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- [00:00]
A
Rabbi I'm Rabbi Ami Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. And you're listening to in these times.
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Shmone mataim unit 8200 is Israel's elite signals intelligence and cyber warfare unit, comparable to America's NSA. 8200's young recruits are chosen for their aptitude for rapid learning and quick analysis. Many go on to top roles in technology or launch companies of their own. Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk, Viber, Wix, Wiz, to name a few. It should come as no surprise my guest today, the brilliant and influential political and global affairs analyst Barack ravid, is an A200 alumnus. Barack's reporting for the digital news outlet Axios as well as CNN and Israel's Channel 12, has shed light on the diplomacy behind the headlines, from the Trump administration's Abraham Accords to the Biden administration's handling of Iran's nuclear program and the war between Israel and Hamas. Now Based in Washington, D.C. he continues to cover foreign policy, including the war in Ukraine and the ever shifting dynamics of the Middle East. Barack, thank you for joining me and welcome to in these Times.
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C
Hi, Omi.
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A
I'm very eager to talk to you about all of the amazing historic events that are unfolding daily beforehand. Though you're such a prominent journalist, I thought I'd ask you what's it like to be a journalist? You're in D.C. right?
- [01:46]
C
Yes, yes.
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A
What's it like to be a journalist in D.C. how do you get so many people to talk to you?
- [01:54]
C
First, It's a great job. I don't know if I recommend it. It's not for everybody. I like it very much. I've been doing this for 20 years. If I didn't like it, I wouldn't continue. It's the only job that you get paid in order to just gossip with people. I don't know any other job that you actually get paid for doing that you travel around the world, you meet interesting people, you talk to them, then you write something about it. Seems like a pretty good deal to me. But again, it's not for everybody because there's also a lot of competition, a lot of pressure, and especially if you want to succeed and you want to break news, it's sort of addicting. And if you don't get a story for a day or two, you can really start to feel the heat.
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A
You look at other people who get stories and you say, why not me?
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C
Exactly. And so obviously what you need to do is to work harder. But you know, it creates all kinds of Pressures. And when you get a story, you know, you get your fix and it feels great. But after 15 minutes, you realize that this is a marathon, it's not a sprint. And you need to do this for a very long time and to keep up doing it for a very long time. And it's not easy. There's a lot of burnout. But it's still, again, if I didn't have fun, I wouldn't continue on doing it.
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A
How do you get so many people to talk to you? You're constantly breaking stories. Is it a relationship built over many years? People have their own incentives to want to be in the newspapers.
- [03:33]
C
It's a lot of experience. It's a lot of relationship that you build over time. Many of the people I talk to are people that I've known for, some of them for 10 years, some of them for 15 years, some of them for 20 years. I have a lot of interlocutors that I met for the first time when I was 25 and they were 25, and they were very junior people, either in the White House or in the State Department or at some embassy of another country or in the Israeli military. And 20 years later, they are either ambassadors or generals or assistants to the president. And I don't think there's anything that can replace this, you know, long term relationships and trust that you build with people for a long, long time. You can't do instant journalism. I don't buy that. The real stories come from people who know you, who trust you, who respect you. Some of them are even friends, you know, you become friends with them along the way. If right now somebody who's like 21 years old, out of college, wants to be a journalist and thinks that, you know, he'll just come in, he'll have the greatest story of his life. I'm not saying it's not possible because many stories just happen by chance. But if someone who's thinking of going into journalism will ask me this, I will tell him, you need to work long term, start building relationships. And if you do that, then in 5, 10, 15 years, you'll have a lot of success.
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A
And do you find that people always tell you the truth or what they tell you is what they believe to be the truth?
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C
It depends.
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A
You develop an instinct over time.
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C
Yeah, it's part of getting this experience to know who you can trust, who tells you the truth, who. Who tells you his version of the story, who's spinning you, who's lying to you. It's part of the business to try and differentiate between all of those. And to take out of this haystack just the things that you figure out that are most accurate and describe the real story in the best way.
- [05:54]
A
Do you feel that the Western media has a thing against Israel or the Jews or the Jewish community? It's a big deal in Jewish communal life here and we constantly feel that the Western media has something against Israel. Do you find that to be the case? Is there some grounding on that or is that just our oversensitivity?
- [06:17]
C
Look, I don't know. It's a very personal thing and each person feels differently about that. I think that overall, at least from my experience in covering the war over the last two years, I don't think that the media in the US was biased against Israel. That's not my sense. From a professional point of view, I think there was criticism and I think some of the criticism might have been very harsh, but a lot of it was, I think, legitimate. So I, at least from my point of view, I think that overall, English speaking media covered the war in a reasonably professional way.
- [07:05]
A
So getting to the war, it looks like we're in a new phase now. It looks like hopefully the 20 point Trump peace plan will, with fits and starts, actually reach some kind of fruition. Where do we stand on that now?
- [07:21]
C
So I think we only started. You know, sometimes something good happens and then we take it for granted. And after two days we say, okay, what have you done for me lately? But 20 live hostages came out of Gaza. 11 bodies of dead hostages came out of Gaza. There are still more than a dozen bodies of deceased hostages in Gaza. So the work is not done yet. There's a ceasefire that, you know, there were several violations on both sides, but overall the number of people killed over the last two weeks decreased dramatically. Humanitarian aid started going in in higher quantities and numbers. And it seems that at the moment, both sides overall, in general want to maintain the ceasefire and want to talk about the next phase. So I think that it has been quite successful so far. That's at least my take. But there are huge challenges ahead right now. From 20 points that were in the Trump plan, I think we implemented four. So there's a lot of more work to do. But this is not something that will happen within days or even weeks. This is a process that will take months, even years to demilitarize. Gaza is not something you do in two days. That's a multi year process.
- [08:54]
A
So how is that going to work? I guess the heart of the matter from the Israeli perspective is disarming Hamas and demilitarizing Gaza and in the longer term trying to create some kind of educational system that is more sympathetic to coexistence, I guess you can call it. So just in the shorter term, is Hamas going to voluntarily disarm and how is the demilitarization going to happen in Gaza?
- [09:23]
C
I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen in the future. But Hamas did not voluntarily agree to the deal that we know because it happened. They didn't just wake up one morning and say, all right, take those 20 hostages, no problem.
- [09:38]
A
So they were coerced by force.
- [09:40]
C
I mean, it was a combination of force, diplomacy, the fact that they understood that it's in their interest to give up the hostages. It's not one thing, it's something that accumulated over two years. So I think at the end of the day, it's about the combination between diplomacy and military pressure that gets you the result that you want. The question is if people have the attention span and the bandwidth to engage in the diplomacy that is needed right now in order to do that. Because it's going to be a prolonged process. It's not magic, it's not going to happen overnight. And you never get 100% of what you want. So the question is, do we only aim at Hamas giving up until the last bullet or the last AK47, or do we say, you know what if they don't have rockets, if they don't have tunnels, if they don't have anti tank missiles, that's not a bad result. So I think this is the tension between maximalist approach and a more pragmatic one and everything that's, that's in the middle. And I think that's the question, which approach the parties are going to take. Same with Hamas. You know, they can take a maximalist approach that says we're not giving up on anything, or they can say, you know, what if we don't want this war to resume, if you don't want to be eradicated, if we don't want more Palestinians to be killed, we're willing to give up on X, Y, Z, but you know, we'll keep some other stuff. So I think this is what we're going to see on over the next few months, this negotiation that at the end of it, neither side is going to get 100% of what it wants. But I think the bigger question is what the policy going forward is going to be, the Israeli government policy. Because the reason we got to where we are right now is because the policy was to strengthen Hamas. For the last 15 years, this was the Israeli government policy under Netanyahu to strengthen Hamas and weaken the Palestinian Authority.
- [11:59]
A
Because he felt that that distanced the two state solution.
- [12:02]
C
That's one reason. There are other reasons. So that's a big part of the policy that got us to where we are. And now the question is if there'll be a change in this policy. Because at the moment, the Israeli government policy is, yes, we don't want Hamas in Gaza, but we also don't want the Palestinian Authority in Gaza. So we want something else and we don't know what it is. And if that's going to continue, then we might end up with Hamas in Gaza.
- [12:38]
A
Who's going to do the disarming? The president periodically over the last several days has threatened Hamas that if they don't disarm, we're going to have to disarm them. Who is he referring to? Who's actually going to do the disarming? The international coalition, the idf, the Americans?
- [12:53]
C
I don't think that at the moment there is anybody else other than the IDF that has the willingness and the capability to disarm Hamas. But I also know that the way that the Trump administration wants to work on disarming Hamas at the moment is not through military action, but through getting a diplomatic deal that will reach some sort of an arrangement about Hamas's weapons. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take time.
- [13:28]
A
What do you think is the likeliest scenario, say, if we were to have a conversation a year from now?
- [13:35]
C
If there's one thing I learned on my job is that predictions on what's going to happen a year from now are worth very little. I'm not sure we can predict what's going to happen tomorrow. So I think we need to look at what's going on right now. And right now there is an effort to first maintain the ceasefire, stabilize it, stabilize the situation in Gaza and start building on it to get to the next phases. You know, it's good to have an end game in our heads and a vision. And I think there is this vision. It exists, at least the Trump administration has it. But it doesn't mean that a year from now this is where we are going to get. It's a very dynamic situation. I think there could be still be a lot of turns in the road.
- [14:30]
A
Well, let me ask in this way. If you were to project the optimum progress over, say, the period of the next year, what do you think, reasonably, is the optimum that the international community and Israelis and Palestinians can hope for.
- [14:49]
C
I think the optimum obviously is for some sort of new realignment in the region of Israel and Arab and Muslim countries were willing and the Palestinian Authority working together to build something new in Gaza. That's at least in my opinion, the optimal scenario. But for that to happen, everybody must be willing to work on it. I'm not sure that we're there at the moment. So I think more realistically we will be still in some sort of a transition period from the war to some new governance and security arrangements in Gaza. I think this transition period will be pretty long.
- [15:42]
A
What I gather is that the American longer term strategy is some kind of grand bargain under 21st century Pax americana, where you have the moderate Arab states, Persian Gulf states reaching some kind of peace accord or some kind of accord with Israel, all under the American rubric with some kind of gesture on the part of the Israeli government towards Palestinian self determination. First of all, is that the long term American goal? And secondly, is it achievable in your view?
- [16:15]
C
I mean, first it is the goal because that's what the Trump plan says, you know, article 19, article 20, that's what they talk about. But I think that at the moment, I find it hard to see that as long as the current government in Israel is in power, you'll be able to really do something about it. Because the Israeli government policy at the moment is still to object, oppose and choke any steps towards Palestinian statehood and self determination. And a lot of people focus on what's going on in Gaza. The situation in the west bank over the last two years has worsened dramatically. And if there's no change in dynamic in the west bank, then I don't see any regional peace deal taking place.
- [17:11]
A
Mm. I was surprised in the initial days and frankly throughout the last two years how quickly the opposition to Israel centered around the Prime Minister himself and the government that this, you know, very quickly it became Bibi's war. And the criticism focused on him personally as well, of course, by extension to the government itself. What is Prime Minister Netanyahu's reputation now in Washington and in the halls of power in America?
- [17:47]
C
So I think a, it's not only in the U.S. i think that's, you have a big constituency in Israel that, you know, after the country was united in the first few months of the war, at certain point, more and more people thought that the way Netanyahu is handling the war only prolongs it and for the wrong reasons. And you saw it in many public opinion polls in Israel that the majority of Israelis thought that Netanyahu took a lot of decisions about the war according to political survival considerations. That's not me saying that's what people said in the polls. I think both the Biden administration and the Trump administration sort of thought the same. And I think the Trump administration, the first few months gave Netanyahu a lot of credit to do basically whatever he wants in Gaza. But as time passed, they realized that if they're going to continue letting Netanyahu do whatever he wants, then they're going to get stuck in this war for the next four years. And I think that's something that's changed over the last two or three months in the thinking in the White House. And I think that the Israeli strike in Qatar in September really proved to a lot of people that Netanyahu is taking the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons. And I think that's when President Trump basically decided to restart pressing on Netanyahu to end the war.
- [19:33]
A
Looking back now two years, I suppose you could say that Israel had many of its war aims achieved, but overall, at a huge price of international diplomacy and Israel's standing and reputation, especially in the west. Can you evaluate who won this war? Or at the very least, what did Israel accomplish and what did Hamas and the Palestinians accomplish?
- [20:00]
C
Well, I don't think anybody won this war. I think Yikya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, managed to give Israel a huge blow that maybe no other Arab leader ever managed to do, not even Egypt during the Yom Kippur War.
- [20:24]
A
A huge blow, meaning just the numbers of people killed and taken hostage and the trauma.
- [20:30]
C
It's more than that. It's obviously also the fact that they invaded Israel and murdered and kidnapped and burned and all of that. But I'm talking about the broader sense of managing to deliver such a blow to Israel's image as a regional superpower. This is something that I think no Arab leader managed to do. What Sinwar did, this was even a bigger blow than the Yom Kippur War. When you think about it, the cost was that by conducting the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Yechiasinwa inflicted the most massive killing and displacement of Palestinians since the Nakba in 1948. That's what's so insane in what he did, because he knew that this is what's going to happen. Ehisinwar knows, knew Israel very well. He was one of the biggest Israel experts in the Palestinian society.
- [21:43]
A
He knew that the OR estimated that the damage that the IDF eventually did to Gaza would materialize.
- [21:52]
C
I have no doubt that he knew exactly what's going to be the reaction.
- [21:57]
A
So what did he want to accomplish? And what did he accomplish?
- [22:01]
C
I think that in his mind, he wanted to deliver this blow and create in the entire region the image that Israel can be defeated and destroyed. And then this would push Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Iranians, other pro Iranian militias in Syria, in other places, that will push all of them to now gang up on Israel and that way destroy it. I think that was his vision.
- [22:30]
A
And he failed in that. Right?
- [22:32]
C
He failed in that because A, he did not coordinate the attack well enough with his allies, and B, I think that even his allies, the Iranians, the Hezbollah, they were also shocked by how quote, unquote, successful the invasion was. And it took them time to get their act together and decide what they want to do. And until they did that, Israel managed to send enough forces to the north, for example, to the border with Lebanon and the border with Syria, so that they saw that trying to just like join the invasion now with their forces would be less successful because they can't catch Israel off guard. But again, in Yehoshua's head, this was the scenario he was looking for to conduct this invasion, create in the Arab media and in social media in the region this image of Israel is crumbling and therefore let's all join. And it was not successful enough, luckily. And therefore it took time for Hezbollah and for the Iranians to actually figure out what to do. And Israel had enough time to defend itself against further invasions and attacks. And also I think what I wanted to do is to radicalize the conflict in such a way that the possibility of a peace settlement would be much harder to do afterwards. And I think he succeeded, I think in that he succeeded because October 7 changed the thinking of Israelis in a profound way. The trauma will last for a long time, and the trust in Israeli society that peace is possible has diminished dramatically. And in that sense, I think this was a huge success for Sinwar.
- [24:43]
A
You know, you mentioned that's one of the things that constantly struck me in my many visits to Israel since 10-7-23, with all of the damage and with all of the catastrophic harm that was done, what could have been, had this been coordinated between Hamas, Hezbollah, Hamas in the west bank, maybe the Houthis, whatever, but with the Iranian ballistic potential, it really might have spelled the end of Israel or at least damage in the amounts of tens of thousands of people killed, many more, hundreds of people taken hostage to Lebanon. Do you agree with that? From A certain perspective. The silver lining was he didn't manage to stimulate Israel's other very radical enemies to invade at the same time in a coordinated way.
- [25:39]
C
Yeah, I think that was. If that was more successful, I think the situation would have been much worse. I don't know if I would go as far as saying that it would have been a existential threat for Israel, but it would definitely make what happened along the Gaza border look pretty small to what could have happened in the Lebanon border. And obviously, if Iran would launch hundreds of missiles at the same time. But I think historians would have to ask themselves, why didn't Sinwar coordinated better with his allies in the region? I think maybe because he thought that this way Israel would find out about it. But I think that's one of the main questions I asked myself of like, how did he go for such an attack without enough coordination with his allies?
- [26:34]
A
So just elaborate that a little bit, because there's this phrase that journalism is the first draft of history. Right. And you're very plugged in and you've analyzed this for many years now, and we know that Israeli intelligence penetrated Hezbollah and Iran to the maximum degree. Do you think that was the reason why they didn't coordinate it? Because Sinwar suspected that if it were better coordinate, Israel would have revealed what was going on?
- [27:06]
C
I think definitely this was one of the reasons, but I don't know the whole story behind it. I think there were discussions between Sinwar and the Iranians and Hezbollah in the months leading to the war. He spoke to them of what he called the big project, that this was the attack. But I think Israeli intelligence misread it. Because when Israeli intelligence looked at Iran, it looked at certain things. When it looked at Hezbollah, it looked at certain things. It did not look enough at this angle of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran Triangle and their cooperation. It didn't put it as a priority. And therefore it misread the discussions that did happen between them in the months before. The discussions were not about the exact date and time, but strategically, Sinwar did speak to the Iranians and to Hezbollah about the big project that means this invasion.
- [28:18]
A
So one of the consequences of the war, and you said this was one of the central war aims of Sinwar, was to create this sense of vulnerability, both domestically in Israel, but also in terms of the surrounding enemies. Now, looking back over the last two years and the outcome of the fighting, do you think that both internally, domestically in Israel, as well as from the perspective of those who seek Israel's harm in the neighborhood, do you think Israel Restored all of its deterrence, a modicum of its deterrence. Where do you think we stand now?
- [28:58]
C
I think militarily Israel had huge successes. It's clear Hamas today is not able to conduct another October 7th attack. Its ability to launch missiles at Israel has. It's not zero, but it's not a lot more than zero. Hezbollah has been degraded significantly, is super deterred these days. And Israel has been over the last year continued conducting strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon on a daily basis without Hezbollah responding at all. And this is so the, the process of degrading Hezbollah continues all the time. The Iranian nuclear program has been rolled back years. The Iranian ability to produce missiles has been diminished. The pro Iranian access in the region overall has been weakened. So militarily there have been a lot of successes. The question is, has anything changed strategically? And how do you create a strategic change that will be more long lasting and not just, okay, we bought ourselves a few years until they all regroup and rearm and rebuild. And this is something you cannot do with airstrikes. This is something you need to do with diplomacy in political decisions. And at the moment I think that while on the military side, big things were done on the side of diplomacy and strategy. I think we see that there's a lot more that needs to be done.
- [30:45]
A
And domestically, the Israeli sense of security was fundamentally shaken. Not only of course on October 7th and in the weeks and months, but I think possibly lasting to today and many years going forward. And that was one of the promises of Zionism, that yes, of course people would continue to hate Jews, there would be assaults against Jews, we would have to defend ourselves. But the kind of mass pogrom and slaughter and savagery that we saw in the past of Jewish history was not going to happen again. And that was what Zionism guaranteed to Israeli citizens. And that was fundamentally shaken, that assumption, that bargain between Israeli citizens and the state. Do you agree with that? And where do we stand on that?
- [31:38]
C
So I think this would stay with Israelis for a long time. It's not something that's going to go away. But at the same time, I think there's a lot of sense with many Israelis that they managed to again to restore deterrence and that the enemy today is far weaker than it was on October 6th. The enemy writ large in the entire region. So it's a bit complex because people know that the security situation or that the threats today have been diminished because of the war of the last two years. But I think that the only overall feeling of security, when people wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night. Whether they feel that they are in a secure place, I think that is still shaken.
- [32:36]
A
And that of course, affects the world Jewish community and American Jewish community as well. Because on some level the American Jewish community related to Israel as if the era of existential threats against Israel was behind us. Completely reoriented the instinct and the emotions of the American Jewish community. That part that's supportive of Israel.
- [33:00]
C
Yeah, but again, I think, to me, I don't think Israel was under existential threat. Okay? It went through something terrible, okay. But on October 8, Israel was still the strongest military power in the radius of 1500 kilometers. It was a military power that got a huge blow. Okay? It was a military power that was exposed as being not ready enough and not prepared for an attack. That's all true. But it was still a military power that fought back pretty quickly and, you know, turned the tables on all of its enemies in quite a significant way. So this is what I'm saying. It's a, it's a very complex thing because people ask themselves, how is this the same IDF that got caught off guard on October 7th and, and allowed this massacre to take place? How is this the same IDF that took out the Iranian military program in 12 days, that took out Hezbollah? How is this the same military and it is the same military. It's the same people. We did not, on October 8th, we did not take out a new military and, and brought it to fight. No, it's the same people. But I think this is why October 7th in many ways was a failure that was both an operational military failure, an intelligence failure and a policy failure. And the culmination of those three got us to this very, very bad place. If only one of them, maybe things would have looked differently. It was the combination between those three failures.
- [34:50]
A
One of the consequences of this two year war is a substantial deterioration of Israel's standing in the west and in the United States. Are you worried about that?
- [35:02]
C
I'm very worried about that because I don't think that the current Israeli government is able to take the decisions needed in order to change the current situation. I mean, the policy in Gaza over the last two years. A lot of the decisions that were made directly led to Israel's isolation in the world. A decision in March by the government to stop all humanitarian aid to Gaza for almost 11 weeks. It is clear today that this decision A brought Gaza to the brink of famine and B, led to a total diplomatic collapse for Israel and to the wave of recognition of Palestine by more than a dozen countries. And to the President of the United States saying that people in Gaza are starving and, you know, putting much more pressure on the Israeli government. And this was a decision that was clear to everybody. When the Israeli cabinet took this decision, they knew what they were doing. It wasn't that they said, oh, we can't believe that when we decided to stop aid from going in, that a few weeks later people won't have food. They knew what they were doing. The same way with the decision to flatten Gaza. It was a decision, was a political decision. It was an order to the idf. The Minister of defense himself said it on the record. And when you look at the systematic devastation and the systematic displacement and you add to it serious discussions in the Israeli government for months about forcing Palestinians out of Gaza and about trying to displace all the Palestinians to a very narrow place near the border with Egypt until they'll agree to voluntarily immigrate. And when you saw ministers in the government saying on the record, let's nuke Gaza, you know, I'm not cherry picking here. When you look at the overall policy over the last two years, it was a policy that led us to where we are now. This did not happen by accident.
- [37:24]
A
So do I understand you might be implying this, that Israel's reputation in the west can't be salvaged with this constellation of political forces in government? Elections have to happen in 2026. Now, the current thinking is sometime in June. Is it your position that unless Israel's government changes, it is going to continue to have its reputation deteriorate in the West?
- [37:51]
C
Look, this government is in power for three years now. There's a record that shows that since this government came to power, situation only got worse. I mean, the economy is worse, Israel's international standing is worse. Israel's security situation is worse. It's not an opinion, it's facts. And at least two parties in the current coalition want to resume the war. They want to occupy Gaza, they want to build settlements, they want to force the Palestinians out. They would like to do the same thing in the West Bank. And those two parties are very dominant within this coalition. And a lot of the lawmakers from the Likud from the ruling party actually think the same way. So you're in this situation where Netanyahu is the most moderate element within this coalition and he's the prime minister and he's calling the shots, but he's also, and we saw that for two years, getting dragged again and again and again and again to do what his ultra nationalist and Jewish supremacist coalition partners tell him to do because of political survival considerations.
- [39:08]
A
Is there a difference in your mind between fundamental difference between the Biden administration's approach to the war and the Trump administration's approach?
- [39:18]
C
Yeah, well, there are a lot of differences, obviously, but there are also a lot of similarities.
- [39:23]
A
Do you think, for example, that Biden or Harris would have bombed the Iranian nuclear facilities?
- [39:29]
C
First, Biden considered it during the transition in December of 2024. A lot of his people were in favor of doing it. He decided against it, I think, and I know that a lot of his people think it was a mistake. You know, whether Harris would have done it or not, I really don't know. I mean, it's really hypothetical. Donald Trump did it only after he saw that a the Israeli attack was successful and only after Israel cleaned out all the air defenses, and only after he made sure that this does not escalate to a broader war. In that sense, by the way, this is exactly what a U.S. president should do. He used U.S. military power to do what nobody else could. He didn't use US Military power just to do something other people could. He saw, okay, there are those targets. I'm the only one who has the bombs. I'm going to come, I'm going to do this, and then I'm going to shut it down. And that's what he did.
- [40:43]
A
So that's my last question. What actually, in your view, and you talk to a lot of people who know more than casual observers, what is the extent of the damage to the Iranian nuclear facilities?
- [40:56]
C
I think it's significant, and I think you should look at it in a broader sense, not just about what happened to the Fordo underground enrichment facility or what happened to the Natanz underground facility. It's much broader because, I mean, the damages to the Iranian nuclear program are multifaceted. First, Israel took out the Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 of Iran's nuclear experts. So doesn't mean that Iran doesn't have other nuclear experts. But the people who are the most knowledgeable, most experienced in the Iranian nuclear program are gone. And that kind of knowledge and experience, we talked about it, you know, experience in journalism, it's the same thing when you're a nuclear scientist. There's a difference if you've been doing this for 40 years or you've been doing this for four years, so, you know, this base of knowledgeable people and experienced people is gone. Second, the facilities themselves have been significantly damaged. It doesn't mean that the Iranians wouldn't be able to rebuild it. But to do it, you need to take a political decision to do it. B, you know, it's an investment of billions of billions of dollars. It's not that simple to just start rebuilding. Okay. People say, oh, if they start rebuilding, it will take them a year to rebuild. Yeah. But you need to actually get to the point that you decide to rebuild. And as we see, the Iranians are not so fast to take that decision. And I also think that more broadly, the Israel strike also hit centrifuge building facilities and R and D facilities. And so it's not just the Fordo or Natanz or Isfan. It's. I think you need to look at it holistically and see that overall, the Iranians today don't have the capacity to enrich. For the first time in I don't know how many years, the Iranians do not have the capacity to enrich uranium.
- [42:54]
A
So they were substantially set back.
- [42:56]
C
You know, Trump said obliterated, got a lot of criticism for it. You can argue what obliterated means. Exactly. But in the macro, he's right.
- [43:10]
A
Yeah. And just final question. Can't Iran just simply buy nuclear weapons from, say, Pakistan or North Korea first?
- [43:21]
C
I would be. I'm highly skeptical that Pakistan would sell a nuclear weapon to Iran first because Pakistan is a Sunni Muslim country, very close to Saudi Arabia and very close to the US So I don't see that. It's not that simple. It's not that simple to just, you know, buy a nuclear bomb. And for the Iranians, the nuclear program was not just about, okay, let's have a nuclear bomb somewhere. I think it had much broader strategic goal of projecting power in the region, both military power and soft power, of being a nuclear power country with the technological knowledge to implement the nuclear fuel cycle and have this base of scientists, physicists, chemists, all the experts you need. So I think for the Iranians was much bigger than just having a bomb. And I know that because they did not have one. Okay. They had a huge nuclear program, but they still didn't have the bomb. And this, to me says that it was much broader than just, you know, whether you have a bomb or not.
- [44:44]
A
And finally, do you want to say something to American Jews who care about Israel? Should we be optimistic and how should we participate in this phase of Jewish history?
- [44:56]
C
Look, you know, I'm not. It's not my place to give lectures to American Jews, especially that, I think, as, you know, Israelis. And that's something that, you know, I knew Intellectually, but I felt figured out in a much more profound way in the last two years that I live in America. Israelis and American Jews come from different points of view. We're the same family, but we don't look at the world the same way in many ways and on many things. And as you know, inside the Jewish community in the US there are at least, what, 2 million opinions, maybe 5 million opinions. So in Israel there are what, also 9 million opinions? But overall, at least to me, what's important is that people would still feel that they can identify with Israel. And that's, to me, that's the biggest threat, that's the biggest challenge. Because I know that there are a lot of American Jews that felt that they cannot identify. That's what people felt in the last year. A lot of people felt it. That's not a good situation, by the way. There are a lot of Israelis who felt that they cannot identify with a lot of things that happened over the last year. To me, that's the most important thing for any Israeli government to understand, that you cannot rule in a way that makes Jews around the world feel that they don't want to be associated with this. And I think many of the decisions that were taken over the last year made more and more Jews in America feel that they don't want to be associated with this. And that's the biggest threat. I hope that now with the war over, the tide will turn, but we'll have to see.
- [47:02]
A
Barack Ravid, first of all, thank you for taking the time. Keep up the great work that you do. We learn something from you practically every day. And it's an honor to be able to spend this hour with you.
- [47:16]
C
Thank you so much. It was my pleasure.
- [47:24]
B
I want to expand on a point that Barak made. I remember those early hours of October 7, 2023 vividly. I caught the television news coverage before leaving home for our synagogue Simcha Torah services and assumed that as horrible as it looked, Israel would soon repel these fiends and crush their leaders. But as I toured Israel frequently over the past two years, my understanding deepened and my mood darkened. In addition to the enormous, unprecedented destruction of lives, livelihoods and property that I saw and the searing, unrelenting, soul crushing national trauma that still cracks my heart, I now realize that with all this devastation and anguish, I cannot shake the feeling that we lucked out. That as bad as it was, it might have been calamitously worse. Historians might look back and mark October 7th as the day that could have been. What would have happened had the entire Iranian Ring of Fire meticulously and patiently constructed over 20 years, attacked all at once and from every direction. As Barak mentioned, for reasons still not fully understood, only Hamas attacked from Gazan that day. But imagine what would have happened if at 6:29 on Shabbat Simchatorah morning, the full battle plans of Iran had been unleashed on the sleeping country. Israel the size of New Jersey would have been paralyzed and might have been overwhelmed. Tens of thousands would have been killed. The genocidal fantasies harbored and nurtured for decades by the world's most vicious death cults might actually have materialized. I've spoken with literally hundreds of Israelis who endured such heart rending tragedies. Relatives of those murdered returned hostages stolen from their living rooms and bedrooms, citizens evacuated from their homes. And I have walked the blood soaked grounds of the kibbutzim and entered the incinerated homes of entire families, exterminated, the stench of extinction penetrating every pore of my body. And I pondered over and over again, why is it that so many people, non Jews, but also Jews, diminished Israeli suffering to such an extent that within two weeks of October 7, it was as if the cause and precipitating event of this tragic war had been completely forgotten even while hundreds of Israeli hostages were held captive. If your existence is not at stake, if you do not feel threatened personally, you see the world differently than those on the front lines. Terror feels different reading about it in Brooklyn than experiencing it in Berri. To all those who truly care, who yearn for the day of coexistence, stay humble. Remember that our lives are governed not only by macro politics for so many Israelis. At the end of the day, after all the debating points have been made, there's just you, your family, your friends, your home, your village, and terrorists who want to kill you up on the ridge, on the hill. Jewish history has proven conclusively that it is far better for Jews to have power and agonize over its moral use than to be powerless and at the mercy of the dark lords. Jewish vulnerability is the impetus to widespread Jew hatred, not Jewish power. I agree with Barak's last words that American Jews need an Israel that is decent, democratic and pursues peace with which to identify an Israel that constantly extends its hand to the other side, despite the ongoing rejection now a century long. And therefore, I urge fellow Jews to redouble their efforts supporting those in Israel who reflect their values and double down in strengthening the American Jewish community at home. Whatever you do, do not disengage or heaven forbid join our anti Zionist enemies who seek our elimination. But we also need to learn to love ourselves again. Until next time. This is in these times Sa.