It's a moment of opportunity for the Israelis, and they've got the president they want in the White House in their corner, so they're gonna do as much damage as they can, I think, for as long as they can. Iran and Israel are motivated by this existential threat that they perceive. And so that's what's dangerous. And that there could be a a misstep, A miscalculation, and then we're climbing the escalation ladder even faster and furiously in a way that we
can't now predict. How close do the international agencies say Iran had got to being able to deliver a nuclear weapon? Worryingly close. Hello and welcome to the forecast as simmering tensions between Israel and Iran explode in a barrage of missiles and drones that have killed a number of Iranian nuclear scientists and military leaders, including the head of the country's powerful Revolutionary Guard. Nuclear enrichment facilities
were also targeted. Despite ongoing talks between Iran and the US over its nuclear programme, President Trump said he gave Tehran chance after chance and urged Iran to make a deal. Iran retaliated with 100 drones fired into Israel with more promise. But so far, all of them seem to have been shot down. So what is Israel's next move with Prime Minister Netanyahu saying strikes could continue for as many days as it takes?
To discuss this, I'm joined by our very own Jonathan Rugman and from the defense think tank RUSI, its senior research fellow in Middle East security, Burju Oschelik. Jonathan, first of all, what have they done? How much damage did we think they have done to Iran's infrastructure? Well, Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel is saying that this operation will take as long as it takes. So it's still open-ended, which means that the Israelis themselves have not assessed how
much damage has been done. As we speak, more targets are being attacked. And I think the Prime Minister of Israel views this almost as a once in a lifetime opportunity. He's been talking about doing this for about 15 years. And I remember during the 2012 Olympics in in in the UK, British intelligence officials saying their biggest geopolitical warriors far back as then was Israel attacking Iran. So now it's happened.
It's a moment of opportunity for the Israelis because they've had this critical report from the nuclear energy watchdog in in Vienna and they've got the president they want in the White House in their corner. So they're going to do as much damage as they can, I think, for as long as they can. And perhaps the only break on this won't be how Iran responds militarily against Israel because it seems to have been
pretty ineffective so far. But the thing might be to watch would be the oil price and what happens in the Gulf and whether this becomes more of a global energy security issue. But you while we wait to see the bomb damage assessment and work out what they've hit and what they haven't hit yet, what what we know they've done is they have taken out some very, very senior figures in the Iranian military, in the Revolutionary Guard. And these are big totemic
people. I mean, what's the impact of that? I think the impact is significant and the concern is that there could be more targeted assassinations planned in the coming days or weeks. My sense is that they're they're the planning, the coordination, the intelligence gathering behind this operation has been ongoing for quite some time. And this is not sort of a knee
jerk reaction by any means. There's been years in the making and we've already seen in the scale and the geographic reach of the, the targeted operation that began last night, a high level of intelligence penetration, I think in country. So the Iranians will have to get a sense of how this happened from the from the inside. It is humiliating and the, and Tehran will be under immense pressure domestically to to retaliate, to respond effectively.
But again, there's very delicate balance there because if they push too hard, if they go too far, how much more can Iran take? How much more of an attack can it absorb from from Israel I mean. These are big, significant totemic people for for much of the population in Iran. I mean, you know, when Soleimani was killed, you know, huge outpouring. You go there, there's a big statue and they've done it
several times over this time. So so I mean, there's the political impact, but what is the sort of the military impact? I mean, how important are they, those figures, head of the army, the head of a Revolutionary Guard, to actually deciding what Iran does? Well, it limits the strategic decision making capability and the quick turn around that would be required to act decisively in a moment like this.
There is the the, the, the prestige, the status, the reputational issue, of course of losing key figures in the IRGC, the military commander and deputies. And we don't know how far Israel will continue to push, whether there it could involve other political leaders. And these are recognizable names on on the streets in Iran. So this fact of the embarrassment, I think will not be lost upon the people. Iranian public opinion is, as we
know, very divided. So we have the hardliners to use that expression who will want a strong and decisive response and others who are critical of the regime and may see this as an opportunity, a window perhaps to push for political change domestically. But we're not there yet in my view. I mean, it's tempting to say, OK, so Iran and Israel are at war, but that they're not really at war, are they? Because what Iran has done so
far is very limited. Yes, and we found out last year when Israel attacked Iran much less decisively and Iran responded and did very little damage. The drones achieved almost nothing inside and the missiles inside Israel itself. And so the question we have to ask ourselves is, is Iran now a paper tiger? Is it now so weak that it can't really respond militarily in any conventional sense? So what does it do? It might think about asymmetric warfare.
It might have sleeper cells in Europe that it could activate, attack Jewish civilian targets or embassies. We just don't know. But the biggest card it has to play is, I think, the energy card. And it, and it, it, if it puts a chokehold on the Gulf, makes the flow of energy to the world's major markets that much more difficult, then we all start to feel it, you know, prices, energy prices go up, inflation goes up. Now, I'm not suggesting they're going to do that.
I don't know what they're going to do. And they, they must be thinking about that right now. But, but we don't yet, know, do we, whether Iran is incapable of hitting back with ballistic missiles the way it did before because Israel has taken them out effectively, or whether it just has chosen not to because there's a, there's a calculation here, isn't there? In that Iran, Israel has done
this by itself. It hasn't done this with American military power joining in yet, but it obviously wants the Americans to join in and for that to happen, I guess they are hoping that there will be a bigger Iranian military response. Well, that's assuming that Israel is actually in the business of regime change and and it really wants to go all the way. I mean, my suspicion is that, you know, Israeli security officials call this mowing the grass.
That's the phrase they use. So they're mowing the grass in Iran. They are making this once in a lifetime opportunity to do as much damage as possible over the next few days, possibly into next week, and we don't know. I don't think that necessarily means that the Israelis want the ayatollahs to fall. And I don't think the Americans want that. I don't think Donald Trump wants that. He wants he wants a deal.
But Israeli weapons can't reach all of the Iranian nuclear facilities at the moment, can they? We don't know precisely what they can reach.
I mean, the, the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon last year suggested that they now have the kind of military technology that they didn't have a decade ago, which could penetrate, you know, bunker busting bombs, get deep underground in the way that they assassinated Sheikh Nasrallah, the, the, the leader of Hezbollah. Now, the, the, the, the, the danger for Israel, I suppose, is that this mowing the grass operation doesn't achieve very much.
And I think that's why they will make it as prolonged as they can to achieve as many targets as they can until President Trump says enough is enough. So how, how close do the international agency say Iran had got to being able to deliver a nuclear weapon? Worryingly close. I think the statement earlier this week was the, was the harshest condemnation of of Iran in in in 20 years and.
We should have known this was coming because Israel was sort of tweeting away those those reports furiously very much. So As for. What they? Were gonna do it, wasn't it? Wasn't a surprise, I think for close watchers, I think the timing of the attacks raise some questions because the the nuclear talks between the US and Iran of selected by Oman, of course, have been ongoing. The next round was due to take place this this weekend. So the timing is perhaps surprising.
But again, we've been hearing for months now, if not years that from the from Israel that this is a strategic window of opportunity. It's an unmissable historic moment. And I think President Trump resisted the temptation to go along with this. There is a sense at the moment that he could still be hoping that this creates A leverage to bring Iran back to the table.
And they're really leaning it hard into this hard power basically to to decimate Iranian the the military commands potentially into humiliate the regime in front of the public. When you say very close, I mean what do you mean? I mean, you mean weeks? It's been hotly debated, hasn't it? It's, it's weeks, months up to a year, but it's close. And Prime Minister Netanyahu's statements even as as recent as last night said that Iran could be a year away from from from building the bomb.
I think from the Iranian perspective, being seen as a nuclear threshold state, it's a it's a source of deterrence and they wanted desperately to be able to hold on to that. But how close they actually got we, we don't know. We don't have enough visibility on it.
But the concern now is that with Iran potentially walking away from the the non proliferation treaty, the NPT, there will be less access by the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor, to verify what Iran is doing, particularly the threat of undisclosed sites, hidden sites across Iran, uranium enrichment sites. We will have less insights now potentially into what Iran is actually up to. And this creates this lack of visibility, creates a new layer of complexity going going forward.
So it very much is, I think, an issue of mowing the lawn. And we have said that if Israel attacks Iranian nuclear facilities, it will likely be unable to take dismantle the program out completely, that this will require ongoing persistent strikes over time. And what is the level of commitment that the US is willing to to provide to that? That is a big question now. And.
And, and the gamble that you have with the, you know, with the, with hitting them every couple of years is that you, you don't, as you say, really know how far along they are. You don't know what their new sites deep underground are achieving. And they could be a lot closer to it than anybody thinks. And that's, that's the fear. That's a great fear. So will this now this embarrassment, this, this the attack on their reputation regionally as well, will this now spur Iran on to accelerate
its program for a bomb? That's that's the question. But at the same time, from the Israeli security perspective, the point of view is we're not only trying to dismantle their ability to become a nuclear state, but we're also taking out their ability to retaliate, to hit us back hard. Even this morning there were news stories about attacks on Iranian air bases, ballistic missile sites, for example.
So it's not only the nuclear facilities that have been targeted, but it's a political military leadership and also the ballistic missile program. It's the ability of Iran to hit back hard that that Israel is now targeting as well. I. Mean they they may also have targeted the them effectively politically because if the Iranian leadership has been humiliated, key leaders have been taken out, how close are they to igniting a home grown rebellion and defiance of the regime?
And how? How feasible is that? Well, Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech this morning sort of said my war is not with the Iranian people. And, and, you know, hopefully, I mean, he, he'd be more or less said, you know, one day we hope that you, you overthrow your leaders. I mean, he came pretty close to saying that. I think it's, well, we've just found out in Syria, haven't we, We, how unpredictable these things are, how movements can spring up within a matter of
days. I think it's too early to say how close that moment is. I mean, the revolution is long in the tooth. It's been there since 1979, the Islamic Revolution. And it's there's an enormous amount of economic hardship in Iran. And still a huge amount of suppression. And. Of of all dissent. And a huge amount of suppression.
So, but you know, what's the other way of looking at it is, you know, what is going to unite Iranians might be actually what Israel does in a way that internal dissent, you know, is a is a different kettle of fish, if you see what I mean. So I think, I think we just don't know. How, how does Iran position itself in terms of why it wants
a nuclear weapon? I mean, Israel has always been very, very clear that they view it as an existential threat because they firmly believe Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map. Now you go to Iran and they say, well, no, we don't, we don't, you know, quite the opposite. We don't want to destroy Iran. We Israel. We want Israel to be a genuine democracy and to represent all the people of the of of of the. Place well, it's a risk of a big
over generalisation. I think there is something quite similar between the Israeli and Iranian psyches and that they both have a a sense of great fear of being being annihilated. I mean, it's it, it and both of them think that. So I, I don't think it's. And I think therefore the Iranian nuclear program springs from something that is as much Iranian as anything else to do with with Israel.
It's been interesting to see the Saudis condemning these Israeli attacks because there's no love lost between the Saudis and the Iranians. But nevertheless, I mean, the Saudis are quite capable of speaking out of both sides of the mouth. They'll be, they'll be pleased that the Iranian nuclear program has been set back as a potential threat to Saudi Arabia. But at the same time, it's an enormous, the front to, you know, peace and stability in the region. I mean, just on that, what?
Because, I mean, you're a big Saudi watcher. I mean, Saudi's been very, very close to the United States. But it seems, as you say, to have improved its relationship with Iran recently to the point to which it is a, you know, it is condemning these Israeli strikes despite Saudi Arabia and Israel having quite a long history in recent years of trying to improve their relationship. What's going on? I mean this is 3 dimensional
chairs. Yeah, I think, I think the war in Gaza has has completely scuppered any attempt at reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and and and Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Saudi Arabia still doesn't recognize Israel. Normalization with Israel is still a very long way off. And actually what's happened with Iran may even make that an
even longer process. And so in terms of Trump looking around the globe and thinking about the deals that he can strike, you know, Ukraine not going well, Gaza not going well now, you know, a, a, a nuclear disarmament deal with Iran arguably not going well either. I mean, the big question is will, will the Iranians do what Trump wants and fall into line and, and actually say we are, you know, effectively say we are
now such a paper tiger. We, we are now so powerless that we will do what you want just to stop a, a, a much wider conflict. But there's an enormous pressure from inside the country to do the opposite and to strike back. What do you make of that? Well, just on the point about Saudi Iran normalization, which has been underway for for some
time, this matters a great deal. And it's also a natural barrier or serves as a restraint on Iranian retaliation that would involve Gulf energy installations or the OR the Strait of Hormuz, for example. Saudi and other Gulf countries are firmly opposed to being dragged into this direct military confrontation between Iran and Israel.
So this matters a great deal. If Iran were to go there, I think it would be a matter of last resort that they are so cornered that there are no alternatives because to blow up the energy infrastructure in the Gulf would be to destroy the relationship with Saudi Arabia. At a time when Israel is viewed to be extremely diplomatically isolated in the region and is acting on its own, it's been described by by many in the
region as as now a rogue state. What's really fascinating is that both Iran and Israel are motivated by this existential threat that they perceive. And so that's what's dangerous and that there could be a misstep, A miscalculation, and and then we're climbing the escalation ladder even even faster and furiously in a way that we can't now predict.
But in terms of Iran Gulf normalization, this means that Iran's options are limited, are more limited than they would have been a few years ago because there will be backlash against the Iranian regime if they were to attack, if they were to damage energy, energy infrastructure and and the price of oil would would escalate. It hasn't yet. Thus far, energy prices have not spiked. They did, but then they then they retreated. So I think this is the initial reaction.
Now markets are waiting to see what will happen over the next few days and just how bad the scenario can can can develop. Now, as Jonathan says, I mean, Netanyahu has been wanting to do this for years and years and years, and other Israeli leaders have as well. But there are lots of domestic political reasons and actually diplomatic reasons why Netanyahu would want to do this right now, aren't there?
Yes, certainly. What's interesting is that both Israel and Iran face stiff domestic resistance and and opposition. From Netanyahu's point of view, this is a long standing almost, I won't say fixation, but it's certainly seen as an issue of national interest that is deeply connected to Netanyahu's own political ambitions, but also
exceeds them in a way as well. Taking out nuclear, Iran's nuclear ambitions is a long standing Israeli desire, the way that they define their national interests. In terms of timing, of course there's the the 60 day deadline that Trump had set that passed this week. And I think from the Israeli perspective, they are now defending that timeline and it has passed. And so this is now a call to action that is seen as as being
justifiable. But it's very unclear as to whether this will push the Iranians back to the negotiating table. But, but I mean, Netanyahu knows that both his internal critics and his external critics will tend to see the Iran issue and the Gaza issue, around which he's drawing huge amounts of criticism, is very, very
different. And and while he's he's under fire from former prime ministers, political opposition, his his own population who wanted to settle that war quickly, and he's under pressure from Britain and France and Canada over Gaza. This is an issue around which all of those critics suddenly go, oh, OK, fine. You gotta well. Up to a point, Chris, I mean, it's interesting that Benny Gantz, 1 of Netanyahu main rivals has come out with full support for Netanyahu.
So you're right. There's, you know, this, this is a, if it's an existential threat that we're talking about. Existential threats tend to bring people together, don't they? But on the international front, it's an interesting one for the UK because last year British jets were involved in protecting Israel from Iranian attacks. Are they going to get involved this time?
Well, they've said no. They've they've, they've explicitly said that they weren't involved in defending Israel. Haven't they? Not so far. But, you know, we don't know whether there's going to be an intensification of, of the attacks that perhaps the Iranians didn't launch last last year or in fact, whether the Iranians have shown that they don't have very much the damage that they can do.
And I think it will be quite possible for the for the Brits to sit this one out in the sense that I mean, these the Israelis have already proved what, what they can do ostensibly on their
own. No doubt there was some U.S. intelligence involved, certainly US more than US awareness, because every time Israel does anything in the Middle East, the Americans have to be informed for the safety of U.S. troops, US aircraft carriers and so on. So arguably this the point of sort of maximum pressure from the Brits over the Gaza issue. Yes, it's possible the Brits get sucked into defending Israel from Iran. Well, we've already seen Macron
sort of flipping the script. You know, he's been hugely critical of Israel over Gaza, but he comes around on side when it comes to Iran. Yes, and, and, and, you know, Netanyahu is often several steps ahead of everybody else in in, I think thinking through how these things are going to play out. What, what does this tell us about the relationship with
America as well? I mean, what, what we've seen in reality is American president after American president unable to really tell Netanyahu what to do. Is that what's happened here again?
Well, the issue is that, you know, over the past few weeks, we've been hearing a lot about there being this divide between Netanyahu and Trump, that they had fallen out, that Trump wasn't pleased with the way in which Netanyahu was handling Gaza, that there was a lack of a ceasefire on the ground, that the situation was deteriorating rapidly and, and, and, and Trump wanted to end it because, I mean. Trump said openly this week he didn't want Israel to hit Iran.
That's right. But at the same time, Trump is is also restrained in that he has his own base is divided into the MAGA camp, right. And in terms of the isolationists and those who are more hawkish with respect to Iran policy. And so there will be those who not publicly but discreetly are in favour of humiliating Iran in this way of dismantling or at least eroding its nuclear program significantly and buying time. A weaker Iran is dangerous because it's it's more
unpredictable. But also could it open the door for negotiations? I think it's too soon to tell. We don't have any idea of what an off ramp would look like for any type of face saving measure for Iran to walk back from this. The argument could be made that the regime is is doing it in favor in for the sake of avoiding all out regional escalation. But at the same time the
pressure to act domestically. On the US side though, I think again very divided, much like the domestic, the constituencies in in Israel and Iran, the US base is also divided as to where they stand on, on Israel and Iran. Yeah. I mean, I think the Iranians are really in a corner now because they've got to be seen to be doing something. But what? And do they really want to escalate the situation into an attack on Israel, which is so successful?
If it is successful, that brings America in to a wider conflict. And so we're still in the situation we've been in for really quite a long time, I think, which is that nobody really wants a wider war. Israel wants to reduce Iran's nuclear capability to a point where it will take years and years and years for it to be restored. And it seems to be saying go hang to diplomacy, go hang to monitoring facilities, which has been going on for years.
And and you know, we're going to do this militarily. And the risk for in all of this is is a miscalculation that that we know we have AUS president who says he doesn't want wars. He's there to stop wars, but nevertheless, he acts in such an unpredictable way. And so suddenly he flips and he said one minute and he says, you know, he doesn't want war with, with Iran. And the next minute he says, well, kind of the Iranians had this coming.
We tried to negotiate and be prepared for even tougher attacks to come in the in the days ahead. So in the same way that on tariffs, he changed his mind, he, he prevaricated, he, he tried to negotiate. He could switch again within a matter of days. He could say, you know, say to the Israelis, it really is time
for this to stop. And I think, however bad the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump is, I think Netanyahu really believes that Trump is the best American president Israel has ever had and would probably do what he was told in
the final analysis. In in the build up to military action last year, it was all about how Iran had become the regional power and was able to cause trouble on multiple fronts, whether it was Yemen, Syria, Gaza, what, what's the reality of the power of, of Iran now? I mean, has it been massively degraded in terms of what it can achieve? You know, there are still missiles being fired by the Houthis regularly as Israel, and they get shot down after the sky.
So can they actually do any damage? Well, it's the paper tiger argument, but the question is, have we overestimated Iran's military capabilities over time, or has the Israeli assault been so effective that they have been
downgraded significantly? I think what Iran has done quite problematically is use the the territory of neighboring Arab states as launching pads of attacks against against Israel in those countries, those domestic populations that have suffered as a result because of Iran's use of its forward deterrence policy. And it's leaning into these armed non state actors that has significantly been eroded over the course of the war, since the start of the war in Gaza.
And without that, in the absence of it, where does that leave Iranian capabilities is, is the question. And that we will I think have an answer to in the coming hours, in the coming days, contingent on how Iran responds. We've, we've heard a lot about tracking Iran's ballistic missile program, its armed drone program, but will it be able to use these to high effect? Or is the ongoing assault that the Israelis are now conducting to limit the retaliatory strike
capability? Will that mean that Iran is is now cornered? There's already talk in regional media in Turkey and in many Arab countries, you know, questioning how it was that Iran wasn't able to respond last night to deter these attacks. Where is the intelligence failure coming from? So there's some serious internal questioning going on as well. Or we can expect to see that
and. What an amazing night for Mossad. I mean, I mean, we've had years of assassination attempts on and successful attempts on Revolutionary Guard commanders, nuclear scientists. But this, this, I mean, this the last 24 hours. And, you know, we thought the walkie-talkie attack on, on Hezbollah members in Lebanon was, was of a different league.
But to take out, to use a crude phrase, at least six nuclear scientists, the head of the army, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, I mean, every man who takes on that job is, is a dead man walking. I mean, because, you know, the Iranians have, the Israelis have shown that they are so capable now of penetrating, you know, the, the upper echelons of the
Iranian elite. Yes, I mean it's a striking contrast with the massive failure incompetence around Gaza on October the 7th and the threat right on their doorstep by comparison to the one in in Tehran. Just finally, I mean, because the other thing I think, you know, people will be worried about watching this is if you're right and Iran's military capability is significantly degraded, it may well turn to asymmetric warfare supporting terrorism. What do we know about their sort
of ongoing ability to do that? Well, obviously there have been various cases in the UK of Iranian journalists targeted, followed, threatened. I think the Iranians have had sleeper cells in Europe for a long time. They've in the past shown the ability to attack museums or attack Jewish tourists. But I think the risk for them is that asymmetric warfare, if it's waged by Iran, will reap more symmetric warfare from the Americans themselves. I think that's that's the risk for them.
My guess is they don't want to go there. You know, there there are various soft targets, museums across Europe, embassies perhaps What? We just have to hope that doesn't happen. I would add to that the possibility of an Iranian LED cyberattack on critical national infrastructure in Europe, in the United States, depending on Tehran's strategic calculus as to whether to target West, the West or to keep it more limited to Israel. So cyberattacks, potential
states supported terrorism. And also I think we need to keep in mind that the the Houthi threats in in Yemen and the Red Sea in terms of maritime security is, is very much live. And could that then draw in the US and the UK and allies and defending the Red Sea and that strategic checkpoints there? I think that is something to watch as well. Thank you both very much indeed. That's it for this episode of The Forecast. Until next time, bye bye.