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Netanyahu’s long game in Iran
00:25:13
The Israel-Iran war has stunned the world. But for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a war with Iran and an attack on the nation’s nuclear facilities was months in the making.
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- [00:02]
Elahei Izadi
On Monday evening, President Donald Trump claimed that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire. He wrote on social media that within a day, quote, the war will be considered ended. But within hours, this ceasefire appeared to be in trouble. Both countries accused each other of violating the agreement and of attacking each other. Then this morning, Trump lashed out at both countries. He told reporters Israel and Iran were both violating the agreement. And he warned Israel specifically to stop striking Iran. And just a heads up, Trump used profanity.
- [00:45]
Unknown Speaker
We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that?
- [00:58]
Elahei Izadi
The details of this ceasefire are unknown. Both countries have claimed victory and events are still rapidly unfolding. So far, this 12 day war has killed more than 600 people in Iran, according to the country's health Ministry. A human rights group that monitors Iran says the death toll is closer to 1,000. In Israel, 28 people were killed, according to government officials there. But as we all wait to see where this conflict heads next, we're still learning about the decisions that got us here, especially the decisions of Israel's leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Elahi izadi. It's Tuesday, June 24th. Today, the View of the war from Israel. I speak with Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jerry Shi. He explains Netanyahu's calculus, including why Netanyahu attacked Iran when he did and what he may have gained politically in the process.
- [02:14]
Jerry Shi
Jerry, thanks so much for joining me today.
- [02:17]
Gloria
Gloria, thanks so much for having me.
- [02:19]
Jerry Shi
So, Jerry, we're talking early Tuesday morning on the east coast in the U.S. it's midday for you right now in Jerusalem. Right now, where does the fighting between Israel and Iran stand?
- [02:31]
Gloria
Yeah, as you say, the situation is pretty fragile. As you know, on Monday night, Trump came out with this very bombastic social media post, you know, in all caps, sort of true to form, saying, congratulations, it's time for peace. Let's all put the guns down. I was the one who sort of helped broker all of this and sort of within hours, we saw Iran fire missiles at Israel that hit residential area in the south of Israel, killing several people. Immediately, senior Israeli officials vowed revenge to sort of bring more destruction to Iran. And we saw that Israeli fighter jets had launched towards Iran after that, while they were in the air, supposedly. Trump, we were told, had called Netanyahu to sort of hold back, not carry out the strike, because it would break whatever fragile ceasefire he had attained. We know that the Israeli jets had struck an Iranian radar site. And we don't know sort of where things will go from here. But it's fair to say that I think generally the sense is that on both the Iranian side and Israeli side, I think everybody would like to have an offering.
- [03:43]
Jerry Shi
So, Jerry, as you've seen in Israel, I'm wondering how have Israelis felt about these attacks on Iran since they were launched, and also this possible ceasefire?
- [03:58]
Gloria
Yeah, I think, you know, that there has been, I think, a great deal of support within Israeli society for the attacks that were launched by the prime minister on June 13. You know, Iran is a country that has long been seen as kind of this mortal enemy, this existential threat to Israel. Their proxies sort of fan across the Middle East. And many of the opponents that Israel has been fighting since October 7, 2023, Hamas and Gaza, Hezbollah and Lebanon, these are all groups that are aligned with Iran. And also, this is something that goes back to for decades. Right. You have a country that's been told Iran is the head of the snake. They are out to destroy us. So I think the country, the nation of Israel certainly rallied around Benjamin ninth, I will be decided to launch this hat. And now that he did it, he has managed to destroy a lot of Iran's ballistic missile capabilities, a lot of its nuclear sites. He's assassinated in his surprise attack, more than 10 senior Iranian nuclear scientists. He is able to claim a significant victory. And so you already have statements coming out basically proclaiming this as like a monumental, historic moment. You have his political allies saying, oh, well, you know, we should call an election right away because, you know, the country's riding on this wave of euphoria over military successes. Not only that, but, you know, this is a prime minister that basically convinced Trump to join the fight and now has the force and the political backing of the United States of America on his side. So Netanyahu is definitely writing on it.
- [05:44]
Jerry Shi
Yeah. Jerry, I want to turn to this one person because I think he is integral to understanding why Israel did what it did in Iran, and that is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So just briefly, what has been Netanyahu's stance toward Iran over the years?
- [06:03]
Gloria
Yeah, this is a prime minister who has appeared on television. He's appeared before the United nations and the US Congress over the last more than two decades saying, you know, Iran is on the verge of a bomb within months. Iran is on the verge of a bomb within several years. ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured.
- [06:21]
Elahei Izadi
Weapons, and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon.
- [06:24]
Gloria
Be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. And he's been agitated for this moment. He's sort of within the domestic political context, framed himself as kind of the guardian of Israel. He's the strong man who, if there's anybody who can sort of stop Iran's inexorable march towards acquiring nuclear weapons and aiming it at Israel, he's the guy. He's not only the guy who had the guts to take the fight too long, but he's also the guy who has the political savvy to convince the Americans to help come to Israel state.
- [06:56]
Elahei Izadi
Yeah.
- [06:57]
Jerry Shi
How has Netanyahu interacted with American policies and stance toward Iran? Because the United States is Israel's biggest ally and biggest supplier of aid, military aid, but also various administrations here in the United States have tried to negotiate with Iran over their nuclear program.
- [07:19]
Gloria
Absolutely. And I think we have to remember that basically before, earlier this month, Netanyahu finally pulled the trigger. Three past presidents, especially President Barack Obama, has sort of talked him off the edge in some cases. In other cases, his own generals have told him not to do it. If you recall, one of the crowning foreign policy achievements during the Obama administration was the agreement reached with Iran to cap its nuclear program to require that Iran submit to international inspection that it only enrich uranium up to a low level that would essentially be used for civilian purposes.
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Unknown Speaker
A comprehensive long term deal with Iran.
- [08:03]
Gloria
That will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Now, when President Trump entered office in 2017, he in large part sort of at the urging of, of Netanyahu, decided that, you know, this was a bad deal that was made under President Obama. He wasn't going to have it and he ripped it off. And it was after the US Left the deal. That was when we actually saw Iran sort of massively accelerated nuclear program to enrich uranium up to very high levels, very large quantity of near weapons glade. And so there's kind of long been this argument that had Trump not taken the step to rip up the nuclear deal today, Iran would still be keeping its uranium stockpile at lowly enriched levels. Inspectors would still be able to come in and visit all of the facilities and sort of have much more transparency into what exactly they were doing.
- [09:04]
Jerry Shi
But Jerry, now we've seen the Trump administration since he's come into office. Once again, we see the Trump administration reengaging with Iran and trying to negotiate a new deal. Is that something that Netanyahu has been very upset about?
- [09:19]
Gloria
This was something that I think Netanyahu did not want from the very beginning. And, you know, we sort of saw how kind of the Israeli position began to enter the rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration. At first, if you recall, in the early days and weeks after Trump announced that he was going to hold direct talks with Iran, we saw that his envoy, Steve Woodpeck come out and say, oh, well, maybe actually we will let Iran keep its nuclear program. Israeli sources tell us that they were absolutely terrified of that scenario. And then sort of over the ensuing weeks, we saw Trump's own position. Harden came out and said, you know what? We want to dismantle all of Iran nuclear enrichment capability.
- [10:07]
Unknown Speaker
Remember, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. It's very simple. We don't have to go too deep into it. They just can't have a nuclear weapon.
- [10:15]
Jerry Shi
So, Jerry, that's how Netanyahu has navigated his relationship with the United States as it, as it relates to Iran. But then there's this other really big development, and we've touched on it, but that is the October 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas on Israel in which about 1200 Israelis were killed and another 251 people were taken hostage by Hamas. And that led to this ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in which Israel has killed more than 55,000 people in Gaza. There are still hostages that Israel has not recovered. And I think it's important for us to get into how Israelis feel about Netanyahu's handling of this war to understand how he's acted in recent weeks toward Iran.
- [11:03]
Elahei Izadi
So what has been his support like.
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Jerry Shi
At home during the Israel Hamas war?
- [11:08]
Gloria
Yeah, I think that his handling of the Israel Hamas war has caused very deep fissures within Israeli society. He has your fears, put an end to the war to strike a deal with Hamas that would see Hamas release the hostages. There were about 20 remaining, and for Israel to withdraw its troops. So he was really facing kind of a domestic political crisis with two thirds of Israelis wanting him to end the war in recent months. But from a strategic perspective, we can definitely say that this story that we are looking at now with Israel fighting Iran, it really kind of the start of it in some ways, or at least this last chapter really began on October 2nd. You know, and I think it was in the days after that when Israeli leaders sat on the table and looked at it. They saw one of Iran's long standing proxies attack Israel, and they also saw that Iran's other car, including Hezbollah and the Houthis in Yemen, also attacked. I think there was always a kind of this step, right? Even in the early days after October 7, that things were coming to a head, that ultimately Israel may one day have to go after kind of this, this, you know, what they would call the head of the snake or the head of the octopus.
- [12:31]
Elahei Izadi
So when we're thinking about how Netanyahu has handled the war in Gaza, what political pressures has he been dealing with inside Israel during this time?
- [12:41]
Gloria
Yeah, so. So I've explained to you kind of the strategic thing, and then there is the political aspect of it. The Gaza war obviously has been grinding for about 20 months. Really no end in sight, as you say. 55,000 people have died, yet Hamas has not surrendered. The Israeli military has pushed the entire population of Gaza or whoever has survived, a very malnourished population with no access to medical care, very low access to food, been at near starvation conditions for months at this point. They've pushed this population into this small corner of Gaza that's smaller than 20% of Gaza's area. There's been immense pressure for Netanyahu to end this war. And just a few weeks ago, his government was actually on the precipice of fall. There were elements of his political coalition who wanted him to continue to wage the war in Gaza, essentially until it led to the resettlement by Jewish settlers in Gaza. There were other factions who wanted him to sort of draft the ultra orthodox population into the military because the strain of the world military were so large manpower and his government was on the verge of collapsing. And then just about a week later, we saw that he launched this attack on Iran. It's turned out to be a massive operational and political success. Whether that calculation of this was his one political lifeline and he started this war to take that lifeline, you know, whether that was kind of the only consideration, I would say no. As I said before, the strategic calculation was always that they would attack Iran at some point. But that's definitely consideration. There's no option.
- [14:47]
Elahei Izadi
After the break how Israel's war in Gaza also made Iran more vulnerable to attack. We'll be right back.
- [15:05]
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Jerry Shi
So Jerry, we've talked about the sort of political calculus and the shifting dynamic within Israel over the past several years, including during the Israel Hamas war. But now let's dig into how Israel's military strategy fighting Hamas and having this war had this other effect, which is reshaping the power dynamics with Iran. Can you explain that?
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Gloria
Yeah. So, you know, as we saw in the almost two years after October 2, we've seen Israel bring its extraordinary military power, backed relative military power backed by the United States to Gaza. We've seen them basically dismantle Hezbollah. We've seen them act with very low inhibition attacking targets in Syria in recent months, and it's sort of become this unquestioned dominant force in the region.
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Jerry Shi
Jerry, is it accurate to sort of think about this as Israel has heavily decimated Hamas, like taken out the leader of Hezbollah, which was Iran's proxy in the region, and Hezbollah has been attacking Israel over the years, and then the Syrian government fell, which cleared the airspace. That all of that combined kind of opened the door toward an attack on Iran.
- [18:30]
Gloria
Absolutely. If you talk to Israeli officials, they would always say that, you know, Israel has black caused by Iran for so long. But there was, you know, 10,000 missiles from Hezbollah pointed at them right across Israel's logging board. Right. So after the events of last fall, in which we saw the Mossad carry out its major attack on Hezbollah's rank and file, we saw.
- [18:57]
Elahei Izadi
And just to break in here, the Mossad is Israel's external intelligence agency. Right. And they were behind this attack that saw pagers explode that belong to rank and file members of Hezbollah, and that's a group in Lebanon that is a proxy of Iran.
- [19:13]
Gloria
Exactly, exactly. I mean, this was an extremely elaborate operation that was conceived years in advance and that basically crippled one of the most fearsome fighting forces in the Middle East. And then Israel dropped tons of bombs on Paso Nasrallah, killing the leader of Hezbollah, rendering this organization basically on its knees. And after that, essentially just a few months later, we saw the very sudden downfall of the Syrian president, Bashar al Assad. And at that point, they had effectively an open sort of lane into Iran.
- [19:51]
Elahei Izadi
So, Jerry, talk me through.
- [19:53]
Jerry Shi
When did Netanyahu start to consider doing something more aggressive toward Iran? Like, when did those conversations begin and how did they go?
- [20:01]
Gloria
So our reporting has shown that obviously this is something, as I said earlier, they had always kind of knew. If you recall, in October, Iran and Israel traded volleys of metal and found out that, wow, we actually have more aerial superiority over Iran than we need. And at that point in the weeks after that October mini skirmish, if you will, that was when I think a lot of the Israeli strategic thinkers thought that this opportunity was open. Iran was essentially exposed. Their air defense had been taken out, and they wouldn't be rebuilt for another maybe half a year. That was when the prime minister issued a general order to begin preparations. We know that that was the point where, when Israeli military intelligence and Assad began to rapidly ramp up their efforts to sort of compile a list of all of the senior Iranian nuclear scientists who were working on research that may be pertinent to a nuclear bomb, as well as Iran's senior military. So they really began to flesh out this plan to carry out a strike. And not just that, but we saw that the Israeli air force began to systematically carry out bombing campaigns, not just in Lebanon, but in Syria and in Iraq, kind of creating this air corridor for future bombing runs into Iran, they also began to carry out attacks in Yemen to sort of practice how to carry out these long distance airstrikes. So at that point, as early as late 2024 basically already had a country that was kind of quietly on this war footing aimed at Iran.
- [21:56]
Jerry Shi
Jerry, when announcing these attacks on Iran, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials said that the reason these attacks were needed at this moment was this belief that Iran was very close to developing a nuclear weapon. Is that true?
- [22:11]
Gloria
That's been the subject of debate. I think, you know, it's increasingly obvious and our reporting has shown that Iran really did not make any substantial progress on its weaponization program. To be sure, they have stockpiled, you know, a lot of highly enriched uranium that is purified almost to weapons grade. It's been sort of, you know, sitting there, piling up the last couple of years. But the question of whether the Iranian supreme leader Khamenei actually gave the order to produce a nuclear weapon, that's been something we have to be studied by Israeli and American intelligence agency. The thinking has been that, you know, if Iran has not shown any desire or any movement towards making a weapon, you know, what is the justification, right? Or what is the imminent threat to Israel to launch an attack? And I think our reporting has shown that that was a matter of disagreement between the US And Israelis.
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Jerry Shi
I'm thinking back to how we were discussing that Netanyahu was an embattled politician within his own country before these strikes on Iran. And now I'm wondering how will he emerge as a politician from this conflict?
- [23:34]
Gloria
Yeah, I think it's a fascinating question. I think that, you know, he's certainly riding on this wave of euphoria. We've seen kind of the old city in Jerusalem light up with the colors of the American and Israeli flags. We've seen giant electronic billboards in Tel Aviv saying, thank you President Trump. There's this kind of upswell, I think, of this kind of victory that we've decimated an existential threat to our country who's really decapitated much of Iranians military and sort of scientific nuclear scientists and the military officials. We are on the same page with the United States. They've come to our aid, right, because.
- [24:14]
Elahei Izadi
Of course, the United States over the weekend sent strategic bombers to Iran to drop more than a dozen 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs on various nuclear plant targets inside of Iran.
- [24:27]
Gloria
And the personal equation between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be very close. Again, right after the strike that we saw President Trump order, he spoke very highly of kind of the personal relationship and level of cooperation between the US And Israel.
- [24:45]
Unknown Speaker
I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before. And we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.
- [25:00]
Gloria
Now, this may be a political victory for Netanyahu, and I'm very certain that it will be. But I think there's a certain irony here. We've seen sort of very deep divisions and corruption in the United States in President Trump's space between those who don't want war and those who are pushing for this strike. From what I understand, I'm not really a BC political insider, but from what I understand, obviously there were many factions within the American political landscape, whether it's sort of the neoconservative or others who are staunch supporters of Israel, who pushed President Trump towards this decision. I mean, of course, you know, we've seen kind of in the last couple of weeks a very deep division caused among a lot of these MAGA base. So, you know, will we have kind of a situation where it's actually Netanyahu who has reached the political gains of this conflict, whereas it's Trump who bears the cause?
- [26:03]
Jerry Shi
Well, Jerry, thank you so much for taking time to join me today. I appreciate it.
- [26:07]
Gloria
Absolutely. Thanks a lot.
- [26:12]
Elahei Izadi
Jerry Shih is the Jerusalem bureau chief for the Post. That's it for Post Reports. Thanks for listening. Before you go, I wanted to tell you about an exciting new season of Try this. It's a podcast from the Washington Post that tries to help us live better lives. It's hosted by my delightful friend and colleague, Christina Quinn. And this new season is all about keeping your gut healthy. Christina finds out what's really going on inside of our guts and why we should care about it.
- [26:45]
Jerry Shi
We'll put a link in our show.
- [26:46]
Elahei Izadi
Notes or you can find Try this wherever you get your podcasts. Today's show was produced by Renny Stranovsky with help from Arjun Singh. It was mixed by Sam Baer and edited by Lucy Perkins. Thanks also to Allen Cypress. I'm Elahei Izadi. We'll be back tomorrow with more stories from the Washington.
- [27:11]
Jerry Shi
Foreign.
- [27:17]
Unknown Speaker
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