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In this episode I talk to Hussein Ibish, a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Insititute in Washington DC and a longtime commentator on Palestinian affairs as well as the Arab world in general. He described how the crisis looks to a liberal Arab scholar who would prefer to see peace for both Palestinians and Israelis, and what we may expect in the future and ended with a rather pessimistic (or optimistic, depending on your point of view) vision of the near future. We hope to have him back soon to discuss what a saner outcome could look like and how that can be achieved (at least in theory; in practice we are probably in for prolonged violence). This is a complement to our earlier podcast with Dr Edward Luttwak, who presented a more optimistic vision of what Israel is trying to achieve and what it is likely to achieve.
Our friends at scribebuddy.com have prepared a transcript. I am posting it at the end below, unedited. But first, here is a chatgpt summary:
Blog Post: A Deep Dive into the Middle Eastern Crisis with Hossam Ibish on The Brown Pundits Browncast In a recent episode of The Brown Pundits Browncast, Dr. Ali hosts Hossam Ibish, a prominent commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, to discuss the current tumultuous situation in the Middle East, focusing on the complex dynamics between Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Their conversation sheds light on a geopolitical crisis that has long roots in history and contemporary struggles for power, influence, and survival. The Prelude to a Wider Conflict Ibish sets the stage by explaining the origins of the current conflict, particularly after Hamas' attack on southern Israel on October 7. This event was intended to provoke a multi-front war, which Hamas hoped would involve Iran and its network of militias, notably Hezbollah, the Houthis, and pro-Iranian forces in Iraq and Syria. However, despite these hopes, Hamas is not fully trusted by these groups due to its Sunni identity, which clashes with the Shia alignment of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance.†Hamas' attack, while significant, has not succeeded in igniting the widespread regional war it had hoped for. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, notably went into hiding during the initial escalation, leaving Hamas without the robust military support it had counted on. The Strategic Calculus: Hezbollah, Iran, and Israel Ibish highlights how Hezbollah, despite its vast arsenal of missiles, has refrained from fully engaging Israel. The reason? Hezbollah's primary mission, as dictated by Iran, is not to fight for Hamas or Gaza, but to serve as a deterrent in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. This strategic restraint is informed by Hezbollah’s role as a vital asset in Iran’s regional power structure. While Hezbollah attempted to support Hamas through limited military action on the border with Israel, the group has largely avoided provoking an all-out war. This approach preserves Hezbollah’s strength for its primary purpose—defending Iran—and avoids unnecessary depletion of resources in a battle it doesn’t see as its own. Israel, on the other hand, views Hezbollah’s arsenal and its proximity to its borders as a significant threat, which has led to the current Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Israel's Quest for a Recuperative Victory Ibish introduces the idea of Israel’s need for a "recuperative victory." Following the security failures of October 7, Israel seeks to restore its national security image and the confidence of its citizens. For Israel, a clear-cut victory against Hezbollah in Lebanon would serve two purposes: weakening Iran's regional influence by crippling Hezbollah and restoring the sense of security for Israelis in the north. However, Ibish warns that this may lead to only an "illusion of security." Even if Israel manages to weaken Hezbollah and push them back from the border, guerrilla warfare and insurgency tactics will likely persist. This scenario would mirror Israel’s ongoing insurgency struggles in Gaza, where an unending cycle of attacks and counterattacks creates a quagmire that may last decades. Hezbollah’s Calculus: Back to Guerrilla Warfare? One of the most compelling points in Ibish’s analysis is Hezbollah’s potential shift back to its guerrilla roots. The expansion of Hezbollah during the Syrian civil war, where it acted as the main ground force for Assad, has left the group vulnerable to Israeli intelligence and infiltration. A return to a more focused guerrilla war in southern Lebanon could help Hezbollah regain its earlier effectiveness as a lean, resilient fighting force, a possibility that Nasrallah seems to welcome. Iran's Role and the Prospect of a Larger War The conversation then shifts to Iran’s broader role in the conflict. Ibish points out that while Iran has supported Hezbollah and Hamas in the past, its current priority is regime survival and preventing any attack on its nuclear facilities. The Iranian leadership may be feeling domestic political pressure to act, especially as Israel has been striking at its proxies without significant retaliation from Tehran. Ibish predicts that a "war of the cities," reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq War, could be on the horizon. Israel could target Iran’s oil production facilities and nuclear infrastructure, which would be a significant blow to Iran's economy and national security. In response, Iran might hunker down and focus on developing a nuclear weapon as a long-term survival strategy, similar to North Korea's approach. The Grim Reality: Open-Ended Insurgencies As the discussion wraps up, Ibish emphasizes the grim reality that Israel now faces: open-ended insurgencies in the south (Gaza), the north (Lebanon), and possibly soon in the east (West Bank). This strategy of counterinsurgency warfare offers no clear path to resolution, and Israel’s attempts to secure its borders may only deepen the quagmire. Conclusion In this insightful conversation, Hossam Ibish paints a complex and often bleak picture of the Middle East’s current situation. The region’s entrenched conflicts, ideological divides, and strategic imperatives have created a powder keg where no side seems capable of securing a decisive victory. Whether it’s Israel’s quest for security, Hezbollah’s guerrilla warfare tactics, or Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the road ahead is fraught with uncertainty. As the crisis continues to unfold, the stakes for all parties involved remain perilously high. This episode of The Brown Pundits Browncast offers a sobering reminder of the intricate web of alliances and hostilities that define the modern Middle East, and the dangerous potential for further escalation in the coming months.
The Brown Pundits Browncast. Dr. Ali: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Brown Pundits Browncast. We have with us today Mr. Hossam Ibish. Hossam Ibish is a very well-known commentator on Middle Eastern affairs. He's currently a resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute, and he writes regularly for The National and The Atlantic, among many other publications, and has been associated with what might be called, I think, a relatively liberal section of the Palestinian cause and we will start by asking Mr. Dr. Ali: Abish about what is going on right now. What does how does he see what is happening right now in the Middle East? Dr. Ibish: Well, I just want to clarify for your listeners in case anybody gets the wrong idea, although you didn't say this, but just to be clear, I'm not a Palestinian myself, but you're right, I have been very active on Palestinian issues for 40 decades in general and 30 decades, sorry, not 30, 40, 40 years in general and 30 years here in Washington professionally. So it's a long time. So your question specifically about Palestine is, you know, can you can you narrow down a little bit? Yeah, Dr. Ali: we do want to go back and sort of look at the events of last year and the history as well. But I thought we will start with what is sort of the current hot topic, which is the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the Iranian strike on Israel. What do you think is happening there? Who is fighting and what are they trying to do? Dr. Ibish: That's well, that is the question. It's very well phrased. Yeah, okay. So what we have here is the beginnings of what is likely to develop into, and I say that just because the trajectory is so clear and it's going to be so hard to find an off-ramp. But I mean, people are working on an off-ramp, but you know, the Americans and others are looking for a way out. Dr. Ibish: But right now we're looking at the beginning of what is likely to turn into a missile war, a war of the cities, a ballistic missile warfare between Israel on the 1 hand and Iran and its network of Arab militias led by Hezbollah, but it includes the Houthis in Yemen, the Hashd al-Shaabi groups in Iraq, the popular, that is to say the popular mobilization forces in Iraq that are pro-Iranian. Some of them are not pro-Iranian, but the pro-Iranian ones. Several similar forces in Syria and of course Hezbollah in Lebanon. So what we're ending up with is that when Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 1 of the things they were hoping to provoke was a multi-front regional war, which would bring in these different forces in the pro-iranian axis of resistance so-called which is basically a pro-iranian alliance run by the IRGC Quds Force the Revolutionary Guard Quds force which is the expeditionary force of the Islamic Republic around the Middle East and Hamas is aligned with these groups and it considers itself a member of the axis of resistance but it's a member peripheral member in bad standing It is considered an unreliable ally by these organizations and by Tehran when you get down to it because this is essentially a fundamentalist Shia alliance. Dr. Ibish: And Hamas is a Sunni fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood organization. So they never fit very well in the axis of resistance. The axis of resistance itself is a phrase which is really marketing gimmick designed to explain why a Sunni fundamentalist brotherhood group would be in concert with Iran and its allies in the Arab world. This all fell apart when the Syrian war broke out because the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria was a key leader of the uprising against Bashar al-Assad. And Iran and its clients like Hezbollah basically said to Hamas, whose leadership was at the time based in Damascus, you have to choose. Dr. Ibish: I mean, you can't be here accepting our support, largesse, sukkur and everything and have your friends trying to overthrow us and kill us. So which is it to be? And of course between having to choose between a very useful marriage of convenience on the 1 hand and their very identity, their Sunni Muslim Brotherhood identity on the other hand, they went with their identity inevitably, right? I can't imagine any organization doing otherwise. So they left Syria, they fled Syria for Qatar and they ended up there. Dr. Ibish: So that is what and then once the Syrian war was resolved in by 2017, you know, it was all moot and so it was possible to for the you know Hamas to become back part of the axis of resistance and everybody pretend that the differences were never exposed but of course they really won't forget and everyone knows that this is they knew from the beginning this was a tacit alliance and then it got exposed and now they pretend it wasn't, whatever. My point is that the other groups are closer, although there is a similar group within the Axis, the Houthis, are like Hamas, they are not a creation of Iran, but an organization that emerged separately and then came into an alliance with the Iranians. They are not as distant theologically and therefore ideologically because these are all religious movements. You know, they're not nationalistic, non-confessional. No, They are strictly speaking religious movements. Dr. Ibish: The Houthis are a Zaidi Shiite group, no doubt, but they are 5er Shiites rather than 12er Shiites. I'm not gonna burden your listeners with any explanation at all about the 5 Rashiites and the 12 Rashiites, but it depends on how many Imams you think are involved in the cycle of revelation and the coming of the Mahdi. It really is the most extraordinary mumbo-jumbo, but there it is. And it splits these people, but they look past it. They can, they are closer to Iran in spirit, for sure, than Hamas is, but still a little bit distant. Dr. Ibish: Anyway, the Hamas was looking to these groups to get involved in the war. And none of them rushed their aid. What they really wanted was Hezbollah to spring to life and attack Israel from the north and rain down its arsenal, a fearsome arsenal, of 150, 000 missiles and rockets, many of them with precision guidance, and they were hoping that would happen. They had no way of knowing if it would or not. I think they were kind of skeptical about it, but That was sort of 1 hope. Dr. Ibish: And it didn't happen. When the war broke out on October 7, 8, 9, 10, Nasrallah, the head, Hassan Nasrallah, the late and unlamented Hezbollah leader, went in hiding. And he disappeared for 2 weeks. Now this is very remarkable because ever since the death of Hugo Chavez, who was the king of this stuff, the 2 leaders in the world who loved the sound of their own voices, not as much as Chavez, that's not possible, but as more than anybody else, were Nasrallah and Netanyahu. And so Nasrallah went into hiding for 2 weeks, which as I've tried to explain, is a very extraordinary thing for him. Dr. Ibish: And then he emerged and he gave a sermon in which he said, yeah, we're joining the war, absolutely, but we're going to focus on our border and trying to liberate these 2 little towns, Shabaa farms in particular, that have been occupied by Israel since 1982. And Israel did not withdraw from when they fled southern Lebanon in May of 2006, because they were driven out by an 18 year long guerrilla war by Hezbollah. So that didn't happen. There is a backstory to this but if you want it you'll have to ask me because I don't want to get dragged down in it. And why they expected it and why Hezbollah didn't, whatever. Dr. Ibish: The point is it didn't happen. But in order to, the reason Hezbollah did not want to go to war for Hamas and Gaza, and Iran did not want them to go to war for Hamas or Gaza either, is not merely that Gaza is a place that has no strategic or religious or historical or cultural significance for Hezbollah and certainly not for Iran, although all that's true. And also Hamas is not a reliable ally as I've explained. So, no, they didn't want to, you know, it's not just that Gaza is immaterial to them and it's not just that they don't really trust Hamas the way they trust other 12 or Shiite groups in this alliance. It's also that the Hezbollah's arsenal and therefore its power in regional terms, not in Lebanese domestic terms, but in regional terms, deriving from this arsenal of weapons, is not there to fight a war for Hamas or Gaza or Palestine or anything else. Dr. Ibish: It's there to fight to serve as a deterrent and a response force to any attack on the Iranian homeland and especially Iran's nuclear facilities above all. That's really what it's there for. Now, I mean, I should say this isn't what it was always there for, right? Hezbollah being a creature of Iran has cut its cloth to fit the fashion of whatever Iran's interests are at any given moment. So between 2012 and especially 2015 when there was this major Russian and Iranian and Hezbollah intervention to save Assad in Syria, at that point it was the main role of Hezbollah was to be the ground troops, the main ground troops. Dr. Ibish: There are many others, but the most crack ground forces backed up by Russia in the air and Russian intelligence, you know, to save Assad. When Assad was saved, the dust settled, and then Hezbollah's arsenal was primarily tasked, and Hezbollah as an organization's primary regional role became to be a deterrent against an attack against Iran's facilities. So they were loathe to waste this on Gaza and Hamas. Now it became even more ironic when Israel decided to call the bluff because Nasrallah, I should say, decided to increase rocket fire against Israel and make a show of fighting a war after October 7, in the name of supporting Hamas and saving Gaza and all that, but on the border, as I said. And what that meant was he was trying to square the circle of having an increased confrontation with Israel and taking kinetic action, going, you know, to some extent going to war in a very limited, very, very limited way with the Israelis and saying it was in behalf of Palestine and of Gaza and of Hamas, but not doing enough to provoke an all-out attack by Israel. Dr. Ibish: Because as I say, the point of the whole thing is to protect Iran. He was trying to square the circle this way. This way he could retain his credibility as a resistance force, but then not waste Hezbollah on useless things like Hamas in Gaza. Once the Rafah campaign was complete, that meant that Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza was more or less done in the sense of being a concerted, conventional style battle against a specific and pre-existing list of targets and people. That is to say, everything above ground that could conceivably be of use to Hamas. Dr. Ibish: And that was all destroyed. They went from north to south and there is nothing south of Rafah except the Egyptian border. So the war there was basically over and it morphed into an insurgency versus a counter insurgencies which is what you see now every day. Hamas pops up, attacks the Israelis, the attack Israelis counter-attack usually massacring civilians and then Hamas is gone and then they pop up here and pop up there. It's a classic guerrilla warfare. Dr. Ibish: And this insurgency is what Hamas wanted for itself. Having no ability to create a regional war, they were relying on Israel to be stupid enough to create an insurgency that they could use for the next 15-20 years in order to gain control of the Palestinian National Movement by waving the bloody shirt and claiming they are the only ones who fight for the homeland. But the end of the regular campaign in Gaza freed Israel up from having to deal with anything other than a prolonged and open-ended insurgency that's going to go on potentially for decades in Gaza. And they started to look north to Lebanon. And the reason they decided to escalate and eventually attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, even though Hezbollah did not want a war and Iran did not want Hezbollah to get into a war, is that Israel and Iran shared an analysis of the impact of October 7 and the post-October 7 environment in the Middle East, which is that Israel had suffered a significant strategic setback on and because of October 7. Dr. Ibish: They expended a lot of blood, they were traumatized, expended a lot of weaponry. The Hamas certainly paid the price, the price they signed up for, but nonetheless a huge price. The Palestinian people paid a huge price in lives and trauma and all that. And the Palestinian National Movement is badly damaged by Hamas's recklessness and stupidity. But no real price was paid by Iran and the Axis of Resistance, because as I say Hamas is not a core member at all, so the real Axis of Resistance and Iran itself were relatively unharmed and they had received a lot of benefits, you know, limited but significant benefits from all of this, especially in terms of damaged Israel, with at virtually no cost to themselves. Dr. Ibish: And I think the Israelis were calculating that 2 benefits could be attained in Lebanon that were not available in Gaza. 1 is, you know, reversing this equation and making sure that Iran and its network paid at least a heavy price, if not a heavier 1, for this war than the Israelis and the Palestinians had, that they were just going to take the war to them through Hezbollah, by attacking Hezbollah. That's number 1. Number 2, from the outset of the post-October 7 campaign, the Israeli leaders were looking for a recuperative victory, a restorative win, a clear-cut decisive victory over an enemy that would repair the legitimacy and reputation of the Israeli national security state which was badly damaged and undermined by the security failure of October 7th. The people of southern Israel were stateless. Dr. Ibish: The cry went out, where is the army? Where is the army? The army didn't come on the 7th or the 8th, and in some places not even on the 9th. So this meltdown in southern Israel was never supposed to happen, right? It's supposed to be the kind of thing that can't happen. Dr. Ibish: And it did. And it was a nightmare and people thought it was the worst day since the Holocaust and all this stuff. And the point is it really was a trauma and they need a recuperative victory to restore the sense of security among Jewish Israelis. That's certainly what they think. So they look north and they say if we attack Hezbollah, we can severely weaken Iran and its network, right, by taking out its most potent weapon, which is Hezbollah and its arsenal. Dr. Ibish: And the second thing we can do is restore the sense of security of the Israeli people. This is the illusion of security, but that's what they're going for. And that's what the business about pushing Hezbollah away from the border and a security barrier and a mopping up operation, all of that rhetoric, it's all about that. It's about giving the people of northern Israel, the people who are going to be brought back to northern Israel, the illusion that dramatic and violent things have been done to make the Middle East and the world safe for them to be in their homes. I mean it's just preposterous. Dr. Ibish: Actually it's preposterous. As a person from Beirut and the way we live and the way we've had to live and the way everybody lives in most of the Middle East, this is just garbage. But it sells well I suppose after October 7th because then you can get people to get scared that they're going to be massacred in their beds. Even to the point that Israel has a narrative about Hezbollah on October 7th, that is the worst bunkum. First, they said, for months, well, we have to do something about Hezbollah, it's changed, everything's changed, it was imperfect, we could live with the situation from 2000 or 2006 until now, but everything changed on October 7th, we have to reevaluate our border security doctrine. Dr. Ibish: Then they said something different after about 6 months ago, 5 months ago, they started saying, you know what? October 7 was actually a Hezbollah idea. They were preparing to do this in the north of Israel, with the Radwan force streaming across the border and murdering and kidnapping and all of that stuff. And Hezbollah heard about this and got the details and plagiarized it and did it themselves. You know, it's sort of like in academia, I published first, that kind of thing. Dr. Ibish: But, you know, that doesn't scan at all. And now they're saying in the past week, the most amazing thing, that 3000 Hezbollah terrorists were massed on the border of southern Lebanon after October 7, just waiting to stream across and do the same thing that Hamas had done in the south of Israel, and they were stopped by a series of unknown secret guerrilla raids. Give me a break. The whole thing is the crudest propaganda. I mean really, give me a break. Dr. Ibish: I want to start swearing. It's an insult to my intelligence. It really is. I don't put it past Hezbollah at all. I mean, I'm not here defending them or saying they're better than that or they would never do that. Dr. Ibish: It doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make any sense from their point of view or from Iran's point of view or anything like that. It's just, it's just obviously fabricated. Okay. But they're looking for this recuperative win and they couldn't get it in Gaza and they couldn't get a strategic victory against Iran in Gaza. Dr. Ibish: So that's why they have attacked Hezbollah the way they have and why they have invaded Lebanon. There you go. Very long-winded answer, but you know, I tried to do it as quick as I could. Dr. Ali: Right. So now the Israelis would say that what they are trying to do, not what their propaganda is saying, but what their strategist, you know, thinkers are trying to do is to sort of correct the strategic imbalance that they have not noticed. Dr. Ibish: Yeah, the first part I said, that's right. Dr. Ali: Right. But then what is the likelihood that they will actually succeed in destroying Hezbollah? Dr. Ibish: No, there's 0. Dr. Ali: What does that mean? Dr. Ibish: Well, they're not even they don't say they're trying to destroy Hezbollah. They said they were going to try to destroy Hamas, which is a very stupid thing to say, unbelievably stupid thing to say, because if you say I'm going to destroy an idea, a brand name, a marketing brand, and that's what Hamas is, it's like Brillo Pads or Kleenex or McDonald's, it's a brand, like Coca-Cola. You put brown liquid in a bottle and say it's Coca-Cola, it's Coca-Cola. Okay. If a group of Palestinians gets together and say we are Hamas, then there's a Hamas. Dr. Ibish: If they put up a website, official Hamas website in Arabic and it's run by real Palestinians, then there's a Hamas. So how are you going to destroy a brand name? It's absurd. And also, the only way, there is no way to destroy even Hamas as a functional organization. You can drive it underground, you can turn it into a guerrilla group, you can smash it and kill people and all that, but Hamas is not a list of people you can kill, and a checklist of equipment and facilities you can destroy. Dr. Ibish: It's a concept. A concept I dislike, but it's a concept. So it was a very stupid thing to say because insofar as Hamas, or anything calling itself Hamas, can survive that war, you've written their victory speech for them. We survived. You wanted to destroy us, you couldn't. Dr. Ibish: God saved us, divine victory, gibberish, gobbledy gobbledy, kalam fadi, you know, rubbish. But you've given them the argument that they won, in effect they've won. And it's very dumb. And now finally Israeli, well finally as of about 4 months ago, Israeli leaders started saying what the Israeli military had been telling them months even before that which is hey you know destroying Hamas is not it is not possible so now there everyone except Netanyahu pretty much is saying that but Netanyahu loves this war He wants it to go on forever. And if you make that the goal, it will go on forever, because as I say, it's a brand. Dr. Ibish: Now, when it comes to Hezbollah, they've never said they want to destroy Hezbollah. And I don't think they're anticipating going beyond the Litani River or Dahlia in Beirut or even maybe Baalbek. And that would take you halfway up Lebanon, no more than that. And I really doubt that the Israelis are thinking about going beyond the Litani River, which is about 22 to 25 km into Lebanon. They might, but I doubt it. Dr. Ibish: Mission creep is a thing. We can talk about that. But right now I think they're conceptualizing something like that. Unless they're conceptualizing just smashing the place up and leaving, which would be the intelligent thing to do. If you must come in, do your worst and get out. Dr. Ibish: And for your own sake, I'm saying from an Israeli point of view, which I'm not, but I'm just saying if I were, I'd say, don't do this damn stupid thing. And if you're going to, make it quick and get out. It was what I said about Iraq and the United States. I used to go on Fox News before the Iraq war and say, don't do this, but if you do, get out as soon as you can. And for God's sake, don't destroy the Iraqi army. Dr. Ibish: Don't disband the Iraqi army. Yeah, duh. You know, Yeah, they would listen to us about as much as I've listened to the cat. So you know, the point is that there's no desire to do or there's no fantasy about destroying Hezbollah or even actually really destroying Hezbollah's domestic political power in Lebanon. Even that they know is not attainable for them. Dr. Ibish: What they wanted to do publicly is to drive the Hamas forces away from the border. And they say that will produce security for northern Israel. It will produce the illusion of security. But the illusion of security is the only security that can be bought by a country that is fighting a war that is not resolvable. You know, that is a war that cannot be ended between states based on surrender and then terms and forgiveness, like Second World War or something like this. Dr. Ibish: It's not like that. It is guerrilla groups that are not going to go away. And the Israelis understand this. You cannot make a treaty with them. They'll just go underground. Dr. Ibish: Okay. Now The idea, I think, is to create the illusion of security for Israelis in the north of Israel by creating some kind of barrier or saying you've driven them away and they'll never come back. When of course they'll come back immediately, you know, and even if you stay there they may come back. And before your very eyes they'll come back, try to kill your soldiers, and then lob some missiles or cross the border. There is no, this is, it's just gibberish. Dr. Ibish: And in fact, I want to talk about Israel's quest for security in a second, but I want to finish by saying there is also a desire to weaken Hezbollah and its commanders, its command and control. That's been done successfully. Most of the senior figures in Hezbollah have been killed or a lot of them. The battalion commanders, a lot of them are dead. The senior figures in the military, the top 2, first the chief of staff, Wajh Shukr was killed, then Rahim Akbal, his successor was killed. Dr. Ibish: His successor will probably be killed. You know, Nasrallah was killed. Nasrallah is not number 2, but several ranks down were killed. And also, more importantly, they want to destroy as many rockets and missiles as they can, and especially rocket launchers, right? Rocket launchers are a very good target because you can have 100, 000 rockets. Dr. Ibish: If you have 1 launcher, you might as well have a thousand rockets. You know, you need enough for launch. You need, it's like repopulating a society. You need 1 man and 50 women. You know, you need more launchers than you need rockets. Dr. Ibish: You need more, you need launchers to fire the rockets. So, I mean, going after the launchers, but I still think in the end, I don't know in the end, but right now Israel claims to have destroyed 50% of those rockets and missiles and launchers, right? That would take you down from 150, 000 to 75, 000. 75, 000 is a hell of a lot. So, you know, again, there's going to be the illusion of security. Dr. Ibish: And a quantitative victory that means that Hezbollah would have to regroup and rearm. But if you create a new occupation on the ground under the rubric of a security buffer zone, there you've given them the ideal platform to rebuild. Hezbollah was a guerrilla operation, was a guerrilla organization, founded when is the last time Israel invaded Lebanon, which was in 1982 in a big way. Was in 1982 to drive out the PLO and deliver a final blow to the Palestinian nationalism in the PLO. So they were able to do this in a way because Palestinians were not endemic, were not, you know, sort of native to Lebanon. Dr. Ibish: They were transplanted there first from Palestine to Jordan by the Nakba And then from Jordan to Lebanon because of Black September, the PLO extreme left groups, PFLP and DFLP, had taken some Jordanian areas and established Palestinian rule there for them to serve as a platform for attacks on Israel. The Jordanian monarchy, the Jordanian state did not accept this as okay, they didn't want to lose part of their territory to a state within a state. They drove the whole Palestinian leadership and national movement and fighters out of Jordan into Lebanon and then made a new social compact with the Jordanians staying in Jordan, with the Palestinians staying in Jordan, that you can be citizens and do almost anything you want, except don't pursue your national ambitions here. It has to be in the West Bank. It has to be in Palestine. Dr. Ibish: Jordan is not Palestine. The Israelis keep saying Jordan is Palestine. We need you to agree with us that Jordan is not Palestine. So the PLO ended up in Lebanon and then they were in 82. The Israelis succeeded in in forcing the PLO and its fighters to sail off to Tunisia to live to fight another day. Dr. Ibish: That left the Palestinian refugee camps undefended and the Israelis promptly sent in fascist, Falangist militiamen, Christian militiamen, and they committed under the direction of the Israelis, the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Between 1500 and 3 and a half thousand, something like that, between 1500 and 3 and a half thousand unarmed Palestinians murdered in their beds. I mean it was actually really kind of an October 7th for Palestinian refugees. It was a very good analogy. It hadn't occurred to me before. Dr. Ibish: But yeah, October 7th was the Israeli Sabra and Shatila. I have to use that. That's a good 1. I like it. It's very precise. Dr. Ibish: Anyway, the attitude of the local majority in South Lebanon at the time to the Israeli invasion was ambivalent. They had developed A lot of resentment of the PLO and Palestinian arrogance and heavy-handedness and arbitrariness. So they were not angry at first at the Israeli invasion. They weren't happy about it. I mean, there's some people were, but basically they're ambivalent. Dr. Ibish: But it took weeks for them to become really enraged with the Israelis in a way that Palestinians had never caused them to be. I mean, the Israelis were brutal, and the Palestinians had just been heavy-handed and arbitrary. There's a big difference between heavy-handed and arbitrary and downright brutal. And the downright brutality of these rallies made the Shiites of southern Lebanon ripe for armed resistance and radicalism. Now you have at the same time the fledgling Islamic Republic in Iran, 2 years old, starting to think about the practical means of exporting the revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini, which is supposed to be a transnational movement in the first place. Dr. Ibish: Khomeini never saw himself as the leader of the Persians or the leader of Iran, he saw himself as a leader of the world's Muslims, of the ulema. He apparently said, or reportedly, it's apocryphal but I kind of believe it, to a reporter on the plane coming back to Iran from France, his cryptic comment which tells you everything actually if you think about it. First it was the Arabs, then it was the Kurds, then it was the Turks, and now it's going to be the Iranians, the Persians. Anyone who knows the history of the Muslim leadership understands the tech he's talking about. He's talking about leadership of the global Muslim community in the main. Dr. Ibish: That was his ambition. So there was this desire to export the revolution somewhere. And they saw this vacuum of leadership in southern Lebanon. There was a political party Amal but it wasn't armed and it wasn't particularly good. Their leader Nabi Berri is still the perennial speaker of the Lebanese parliament which is a job conventionally reserved to a Shiite, and they want to give it to Hezbollah guys, so it's always been a poor old Bedi. Dr. Ibish: And he's still there, and still speaking in the parliament. And he serves as a cover for Hezbollah, but it really, he wasn't going to do the trick. Amal wasn't going to do the trick. And Iran saw a leadership vacuum in the same way actually that the Muslim Brotherhood saw a leadership vacuum in Gaza and the occupied territories in 1987. With the first intifada emerging led by Gramscian local committees, the PLO struggling to get back in into the West Bank from Tunisia, and the Brotherhood saying, aha, here's an opportunity to set up a rival organization that will make the Palestinian National Movement an Islamist 1 rather than a secular nationalist 1. Dr. Ibish: We get rid of these Fatah guys and we run the show. And that's still their main goal. The main purpose, the prime directive of Hamas to this day, the unfulfilled first mission is to take over the Palestinian National Movement and that's what October 7 is really about. It's about a long-term war with Israel in Gaza that will deliver, they hope, leadership of the whole Palestinian National Movement to them over time. Not quite sure how it'll do it, but they just think that if they're fighting and the others aren't, then eventually it'll fall into their hands. Dr. Ibish: And they might be right. I hope not. I don't know. It's their bet. It's their gamble. Dr. Ibish: They're thinking, as I say, they're thinking 15-20 years down the line. The Iranians helped to form Hezbollah. They helped to arm Hezbollah, inform it, lead it, arm everything. And so Hezbollah has been a creature of the Iranians from that time. And for Hezbollah, the formative 20, 18 years, 20 years, the first 2 decades of their existence were entirely dedicated to getting the Israelis out of southern Lebanon. Dr. Ibish: And so a war, a guerrilla war in the south of Lebanon, in their heartland, in their homeland, in their heartland of Dahiyya is also southern suburbs of Beirut and the Baalbek is also, but basically the south is their heartland. A war there to drive out the Israelis by guerrilla means is a back to basics for them. And 1 of the reasons they were so penetrated by Israeli intelligence and have been so vulnerable to the kind of human intelligence central to the killing of Nasrallah and Shukr and Haqil and all these other people. Plus the killing of, and this is penetration of Iranian intelligence, in the killing of Haniyeh in Iran, blowing him up in a safe house of the RGC, and a bomb put 2 months ahead of time, and at a time when he and his personal bodyguard were there alone. So they killed him and his bodyguard, but not any Iranians. Dr. Ibish: So it's not to escalate unnecessarily a mission that was just designed to kill him. It means you have really good human intelligence. It means they're thoroughly penetrated. And Hezbollah is thoroughly penetrated as a consequence of the mission in Syria. I told you they were made the shock troops in Syria. Dr. Ibish: When that happened, they expanded greatly beyond their previous size and mission, which was in Lebanon, and to be a regional leader and trainer and advisor to groups like the Hashd al-Shaabi groups and the Houthis and whatever was coming up in Iraq and Syria and Yemen and possibly Bahrain and wherever. Shiite groups aligned with Iran. Teach them how it's done. The big brother, you know, is the firstborn. Hezbollah is the firstborn. Dr. Ibish: They have some brothers. The brother has to teach the younger brothers. Okay. That's basically their role. But then they're told they have to go and fight the war in Syria and be the most important forces. Dr. Ibish: But they had to expand, they had to greatly increase recruitment. They had to start bringing in all kinds of, they had to expand their size very quickly to fit the mission. That meant they had to recruit a lot of people quickly and meant they had to recruit a lot of people they didn't know. They took in a lot of people they would never have taken in before. People whose origins were unclear, whose motivations were uncertain, whose orientation was questionable, whose ideological fealty was dubious, and all of that kind of stuff. Dr. Ibish: And so they ended up open to Israeli penetration, to blackmail, to bribery, to the deliberate insertion of double agents, to all kinds of things. And they became fat and flabby, if I may say so. As someone who is very fat and very flabby, I can say that being fat and flabby opens you up to a lot of mischief and that's what happened to Hezbollah. So a return to the guerrilla war in southern Lebanon is also an opportunity to get back to basics and go back to being a lean mean fighting machine rather than this you know overblown overgrown thing that's vulnerable. So they might welcome that. Dr. Ibish: In his last sermon, Nasrallah said, Ahlan wa Sahlan, come on, we welcome an Israeli attack. And he was not blustering. He meant it. Dr. Ali: Right. But from the Israeli point of view, it seems sort of pointless, even from a military point of view, if they push them back behind the Litani River, what's to stop Hezbollah from continuing to fight? Dr. Ibish: Nothing. Nothing. And that's why it's the illusion of security and not security. Dr. Ali: No, but even the illusion may not happen if they're not even accepting a ceasefire. Dr. Ibish: So of course, but you can get them then, you can tell the people of Northern Israel that there's a buffer zone so they can't come and do October 7th to you because they'll meet Dr. Ali: in the Red Army. Sure, you know, Katyusha rockets from Dr. Ibish: well, they're not Katyushas, they're fighting, they have real stuff, Fars 1 and Fars 2 and stuff like that. But, you know, look, that's not their game, ultimately. Their game is to serve as a deterrent against attacks on Iran. It's about an illusion of security and the restorative win that I talked about. Yeah, I think the bigger question is this. Dr. Ibish: I mean, you raise a good point. I think the Israeli public will buy it. I think they will get sold this used Edsel, you know, and be happy to purchase it, this Pinto that's going to blow up. But it's not that. It's the bigger problem is they now have an open-ended, unresolvable counterinsurgency quagmire in the south in Gaza. Dr. Ibish: Right? No plan to get out, no way to get out. And once you get into a counterinsurgency, it's very hard to get out. The logic of continuation is inescapable. The logic of escalation is stronger than the logic of de-escalation, because there's always someone around the next corner waiting to shoot you. Dr. Ibish: And you know that. And so their first impulse is to go around the corner and get him. And that means you expanded the territory of the theater of battle. And you keep doing it until you've been drawn in even deeper. So it's very hard to even stop. Dr. Ibish: But if you do stop and you say, no, we're really not going further, going back is even harder. Because if you go back, it looks like you're surrendering. You will leave to the jeers of the victorious rebels who will claim to have driven you out, even if they didn't, you will leave ignominiously, right? It's the American departure from Afghanistan, it's a good example. I mean they're hammering Biden for fulfilling Trump's plan, You know, and Trump can say, well, I would have done it better or I wouldn't have done it unless that, yeah, I mean, he's lying as always. Dr. Ibish: But my point is, it always looks ignominious and cowardly and pointless and unnecessary, especially when you're flush with victory. So, or either, no affect is right, because either you're flush with victory, and it's throwing away a win and handing people an undeserved present on the other side if you go. Or you feeling threatened by them, right? Because there's nothing in between, right? There's never like, oh, it's okay. Dr. Ibish: I mean, there is, but In the heat of battle, there isn't. So the other thing to be feeling is afraid. And if you're afraid, going back looks cowardly and like surrender and looks like you've been driven out and you feel driven out, you know? So either way, it's bad. If you're winning, withdrawal looks terrible. Dr. Ibish: And if you're losing, withdrawal looks even worse. And if you're winning, withdrawal looks like you're handing a victory to the other side gratis. And if you're losing, it looks like you're accepting a defeat without fighting back. Either way it's just politically terrible. And I think the the problem for the Israelis is actually a bit deeper, which is they're in that situation in Gaza already. Dr. Ibish: They can't go forward, they can't get out, they can't, they're just trapped and now Hamas can take their time and over the next decade or 2 and they really are thinking in those terms, but at least Sinwar is. Maybe the guys in Gaza, the political leaders, were never, many of them were not thinking this way, but the gunmen in Gaza who authored this war sure were. They think very long-term apparently. And the Israelis now are in the business of creating the same situation in the north. So you have an open-ended, irresolvable insurgency into the foreseeable future in the South and 1 in the North. Dr. Ibish: And they are also more quietly and less dramatically, but no less practically, developing 1 in the East. Because they have been very brutally – first of all, they've been arming – these 2 guys Smotrych and Ben-Gvir, these Jewish Nazis, or at least Nazi-like Jews, let's put it that way, in Netanyahu's coalition, on whom he is now dependent for his majority, have been kept out of decision-making, kept out of the War Cabinet, kept out of decision-making on Gaza and now on Lebanon, because they're too extreme and too wild. The way that Christian fundamentalists, with the exception of Mike Pompeo, the only 1, have been kept out of American foreign policy decision-making ever since Ronald Reagan. They've been given all kinds of positions, but in foreign policy, only 1 fundamentalist was ever a senior policymaker, and that was Pompeo. Other than that, no. Dr. Ibish: And the reason for that is these people are crazy. That's the reason. Dr. Ali: There is also- Dr. Ibish: Go on. Dr. Ali: No, I was going to say, they're in a sort of a possible quagmire in Gaza. They are a possible quagmire in Lebanon. But beyond these 2, what they call the head of the snake is Iran. Well, now they're in a mizzle, you know, like. Dr. Ibish: Let's come to Iran. No, let's not get there too soon because we have a little bit more to go. Dr. Ali: Okay. Dr. Ibish: They gave Ben Gavir and Smotrich authority in the West Bank to keep them happy because they also they care about the West Bank more. So no we're not involving you in the wars because you're crazy but you know you can have authority in the West Bank. So Smotrych as a head of the finance Ministry is strangling the PA, cutting them off from the banking system of Israel. It's going to make it impossible. If he does that, the PA will collapse within months because the only function it has now is to pay the payroll and keep food on the table. Dr. Ibish: But If they can't use the Israeli banking system, they can't get any money. There's no way. And Saudi Arabia can bring in cash and things, but in the end, it's going to be very hard for them to survive. Meanwhile, there are these youth groups in the inner cities of West Bank, Palestinian towns in Area A that have been developing independently of Fatah and independently of Hamas and independently of Islamic Jihad. But 1 key guy has the ties, but they're really not. Dr. Ibish: They're spontaneous groups of armed young men without families and jobs and anything. They're doing what armed young men without families and jobs, but yes, with guns, do. They're bringing rackets, they're criming, they are, you know, blustering and preparing and training. And they're taking the battle to the armed Israeli settlers. The other guy, other than Smutrich, is Ben-Gvir. Dr. Ibish: Ben-Gvir has been put in charge of security. And what he's been doing is arming the settlers, who are acting more and more like the night riders of the KKK. And he's been sending out the army and the settlers to provoke and terrorize and kill Palestinians. And the Israeli military in the past 3 weeks has been engaged in a series of really brutal battles and destructive actions, ripping up roads, tearing up buildings. I mean, it's just on a bit of a rampage under the radar because of Gaza and Lebanon and everything. Dr. Ibish: No one's noticing that in Jenin and Kul Karim, they went on an absolute rampage. And the target was these youth groups. And the youth groups' reaction will be to become a guerrilla force and to thrive. Because guerrilla forces under conditions of occupation and quasi-apartheid or neo-apartheid do well. They do very well. Dr. Ibish: They're representing a feeling that is there and a goal that must be accomplished, which is freedom. And they're going around about it in the wrong way, with the wrong ideology, but there's, you know, it will take. You know, it's like putting a bread dough in an oven. It's going to rise and bake. Might blow up in the oven, it might burn, but it's gonna bake. Dr. Ibish: And this is bread dough in the oven. So my point is just this, Israel now has an insurgency in the south, it is creating 1 in the north, and it is slowly building a third 1 in the east. And in a year or 2, we could easily say Israel is surrounded on all sides by open-ended quagmires of insurgency in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank and the only calm area around it is the Mediterranean Sea. Now let's talk about Iran. Oh, by the way, just to finish the thought, I would say, if that's security, if being surrounded on all sides by endless wars by armed people who absolutely hate your guts and for a very good reason, for very very good reason hate your guts, if that's your idea of security I would love you to describe insecurity. Dr. Ibish: I'd love to know what insecurity looks like if that's secure Dr. Ali: So we can move on to Iran because we'll come back later to Netanyahu, but first let's Dr. Ibish: well We might be running out of time. But yes, we'll do 2 more questions Iran and Netanyahu. How about that? OK. OK. Dr. Ibish: You can bring me back if you like. Dr. Ali: We would like to do that too. Dr. Ibish: This is fun, but I have to write 2 articles and I need at least 1 hour sleep before my kids. I have little kids. They're going to wake up and jump on my head in a few hours. OK. So Iran. Dr. Ibish: I'm talking like 6 years old here, kind who do jump on your head. So Iran, what is Dr. Ali: the status there? Dr. Ibish: War of the cities is coming, I think. I think a big, big multi-front war is coming. I think Israel is, I said they gave Hamas what they wanted in terms of the open-ended insurgency. I think Israel is preparing to give them the other thing they wanted. They knew they couldn't have much influence in getting it or not. Dr. Ibish: They thought they didn't get it from Nasrallah because they were hoping, you know, everyone would rise and shine in the in the axis of resistance, come to their defense, join the war. That didn't happen because Iran had no desire to go to war for Gaza or Hamas. So they thought they were disappointed. They're just going to have to fight the Israelis on their own. But that's OK, because it's still the path to leadership among Palestinians. Dr. Ibish: And that was the main goal. They were hoping for a regional war, but They had no real expectation they would get it. It was sort of aspirational. Well, guess what? The Israelis are giving them that too. Dr. Ibish: Because, as I said, they want to go after Hezbollah. And when it came to going after Hezbollah, Everyone in Iran knows and celebrates the close integration of Hezbollah with Iran and with the IRGC. This is an article of faith in Iran or article of public civic life in Iran. No 1 has any doubts and you know, the state boasts about it. So, as Hezbollah is getting decimated, Hezbollah people in Lebanon are realizing, oh my God, this is bad. Dr. Ibish: First of all, our weapons are not for Palestine or Hamas or Gaza. That's bad. We were told they were. Now, my God, They're not for Lebanon or Hezbollah either. Holy crap, my buddy just got shot, my house is being destroyed and Iran is doing nothing and they're not letting us use our best missiles either because it's for them and them only is not even for us. Dr. Ibish: Like we are not allowed to use our biggest weapons and our real blows because we're supposed to keep it for them. And they're doing nothing. And we have taken a solemn oath to defend them. And we're getting blown to smithereens. And They do nothing. Dr. Ibish: It's a one-way street. Oh, my God. Now they're starting to realize they've been duped. They're jackass. They're fools. Dr. Ibish: And they've been absolutely humiliated, and they've had to realize, some of them care, some of them don't, that Iran couldn't give a crap about them, and that it's a one-way street, and they serve Iran, and Iran does not serve them. As simple as that. And their weapons are for Iran and not for them. An amazing thing. But that's what you get for being a proxy organization rather than an ally. Dr. Ibish: Hamas is an ally. It can do what it wants. It doesn't take instructions from Iran. Iran doesn't even try to give it instructions. The Houthis take instructions, but they also say in Arabic, tuz, get lost, which is a sort of polite translation for tools. Dr. Ibish: It's sort of a farting noise, basically, you know, and do you Dr. Ali: think there is any possibility that Israel can attack Iran with so much force that the regime can collapse? Dr. Ibish: Yeah, I want to talk about that. So the reason, it's a good question, but it jumps ahead a little bit. The reason that Iran has finally attacked Israel in a failed but stronger attack than the last 1, which was pure Kabuki. I don't know what they were trying to do in this 1, if they were really trying to hurt Israel and failed, or if they were again pulling their punches. I can't tell. Dr. Ibish: I think if they really wanted to hurt them they would have unleashed whatever is left of Hezbollah's rockets and they're holding them back. But I don't know. If they were trying to harm Israel and they couldn't, then they really are a lot weaker than they thought. I didn't have any idea. But point is this, they must have done it for domestic political reasons. Dr. Ibish: Nothing else makes sense. They must have done it because the regime's credibility was becoming so badly damaged and their national security strategy of a forward defense through these groups led by Hezbollah and with the charismatic Nasrallah being the replacement for Qasem Soleimani, the former IRGC head who was this iconic charismatic figure. Well, his successor, Ibrahim Qani, is a bland apparatchik. He's about as charismatic as he used Kleenex. So, you know, they needed a charismatic figure. Dr. Ibish: Nasrallah was already a charismatic figure and he assumed that role, that Suleimani role, in terms of inspiring people around the region and being the ideological leader of the axis and all of that stuff. He already had a big role, but he became the unquestionable that. And so the loss of him is very embarrassing. The whole regime is very embarrassed. And I think they felt they had, apparently they felt they had to do something to shore up their domestic political position as a, you know, in response to this battering from Israel. Dr. Ibish: And whether they wanted to open quote fail close quote in the sense of not killing anybody and not doing all that much damage or it's just a complete, you know, fiasco, I really have no idea. You'd have to ask someone with more knowledge about Iran's capabilities and all of that. I mean, Israel was using arrow missiles and other things very effectively. Their defense, air defense is, you know, best in the region and very, you know, perform well, but you would think it could be overwhelmed. And anyway, it doesn't really matter. Dr. Ibish: My point is that the regime was clearly responding to domestic political pressure to eventually take action. They weren't going to do it to please the Arabs or to help Hezbollah, which it didn't, or anything like that. It's to mollify people inside Iran. The public and also people within elite groups who they fear maybe are starting to say, wow, these people don't know what they're doing. In the last 25 years, we've been told our forward defense is these guys, and they crumpled like a Coca-Cola can being run over by a garbage truck. Dr. Ibish: And, you know, maybe they don't know what they're doing. Maybe Persian nationalism and Iranian nationalism just cannot be left to these people. And maybe we need different leaders and maybe even a different regime. Now, you know, there's no sign of that. But you were asking about Israeli strikes against Iran, against Iranian institutions, against oil installations, nuclear facilities or intelligence headquarters or civilian targets. Dr. Ibish: Any of that, and if it goes practically unanswered or has to be answered through terrorist attacks overseas or something like that, could lead to the loss of, kind of loss of faith that undermines the regime. You can think in terms of the Argentinian Junta and the Falkland Islands. The Argentinian Junta was already struggling with popularity, as the Islamic Republic leadership has been. The Junta in 1978, had arranged the World Cup in Argentina and they told Menotti, the coach, you better win this or you're going to get shot. And also, that came out much later, and also somebody paid the Peruvians to lose in the semifinal to them 6 to 3. Dr. Ibish: They had to lose by by 2 goals or more and they promptly lost. And it was it was sort of a weird match. The only World Cup match, high-level World Cup match I've ever seen where I thought you know somebody's been bribed. There's money behind this. Anyway then they ended up beating the Dutch and they won and that preserved the regime for a few more years. Dr. Ibish: And then they invaded the Falkland Islands. And they got absolutely walloped by Britain. Belgrano was sunk and, you know, in like 70 days they were humiliated and defeated. It didn't take long for the regime to collapse. In 1983 the regime collapsed. Dr. Ibish: It was unpopular and it suffered this huge national security debacle and that was enough. And so you do have to wonder if you're a friend or foe of the Islamic Republic or the leadership of the Islamic Republic, whether elite people in Iran eventually or the public in Iran, either 1, will decide to replace either the group of people at the top of the Iranian system without having a, without changing the Islamic Republic. But You could get rid of the Basiji and IRGC people who've been running the show, who based everything around Hezbollah and this web of militia groups outside, and repression at home, and you could try to put in a new group of people, or you could do away with the Islamic Republic altogether. And see, the whole system sucks. And it's bad at home, and it's a failure abroad, and our national security has collapsed. Dr. Ibish: And that's the last straw. If you can't defend Persian national interests regionally, and you're bringing Israel to attack us for no good reason, for no reason that really benefits Iran. You know, fighting over Hamas and Hezbollah and Lebanon and these things we don't care about and we've never been there. You might see regime change out of this. Now, that's a, that's, Netanyahu did a Navarro's message to Iranians and he invited the Iranians to overthrow their regime. Dr. Ibish: And that probably did more harm than good because no 1 is going to go and change their government because freaking Bibi Netanyahu, the criminal, the crook, the guy who's going to go to prison for corruption, the author of this savage war of vengeance in Gaza, this man who everybody hates, in Israel even. No one's going to do that because he said so. And I do not think having Netanyahu urging the people of Iran to overthrow their government is helpful. But I do think it gives you a sense of the Israelis think there's some space there. And the Americans who speak in terms of regime change in Iran are more vocal as well. Dr. Ibish: And you know, I think the sharks can smell the blood in the water. That's what I mean. And when there are no signs of it, you wouldn't expect necessarily to see the signs of it and I am sure that the leaders in Iran are worried. If they weren't, they would be stupid and I don't think they're stupid. You have to wonder after the past few months, but yeah, I still don't think they're stupid. Dr. Ali: But unless they actually have confirmed deterrence that Israel sort of secretly knows and respects There is nothing stopping the Israelis from doing serious damage to them. No, there Dr. Ibish: is nothing stopping and I expect it to happen. Everything may look different tomorrow or next week or in a month. But right now if you do the math, the political math, you come up with a result that Israel will have concluded, you know, assuming they think a war against Iran or war to stop Iran's nuclear weapons and knock it back, knock the program back 10-15 years through damaging it through bomb attacks and sabotage and missile strikes and huge bunker busters and things. If Israel has concluded that that must happen and it's inevitable, then it is very hard to imagine that they wouldn't conclude now is the time. Because you have Hezbollah on the ropes, you have Hamas incapable of striking back from the south, you have the Americans on board to the extent that you know that either in any of the 3 possible presidents, Biden or after January 20th, either Trump or Harris, is going to ultimately come to the defense of Israel if Israel gets into trouble or needs help, even if the United States has said and means it, don't do this. Dr. Ibish: But, you know, they do it anyway. They said, you know, don't invade Lebanon. And they did. I'm sure they, I don't think they said don't assassinate Nasrallah, but the whole escalation they didn't like. They were pressing for a ceasefire very hard and they thought they'd gotten Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire. Dr. Ibish: He was going, oh yes, yes, yes, yes, and then he killed Nasrallah. And the White House was just like, my god, this guy lies to us every time we talk to him. He's the biggest liar of all time. But Netanyahu knows 2 things. Number 1, the time before an election, the couple of months before an election, is the period for Israel of maximum impunity and freedom of action when it comes to American pushback and restraints. Dr. Ibish: He knows that. That's why they escalated when they did. I mean, why didn't they do it a couple of months before? Rafah was already finished. He could have. Dr. Ibish: They didn't. Why didn't he wait and do it in December after the election? Like judges who are gonna sentence Trump decided, no, it's, you know, we've scheduled, but you know what, let's not do it before the election because it's just unseemly. They could have waited until after November 5th. That's a month from now. Dr. Ibish: There's absolutely no urgency. None. You know, it's, you can always claim it has to be done now because it has to be done. Not true. In fact, they could have waited. Dr. Ibish: And they didn't, because I think they want to make sure that the dynamic is in place after the election and that they take full advantage of this time of maximum impunity to create the situation they want. A situation they hope, I'm sure, that will compel the United States to get involved and either rescue Israel or finish the job and do the kind of damage that really would set Iran's program back 10 years, 15 years as the Israelis want. The Israelis probably don't have the conventional firepower to do that. The Americans definitely do. A lot of those nuclear facilities are underground, they're heavily fortified, they're very hard to destroy, and the Israelis have some bunker busters, but not, you know, and some capability of hitting Iran, but not the kind the Americans do, nothing like it, nothing approaching. Dr. Ibish: It's a fraction. And this is obviously the idea. And also, they know that any of those street leaders and anyone else that might possibly be in the White House will eventually support Israel if Israel needs support and the United States is not yet at the point of looking at Israel dispassionately and judging that look you started this you didn't have to in Lebanon you could have there was no need for this war. You know, you say there was, but there really wasn't, because guys on the other side didn't want a war. You may think it's because they're nefarious people, but they didn't want a war. Dr. Ibish: And you didn't have Dr. Ali: to do it, and you Dr. Ibish: didn't have to do it, and you didn't have to do it now, and you did anyway, and you know, you're on your own. But we're not at that point in the United States. The United States is, this is very much, especially what's going on now in the 2 and a half months before the election, 2 months, especially the month and a half before the election, is 1 of the most blatant examples of a tail wagging the dog scenario I've ever seen. The client country is jerking the patron around with absolute impunity, doing whatever it wants, and committing the patron to certain outcomes. The patron doesn't want, but the client has enough clout over the patron to make it happen. Dr. Ibish: Some people do get their lives dictated by their pets. And I'm not calling, I'm not trying to compare Israelis to animals. I'm not, don't say that. Don't come at me and say, oh, what are you saying, dogs and cats, and we're not that. I'm not saying that. Dr. Ibish: I'm making an analogy. I'm thinking you could think about anything where the subordinate dictates to the dominant and in a way that is not rational. It doesn't reflect the actual balance and it is weird and and unseemly but that's what we have, you know, and and that's the way it is right now. And so that is the situation. Yeah, we're gonna have to wrap up very soon. Dr. Ibish: 1 more question, 1 closing question, I'll do it. If not, you can bring me back weekly if you want. Dr. Ali: We absolutely have to bring you back because I want to ask a much more detailed question. What would it be? The question would be that the picture you have painted is pretty hopeless no matter which side you look at it from. It's just a mess from beginning to end and in this situation, what would a good outcome look like and who can work for that? Dr. Ibish: So you do have to bring me on for that 1. Because we need an hour to talk about that. This is really hard. And I'm happy to do it. Do you have a question suited to today's discussion? Dr. Ibish: Or shall we just say thank you. Dr. Ali: Just if you want to make a wild guess about what Israel will do in response. Just a wild Dr. Ibish: guess. Okay, first of all, I am, I don't know. And I don't predict but I will I will wild guess. I think today, and it could look different in tomorrow morning or in a week or in a month, because things happen fast. Right now, the math, the political math, which is an irrational system of mathematics, but it is a, it does have its own weird logic, you know, like dreams, Freudian dream theory. Dr. Ibish: It's not rational, but it has its own logic to it. Political logic would, and IR, international relations logic, more to the point. Because I'm not talking about politics as in who has power. I'm talking about country to country. That suggests that Israel will try to start a huge war with Iran now, a war of missiles, a war of the cities, the Iran-Iraq war with with Iran, you know, trying to blow up each other's cities, and aimed mainly at trying to destroy Iran's oil production facilities and nuclear installations. Dr. Ibish: The oil production facilities will be an attack on Iran's economy and the oil production facilities will be an attack the nuclear facilities will be an attack on Iran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon with the amount of enriched plutonium they have created and the all the progress they've made towards a bomb where they're really quite close. They have not gone weaponization but they've gone to the point where weaponization is a matter of weeks, if not a couple of months. They're really very close. They've got enough appropriately weapons-grade refined physical material that they could do it. They don't, you know, whether it work, you always want to test these things right and then you have to weaponize them you have to produce the warhead and all that it's this is ancient technology all right this is 1944. Dr. Ali: That kind of technology they could be given also I mean there's also behind them is China and Russia. Dr. Ibish: Well, yeah, but I don't see China and Russia as the giving them those technology countries right now. Dr. Ali: Probably not. But the Chinese did give a design to Pakistan. So it's not out of the question. Dr. Ibish: No, it's not out of the question. They don't need the design. They just need to do it. I mean, they know how to do it. They just have to decide to do it and then do it. Dr. Ibish: I don't think they lack anything at this point. I think they would, they just have not taken the final decision. And then you would want to test it if you could. But maybe you can't. Maybe you just have to say, let's, you know, we'll test it when we use it. Dr. Ibish: I don't know. Anyway, My point is this. I think if Israel does launch an all-out war on Iran, the Iranian regime strategy will be to hunker down, try to survive, and sprint to the bomb. That's what they will do. They'll forget all about the forward defenses and completely rejigger their regime survival strategy to be based on a Pyongyang approach. Dr. Ibish: Everything's suspended until we get a bomb. If we have to have famine, we'll have a bomb. If we have whatever it is, we'll have a bomb. And that will probably be the long-term reaction. I'm not long-term, but that's probably the the principal outcome of the current conflict from an Iranian national security perspective, speaking today as we're talking, the likely logic of it all is a sprint to the bomb and try to get there by 2026 or 20 early yeah sometime in 2026 you get a bomb. Dr. Ibish: It doesn't matter how blown up Isfahan and Tabriz are. If you have a working bomb underground you can emerge from it and say if anyone looks at us sideways, this thing is going to blow up in Tel Aviv. That's it. We'll get it there. And, you know, you know, don't just stop. Dr. Ibish: That's it. And if you have to be North Korea for a little while you're North Korea what's the phrase eating grass I think it's a Pakistani idea right yes Dr. Ali: who was it Dr. Ibish: who said it? Zulfi Bhutto said it Benazir? No, the older Zulfi, Dr. Ali: her dad said it her dad said Dr. Ibish: it. Dr. Ali: Zulfi Bhutto said it. Dr. Ibish: Yeah, I'll hang the Bounder guy. Yeah, right. Yeah. Zia, Zia's. Yeah. Dr. Ibish: Anyway, yeah. So yeah, So eating grass may, I'm not saying people will eat grass, but I'm just saying that that notion of the regime will say what Hamas has said to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, that we're a nation of martyrs. Don't worry. So They signed up everybody to martyrdom, everybody in their family. Well, that's wonderful. Dr. Ibish: But you know, it does feed a certain defiant nationalist logic. And anyway, that's what I think. That's I think that's where we're going. I think Israel is going to try to start a war. I think they're going to try to get the Americans to come in. Dr. Ibish: I think the Iranian response will be terrorism around the world and make a bomb at home. Sprint to a bomb. Dr. Ali: So with that happy thought we'll have to wrap up today. Thank you very much. Dr. Ibish: Call me Santa Claus. Dr. Ali: And we will have you back very soon and talk about what a sane alternative could be in the Middle East. A sane alternative? Dr. Ibish: What a weird guy you are. You want to say an alternative? Dr. Ali: Yes. Dr. Ibish: Oh, way man. Where'd you come from? Okay. Say an alternative it is. Dr. Ali: Thank you. Tune in next week Dr. Ibish: for BrownCast.
