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- [00:01]
Haviv Redik Gore
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- [00:30]
Eli
I am so delighted to have my friend Haviv Redik Gore coming back onto the Breaking History feed. I think the last time we spoke was the 12 day war with Iran, and I wanted to check in with you this time around. And I have to just recommend to Breaking History listeners Ask Khabiv Anything is really one of my favorite podcasts and you are getting a very deep sea, serious intellectual dive into not just the tactics and strategy of wars in the Middle east and things like that, but I would say kind of deep political and theological history, which is one of the reasons we cherish you as a leading light of the Republic of Letters. So thank you, Aviv.
- [01:15]
Haviv Redik Gore
Thank you, Eli. I'm a big fan as well. I listened to the podcast, just read your piece on Israel's strange new position in the Middle East. That's it's funny. I'm optimist.
- [01:26]
Eli
We'll get into that because I'm an optimist now. Okay, so we are recording on Friday, March 27th. This will be out next. This will be out a little bit later. As of today, we are, you know, we're coming into week four of the war, or rather we're going into week five of the war, I should say. How do you assess it so far? How would you say we're doing?
- [01:50]
Haviv Redik Gore
I think we're exactly where we thought we would be. And what does that mean? The Iranian state was not going to fall quickly. I don't know why that was ever an expectation. I don't know why. I mean, sometimes President Trump said things in that vein. So I don't blame people outside who don't know what's going on. But and on the podcast, on my podcast we did a whole episode, a two hour deep dive into the, you know, Marxist and Fanonian and Shia eschatological origins of this regime. Basically just to argue it doesn't fall. It's not, it's not one of those regimes where if the, if the leader is dead, then the whole thing crumbles. It is long and resilient, and it will take a real standoff that will last a very long time for anything like a fall to happen. And the fall might not even be a fall. It might be just a replacement of one piece of the regime with the other. But we need the idea, the ideology to lose, to drop out. We need it to turn from Maoist China to modern China. That would be something that in the Middle east would be enough. In the context of Iran, I don't know if it's a good thing that China is what it is today for the world, but within the context of Iran, that would be enough. So if you understand the war as the reduction of the capabilities attached to the ideology, the conquering ideology, then the war is going extremely well. Iran has no defensive capability whatsoever. And we have stopped short, to my frustration, of going for regime infrastructure. In other words, we don't want to hurt the global oil supply even further. So we don't want Iran's export capabilities destroyed, but the internal capabilities of distributing gas and oil. Now, why would you want to hurt the internal capabilities of gas and oil that give electricity to 90 million people? The simple answer is because the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps owns so much of it, and what it doesn't own, other pieces of the regime, these special foundations run by the supreme leader own. You have to go after that infrastructure because that infrastructure is the core of the economy that this regime has a death grip on and will not fall without that being denied it. And so Iran has to suffer to shed it is chemotherapy to shed this thing, this regime that has demolished it from within, that has spent 47 years destroying every piece of the Iranian economy that works. There's a saying in Iran that every Iranian with talent and capability is either a martyr or an exile. Now, that's not a curse of Iranians or still in Iran. There's plenty of Iranians with talent and capability in Iran, but you can't express it, you can't build real business, you can't do live rich lives. You don't have an intellectual life. Iran. So there's been this massive brain drain and of course, this generation of leaders who just constantly massacred by this regime every time they rise up. So how are we doing? It's going to be a really hard slog. If Trump negotiates with them and we stop now, Iran will obviously claim victory. The mukawama, the resistance axis, always claims victory if it's merely still alive, even as it destroys its own society. But that's okay because there'll be Another war, and there'll be another one after that and another one after that, and the steadfast will win this. They have developed a whole ideology about how they're steadfast, and we Israelis are such pansy little Westerners that we're obviously going to fall. At first blush, we have the steadfastness. We have the generational capacity. There was a poll out today what Israelis think about continuing the war. The vast, vast majority in the high 70s are able to continue the war, support continuing the war, and they understand what's at stake and what it will actually take to bring them down. So we're exactly where we needed to be and where we wanted to be. And if we stop now, it'll just be worse the next round. But there will be a next round. This regime can't do anything but another round.
- [05:40]
Eli
Okay, so that was a lot. And I want to dive into it. And I think we have a slight disagreement. We have an honest disagreement. But I think it comes from the great expression which I love is where you sit is where you stand, which is to say, I think that you are somebody who has mastered an understanding of the ideology of this regime. And I look at it from the context of the broader sweep of Iranian history. So in your view, and I think, by the way, you're entirely correct about the ideology and mukuama, and I want to get into that. From my view, However, I see 1979 as a stolen revolution in that there was a much wider kind of group of Iranians that had been agitating, I would argue, since the late 19th century, but certainly since the 1905 Constitutional Revolution that wanted something that was like Western small l liberalism with an Iranian character and a strong kind of executive, and that that is an organic outgrowth of kind of, I think, centuries of Iranian history and holding their leaders to a certain kind of account, and how power was balanced before the 79 revolution. I think the 79 revolution, what we saw was a violent kind of, you know, almost as soon as the Shah leaves and Khomeini comes back in 79, you begin to see the show trials and the purges of every other element of Iranian society. That was an agreement that they wanted to try something democratic. And so I hold on at times to the belief that the ideological project is somewhat alien to Iranian history. And there is a chance to break the regime by appealing to the Iranian ness of the Iranian people and not necessarily taking or. Or believing the Iranian leadership and the true believers in that regime kind of on their own terms, which is to say, I'm sure that there are many who embrace martyrdom and there are many who take the kind of view that if we just survive, we win. But I'm not sure that's everyone. And I think that the lower down you go and when you can't pay salaries and you have the, again, organic movement within Iran, I imagine at the dinner table of a mid level IRGC commander and having to hear from his wife and his daughter or maybe his cousin or his uncle about some of the brutality that Iranians themselves have suffered at the instruments of repression of the state. And there is, I think, a kind of different appeal, a different tug there. So that's. So let's first start by defining our terms. What is mukuama and how does it fit into understanding what makes the regime tick? So let's just define that first and then kind of get into that.
- [08:51]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yeah, you also said a lot. I have a lot of thoughts. The mukawama is a. It's just the Arabic word for resistance, but it means, for example, you would use it to describe the amount of electrical resistance in a copper wire. But in the context of this political movement, it has come to mean an entire vision of history, a whole analysis of how history works. The muqawama has its roots in two things, really fundamentally. One is the Algerian independence war. And not literally the war, but everything that war represents in Arab consciousness in the 20th century. This is a war in which the Algerian National Liberation Front, people who've listened to your podcast will know about this. But this is a war in which the National Liberation Front from 54 to 62 I think it was, begin this terror war against the 130 year French occupation, the colonization of French.
- [09:48]
Eli
This is also the war that gave us Frantz Fanon's Retro Earth, which is the philosophy behind the resistance of the
- [09:56]
Haviv Redik Gore
Algerian right and all this third worldism and the reason that college students want to decolonize the humanities and all of that, that language, not literally, just Algeria, some of it is out of the Kenyan experience and some other things. But let's just. We'll focus in just to tell the story. But there's more to the story, obviously. But there's this idea that the, the colonialist might be powerful, the colonialist might be many, there might be a lot. There were a million and a half French white European citizens living in Algeria for a century when they began this terror war. And after eight years everyone left. I mean the entire French apparatus, the French state, the French army, everything. Algeria went from being a literal voting diploma of the French Republic represented in the French Parliament to being its own independent country, the French Republic itself fell. De Gaulle comes in with a new constitutional order. Basically all because of this Algeria challenge and the two things the French couldn't withstand. One was the French army in Algeria won every battle against the fln, every desert skirmish, everything. And they still lost the war after eight years. Why? Because the FLN managed to harass and exact costs from civilian populations, terror attacks against the coastal cities. But also the French response was brutal to an extent that shocked the French and created internal opposition within France. Probably 500,000 dead civilian Muslim Algerians from the French response. And the fact that then in 62 the French all get up and leave was a shock to the world system. This idea that you can, that the weak can push out the strong, that violence works against a colonialist, even if that colonialist is a NATO ally, nuclear, nuclear world power. Nevertheless, the desert fighter with nothing but an old machine gun of some kind, living in the villages of the bled of the desert, can defeat them and push them out. It's this powerful, powerful imagery that catalyzes the establishment in 1964 in Cairo, two years later of the PLO. And the idea of the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, is to do exactly what the FLN did in Algeria, to do it for Palestine, right? To kick out this other European colonial project called Israel. And they developed these commando raids from Jordan with the Fedayeen and they established places in Lebanon and they start to hijack airliners and they carry on an attempt to replicate what the FLN did. And the concept is the Israelis are powerful, the Israelis will win every battle. But if you just exact never ending costs, the Israelis will eventually collapse and they will eventually leave. Because there's a huge amount of Western German 19th century romanticism here about the authenticity of indigeneity, which grant, you know, if I'm the rooted person, then I can't be pushed out. Whereas you are you Westerner because you're technological, because you're modern, because you're the orcs of Tolkien or the humans and avatar this imagery, which is basically just 19th century romanticism, you can be pushed out because even though you have a lot of power in physical terms, you don't have the kind of spiritual power and attachment, you don't fit the environment properly. There's an obsessive discourse in this Mukawama world about how Israelis are allergic to olives. They are not in fact allergic to olives, but it's important to say that they Love olives.
- [13:47]
Eli
I don't even know that.
- [13:48]
Haviv Redik Gore
Apparently we're allergic to olives. We have high rates of skin cancer. That has to do with Tel Aviv. That has, you know, I don't know if Yemeni Jews are the same rates of skin cancers, Ashkenazi Jews. But anyway, it's these discourses of authenticity. And the Mukawama concept is then translated, and this is really the last step into, into a religious mode, into a religious code.
- [14:10]
Eli
Oh, yeah, no, let's, let's, let's really drill down on this because this is, let's talk about that transfer because that's a very important point here because there's, I think scholars would, I don't want to say it's not really a disagreement. I think it's a matter of emphasis. But tell me what you mean and then I want to maybe push back.
- [14:27]
Haviv Redik Gore
So this begins. There is a Muslim idea of jihad, of holy war. And many people debate about what it means. And you'll hear a lot on college campuses, actually, it doesn't mean war. It means a struggle with the bad parts of your inner self. For most Muslims, for most of Muslim history, it meant war. Can it mean many other things? Sure. Within Judaism, every fundamental foundational word has six versions and six different Jewish sects that all say different things. But what it means for the people we're talking about is war. And there is a deep century and a half long conversation among the most important Sunni theologians in the Arab world. And this is something we've talked about and discussed also at the Free Press about the meaning of Muslim weakness in the modern age. Europe shows up in the Middle East. The French begin to build out their empire controlling Syria and Lebanon. And the British from Iraq all the way to Egypt and further. And the French in North Africa. And the Arabs begin to look at this, especially Muslim theologians begin to look at this and say, wait a second. There's a deep, shocking theological problem in the power gap between the west and the east. Because Islam is not a contemplative, inward looking, spiritualist religion. It also is, it has those elements. But Islam is fundamentally a religion that is, that believes it needs to dominate the world peacefully or by war. There are different kinds of Muslims, but nevertheless, this is the truth given to God, that and the whole world will eventually convert and that is redemption. And so Islam needs to be geopolitically on the ascendant. It's a, it's a, this is. Up until now, I've said things that are mostly true of Christianity, but with Islam, it's different. It's even more so because it's born in war. It's a religion born with a prophet who is a conqueror.
- [16:22]
Eli
The only of the monotheistic three faiths. Whereas the prophet is also a conqueror.
- [16:28]
Haviv Redik Gore
Right.
- [16:28]
Eli
Moses conquering king.
- [16:30]
Haviv Redik Gore
Right. Which is not the example of Jesus. Right. So.
- [16:34]
Eli
And not by the way. And Moses is. Is not allowed to enter Canaan. Right. So it's not allowed to then take the land who leads the. The war for.
- [16:46]
Haviv Redik Gore
And King David is not allowed to build the temple in Jerusalem because he has blood on his hands from war. So his son Solomon has to do that. And so whatever. The point is not to. Not to argue against Islam. Just. This is a. This is a difference.
- [17:02]
Eli
It's not a difference. It's not a good or bad. It's just a.
- [17:04]
Haviv Redik Gore
In their fundamental. Yes. So what that does is it develops this vocabulary. I teach classes on this. It's hard to do it in the 42nd version. Let me do the 42nd version. They begin to develop ideas about the problem of Islamic weakness as a theological problem and how you redeem ourselves Islam from this terrible power gap that we've suddenly discovered when the British suddenly conquer Egypt. And the way Islam and one school of thought people who. There's a specific lineage that I have a couple podcast episodes about a guy named Al Afghani student is Muhammad Abdul
- [17:46]
Eli
who was the highly recommend. We'll link that in the.
- [17:48]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yeah. He's. He's the Grand Mufti of Egypt in the 1890s. His student Rida. His student is a guy named Hassan Al Bana, which should be a name known to all people today in the modern world because he's the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt which created, you know, which among its outgrowths are Al Qaeda and Hamas and. And. And many others.
- [18:06]
Eli
Let's say he's the founder of modern political Islam.
- [18:09]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yeah. Certainly it's organized sense. Yeah. So this theological line makes the argument that the reason we Muslims are weak is. Is that we have abandoned our Islam, our original true deep Islam. It's a kind of originalist idea. How do I know this? One of the ways I know this is that the original Islam close to the Prophet, those first three generations that they call the holy generations were this astonishingly successful conquering empire. And what did they have? They didn't have some incredible technology. They didn't have special spaceships. What did they have? They had faith. And if we return to our faith and we return to that piety of those first generations, we will retake Our place in the geopolitics of the world and the redemption of the world depends on Islam retaking its place. And so that's the foundational religious idea, they call it. It's generally called Salafism. Salaf is a forefather. Salafism is forefatherism returning to the piety of those early generations. And that becomes, coupled with this developing in the 20th century, anti colonialist, anti imperialist kinds of violence that are so successful in Algeria and Kenya and many other places. And what you end up getting is a kind of merger called basically, certainly among the Shia, Muqawama. A lot of the heroes of this story are, for example, this cleric from Syria in the 1930s. He's Adin Al Qassam, for whom Hamas actually named its fighting battalions for him.
- [19:37]
Eli
And rockets.
- [19:38]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yeah, and its rocket. There are a lot of these sort of heroes who are Sunni. But the apotheosis, the epitome, the apex. I've checked out my thesaurus twice today of this idea is probably Hezbollah. Hezbollah is all Muqawamah talks about. It uses the word every day of the week. It's this branch of the Revolutionary Guards that mobilized and radicalized the Shia of Lebanon.
- [20:05]
Eli
And I would argue with the apotheosis is the 79 Islamic revolution.
- [20:11]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yeah.
- [20:12]
Eli
Which is to say that's the first time we've seen political Islam create a state.
- [20:18]
Haviv Redik Gore
So I want to add a third element real quick. The Islamic Revolution in 79 does one more thing which is bring in explicit Marxism into the story, and that is through a guy named Ali Shariati. There are these handful of people that if you go and learn them, you know, dear listener out there in the world, you will know this world better. Frantz Fanon is one of them. Rashid Rida is another. Ali Shariati is another.
- [20:45]
Eli
If, you know, I would argue with Shariati, I would just as a slight. We don't know because he dies in 78. So there are some Shariati followers that would say he would never have gone on. Gone along with the brutality of what Khomeini does.
- [21:00]
Haviv Redik Gore
A year later, he was explicitly anti clericalist.
- [21:04]
Eli
Yes, right.
- [21:05]
Haviv Redik Gore
Because to establish.
- [21:07]
Eli
Yeah. What I'm saying is that I agree with you that Khomeini and his people around him kind of borrow. They cut and paste Shariati to explain. I mean, there is some would argue that they do that to explain it to the west and the left in the west, which is to say here we have a socialist sociologist and kind of somebody who is fluent in Islam and this can, can kind of translate these ideas. Whereas Khomeini is really uninterested in modern ideology. He's interested in what he writes in his book the Islamic State, creating an Islamic State. However, because we just. It's one of the great unknowns, I would say, of history, which is like, what if Shariati had lived and what, you know, he died very young. What if he lived, would he have, would he have joined the resistance to Khomeini? Perhaps, you know, and, and we would have had a better outcome.
- [22:01]
Haviv Redik Gore
But isn't that true always with these, with these guys? I mean, Fanon wanted a violent anti imperialist revolution everywhere that would result in a liberated, modern, emancipated, you know, tolerant, egalitarian man everywhere.
- [22:17]
Eli
Where credit to his credit, in the second part of Wretched of the Earth, he even critiques the idea that if you get revolution through violence, you're going to have to deal with the violent people who are now in charge, who did it.
- [22:27]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yes, he himself knows the danger. And Marx himself. What would Marx have made of Stalin? I mean, yes, you can always find that defense. And I grant it to you in terms of truth, like if we're actually asking what is actually true Shariati, we know for a fact that Khomeini didn't like Shariati because Shariati saw the establishment of a new clericalist regime the way Khomeini took Shariati's ideas and actually implemented them in Iran as an establishment of a new version of the kind of oppression that Shariati was talking about. But what Shariati did just in a single sentence is he took this famous paradigmatic moment of the foundation of Shia consciousness, of Shia self of identity, which is this battle of Karbala in which, in 680, I think it was, in which Imam Hussein faces the Caliph Yazid and Yazid kills Hussein. Hussein is killed in this battle. And the Shia belief is that Hussein was the legitimate line for Muhammad and that the next Imam has gone into occultation or disappeared into history, but will come back. And this is the Mahdi, the messianic figure that will return. And what Shariati did was recast this whole story of redemption as a story that is essentially Marxist. So Hussein was represented the revolutionary impulse to throw away the evil, you know, oppressor which Yazid represents. And all Shiism is actually the story of revolution. Now, Shiism is not a revolutionary version of Islam. Shiism, classically, traditionally, it's almost, it's a kind of stereotype of Shiism up until the 70s is that it is much more the introverted, peaceful, pietistic kind of contemplative versions of Islam. We don't have a lot of examples, we have some, but we don't have a lot of Shiist empires conquering in bloody conquests all over the world. And what Shariati does was recast the old version of Shiism of this quiet religion of mourning of Hussein. And he says that religion of mourning was established by the powers that be, in this case the Safavid dynasty of Iran, in order to keep the people quiet. So you have to constantly mourn Hussein and have this contemplative religion and the empire still rules you. And, and Shariati called that black Shiism, that's the bad Shiism. And then he said we also could have red Shiism. He says red for blood. But red also happens to fit with, you know, he's writing in the 60s and 70s also happens to fit with communism. And he says red Shiism is the revolutionary Shiism, the Shiism that says actually the heart and soul of Hussein's message of the redemptive ark that Shia Islam has for humanity is the Marxist heart and soul. Now he publishes, he gives a speech, I'll just finish with this in 1971 called Black Shiism and Red Shiism. And people should just go and read that speech. But it is a year before I believe, or maybe after it's a year before, I think the publication in Peru of the Theology of Liberation, which is where a Catholic priest whose name escapes me at the moment, articulates for the first time in a serious way what came to be called in Latin America liberation theology, which casts Jesus exactly in this way as this Marxist figure doing this Marxist thing in history. So it's a Marxification of Shiism in exactly the same way that Catholic liberation theologians are doing that to Jesus at the time over there, one year after
- [26:21]
Eli
Khomeini publishes Islamic Governance, which is right.
- [26:25]
Haviv Redik Gore
And then Khomeini just says we are that revolution. We are the world revolution for all the oppressed everywhere. The heart of Shiism and everything Marxism is. And we're going to use Mukawama and all these ideologies of anti imperial rule and Shariati translates Fanon to Persian. I mean it's all this one interconnected discourse. And that's what this regime is, that's what the Mukawama is, it's this religion of, of this Marxist pan global, you know, overturning of the powers that be all Power structures are one power structure. It's all intersectional and we are the great forces that will defeat it everywhere. And just one point to make of that. That's why people think that, you know, in America, in the anti Israel discourse in America, there's this argument that the reason Iran doesn't like America is that America supports Israel. Khomeini didn't like America because America is the evil empire. Israel is bad because it is part of America's evil empire. It's the opposite. The thing they hate most is America because this is a deeply Marxist vision of the world. And Israel is this secondary. It's the little Satan to America's big Satan.
- [27:34]
Eli
That's just, well, Khomeini also. I mean, Khomeini also is the first public figure in Iran starting in the late 50s to criticize the Shah for his recognition of Israel. So that he introduces a kind of anti Zionism which I think plays on, you know, there is an anti Semitic tradition in Iran somewhat to say that goes back to the Book of Esther. You know, that is a. That he kind of taps into with introducing the anti Zionism. You know, really comes full flower in the early 60s, before he's exiled to Iraq. But you're right, he does have a theory of the case, which is that Israel's the little Satan and America's the big Satan. Right. Like you, we care a lot about craftsmanship at breaking history, how things used to be made and whether that still matters today. Which raises a fair question. Can you still build something, well, on purpose in America? Today's sponsor is doing exactly that. Vare, that's V A E R was founded in Los Angeles with a mission to revive American watchmaking. And they've actually pulled it off. VAIR is now the largest independent watch assembler in the usa, building watches across California, Arizona, Rhode island and Alabama with leather straps made in Illinois and Florida. Now, I have to tell you something. I happen to have a beautiful DS2 Meridian Black Vare. It's quartz, 39 millimeter, and I get compliments on it all the time. I love this watch. And the great thing about it is I know that when I have this watch, I did not pay a premium for a brand name that simply just connotes that I have a lot of money or I am in style or something like that. No, people admire my watch because it looks wonderful, it looks great and it tells time. Great. And one of the things I really like about the watch is that it also is quite durable. It's waterproof, it uses some of the top grade luxury materials that you would expect in your Rolexes or your other more expensive brands. And I can tell you that the public agrees. They've already gotten 10,000 five star reviews. So if you're tired of disposable products and want something that's rugged, timeless, and thoughtfully made, check them out. Go to Vere Watches, that's V A E R watches.com and support American craftsmanship.
- [30:14]
Haviv Redik Gore
The world moves fast. Your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more@Microsoft.com M365 copilot okay, so let's
- [30:46]
Eli
kind of just tease this out. Mike. I think that we largely agree on the character of the regime built by Khomeini, the importance of mukuama, and how this is an important insight into understanding what it means to be at war with such a regime. Because you're not fighting a rational actor that would say, oh my God, we've invested half a trillion dollars in a nuclear program and it's rubble. That would be for most sort of rational state actors, right? You know, defeat. They would, they would re. They would come up with something else. But I constantly, my one question about it, I don't know that we know the answer. And I want to kind of ask you. And there is, there has always. I feel that what Khomeini introduced to Iran is alien to Iranian history. It's alien to the Shia tradition within Iran. And what I mean by that is the tradition within Qom, which is their theological center, where they're, you know, the equivalent of their monasteries are, you know, and there are various houses in there and there, there are some, you know, each family belongs to, like or follows a grand ayatollah. So most of the Grand Ayatollahs until 79 were what we would call quietists. They would believe that there is a role for the mosque inside of Iran. They helped the poor. They were landlords in many ways. In most of the country, they own the land. There was a kind of peasant class. They ran the schools for centuries in Iran. But they left foreign policy. They left kind of running the country to the Shah. That was the understanding. And that was true not just for the Pahlavi dynasty, it was true for the Kajuri dynasty. It was for the Zan dynasty. This was since the introduction under the Safavids of Shi', ism, this was largely the kind of Shiism that Iranians practiced. And that Khomeini was an outlier. There were other outliers, like one of his mentors, Ayatollah Khashani, who was very, very powerful and became speaker of the Majlis. But for the most part, the consensus position was the clerics do not rule in Iran. And so the question is, after 47 years, is there no one left who believes that? Is that the old ways, and everybody sort of accepts now that we're going to be run by a supreme leader who believes that he is, you know, kind of, you know, not just the leader of the country, but also something like the Pope of Shiism, or, you know, is there a chance to sort of appeal to the historical memory of the Iranian people that this is not how it's been for most of Iranian history?
- [33:44]
Haviv Redik Gore
I. I have no idea.
- [33:48]
Eli
Okay. But I'll tell you, I appreciate that honesty, by the way, and I don't, I don't either. Right.
- [33:53]
Haviv Redik Gore
I don't know what, you know, when an ordinary Iranian in Iran in the Persian language sort of thinks their way through these, these ideas. Ordinary people don't think abstractly at large scale about, about things. About most things that I'm not professionally obligated to think abstractly about. I don't either. Right. I don't know if they, if they sift this out. My impression, for what it's worth, and it's absolutely the impression of not just an outsider, but an outsider with an extreme interest in this regime falling because it happens to want to murder my children, literally and specifically. So with that caveat, my impression is when you strip away everything that is Shiism, that is shared by every other Shia, in other words, the quietest Shia, the majority Shiism, as you put it, and I think you're right, that was what Shiism was until Khomeini. And since Khomeini, everything's living under this oppressive regime. So who the heck knows? But if you strip away from, you take Khomeini and you take, you know, all other Shia and you strip away the Shi, you normalize it, right? You erase all Shi' ism from the Khomeini, what's actually, what's actually left? What's the difference? What's the skeleton that's still there? I have a sneaking suspicion none of it is Iranian whatsoever. It's 100% Marxist. What is the actual difference between Khomeini and every other Shia, the great revolutionary impulse, and that all history is the revolution, and that the revolution requires you to recruit 700,000 fighters from five, six different countries and send them on expeditionary forces to other countries to demolish those countries in the name of the great revolution. That is exactly how the Soviet Union functioned. It is. The ideology is just literally, I mean, the ownership of the economy by the state. People don't understand that the irgc, the IRGC alone, that military, that second military that serves the loyalty to the regime, that's loyal to the regime rather than the state, which the regular military is, probably owns 30 to 40% of the GDP of the country, no less, including almost most of the energy. And then people don't understand that beyond the irgc, you have what are called boneyads, which are these immense foundations, charitable foundations with no taxation, no oversight of any kind, totally answerable only to the office of the Supreme Leader, which own multiple vast industries. And probably another I'm going to throw out, it's within an order of magnitude 20% more of the GDP of the country. The Supreme Leader, just in his hand at his typewriter, literally can make the decisions of what happens with two thirds of the GDP of Iran before ever having to worry about any other class of people and what they want. Again, Marxism. None of this is Shi' ism of any kind. None of this is the monarchies that used to exist in Iran. So my suspicion is, well, the monarchies
- [36:52]
Eli
had a similar Bunyat. I mean, there were enormous powers. The Shah. Well, it's interesting because Pahlavi is often seen in history as the example of colonialist oppression. But he had introduced reforms that relinquished most of the land holdings that the Pahlavi family, through the Shah, owned. And so that you had the equivalent of land reform, which we saw in Russia in the 19th century, and sort of the end of peasants in Iran. That happens really, I would argue, in the 50s and 60s in Iran.
- [37:29]
Haviv Redik Gore
You say it's explainable as a feudal model rather than as a Marxist model.
- [37:34]
Eli
Well, something like that. It's borrowed. I mean, so I look at Iranian history, I think you're right that this is a huge break. And Khomeini advertises as a break. In 79, he says, this is the end of, you know, I mean, we have in 73 the 2500th anniversary of Iranian kings, that Pahlavi puts together the world's greatest party and then literally within six years, the end of the lineage of kings in Iran. And this is how they presented it. And this is one of the reasons why so many secular leftists and Marxists that are not Iranian supported the Iranian revolution because they bought into the advertising material. But what ends up happening is that they don't restore that you don't have another Shah, but the Supreme Leader has the powers of the Shah. So there is a kind of, you can see the echo, like, you know that. And, and he, he rules more arbitrarily, I would argue, than the Shah that he replaces Khomeini and then later Khamenei. So I'm not saying that it's shah ever achieved. Yes, that's right. So in that, in that respect. But I want to get to something else though, because I think you're absolutely, I mean, I think you've really done a masterclass in explaining the ideological currents. It's anti colonialism, it's Marxism and it's of course political Islam. I want to focus a little bit on political Islam because you're right, political Islam emerges as the answer to this question as to why are we behind? Why are we subjugated? Why are we, why are we weak? And the answer is what they say. Their great slogan, Islam is the solution. We have turned away from Islam. The Ottoman caliphate had become corrupted. It was no longer Islamic. And therefore, which is. It's interesting that Ataturk and Hassan Al Bana are kind of existing at the same time. Right. They're coming to, they're answering the question in very different ways. Ataturk is saying, our problem is Islam. We have to modernize and become modern Turkey. And Hassan Al Banna says, no, your problem is that you've turned away from Islam and we need to create Islamic states. Now in 1925, or for that matter in 2001, there is an argument, or 1978, there's an argument that we haven't tried it. Maybe they're right. Maybe they're right. Maybe an Islamic State will work. Maybe this will bring back glory that has been lost to the Muslim, to the ummah. Right. In 2026. And this is the part that I really want to drill down on. How can you credibly say that this path that we have tried has restored glory when not even Russia or China would vote against the resolution in the UN Security Council condemning Iran A few weeks ago, when all of Iran's neighbors that were scared of Iran in the lead up to the war, at least publicly, they looked like they were trying to be on this, neutral, are now talking about joining the war and are publicly saying we hope that Trump doesn't stop. We have to continue. How can you say when you've lost your investment of half a trillion dollars in your nuclear program, you've lost your missiles, you've lost your navy, you've lost your leaders, your currency is worth nothing. You don't, you have a potable drinking water crisis in a very resource rich country. You have the failure of even the banks that were benefiting the elite Revolutionary Guard. You have so many signs of utter failure and humiliation. I wonder if somebody is looking at this question, where did we go wrong? Perhaps at a certain point they might say Islamic governance is not the solution. Now, I'm, I'm acknowledging there is an answer, and you've also talked about it, that when we are facing even more adversary, God is testing us. This is a test. We have to be strong, we have to be steadfast. I understand that and I think there are some who will say that. And clearly that's what we're getting in terms of the public messaging. But inside, around that dinner table, haviv I ask you, I think there's a very good chance that somebody might say, I've been sold a bill of goods. The same kind of disillusionment that might have been experienced at the end of perestroika in the Soviet Union. The same kind of disillusionment when you're like, I've been a part of this system, I've believed this theory of history. I believe that this is getting us to a better place. And now look around and all I see are the ashes. So, I mean, how would you respond to that? I do think that there is an argument that the appeal of political Islam, the appeal of mukuama, is different depending on what point you're looking at it.
- [42:44]
Haviv Redik Gore
Khomeini explicitly talks to this question of Islamic failure.
- [42:50]
Eli
Yeah.
- [42:51]
Haviv Redik Gore
And he does this fascinating thing and he's obviously not alone, but he's the most relevant for our conversation where he makes this distinction between two categories that are already in the Quran. The musta, the fin, the. The. The humble of the earth, the weak and the mustak beren, or the, the powerful and the arrogant. And the. These are two things. Two things. There's a verse in the Quran, the mustafeen will inherit the earth, borrowed from Jesus, borrowed from Psalms. Right, right. But the idea is that there are the humble and there are the strong and the humble will inherit. And this is built deep into Islamic also history and ideology. There's the famous battle of Badr where Muhammad leads a force that's very small and against much more powerful forces, and he nevertheless wins the day. And this is this paradigm of, you have the powerful forces of the world and the weak forces of the world, but the weak not only can triumph, Khomeini writes that they're much more likely to. It is easier for the weak to defeat the strong than the strong to defeat the weak, because the weakness are less distracted from their piety. They are cleaner, they are purer, and therefore they are more easily capable of drawing divine intervention on their behalf. And therefore they have no choice but to win. It's not if once God gets into the game, it's not like if the divine promise is on your side, nothing can possibly prevent it. And so he transforms Islamic weakness, which is such a big theological problem for so many Muslim thinkers and movements and cultures. He transformed it into a great spiritual advantage and therefore also geopolitical advantage, where he says, the Mustafin must triumph because they are the weak and therefore the pure, and therefore and the humble and all of that. And so he gives a vocabulary for already facing this fact of our weakness and not saying, oh, we're weak, therefore we have to hedge and we have to be careful and we have to keep our heads down. No, we're weak. That is why we know that in our battles of Badr, we will also triumph. And then he does one last thing, and this is borrowed from Izzeddin al Qassam and the many, many examples and Fanon and the fln. And that is the question of martyrdom. It's very easy to talk about martyrdom in Shiism because so much of Shiism is mourning for martyrs. And so Khomeini says, the example of Hussein's death is an example of a death that, in the death itself, launches the millennial redemption arc of humanity. In other words, how do you. You are weak, right? The arrogant enemy, apostate is powerful, whether it's Yazid or the United States. How do you bridge the gap? It's yes, I have faith and God will intervene. But what is the mechanism by which my faith changes the architecture of power to the point where I win? And the answer there is martyrdom. Martyrdom closes that gap. The ability to suffer, the willingness to suffer, the willingness to die, the immense power that a martyrdom death, a death in the name of the Redemption, A.R. has to create a new generation of willing martyrs, a new generation of fighters, a new generation of people willing to suffer. The arrogant and powerful are never able to suffer. They're not used to suffering. They have nothing to suffer for except their worldly strength and worldly goods. And so they have a very low threshold of pain. And you, and they can cause a lot of pain, but they can't suffer all that much pain. And you, because you are a believer, because you don't have much in this world, but you have immense things in the spiritual realm, you can suffer infinitely and you can inflict pain just enough to surpass the threshold for the enemy, for the powerful. And so your ability to permanently inflict pain while suffering far more pain than you can inflict, but you can handle it and they can't. And all the way up to and including martyrdom, which does nothing but generate a new generation of new martyrs. That's the mechanism and strategy. And so for this regime today, what the true believers are telling themselves is Alaqji said this, the foreign minister of Iran, they got some note from Pakistan. Pakistan mourns the death of the supreme leader. I think it was. I forget what it was. And Alakji wrote them back a letter and published. They publicized it on the official Twitter feed, either of the Rakshis or the Foreign Ministry. And he said in this. I'm going to misquote it. People can go to it. In this sublime divine moment, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to the Pakistani people. What is that sublime divine moment as half the regime is decapitated? And the answer is we are now doing the very thing that closes the gap of martyrdom, that gives the mustadafin the humble, the overwhelming advantage over the arrogant and powerful. So they have a story that answers exactly that question of catastrophic failure.
- [48:09]
Eli
So a couple points. First of all, that's not a unique story to Shia Islam or the Islamic Republic of Iran. That's a story that you can see. I mean, I would never compare my hero Menachem Begin to Khomeini or Aradci. But I mean, there's a famous speech where Begin talks about, we'll turn our nose. Well, then they have crooked noses where he says, I live through death. I live through all this. There's nothing you can do to me. You, he's talking about, I think it's the German chancellor is asking him to accept a Palestinian state and he's rejecting it. But in that, this is somebody who lost an enormous amount, who lost his entire family to the Nazis, who lost his comrades in the uprising. And he uses that as a kind of strength, saying, you can't do anything to me. I live for a cause. This is, you know, you go back to Norse mythology, this is the no greater honor than to die in the battlefield. And you will be sitting closest to Odin. You know, this is the. In Valhalla. This is a human story, and it's one that appeals. You know, you find it in some of the best hip hop music. You know, the. You know, the great album by Biggie Smalls is ready to die. So, yes, I do think that there is an appeal to it yet. History is filled with lots of people who would choose not martyrdom. You know, even in revolutionary moments, history is filled with lots of people who would rather, you know, live out their days with their family. It's just a fact. Even in. So it's. The reason that martyrs are celebrated in some ways is because they're extraordinary, because most people are not willing to do that, even though it goes farther here.
- [49:54]
Haviv Redik Gore
It goes farther here. And it goes farther for Hezbollah and it goes farther for Hamas in the Sunni context. And this is all part of Mukawama. This is a word that encapsulated an immense thing where it goes farther here. Because it isn't just. I personally, I mean, you know, every American Seal Team six squad has, you know, young warriors willing to die for their comrades and for their country. That's. The willingness to sacrifice is universal. But what we have here is deeper than that because it's a willingness. It's an argument that our weakness, since we can't change it, it's in fact holy, and it's what we're supposed to be, and it's how we know we're going to win. Because this weakness is our spiritual greatness and therefore sacrifice. Sacrifice isn't just personal, it's collective. So Hamas, for example, today in Gaza, believes that Gaza is on the cusp of great and triumphant and religious victory. Now, do actual Hamas fighters believe that? Do most Gazans believe that? I am absolutely convinced that definitely not. But the true believers, the people who follow in Sinwar's footsteps, do they believe that? Yes, absolutely. And they think that their only task is survival in the ruins. Survival in the ruins is the great victory given to overcome the evil, arrogant powers of the world. The Iranian regime thinks in those terms. What I'm saying isn't just that they're willing to sacrifice their own soldiers. What I'm saying is they're willing to sacrifice their own society. This is a regime like, I mean, you and I, Eli, we know a dark secret about the Jews that I'm now going to share, but I hope stays just among the listeners of this podcast. Jews are not magical there's nothing magical about them. They are ordinary people. And every extraordinary success that Israel has had, just in the numbers, just in the economy, in the high tech, all of it is replicable. These are best practices you yourself can go and do in your country and you'll have these results. The two countries on earth with the highest per capita of spending on RD are Israel and South Korea. And Israel and South Korea kind of look like they would be the two countries with the highest per capita spending on rd. If you had the highest per capita spending on R and D, you'd also look like them. And so these are, these are best practices, right? So the Iranian regime, instead of saying, wait a second, maybe the Jews are not magic, maybe all the successful countries in the world are not magical. By the way, they're not all western. There's a lot of Asian countries that are successful. Ghana is an extraordinary place compared to the rest of Africa. Why best practices? We know how to make societies happy and prosperous. It's not complicated. I mean it's incredibly complicated to implement, but it's not complicated to learn. It's a seminar of three days and you can have the basic outline of a policy that will make your country better off, happier, wealthier, more successful. And instead of doing that for 47 years, the Iranian regime has doubled, quadrupled and quintupled. I think I'm out of the words I know on that score. Down on. Actually none of that matters. Iran's internal economy doesn't matter. Iranians internal freedom doesn't matter. Our basic fundamental competence doesn't matter. All the money that Iran has spent on its nuclear program, somebody calculated that it's something like 200 times what Israel spent on its nuclear program, corrected for inflation. And Israel allegedly, according to foreign sources, nobody tells me, so I can talk about it has what, 90 warheads? I think Colin Powell once claimed whatever it is, it succeeded and Iran spent 200 times that and failed. Now maybe don't fight the whole world while building a nuke. That might be one, one reason. But the point is the found fundamental profound incompetence. Look at Iran's basic war strategy. It has no defensive capability. It has no air force. It actually has just about no air force of any kind. It literally can't fly against the Israelis. What does it have? The ability to burn down the economies around it? To launch missiles and drones at the refineries of the Gulf? It has nothing else. It has nothing else. That's extraordinary. It built out a massively competent, a lot of Chinese tech went into it repression architecture internally against the Iranian people and the ability to burn down the world and then just decided to start demolishing everything in sight in the name of the great revolution. And if you challenge them on it, they will burn everything down to the ground. It is nothing but collective sacrifice. Collective sacrifice isn't a willingness to see a greater goal. Collective sacrifice is the goal. The martyrdom is the engine of redemption. And so this is actually Muqawama is the self immolation of a society. Mukawamah is self destruction. Hezbollah in Lebanon has done vastly more damage, multiple orders of magnitude more damage to Lebanon than it ever did to Israel. But in the name of slightly hurting Israel, you can destroy Lebanon. That's a worthwhile sacrifice to pay in the mukawama calculus. And Hamas, Hamas thinks it did a great job and this is exactly where Palestinians need to be. And if Israel pulls out of the west bank, it's what Hamas plans to do in the west bank as well.
- [55:14]
Eli
So I want to, with the time we have left, I want to get to. I'm optimistic about the war. I'm not certain about the outcome, but I'm optimistic. I think that generally share your assessment. At the same time I believe that we have to push for the maximalist definition of victory, which for me would be a color revolution or a velvet revolution, hopefully supported by Israel in its various capabilities, including drones over the skies of Tehran where you would see the image of hundreds of thousands of Iranians marching peacefully to the Majlis. Except this time they would not be mowed down, they would take control of the institutions. To me and I would love to get your thoughts on this, that image would go a long way in the ideological battle against political political Islam. Even with Mukamawa, that would be the win condition in my view of defeating this ideology because it would be the Iranian people themselves rejecting it and it would show the powerlessness of the remnants of the regime to stop it. And that I think is a profound thing that happens that not it doesn't just reorder the Shia world, I think it reorders the Muslim world. I want to get your thoughts on that.
- [56:50]
Haviv Redik Gore
I'll tell you where I think a good perspective on how much of an effect this can have in the Muslim world would be the Israeli experience. It's not a Muslim answer, it's an Israeli answer, but it's an outsider, but deeply within outsider. The Israelis think they've gone through this before. And if you want to understand why this war is a multi front war and where it's going to go and whether the Israelis are going to stop. And what do the Israelis think is happening? They've gone through this before. In the 1950s and 60s, the Arab world unified. Unified in a dangerous way from the Israeli perspective, because it unified around the idea of destroying Israel. But it unified around a much bigger and deeper and more beautiful idea. And it was expounded in beautiful ways by poets and thinkers called what is today called pan Arabism. Basically, under Nasser of Egypt, the. The Arab states unified around this idea that there is a cohesive, coherent Arab nation, that the Arabs have been divided, chopped up, borders drawn between them by colonial powers, and that if they overcame that and became the Arabness that they were, the unified Arabness that they should always have been, then they will find their place back in history. Their honor will be restored, their martial prowess will be restored. It's not a terrible point in favor of this idea that the Soviets are willing to bankroll it and also hand them a lot of brand new Soviet hardware to fight wars with. And they went to war against the Jews to prove it. And it was the 56 war. There was some skirmishes beforehand, and then the 67 war, and then the war in between 67 and 73 called the attrition war between the Israelis and the Egyptians, and then the 73 war. And with each war, the Israelis defeated them worse and more dramatically, an Arab unity, which at one point saw Syria and Egypt actually unify into a single state for about 10 minutes. But that was the scale of the willingness and the desire of these elites to find this pan Arabism. Each time they met the Israelis in the desert and tank went up against tank and the Israelis smashed their armies. Pan Arabism had to answer for it. And pan Arabism had promised that Arab nation states would prove their mettle when they unified. And what is the test? The test is defeating the Israelis. So when we defeated them again and again and again, we destroyed the idea of pan Arabism. It no longer made sense to anybody because it didn't deliver. It didn't make the Arab powerful.
- [59:24]
Eli
Exactly.
- [59:25]
Haviv Redik Gore
The Arabs stuck all these years. All pan Arabism really was, was it was a justification for these dictators to become worse and worse and, you know, more destructive and internally repressive regimes. And they couldn't even defeat the Jews for all the suffering of the Arabs that they imposed on the Arabs. And so pan Arabism died. The Israelis generally think that's what's happening right now. There is this idea, and this idea has a promise, and it's Good to understand the Mukawama, because then you understand why they're not defeatable in ordinary terms. You can't just defeat them in the battlefield. That's not a defeat for them. That's not what the Mukawa ma tells them. That is the path to victory. You'll lose, lose, lose, lose, and eventually the French will leave.
- [60:06]
Eli
Right?
- [60:06]
Haviv Redik Gore
But they don't just mean the French in Algeria. They mean the entirety of everyone who isn't them, basically on earth. But you know what we can do to these guys, and this is very similar to what you just said, we can demonstrate that not only are they catastrophically self destructive. What has this version of Islam done to Iran? What has this version of Islam done to a country with what, the third biggest hydrocarbon reserve on earth? Maybe the second biggest? I don't know. There's a chart out there somewhere. Iran should be a country with Israel levels of human resource talent and R and D. The Iranian Persian exiles populate all the math departments of the West. And it should also be a country with Saudi level energy resources. It should be that combination. Iran should lead this region. Iran should have an economy the size of Japan's. And it doesn't. And it doesn't because of this regime. And this is the great story, the Muqawama, the Salafism. There's a Sunni and a Shia and there's a lot of complexity and a lot of subtlety and profound ideas. But at the core, core base, this idea, this revolutionary regime, has gutted Iranian society. Hezbollah is the enemy of Lebanon and the Lebanese know it and have always known it, but now they're getting a little courageous in saying so. And Hamas and this revolutionary idea which we saw in Khajamen Al husseini in the 30s, and we see today this promise that the Jews can be destroyed, this promise that they can be destroyed on the altar of these strategies of terrorism of the fln, all of these promises, this is before the fln, obviously, but it. But it is very much an outgrowth. Hajamin is a student of Abdukhun Rida and it comes from there. Izzeddin Al Qassam was a student of Abduh. It's literally that lineage of ideas destroyed in every generation. The Palestinian cause, they demolished the Israeli left by responding to every peace overture with waves of suicide bombings. This is a vision of Islam that everything it touches. You let them into Iraq, they'll destroy Iraq. You let them into Azerbaijan, they'll destroy Azerbaijan. Everything it touches, it destroys. And we have that task to show that and to show that it's one promise, which is that it can finally make Islam powerful enough to start winning on the world stage. And winning means the destruction of Israel. Because the weakest thing that ever pushed Islam back in this vision of Islam is the Jews. So they promise that they will have a society organized, mobilized to great revolutionary redemption arc that destroys the Jews. Well, guess what? You're not going to destroy the Jews. The Jews will get more powerful, not less, and you will demolish your own. When that is true for a generation, maybe two, maybe three, unfortunately it's a powerful idea, then they have nowhere to go and the idea dies. And then they might notice that, you know, there are some ordinary, mundane best practices that actually build healthy countries.
- [63:02]
Eli
Well, I think. I mean, let's just say Baruch Hashem. I hope that's true. And I do think that we are close to that. My last question to you, Haviv, is this. What would the effect of a color revolution in Iran be on the Sunni Islamists, the Sunni Salafists? Because, of course, there is a very deep theological schism. There are different traditions. I respect the differences. However, the diagnosis of the problem and the broad kind of solution. Islam is the solution are the same. And the Islamic Republic of Iran was the successful example. I mean, there was a caliphate for a year and a half, you know, from isis. There was, you know, Turabi had a moment in sudan in the 90s. But for the most part, in terms of actual practice of Islamic governance, it's Iran that has been the pioneer. And if Iran, then whatever comes next, but it's not that. And it's no longer held hostage by the mukuama ideology. I think that that could have a profound impact on the broader Sunni Muslim Brotherhood as well, in the sense that it would be a discrediting. Obviously, you could say, well, they would not have been able to do it without the air campaign of America and Israel. And while I think there's a lot of disinformation about the role that Mossad has played in a largely organic movement in Iran of Iranians trying to get their country back, there is some truth to the fact that the Mossad is, of course, in Israel and has an interest in the success of a velvet revolution, which is what Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have been saying now openly. But all of that aside, I just think that image would have potentially the. I mean, we might see finally the process of a decline of Hassan Al Banna's project and what we've been talking about.
- [65:14]
Haviv Redik Gore
If Iran's regime falls in a way that is demolishing of the idea of the regime. In other words, Shariati's Red Shiism and the clericalist tyranny that Khomeini built in its shadow. That whole thing gets swept away by Iranians themselves. And that is visible. Then the first thing that the Sunni side of this world, the Salafists, would experience was a massive loss in funding and training and support. Now, in many places, Iran fights these guys. Al Qaeda, the, you know, grandchild of Hassan Al Bana, was the main fighter against Hezbollah in Syria. Right? Right. Right. Now, Ashara, who led Jabba, although Iran
- [65:57]
Eli
also cooperated with other people, has moved
- [66:00]
Haviv Redik Gore
forces to the Syrian Lebanese border to fight Hezbollah with the Israelis really hoping to kill Hezbollah. They hate Hezbollah for its massacre of Sunnis in Syria far more than they hate Israel, what used to be Al Qaeda in Syria. Right. So. So the. The gap is, you know, you're absolutely right to point it out. It is total, it is complete. It is. On this question of what do we do about Islamic weakness? They share overlap. Now, Hamas was extraordinary because Hamas managed to embed itself in both camps. And it actually, for five years, left the Iranian orbit, lost Iranian support, and wouldn't talk to the Iranians because of the Syrian civil war. And then when Sinwar was elected head of Hamas again in. I forget what year it was. 2017, I think. I forget exactly. Sinwar's great vision was, no, we're back in the Iranian camp. We're back in the Shia mukama. We need this support. We need this money. And started receiving vast sums from the Iranians and from. And training from Hezbollah and all of that. But. But even, even Hamas, Iran, there was tension, and Iran was one of the great patrons of Hamas. So the, the tension is there, but if Iran falls, a lot of that support in many, many places goes away. However, Sunni Salafism is very decentralized. You know, Iran managed to centralize the Shia on this point to build out its proxy system in Iraq and in Lebanon and in Syria and in Yemen. But Iran centralized them by funding them, by training them, by arming them with, you know, why would the Yemenis have better missiles than the Germans? Right. This is Iran. There is no one like that among the Sunnis. And so the Sunnis are a large number of disparate groups. The great danger of Iran's fall is therefore, in other words, Iran's fall wouldn't have an immediate operational difference. It would hurt Hamas, but it wouldn't hurt many of the others. The Great danger is that into the vacuum of an Iran that is no longer functionally projecting power on the regional stage, a Sunni power will step in, take on. There's still value to the story. There's still value to this redemption arc vision, not the Shia one among the Sunnis, but there's Sunni versions of it, of what the Mukawama is and the resistance and the steadfastness and the redemption of the weak against the strong. And all this Marxist conversation dressed up in Islamic garb and Islamic drag. Maybe I don't know what exactly it is. And that is why a lot of Israelis today are worried about Turkey. Turkey is ruled by a guy named Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And he I religiously belongs to movements in Turkey akin to and borrowing ideas from and some actual thinkers, you know, 30, 40, 50 years ago, actually crossed that gap from Egypt to Turkey and had this discourse that is kind of a Muslim Brotherhood.
- [69:02]
Eli
Well, there is one difference though, which is to say that the resilience of the system that Ataturk built means that Erdogan's opponents have won municipal elections in Istanbul and I think in Ankara, and that it's not that the takeover of the state has not been as total as in Iran. That's the only caveat I would make, which is to say you could see a horizon where they would. Turks themselves would say, enough of the Muslim Brotherhood.
- [69:34]
Haviv Redik Gore
We don't want this self destruction that Salafism brings. Yes. The problem with that is Turkey has been sufficiently democratic for sufficiently long to be a very competent state. I don't know in comparison to Western Europe, but certainly in comparison to the Middle East.
- [69:51]
Eli
Sure.
- [69:51]
Haviv Redik Gore
And that means that Erdogan actually wields one of the few militaries that can really fight in the Middle East.
- [69:58]
Eli
Also true.
- [69:59]
Haviv Redik Gore
While also being a Muslim brother, ideologically. So Turkey's democratic impulses, the democratic side of Turkey, which is very much there, Erdogan's not part of it, but he would demolish it if he could, I think. But it also is one of the great dangers because if he can rule something that is actually competent, in other words, Salafism hasn't had a chance yet to demolish Turkey from within. So it's not weak, so it's strong and it's strong while also being having a radical leadership. So Turkey could potentially step in and be very dangerous. That's the pessimistic view, I would say, of Turkey.
- [70:32]
Eli
No, no, I share your concern about it and I think that you're absolutely right to point to Turkey as potentially the winner of, you know, the fall of, of the Islamic Republic in Iran as the sort of, you know, that. That will then pick up the baton of this wider Mukomo. I think that's absolutely right and I think they will try, and I think it'll be a problem. I'm just noting that the ability of Iran to use almost all of its resources to neglect its population, as we discussed, in order to hollow out the Lebanese state, in order to support Bashar Al Assad in Syria, in order to form, you know, to arm the Houthis with weaponry, as you said, better than what Germany can field, and also obviously to support Hamas. That is going to be harder in Turkey just because Turkey has. Because the Muslim Brotherhood does not have the same grip on Turkey as Khomeinism has on Iran. That's all.
- [71:31]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yes, let us hope that the democratic in Turkey is stronger than the Salafist. In Turkey. I use the word in its classical meaning today. Usually, sometimes people say Salafist. They mean groups more extreme than Al Qaeda. So just to clarify, people might hear the word Salafist or say, that's not what it means. That's what it used to mean. And that's why how I'm using it, because historically that's what I meant. So Iran falling would be a tremendous boon to the Middle East. It would be a liberation of Lebanon. It would. It would be a new day for so many countries. It could potentially lead to some kind of reunification in Yemen, which might even give us the hope that Yemen might one day be a real country, a real state, state that can actually feed its people. So there's so much good that could come of it. Power could step in other.
- [72:19]
Eli
And it just is kind of an Israeli focused question on this, which is to say I have great sympathy for the kind of, what I think is the basic kind of consensus position now for most of Israelis, which is you want us to withdraw from territory so it can become another base for one of these Iranian proxies. Are you crazy? I completely understand that and I support it. However, if you did not have an Islamic Republic of Iran, would that not open up possibilities to revive this now dormant idea in Israeli society of land for peace? Or do you think that, you know, I mean, Israel's haters, the critics of Israel more than critics, people who want to destroy Israel say they point to the extremism on the West Bank. They point to the rise of Ben GVIR and Smotrek, and they say, hey, this is the face of Israel. I just debated Andrew Sullivan, and this was one of his points. My view as somebody, you know, I'm not Israeli, but I've been there many times, you know, is that Israel can turn very quickly because it's so democratic. And if you had a new scenario, a new group of leaders, once Netanyahu leaves the stage, wouldn't there be this opening for maybe a renewed interest at least in land for peace negotiations?
- [73:38]
Haviv Redik Gore
Just as a methodological point, as someone who grew up in political journalism, when you're, when you're trying to analyze what people will do if conditions change, you always have to get drilled down to the questions they're asking, the anxieties they're facing, what it is they think is happening to them and what it is they think they're responding to. Israelis turn to the right is a response to a perception that the other side wants to destroy them, that the only politics the Palestinians can produce at the end of the day is politics of annihilation of the Jews. There is no compromising there. There are examples that people then point to. What do you mean? Mahmoud Abbas compromised with the Israelis and even helped the Israeli security state tamp down Hamas terrorism. And that's absolutely true. And it also caused Abbas to be the most hated leader in the history of the Palestinians. He pulls it single digit percentages in favorability. Everybody's talking about whether the Palestinian Authority can take over Gaza afterwards. And they're all angry that Netanyahu doesn't want it. Netanyahu is not even a function here. Gazans won't accept it. If the PA under Abbas is allowed to come into Gaza, Gazans will turn to Hamas again. It's not like, you know, it's such a hated thing because it collaborates with the Israelis. And so even the examples where there are Palestinian leaders who will are for Israelis, examples of the incapacity of Palestinian politics, not to the incapacity of Palestinian politics to accept a compromise that is less than the annihilation of the Jews. And that is the perception. Now, you could argue that it's not true and that's okay. And there are, by the way, serious pollsters of Palestinians that say it's much more complex and I'm happy to discuss it. But that's what most Israelis believe. Ordinary Israelis, left wing Israelis, progressive Israelis believe that if Iran falls, then the powers in Palestinian politics like Hamas will be weakened dramatically. In logistical terms.
- [75:33]
Eli
Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Right.
- [75:34]
Haviv Redik Gore
But it won't do anything in terms of narrative terms.
- [75:36]
Eli
Okay.
- [75:37]
Haviv Redik Gore
It won't change the Internal Sunni Palestinian story drawn from Hajamin through Izzeddin al Qassam, through, you know, the generations of Arafat and his Algeria model. And all of that will remain. And the central view of the Israelis as this monolithic, demonic thing. Incidentally, most Israelis believe the vast majority of Palestinians want them dead and gone. Most Palestinians believe the vast majority of Israelis want them dead and gone. Every one of them has 10,000 data points to point to when they make that argument. And every one of them is responding in that way. So understanding people from that perspective of what they think is happening to them and what they think they're responding to, I think is the best way to understand what's happening. Iran disappearing will militarily weaken Hamas. Militarily weakening Hamas might be a very good thing for Gaza because it's turning out to be extremely difficult to begin the rebuilding of Gaza as long as Hamas controls every part of it. The IDF pulls out of, you know, at every moment. And an actual, an actual crowbarring of Hamas out of Gaza might become 20% more possible if the Iranian regime falls. It won't solve the fundamental problems of the narrative and of the experiences of the two peoples.
- [76:49]
Eli
We know that there is, I don't expect, by the way, that a Gazan who hates Hamas loves Israel or wants peace with Israel, but there is something there, which is that there is a lot of anger at this blunder, this tragic blunder that Sinwar imposed on everyone else, really in that term, I think, I would say imposed on the region, but certainly Gaza. Is there an opportunity, though, for, I don't know, for Palestinian politics, their narrative to evolve? Isn't that, you know, as, just as, I don't know, Ben Gurion evolves, right? A Ben Gurion evolves in the early 30s. Ben Gurion thinks he can cut a deal, you know, with maybe not Hajimeen Al Husseini, but he meets with the mandarins of Palestine and he says, well, you know, this is going to be good for you. We're going to give you jobs. And he evolves over time and comes closer to the Jabotinsky position as outlined in the Iron Wall. As you know, is there an opportunity for something like that to happen to the Palestinians? It feels like they are stuck in a hundred year loop.
- [78:00]
Haviv Redik Gore
A hundred year loop in which somebody somewhere always promises them that God will liberate them if only the they kill enough Jews and they don't understand why it hasn't worked yet. I would say this. Look, the problem, when facing a regime that is mass sacrificial like the Iranian regime is that the very sorts of people who would march against it, people who want their small business to thrive, people who want their kids to go to university, people who want the economy liberated from the people who physically hold in their clutches 60%, 70% of it. People who want the country to have a free and new day and not to engage in wars everywhere in the region at their expense. People who want their daughters to walk around without having to worry about modesty. Police. Those people can't march into the gunfire because of the nature of these people, which is decent people. They don't have that mass sacrificial impulse to march into the gunfire. And there are hundreds of thousands. It would not take another 30,000 or 80,000 or 150,000. If millions can't march in Iran, in my estimation, the regime can't be brought down because it will kill hundreds of thousands. At the very beginning of a month ago, whatever it was, Khamenei released a statement in Persian not to the world in which he said hundreds of thousands of martyrs built this great. Got this revolution and we will not. We, we will pay that sacrifice to prevent it from falling, or hundreds of thousands more are willing to, to prevent it from falling. What he was saying was we're going to kill hundreds of thousands, don't come at us. That's what he was telling Iranians. That's how Iranians understood that statement. And then he went and killed 30,000. So it's not, I mean, and they would kill more. That is the mass sacrificial mukawama. Hamas is that Hamas will kill every last Palestinian because the redemption of the world is at stake, because the Palestinians are the spearhead of the liberation of Islam through the defeat of this thing called Zionism, the weakest thing that have pushed Islam back. And that is the beginning of the pivot of history after centuries of weakness that the whole world's redemption depends on. And that's the story of the Palestinians, a story of great and noble honor as the spearhead of Islam rather than the story of dispossession and weakness and humiliation. And so that's all Hamas is and all Palestinians can die for it. And they're proud of what has happened in Gaza. And if it had been three times and eight times the death toll, then it would have been a better victory against the Israelis because the Israelis would be even worse off on the global stage and the Muslim world would have mobilized more, etc. So how do you protest against the mass destroyers of your own society who are perfectly willing to mow you down in almost infinite.
- [80:45]
Eli
Well, I'm saying if the Iranians and
- [80:49]
Haviv Redik Gore
now Iran might reach that point, but in Gaza you have the problem and this is a real problem. And I don't know how to get away from it. I don't know how to solve it. The Palestinians, who might be willing, just literally, they know they'll die, but they'll save the next generation by marching against Hamas in mass numbers, actually have to contend with the fact that if they do bring down Hamas, they still face an Israel that in the Palestinian view really is dominated by Benvir and Smoterich.
- [81:21]
Eli
Well, this is why it's maybe not the immediate horizon, but I'm saying if the fall of the Islamic Republic can open up a political space for Israel to adapt and then maybe I think
- [81:36]
Haviv Redik Gore
one of the great failures of this war, the Israelis in Gaza and also probably in Iran, I mean, I luckily I said this before hostilities began, so now I can. It's not, you know, 2020 hindsight, but I think one of the great failures is not holding out a better future that makes it worth toppling the, the evil regime. That's not exactly the problem in Iran. In Iran, the problem is that we haven't. We Israel, we America, we. The west hasn't made a stronger case not that the Iranian regime is bad for the world, but that the Iranian regime is bad for Iran and not.
- [82:11]
Eli
Well, I don't think we need to make that case to Iranian.
- [82:14]
Haviv Redik Gore
We need to play a huge. We need a huge, concerted, successful, powerful, focused propaganda campaign on why this regime that claims to be red Shia is actually black Shia is actually the evil regime of the Safavids come back. For example, the fact that they're all a bunch of billionaires, all these great leaders of the revolutionary poor. The.
- [82:37]
Eli
By the way, I think that's being done. But that's.
- [82:39]
Haviv Redik Gore
Anyway, but, well, you know, the fact it's being done, it should be done 10 times more. It should be in every speech by every world leader. And then the regime can't explain to the ordinary IRGC fighter that hasn't been paid for a month and won't be paid for another two. What it is that they're actually fighting for that will weaken them more than bombing another 10 places or another hundred places. So that needs to be in the Gaza. That would look a very different. What you would need to give Gazans to create a movement against Hamas that's viable. Not to create it, to have any chance of it ever forming for real is a better day after you're marching in Iran against the regime for a better day after that, Iranians will set. Well, what about Gaza? Israel hasn't. And this is Israel's fault, and Israel should have done it. And it's Israeli agency. And I'm a big believer in agency, in adulthood, in responsibility. If you screw it up, you own it. One of the things we screwed up is we let Smotrich narrate this war. We, we have a war that is causing terrible devastation in Gaza. You can think it's a legitimate war, you could think it's illegitimate war. Either way, it caused terrible devastation. But we didn't ever bother. Netanyahu didn't ever bother explaining that the day after this war, the goal is a Gaza that looks like Dubai. The goal is.
- [83:51]
Eli
Well, that is, I think that's what Jared Kushner is trying to do with the.
- [83:55]
Haviv Redik Gore
That's wonderful. But Palestinians don't think Jared Kushner makes that. Has that call, might be able to make that call. But if Israel had said that from day one, and Netanyahu won't say it, and he won't say it for political reasons. And so Smotherich kept saying, you know, again and again and again over the last two and a half years.
- [84:11]
Eli
I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm saying, after these leaders, at some point, Netanyahu will not be the prime minister of Israel. And I'm saying that I think that there is an opportunity. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I just. My sense is that there is an opportunity. And I think you're absolutely right. You have to.
- [84:29]
Haviv Redik Gore
Because we don't have a sense that these regimes at their core are stories.
- [84:34]
Eli
Right?
- [84:35]
Haviv Redik Gore
That's what sustains them. We keep missing these opportunities. Why, when 30,000 Iranians are getting gunned down, did the world not see everything happening? Because there's a massive intelligence operation to make sure the Internet still works. Why? When. When the people are marching.
- [84:53]
Eli
Don't get me started. I agree.
- [84:54]
Haviv Redik Gore
Why, when the people are marching, did the airstrikes not begin? And the answer is, well, you didn't want to taint this revolution with Western. Yeah, no, bring the whole.
- [85:03]
Eli
That's not why.
- [85:04]
Haviv Redik Gore
The.
- [85:04]
Eli
If I, if I may correct, that didn't happen because we didn't have the assets in place. Maybe Israel could have done it. But I mean, I would love, if it is real, to do it.
- [85:13]
Haviv Redik Gore
I don't mean to criticize a specific thing. I know a lot about Gaza. I know much less about the American buildup on Iran, just literally in terms of the day to day following. But if we're ready for it ahead of time, if we know what this regime is, we know what a war against it would look like. Right. When CENTCOM was told by the president, I want to get Iran, they pull a drawer, they open a drawer and in the drawer are 16 different folios and plans and things. And they prepared these things. There's people whose full time job is preparing these plans. These plans don't include full on assault narrative. Assault on the narrative of the regime. Certainly the Israeli plans on Gaza never have and need to and need to for now. So long term, if we start to do that, yes, there's a hope. And if we don't start to do that, Hamas will survive just by saying, look how evil the Israelis are. What do they offer you? Well, if they offer you nothing, what else have you got other than us? So we need to have an offer that is not nothing and that is actually magnanimous and actually a new life, a new day. Integration into the Israeli economy. You want your own state? Well, the Trump plan plus a lot or the alone plan in some sense or another. There are Israeli plans. There are ways to do this. I don't want to rule them forever. My oldest is three years away from military service. I have four kids. I don't want to spend 15 years knowing my kids are at checkpoints in the West Bank. It's not something I want and no Israeli wants it. And so where is now? And I say that with everything I've said before, which is there's no horizon, there is no new day, there is no way out if you really understand what the actual peoples on the ground actually think and believe about each other. But therefore you begin to build it. A real Israeli offer would place a question, a question mark over Hamas's claims and a question that a choice that actually lies before Palestinians. Nobody places that choice. Once you place that choice, you need a profound shift in the political culture of Palestinians and to be able to accept anything like it. I don't know if that's possible, but we're not even creating the conditions to test it at this point. This war might end now because the American domestic politics is going to force a change. Whatever. The war doesn't end. The Israelis, I don't think it is either.
- [87:20]
Eli
I think Trump is more committed than people are saying.
- [87:24]
Haviv Redik Gore
Yeah, he seems to be doing exactly what he would be doing if he was more committed than people are saying. But I want to say the Israelis think that this is the pan Arab war which is to say five wars over 30 years but the enemy finally falls that is what the Israelis think they're doing don't expect it to go away you won't have an end to the war if you just think you are finishing it and walking away and you want to keep the straight of Horus open have a plan for that for the next round this is going to be more rounds and in the end I hate to say it I deeply apologize to all the haters out there the Jews are probably going to win this one oh yeah I apologize our enemies are self destroying so we might win it just just on points
- [88:04]
Eli
but we're gonna I'm.
- [88:06]
Haviv Redik Gore
I'm amazing for Iran in the region
- [88:08]
Eli
Qatar kicked out like dozens of Iranian generals and spies that's amazing even never thought I'd see the day thank you so much Haviv.