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In this episode Amey and I talk to famous (and famously pro-zionist) author and strategist Edward Luttwak to discuss the current crisis in the middle east and get the pro-Israel perspective (we also talked to Hussein Ibish to get the liberal Arab viewpoint). I also wanted to ask Dr Luttwak about some other topics (such as the travails of turbo capitalism and the nature and issues of US power etc) but the Iran and Israel clash took up most of our time. Amey did manage to ask Luttwak about the role of innovation in the IDF (a topic on which he has written a book too), but we will have to get him back someday to discuss other interesting topics. For now, here is Edward Luttwak on the Iran vs Israel war and its respective strategies and issues. Transcript below.
Our thanks to our friends at http://Scribebuddy.com (they provide a service that converts audio to text) who have provided the following transcript (not edited, so some errors will be there):
The Brown Pundits Browncast. Amey: Hello, this is Amey from Brown Pundits Browncast. And today we have a fascinating conversation for you with Dr. Edward Lutwak, Dr. Omar Ali and myself on Israel, Iran and Grand Strategy. We have a slight blip at 3130 mark. Amey: Apologize to you guys in advance. And without further ado. Dr Ali: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to a very special edition of the Brown Pundits Browncast. We have with us today a very special guest, Mr. Edward Luttwak. Dr. Luttwak is a historian and strategist, very well known, written many books and essays and interviews, and is currently obviously watching very closely the events in Israel to which he has been personally connected as well. Dr Ali: So we are very delighted to have him with us and welcome Mr. Luttwak and we will start by asking you to just introduce yourself and say a few words. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Well, you said enough. I will only add the fact that I have served in 2 armies in various wars, and I've participated in other wars. So I do, when I write about the subject of war is something that I've known from the bottom up, you know, somebody with a rifle and engaged in combat. That's 1 thing. And the other is that I have a connection with the practical world because I started and operate a ranch, cattle ranch. Dr. Edward Luttwak: You know, not animal husbandry, more like letting the animals wander around and doing roundups to sell the steer and stuff. So therefore I'm perhaps somewhat different from the average academic who talks about war and has never fired a rifle and is never engaged in that activity and stuff. Most so-called military and strategic experts have no knowledge of war at all. And I've never involved in anything really serious like anybody who, let's say, was in the First World War, he had a different experience. But it was just dabbling, but it was very varied and so different examples of activities and so Anyway, that's it Dr Ali: With the war then There is obviously a war raging in the Middle East right now. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Yes. Dr Ali: We will go back to some of the background questions, but I think the hottest question right now would be what is happening right now? What is your view of what the strategic and tactical situation is in the Middle East? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Well, as you know, the Middle East, the Arab Middle East was always considered a Sunni Arab community. And then what's happened is that there's an ongoing attempt by the Shia Iran to take over the Middle East on the argument that, yes, it's true, we're not Arabs, we're Persian, but it doesn't matter because we oppose Israel more than you do. And yes, it's true, we're not Sunni but Shia, but that doesn't matter because we hate the Jews more than you do. That's why they had all this Holocaust nonsense, you know, Holocaust never happened nonsense, which was deeply hypocritical actually because when I was a child there were Jewish communities in every Arab country from Morocco to Algeria to Egypt, I mean Libya, Egypt and so on and all the way to Penang in Malaya. They've all disappeared. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The only Jewish community that remains is in Tehran and Isfahan and Shiraz. So when the Persians tell the Arabs don't worry that we are not Arabs or Persians or Sunni because we hate the Jews more than they do, they're not being truthful because it is a fact that these communities survived. It is much smaller than it was, but it's still 20 times bigger than any community in any Arab state. So this is a very cynical policy, which is appropriate for an empire. The Iranians, all these Iranian priests and so on, who talk about religion, they all have a Persian national and imperial character and they are using Arabs as expendables in order to reestablish their Persian empire. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And strange enough, a two-star general, the Roshi guards said this much. He said, we are back to the Mediterranean as we were with Cyrus and with the Jews. We were with the Jews and we were with Cyrus. He just said it, you know, and blurted this out. So that's what's going on. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And the sort of Western humanitarians keep talking about the Palestinians and They keep talking about the fact that many Palestinians died in Gaza well, the fact is that Israel attacked Hamas like mr. Churchill attacked the Nazis and a lot of Germans got killed because they were up in cities and so on. And even you couldn't say that all of them were Nazi fanatics or murderers. They were just German citizens. And the Palestinians got killed as being the civilians around Hamas. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So it's a lot of rather plain things going on that people were very hard not to see here. Amey: So Dr. Luthwak actually had a question and this is Amey here for listeners. You know you're known for writing books about you know like the grand strategy of Soviet Union and you know more and historically also about the Roman Empire, is this Iranian sort of nationalistic posturing? Does it have the actual historical weaving to do or is it just rhetoric that they rely upon? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Well, Since the people involved are supposedly Islamists, they are supposedly, they should view the Persian culture and the Persian empire with total indifference, complete indifference, and they should only refer to it hypocritically to appease, I don't know, some Persian nationalists who might be hearing them. That is not at all the case. The people of Egypt, as Islamic people in Egypt, were totally indifferent to the Egyptian pyramids and to the ancient Egyptians, totally. If the Westerners didn't come along and show an interest in them, they wouldn't do this. That has never been the case with the Persians. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Even, remember, when the Persians become Muslim, they're not happy about it, but then they find a solution by not being Sunni, but by adopting the heresy, because being heretical Muslims, they therefore were able to retain their identity. And all these people, even the most retrograde benighted Persian cleric has in him the imperial culture. And You know that from their sophistication in handling the Arabs, because they call the Arabs insect eaters, lizard eaters, and things like that. But they have developed these militias as expendables. See, they say, oh, you know, we pay the money and so on, and we give them this great mission and so on. Dr. Edward Luttwak: But there is an imperial culture. The Persian people lost the empire a long time ago, but they retained an imperial mentality. And in fact, they will often refer to Iran and An-Iran. So Iran is actually the Iran of the maps and An-Iran is all the countries of the wider empire and if you ask them where is the boundary of this empire they say oh no problem is where they celebrate Nowruz and what is Nowruz? It is the Zoroastrian festival. Dr. Edward Luttwak: In other words you have people who are Muslim clerics that the outside world views as fanatics and so on, and is the country of no roots. Now fairness in fairness, this came about through steps like the Iraq war, fighting Iraq, okay? Until the Iraq war, they were trying to suppress the national epic of Iran, which is the Shahnameh. They were trying to suppress it. It's only when the war with Iran started that the Ayesh al-Azhar agreed for it to be published, republished and so on. Dr. Edward Luttwak: People had plenty of old copies around, but They had stopped new publications. Then they went back to publishing the Shahnameh and a short time thereafter in a very highly decorated, expensive format. And secondly, at the beginning, they were trying to stamp out Nowruz, you know, the jumping over the fire of the Shia and some, trying to stamp it out because of course it is not Muslim. It's not Islamic at all. Well, then they gave up and they started referring to on Iran, which is all the lands where they practice Nowruz, Turkmenistan and all the others. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So yes, they lost the empire a long time ago, but they have an imperial culture. Amey: Dr. Lutok, I'll just point out Bombay, although you don't have Farnesworth, the city is still a place where they celebrate Nowruz. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Now who celebrates Nowruz? Amey: The Parsis of course. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The Parsis of course. The Parsis who are not Muslim at all but who are very Persian of course. So I say it is Iran and I'm Iran and many of the people so practice now rules are not Muslim actually. There were perhaps at some point in the history, I mean like in Southern Kazakhstan, it's a big deal and stuff. Dr Ali: So if this is their Imperial project and in the garb of sort of anti-israel or pro-palestinian whatever activism What is the status of this project right now if their biggest? Proxy Hezbollah is so severely under attack Dr. Edward Luttwak: well Hezbollah was an asset of theirs. He's disappeared, by the way, your companion. There's only a red glow. Okay, that used to be. Okay, so first, Hezbollah was there. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They invested very heavily in Hezbollah. The citizens of Iran have paid a large price for the fact that the Revolutionary Guards maintained these militias, I would say Hezbollah has absorbed 90% of their resources. A great deal of the oil revenues of Iran have actually ended up being spent to equip Hezbollah with expensive weapons and also give them expensive training. And in this regard, there is some military seriousness going on because for example, there is this very effective Russian anti-tank missile called Kornet. Very effective, very long, very long and not handy, but very long, extremely effective missile. Dr. Edward Luttwak: However, which requires serious training. It's not a pick it up and point and shoot anti-tank weapon. It's something that can hit a tank 8 kilometers away, but it's very hard to use. So the Hezbollah operators were given a whole year of training, a full year of training to really use these weapons. And they would take them to Iran and spend the whole year training them. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So the cost of Hezbollah as a whole has been enormous, very big cost, And yes, they have lost it. They lost it because of the fact that Ismaili started believing its own propaganda. That is, the Israelis will never hit us because we have all these rockets and missiles. It never occurred to them that the Israelis would find out systematically where they were and would develop ways of neutralizing them and destroying them in bulk. And in fact, I was in Israel 3 times and I was actually on the border area, but I only found out in a very coincidental way that all through this time, for months now, there've been tiny raids by 3 or 4 Israeli soldiers that penetrated territory and neutralized the missiles or neutralized the rockets. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They would actually creep over the countryside, come to a place where they had 1 of these hidden magazines of rockets and missiles, and they would just disable them. That's why when they tried to retaliate in a very heavy way, a lot of them didn't come off. So yes, Hezbollah, after all these years of successful expansion and advancement and all that stuff, has had the stuffing knocked out of it through the series. And there was also some sequence. For example, first you have the bleepers go off. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Then they say, oh, we can't use the bleep to telephone method. So they pick up field radios. Only then the field rates have blow up. Now having no radio and not being able to use the phone, of course. They can't use their satellite phones and you know, because that's totally compromised. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And that's why they went to the beeper system. So what they do is they gather. They never, they gather. They have, you know, an emergency meeting of the general staff and they're all there in 1 place. When they are gathered, the bomb comes. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So what we're dealing with, if you want a wider view of it, is that 1 reason why Hamas was able to totally surprise the Israelis on October 7th was because their resources were largely devoted, the intelligence resources were focused on Ismail. They focused to an excessive extent, of course, because they failed to put in even the simplest precautions against Hamas. But then that's part of Israeli history. I was a volunteer in the 1973 war. I was a participant and the guy riding in the armoured vehicle with me, a vehicle just looted from the Egyptian army actually, a wonderful eight-wheel Russian thing who would run 80 kilometers an hour over the desert break front for us. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The guy next to me had been on the front line of the Suez Canal, 1 of 411 soldiers holding the entire extent of the canal at a time when the front line Egyptians were 40, 000. So why did they do that? Well, because 1 feature of Israeli life is overweening self-confidence. Israelis are terribly self-confident. People have watched them in India, traveling around India. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They arrive and they scarp her up in Himalayas, they go into deep jungles, and you know, they don't actually know anything. They're just come off the army, national life was rather restricted. They didn't know anything about jungles or glaciers or Himalaya. But, you know, it's a national character. They're so they're overconfident, overconfident. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So in October 6, 1973, they had formed 11 soldiers holding the Swiss Canal. Absurdly, when they were out, as I say, the visible Egyptians were 20, 000. And then in October 7, having made the decision to destroy Hezbollah and penetrate it through maximum intelligence effort, they didn't even allocate a minimum to safeguard against a Hamas surprise. And that's what they got. Dr Ali: But if this is the case and Israel has now sort of turned the tables on Hezbollah, Iran obviously is in danger of losing its entire grand strategy in that case. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Yes, and that's why today they launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel. And 180 ballistic missiles, which are rather large objects, rather substantial. You can visualize them as something that costs like $50, 000 a piece. They could cost just the metal is $50, 000. The actual cost probably is more like a million apiece in terms of money. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They've invested over the years and what happened when they launched 180 of them, they wounded, sorry, they killed an Arab from Gaza who was visiting a friend in Jericho. Now how said Arab was it must have been an Arab who was already working somewhere in the West Bank or something like that. Anyway, 180 ballistic missiles launched at Israel killed 1 Arab. The previous time they wounded a Bedouin girl. In other words, 1 aspect of the story is that the Ravushi guards and some totally do not understand the technological level of their antagonist. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They don't understand that Israel's ballistic missile defenses are far more advanced than their ballistic missiles. I mean, imagine launching 180 ballistic missiles and killing 1 person in Jericho. How could you do that? Only, I mean, you know, they don't realize that Israel has ballistic missile defenses that the United States does not have. Russia does not have or China has. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Nobody has it. Only they have it. So during all these years, the Israelis were doing this and that and the other and having tank regiments and submarines. And they managed to find the resources to develop their own native purely Israeli ballistic missile defenses that use hard kill. Hard kill, that is not proximity views or anything. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The piece of metal flies up into space, because this by the way has been the first introduction of space warfare. This and the previous attack, that was a space warfare. A piece of metal flies up from Israel and intercepts an incoming warhead directly, hand-on. Hit-to-kill, it's called. Hit-to-kill, which is no proximity fusing, you don't depend on secondary effects, And it implies a certainty of an accuracy. Dr. Edward Luttwak: An accuracy that is just beyond anything you can imagine. It's not like intercepting an aircraft with an anti-aircraft missile. Because really, you're sending a nail into space. That's what they're doing to hit this thing. So, you know, they have great virtues, these Persians, but 1 thing they don't understand is actually they because they do things themselves like drones and All kinds of things they don't realize that there's a whole different level of technology Dr Ali: But If this attack has not been that successful, what is the Iranian sort of longer term plan? Now, do they have a look? Dr. Edward Luttwak: You're dealing with a country that just had an election, something very unusual because there are no elections in the whole region except for Israel and Iran. In that election, the opposition could only affirm its position by abstention. And as you know, 80% abstain. In other words, this regime has very little public support. The regime employs a lot of people. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And if you assume that their employees vote for them, The only people who vote for them in Iran are their employees. So they're a very narrow base of support. They're out on a limb. Of the 80% who don't support the regime, I think a large percentage don't support the Imperial Project. The Imperial Project is at their expense. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And that expense may increase as we speak tonight because the Israelis might take out their oil export terminal in Karg Island. Iranian oil goes out through 1 terminal in Karg Island. They have a secondary 1 way out in the Indian Ocean in Jask, but that is supplied by a pipeline that's even closer. And Karg Island is much closer to Israel than Hodeida in Yemen, which they again bombed again yesterday. So they might take out Karg Island, that will stop the oil revenues until they can repair the facility. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And repairing the facility while not being able to avail yourself of Houston, Texas, it might be very difficult to do, except very slowly. Amey: That was the facility bombed during the Iran-Iraq war quite a bit. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Correct, absolutely correct. They had, of course, that time they still had another 1 near Abadan, further up the Persian Gulf, but Karg Island was attacked by the Iraqis and set on fire. But at that time, Iran was not under embargo, and Iran could turn to the oil industry. For repair purposes and reconstruction, you need Houston. And the only people who can really play a role other than Houston is the Norwegians, who specialize in stopping fires. Dr. Edward Luttwak: But now they don't have this possibility. So if the Israelis do knock out Tarn Island tonight or tomorrow, they will not be able to, it will take them a long time to rebuild it. And because the Persian Gulf is so unfriendly to tankers, because it's so terribly shallow, you can't actually load them without such a facility. So this is what may come down. And then you see the end game here is not Iran current rulers coming up with a new strategy, but rather that they will fall from power and they'll be replaced by people who might be Muslim and they might be, you know, retain all the characteristics, but who are now going to take the oil revenues and invest them in an imperial project to this extent. Dr Ali: But if there is to be such an attack tonight or tomorrow or very soon. There is always the possibility that the Iranians can't get significant missiles into Israel. They can probably get rockets and missiles hitting Jubail and Ras Tanura and whatever. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Yes, in other words, that they would turn against their neighbors with whom they have reconciled on what grounds? Of causing trouble to the world? You know, causing trouble to the world, that's a dangerous game to play. Because if they knock out Rastanurah, if they knock out the Saudi export facility, this will have an impact, of course, in the whole world economy. And rich people will be slightly richer and the poorest people will go over the edge and starve. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That's what it is. Now if the Iranians do that, they should do the thing first instead of doing that thing second. Because the second thing they would do would be suicide. They knock out Rastanurah and they're going to get, the Americans will arrive on the scene. They have to. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They won't send any soldiers of course. Iran is too big and they couldn't even cope with small Iraq, you know, half of Iraq, Mesopotamia. So they're not going to send troops, but they can really wreck the regime and go after it and wipe them out. They can do that. But that would be a reckless act of vandalism because Israel's action is not, there's no Saudi involvement, there's no Kuwait involvement. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They're completely innocent. It's true that they are more sympathetic to Israel than to Iran in the circumstances, but that's not surprising since Iran threatens them and Israel does not. But If they do that, this is the suicide turn of the regime. You know, blowing up Rastanuram. Dr Ali: But is it possible that while you may think that they won't do that and Israel may think they won't do that, the United States, State Department, Lincoln, whatever, these people are not known to be reckless, you know, who dares wins kind of people. They are very bureaucratic people. They will stop Israel from... Dr. Edward Luttwak: No, but you see, Israel was attacked with 180 ballistic missiles. And Israel will retaliate in a serious way and they will not attack nuclear facilities, of course, because I may be put it in a jocular way, but they're too many, they would kill too many of their friends there. So it's cutting off the oil is not an attack on the 91 million people of Iran, because this oil is denied to the Iranian population. The Iranian population doesn't get this oil revenue. It doesn't. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That's why you have, for the first time since the revolution, since 1979, there is hunger in Tehran. People are going hungry because they get the salaries and with the inflation rate the real is now 52, 000 or 58, 000 real to the dollar. It used to be, you know, 4 to the dollar. Now it's 58, 000. What does 58, 000 mean? Dr. Edward Luttwak: It means that it's worthless. It means that any inflation number that you hear about is not in fact the true number. The inflation is such that the money is worthless. 58, 000 real to the dollar and you carry that in a wheelbarrow. So the oil revenues are denied to Iran's people. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Knocking out the oil revenues undermines the regime. It does not make the people any poorer because they are not getting the oil revenues. Iran under the Shah used to export 4000000 barrels a day in the much smaller economy that it was. And now they are exporting less and instead of the money doesn't get there. The only foreign exchange products that you are sold in Iran today are merchants who are exporting pistachio nuts and traditional things. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The carpet trade has collapsed, as you probably know, the famous Tabriz carpets, nobody wants them in outer fashion. So the merchants who do these exports, they do not repatriate the dollars. They instead use those dollars to purchase imports. So the oil economy has nothing to do with the people of Iran. That money goes straight to the Russian guards. Dr. Edward Luttwak: It pays for the salaries of the Houthis. The Houthis who are getting dollars every month on which they live. And if they don't get those dollars, they'll have to go home. And the same goes for Hezbollah and same goes for the Qatayib in Iraq and the whatever the other 3 militias they have there. In other words, cut off the oil and no money for the militias. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That is a very good move for Israel. Dr Ali: So there is, as you know, a very widespread sort of support for the Palestinians and Hezbollah in the in the Muslim world, not necessarily in their elites, but in the common population. Yes. Is there a possibility that the Iranians, having become like heroes for the resistance instead of folding, will get so much support that some of the pro-US or pro-Western governments could be in danger? That they could win that way? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Okay, that is certainly, listen, for Muslims to support not the Palestinian nation, which is not a religious category, but Hamas and Islamic, at least Muslim Palestinians, for the Muslim nation, for the Muslim palace, it's a basic identity solidarity thing that is inevitable. And they don't care what the arguments are for Israel. They don't care what anything like that. They say, well, you know, even if my brother made a mistake is still my brother and you're not my brother. You're my brother's enemy. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So that is possible, except that many Muslims at some level intellectually must understand that what's going on, what is being going on here is the Shia hijacking, the Palestinian cause for themselves, for the purposes of expanding Shia power in the Arab world. And bringing, as the Revolutionary Guard General said to my great surprise, is the first time we're back in the Mediterranean since Cyrus. Well, Cyrus is further known of co-religionists, but then there must be also some understanding that this cause was hijacked by the Persians to rebuild a Persian empire and hijacked by the Shia to establish a Shia domination. They must understand this. And many do. Dr. Edward Luttwak: I know that for a fact. For example, the 3000000 Palestinian citizens of Israel, the 3000000 Israeli citizens who are Arab and therefore Palestinian, they have maintained complete loyalty to the state of Israel since Hamas attack. And they did it because first they're a sophisticated population, you know, they have a very high percentage of graduates, many, many doctors, engineers, and some of them in high tech. They're educated people and they therefore know that Hamas is against Palestinian identity, they reject any Palestinian nationalism, That they threw Fatah people from rooftops when they won in Tehran. And they also know that all this is Bala stuff, this is Shia stuff, and Persian stuff. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And they understand that this is a Persian hijacking of their national cause. And that's to be a reason why the 3 million Palestinians haven't said boo. They're citizens, you know, they have a right to do things like demonstrate. They haven't done so because they realize that this is, they don't see themselves as, you know, people who should support the Persian ambitions in the Middle East. And as for Hamas, which is not Persian, they're simply beneficiary of Iranian money. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Iranian money is going to everybody except Iranians. And the Hamas received a hell of a lot of it. And the problem with Hamas is that their behavior on October 7th is a behavior that the Palestinians of Israel did not accept. Jews and Palestinians have been fighting for a century or more. Hardly 1 case where somebody went and killed children. Dr. Edward Luttwak: You know, just didn't happen. And there were so many different configurations of this fighting, but at no point did a Jew go into a Palestinian school and kill children. And the only time there was an attack on an Israeli school, it was done by a Druze from Lebanon who belonged to the Syrian National Party, which was a kind of 1930s fascist-type party. In other words, the only time, notwithstanding a century of conflict, when somebody attacked somebody's children, it was not in fact either a Jew or a Palestinian, It was an outsider. And so they saw October 7, and they said, that's not us. Dr Ali: So at this point, if we flip this around, this is Iran's grand strategy, which may be running into trouble now. But what is Israel's grand strategy? And how do they propose to sort of change? Dr. Edward Luttwak: In Israel's grand strategy Has always been very much a simple thing of getting a piece of land, putting a farm on it, building a house on it, that, that, that. It's called building the land, up-building the land. There was never any grand strategy behind that. And insofar there was strategies, they all failed. For example, David Ben-Gurion was a Palestinian leader, a Jewish leader in Palestine before 1914, but in 1910 or something, 1905, and in 1913, he went to Constantinople to learn Turkish and become a lawyer in the expectation that the national project would develop within the Ottoman Empire. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So he better learn Turkish and become a Turkish lawyer. That was David Ben-Gurion. Well, he hadn't made much progress when the Ottoman Empire went poof. Next, there was a long period when they had to cohabit with the infinitely wily British. And the British were terribly wily because they had made contradictory promises. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So they had to wild themselves from right to left. So the Jews were enormously difficult to understand the British, you know, with their layered authority patterns and, you know, the fact that country house meetings of people that were not even published in the papers were more important than things done in parliamentary committees. And so it took a long time. By the time they had some idea of how the British function the British empire went poof, okay. Then there was a long period when they were fighting the Soviet Union which used Arabs and gave them, you know thousands of armed vehicles instead of hundreds, thousands suddenly, and hundreds of jet fighters because that was their way of entering the Middle East. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And so The Israelis had to invent a million things to cope with the thousands of this and hundreds of that. And they developed a whole technology and the method to survive. Well, they did it and did it, and then the Soviet Union went poof. And since that time, there's been the Iranian story, which is the government in Iran that has steadily less support. Now it's down to 20% statistically from the last election, which pursues this Shia imperial project And that takes all their money so that they become impoverished. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And even though the Ayatollahs are not socialist at all, and there's not progressive taxation and people can be rich in Iran, but they made that difficult because they divert their main export revenues, oil, manufacturers are very small, and suddenly, maybe the day will go poof as well. As all these others went poof. But that, of course, is the only continuity of Jewish history. That is to say, you always have some outnumbered group of Jews facing a world empire, and it really is hopeless and only fanatics would try to resist and then the world empire just goes you know so there's been going on since the time of the assyrians the assyrians were doing pretty well you know until the Babylonians showed up and they did very well until they went off and so it goes. Dr Ali: But as you know, the other side of the argument people always say that Israel has been building settlements, putting in settlers in land that clearly they themselves did not regard as part of their own country at Dr. Edward Luttwak: that time? Well, you can, facts, you know, there are principles about dealing in international affairs, and that is you don't challenge facts. The fact is that the Zionist project is to build a house and then a village. And That is what the project is about. It implicitly means that they don't recognize the sovereignty of anybody there. Dr. Edward Luttwak: What they have never done, except maybe 1 or 2 cases in the middle of wars, they never actually took anybody's land. They bought it. Traditionally, they bought the land and all the land given to settlements is not land that anybody lives on. It's land that was considered sovereign land, Ottoman sovereign land, British sovereign land, Jordanian sovereign land. But the idea is you get a whole, you build things. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And that is what the whole Zionist project is. Is to build up a nation of Israel, you know, with farms and factories and schools and so on. And that's the essence of it. In the West Bank, there are all these settlements, but they're not built on top of villages. They're built in what is... Dr. Edward Luttwak: Nobody is there. And if they build a settlement that has no farmland because the farmland is in fact being farmed they don't take that farmland and what they do is they say oh we're an industrial settlement we're doing something else but that's what the urge is. This is, you know, every Jewish prayer ends with the promise of returning to Israel. Next year in Israel. So this is an ideology. Dr. Edward Luttwak: You see, the Jewish nation has a racial element to it, I presume, to some extent, although you see blonde Jews and so on. But it is most definitely a cultural project. It's a cultural project, and the cultural project is that you leave Egypt and you build a state in Israel. And that's what they've been doing. Or, I mean, my parents living in Romania before the war bought land in Mount Carmel. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That is to say, they bought under British, the British government, British legality with the Ottoman, by the way, the British kept the Ottoman land law. So what they were doing, they were buying an Ottoman allotment of manpower while living in Romania, with the idea that they would 1 day leave everything and go there and become farmers there. So this is a, it's an urge of returning to Jerusalem which started, well, 2000 years ago. And that's what's kept going, the Jewish people ever since. I mean, it's a project that certainly appealed to me. Dr. Edward Luttwak: I mean, I went to offer the volunteer to fight in Israel and so on. And 1 aspect of this ideology, of course, is that when you see some great empire standing in your way, you know that sooner or later, they'll disappear. So you might need patience. But, you know, but it's a fundamental condition. But that is a fundamental condition. Amey: So Dr. Luthberg, I had a question, right? Like I can definitely see Soviet Union being the last great empire, but vis-a-vis the current Iranian state, it has never quite, at least from my Indian perspective, struck to me as a particular empire, like what, if you could sort of steel man, like what was the impetus for the Ayatollahs beyond notion of having influence of the Shias of the Middle East and perhaps during around Iraq or they wanted allies in the region but but what what has what has made them so single mindedly focus on obviously a fight that does not look like Dr. Edward Luttwak: you mean. That's their excuse. Their problem in establishing an empire is that they're not, they want to establish an empire over the Arab lands, okay? And their problem is they're not Arabs. So what they say is, it doesn't matter we're not Arabs because we hate the Israel more than you do and Zionism more than you do. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Oh, and by the way, it doesn't matter that we are not Sunni but Shia because we hate the Jews more than you do. That's why Ahmadinejad, who's a perfectly nice fellow, started this Holocaust comic, you know, a competition for comics about to make fun of the Holocaust and deny its existence. He gave prizes for this. Now, if this were done by an authentic Jew-hating person, that would be, you know, a guy who hates Jews. And there are all these people who go around with obsessed with hating Jews. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And you ask them why and so on, and they give you funny answers. Ahmadinejad is a nice chap. He doesn't hate Jews at all, but he figured that the way to overcome the Sunni-Shia thing was to pose as somebody who hates Jews. So he went into this Holocaust cartoon competition thing. Amey: Wasn't it like- Dr. Edward Luttwak: I mean, this was real effort. By the way, the head of the Jewish community in Iran, somebody who goes along with the regime, wrote a letter to Ahmadinejad, which he also gave to Reuters. And the letter said, what you say about the Holocaust is idiotic and stupid and causes people to think that you're retarded. He's the president of Iran we're talking about. And this is ridiculous, and it's absurd and insane and stop doing it because even though it's so absurd, it does frighten the Iranian Jews, you know, and to hear you saying that. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Now, what was Akhmedinejad's response? Imagine a Jewish community in an Arab country, they don't exist anymore. But there were all these decays. Writing a letter to the president, Saddam Hussein, saying you're an idiot and stop saying these things, he would be dead on delivery, right? Well, what does Aqil Nijad do? Dr. Edward Luttwak: After a while, he sends him a letter saying I don't think I'll be able to call you as my friend That's what he wrote so The Iranians are playing a game of deception The story is it doesn't matter. We're not Arabs because we hate Israel more than you do. And it doesn't matter we're not Sunni because we hate the Jews more than you do, which is a total lie because the only place where there's a Jewish community is precisely in Iran. And if they were so terribly hated, they wouldn't stay there. You know, they would leave because there's no problem for them leaving. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They're not enslaved like the 100 Syrian Jews were for many years, where they were basically locked up. The Iranian Jews are not locked up. They can leave whenever they want. Just take the cars and drive off. And so this is a pretense, a double pretense. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Sunni, Shia, and so on and so forth. But why are they doing it all this? Because I believe the imperial impulse is extremely strong. And remember that the Anaran empire, then the cultural empire, the Norwegian empire. Delhi, when Nehru was brought up as a child, he had a tutor to teach him Persian. Dr. Edward Luttwak: You know, he had to study Persian. He raised Persian culture over the last 100 years. Because the Persian culture was the Persian, of course, of the so-called Mughal Empire. Because the Mughals themselves were a bunch of Mongols who had come, you know, who knew something about riding horses and drinking mare's milk, that's it. And so their culture had to come from somewhere and actually on the way from Iran, they picked up and so on. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Hence, This is what drives the Persian imperial concept is the fact that they are an imperial culture which is still alive and well. And every time these devout Muslims hear of another person jumping over the fire in Nowruz, which is a pagan custom, which he as a cleric, Muslim cleric should revile and denounce. Instead, he's very proud of it. And they say, oh, Kazakhstan is 1 of our countries because in Kazakhstan, in Northern Kazakhstan, there are a bunch of Mongols pretending to be Turks, but in Southern Kazakhstan, you have these original Central Asian cities and they do practice Nowruz. That's the biggest festival there. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That's the biggest festival by far. Amey: I think I think India produced more Persian literature in like late like early modern era than even even Persia, I believe. But I guess, Dr. Ali would be more as a Pakistani here. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Yeah, I am not. My knowledge of these things is limited Amey: to Dr. Edward Luttwak: the Shahnameh, which I've read several times in different translations, actually. And I know very little about contemporary Persian poetry and so on. Amey: Interestingly, Indian Muslim cultures see Shahnameh like how a me as an Indian of Hindu background regards Mahabharata. So actually, if you're Indian, you're kind of aware of Shah Naam stories because, you know, But you're a Hindu. I am, yes. The government programming in like socialist India would be like, well, we're doing these Hindu epics, so we should also do something on Shah Naam. Yeah, well, I mean, Television program, you know. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Like most people, I know nothing about the Mabarakta except of course for Arjun and so on, you know, writing forward. They are my relatives, how can I fight them? And the guy says, don't you understand? It is the principle of action. You know, life force and so on. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That is a pretty good set of poems, you know Really? It's You Dr Ali: gave us sort of a picture of what the Jewish identity and their dream of what the Zionist dream would be. But I was asking more in a concrete sense about the state of Israel. It's dealing with this war right now. How does it intend to settle in the future? What does a good... Dr. Edward Luttwak: Their intention is to remove the extraneous in Persian presence and its artifacts like this Bala and so on, and just to get rid of them, to defeat them and destroy them. Then of course when you ask them and how you're going to deal with the other questions and so on, there is a complete disagreement in Israel between people who say that Israeli Arab citizens, all 3000000 of them, are very happy to remain Israeli citizens. They don't want to become the citizens of any Arab state. But unless you're willing to take in all the Palestinians and make them citizens within the largest state, even if it's an Israeli state. Once they become citizens, they vote. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And therefore, you know, it's not that they're not not a majority, of course, they're not a majority. And by the way, the Jewish birth rate is higher than the Arab birth rate. So they are not the majority. It won't be a majority, but you have to accommodate them. You know, this becomes a very big. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So that's a debate between people saying you must choose 1 or the other and then there is the other lot who says something will turn up. In other words, no he's not sure something will turn up and the something will turn up party, that is how the right wingers who don't say something will turn up, they simply say, we don't care about who is there, this is it, we want it. They are relying on the votes of the something is turned back. And finally you have the religious. And as you know the orthodox, they call them ultra-orthodox, but that's just the orthodox, the orthodox reject the whole idea of a state. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They feel that it was an impertinence. The Zionist project was an impertinence because God was going to give it anyway. And you should just be patient. What's 2000 years, you know, between for the Jews, then 2000 years, no big deal. So you can wait, you know, wait. Dr. Edward Luttwak: I mean, and taking and creating a state instead of allowing the God to do it, is what the, that's why the Orthodox refuse to serve in the army, because the army is a suppression of impatience. Well, God is going to do it all. So on it. So you have those lot. And then you'll have hardcore nationalists who are a very European, let's call them European nationalists who are embedded in the Jewish project, but whose fundamental thinking is a typical European nationalist thinking. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And so you have all of these people, and in between you have the average citizen who goes about his business trying to set up a billion dollar cyber company and he goes along. That kind of stuff. So in a dynamic entity, very dynamic entity, any formulation you make about its future is going to be contradicted. But The crucial point is this. Past events within the Israeli state prove that coexistence has in fact become steadily more possible. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The events of this war have greatly increased that. Israeli non-Arab Israeli citizens have noticed that Israeli Arab Israeli citizens have uphold the state, on uphold the institutions, running hospitals and doing things when a lot of Jews were off being reservists and absent and running their pretty well and with very good intentions. So suddenly to say that there's going to be a Israeli-Palestinian state is much less outlandish and much become acceptable. It's 1 of the incidental consequences of the war is that the 3000000 Arab citizens proven that they are citizens first, Arabs second, and religious last. And indeed the Israelis deal with them in secular categories, they engage in some. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And they impressed a lot of people, you know, they've been running hospitals. When Israeli Jews doctors are off in the army, doing military doctors, you know, they're running hospitals and everybody's pretty pleased with that. Everybody's noticed that. And in the West Bank itself, there have been Iranian penetrations in the West Bank. There are also Fatahk survivals and the Hamas presences and other episodes. Dr. Edward Luttwak: But the average West Banker is also, you know, hasn't burned anything or done anything. And They're suffering serious hardship because most of the permits to work in Israel have been revoked. So they're suffering hardship. They have no reason to be happy about this situation, but they do realize that it is a wartime emergency situation. So they're not, you know, totally... Dr. Edward Luttwak: In Ramallah, where people do not go across the border to work because Ramallah is prosperous and has all kinds of things going for it. In Ramallah, they're just sick and tired of this conflict. And people of Ramallah are very close to the Arab citizens of Israel. As people that, in other words, the paradox Hamas by being so horrific, and so let's call it un-Palestinian, have made a lot of Israelis understand that coexistence with the Palestinians is possible. You know, Hamas, a different ideology, caused them to want to kill babies. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Palestinians don't kill babies. And the Israelis have apprehended this difference. So this war, all Israeli wars are characterized by 2 phenomena. 1 phenomenon is a consensus that the prime minister is the worst possible prime minister ever of any country in the history of the world because in 1967 when Nasser was thundering we're going to conquer the Israeli prime minister Levi Eschel was a kind of trade union Zionist who had a speech impediment and who goes on the radio, Nasser goes on the radio and says, we're going to go, we're going to attack, we're going to conquer. And Levi Eskel says, well, Perhaps it is, maybe yes, maybe no. Dr. Edward Luttwak: We'll try this, we'll try the other, perhaps, you know. And so people were absolutely disgusted and Moshe Dayan was recovered to leave the zone. And then that was 67, then in 73, Golda Meir, formerly the great heroine of Zionism, was the queen of the bathtub, completely incompetent. The general, Dayan, who had saved in 1967, had panicked and lost his thing. So Golda Meir had to go, and she went. Dr. Edward Luttwak: After that, there was the 1982 when Prime Minister Begin and Ari Shalom were quarreling publicly. What kind of Prime Minister is that? And then finally, fighting Ismail, there was Olbert, who had never really served in the army seriously, and who was prime minister by chance, ended up in prison because of a real estate crooked deal, and who appointed an Air Force officer chief of staff who naturally reacted by solving everything by bombing. You know, he wanted the bomb. He wouldn't let the infantry attack until the last 24 hours. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And when he these young infantryman, you know, 19 year old, 20 year old Israelis went up against his ballet infantry, they killed hundreds of them. But they had not been allowed to engage until then because this air power guy, this chief, Air Force chief, was a simple-minded guy, you know, the bombing solves everything, you know, you go to him, you have a toothache, let's bomb it, you know, that kind of stuff. So, Ullmer was decided he's the worst primarist in history. And now it's Bibi Netanyahu. Bibi Netanyahu is kind of turning the tables on them. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That's 1 constant. And the other constant is this, that 2 years after every Israeli war, people discover it, well, actually, we were pretty good. We had all these capabilities. We didn't know about it. I didn't know we had this. Dr. Edward Luttwak: I didn't know we had that. And the outside world also comes to the same conclusion. So the big conclusion in 1949 was the Jews can fight. Because remember the British general staff had opposed the Balfour Declaration on the grounds that they would then have to use a lot of British infantry to protect the Jews because the Jews can't fight. You know, it's a well-known fact, Jews can't fight. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That's it. The reason it went through is because Lloyd George as a Welshman, Bible reader said, oh, once the Jews have their own country, they fight like hell. And what's your evidence, Prime Minister? The Bible. And that is how the objection of the Imperial General Staff and the height of its influence immediately after the Second World War and the First World War was overruled from his complete opposition to the Balfour Declaration by Lloyd George on quoting the Bible. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So you have all these these are recurrent aspects. After 49 people discovered the Jews can fight. That was a big discovery. Then after 67, they discovered that the Jews with 80 aircraft can destroy 4 air forces. Imagine if they had 400 aircraft instead of 80. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Then, you know, every war, and in this war, what's the discovery? Well, the Americans, the British, the Soviets, the Chinese do not have ballistic missile defense. And therefore, the North Koreans could burn San Francisco whenever they want. Well, the Israelis do. The Israelis could take care of all the North Korea. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And what you have is suddenly countries that have that interest, like the Japanese vis-a-vis North Korea, And now they're arriving with checkbooks. We're talking here about a $24 billion checkbook to buy their system to cover Japan. And they also understand that they cannot get the technology and do it in Japan, because otherwise they'll become 1 of those 25 years down the road type of projects. So that was 1 little thing, and the other thing is something that I was a beneficiary of, because I was 3 times in Israel since this fighting started Because you know as a doing some advisory stuff and like alongside a lot of retired generals It's not as a facility where this sort of thing happens, which they actually use the Salooner and I I got a tour in Gaza during the fighting. I was able to drive through Gaza during the fighting when it was still very intense because they have an armored vehicle in which you can sit down and see everything through screens. Dr. Edward Luttwak: You're not looking for a slit. You don't stick your head out. You have great big screens inside the vehicle and the vehicle is essentially invulnerable because, you know, it's not a 10 ton vehicle, it's 65 metric tons. And not 65 with much of the turret, the armor in the turret, there's no turret. So it's basically resilient to everything. Dr. Edward Luttwak: In fact, as we were driving around, we got hit by multiple RPGs. And you do feel them, like a boom, you know, and that's it, but no consequence. So they revealed all kinds of things that Nobody else in the world has. Nobody has an armored vehicle like that. They can drive through a battlefield. Dr. Edward Luttwak: If the Ukrainians had this armored vehicle, they could drive right through the front. And indeed, the Israelis have this trophy, which is like a tiny anti-aircraft system on top of their armor of tanks and everything else including the vehicle I was in which identifies rockets and missiles coming its way as if it was an air defense system like a radar and then sends a projectile to break them up. So the Germans didn't have that with the leopards they gave to Ukraine. So the whole famous Ukrainian offensive was failed because they led by leopard tanks and the Russians blew them up. With rockets which the Israelis would be totally unable to destroy the Israeli tanks. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So this advancement was not really known to the world. Amey: So Dr. Luthwak, this is an interesting question. Like your most recent book was about the art of innovation and the IDF. I haven't had a chance to read that 1 yet. Oh, I see. Amey: I know. And it was, it was, it came out right before this war. So what do you feel like you have learned? Like if there were a second edition to the book, what, what have been your learnings? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Well, if you read the book, if you read the book, you will realize you would not have asked this question. Because what I do in a book, I do not say, oh, listen, they have this pair of glasses and they're very good, you know, and you can actually use to see them far away. Nothing of the sort. What the book is about is the actual, actual phenomenon of innovation. I mean, in itself, the actual phenomenon of innovation, and how it occurs, and to disentangle the elements of it. Dr. Edward Luttwak: 1 of the elements in Israeli Army's case is that indeed it's the Israeli Army. They don't have, truly, they do not have a Navy, Air Force, Army kind of distinction. They're all the same, they go to the same office, school. So you do not have innovation blocked, for example, by the fact that it doesn't fit into service assigned roles. Like it's not really mine, it's not yours. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And so that's 1 structural thing. But the other thing they have, which I had to describe, I was quite difficult to describe, is that Because they're Jews, they don't really take themselves seriously in any of these roles. So the consequence of that is that if you are a total stranger wandering in the streets of Tel Aviv, and you happen to pass the Ministry of Defense, and it suddenly occurs to you that there's this innovation that you've been toying with all those years, and you want to communicate that to somebody, you can go to a sentry, and you say to the sentry, I would like to speak with the chief scientist. That is the office of the chief scientist in the Ministry of Defense. And the soldier says, why do you want to do that? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Well, I want to tell him something. So the sentry will take you, he will then dial the office of the chief sergeant and then you have a chance to tell whoever answers the phone that you know you just served in the army and you have this thing but it occurs to you it could be something else. There's this adaptation of a piece of equipment that was developed to do raising chickens, whatever your story is. Well, you will be hurt without anybody asking you what your qualifications are or anything else. If you're an Israeli and you speak to them in Hebrew, you will be hurt. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And if your idea has any substance at all, you will then be invited upstairs and then you will meet somebody who will start actually listing the objections against your suggestion. Saying, for example, somebody in 1970, somebody walked in in those circumstances, and an RF-4 Phantom 2 pilot, 2 engine, had been shot down because it was taking photographs of Egyptian, Soviet missiles just across the Swiss canal, a distance of 30 kilometers from Israeli lines. And 2 men got shot down in taking photographs of these surface-to-air missiles. The guy walks in, he's a total stranger, no background whatsoever, and he gets to talk to the chief scientist, who was a mathematician actually, And the chief scientist said to him, you know, what's your idea, man? Well, my idea is that the rich kids in Switzerland who have model airplanes, which they can direct, admittedly it's a mountain country, they can direct of distances of 20 or 30 kilometers. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And why not take photographs by having a Sony camera on a gimbal below it? That was the first RPV. Chief scientist Ariadnevsky said to him, you know, when you look down and it's hot, there are thermals coming up, so the image will be unstable. He said, yes, but you still see there is something there, you know, instead of sand and sand squirt. Out of that dialogue was the development within 18 months of the Tandoram Massif, the first of the small UAVs with a camera on the gym ball from a guy who walked in and who was an unknown entity, 0 entity. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That story was then, then there was a story that occurred not all those years ago, but occurred 3 years ago. And that was somebody who was talking about Hezbollah and saying, you entered Lebanese territory and you have all these guns pointing this way and guns pointing this way and nobody's shooting down into the ground but all this stuff is down in the ground so why don't you shoot into the ground? Why don't you get RPGs that the Russians sell for $180, the cheaper 1, and you put a magazine in the back of an armored vehicle and start just shooting them. Okay, most of them will find nothing, but some of them will hit tunnels because in the villages, in the Lebanese villages, they build these tunnels, not deep tunnels, just very shallow ones, unconnecting house to house, and that is how they moved the Katyusha rockets from here to there. So you should do that inside. Dr. Edward Luttwak: This guy told this little story while he was being escorted around the Hezbollah reproduction village they built in Mount Carmel. He was a tourist and they took him there as a tour and he told this to the escort officer. Who is the escort officer? A reservist, a reservist, a generic person, no technological qualifications. And he took this visitor around. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The visitor said, that's the way to do it, and That's the way to do it. And that's the way to do it. And next morning, the armory development officers contract officer arrives at the guys hotel at 8am saying this is very interesting, what you suggested, so come in and tell us more. And they did it. So in other words, 1 secret, open door. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They had an open door all those years ago when they were much smaller and less formal, they have an open door now. And that open door is for anything at all. Open door, it must make a difference. The Mossad, by the way, lives up to this principle because they only recruit online. They recruit online. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They have a website in English and Arabic and Persian, French and so on, and they recruit online. There are people who decide they want to become Assad agents. They're perhaps not particularly engaged with Israel or against the Arabs. Many of them might be Arabs. In fact, many of them are Arabs and Iranian. Dr. Edward Luttwak: But to decide that it would be fine to go with such an organization which doesn't so many imaginative things. Amey: Fascinating. As Dr. Edward Luttwak: an Indian. Open door. Open door. Amey: I wish I had DRDO function some. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Now I actually have a better example, which has the virtue that you'll be able to find the documentation very easily. There was a German gentleman who was the world leader in the study of explosives. He developed the use of high-speed photography for explosives. This gentleman had the idea that you should put a box on top of the tank's armor, a box made of thin alloy with a little bit of plastic explosive so when the bazooka hits it, the bazooka warhead blows up, not through the armor but against this box so that it doesn't penetrate. That was his idea. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The man was a world German citizen, world expert on explosives. He then contacts the German armored vehicle manufacturer Krauss-Maffei and tells him the story and say, you must be an idiot. You think we want to put explosives on our own tanks. Says, no, no, but it's very little explosive and this is like alloy. Oh no, no, forget it, fuck off, kind of stuff. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Even though he is the world leading scientist. He then goes to the German army and the German army says, oh, you want to put an army on? Then he decides to call the Israeli defense scientist in Bonn, not Berlin at the time. And the defense scientist is a naval, navy officer, Navy officer, knows nothing about armor. And he takes notes and then next morning calls the head of armor development, head of armor development says, call him back, send him his tickets. Dr. Edward Luttwak: I expect him at Lod airport tomorrow morning, I'll wait for you. That is how the Israelis developed this reactive armor boxes in new course, they exported them and this German expert professor and son started getting royalties from the sale of this armor, reactive armor, they sold to everybody, right? So open door, how exactly you have an institution that goes bigger and bigger, more and more complex and still has an open door. That is the kind of thing I wrote about in my book. I see you see the actual machinery of innovation how it really happens and there is wonderful that it can be documented because Being a military organization that army and air force and widespread, you know generates a lot of cases Amey: So that's interesting If you know like I just wanted to add 1 small comment as a, you know, that's interesting, because, you know, I work in Silicon Valley, and many of my colleagues are alums of 8200 unit and what you explain kind of makes makes all sense to me. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So, I don't know how they are Wednesday are in Silicon Valley, and so on. What is it, what, okay. I, of course, interviewed many of them for my book and you might, I did not explicitly refer to these interviews in my book, but I derived it from, what did you learn about why, in what sense they were different? Or why they were different? Amey: You know, it's, you know, and, you know, the startup culture encourages you to take lots of risks because a lot of the younger companies are going against Google's and Facebook's of the world and my, you know, working with Israeli teams, what I've found is they have a willingness to try the most audacious things that, you know, an American entrepreneur would typically be like, okay, let me try to build a social app because, you know, like Facebook is doing something and that might have a market. So I've found a lot more interesting and innovative, like something that's not your normal garden variety. So Khan Valley startup, especially in the terms of computer security that I've found- Dr. Edward Luttwak: I mean, cyber security. Amey: Yep. Dr. Edward Luttwak: You know my surname, do you? Amey: Sorry, Dr. Edward Luttwak: you know my surname, you know what my Amey: name is? Lutwak. I do. I don't know what that means. But Dr. Edward Luttwak: I mean, Lutwak is my nephew. He's the 1 who, with 3 other scallywags, turned down Google's miserable offer of $24 billion for the company. Amey: That is, that is, that is, I suppose. Dr. Edward Luttwak: But he was a product of the other unit, not 8200, but unit 81, the 1 I described in my book, which was a secret until their existence leaked out because they were employed to do the COVID planning. What is this characteristic? This is the characteristic of being young. And young and non-differential. The fact that these people come up with all these ideas, right, out of the box, whatever the Americans say, is because they are young, they retain a young mentality, they're not mature enough to be realistic about limitations, They're not knowledgeable about limitations and they are huge risk takers. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Their counterparts are the backpackers. In fact, Ami Lutrak himself, after selling 2 companies and becoming a multi-centi-millionaire, he took time off and finally went around the world like all the other backpackers, the ones that go all over India, you know, stay in 10 rupees hotel. And where did he stay in 10 rupees hotel? Because him and his girlfriend wanted to be with other young Israelis at 10 rupees hotels after he had companies worth at that point 200 million dollars. So and why does this happen? Dr. Edward Luttwak: It happens because when you join the army in Israel and you're 18 and you are given an assignment like 8200, you are given no training other than infantry combat training, no training. Otherwise you would inherit somebody else's. The previous methodology, you wouldn't innovate. They just don't give them any training. And so what do they do there? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Well, they're hanging around playing games, whatever they're doing, boys and girls flirting, I don't know, screwing perhaps. And then an officer comes in to this kind of barracks and says, oh, I have a new Syrian code. Who wants it? Who wants it? And somebody says, oh, I'll have a grab to it. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And a little cluster of guys grab this code and they're going to do the ones working on it. That's what 8200 is about. There are no training courses. It's not Harvard business school, you know, it's simply do it, you know. And so all of these things is what my book was attempting to capture this phenomenology. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Not to as a brochure or catalog of weapons systems. Dr Ali: But even the most innovative people if they are like 10 million in number are obviously outnumbered by many, many other groups. And they would have to be 10 times better to match someone 100 million strong. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Right. That's how that is what Judaism is all about. Dr Ali: But there Dr. Edward Luttwak: is a complete. Yeah. I mean, listen, the Romans look, The Romans are very reasonable people in running the empire, very reasonable. Emperors paid for 2 of the 4 sacrifices of the temple or something. They were very differential. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They crossed the land of Israel. When they crossed the Israeli, their territory, which was the, they would not carry the eagles because not to offend the Jews or against, you know, it could be idols, you know, the imperial eagle, the legion. They did everything possible to get along with the Jews. And then a bunch of Jews were dissatisfied. They said, what did the Romans ever do for us? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Did you ever see Monty Python? Amey: Yeah. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The Life of Brian? What did the Romans ever do for us? Well, the water. Okay, I'll give you the water. Then this and this and this. Dr. Edward Luttwak: In other words, they are not realistic about being a small people. You go to them and say, you're a small people, shut up. Especially when people give you a very good deal like the Romans did an exceptional deal for the Jews. The Jews were the most privileged, most privileged. And in fact, if you went to the court in Rome, the only foreign princes that lived in the imperial palace when visiting Rome and hanging on sometimes for years, they're all Jews, nobody else. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They didn't have any of the Greek part in things. And then what happened, not enough. Because being unrealistic, completely unrealistic, is perhaps the basic axiom, fundamental axiom of being Jewish. Dr Ali: But then are they dependent currently on Western or US support? How important is that Dr. Edward Luttwak: to them? Not really. There's a strong Jewish presence in American politics. It doesn't give them a domination, but forces anybody who wants to play the game to say, I will support Israel. That's it. Dr. Edward Luttwak: I will support Israel regardless. And you can have an infinity of students in Columbia who side with Hamas. But if they ever become members of the Congress or senators, they won't. So, in other words, in order to have this survival, you have to have an ideology which has these characteristics of deep self-confidence, self-assurance, and, you know, determination and being unimpressed by the powers of the world. You know, there were in the 19th century, Russian occupied Poland. Dr. Edward Luttwak: The arrival of the railways destroyed the business of the small towns, the shtetls, the small Jewish towns, which were basically logistics towns, where people made carts, repaired carts, set horses, and they moved merchandise across. Railways came, they became terribly impoverished, but they still continued to produce satirical songs against the Tsar. And for example, how does the Tsar eat potatoes? Well, soldiers fire them into his mouth. You know, they were living like fleas on the coat of the Tsar in the pale of settlement. Dr. Edward Luttwak: They're not allowed to enter Russia itself, just to your point. And yet, these miserable poor people were filled with self-confidence and a sense of superiority over the czar. So, you know, and I come from that background. I mean, my father, the mother, I was born in Transylvania and my father was a very rich global trader. Imagine that in 1938, they went on a honeymoon to Bali because KLM started air service. Dr. Edward Luttwak: There were no hotels in Bali. But the princes, you know, Bali had just been discovered, you know, Hollywood made the film called Bali Hai and so on. And so 1948, 1947, November, the communists came and confiscated everything. His property was extremely non-tradable and movable because he owned railway wagons for his international logistics and warehouses. So he left with nothing. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And so we arrived in Naples. It went to Haifa to go to Israel, but the British would not let Jews land until they control it. So the ship went down to Naples, he arrives in Naples, and Naples is kind of exotic. And so he should move north, you know, to Frankfurt or somewhere. Well, it was post-war Europe. Dr. Edward Luttwak: There were, Frankfurt was a boomtown for many Jews came out of concentration camps, went to Frankfurt and went into the real estate deal. But no, no, he went to Sicily. Why? Because he had read that the British National Health Service was promised to hand out oranges to every boy, every child in England. And he knew there were no orange trees in England, So he goes to Palermo, buys green oranges and pays people to make crates with little hammers and nails and sends them directly to the Ministry of Health. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Now other people there would buy the oranges from the farmers, sell it to a wholesaler. Wholesaler would sell it to a Rome or Genoa exporter who would then sell it to a British importer. So the original orange supplier would get 10 cents and everybody else would get 90 cents. And he sold directly to the munition and became a millionaire in 3 years. So how the hell does somebody who is, you know, Central European Jew finds himself in Palermo, Sicily. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And the best thing, the mafia came along and said, you're making a lot of money, Mr. Luttwak. We have to have some of it. And my father threatened them. And he discovered there were German prisoners of war held in Palermo under death penalty. Dr. Edward Luttwak: And he persuaded the Carabinieri to lend them to him. And then he went to the Mafia and said, look, you guys only kill each other, but these fellows starve with their children. So 1 of my oranges falls, your village is destroyed. That's what he did. Why did he do that? Dr. Edward Luttwak: Because he had no money, he had the family, he didn't speak the language, he didn't have legal status in Italy. And yet he had 3 children and he had to provide for them. So this is not like the Jews are unique or anything. There are these examples of ethnic adaptations. I mean, When I visited Afghanistan during the war, I crossed the famous Salam Tunnel. Dr. Edward Luttwak: On 1 hand, there was all these burnt armored vehicles. Come to the other end, they're perfectly intact villages. So I go and I say, who the hell are you? We are Ismailis. Ismailis of the Aga Khan Foundation. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Ismailis. Their villages were intact. Nobody touched them. And they were great, you know. The village leader was like, because he's Israeli, you know, you've been to London, you know, you've been to London. Amey: And they all pay Aga Khan their tithe. And Aga Khan does take care of his people. Yes, And Dr. Edward Luttwak: he takes care of his people, right? And these guys had the feeling that they were, the Taliban are supposed to kill them because they're apostates, according to Taliban notion, because they are not only Shia, but they're not even 12 years, they're 7 years, he's my and yet these people were in those villages were totally intact, when the Taliban came they also left him alone. Amey: So, you know, You know, like just a throwaway comment, we can talk in a different podcast, but I perhaps is the good drop the DNA of these families that's that shines there. Dr. Edward Luttwak: That's a claim. You're making a claim that Amey: it is a claim of course. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So are you becoming good Jackie I thought you were from my last I Amey: am I am Russian but you know, I'm an Indian, you know, nationalist. Dr. Edward Luttwak: You accept all of it. Yeah, I said. All I'm saying is the Jews are simply 1 example of this type of nomadic cultures because these Ismailis are not, they're also nomadic culture. And you find them in many different parts of the world. You find them in Hollywood and you find them in Badakhshan. Dr. Edward Luttwak: I went to visit Tajikistan and the whole Eastern Tajikistan is called Badakhshan, and it's inhabited by these so-called Pamiris, Pamiris, okay, Pamiris, who are in fact Ismailis. The Ismailis, and these Ismailis are like 14 people on mountain peaks. And what did they want? They wanted to create their own state. So they periodically revolted. Dr. Edward Luttwak: So, you know, don't expect Jews or people like that to be practical people. They're not. Dr Ali: But as a practical matter, war can be serious business. In the United States, as you said, you said the students are not going to make a difference, but it seems like, at least in the Democratic Party, there is now relatively mainstream opposition to much of the AAP. Dr. Edward Luttwak: If it were mainstream, Kamala Harris wouldn't say what she says. It's not mainstream. It's not mainstream at all. It's a noisy minority of posers, intersectional posers. That is to say, you know, these sexual guys, intersectional. Dr. Edward Luttwak: My proof is this, Kamala is a serious politician. She wouldn't take this far-right absolutist position if she felt these guys had any leverage. They don't. Amey: Dr. Ali, I'm willing to bet you AOC will speak at the ADL within the next 10 years. That is, that is, I mean, Dr. Edward Luttwak: AOC came out with a complete one-sided condemnation of Hamas after October 7th. Yeah, I mean Look, it may change. You don't know after all Germany was a paradise for the Jews and then it became Nazi Germany Everything is possible. The only thing I can tell you is that this project has a long history and will continue. Dr Ali: So we have gone on for a long time. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Anyway, it was a pleasure talking to you. I don't know who you are. I have no idea who you are. Except for the crime of not having read my latest book. You have read, you know, a thing or 2. Amey: Yeah, no. So I mean, we can do it after the podcast ends. Dr. Edward Luttwak: Very good. Amey: Yeah. Stay online for a minute after we're done recording, it needs to upload the data.
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