opposite. When I go to the Gulf, my wallet gets stuffed. When I go to Israel, my wallet gets emptied.” And they saw the ascendancy of the America First versus Israel First, and there was a choice, perhaps, to be made: Do we recalibrate what we are doing in relation to this change in America? Or do we go big, double down, try and pull that in our direction?

I think someone in a less personally politically desperate situation than Netanyahu may have made a different decision. But Netanyahu—Ellie reminded us the thing he's had about Iran for decades, but there's something else which I think is even more associated with the Netanyahu brand: I manage America better than anyone else. And we should never underestimate the extent, the depth, the diversity of Israeli points of access and influence on the American system. And alongside that, we should never underestimate the gullibility of the DC blob when it comes to foreign policy, national security affairs, and especially when that has anything to do with Israel and the Middle East. Therefore, I'm speculating that if you put those two things together, Netanyahu decided this was the time to go for it, and it worked. Israeli ability to carry the DC blob to a place was put to the test, and thus far, Netanyahu's bet has played out very well indeed. By the way, shame on, disgrace on, the Democrat establishment, that they are incapable of being anything other than the amen war party corner to all of this. Shame on disgrace on the liberal media establishment that they're unable to do the job that Tucker Carlson does in being a serious interviewer. But that's perhaps for another time.

Maybe since we're on the shame on theme, I'll add a shame on the response from some key European countries to all this, which seems to be giving complete carte blanche for Israel to commit international crimes that they're party to under the Geneva Convention, in terms of attacking nuclear facilities. But let me just add two points to Daniel's excellent points about Trump's visit to the GCC and the impact that it had. Because in my view, the Iranians were actually engaging quite seriously in a negotiating process with the Americans. They pivoted to negotiations very quickly, even under the transition period. They were looking at making avenues to the Trump administration. And part of the leverage that Trump had, which I fear he has now lost in these talks, is his ability to put a cap on Israeli military action inside Iran. Now, if you're sitting in Iran, you will wonder: Even if you make a deal with Trump, can he actually deliver on one of the core security dynamics of a deal, which is basically preventing Israel from acting with total freedom of action over Iranian airspace going forward? And frankly, I don't know the answer to that anymore, given the way that Trump was pulled in to this military campaign from Bibi. I think Bibi pulled off something quite radical. As you say, there were those tensions emerging. We did think that people like Whitkoff and J. D. Vance were winning that internal battle in the White House, to push for a diplomatic opening. And I think now, Iran needs to do something radical. I don't know what. I mean, there's a few options there. I don't know which one will most effectively work with Trump, but they need to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Should they invite Vance and Whitkoff to Tehran for negotiations, in ways that basically impose a ceasefire on the Israeli side for a 48 hour period when they're doing these negotiations? Should it be conducting a clandestine nuclear test for a bomb in a month's time? I think that what Bibi has done is accelerate a choice that the Islamic Republic of Iran now has to make on doing something radical.

My last question is, again, a little speculative, but it's a question that a lot of people want to hear your thoughts on, which is: Where do you see this heading? We are talking at a time when the US has not yet joined in, but most reports are that it's very likely that they will strike Iran. It hasn't happened yet though. So I guess the first question is: Do you think the US will be drawn in and directly participate? And what are the consequences of that? And then, what you are looking for, what are you thinking about as you assess whether this conflict will escalate or whether this will end somehow?

Look, things have taken such unpredictable turns in less than a week that it's really hard to predict. You know, if I was wargaming this, I would think: Could something shift on the Russian position on all of this? They're starting to be a little bit more vocal about the need for Israel to cool things down. I don't know. Will they use that access and influence that they have with Trump to push the needle towards de-escalation? As I said, would Iran reach a point where it does something quite radical on either a diplomatic opening or the escalation front? But what I can tell you is that if the US goes ahead with any sort of strikes inside Iran, that Iran will respond, and I think the intention so far is to respond immediately and as quickly as possible, and with a type of proportionate force but in a way that deters the US from getting more engaged militarily.

Now, Iran is facing, I think, its most existential challenge ever faced since the 1979 revolution for the political establishment. It hasn't yet used all of the cards it has. It's been very disciplined about not moving. against US assets, making sure that any non-state armed groups in the region that's allied to it also do not move against US assets. That may well change. Iran has been very disciplined on not doing anything on the Strait of Hormuz, nor has it requested (yet) that the Houthis join in with either a major coordinated ballistic missile launch into Israel or disruption of the Red Sea. So there are escalation pathways ahead. Iran has chosen not to go there yet, predominantly to keep the US out of this. Once the US enters it, I think they will try and do everything possible to show that this is going to be a lose-lose-lose for both Iranians, the Americans, and the Israelis. It's also this psyche in Iran that in a war of attrition, they have the bandwidth to outlast the Israelis and the Americans here. They look at the sort of deal that was struck between the Houthis and the president, and they think that, “Okay, after a few weeks, Trump will lose interest. He doesn't want to see gas prices rising at American gas stations. He'll come and do a deal.” But I think that's a very risky gamble from the Iranian side, if they think it's going to be clean for them as well. I think it's going to bvery, very destructive for Iran once the US is pulled into this. But they will make sure that everyone goes down with them.

Yeah, and I guess what I would add to that is to first, just offer the counterintuitive on this one— that I'm not suggesting is the likely outcome, but here's the path currently not being traveled: That there is a decision in the administration to bring this to an end, to not get dragged in; that the apparent possibility of talks in the very near future happens, that they don't fall into the Israeli playbook for how to conduct those talks. And what I would say about that possibility is what people should know is that Netanyahu can also have his political win. What I'm saying is there is an Iranian-American zone of agreement that respects that Iran is a sovereign country with interests that is not defeated and, therefore, is not going to fully capitulate, that Netanyahu could also pivot and sell at home. Trump says, “This is the deal. It's finished. It's done.” Netanyahu—I think there's a point at which he recognizes he's being told enough. And what I'm suggesting is that the Israeli opposition is so feeble that Netanyahu can carry the day on that.

There is also a narrative slowly coming out of Israel. If you follow it closely, they're running out of targets that they can hit that they don't need the Americans for. They're running out of some of the missiles that they need to intercept. There's a degree of tiredness in the ranks of the air force. How long can you maintain this intensity of missions? Mistakes are going to be made. So anyway, the more likely outcome is that everything Elie just outlined for us is tested. That the idea that Iran doesn't have a short-term dramatic response capacity is going to be put to the test by an escalation, an American engagement, and I think Netanyahu kind of sees this as a win-win. If America gets sucked in further, and it's a response that hurts America, hurts the Gulf states, hurts the global economy of which Israel is a part but it's in quite an okay place, then none of that matters a damn to Netanyahu. And if the consequences are longer term—the response capacity may not emerge in the next month or six months, but later on—then again, that's something that certainly Netanyahu, and perhaps Trump, can absorb as well.

The last two things I would say are, I think Israel has gone a step further. And if those things do play out—if the Gulf takes a hit from this, for instance—I think Israel has gone a step further in making itself an almost impossible to accept, integrate, absorb entity in the region. There's a degree of radicalism, of destabilization, of acting as a revisionist state, which is really dangerous to Israel's own well-being. And there are places this can go which could also have, I think, very consequential effects in the US. Israel has lost the Democrat voting republic. It hasn't lost Democrat electeds yet because they have very little relationship to their own voting public. They're also controlled by corporate and other interests. But that matters ultimately, and it may already have made itself a controversial rather than unifying theme on the Republican side. America First versus Israel First is really playing out. If I extrapolate further, I think Turkey now has to ask itself: What kind of additional deterrence do we need when Israel is simply joined the messianic wrecking crew? Israel has talked about going after Pakistan in the past. Pakistan has come out in solidarity with Iran. There are tremors that will be felt far further afield. And I think China is looking at this and saying: Let's see whether a small, reckless ally can take a preemptive action that drags America into a war. And meanwhile, it is showing that it is the responsible, rational global power rather than the US and its allies.

On that note, thank you so much to Daniel and Ellie for joining our show today. And thank you, of course, to our producer, Jesse Brenneman. Please rate and review our show on your podcast apps and go to JewishCurrents.org to read all of our work, including continuing coverage of Israel and Iran. We'll see you next time.