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- [00:01]
A
What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Joshua Landis, the director of the center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, who was brought up in Beirut, Lebanon, and has lived over 14 years in the Middle East. This is special abbreviated episode, one of several I'm publishing in quick succession to capture the views of different guests on the rapidly evolving U.S. and Israeli military campaign against Iran. In the conversation that follows, Joshua and I discuss the objectives and competing strategic narratives behind the bombing, the 21st century history of America's attempts to remake the Middle east and why each has ended in civil war and regional destabilization, the risks of fragmenting a country of 92 million people along ethnic and sectarian lines, the role of the Kurds and the implications for Turkey the emerging regional realignment taking shape amid Israel's growing dominance and where things go from here. If you want access to the transcripts and intelligence reports for this and other episodes, which include summary sections with key takeaways, you can access those by subscribing to our super nerd tier at HiddenForces IO subscribe, where you can also join in on the conversation by becoming a member of the Hidden Forces genius community, which includes Q and A calls with guests, discounted access to third party research and analysis, and in person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats. If you still have questions, feel free to send an email to infoiddenforcesio and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this extremely timely and important conversation with my guest, Joshua Landis. Joshua Landis, welcome back to Hidden Forces.
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B
Demetri, it's great to be with you.
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A
How are you doing today?
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B
I am doing very well. Worried about the Iran adventure.
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A
How closely have you been following this story?
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B
Well, I've been, you know, like everybody else, I've been glued to it and I'm trying to figure out what is going on because as you know, I've been following our adventures in the Middle east now for 35 years. I grew up in the Middle east and I went back to teach there right after college and have been working and writing about the Middle east ever since.
- [02:36]
A
You've been on the podcast, what, three or four times? We've spoken about Syria, Turkey, the Kurds. I mean, for people that are interested in learning your background. I suggest they go and listen to some of your previous appearances. So let's get right into it. The bombing campaign, and I don't know how else to really describe it because it's not clear what the objectives are either of the administration. They haven't done a great job of communicating what those are or communicating a clear theory of victory. So all we know is that the US And Israel have been bombing Iran mercilessly from the air. The Iranians have responded, bombing Israel directly as well as US Bases in the region. We don't quite, it seems, yet at least I haven't seen reports of there have been some reports of casualties. I think three service men or women were killed. But there are other reports that the damages I think, yeah, it's the fog of war, the typical fog of war. And some of the Gulf states have also their oil infrastructure in particular has been attacked. Ships reportedly some ships have also been attacked in the Strait of Hormuz. Just give me the latest. We're recording this on Wednesday, March 4th. And I should also mention because of the nature of these events, I had something else planned to record this week. We're going to try and get this out as soon as possible. So the intelligence reports and transcripts may lag the publication of the episode, in which case you can find them later on the website. And there's not going to be a second hour either, as I'm trying to put out a few episodes on this topic and elicit the views of a number of different guests in short order. So not our typical publication schedule. But Joshua, why don't we just start with you giving me and our listeners an idea of where things stand at this point moment?
- [04:18]
B
Well, I think we should start at the beginning, which you mentioned the objectives. What is America trying to do? And on the one hand, you can say it's trying to secure Israel, its ally in the region. And America and Israel have gone at this war shoulder to shoulder. And for Israel, the objectives are regime change. For the United States, it's unclear what the objectives exactly are. On the one hand, we've had Secretary of war say that it's about attritting both the nuclear and the missile capabilities of Iran. But President Trump has talked about regime change as well and bringing freedom to the Iranians and other rather higher objectives. So the question then becomes, can we bring either of those? And yes, it's possible to obviously destroy much of Iran's defense capabilities, that's for sure. And we've done that. It seems We've done that, and we did that back this summer when we carried out the 12 day war. And President Trump said that he had obliterated the nuclear capabilities. So this is obliterating the missile capabilities. The question is, can we get a compliant regime in Iran or can we destroy the Islamic Republic and get rid of the mullahs? And that seems like a very heavy lift, this effort to regime change, because Iran is buckled down. They're clearly going to try to survive this and survive in a way that they will retain their ability to once again start nuclear capabilities and rebuild their defenses. And that's going to be the test of wills here. And so there's been a lot of talk about how durable is this regime. And the top Iran experts have been saying this regime is not like Saddam's or Assad's or even Gaddafi's. It's not an Arab regime that once you kill the leader or the top, few people at the top, the 50 cards, that it's going to crumble, as Iraq did, that it's much more institutionalized. Iran has a higher level of nationalism, and that the Republican Guard is very big and it's deep and it can reconstitute itself. So that's the test that America is up against. Can it take down this regime and get a more compliant Iran?
- [06:48]
A
So I have many questions. I just want to express one of my primary sources of frustration, which is that, once again, I repeat this, the administration has done a really bad job of communicating and setting expectations, which then inevitably leads to those of us trying to sort things out, to do much more guesswork, not just in terms of what is outside of the domain of knowledge, but even the things that we should know. For example, what are the objectives? What's the strategy here? To the extent that is responsible to communicate what that strategy is.
- [07:19]
B
Right. There's an upside and a downside to that. And clearly the upside for President Trump is, is that he doesn't have his hands tied by any clear objectives. And he can decide to swerve away from this and call it a win when he wants. It gives him much more flexibility, but it does leave the nation and the world with a big question mark about what are we doing and how do we measure success? And I think it also means that the American people are going to have a very short fuse on this. Today they're excited, they're seeing all of this. People are confused. But tomorrow, they're gonna begin to carp. So it gives President Trump a really, very short Runway, and he's already Talked about a month, but let's say he's pushed that out more than his normal two weeks for things. He's gonna have to end this fairly quickly because inflation is gonna hit. Here in Oklahoma, gas prices are already up by 50 cents a gallon. I was noticing on my way to work this morning as I had to fill up, and that means that I paid $5 more for my tank of gas than I normally pay. Now, if that extends, that's going to hit inflation in a big way because it's not just my gas tank, it's my heating oil. It's all the transportation for Walmart and Amazon and so forth. Everything is made out of plastics and has plastics in them. All of that is made out of oil. So inflation is going to tick way up. And part of the reason that Trump was able to get inflation down is because he flooded the market with oil as much as he could and made it easy for oil. So that's going to hurt him in the midterms. And I think he's going to have to swerve away from this war if the Straits of Hormuz stay closed. And that's why he's offered for America to pay the insurance on any tanker going through those straits. Because oil tankers coming through the Straits of Hormuz, where 20% of all the world oil comes through there, the exported oil, that's been closed because Lloyd's of London and the big reinsurance companies said, we're not going to insure any tankers going through the Straits of Hormuz. So everything stopped and oil prices jumped up. Trump is now saying America will pay for all that insurance and any damaged tanker that goes through there. And that's another big expense. And this war is going to be very expensive. You know, having two aircraft carrier groups over there, each one is $7 million a day. But the three airplanes that were shot down are almost half a billion dollars in their own replacement costs. This is going to be very. We've sent hundreds of jets, you know, tankers that, refueling tankers, you name it, to the Middle East. It's expensive. And that price is going to begin to mount up. And I suspect we'll be paying for Israel's share of this as well.
- [10:11]
A
So there are two competing narratives that I've seen that attempt to put some order around what's unfolding, and there are variations of each one is that this was an ill advised decision on the part of the President, made out of frustration with the pace of negotiations, in part driven by Israel, Rubio suggested something similar or gave fuel to this portion of the narrative that really we were pushed into this war by Israel because they were going to attack Iran anyway and that was going to result in retaliation against US Bases. So then we preempted their preemption and that's what led to this conflict. And the second narrative that I've seen, and also I should add, in addition to this, there's speculation about how long the US And Israel can sustain Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks because we have a limited number of interceptors, not to mention that our interceptors cost significantly more than the missiles and drones being used by the Iranians. So there's a lot of speculation there. And I guess it's also a race against time. The strategy being, of course, to take out all of Iran's ability to respond so that by the time we do run out of interceptors, it isn't a problem. And again, there are variations of that narrative. The second narrative is that the Trump administration came to a conclusion at some point in the course of the negotiations that Iran simply was never going to relinquish its nuclear program and that any promises made were simply an effort to buy time on the part of Tehran to eventually acquire a nuclear capability and the means to deploy it. There's also speculation that what the Trump administration was doing is trying to neutralize Iran as a potential forward base and ally of the Chinese, who have been reportedly aiding Iran in their ballistic missile development and have been providing them a lifeline by helping build some of their infrastructure and are responsible for purchasing something like 80 to 90% of their exports. And that this is actually part of a long game strategy on the part of the White House that includes the recent extradition of Maduro and Venezuela and Trump's interests in Greenland leading into his summit with Xi in a few weeks. And that maybe this is all part of some grand bargain that he's looking to strike. I'm curious what you think of each of these narratives.
- [12:36]
B
Well, let me take the last. First to China. This is necessary in order to pin back China's ears. China has been quite diffident about moving military forces into the Middle east or really siding with Iran against the United States. Why do I say that? First of all, China has complied largely with America's sanctions on Iran. We disciplined China. First of all, Huawei was breaking sanctions and we arrested, had Canada arrest the daughter of the head of Huawei, who stayed in jail there. And then there was finally a trade because China arrested a bunch of Canadian businessmen and there was A trade to get them out. But it showed China that there's a high price to breaking sanctions. Now a few small Chinese oil companies have been getting about a million barrels a day of Iranian oil. Iran has been exporting a teeny bit of oil, but not much. It's very poor. The sanctions have worked in large part because China did not try to break the sanctions. The other major reason that China has not jumped in on the side of Iran is because China's trade with Saudi Arabia, with the uae, with the Gulf countries, even with Israel, is much bigger than its trade with Iran. It doesn't want to alienate other Middle Eastern countries by jumping in on the side of Iran. So China has largely complied with American hegemony in the Middle East. So I don't buy that argument that this is really doing damage to China because it'll undermine our own economy much more than it will undermine China's. Your first argument. Remind me of your first argument.
- [14:21]
A
So the first argument was essentially that this is a calamity, this is a mistake, this is an ill advised decision by the President made in frustration, a result of his impatience, and that it was driven in part or significantly by Israel and Israel's national security objectives and that we are going to quickly find ourselves not only in a quagmire where we have lost the ability to actually effectuate regime change or whatever it is that we want to accomplish. Again, we're guesstimating here what that is, but that we might actually find ourselves in a situation where we lose escalation, dominance and hand it to the Iranians who now are in a position to exploit the insufficient interceptors and missile defense systems and begin pounding Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and US bases and oil infrastructure in the region.
- [15:06]
B
Right. Well, you know, Michael Oren, who is Israeli Ambassador to the United States, wrote an article several days ago in which he argued we need to take out the Iranian regime. It is low hanging fruit. We've destroyed, largely destroyed Hezbollah, overturned the Assad regime, we've got the Houthis on their heels and we've bombed Iran and largely hurt their nuclear capacity. But we've left the regime in place so that it could rebuild. Sort of like a pilot light. And what we need to do is blow out the pilot light in Iranian Islamic Republic and we will have snuffed out the entire axis of resistance. And this is, you know, if we don't do it, it's sort of criminal that we would have left this strategic objective unfulfilled. And that's the argument, I think that has persuaded Washington to go along with this and persuaded President Trump to go along with this. I don't think we're going to do it. I don't think we're going to succeed in doing it. And secondly, Iran was no threat to the United States. Yes, it's a potential threat to Israel, but it's not a threat to the United States. And so in many ways we're gifting this to Israel. And that's what our Secretary of state basically said and other people have said. There's a good article just came out today by Donna Struhl in Foreign affairs in which she says Israel and the United States are shoulder to the shoulder in this. And that's not something that's new that has been being put into place for a long time because we have made Israel an integral part of CENTCOM and that we've been practicing for this sort of joint defense, regional defense for a long time. So we've been working on this and I think Israel has been working on it as well, but so have the United States of integrating the two, intelligence, counterterrorism, military. So this is a long time in coming. And we've seen our alliance with Israel built over the years in the same way that we've pursued Gaza as relentlessly as Netanyahu has in many ways. And so this is part of a long time strategy of the United States which is to really become one with the Israeli Defense Forces. And so Iran now is taking down this regime has become a common goal.
- [17:38]
A
So I want to challenge you on the use of the word threat and maybe introduce some nuance to it, because this is a common argument that Iran presented no threat to the United States. They have no ability to project power into the Western Hemisphere. But if we expand the scope of what that word means, threat, they certainly represent a threat to American interests and to America's order building attempts in the Middle east and potentially could play a role in any future conflict with China by draining attention and resources away from Asia and the South China Sea. We don't need to look very far to find a similar example in the form of North Korea. The fact that North Korea has nuclear weapons today has created an intractable problem for Washington. And anytime a nation enters the nuclear club, it is one too many. Putting aside for a moment whether or not the US And Israel can actually prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon by force, do you believe that the Iranians, if left to their own devices, would continue to pursue nuclear breakout?
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B
Look, it would be smart for Iran to have had the nuclear weapon because we wouldn't attack it like this had it had the nuclear. We haven't attacked North Korea, which as you pointed out, is a irritant to all of our whatever we want to gain in the Pacific. So the weakness of the Iranian regime makes it easy to attack. So yes, in theory, if I were an Iranian defense minister, I would have tried to get it. Now, secondly, yes, Iran is an irritant to some American interests in the Middle East. It does supply Hezbollah, it does supply the Houthis and so forth. But I'll go back to a saying of Secretary of State Kissinger, National Security Advisor Kissinger in 1973, after the 73 war. And Israel had reconquered all of its occupied territories and taken more land in the 73 War. And he was trying to work out a negotiated agreement between the Arab neighbors and Israel. And he told Golda Meir, the Prime Minister, you know, absolute security for Israel is going to mean absolute insecurity for its neighbors. Much better to work on some sort of balance of power. And he, as a realist, believed in a balance of power. And that was what he explained in his first great book on the the concert of Europe after the Napoleonic wars, et cetera. What we're doing, we're trying to do is to destroy any military that could threaten Israel and American interests. But in doing that, we've had our embassy in Saudi Arabia bombed. We've had our embassies through the Middle east being attacked. We now are paying a very high price, possibly inflation. This is going to make our debt much bigger. In a ways, I would argue that this war is going to undermine American security more than it's going to advance American security and it's going to undermine regional security. Now, the thing we haven't talked about is let's say we push Iran into civil war. And I don't bring that up as a likelihood lightly because we pushed Iraq into a civil war by throwing them out of power down to the bottom of society and catapulting the Shiites to the top in order to get regime change in Iraq. And that sparked a terrible civil war that ran for decades and caused Al Qaeda and ISIS and so forth. And it bled over into Syria. Syrian civil war. Eight million people became refugees and displaced. Libya is the same thing. It has been devastating for the region and for American interests. And what do we have in Afghanistan? We spent $8 trillion just in Afghanistan and Iraq together. And what do we gain out of it? Do we have forces? Do we have influence in either countries? Our embassies are. We've gained nothing out of it except for a large hunk of our debt. And it's weakened America. And I fear that Iran is, if it is tipped into civil war. And already you can see the beginnings of this, because the United States, Trump, just the other day had a long conversation with the Kurds in northern Iraq and is trying to organize the Kurds in Iran to fight against the central government. And this is the divide and conquer method that we used in Iraq, we used it in Syria. And it's going to, you know, if we go down that road, and we just see the beginnings of that in Iran. But if we go down that road, Iran is a country of 92 million people. Iraq was 24 million in 2003, Syria, 22 million. So Iran is a country that's four times bigger than Iraq. If we start a civil war there, which is likely, it's going to send out tens of millions of refugees around the neighborhood, and none of our allies want that. It's not going to be good for stability. It's not going to be good for the international order or for the United States.
- [22:57]
A
You know, that was going to be my next question, actually, which is that we saw recent reports that the CIA is working to arm factions of the Kurdish minority within Iran. And again, this is the thing, and I recognize that part of the job that we have as commentators or journalists, when I say we, I mean people like me, you're a professor, but you get brought on to comment is that we're inherently working with very limited amounts of information very early on as events are unfolding. But having said that, again, the administration has not properly communicated a coherent strategy. Again, I agree in principle that.
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B
But, Dimitri, we look at what's happened with our last four regime change wars, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya. It has been civil war. And, you know, the old adage about what's the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. Many Iranians say, oh, we're not like the Arab countries, we're Iranian. We've got the great empire. We've got 6,000 years of history. We're a nation. The Kurds are going to stick together. But we don't know that. And they don't know that because there has been a tight lid on Iran for the last 50 years. And Syrians told me exactly the same thing at the beginning of the Syrian uprising in 2011. I'll never forget several of my friends and I were talking about this, and they said, landis you pro Assad? You can't, you know, we need freedom. And I said, I'm not pro Assad, but I believe that the costs of this are going to be so big that we're not, you know, Syria's going to fall into civil war. And they said, no, it's not going to. We're different from Iraq. We have true nationalism. We all love each other. And that turned out to be wrong and they didn't know it. Syrians didn't know each other because they'd been under this deep dictatorship for 50 years. And that's the same situation with Iran. We don't know the outcome because there are 9 million Kurds in Iraq. I mean, in Iran, excuse me, there are 20 million Azadis, there are Baloch, There are many different. Only about 50% of Iranians are ethnic Persians. The rest are minorities. And yes, they may have a strong sense of Iranian nationalism, but if you drive any people hard enough, poor enough, destroy the central government, you don't know what wheels will fall off.
- [25:33]
A
Well, I mean, that was why I was trying to preface what I was about to say, which is that the administration began by creating this impression that they were trying to decapitate the leadership, but try to work with more moderate elements, perhaps within the artes, perhaps within, within the irgc, and follow a model that looks somewhat like Venezuela. The president even suggested that. I think he actually specifically cited Venezuela as an analog. So not exactly regime change, but oddly and weirdly enough, a quote reset in relations after you've really almost carpet bombed the country. And then we find out that they're talking about arming the Kurds, which undermines the nationalist impulse that you would be dependent on if you're looking to move away from an Islamic centered government and working with some kind of more pragmatic elements within the country. Which again suggests to me that, I mean, they're not communicating it. They're not communicating a clear what comes after. And this is the thing, Joshua, that really I wanted to get to, which is I can understand the theoretical desire to take Iran off the table, the Iran nuclear threat off the table. The United States wanted to accomplish the same thing with Iraq and Saddam Hussein, to take the weapons of mass destruction off the table, to reduce him as a threat and reset that country. I just don't understand the willingness to do it over and over again. And not only are we doing it again, but unlike Iraq, we're expecting to do it with just air power. And that's the other thing that I find extremely confusing. Because essentially the best case scenario here, the only scenario that leads to anything that would be to me, remotely acceptable to the MAGA base, which elected Trump on the premise that he was against Forever wars, is something that they hit them, they get them to agree to terminate their nuclear program, that they give them some kind of assurances that would somehow be better than the ones they gave them before. I'm just. The whole thing seems fantastical and I just have a hard time wrapping my head around it.
- [27:44]
B
Well, it is a bit fantastical because you pointed out these two outcomes, the Venezuela and the no boots on the ground. But a lot of Iranians are arguing or trying to make the argument they want America to keep on bombing because we, they say, we will be your boots on the ground, the Iranian people, and they're going to overthrow the government. But that is extremely naive. They do not have arms, they are not armed, they do not have a leadership. And the IRGC is big. It's about a million people. It is armed. It's very decentralized. The government has allowed arms to go back into homes of the irgc. So it'll be very difficult to overthrow this regime as a, you know, just by going out and demonstrating. And the regime has already demonstrated that they're willing to kill lots of people in order to suppress the people. So I don't see that as a likelihood at this point. We saw in Syria that it took 14 years to overthrow the regime and to develop a leader who was known nationally, who could take over and hold the country together as Ahmed Al Shara has appeared in Syria. And, you know, it's possible that President Trump could just say mission accomplished in a week's time, accept the fact that he has killed the top 50, 60, 70 leaders, and hope that somebody emerges who reconsiders the relationship with the United States in a Venezuela type situation. Now, that might be the best outcome for the United States and for Iran in the long run because it would avoid the civil war, it would get America out of this before inflation is run up too high and before we run up a giant debt. But President Trump seems to have really committed himself to regime change. That's what I worry about here.
- [29:48]
A
So let's talk about some of the broader implications here, Joshua, first to the region and then for the world. Turkey has come up a number of times in our discussions. I recall one specific conversation we had several years ago, in fact, this was during the first Trump administration, and it was prompted by the expansion of Turkey's military presence in northern Syria. That was Part of an effort to defend it from the threat posed by an independent Kurdish state aligned with elements of the pkk. So the obvious question in this case is, what does Turkey do in response to the US Encouraging and arming the Kurds of northern Iran, in this case, to fight on their behalf in some new civil war on Turkey's eastern border?
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B
Well, I think Turkey is telling the United States, don't push this into civil war. First of all, we don't want millions of more refugees. We accepted 4 million Syrian refugees. We're trying to send them back home. We cannot be flooded by another flood of refugees. Secondly, the Kurdish question, as you know, in some ways, it's very ironic that we're talking at this time that the United States is trying to encourage the Kurds of northern Iraq and northern Iran to go on the warpath for the United States with a promise of some kind of autonomy, independence, whatever it is that they're promising them. Because just this last month, the United States pulled the plug on its Syrian Kurdish allies. As you recall, the United States, when it wanted to Destroy ISIS In 2014, it switched from supporting the Arab opposition in Syria to supporting the Kurds because the Kurds were willing to kill isis, who were Sunni Arabs. And we did that. We armed them, we built them into a quasi independent little state in northern Syria. But this last month, we switched sides. We dumped the Kurds. We told Ahmad Al Shara, the head of this, what used to be Al Qaeda in Syria, the new president of Syria, that we would partner with him for anti ISIS counterterrorism and that we were no longer partnering with the Kurds. And he conquered all of northeast Syria, about 25% of the country, which had been held by the Kurds. So the Kurds have just taken it across the face in Syria, and now they're being asked, in a sense, to arm up, to do the same thing in Iran. So I think they're going to be very leery of putting their eggs in the American basket. But on the Turkish question, Turkey is going to be very fearful of this. Turkey has spent the last decade being worried that by arming up the Kurds in Syria, this was going to cause a renewed independence movement amongst Kurds in Turkey. And about 20% of all Turks are Kurdish, 15 to 20%. And this has been a nightmare scenario for the Turks, which is that eastern Turkey could light up in some kind of independence war and that they might lose their eastern provinces. So the last thing they want to do is see 8,9 million Kurds in Iran gain independence and get armed, because that would just rekindle all of this Kurdish nationalist desire.
- [33:14]
A
So I don't know if you saw this, but former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett recently made some remarks on camera about how Turkey is the new Iran.
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B
Yes, I have seen that.
- [33:25]
A
I mean, again, I don't understand how this kind of thinking can lead anywhere good. We haven't even completed bombing the shit out of Iran. And now already America's most powerful ally in the region, its former prime minister, is describing how there's another threat that is going to grow as a result of what we're doing in Iran. The United States still seems to have remnants in its operational framework of the unipolar period, where it seems to think that it has infinite resources and an infinite ability to impose its will on the most fractious part of the world. And I don't understand where this leads.
- [34:11]
B
I think your point is very well taken. And what happens when you knock out a major power like Iran and this access of resistance, which was sometimes called a Shiite crescent, that went from Hezbollah to Syria, the Assad regime, through Iraq, Shiite now dominated Iraq. And Iran, which was developed by Iran in order to counterbalance Israeli might and US Might, because Iran was always worried that Israel would bomb its nuclear facilities, as it has done because Israel bombed Iraqs, the Ozirik, and it bombed Syria's nuclear facilities. And it could have its way against most of its neighbors. But Iran set up a deterrent by arming Hezbollah and having Assad help him pour arms into Hezbollah because Israel was fearful that if it bombed Iran, Hezbollah would launch lots of rockets into Israel. So when Israel destroyed Hezbollah a year ago and took down the Assad regime as collateral damage, it rolled back this Shiite crescent, then bombed Iran, which allowed it, of course, to bomb Iran in the 12 Day War, and now trying to finish off the Iranian regime. What we're seeing is the regional powers beginning to realign. In a sense, those iron filings are realigning because Israel is so dominant in the Middle East. It's the new hegemon. It can bomb Lebanon, Syria, the Yemen, Houthis. It can bomb anybody. Bomb Qatar just the other day at will. And so what you're seeing is Saudi Arabia is a new access in a sense of defense, is Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which had been major competitors over who was going to lead the Sunni Islamic world and both wanted to do it, but now they put aside their competition and are really forming a new axis, if you will, to contain Israel, because they're frightened of Israel. They're frightened that Israel will bomb them. So they have been allying. The UAE has been allying with Israel. And you're seeing major competition break out between Saudi Arabia and the uae. But in part, that's because they're building this new alliance that goes up Turkey, Syria, which is indebted to both Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. And Israel is very worried about it. But that means that once we bomb Iran, all eyes are going to turn to Turkey, as you said. And Israel is already preparing the way to look at Turkey as a major enemy and to discipline this Erdogan's government. And that'll become the focus once Iran is largely turned into a rubble heap because Israel does not want any other major power in the region that can challenge it. And Israel has accused Turkey of being nice to Hamas, entertaining Hamas leaders in Istanbul, allowing them to have houses there, speaking out against Israel, saying it's genocide. Erdogan has annoyed Israel to great extent and spoken out against Israel. So this brings us back to the Kissinger world of balance of power. America should be fostering a balance of power. We cannot turn everybody into our ally and make everybody subservient to Israel. We have to accept a balance of power. And a balance of power is good because it restrains everybody and it will ensure a certain level of stability. You can never have 100% subservience from your neighbors. You do need a balance of power, and that requires diplomacy and delicate understanding of international power.
- [38:15]
A
So one quick observation and then a couple of questions to close us off. Joshua, because I wanted to keep this relatively short so our listeners had a chance to get an update from you and a few of our other guests during the course of this week and next week. Iran's not popular in the region. I mean, that's obvious. It isn't just Israel or the United States that would be happy to see the nuclear threat, the potential threat of a nuclear Iran disappear and a more reasonable actor emerge. I just think that what, I think what we're talking about here is just a question of, like, what's possible. And in my lifetime, I have seen this region increasingly fracture and collapse in on itself. We saw it with Iraq, we've seen it with Syria, and it just, it continues to grow. And I will be honest, I did not expect this. You know, I did not expect when the president was negotiating the nuclear deal and he was sending assets into the region, I didn't actually believe this was going to happen because I just couldn't wrap my head around it. And there are smart people, smarter than me, that see a through line here for success and reasons for optimism. And so what I want to ask you in closing, and I want to ask this to all of my guests who come on to discuss this, what is the most plausible optimistic scenario? And then what is the most plausible pessimistic scenario that you foresee?
- [39:38]
B
Right. Well, I think the optimistic scenario is that President Trump bombs Iran, kills the top leadership, finds someone or a few Iranian leaders who are willing to take the reins of power and who can take the reins of power in Iran. And in a sense, what many secular Iranians and pro Western Iranians have wanted for decades is some form of democracy in Iran and Iran as political science call it, a hybrid regime, because it's not just a theocracy. Yes, it is a theocracy. And the Supreme Guide had power, well, consolidated his hand, but he also allowed for a parliament and a president that is elected. Now, that side of government did not have real power. The military, the judiciary, so forth, was firmly in the hands of the Supreme Guide and the theocracy. But the ideal outcome from a Western point of view, and I think from the point of view of many of the upper class Iranians, is to really have that theocratic side of the government collapse and be replaced by the parliament and Iran. The big advantage that Iran has over the Arab dictatorships is it really has a history of elections. It has a democratic tradition with the first Iranian Revolution of 1909, the democratic revolution, a constitutional revolution of 1909. So it has its long tradition. And that tradition could in theory be the winner. Now, the downside of this is that that doesn't happen. The IRGC is too strong. It remains in power. Or that the IRGC is broken and the country falls apart into civil war, as we've already discussed. And those are what people fear. And of course, it gets our anxiety up and we tend to focus on those more. But the upside would be that Iran emerges out of this with some level of electoral and constitutional politics. But it seems like such a small opening. And can it really be done through bombing a country? We've never done this through bombing a country. Now, I suppose some people will say, no, that's not true. Look at Japan, look at Germany. We destroyed them, we occupied them, and they turned out to be democracies. Constantly the hope. But in the Middle east, we haven't seen that in our last four regime change wars.
- [42:13]
A
So what are you looking out for? I mean, what do you think that people should be focused on going forward if they want to try to understand where this conflict is going.
- [42:24]
B
And it's broad, the Iranian opposition. And that's what we don't know anything about. The big question is who are we talking to in Iran? Are we talking to anybody in Iran? Who is the Iranian opposition? We've seen Trump turn away from the son of the Shah. He says, and I presume this is a CIA saying we need to find somebody inside the country. Now he did say that they were thinking of several people in the top leadership of Iran.
- [42:54]
A
Apparently they're all dead.
- [42:55]
B
They're all dead. As the president explained, we did too good a job and we killed them all. So the question then is who are we talking to? Who is the Iranian opposition? Is there an Iranian opposition? And we don't know the answers to that today. So that's why I think if people run to black, they begin to see dangers out there because we don't really know. And that's the big question mark.
- [43:21]
A
Joshua, thank you so much for coming on such short notice. If people want to follow you, follow your writings, Twitter, give out your Twitter handle. And where do you publish these days? Where can people read your op eds?
- [43:32]
B
Well, Twitter is Joshua Landis with an underscore between Joshua and Landis. And I've published article this year in Foreign affairs which is a sort of go to place but follow my Twitter I will put anything I publish on that. So that's the way to see what's going on, particularly in Syria, but in the broader Middle East.
- [43:55]
A
And I want to again recommend people go back and listen to your previous appearances. You were on for episode 106, which was titled Us Withdrawal and the End of the Rules Based Global Order. And you were on again after that to discuss the Turkish move into Syria, into Rojava, and then again more recently to discuss the new security order taking place in the Middle east after the October 7 attacks. Thank you so much. It was great speaking with you again, Dmitri.
- [44:21]
B
Always great to be on.
- [44:23]
A
If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to HiddenForces IO subscribe and join our premium feed. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces genius community, you can also do that through our subscriber page. Today's episode was produced by me and edited by Stylianos Nicolaou. For more episodes, you can check out our website at Hidden Free Forces IO you can follow me on Twitter at kofinas and you can email me at info@hiddenforcesio as always. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.