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Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Emergency update: US and Israel strike Iran; Khamenei reported dead - with Amos Harel
00:18:46
Jonathan is joined by military analyst Amos Harel to assess the latest Israeli and US strikes against Iran — and what may come next. Together they examine the logic behind the operations, the degree of coordination between Jerusalem and Washington, and how Iran is likely to respond next. They also ask the harder questions now hanging over the region: whether this marks a turning point for the Iranian regime itself, how far escalation could go, and what the strikes reveal about the shifting balance of power in the Middle East.
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Transcript12 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is an emergency episode of Unholy. I'm Jonathan Friedland, usually in London. Yonit is on air broadcasting on Israel's Channel 12 as she has been for well over 12 hours from 8 o' clock in the morning, Israel time. It is now about 10:15pm Israel time. She's been on air throughout on this very dramatic day which began with an Israeli apparently joint Israeli US attack on Iran with a Iranian response directed at Israel and elsewhere in the region as we speak. Now some more dramatic developments. Reuters reporting that Iran's supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead and that his body has been found, reports that even there is a photograph that that has been seen by Israel's Prime Minister. It follows comments from Benjamin Netanyahu saying that there were growing signs that Khamenei is no long with us. That came in a whole series of comments from the Israeli Prime Minister addressing the courageous Iranian people and saying that these strikes launched by Israel, joined by the US Will help the Iranian people unshackle themselves from tyranny. That this was a once in a generation chance to overthrow the Iranian regime. Donald Trump in the US has spoken to leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and also NATO all and saying to Axios that this thing could be over in two or three days or it could in his words, go long. Uncertainty over all of that. Well, who better to pick our way through all these developments then? Longtime friend of the podcast Haaretz is military analyst Amos Harel. Amos, it's been more than 12 hours of very, very dramatic development, ones that people in the region have been preparing for for some time. Just tell us how this day has unfolded and what's been happening.
- [02:14]
B
So this has been for quite a few days. There have been a lot of assessments whether this, the current events in the region would finally lead to an American strike against Iran. It turns out that the decision was made for a joint strike for both the Israeli and the American Air Force. It began slightly after 8am in the morning. The decision was probably taken yesterday. We saw President Trump for the last few days speaking back and forth about the possibility of a strike or the possibility of negotiations, further negotiations. He finally made up his mind to attack. He didn't need to convince Benjamin Netanyahu because Netanyahu was pushing for a strike all along. We don't have enough details about what actually occurred. I think the late latest reports from Israel are that the army has used around 200 airplanes, fighter planes for about five for attacking about 500 targets mostly in Tehran and in western Iran. The Americans have not given details yet, but probably massive airstrikes as well. Regarding the outcome. The Iranians have announced that 200 people were killed. They haven't said anything official about those who were targeted, but apparently both the Defense Minister and the recent commander of the irgc, of the Revolutionary Guards, have both died as a result of Israeli targeted killing. The whereabouts and the fate of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are yet unknown. Israeli sources are saying that they're optimistic. We now know that this was an Israeli strike against Khamenei and not an American one. And also on top of everything else, a lot of other targets were hit as well by both the Israelis and the Americans. It has to do with ballistic missiles, with production lines for those missiles, with some sites that are probably connected to the nuclear plan and also IRGC bases and so on. What's yet to be seen is whether this is affecting the stability of the regime itself, whether these actions would actually encourage Iranians to go back to the streets along the lines of what occurred in the beginning of January and will there be an actual attempt to topple the regime?
- [04:56]
A
So you mentioned that there were direct Israeli strikes aimed at the Supreme Leader, the President. This is a decapitation strategy and you attributed that move specifically to Israel. In terms of the overall operation, how are we to understand this? Obviously, the final decision was Donald Trump's, but it's being presented in some ways as if Israel moved and America went in behind them. Is it really the case this was an American decision and Israel has agreed to, as it were, you know, pretend it made the first move, but really it is following a Washington decision. Who is the author, to cut to the chase, who is the author and the sort of lead of this operation?
- [05:36]
B
The author and the lead is Donald Trump. The advisor, so to speak, is Benjamin Netanyahu. And he's been pushing for such a result for a long time for such a decision. This is what Netanyahu dreamt of happening last June. But at that time, Trump was focused on hitting the nuclear sites at the end of the of the 12 day Israeli War and didn't want to hear anything about regime change. Now, because of the protests last month, Trump has actually said, claimed that 32,000 people were murdered by the regime during the demonstrations. I'm not sure if this is actually entirely accurate, but it's a well known fact that thousands and thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of Iranians were slaughtered by the regime. So now I don't know how appalled Trump is actually, by all of this, but it's quite clear that they were going to try at least to topple the regime. Now, regarding the actual timing, we don't know yet. It may have been the case that the Israeli planes struck first, but if this is the case, not long afterwards, the Americans were also involved. Perhaps this is a notion that they tried to create in advance, but it's actually, as I said, it's a joint operation. It's not as if Israel decided to strike and then the Americans joined. It's part of the same plan. But it's true that the Israeli announcements came a few minutes or perhaps half an hour before the American statements. And this is what created the impression, as if it was an Israeli operation in the beginning, as far as I can tell, and I think I've talked to enough people who, who are supposed to know since this morning. This was coordinated in advance. There were talks. There's even an official statement by the IDF spokesperson and by the chief of staff of the idf. They're both saying that this was coordinated in advance, that there have been joint plans for quite some time. What was missing, of course, was the actual decision to strike, and that was the decision made by Trump. There were attempts in Geneva. Even if I think it was first day, if I'm not mistaken, that the last round of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Akshi and Trump's envoys, Witkoff and Kushner, it was quite vague. The Americans, I think, did that intentionally. It wasn't really clear whether those talks were successful. Trump himself, who talks constantly to the press, said that he was considering resuming the talks next week. But then again, it appears that he decided intentionally to mislead the Iranians. And again, the Iranians were surprised the same way they were caught by surprise in June. This time the attack happened in the early morning hours and not at night. And perhaps some of the targets were a surprise to them as well.
- [08:37]
A
We've been speaking on the podcast about how Israelis have been bracing for this for weeks. Obviously, Chief, in their mind, the notion of the Iranian response. And messages have been coming to Israelis all day, sirens, messages on their phones saying, get to the your protective room in one minute, one and a half minutes, and so on. What has been the Iranian response? How lethal, deadly has it been, both in terms of hitting Israel, but also other targets in the region?
- [09:06]
B
Well, thankfully, for the time being, it hasn't been so lethal. There are quite a few differences from June and from October 24, where you might recall there was a barrage of missiles and Iranian Drones that attacked Israel in retaliation to some Israeli attacks at the time. So this time they've launched hundreds of missiles. The last number I heard was 220. That was around 8pm I'm not sure if it's entirely correct. Most of them were launched towards Israel, but there were also attacks against Qatar, Bahrain and the uae. And what these free countries share, apart from being next door neighbors to Iran, is American bases. So I would assume that the general target was American bases. But the Iranians didn't mind too much if civilian infrastructure in those countries was hit as well, that they were being punished for cooperation with the Americans, in spite of the fact that they weren't part of the plan, unlike Israel. And as I said, there was also a massive strike towards Israel, but this went on quite differently than in the past. It wasn't dozens shot simultaneously, but actually for about, I'd say 10, 11 hours there were missiles being launched, 1, 2, 3, sometimes 5 missiles launched every 15 or 20 minutes, mostly towards the center of the country, the Tel Aviv area. And that meant that people were stuck in their safe rooms or shelters, bomb shelters, for hours at a time, which is quite rare. We didn't go through this, not during the war with Hezbollah and not during the 12 Day War. This may have to do with their attempt to interrupt everyday life in Israel to show that Israel is paying a price. But there could be other explanations as well. One explanation is that many in their command and control chains were hit by the Israelis. And so with the lack of commanders, they found it hard to organize a simultaneous attack. And also we're told that most of these launchers, since Israel has air superiority and so do the Americans in western Iran, it's very hard to launch missiles without being hit immediately afterwards. So what they're attempting to do, the Iranians right now is to use those missiles and those launchers as quickly as possible before they are being hit. So there could be a possible explanation of this, of an Iranian attempt to launch as much as possible right now, fearing that those launchers would be lost quite soon. The latest number published by the Israeli authorities was, if I'm not mistaken, 89 people injured since the morning, all of them lightly hit, which is, I wouldn't say not insignificant, but not massive. This is not the end of the story and unfortunately there will be casualties in the future, perhaps even today. This has not ended yet, but we haven't seen yet any proof that the Iranians have really improved since June and that were capable of hitting the Israeli home front in a devastating way. If you remember, last June, there were direct hits by ballistic missiles towards buildings in Tel Aviv, the Weizmann Institute, Beersheba, the Soroka Hospital, Haifa, and so on. And there were some casualties. 34 Israelis died during the war. And yet it was quite short of the expectations. Even the Israeli army assumed that somewhere between 200 and 800 civilians would be killed. This is not what materialized at that time, and hopefully it's not going to happen this time as well. In spite of everything else I've said, there is a huge difference in the balance of power between what Israel and the Americans are capable of doing and between the current state of the Iranian Defense Forces. There's quite a gap here. This doesn't mean that we won't pay a price. And if things get wrong, if we get it wrong and this turns into a war of attrition, then it could be quite costly in the long run. But it's no secret by now that both the Israeli Air Force and, of course, the American Air Force are much, much stronger than anything that Iran could offer.
- [13:50]
A
So you've touched on what was going to be one half of my final question. First, how long do you think this might go on? And you've raised there the question this could turn into a war, war of attrition. But the other question is there is much political discussion in the United States about what exactly is the aim here, some uncertainty in Washington about whether this is about ending the Iranian nuclear program. Is it about ending the ballistic missile program? Is it about regime change because of Iran's own brutal crackdown, slaughter of its own citizens? And there's haziness there among Israelis. Is there clarity from Netanyahu, from their prime minister, about what his war aim is and whether or not it is regime change? So how long do you think this might go on? And do Israelis feel they have clarity from their prime minister as to the aim of this operation, which, even if only nominally Israel did begin?
- [14:45]
B
So the two parts of your question are actually deeply connected right now. It all depends if Netanyahu and Trump are successful and if they actually manage to hit regime targets, and if in some magical way, Iranians, who are very brave to begin with, the fact that they were willing to challenge the regime two months ago, and so many of them have paid with their lives for that, if they're able and willing to do that again, and if hundreds of thousands of people take to the street in spite of the dangers, then we're in a whole different ball game. You know, hitting regime targets might encourage people to risk their lives and to stand up to the regime. And then all options are on the table. And if this is successful, then we could even find ourselves finally seeing this end of this terrible regime. The question, of course, is how much stamina Trump has to deal with that. He surprised many of us by actually going for this against his original instincts, because he doesn't like long wars. He's usually against wars in faraway countries. He talks against American intervention. He's not a big fan of democracy all over the world or anything like that. And in spite of everything he said, he decided to strike this time, which is quite impressive. But then we have to see how this plays out, because Trump being Trump, in a few days, he can also decide that his goal is actually just reaching an improved nuclear deal, better than what Obama achieved in 2015 and announced victory and lift the sanctions and everybody lives, gets to live happily ever after, except for those poor Iranians who will be stuck with the regime. So this is one scenario. If not, and if they insist on regime change, then hopefully they succeed. But nobody can promise that, and we've talked about that in the past, the fact that there's no precedent except for Kosovo in 99, and Kosovo is a tiny country and the enemy was NATO. This is different. This time Iran has 92 million people, if I'm not mistaken, and the regime is brutal, but also extremely smart and extremely calculated at murdering its own people in cold blood in order to survive. So we'll have to see who has the upper hand there. But this best case scenario, in which within a few days this all ends and the regime is out and suddenly democracy, it never happened in Iran, but suddenly democracy arrives in Iran. I still see this as a bit far fetched, this scenario right now. So it all depends on the defined goals and the changing goals of this operation. But things, I have to remind you that things like that could go terribly wrong in the long run. The law of unintended consequences, it works overtime during wars. And we've all witnessed the two wars in the Gulf in 91 and 2003. We saw unintended consequences there. And sometimes this turned into wars of adoration that took a long time and had quite a lot of human costs, but also cost for strategic goals for the US and for the West.
- [18:10]
A
Yes, the precedents are not good. I was going to say the law of unintended consequences. Consequences works overtime not just in war, but in the Middle east in particular.
- [18:18]
B
That's true as well.
- [18:19]
A
That's been the experience. Amos, we will definitely come back to you. I am sure in the coming days there will be more updates and of course, our regular episode when it comes, Yonit will be back. Then I'm sure she, to reiterate, again, is on air anchoring Channel 12's coverage of this unfolding situation. But for now, Amos Horel, hugely grateful for you joining us on Unholy.
- [18:45]
B
Thanks, Jonathan. See you soon.