← Ask Haviv Anything
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Foreign.
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Welcome to a new episode of Ask Khalif Anything. We're on day nine of the Israel, Iran, America war in the Middle east and today we're going to take a deep dive into some of the real heart and guts of the war. We're going to look at what's actually happening, what is happening on the ground tactically, what some of this means on the broader stage. And Yaakov Katz is with me. Yaakov Katz is a best selling author, senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute in Jerusalem, co founder of Mead Mead, a premier Middle East America Policy Forum. Between 2016 and 2023, Yaakov was editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, where he continues to serve as a columnist. I've actually known Yaakov for, I think over 20 years and he was also a phenomenal military reporter and correspondent who understands these issues very, very deeply. You're going to see that in this conversation. He's a man who spent a lot of time studying the Middle east, its politics, and especially high tech and defense tech. Some of his first books co authored with Amir Bukhboot are entitled Weapon How Israel Became a High Tech Military Superpower, the Secrets to that Whole Industry, Where It Comes from and Israel versus Iran, the Shadow War. So you get the theme we're going today to get into the purpose of the current Iran war, what each of the sides are trying to accomplish, how it is progressing, what victory looks like or defeat would look like, and how this is going to shape regional and global events and the future. Before we get into it, I want to tell you this episode is sponsored by an anonymous donor who asked to recognize the staff and scientists of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot in Israel. In June of last year, the Weizmann Institute was hit directly by two ballistic missiles from Iran. 60 laboratories were destroyed in true Israeli fashion. Flexible that we are, scientists in the unaffected part of the campus opened their labs to their colleagues and doubled up and tripled up and the work continued relatively uninterrupted. The Weizmann Institute exemplifies collaboration at its best, which is after all, the secret sauce of the state of Israel. Thank you to that donor. We appreciate it very much. And for that dedication which we very much endorse and support, I also want to invite you to join our Patreon community. It helps us keep the lights on. You ask the questions that guide the topics that we talk about and there's a great discussion forum there and you get to join our monthly livestream where I answer Your questions live. That's at patreon.com/askhavenything. The link is in the show notes. Yaakov, how are you?
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I think, like the rest of this country, a little tired, but I'm optimistic and hopeful.
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Okay. We're going to get into optimistic and hopeful. I have, you know, family over. My small apartment is very, very full right now. You're coming through the war okay? Family's okay? Yeah.
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I think like most people, everybody's dealing with the, you know, the issues of what it means to wake up sometimes the middle of the night, have to take kids down to the bomb shelter, have to stay close to home, having kids not in school. But these are all the way, I look at them, small problems, right? The, the, the, the, the big issue. And I think that I want to say, I mean, anecdotally, and I wonder what you think, Khabiv, but I think most Israelis are willing to suffer through this right now because we understand that there is something so much bigger here, that there is finally an opportunity to take down the source of all of the basically the instability that we have faced for the last 30 years or so. There's finally an opportunity to weaken them, to change our security reality, to change the region, and of course, to bring a new liberty of freedom to the people of Iran. So if that means we got to stay a little longer in the bomb shelter, we have to have our lives a little more disrupted, I think most Israelis will take it.
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Yeah, we have polls on that. It's, I mean, I forget the exact numbers. It's 80%. Yeah. Basically, rule of thumb, kind of 80% of Israelis. It's people who support this government, people who hate this government and are desperate to get rid of this government in this election year. It's every kind, every from the right, from the left. Iran has never not told us it wants to destroy us, and it has never stopped spending billions that the Iranian people don't have on destroying us. And so if this does the job. So let's get into it. You explain that America is using this war to showcase its capabilities, its military capabilities. America hasn't fought a conventional war since 2003, and now it is. And it's trying through how it broadcasts this war and through the actual weapons systems it's deploying to say something, tell us that story.
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Well, like you said, I think that what's important to keep in mind is the context here. The United States has not faced a conventional military, although much weaker, and nothing in the scale or scope of what comes Close to America, but it hasn't faced one since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And we all remember how Saddam's army collapsed pretty much immediately. But since then it's been in counterinsurgency, it's been state building, it's been small little Delta Force style operations in, in, in or throughout the world. And it's been a lot of force procurement and, and buildup for enemies and adversaries that America might one day fight against, whether in Iran in this case, but definitely China or Russia or North Korea. But what we're seeing now is that 23 years later, since the Iraq war, this is America's first opportunity to really showcase and test out all of the different capabilities that it has built up over these last two decades that could potentially be used one day against a larger adversary. Now why is this significant? Because America's eyes are always, you know, Iran is an enemy, it's a challenge, it's an adversary, it's destabilizer. But it's as much smaller enemy than what it would face one day against China, Russia, both nuclear powers, both with really significant extreme advanced capabilities. But Iran's military khaviv is based on exactly those two countries capabilities. If we look historically, the missiles that are being launched at us as we speak, right, are Iranian missiles, but they are built on the different variations of Scud missiles. They're built on different variations of Soviet era submarine missiles. The Hormasher, which is one of Iran's most advanced missile showcased just a couple years ago, has an engine that is apparently a replicate of an old Soviet style submarine missile. So we're seeing things right now that are playing out that the Americans are using, including technology. You know one thing that caught my eye was the naval vessel that the United States blew up and destroyed, the Iranian naval vessel in the Indian Ocean, they used a torpedo. And even Pete Hegsett, the Secretary of War, you got to watch him, takes a lot, took a lot of pride in saying how this was the first time a torpedo was used since World War II. Now come on, they've bombed ships since World War II. We've been watching what they've been doing, you know, in, in, in off the coast of, of the United States, in the south, where they're taking out these narco vessels. They're not using torpedoes. Why here did they use a torpedo? Why submarine? Why not a, a, an airplane? Because they want to test out these capabilities. They want to flex a muscle and show particularly China what they are capable of doing and how they need to also recalibrate and recalculate.
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What is the prsm, the precision strike missile, other than what the name implies, why is this something special, advanced, unique, that America is taking great pains to also film and broadcast its strikes? What is that? And beyond this torpedo, tell US what's those 20 years of force, of procurement and force building built a whole nother scale of military capabilities. Tell us a little bit about what America can do now that it couldn't do, you know, that the Chinese might not be aware of because it had not seen deployed 25 years ago.
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Well, the Prism missile, it's called, it's spelled prsm, but it's pronounced. Prism is a surface to earth surface missile. It's long range. It has some ranges that are rumored to be to, to be about 500 to 600 kilometers. They can be launched with regular artillery style rocket launchers. So you're able to use the launchers that are already within service in the US Military. Some of them do have, because of their ranges and their sizes, they would potentially violate different treaties that America had in the past signed on to. But since Donald Trump has pulled out of some of these treaties, the United States is able to use them and they have been using them. This is a precision guided missile. Right. So what it does is essentially something, by the way, that Israel does not have. And, and, and I think that this is glaring over the last couple years of this war. We don't have or we don't use a surface to surface miss missile capability when attacking our enemies, whether they're Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah and Lebanon or Iran for that matter. But the Americans now have that capability. They've been using it. And it's another way of getting an explosive device and a warhead with great accuracy to a target without having to risk an aircraft or a pilot flying over enemy territory. That's not really needed in this war. Again, aerial supremacy and superiority was created in this war. In day one, right. We had weakened Iran's air defense systems. Again, another perfect example of that Russian play, Russia. All of Iran's air defense systems, these are Russian made systems. And Israel has systematically.
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The S300, the S400.
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Yeah, the S300, which Israel already took out back in 2024 after one of, after the first round of ballistic missiles that were fired at us in April, we eliminated one of the batteries. Since then, all of those three or batteries that Iran has has been taken out. But they have SA15 and SA20s and SA2s and SA, all the different variations of Soviet and Russian air defense systems, they are nothing. They're gone. Now imagine you're Vladimir Putin right now, and imagine you're the Russian military. And you see how all the air defense systems that you have created over decades are simply obliterated by Israel and the United States. Which means effectively that your skies are completely vulnerable. That you are vulnerable. That an F22 from America, Raptor, or an F35American or Israeli for that matter, it doesn't make a difference, can fly over Moscow and you won't even know about it. What does that do to you and how should you feel as the leader of a country that is an adversary to the United States?
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I remember that there was a big debate in Israel for many years about missiles versus air force. And we came down on the air force. We will have a human led. You know, there are. There's quite a bit of drones, or they're developing our drone capabilities, but humans sitting in cockpits flying places where they need to go instead of a missile force. And this was a debate that made it to Knesset debates. This was a debate that generals were opining on what's the advantage of missiles? Why are we even having. Why have we ever had this debate? Why did the Israelis decide not to?
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So I think there's three answers that together make one answer. Number one is Israel does have a ballistic missile capability, right? It's something that we don't talk about. It's never showcased, it's never used, it's rumored, and you can read all about it online to be called the Jericho missile. It's a missile that could be used as to. To launch the purported nuclear capability that Israel has. What we know, though we've never seen Jericho used ever in combat. What we have seen is that Israel has space launch vehicles called the Shavit, which is I think English or Hebrew for comet. And that is what launches sometimes our satellites into space, our reconnaissance satellites. The Shavit is a modification of the Jericho missile. So if you're able to launch a satellite into space, that means you have a ballistic missile capability as well, right?
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Israel did not slow down. I'm sorry. I've always been very proud of the fact that Israel is one of only eight countries that totally indigenously can put a satellite in space. No, no.
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It launches from unbelievable beach south of
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Tel Aviv and it's low earth orbit. Okay. We're not America, we're not Russia, we're not China in this regard, but nevertheless, we could put something in space. You're saying that that is an excellent way to make sure you still know how to launch surface to surface long range missiles.
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By the way, I'll tell you something even more than that to also take pride in, if you want to take pride, Haviv, is that we are the only country in the world that when we launch satellites, we, we'd launch against the rotation of the earth, right? We don't, why don't we launch eastward? Because God forbid something goes wrong, you have a missile and a satellite that potentially lands in Jordan, in Iraq. You don't want that to potentially, you don't want your technology falling in the wrong hand. So we even have to have more powerful missiles to launch those satellites into space. We don't use ballistic missiles because we don't want to talk about what they could potentially be used for. That, that, that's, that's, that's one piece of the puzzle. The second piece is that a, a missile core, which is something that has come up over the years. If you remember Avigdor Lieberman, the head of the Israel Bateino party when he was Defense Minister, he talked about what was called the, a missile core in the idf. He wanted to allocate for this hundreds of millions of shekels. It came up against stiff opposition within the air Force because the air force saw this as a chipping away at its monopoly of being the carrier and the provider of a surgical precision strike capability. They didn't want to see them start to get into fights. Okay, who runs this corps? Is it run out of the air force? Is it run the ground forces?
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I read that as turf war in Israeli institutions. Which happens, which is the politics of every institution ever built by humans. You're saying, was there substance to it or was it the serious tactical debate, strategic debate?
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Oh no, it was a serious debate, remember? I mean, look, our, our defense budget right now, right after two and a half years, almost of war, the defense budget that's supposed to be approved now in the new budget, if it gets approved at the end of this month, which doesn't look like that's happening, but if it were to, is, is, is, is not a ton of money and is limited, it's about 8.8% of our, of our GDP, we're looking at 150 or 120. I don't remember the exact number billion shekel that's supposed to go towards the defense budget. I mean this is limited capacity and limited capability of limited resources. This has always been just a fight over what you have and where you can divide it up. And the, the Focus has not been on this. And therefore, because the Air Force has been able to do it, why do we need this now? The reason you would want it in one word is because why should I fly pilots and aircraft like the F35 and F16s and F15s that cost $100 million plus when I can deliver a missile that can potentially do the same thing? And here we go into piece three, I think, which is part of the answer. A missile as precise and as accurate because it's totally standoff, it's totally autonomous once launched, it flies, it would seem, God forbid, in a world of where there is collateral damage. And Israel is often accused of disproportionality and of committing genocide on every front. Right? Which is, you know, just the accusation thrown our way no matter what we do. I think that also plays a role here as people are afraid to use missiles. When you have a human in a cockpit who's the one pressing the button, it makes it seem like it's more controlled. And therefore we can explain better to the world what it is that we are doing.
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One of the remarkable things, as an Israeli watching this war, and many have commented on it, is that the Israeli Air Force takes these operations, releases some videos. We get these grainy cockpit kinds of videos that we just assume that's that's what airplane videos of their targets, when they're hitting them, look like. And now the Americans are releasing videos with a whole different level of production value, and a lot of them about the entire, you know, these waves of strikes. And I didn't know why, I just thought, okay, well, they put better cameras on, right? Cameras are cheap now, right? You can get very good cameras very easily. And you had a suggestion that suddenly everything clicks into place and makes sense for me about the nature of this war and how the Americans are thinking about the fighting of this war, which is that this is part of the psychological warfare. All these videos, it's about broadcasting those capabilities. Is that right?
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Yeah, 100%. This is all about communication. Strategy is always going to be an integral part of any campaign that you're fighting. So you have your offensive capabilities that are attacking the enemy, your defensive capabilities that are defending the home front. And of course, and your allies. And of course, you have to have your public diplomacy capabilities, your communications. So the Americans are investing in this. I mean, you watch some of these videos that are coming out and they look like they're Hollywood productions. I mean, the visuals, the soundtracks, the cutting, the editing, this is top pro quality, right? Not to mention you have Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War who's giving these almost daily briefings. So we have nothing like that here.
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Right.
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And this is, you could say maybe it's by design. I think it's not by design necessarily. It's just a result of a deterioration of some of our communication capabilities over the years without putting the right focus and the emphasis on being able to create this.
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Explain that. The Americans are saying this is a message to the Chinese, to the Russians. We have capabilities. The more they know, the less they're going to try us. This is preventing broadcasting war to prevent war. That is such a fundamental and obvious advantage to take out of this. You're already fighting a war. Make sure everybody knows what you can do. That is so obvious. Why can't the Israelis do that in a professional, serious way? It's not that Israelis are don't know that there's such a thing as marketing, strategic communications. I mean, Netanyahu is going off building a political campaign for the election this year. Lapid is going off building a political for the half the generals are going to try their hand at politics when they get out of. Right. It's not that Israelis, they're going to have wonderful, amazing marketing shops that are going to hack the human brain stem to get themselves elected. Why can't they do it as an air force? Why can't they do it as a military? Why can't they do it as a government?
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So the IDF Khabiv is, you know, it does what it can and it puts out some of these videos and they're nice and they're okay. And there was one with like the Star wars soundtrack that they put on aircraft that were flying and tried to make it viral and cute. And I get, I get all of that in today's world, that's just kids showing off. That's not correct.
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Strategic. That's not. I want my enemy to see xyz. How do I make sure they see that? I want this plane to drop this particular thing in this particular way at that particular time, at that particular target to produce that video. Because that video is a message on the grand strategic chessboard.
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And I think that the reason we don't have that is because we do not have a coordinated strategic national media, communications, information, whatever you want to call it, warfare strategy. We've seen this throughout the last two and a half years. This isn't new. You know this just as well as I do. We don't have anyone at the top who's thinking, okay, looking across the Entire system, the politics, the defense establishment. What are the messages that we need to be sending out to the world right now? Who's the best person to do it? How should we do it? How do we get everyone on board? How do we make sure there's coordination, there's message discipline, there's an effective apparatus that's sitting. I mean, we know the Americans have hundreds of people, that this is exactly what they do in times of crisis, but even just in routine in Israel. And I know. You know, hold on, because I know you know this, but probably most of the listeners here do not know. We have not had a head of what's known as the National Information Directorate, what's called the Matehas Bara Lu Mi, something that was established after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, which was meant to coordinate, do everything we just said. We have not had someone in that seat since April. Not April of last year, not April that's about to come, but April of 2024. Right. So we're almost two years without somebody who is in charge of Israel's media strategy. Now, you tell me, does that make sense for a country that is embroiled and engaged, engulfed in conflict for so long? To me, it's crazy. It's like if I told you that we would have an air force fighting Iran without an air force commander.
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B
If you talk to our enemies and you say to them, listen, we outclass you on the battlefield, what's your strategy? They will tell us, and they do tell us, our strategy is that you lose the world community, you lose your ability to sell, you lose your ability to buy, you lose your ability to arm, and then you are weakened sufficiently for us to bring you down. And so it's not just that it's unpleasant that we don't even explain ourselves, and so we look worse than we have to look. It's literally we're seeding the main battlefield arena that the enemy has chosen to fight on. Hamas didn't fundamentally fight on the ground. It mostly hid underneath civilians on the ground. And Hamas was fighting in the arena that you're describing the Israelis refusing even to show up to. It's.
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No, it's painful, by the way, because, I mean, it's a. I get it. No, I think it's even criminal and negligence. But, you know, and it's not. It's not. I want to just exactly clarify something and stress this. I'm not against the war. I mean, like, this is not meant to be criticism, to undermine. This is meant to be. We can do so Much better. And look at what we're able to do. Imagine what we could do if we were really focused and strategic about how we're sending. I mean, you know, there is an opportunity right now, if you look at this big war that's happening, right, for, for, for a dramatic change to this region, right. The Americans are thinking not just about Iran, they're thinking about China, they think about Russia, they think about global security, think about trade, they think about the flow of oil, right? 50%, almost of Iran's, of China's. China is purchasing 50% of Iran's oil, right? The fact that they can't get there
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right now, it's like 90, 90, sorry.
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Is dramatic. This is dramatic. Now that they're not able to get their hands on that oil, this has real opportunity to change everything. And here in Israel, we could be talking about all this. We could have people who are out there explaining how this is not a war about us and it's not us just fighting. We're here. But you don't have people who are, who are talking this way. And it's just a missed opportunity.
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B
It's unbelievable. I've been, I've been traveling the world. Some things that were decisions in the war in Gaza or in Lebanon or in Iran I thought were mistaken. Sometimes I talk about Israeli mistakes, sometimes I talk about Israeli success. But I don't find anyone out there representing actual Israel. Like I only at the end of the day, represent Khaviv's opinion. We have to learn from the Americans. The Americans have some extraordinary capabilities we can't have. We're just too small. If we learn this from the Americans, which is the cheapest thing, it's all about. Two dozen people in a marketing firm will solve this problem if they have high enough security clearance. This is the cheapest thing. And this is the thing the Americans are doing right, fundamentally right at a strategic level in the military. And Israel isn't even bothering to show up to. That would be one heck of a valuable takeaway from watching how the Americans are running this. Let me pivot to a slightly different question. So the Americans are trying to show off all these capabilities because this war with Iran is very much a war against Iran. It's also a war to contain a Chinese forward base, a Chinese proxy, a Chinese energy, energy import diversification source. This is a very important country for China, also for Russia. Iran produced the Shahid drones, I think the Ukrainian, the official Ukrainian number is something like 55,000, 57,000 shahed drones produced by Iran have smashed into Ukrainian cities over the course of the last four years.
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Sorry to interrupt you, but you know, the Shahid drone, you know, America's been using a drone now in this war called the Lucas drone. The Lucas drone was fast tracked by the Pentagon. They got their hands on a shahed drone, they replicated it. They made it cheap. It's a suicide drone, and they've been using it effectively in this war. So America also took Iran's weapon that it had been providing. Russia, replicated, is now using it against Iran in a most brilliant way.
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See, that gives brownie points to both America and Iran. Iran built something that America, that America itself said, hey, not a bad idea. That's very fascinating. So this is a war on all these different fronts. And therefore, I think for a lot of people watching, for me watching this, I am very confused about the victory conditions. And I'm confused about the victory conditions because on the one hand, if the whole goal is preventing Iran from having a ballistic missile arsenal and a nuclear program, that's, you know, victory in a war like that is one thing. We'll have to figure out how setback they are. And if it's a message to China, maybe that's already been achieved, you know, by day two. And if it's, you know, any of the other versions of what this is. What Israel needs from this war is rather different than what America needs from this war. Israel needs Iran to stop being able or wanting to fund Hezbollah. Israel needs Iran to stop being the disruptor of every nation around us. Iran is now funding the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan to the point where Jordan this past year outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood for the first time because Iran is trying to produce a Sunni radical movement within Jordan to topple the monarchy. Because Jordan and Israel have a peace treaty and it's a stable border of Israel. Israel needs Iran to stop that. And for that, Israel really kind of needs regime change. It doesn't need a democracy in Iran, but it needs this anti, this religious fanaticism that is this anti Americanism, anti Westernism, anti Israelism, to no longer be the cultural and political DNA of this regime. So these are very different victory conditions. What does victory look like on any of those planes that you want to answer? There's a lot of ways this war end.
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A
Yeah, the goalpost keeps moving and depending on who you talk to, there's obviously different objectives. You know, Donald Trump on day one of this, in the beginning hours of the offensive last Saturday spoke about how this is ultimately about giving the Iranian people a once in a Generation opportunity to seize control of their country and to take power. We will weaken the regime, we will weaken their, degrade their capabilities. We have to stop their nuclear. But this is about the people taking to the streets and seizing power. Since then, you don't hear a lot of talk in America about regime change. You do hear a lot of talk about regime change here in Israel. We of course want to see that for exactly the reasons that you just outlined, because we understand that fundamentally that is the way for this really to change. It's not that we need, like you said, Iran to become a democracy, but we need it to be a regime that's not bloodthirsty and not chanting and marching and calling for our destruction and working towards it on a daily basis. Now will that happen?
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B
Let me just, I'm sorry, let me just cut in and say I would love for Iran to be a democracy that unlocks all of the massive potential of that country. I just want to say that. But we're the size of Austria, with the population of Austria and we have the kind of epistemic humility that grand and great America doesn't have. We don't think that's available. Like, we don't think that's something we're going to now socially engineer democracy. I just want to clarify. Dear Iranians, I hope only for the best for you. What I need is for this, you know, this regime to stop trying to kill me. That's. Yeah, correct.
- [28:12]
A
So, so I think that, you know, while I share that hope, like you just said, but we're 10 million, they're 90 million. We can't do, you know, everything. With that said, if we look from a purely military perspective for a moment, the, the degrading of their ballistic missile capability. I mean, look at, look at what's happened throughout this war, right? They started up with about 100 on day one. Now we're looking at one, two rockets each of these sirens and each of these salvos. The Israeli missile defense architecture we have multi layered is proving to be very effective in this war. You're seeing the American systems in other places throughout the region, very effective. We have to be cognizant, by the way, stockpiles and reserves of interceptors. Super, super important, whole other conversation. There's not an unlimited number. Always have to be aware of that. And that's why the offensive operation is so important here. But if we can remove the ballistic missile capability, destroy stockpiles, destroy mobile launchers, remove their production elements, right? So they're getting chemicals from China for Example that are important for creating the solid fuel as well as the liquid fuel propellants that are used in some of the different missile capabilities. If we can destroy the assembly line, that will also help delay and degrade. If we can take away the nuclear capability, we still have the runaway 400 kilos of enriched uranium to 60% that are still unaccounted for. We have to make sure that is, that is either destroyed or picked up by the Americans or the Israelis so that the Iranians cannot then make a mad dash in some secret enrichment facility. And of course, there's also the support of proxies, but the weakening of Iran weakens the proxies. Hence what we're seeing play out right now in Lebanon where the Lebanese government is standing up and saying we're going to crack down also on Hezbollah. Obviously Israel is doing what it's doing right now with Hezbollah. But so you have, I think from the Israeli perspective, if we can really achieve all of that from a security perspective, wonderful. Now, does that mean that this is a victory in the sense of decisive victory, like, you know, people have tried to condition us to believe in over the last couple of years? No, it's not a decisive victory. And, but, but here's what I've been thinking, Khabiv, and you know, I'm curious your thoughts as well. 1991, first Gulf War, Saddam is smashed, doesn't fall. 12 years later, 2003, Saddam gone. No, obviously very controversial war that then progresses. But he's removed. Twelve years later, Bashar Al Assad, Arab Spring starts in 2011. He's undermined, he's weakened, but he hangs on. With Iranian help, with Russian help, he finally goes, last year, 2024. Right. The end of 2024. It takes time sometimes. So it's not, you know, when we think about regime change, it's not always going to be overnight. It's not going to be within weeks. It might not even be within months. This could be the beginning of a process now that shows the Iranian people and the world Iran is not what they've made themselves out to be. And, and, and, and hopefully this will lead us in that direction as well. So I, I don't know how it's going to end necessarily, but I think we can look at the, the here and now, which is improving our security that we just spoke about. But also the bigger picture, this could be a process that leads to much, you know, to a different future and it might take time.
- [31:36]
B
I, I agree. I think, I think Iran's story is already Shattered, the regime argued that it was this Red Shiism, this vaguely communist oriented, anti imperialist Frantz Fanon. That's really where this regime, Khomeini literally did a syncretism of Shia theology and third worldist ideologies and very much drawn from also Mao and Soviet vanguardism. That's all shattered and broken. And yes, Israel and America shattered it by showing the deep incompetence that this regime has imposed on Iran. But also Iran did it. You know, Hassan Nasrallah was the most popular leader in the Arab world after the 2006 war. All the polls, Pew polls, I mean, Western polling, not just, you know, Hezbollah's own internal polling, right? And then in 2012, Hezbollah was ordered by Iran into the Syrian civil war and spent the next ten years massacring Muslims. And then the Muslim world, especially the Sunni world, which had lionized, celebrated Hezbollah, even though Hezbollah are Shia across that theological divide, the hezboll heretic Muslims to the Sunni, but, you know, fighting the good fight and raising the banner of Islam and all of that. And then they started massacring Muslims. And Hezbollah has killed far more Muslims than they ever killed Jews or Americans. And that became something you couldn't, you couldn't not notice. And so Yusuf Al Qaradawi, anti Western Al Jazeera, you know, ran out of this Al Jazeera show about Sharia, Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, well known in the Muslim world as this radical Sunni preacher. He comes out against Hezbollah as not the party of God Hezbollah, but Hezbo Shaitan party of Satan. And, and that's the beginning of the end of the regime's ability to pretend. And it's just massacred. We have, we still don't know 30,000, 40,000. We don't know how many of its own people. Well, a regime that claims that it's a great war for the oppressed and that Islam is the answer to all the evil, opposite arrogant powers that oppress the whole world should probably not be massacring its own people in the tens of thousands. So their story is dead and gone. They will only ever be a pathetic North Korea that couldn't even make the bomb. So I do think their time, their time is up. The one thing they've done well for 47 years is destroy and demolish every other power center in Iranian society. So as they fall, we literally don't know who could possibly step into the breach. So I don't know that we know how it falls, but it's
- [34:16]
A
something else
- [34:17]
B
towards the moral sense of it has already died.
- [34:19]
A
Yeah. And I'll add something else to what you're saying. You know, one of the things, the Iranians and this regime is extremely paranoid. They're paranoid because they've been penetrated so many different times with spies by the Mossad and the CIA. There's a great story. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, right. The former president, whose fate still is, I don't think is fully known at this point whether he was killed or he's not killed. There's conflicting reports exactly on that in the beginning of this operation. But he said famously in a 2024 interview, so take his word for it, not mine. He said that back when he was president, they established a counter intelligence agency that was meant to smoke out the. The Mossad spies within Iran. And lo and behold, it turned out that the head of the agency himself was a Mossad spy. And, and, and people have long wondered, why is it that they have so many people turn on the country? It's because so many people are in opposition to this regime. It's because they have so many of their own people who hate the clerics and the ayatollahs and the oppression that they are under, and they climb to positions of power, but they're relatively easy to turn. You talk to Mossad agents, right? You talk to CIA. I've met with a guy who holds the record in the CIA for turning the most Iranian scientists against Iran in the last 15 years of its nuclear program. I mean, it's remarkable. And they all want.
- [35:45]
B
It's like a race. There's a competition at the CIA. I got 14, I got 17.
- [35:49]
A
No, but I mean, it just shows, you know, they don't have you. And I know we have here resilience, right. Doesn't mean we're perfect, but we have this sense of togetherness and unity and eyes on the, on the prize and the objective and the national cohesion that keeps us together because we understand that we're in this together for a common purpose. That's what Zionism, Judaism and the state of Israel have given us. The people who live here.
- [36:20]
B
Right.
- [36:20]
A
They have not been able to give that to their own people.
- [36:22]
B
All right, let's get back to the victory question. So the Israeli, you know, hope is regime change. When do the Americans do you think cut out of this? They've already lasted longer than a lot of American pundits predicted. When do the Americans say, we got what we were looking for, we're going home?
- [36:38]
A
Well, this is the, you know, no one really knows the answer to that because of Donald Trump's famous unpredictability and difficulty to know he is really into it. And you also see by the excitement of Pete Hegseth and the daily briefings and the continued, as we spoke about just before, the way they're communicating this war, the power and the projection of that power is very important to them. If they are able to end this in a way that they feel that they have achieved their objectives. A weakening of Iran, some promise of a new leadership. I don't think it's by chance that the president keeps on talking about Venezuela.
- [37:14]
B
Right.
- [37:15]
A
That that's become his gold standard now. What was the regime change in Venezuela? They pick up Maduro, they fly him to America to stand trial, and who did they replace him with? The vice president. Right. That now. And he keeps on talking about how great she is and how she works together with them and how much they all get along. Right. So if they have someone and he has said, I want to be involved in the selection of who the assembly is going to select as the new supreme Leader, but if he feels that that's somebody who he can work with and is willing to now abide by the demands of America, whether it has to do with the nuclear program, the support of proxies, or even cutting off the sale of oil to China for that matter, that is something that he would probably go for. And Israel, in that sense, won't have much to say. Right. We are at the whim of the U.S. president here. When he calls it quits, it's going to be over for us as well. And I think that's also why Netanyahu is being very careful, very complimentary. And whenever he talks about this war, my good friend Donald Trump, the support of Donald Trump, the best president Israel has had, the great leader, it's all about making sure that he feels good over there in Washington. So he keeps going, because the longer he goes, the better it is for us.
- [38:32]
B
I was assured by Tucker Carlson that he's only doing it for us. So you're completely confusing me.
- [38:38]
A
Yeah.
- [38:38]
B
What is the Iranian victory plan? Do they. Do they. Do they have one? How do they expect to survive? One of the remarkable things that happened the last 24 hours that we've all been watching is President Pizzkian has gotten up and said, we're not going to hit our Gulf neighbors anymore. He gives a speech, and then almost immediately, Dubai International Airport is hit. Does that mean that Iran is coordinated? And one is meant for one audience, the other for another audience, does that mean that the guy Talking is not the guy pulling the trigger. Does that mean that the IRGC still actually rules what's left of the Iranian state? And the Iraqji and Pizzaskiyan, all these basically spokespeople are off doing their own thing and nothing is actually coordinated. Are there two strategies, one strategy? Is there any strategy of any kind at all to actually survive this thing? What do you make of it?
- [39:26]
A
The Iranian regime, the Islamic Republic? Right. I think what people tend to forget is that they have agencies, institutions, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the irgc, the besieged, their whole objective, their goal is to defend the revolution, is to keep the revolution going. The politicians you mentioned, the foreign minister, the president, their job is to be spokespeople, is to be the nice smiley face to the West. It is to look like you are part of the west, to talk the good English as Iraqi does, does. And we've heard him, you know, go on Face the Nation and other, you know, news shows around the world. That's what their job is. But they're not calling the shots. Who's calling the shots are the clerics. It is the commanders of the irgc and they are continuing. And therefore when he says we're going to stop attacking our neighbors and then right away afterwards, they continue to bombard Dubai and Abu Dhabi and Bahrain and other countries throughout the region. This just goes to show that he's not on, he's not getting the talking points that are, that are coming up from the irgc. I think for the regime here, what this is really about is one thing, it's called survival. And I'll tie it into something else. Khabiv, you know, it's interesting. You have two countries that have really been hit really, really hard that have powerful militaries in this region who have yet to respond. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, both of them have probably some of the most powerful military capabilities, American made F15s, F16s. They're doing a very impressive job at defending their countries with American defensive systems. Some are still getting through and that's how they're getting hit. Why haven't they responded militarily? Why are they not attacking Iran? And I've been speaking with some of the Arabs in the Gulf and one of the answers that they give me is that, look, Donald Trump won't be here in two years, but Iran might still be here and we have to consider that as well. So they're not buying into the regime. Change is coming and new leadership is coming and therefore we're going to be now safe. They have to calculate very carefully how they proceed. So the Iranians are also just like the Emiratis and the Saudis and everyone else thinks that Iran might live to see this, to see another day. Iran wants to live to see another day and they think that they will outlast them. You know, Brent McGurk who was longtime administration official served in the Biden administration, also in the, in the first Trump administration was the head on the National Security Council of, of Middle east and North Africa told the story of how he sat once with Iranians in some sort of negotiation and conversation. And they said to him, listen, at the end of the day you're gone in a couple years Wolf, still be here. And that has long been the survival is what this is about. They have the IRGC and the besiege which are meant to ensure their survival. That's what they want. And then if they survive they will rebuild without a doubt. And I'll say something else and this is the danger here of this war. If you are whoever the new supreme leader is, what's your conclusion from this war? If you had nuclear weapons, would you have been attacked? I think the answer is no. And therefore one of your conclusions will be I need to race towards a bomb. And that is why we have to be even extra careful and ensure that the further degrading of nuclear infrastructure but also ensure that we don't just walk away the day after. We have to ensure that they are not able to rebuild anything in the realm of the nuclear fuel.
- [42:50]
B
So two questions. What's going on with the interceptors and are those Gulf states not entering the war just because someone else is doing the heavy lifting and their armies are less capable than they look on paper?
- [43:02]
A
The interceptors is a huge story which people don't want to talk too much about because it's a, it's a vulnerable spot for the United States, for Israel and for the Gulf states. I'll give you just a couple of numbers. Khaviv in the 12 Day War, take America first because those numbers are more public. America used about 150 of its THAAD interceptors. That's a terminal high altitude aerial defense system that helps intercept ballistic missiles. They used 150 on our behalf. We had 550 ballistic missiles that were fired at us at over 12 days then so think they took out with 150? Let's say they all succeeded. So we still have about 400 missiles. The rest were intercepted mostly by Israel. Sometimes we launch more than one interceptor at a missile. That is Coming. So we're talking about anywhere from 400 to 800 interceptors that we needed to fire. Most of them, the arrow two and the arrow three. Add into that April and October of 2024. That means Israel has been using over the last two years more than a thousand interceptors that it has had to use. The Americans, when they used 150 during the 12 day war, how many did they have in their global stockpile? 500. So they used up a quarter. Now think they got China, they got Russia, they used a quarter on 12 days against Iran. You know how many they were making a year? Lockheed Martin, 96 a year. What's 96? That's nothing. So they just, in January of this year, just two months ago, suddenly increased the order. The Pentagon increased the order from 96 to 400. It's going to take time until they get there, but they got to increase production capability. Israel doesn't talk about how many they have and how many they produce for the obvious reasons we don't want to reveal anything to the enemy. But this is something that is hugely important and you have to be very, very smart of how you use your munitions, what you use them for. Thankfully, this is why the offensive operation is so important. We're succeeding in bringing the rocket and missile fire to a decline and degrading it. So we have to use less of those interceptors. I'll just one other thing that Israel has succeeded in doing. As is known, Israel has really probably some of the most impressive multi layered missile defense capabilities. We have Iron Dome at the bottom, David Sling, Patriot Arrow two, Arrow three. We are able to use different systems based on different missiles. Some missiles you see intercept above us and some missiles, they're intercepted farther away. Now the reason is those are different interceptors. ARRW is going to hit it farther away. The lower range ones, sometimes you're able to use those, they're going to intercept closer to home. And that's why you're sometimes seeing. Also look at the debris. Sometimes in Israel sometimes there's no debris, sometimes there's big debris. That's because you have different interceptors, some smaller, that are intercepting missiles. This is a big issue that we are going to, if you ask me, and it's a whole separate conversation. We need to rethink the defense budget it and we need to rethink how much money you put into it. I know that that's, that that's sensitive for a lot of people because we're already at almost 9%. But that might have to Change about the Saudis and the Arab states, you're 100% right. They have really sophisticated, advanced capabilities. They, they, but they're not using them. And there's a question of competency.
- [46:37]
B
Yeah. Can they use them? Can the Saudi Air Force fly the way the Israeli Air Force flies, even given, you know, no F35s now they can.
- [46:45]
A
Yes, now they can because we've cleared the way for them right now. It's a question for them. If they want to actually put that skin in the game and potentially provoke a, a bigger response to retaliation and antagonize the Iranians, that's where they are. But in terms of security to their pilots and safety, if they want to do anything now, it would be purely for theatrics and purely just to show their people and their public opinion and the Iranians that they don't take this sitting down. As of now, they're deciding to take it sitting down and that's their decision. And you know, it's up to them to decide to do that. But if they wanted to do something, it's fairly easy today because of the supremacy that Israel and America have created over Iran.
- [47:34]
B
You just made a case for regime change. Anything less than regime change is kicking
- [47:38]
A
the can and that's going to be a big problem. I mean, you'll need either. If you can't get regime change, you have two alternatives. One of them is some sort of safeguard presence international agreement, a new nuclear accord like the GCPOA or what Trump was trying to negotiate with Iran. Assuming that's not possible, you will need follow up attacks over the next few years. This will be what you remember. You know, during the second intifada, for 20 years or so, we would talk about mowing the terror lawn in the West Bank. You know, going in, grabbing a suspect, making sure it doesn't, doesn't ever rise above a threshold, you will need to continue to do that. In Iran, they build, rebuild ballistic missiles. You go in there and take it out before they have it. They start to reinforce air defenses. They get a new shipment from China or Russia, you're going to have to take those out before they go live. They start to rebuild Natanz. You get intelligence about a new nuclear facility in some mountain, you blow it up before they're able to reinforce it. This is going to be the new reality. And it's, it's, it's, it's not a simple one to digest because what this means to some extent is a constant conflict here, a constant war. Unless you can get that regime change. And if you can, and we're gonna have to fight for some time still,
- [49:01]
B
I have made the argument, and so have many others, that this is about China at least as much as it's about Iran, and that Iran controls a choke point that China would like to be able to disrupt, to seal up in the case the US Seals up China's energy import choke points that it's totally dependent on because it's a massive energy importer and its whole economy depends on it. Like the Straits of Mal over in Malaysia, which the US Navy can shut down in the case of a war with China over Taiwan, for example. So China wanted this reciprocal capacity to seal up the Straits of Hormuz, the Bab El Mandev Straits, which the Houthis will do for the Iranians in the case of that sort of grand world conflict of an America China war over Taiwan, that this is about denying China that capacity, denying China their forward base in the Middle east effectively. Is this the first skirmish, hot skirmish of the Cold War between the US And China?
- [50:03]
A
It very well could be. And it could be that this is what we're seeing now play out is just this proxy of the Chinese to some extent, that America is taking the battle to and ties into what we spoke about before of the, the, the dominance and the military communication and the use of systems that you typically do not see, whether it's the torpedo, the AIRC aircraft carriers, the Tomahawk missiles and different variants of Tomahawk missiles, new laser weapons, that they've used such superiority to project that power, but also to show the Chinese not only what could happen to them, but how America, how they should not think about even doing anything, whether it's in Taiwan or anywhere else. What we do know though, Khaviv, is that Trump is meant to meet with President Xi in just a few weeks, right? And they're supposed to talk about trade, which is obviously the big issue. But this leads also to maybe some belief that the timing here is not just a coincidence, right? The meeting with Xi was meant to be taking place anyhow. This is a long standing issue that Americans and the Chinese need to work through is how they conduct trade with one another. But now imagine you're Donald Trump walking into that room with the Chinese president. It you're coming in at a, you're coming in a little different this time, right? You're coming in, you're riding a little higher and you're coming in a little more powerful. And she is not going to surrender. But his wiggle room Here is a little different. He knows who he's up against. You know, I. I've been reading some Chinese analysts as well, and independent thinkers, but people based in China. So, you know, they're toeing the line. They got to be careful what they can say. And some of them are talking about how the pla, the People's Liberation army, right, needs to learn and really study very carefully what's happening here. And knowing China a bit, I've been there, their capabilities, they probably have. I would cast thousands of people right now sitting in PLA bases, watching every single video that's coming out of this war, studying every single new capability, making reports and in learning from them, because this is something that they will have to take into consideration.
- [52:27]
B
Way back at the beginning, you said you were optimistic. It's not easy. Everybody's family in the middle of the night is running to bomb shelters, and yet you are optimistic. Why are you optimistic?
- [52:40]
A
I'm optimistic for a couple of reasons. Number one is, I think what we're seeing play out right now, this military operation between Israel and the United States, firstly, is something I would not have imagined as possible. Right. If we look historically at the Israel, US military alliance for after Israel's inception in 1948, America didn't want to even give us a single bullet, Right. It was only in the 60s when JFK finally sold us the Hawk missile. It was a surface to air missile system, defensive. If you look over the years, yes, America gave us money in foreign military financing, would sell us aircraft and would sell us munitions. But anything they ever did for us was defensive. They came here in the Gulf War, Patriot missiles, defensive. We used to hold this exercise called Juniper Cobra defensive. In April and October of 2024. They defended us. It was all defensive. Right. We saw in the 12 Day War what I thought was maybe the pinnacle. We were leading the attack. America comes in with the B2 bombers and does that little piece which was huge, but it was the first time they kind of flew almost alongside us. What we're seeing here, Kavi, a whole other level. We are the UK to the America of World War II. We are that close partner. The aircraft fly together. This is probably the first war in Israel, in Israel's history that is being fought in English. The IDF. You're going to any IDF's officer's office. On the wall, they have a clock. Shaon Milhama, the war times, right. We have. We're no longer using that. We're using Zulu time. We're using the NATO standard time because we're working with the Americans. We've got to make sure we're, we're totally synchronized. You have American Americans sitting in every bore, right in every underground command center of the Air Force and the General staff and the navy, everything coordinated. It's incredible. It's a total merger of capabilities. So that's, number one, I think of the strength of the fortitude of this relationship. Number two, I think of the change to the region. You've spoken a lot about this. I know, but for years, everyone spoke about how we are the source of instability. We are the problem. We need to be removed. If we only solve the Palestinian conflict, peace will come. No one has any illusions today. The real problem is Iran, that they're shooting at everybody. I mean, they've opened, what, 10 fronts by now? Azerbaijan, Turkey, Cyprus, you name it. Not to mention, of course, all the Gulf states. There is an opportunity for united front against Iran once and for all to really recognize the importance of taking this down. That gives me optimism. And the last one I'll just say is what we started with is the Israeli people. We have huge issues.
- [55:32]
B
They are not going away.
- [55:33]
A
That's a whole other two hour conversation, right? We're going into an election that's going to be tough and it's going to be bloody and it's going to be divisive. But Israelis have really pulled through these last two and a half years in a remarkable way. We're traumatized, we're beaten. We're all suffering from some measure of ptsd. But at the end of the day, Israelis stand united in this desire to change the reality for the better. And that is something that I see every day play out, despite all the challenges that I always write about and highlight and talk about. And they're big. But this is something that I think should also give us great optimism.
- [56:15]
B
Yaakov, Kat, thank you so much for joining me. I learned a lot and we'll keep following you. Also on X. It's a whole different Middle East.
- [56:23]
A
It is a whole different Middle East. Kavib, great to be with you.
- [56:25]
B
Thank you.