← Unholy: Two Jews on the News
Unholy: Two Jews on the News
War with Iran Day 6: The Gulf Under Fire, Tough Questions for Trump - With Gideon Rachman
00:45:06
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- [00:00]
A
Yanit, it's unholy. I'm Yanit Levi in Tel Aviv.
- [00:02]
B
And I'm Jonathan Friedland, usually in London, currently in Sydney, Australia.
- [00:07]
A
Hi Jonathan. I mean a disclaimer. I haven't slept much, which is to say not at all really. So I'm doing my best, but adjectives and nouns together, that is basically what I can have, what I can do. This conversation. We've had a few updates over the week and the last one was talking about what it feels like to be under fire in Tel Aviv. And this morning I thought to myself after other there were three alerts in the span of like I think an hour and a half between 3:00am and 4:30. I admire anyone who can go back to sleep after that. I couldn't. But I thought of trying to tell you how your brain in emergency mode has this function where it feels like a lifeboat, I think where only the things that are very urgent can stay on the boat and the rest needs to be discarded. So that is where we are. I mean it's thinking about the next couple of hours or the next couple of weeks, couple of days, but nothing beyond that. Anything beyond that is like a very dark, vast ocean that my brain can't even calculate. So these are my feelings right now. How are you doing?
- [01:12]
B
We'll come to that in a minute. But I bet you're speaking for most of your fellow Israelis when you say that living. I mean, I'm impressed that you're able to think on a sort of hours horizon. I would have thought it'd be minutes and specifically actually just to the getting through the next siren. I mean just I know because we've been texting and so on that you know, you're in the middle of something and then Sorry, gotta go. Sirens, you're back to the shelters. You explained that in our last update and you know, I think people really got a glimpse there of something that actually is often not in the reporting. Cause it's all about geopolitics and strategy. But what it translates into and it will be going on across the Middle east is rushing shelters, panic alarm and that's going on all over. There are stranded. Besides the people who live in the region, there are stranded travelers all over the world who are suddenly getting a taste of that themselves where they're in the Gulf States and so on. But you've been living it. There's been some interesting changes in what is being asked of you and your fellow Israelis which before I get into talking about what I've been seeing and Watching and experiencing close up here. But you should perhaps fill us in on that.
- [02:21]
A
Much to the amazement of many Israelis, the Israeli government decided to ease wartime restrictions. So last night on Wednesday, 10:30pm A decision was made by the home front command, which is of course a decision made by the Israeli government that work from offices would be possible and it is possible to congregate beyond groups of 50 can actually congregate. I mean, that stems from the Finance Minister Bezales Motrich's realization that war is expensive, which is quite a revelation, one should say, and that that the Israeli workforce needs to return, however gradually, to work. The only problem with that, of course, is the fact that children are still staying at home because the education system hasn't opened. So try and explain how we are in a wartime. As I talked about last episode, average once every hour and a half, there are sirens here. You need to run to a safe room or a shelter or anything that's protected. How does that square with trying to go to work, leaving your children at home? I mean, that is, I'm using gentle terms here. Ridiculous. I can just tell you, obviously I work in the news company that is deemed to begin with as an essential workplace. I drove to work yesterday. It's a 40 minute drive usually. I had to stop on the way on the side of the road because there were sirens for 20 minutes. I had to stop on the way back home on the side of the road because there were sirens. Add to that traffic jams because people need to drive to work now. All of this doesn't really fit in. There's been a lot of anger toward this decision. I don't know how it will manifest itself in the next couple of days, but that is worrying because it's on a deep level a sort of normalization of a wartime scenario which is not normal in any way.
- [04:04]
B
Really wrong for me to linger on this one detail, but sort of thing that people outside will not know what happens when a siren goes off? When you're in a car, where do you go? Where do people go? Because I know from previous times people talk about going under bridges and that kind of thing, but just explain where people go.
- [04:18]
A
Thank you for asking. It's not the most elegant moment. One should say what you need to do is stop on the side of the road, stop driving and find anything you can. You need to walk a distance from the car because obviously if you have a gas tank, that could be dangerous. So you need to walk a certain distance from your car and then basically lie down and Put your hands on your head. That is the only thing you have left in this situation. That's why people in the first couple of days of this war were not driving. They stayed home because it's dangerous. And when you add to the equation the fact that Hezbollah started firing rockets over Israel, which means that there is no preliminary alert for these kind of rockets, it's a very immediate thing. It's dangerous. So it's not recommended to drive from point A to point B. If this is what happens, that's what you have to do.
- [05:05]
B
Yeah. And again, just to explain the basics, the difference between a Hezbollah rocket and an Iran rocket is the distance is much shorter from southern Lebanon into Israel. That's why there's no warning time, whereas at least the journey from Iran to Israel is longer and gives you some kind of heads up pushing just at something we talked about in our last update episode, when do you, because you said there's anger at this latest decision, which I think everyone hearing you will understand, at what point does that become translate into, and I ask this because people are asking this about American public opinion. At what point do people start saying, growing impatient with this whole operation, the disruption is so great, the lack of understanding of how family life can be juggled in the way you've just described, at what point do people start turning to their political leaders and go enough?
- [05:56]
A
Well, I mean, first of all, what we have to add into this equation is that many people are seeing this as a way for the government not to compensate to the citizens. Because if you're not working, the government needs to compensate you for the days you haven't worked. If they are, quote, unquote, forcing you to go back to work, no one has to pay you compensation. So that is what many people see in this, the question of impatience. Look, again, the Israeli, I think citizens are quite used to this kind of wartime effect. We've seen it in June. It is difficult. And I think if the feeling is such, again, generally speaking, that we are going forward and looking at a new Middle east and a regime change in Iran and things will be better, people have the patience if it will look like something different that doesn't have results even immediately or again, the Israeli public will be promised this sort of, we, you know, we change the situation for generations. Eight months later, we're again in this, this war. I think that's going to be a more difficult thing. Jonathan, I can go on and on about not sleeping for the past five nights, believe me, but since you are in Australia, I do want to hear a little bit from you. You've been meeting the Jewish community. You visited Bondi Beach. This wasn't so long ago that that was the only thing we were talking about. I want to hear from you a little bit or even a lot about your.
- [07:20]
B
This has been this leg of this tour where I've had, you know, I've spoken at big public gatherings in Melbourne, then in Sydney. And look, the first thing to say is, of course, they are completely fixated and gripped by what's happening in the Middle east at the moment. Everyone's very concerned. There is something very discombobulating and strange about being so out of sync on the other side of the world. The times at difference, the time zones. There's a sort of disconnect there that I know, you know, people in Australia cope with all the time when news is happening elsewhere, but that came through. But don't think that just because they're so far away, they're not thinking about all of these developments. But look, it was very clear that I was speaking to a community that was still reeling from what happened in December, and that a lot has changed in terms of their feelings about living here in this country. Before coming, I wrote something for the Jewish Independent paper here, just talking about something which I think we had talked about on the podcast, which is the notion that there was, on some level of fantasy about, in the Jewish mind about Australia, which is, well, at least there's one place in the world where we are, where we could be free of our demons. You know, the terrors of life in east, you know, Jewish life in Eastern Europe, even the Middle east, there's a place you can escape from those far away. And that fantasy was obviously shattered on December 14th at Bondi Beach. And that really came through, that the, you know, in speaking to so many people over these last few days, the sense that something they thought was very precious about this small community has been broken by the experience of such horror in this place. And just today, actually, I visited that spot on Bondi beach. And as so often with these things, there is no substitute for actually being there. You see that small bridge? Really just a kind of not quite decorative, ornamental bridge, but you know what I mean? Where the shooter, father and son stood. There is now a drawing, a sort of graffiti that's been put there, and it says Am Yisrael Chai in chalk. That's been graffiti on there. The people of Israel live. Just a few yards away from that is the actual spot where the Hanukkiah, the Menorah, for Hanukkah was to be lit. The actual Hanukkiah has been taken now away and is going to be kept in the Jewish Museum in Sydney. But a different Hanukkiah that was used for a different ceremony is taken its place. They call it a Sanukiya because it's solar powered and it's about bringing hope and light again. But all around, there is a permanent Chabad presence there. Chabad, The Lubavitch movement, the Hasidic movement whose rabbis were slain and who organized that gathering. They've got a permanent, sort of like a sea shipping container that they are sitting in. They are permanently there to show people. And they will point out to you the palm trees around where the bark is stripped from where there were bullet holes on those palm trees. You can see a pole, a pillar of one of the shelters there, deeply indented where a bullet lodged. And it is so dissonant because just all of this is yards away from one of the most beautiful, iconic beaches in the world, where people are still gathering and they're surfing and they're swimming and they're eating ice cream. And what struck me again was, of course, you can see why the Jews of Sydney thought they'd found paradise here. I spoke to somebody today who said, can you imagine when I was at Sydney Harbour, you know, with the Sydney Opera House, that beautiful place? And this woman was describing to me, saying her grandparents came on a boat from Eastern Europe, and can you imagine what they felt when they came into this beautiful place and they thought they'd finally found paradise and the torments of Eastern Europe were forever behind them, and yet those demons caught up with them on December 14th. That's how it seemed to me. There was definitely an anxious, anxiety and nervousness, lots of questions. I can't let the opportunity go by without saying. And lots of people who are devoted listeners to unholy. And they said so and passed that on to both of us. So it's been a very intense few days. Very, very meaningful to be here and very powerful to stand in that spot.
- [12:13]
A
I mean, it's so interesting to hear you talk about this. And I'm holding on to what you're saying about the optimism about this chanukiah that's still there on the beach and people that are still there. And I think of the fact that even this week in Israel, there was a story about a couple that was supposed to get married, Michael and Lior. And they. Because obviously you can't get married. So they found a. They decided to get Married in a shelter four floors underground in a very famous mall in Tel Aviv. And that's how they got married. You know, people having Purim parties literally underground, because it is Purim. We kind of forgot that, you know, and so there's something about, I guess, the Jewish spirit and the Israeli spirit to kind of say, you know, that is what we can take from that and to feel a little bit better and to perhaps take that forward.
- [13:05]
B
Yeah, I think the connection that is felt across this vast planet, the connection that ties Jews together to each other is very, very strong. That's what came through to me here. I was 15,000 plus miles away from my own home, and yet the connection, the. The shared experience was automatic. I talked about Heaton park, the synagogue in Manchester, struck on Yom Kippur. They talked about Bondi Beach. It was as if we had gone through something together over these last two and a half years. Obviously, the whole reaction to October 7th, what that has meant in the workplace, questions that came up about how do you manage a rising antisemitism. Very, very clear, you know, guards outside, heavy security, all these Jewish venues that I was at, increasingly a part of Jewish life, the whole world over. Australia, very much not immune to that. On the contrary, in some ways, it has been the most intense, extreme case in the Diaspora in recent months. But there is a bond there, and I think that's something positive, that Jews around the world have gone through something together in recent years, and that came through loud and clear.
- [14:27]
A
And we're back to Iran, I think. Not that we kind of left the topic, really, but I think that this is another case in which things look a little bit different, a little bit being understatement here, but from Israel, perhaps from the Trump administration and from other parts of the world. And there has been growing criticism, political criticism in the United States of this war coming not only from the left, but also from the right. I think in Israel, the sort of logic of this is clearer, and I think it's important to underscore the fact that Israeli intelligence is saying that Iran recovered remarkably quickly from the June attacks, both in ballistic capability and in nuclear plants. Not all of this could be obviously said out loud, but in Israel's rationale and opportunity presented itself. And I think there are parts in the world that obviously say, look, this was a war of choice, this wasn't an imminent threat, so that this war needs to have a lot of question marks above it. I think in Israel, obviously, because the threat from Iran is very clear for a very long time. This is viewed a little bit differently.
- [15:39]
B
Yeah. I think part of the disconnect is that in a way, even if it was true that there was potential for progress on the nuclear negotiations, from the Israeli point of view, that wouldn't be enough because Iran's a threat even with non nuclear weapons, meaning conventional ballistic weapons, but also its support for proxies. So I always felt when those talks were going on with the Omani mediator and so on, in a way, there was no outcome that would be satisfactory from Israel's point of view, and specifically Netanyahu's point of view, because his argument has always been Iran is just a threat to Israel's existence because the Iranian regime is committed to Israel's destruction and says, so we want to wipe Israel off the map. And therefore, in a way, the nuclear thing was important to the Americans, I always thought, but it wasn't really the be all and end all from Israel's point of view. Even though for many decades Netanyahu made his reputation talking about the Iranian nuclear threat, really his issue was Iran and this regime, which was a mortal, sworn enemy of Israel. So I think that explains partly the gap, because, you know, there's Israeli intelligence saying, you know what, hitting it by force didn't actually reverse much. You know, the damage was caught up pretty quickly. There was a graphic, really telling graphic, that appeared in the Financial Times actually just in the last few days, which talked about the development of centrifuges, and there was a steady pattern of those before 2015. Then there's a gap 2015 to 2018, where there are no centrifuges developed at all. Then Trump breaks out the JCPOA and the development leaps up, and the biggest period, according to this estimate, was in the period since last June. So there is a view outside which says if nukes are the problem, actually a deal is much more effective than force. Force doesn't work. Deals do work. But in a way that's answering a different question than the question Israelis ask themselves, which is, this regime wants to see us gone. What can we do about that? So I think that in a way, Israel and the rest of the world have been talking at slightly cross purposes, because for the rest of the world, it's about nukes, and for Israel, it's actually about this regime and its existence, which represents a mortal threat to Israel, borne out by its support for Hamas, Hezbollah and the like.
- [17:59]
A
I think you point that out very astutely. The difference between Israel and parts of the world and the questions they ask themselves vis a vis Iran. I do ask myself whether if Donald Trump decided to attack Iran around January 8th or 9th, when the riots against the regime were at their peak, would the world still be asking the question about the justification for the war? I'm not sure.
- [18:22]
B
Yeah. No, I think that's completely right. That and I have wondered myself about that, that in that period when he was saying, keep on going to the protesters, America's coming to the rescue, help is on the way. If then after that colossal massacre, estimated by CBS News to be 30,000 people in two days, January 8, January 9, if those numbers are right, that's the biggest massacre, single event massacre since Babi yar in the 1940s. It is so huge. If that had been the moment, I think I agree, the world reaction to this would be entirely different. Instead, it's not only the timing that it waited till March, but it is the fact that the American administration, actually even the Israelis, have waxed and waned on whether or not this is about that. If it had just been solely focused on this evil regime is killing its own people, therefore we are taking action, I think that would have been completely different. The trouble is Donald Trump mentions it on a Monday, doesn't mention it at all on a Tuesday and Wednesday, it comes back in again on Thursday, then it's actually denied on a Friday. It's clearly not the justification or the reason. And then it begins to look like just a talking point. But I think that would have been completely different.
- [19:38]
A
So we want to hear a little bit about what parts of the world think about this war. And I think we have a extremely well positioned interview to talk about that.
- [19:51]
B
Gideon Rahman is the chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times and one of the most read observers of international affairs around the world. Gideon, really good to have you with us on Unholy. You've written skeptically of this war, military intervention operation, however we want to term it for a whole variety of reasons. But why don't you just set out for us why your first blush at this is skeptical?
- [20:21]
C
Well, I mean, I think it looks different from an Israeli and American point of view, but I think in the U.S. first of all, it's a sort of staggering reversal from what Trump campaigned on for many years. He was the guy who lambasted the folly of Middle Eastern intervention and said that Biden would start World War Three by attacking Iran or in Ukraine. And then suddenly seems to reverse. And it doesn't seem clear to me that there has been a real change in circumstances. I think there's more of A change in Trump's mentality that having been very risk averse, he seems to have decided that actually military intervention can work very well for him. There was the June 12day war with Iran, where clearly Israel in retrospect managed to really force America's hand. But I think in retrospect, Trump felt, well, that went very well and we had obliterated Fordo and he was able to boast about it. And then Venezuela was, from a military point of view, a kind of faultless operation. So I think Trump's mentality changed and he became more attracted to military action. But the thing that I think is most alarming from the US and maybe a wider point of view is that the justification for the war keeps shifting. They said at times that Iran posed an imminent threat, although some Republicans senators have now said Iran was an imminent threat for the last 20 years, which seemed slightly paradoxical. But then also Trump in his initial statement at Mar A Lago, said endorsed regime change and appeal to the Iranian people to seize power and so on, but would not put American troops on the ground. So it's not clear who would take control other than through some sort of spontaneous process. And I think as it's become clear, that's very problematic. They're now backed off regime change. JD Vance is now saying, oh, the only point of the war is to destroy Iran's nuclear program. But then Rubio suggested at times that they had to do this because Israel was going to act and so America was going to be implicated, so they had to come in. So there's a total mess as to what the goal of this war is. And if you don't know the goal of the war, it's very hard to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. And I think there's also some evidence already that they didn't really anticipate the level of escalation from Iran.
- [22:55]
A
We'll get to the level of escalation from Iran, which means Iran really shooting at every direction, quite the literally the GCC countries and beyond the Gulf states. But I wonder you mention a point and it is interesting to notice that since those two joint statements, both Netanyahu and Trump on Saturday, no one is saying regime change anymore. And to be quite accurate, I think Carolyn Levitt in her briefing on Wednesday really went out of her way to say the goals are the ballistic missiles and nuclear sites and the proxies and obliterating the Navy. But she definitely didn't say regime change. And I wonder if at the end of the day, if the Trump administration does arrive at a nuclear deal that they think is a good deal, would that be enough for this administration? Israel is a different picture, of course. But would that be enough for them?
- [23:45]
C
Well, maybe, but it's not clear, I mean, who they'd make that deal with at the moment. Trump, in this sort of one of these tragic comic moments, said, well, we had this idea for three people that we might talk to, but we managed to kill them all. So who's in charge? Charge in Iran is a big, open question. And of course, famously, they did have a deal, the jcpoa, that Trump walked away from because it was an Obama deal and felt it was unsatisfactory. And then shortly before the outbreak of the war, the Omani foreign minister came on television in the US and said, look, Iran has made this unprecedented offer, better than the offer that he made to, to Obama, which was to completely freeze the nuclear program in ways that were even more satisfactory from an American point of view. But then within 24 hours, the war had started. So I don't know who they'd make the deal with and who they would trust and whether at some point they would be told that, well, the deal's unsatisfactory and certainly Israel, I think, you know, is more inclined just to rely on its own force rather than anything that Iran might say or promise.
- [25:02]
B
So in amongst all this skepticism, and right at the start, when regime change was the explicit justification, you were writing that regime change has never happened through air power alone. It's always required, as you've mentioned, ground forces. And who exactly would people hand over their weapons to? And how would the Iranian people, exactly? They take control. Putting all that aside, just in terms of Israel's own point of view there, surely I don't mean in terms of what's right or wrong, but just in terms of their own calculus, you can see that there. It's much. It makes much more sense, doesn't it, that from their point of view, here's this country regime that has been the sworn enemy, arch enemy of Israel. It has been the patron of those proxies that have made life miserable for Israelis, the three Hs, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. And here suddenly, was this moment of weakness for that regime coupled with an American president who was not going to forbid it. From Benjamin Netanyahu's point of view, hasn't he acted entirely rationally? His calculus makes sense. And so. Or does your skepticism extend even to him and by his own lights, by his own logic?
- [26:13]
C
Well, it does, actually, but I mean, I'm sure I'd be dismissed as a sort of crazy unrealistic liberal, but I think it seems to me that Israel's now got to a point of view that it's completely reliant on its military superiority in the Middle east without really a political vision. Various Israelis I've spoken to have said, well if Iran collapses into chaos, that's fine by us. Better that than a weak Iran and maybe you're a safe distance from it and that's okay. But of course that does begin to destabilize the Gulf. It also antagonizes the Gulf. And there was this alternative path which was really kind of laid out by the Abraham Accords and so on, which is a normalization of Israeli relations with the whole of the Arab world at least, and not with Iran. And I think that's now much, much more difficult because I think the Gulf states first of all have been antagonized by what happened in Gaza. And you will hear from the Saudis that we just can't normalize under present circumstances. But also ISRA looks like an unpredictable and self interested actor that will really only be concerned with its own security. Well, maybe that's what states are, but that will take actions that have really serious blowback for the Gulf states who are now having missiles rained down on them. So I think it makes Israel more isolated within the region. Now we have to be realistic. We don't know what this is going to look like in a year, two years maybe people will come to different assessments. But right now it's the picture of Israel that acts forcefully, unilaterally, without any particular interest, even in the interests of friendly regimes within the Middle East. I don't think that's in the long term interest of Israel. I also think that the real danger for Israel is the shift in American opinion because it was very striking that just before the war broke out for the first time you had a poll showing that more, more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. Maybe it was one off rogue poll, but it's an extraordinary moment if that lasts and is persistent. And then you have Rubio coming out and more or less saying, well we did this because Israel railroaded us into that. So if this war goes wrong, and I think it's quite likely to go wrong, the backlash is going to be potentially quite strong. And you have it obviously on the Democratic Party with Newsom coming out, probably the favorite to be the Democratic nominee at the moment, saying Israel's an apartheid state and, and people to the left of him, like aoc, even more hostile to Israel. And now you have the MAGA wing of the Republican Party or bits of it, Vance, skeptical about the war, but Carlson, Candace Owens, et cetera. Obviously explicitly not in the anti Israel, but I would argue anti Semitic. So the kind of the broad bipartisan support which was absolutely critical to Israel and the United States is crumbling and this war is not going to help.
- [29:21]
A
I think you're very right to point out that the support in the United States of Israel is changing drastically. And we look at the Republican Party, not only the Democratic Party, we're in a very tough position. I don't know about the Gulf states, though, because I don't know how sad anyone there really is that Khamenei is gone. There was those, there were those reports that MBS actually called Trump before the attack and kind of encouraged him to do it. It's a different thing when you're under attack. I think the Gulf states are less used to what we have been going through for a long time, so perhaps it's more, it's more difficult to them. But I wonder, when you look at Donald Trump and all of the sort of pressure on him that we talked about, the critique from inside his party, obviously oil prices, obviously the Gulf states at some point, again, are not used to this kind of barrage against them, what will be the thing that will stop this? When you hear these conversations, Trump himself and Hexith talking about four or six weeks or beyond, and what will actually be the thing that makes him press the brakes?
- [30:20]
B
Well,
- [30:23]
C
could be a number of things. I guess it could be high levels of American casualties. I think that Trump was persuaded this could be easy and if it begins to look difficult, he's liable to try and cut his losses. I think the markets and energy prices are the other thing. I mean, the markets are not looking so terrible today. But if the war goes on, if there's a spike in energy prices ahead of the midterms, the single most watched price in America is the gas price, and if the petrol price goes up sharply and that's really impacting badly on the Republicans in the midterms, or if the kind of people who he mixes with Mar a Lago, his business buddies turn against the war and say, look, we've really got to stop this. And indeed, I think the Gulf states weigh pretty heavily. I mean, let's remember his first visit as president in 2016 and then again in 2024 was to Saudi Arabia. Incidentally, the Saudis, I think, deny that MBS was Urging war. I don't know, they deny all sorts of things. It doesn't mean it's not true, but it's not absolutely clear that that was their position. So, yeah, I don't think Trump is prepared to tolerate a lot of pain. On the other hand, he has this amazing ability to reinvent reality. So in a way, he's better placed to get out of war than somebody who's worried about internal consistency. So he will say, well, we obliterated the Iranian nuclear program in June and indeed fire people from the Pentagon who issued dissenting opinions and then say, well, we've got to go to war to destroy the Iranian nuclear program. And I see he was just recently saying we won the court case on tariffs in the Supreme Court. I mean, extraordinary. But in a weird way, that gives him a get out because he can just say whatever and browbeat his supporters who he's still got a lot of into just following whatever he says.
- [32:28]
B
Yeah. And he can declare victory even when everyone else sees defeat. And that does, as you say, enable him to move on. Indeed, you are one of many commentators who've drawn the comparisons with George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003. Such a study, in contrast, where, where, yes, there was, it wasn't just regime change from the air, it was on the ground. There was a long period of buildup and making the case for months and months and months, which didn't happen in this case. The other difference is allies and the so called middle powers. I mentioned this partly because where I am now, Mark Carney, who's become the kind of unofficial leader of that grouping, has addressed the Australian Parliament, Canberra, and was saying, this is, in a way, we've got to step up now. We can't rely on a world world with the United States. We've got to work together. It seems to me the United Kingdom, France, Germany haven't joined this operation. They've not opposed it. What they've done instead is said, well, when our own assets and interests are under threat, troops abroad and so on, we'll protect them. But we're not coming on board and joining this. That seems to be a big change. And we've seen Trump criticizing Starmer. So British Prime Minister saying he's no Winston Churchill. But. But how? Because you look at the big picture, how does this fit in terms of this changing world order that we're seeing, that people have been talking about the end of the 1945 world order? Is this war, this war with Iran, a big chapter in that story?
- [33:54]
C
Well, we'll see. But it's certainly a big contrast with 2003, when a lot of European countries and a lot of American allies went in with America into Iraq and famously, it split Europe so that Britain, Portugal, Spain, because Spain was then under conservative rule, went in and supplied troops and diplomatic support. And France and Germany even had a joint press conference with Putin to oppose the war. So, yeah, different times. But I think if I was American worried about its alliance system, it's very striking that none of their European allies have been involved in this. And. Okay, well, the decision was made pretty quickly. And really, none of them have been vocal in their support for it. Some have been. I mean, Sanchez in Spain has been vocal in denouncing it. Most of them have just tried to kind of hum and whore, and Mertz was a little bit more supportive. But I think the Germans have their own reasons to be strongly supportive of anything involving Israel. But the British are staying on the sidelines. And you know better than I do that that's. That's a very unusual response from the UK, because the UK's first response generally is to preserve the special relationship with America, to always give the Americans the benefit of the doubt. And you can see the conservative newspapers in Britain sort of falling back on that instinct and saying, why aren't we getting involved with the Americans? But I don't think that is where the British public is. I would guess that Starmer's position is pretty popular. And this is again where I think Trump. Trump pays a price for a year of fairly abusive relationship with his allies. You can't really impose tariffs on them, say that they were hung back in Afghanistan, denigrate their war dead, effectively abuse the Ukrainians, and then say, oh, but why aren't you supporting us? It has an effect in the long run. America looks capricious, unreliable, and so people are much less willing to ally with.
- [36:12]
A
I want to do something that's perhaps presumptuous and kind of look into the future and say, if we don't know if this creates regime change in Iran, it might lead to destabilization and Iran will weakened in a way, even if the ayatollahs are still in power. You know, when you look at the Middle east the last 50 years, we had two powers, right? Two regional power, Israel and Iran. If Iran is weakened, what's the force that moves to the foreground? Is it Saudi Arabia? Is it Turkey? Is it Qatar? What is the kind of next regional power to rise, in your opinion?
- [36:48]
C
Good question. I mean, you know, I don't think you can say now because it's one. I think it's partly because a weakened Iran wouldn't sort of exist in a vacuum. It's a country of 90 million people, so what happens there will affect the neighborhood and so on. So, you know, you mentioned the ambivalent reaction of the Gulf and of course they've been among the forefront of those warning about the dangers of Iran. But I think that they have to now say, okay, can you have a kind of destabilized, weakened Iran, but perhaps a much less hostile Iran because it's kind of off the table. And is that good or bad for MBS's sort of vision of the future of Saudi Arabia? You could argue that, well, maybe in the long run it's good because you don't have this hostile Iran on the borders. But if you have refugee flows, if you have a civil war, if you have a successor regime that is still in charge and actually has zero interest now in trying to build some sort of relationship with its neighbors and becomes a sort of spoiler that sponsors terror groups, et cetera, et cetera, well, that's kind of bad. All it requires, I think, to really destroy the Gulf dream is for missiles or bombs to land periodically, just for people to say, you know what, Dubai isn't safe. This wasn't a one off. It could keep happening. And then I think a lot of the sort of Gulf vision of what they want for their future is endangered. As you say, Israel's sort of learned to live with it. But Israel has, hasn't built itself as a sort of global aviation hub or as a global hub for footloose money and come and live the dream in Dubai, if that's your dream. So Israel has other strengths, but that's not the way that the Gulf states were going. Turkey, yeah, I mean, Erdogan has his vision of greater Ottomanism, et cetera, and will be looking to expand his power. But they have their own problems and issues. So I don't know, it depends whether you think if Iran became a bit like Iraq now, which is turbulent, violent, unstable, but kind of off the table as a player, that would probably work well for Israel. Maybe it would work for some of its neighbors. But I find it difficult to believe with a country that large, I mean, the population is three times the size of Iraq's, that it will somehow just dwindle into an irrelevance that we can just like forget about it. I don't see that happening. But maybe, maybe I'm wrong.
- [39:32]
B
Just following up on that. And you wrote this about those Gulf states that were trying to pioneer a sort of new Middle east and they've been sort of sucked back in. Al Pacino in the Godfather style. They're pulled back in to the old Middle east by this. Doesn't that mean the fact that it was their hotels and airports, et cetera, that were hit, that they now have to see the end of this regime? Because for the very reason you identify, which is if the regime continues and it just is an occasion regional threat, that absolutely undermines their model, which is you can be safe here. Aren't they now necessarily all in on total regime change rather than just some Moderate Iran Regime 2.0 scenario?
- [40:19]
C
I don't think so, actually. Because the thing is, to have an assured total regime change, you can't just overthrow. You have to then put something in its place. You have to start deploying troops to stabilization forces. I don't think you can just decapitate the regime as we're seeing now and expect that somehow spontaneously, without any further foreign intervention, without troops on the ground, and that debate is starting in America, you will get a successor regime you can live with. I mean, maybe you will, but I literally can't think of any examples where that's happened. And actually, as we've discovered when he deployed troops on the ground, even that probably doesn't work, which is why Trump, et cetera, were arguing so much against it because the experience with both Iraq and Afghanistan was that it didn't really work out. Libya's maybe a counterexample where we didn't put boots on the ground and there's also been a civil war there. It's not clear to me that they have to commit to all out regimes and certainly without a plan. But I think in the shorter term they may, may feel compelled to go to war now to join the conflict. Because if you think about it from their point of view, they've been taking incoming fire from Iran without retaliating. They've spent a lot of money on weapons and so on at some point, I mean, okay, their populations are tiny apart from Saudi Arabia. But they may feel that they have to show to their populations that they're not just a punching bag and that they will hit back. It may just be a symbolic action, but I wouldn't be surprised if you see the air forces, the UAE or Saudi Arabia beginning to participate in these actions. But that's not to say that they have a plan for the future of how Iran is stabilized or indeed that they're going to suddenly say, well, it was a great idea that Israel and the US Went in, but like all of us, they face the situation that now exists and they have to respond to it.
- [42:21]
B
Well, there is going to be much more of this. I know. But for guiding us through just for this first week of this, even though it feels like several months already, Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times, thank you so much for joining us on Unholy.
- [42:35]
C
Thank you very much for inviting me.
- [42:41]
A
That was a fascinating conversation. And I, you know, after opening up this show by telling you, Jonathan, I can't actually my brain cannot think about a day forward in the future. I was asking you what will happen in the future of the Middle East. There's so many fascinating questions. We have not seen even the beginning of the sort of repercussions of what we are seeing. These are historic days, whether you support this or not. We are going through historic days in this region.
- [43:09]
B
We are. And I think it was really appropriate that we began with the absolute granular, hourly reality there for you in Israel. But this is a huge world story and it is affecting Turkey, it's affecting Cyprus, it's affecting obviously the Gulf States. It's having an impact even, you know, here far away at the other end of the world in Australia with a visit of the Canadian primary. This is a world event. And so in a way, we've gone from both ends of the telescope and Gideon Rachman took us to that within his own very expert and sage way. So very grateful to him. It would normally be awards time. Yonit, what do you think?
- [43:49]
A
I think we're not in the mood. I mean, yeah, I think we're on my end of the conversation. I think it's okay to say, look, we are obviously going through a tumultuous time. We will bring you, our listeners, more episodes than usual. You've heard that this past week and of course next week. And I think we'll shelve the awards for a little bit. Jonathan, what do you think?
- [44:14]
B
I think we both agree on that. Yeah. It's not quite the vibe this week. Instead you have to dodge sirens as they come hour by hour. I am set to make a very big journey across the world. My plans had to change like many, many tens of thousands of others. I was due to fly back from here via Dubai. That flight has been cancelled and I'm going the other direction, westward via the United States, but hopefully back soon home. And we will speak again from then as this huge and enveloping story unfolds. But for the moment. I know that I'm speaking for everyone listening to this. To you, Yoni, to Michal Porat, obviously, our brilliant producer. Stay safe. To everyone else in Israel and in this very troubled region right now, stay safe, stay out of harm's way, and we will speak again.
- [45:05]
A
We will.