In the conversation – recorded during a media briefing hosted by BICOM – Oz Noy unpacks the tension between Israel’s declared objective of dismantling Hamas and the parallel goal of returning the remaining hostages. He assesses the security risks of a potential prisoner release, the strategic leverage of hostage diplomacy, and the role of Egypt and other regional powers.

Oz Noy served as a divisional head in Shin Bet (ISA – Israel Security Agency), equivalent in rank to a Major General in the IDF, before retiring in 2020. He now lectures at Reichman University in Tel Aviv.

Transcript

(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)

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Daniel J Levy: Hello and welcome to the Bicon. Podcast I’m Daniel J. Levy, programs manager. And today is 3rd of July 2025. My guest is Oznoi, a career shimbet officer, who retired as a divisional head so equivalent level 2 major general in the Idf. In 2020. He is now a lecturer at the Reichman University in Tel Aviv.

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Daniel J Levy: Thank you for joining me, and to open our conversation. Perhaps you could introduce yourself a little further beyond what I did, and also maybe explain a little bit about Israel’s current security situation, reference, the possibility of an imminent ceasefire in Gaza.

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Oz Noy: Thank you very much for inviting me to this platform. Appreciate it.

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Oz Noy: As the Daniel said as they, I retire. The id the I am.

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Oz Noy: I say, sorry. 4 years ago I my last position was the head of the what we call then it been changed, and since then the head of the Israeli and the broad division. I was responsible of all the Israeli Arabs. All the Isa targets abroad. I grew up in the Palestinian arena as a field officer

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Oz Noy: and

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Oz Noy: Most of my career I made in in the field the positions. Only one position was the

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Oz Noy: in the I say headquarter.

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Oz Noy: And so my expertise, especially within the Palestinian Palestinian arena.

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Oz Noy: And to your question we’re facing now another option, another possibility for a ceasefire or some kind of

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Oz Noy: a deal.

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Oz Noy: Unfortunately, the as far as I see it, and I’m not familiar with the intelligence material since I retired. So all my knowledge is from from the media.

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Oz Noy: but as far as I see it.

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Oz Noy: unfortunately, the future within the within the Hamas in Gaza strip is very blur, because the Israeli government

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Oz Noy: put a goal, a definite victory on the Hamas, which means that

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Oz Noy: I don’t know what it what it means, a definite victory on Hamas, on ideology on thousands and thousands Hamas members with weapons, with Rpgs, with Klatchnikovs, and so on in Gaza strip.

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Oz Noy: And I really don’t know if someone know

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Oz Noy: what it means what a definite victory in Gaza, in Gaza strip means.

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Oz Noy: And, on the other hand, we have those hostages in in Gaza Strip.

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Oz Noy: and, as as you know, as I know, until the last week we had 2 main major goals.

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Oz Noy: the 1st one by the this priority.

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Oz Noy: just like the Government, the Israeli Government or the Israeli Security Cabinet defined it.

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Oz Noy: A definite victory on Hamas, and the second one

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Oz Noy: should be to release the whole. All the hostages, the death, and the live hostages.

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Oz Noy: I really don’t know how they can do it logically.

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Oz Noy: How can you erase Hamas? Existence in in Gaza Street.

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Oz Noy: and on the other military in military way, and, on the other hand.

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Oz Noy: to bring back all the all the hostages. I think there is some kind of oxymoron in this definition.

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Oz Noy: and I think that this is one of the reasons, one of the reasons that we are almost 2 years

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Oz Noy: in in Gaza Strip, and no one. Yet no one can see the the light, even small light.

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Oz Noy: to where it goes and how we are going out from this from this situation.

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Oz Noy: So I hope that we will face another ceasefire. Another another deal.

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Oz Noy: I hope that the goals, the priority of the goals, will be changed.

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Oz Noy: because I I think I believe that part of the or the main leverage to and to naturalize

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Oz Noy: Hamas influenced the military capabilities and the political influence

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Oz Noy: in Gaza strip the main leverage today. To do that is not a military leverage

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Oz Noy: is to bring all hostages back home, and I think once Hamas will be left in Gaza street

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Oz Noy: without the hostages.

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Oz Noy: It will be a completely different situation.

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Oz Noy: Internal situation in Gaza strip within the Hamas, or within the Palestinian, and people in Gaza Strip.

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Oz Noy: So I think that the main leverage to bring some kind of

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Oz Noy: solution, some kind of reasonable end to this conflict or to this war with Hamas in Gaza strip

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Oz Noy: is 1st to bring all hostages back home, then to deal with Hamas.

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Oz Noy: Hamas army, and then to deal with Hamas governance in in Gaza trip.

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Oz Noy: That’s how I see it. I think that we are way.

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Oz Noy: Still. Now, according to the to the government goals and the and the strategy, I think that unfortunately we are a little bit away from

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Oz Noy: from seeing some kind of reasonable solution

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Oz Noy: with with Hamas in Gaza strip.

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Daniel J Levy: And if we do have a ceasefire that moves forward, involving some kind of large scale prisoner exchange. What kind of factoring do you think Shimbet will be doing for the security risks associated with releasing dangerous Palestinian terrorists, convicted terrorists. And how do you think a future Sinwa situation can be avoided?

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Oz Noy: I think that the involvement of the Isa is in 2 ways 2 main ways. The 1st one is the military. It’s helped the military effort with precise

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Oz Noy: and very valuable intelligence that the Isa can bring on Hamas members, especially the

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Oz Noy: the leaders of Hamas, or main figures that hold the main capabilities in in the Hamas army.

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Oz Noy: and the other one is with the negotiations, with with Hamas.

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Oz Noy: especially through the Qataris and the Egyptian.

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Oz Noy: I think that the Isa has a very good relations with the Egyptians, and we can. The Isa can leverage

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Oz Noy: few things with the Egyptians towards Hamas

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Oz Noy: in in Gaza strip. We did that all the last 2020 years. I think that this is one of the

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Oz Noy: and

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Oz Noy: the the edges that the Isa has in this effort. So I see the Isa in 2 main efforts, the military intelligence, military effort, and help, the negotiations

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Oz Noy: to bring as much as hostages that we can bring back home.

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Daniel J Levy: Thank you for that. One of the themes that we’ve been hearing a lot is the day after. What does Gaza look like in a post Hamas era. And who should be ruling Gaza? What

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Daniel J Levy: would Shimbet or the Israeli intelligence, or sort of the domestic parts of the Israeli Intelligence Community be thinking about such an arrangement, and how could that possibly be differing from the Idf. Say.

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Oz Noy: So again, I don’t know. What are the

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Oz Noy: What are the current plans or strategy?

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Oz Noy: The I say strategy for this very main, big, huge.

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Oz Noy: important question, just to remember that at the beginning of this war, at the beginning of 2024, I believe, somewhere around March, April 2024, the Isa and the Idf.

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Oz Noy: They wanted to bring this very important, very strategic question to the Security Cabinet, and they did together.

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Oz Noy: a very deep and wide thinking, and to bring to the table some kind or several reasonable solutions.

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Oz Noy: who should be take over after after Hamas.

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Oz Noy: And just to remind you. This discussion was never made because of yeah.

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Oz Noy: that the Prime Minister didn’t want to discuss this this question.

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Oz Noy: as far as I know, until today.

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Oz Noy: So, this is, this is again one of our, I think, strategic problems that

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Oz Noy: we don’t know. Where is the the door that will lead us

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Oz Noy: to the to some kind of reasonable solution.

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Oz Noy: With the Hamas in Gaza strip.

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Oz Noy: There is no, as far as I see it, as far as I know, and familiar with the Palestinian arena.

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Oz Noy: there is no good solution, there is no good solution.

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Oz Noy: there is no even reasonable solution.

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Oz Noy: We have only bad solutions.

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Oz Noy: This is the reality.

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Oz Noy: So in this reality I believe that we should take the less bad solutions

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Oz Noy: solution that we have on the table.

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Oz Noy: And again, according to to my expertise within the Palestinian arena more than 30 years.

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Oz Noy: I don’t believe that there is any option, any options that someone else beside Palestinians can rule Gaza Strip.

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Oz Noy: I think that Gaza strip. It’s the most complicated area in the world.

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Oz Noy: and I don’t believe that there is any chance that someone.

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Oz Noy: even if it will be a a, some kind of Arab organization.

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Oz Noy: Qataris, Egyptians, Arabs, Swedians, whatever. I don’t believe that they have any chance to rule and to run

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Oz Noy: and the Gaza strip for a reasonable time

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Oz Noy: that that will take a Gaza strip out of this this very complicated solution.

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Oz Noy: So in this, under this assumption my assumption.

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Oz Noy: I think, that we should build some kind of Palestinian organization

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Oz Noy: that will take over a Gaza strip that will run Gaza, strip all the

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Oz Noy: or I will say before the security responsibility

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Oz Noy: for the next years. I don’t know how many, 5, 1015 it depends, but as far as I see it. It’s not few years

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Oz Noy: will stay at the Israeli side.

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Oz Noy: and there will be. We should build some kind of Palestinian professional Palestinian organizations

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Oz Noy: that will take over a Gaza strip.

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Oz Noy: and we’ll start to rebuild the

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Oz Noy: all the all the mess in in Gaza Strip.

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Oz Noy: and I know this is not a very good solution, and I know there is a very, not small chances that it won’t succeed.

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Oz Noy: And I know it won’t take a year or 2, or even 5.

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Oz Noy: But I believe that this is the only reasonable solution

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Oz Noy: for the day after in in Gaza Street.

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Oz Noy: and I know I know there are maybe too many political complication with this solution.

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Oz Noy: But I don’t. I don’t consider if even any political a consideration.

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Oz Noy: All, all, my, all. My view is, is only from the security

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Oz Noy: and my my knowledge and my expertise with the with the Palestinian arena.

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Oz Noy: So this is my my opinion, and about how we can.

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Oz Noy: We can see the day after in the Gaza strip.

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Oz Noy: As I said before, I really don’t know even to evaluate

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Oz Noy: what are the chances that some kind of the dissolution will be not implemented, and will be considered in this political in our political situation.

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Oz Noy: But this is how I see it.

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Daniel J Levy: And earlier, you mentioned that Shimbat has a particularly good relationship with the Egyptians. What role would you see the Egyptians playing in your vision for a day after, even if it’s indirect rather than direct rule or security involvement.

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Oz Noy: I think that practically the Egyptians are

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Oz Noy: controlling almost or not everything, but they are controlling

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Oz Noy: Gaza strip in in many ways

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Oz Noy: for the last 20 years or yeah, 20, almost 20 years.

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Oz Noy: 18 years. The only way out from Gaza Strip was through the through Egypt, Bouwaffa.

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Oz Noy: and this is the only gate outside the Gaza, strip for people, for merchandise and and everything.

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Oz Noy: And

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Oz Noy: I think that the Egyptians have still have a very heavy or big leverage

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Oz Noy: on the, on, the, on the Palestinians, in the in Gaza Strip.

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Oz Noy: They have a very or too many interests with Gaza Street.

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Oz Noy: Especially interest that the things in Gaza strip will not influence on on the on the Egypt, on the Egyptians

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Oz Noy: on the Egypt side, so I think that we should

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Oz Noy: use the Egyptians influence the Egyptians

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Oz Noy: leverage. I think we should use the Saudi Arabia influence. I think we should use the Jordanians leverage.

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Oz Noy: I don’t believe, with the Qatarians influence or leverage.

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Oz Noy: I don’t believe, with the Turkish Turkish leverage.

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Oz Noy: so this is how I see it. I think we should take the Egyptians, the Syrian, the Lebanese, the Saudi Arabians, and they should be the

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Oz Noy: the board.

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Oz Noy: Some kind of board of this.

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Oz Noy: if there is, or if we can build any some kind of a solution

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Oz Noy: they should be to. They should be involved in this solution. Of course, with the Americans, with the EU and the other other western countries.

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Daniel J Levy: And we almost have a template in the West Bank for what Israeli Palestinian security cooperation can look like. Granted. Far from perfect many issues. There. Is there any way that you could foresee some kind of similar cooperation with the Palestinian administration in Gaza.

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Daniel J Levy: taking the best of what the Israelis and the Palestinians doing together in the west bank.

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Oz Noy: Yeah, for sure, according to my my experience with the

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Oz Noy: the Palestinian security organization in the West Bank. I was there for 20 years in a row

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Oz Noy: there were years.

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Oz Noy: I’m I’m say, that clear cut the

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Oz Noy: evidence that there were years years that the Palestinians Security organization they swore more tele activity than the Isa.

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Oz Noy: Why? Why was that? Because they had the interest. They had the capability.

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Oz Noy: And then they figured out that the Hamas and the Islamic dead. The page were, threaten, the Palestinian authority

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Oz Noy: not more, but not too far from the threat, and that from the threat that they that they were threatening the Israeli side.

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Oz Noy: but

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Oz Noy: When the Palestinian authority they

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Oz Noy: They started to see that there is no any future.

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Oz Noy: There’s no any solution for the Palestinian political solution.

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Oz Noy: Things went very wrong, and since the Israeli Government started to prefer the Hamas

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Oz Noy: and prefer Hamas in Gaza strip.

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Oz Noy: just to remind you that the strategy, the Israeli strategy for years

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Oz Noy: with the Hamas in Gaza Strip was Hamas control, weak and deter?

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Oz Noy: That was the Israeli strategy.

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Oz Noy: I don’t know how you do it, how anyone can do it.

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Oz Noy: And at the end we saw.

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Oz Noy: But the Israeli strategy said that they prefer Hamas in Gaza strip, and don’t want the Palestinian authority in in Gaza, in in the West Bank.

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Oz Noy: So under this strategy, we saw that the Palestinians capabilities, security capabilities, deteriorating, and are their interest.

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Oz Noy: Were were not the same.

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Oz Noy: and the end. We are seeing these days that the Palestinian authority they are not, as far as I see it from again.

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Oz Noy: I’m not familiar with the intelligence materials, but as far as I see it, they are not working almost

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Oz Noy: any kind of terror activity in the in the west bank.

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Oz Noy: and almost 100% of the of the terror activity is working by the Isa and Idf, so they are not playing any any rule in the in the west bank, because they don’t have any interest.

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Oz Noy: So to your question, I believe

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Oz Noy: that if we can take some kind of Palestinian, a organization I don’t know how to

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Oz Noy: how to define it. Let’s let’s say that it will be some kind of Palestinian organization

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Oz Noy: that will be responsible on the for the 1st stage or phase. They will be responsible on the civilian.

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Oz Noy: They will have all the civilian responsibility in Gaza street with milestones.

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Oz Noy: 5 years, 10 years, 15 I don’t know, and with a map road

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Oz Noy: that at the end they can see that they can have the ability to take over

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Oz Noy: for all a for all Gaza Street, also on the securities issues, if they don’t

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Oz Noy: see, and they don’t believe they won’t believe that there is some kind of really and realistic

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Oz Noy: Map Road. I believe that the chances are very, very low.

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Oz Noy: It will help few years, because

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Oz Noy: the situation now it’s it can be worse.

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Paul Martin Cainer: So.

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Oz Noy: It will held. I don’t know 5 years.

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Oz Noy: but in 5 years, when the situation will be better, and they will rebuild the Gaza strip from the beginning, they will start to

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Oz Noy: and to to they will have the the initiatives and the motivation to to be independent authority.

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Oz Noy: which is very reasonable a will.

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Oz Noy: And if the Israeli side, or any kind of international and a board, or

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00:25:27.420 –> 00:25:34.810

Oz Noy: some kind of Internet, they won’t have any kind of international background for those initiatives.

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Oz Noy: I don’t think that there is a very good chances that it will succeed, and we will face things

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Oz Noy: that are very much similar to what we are facing in the West Bank.

In this episode, Richard Pater speak with Professor Kobi Michael about the trajectory of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. In the conversation, recorded during a media briefing hosted by BICOM, Professor Michael outlines the emerging trilateral cooperation between Israel, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, reflects on Qatari involvement, and discusses the prospects for further hostage releases.

Prof. Kobi Michael is a senior researcher at INSS and a visiting professor at the International Centre for Policing and Security at the University of South Wales. He served as the Deputy Director-General at Israel’s Ministry for Strategic Affairs and as the Head of the Palestinian division at Israel’s National Security Council.

Transcript

(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)

Richard Pater:

Welcome to this BICOM Briefing. My name is Richard Pater. I am the director of BICOM based here in Jerusalem. Delighted to welcome, Professor Kobi Michael and to the briefing. Kobi, thank you very much indeed for agreeing to do this. By way of background, Kobi is a senior researcher both at the Ion Assets Think Tank and the Discovery Institute.

In the past, he has served as the Deputy Director general at the Ministry for Strategic Affairs, and before that was the head of the Palestinian division at Israel’s National Security Council. So perhaps, Kobi, if I can ask you just to make some opening, comments and share your overall assessment of the latest, the current military campaign the IDF has underway in Gaza and how I mean, maybe if I can ask you the appointed question, how close is the IDF to defeating Hamas? And what does that, what that look like?

Professor Kobi Michael:

Good morning. And thank you for having me. We, and our 20 months, after October 7th, 23 and, actually, we have entered to the longest war that Israel, has faced, since, ever since its establishment in. We came to be even longer than the War of Independence.

That used to be the longest one. And this is something that indicates about, the the complication or the complexity of, the situation because, you know, many people in Israel and mainly abroad, do not truly understand why the hell it takes such a long time. But, unfortunately, we are dealing with, I would say the most complicated urban warfare ever in the entire humanity.

Humanity. It cannot be compared, nor to, Afghanistan, neither to, Iraq, Mosul, Fallujah, or any, any other, Cser or arena, in the last, in the last century. And even beyond that, we are talking about, the most populated area in the entire globe, 365km², with more than 2 million people.

And we are talking about a very, radical, extreme, violent, determined ideological, religious, two organization which, is in the very same time, even an effective, sovereign in, in this piece of land in the very same time, Hamas is does not stand alone in the sense that Hamas is, a component, even a crucial component in a much broader, camp axis, which is known as the resistance axis, led by Iran, which is now, in the, in the news.

Okay. In the headlines, but, Iran, seeks to, to, establish its hegemonic in the, in the broader Middle East. And the Iran, uses the strategy, among some other things, but uses the strategy of, of proxies where Hamas is one of the proxies that, Iran uses, and, and therefore, from the first beginning from October 7th, 2023, the war against Hamas was not limited to Hamas or to the Gaza Strip.

From the first beginning, it was, a much broader war, a regional war when Israel faced, a multi-front war and the I would say that this regional war was even, sort of a global war in some occasions. They even say that this is something that looks like the beginning of World War three. And, if now, Israel or the United States or both of them will attack militarily Iran, we are involved.

World three, there is no doubt about it. Okay. Because this is not only Israel, Iran or the United States, Iran we have here Russia and China, and we have many other players. And, this war will have further impact, which will be global impacts for, the long run going back to the Gaza Strip.

Hamas for, I would say almost two decades worked very hard in order to fortify itself, to build itself as an organized terror military by, using all the resources, in order, to build the capacities, mainly with regard to the very well developed, infrastructure of, of tunnels, that, eventually and makes the war in the Gaza Strip, a war from house to house.

It means that, Israel cannot isolate part of the Gaza Strip and, and to run or to conduct the war in this isolated part, without, citizens and without, the civil, humanitarian facilities like, hospitals, schools, mosques, and some other, facilities and, to take the time to destroy the, the terror infrastructure and then, to continue going on to another part of the Gaza Strip to isolated and, to do it until, finishing the entire war or the entire work in, in the Gaza Strip.

This is not the situation. Hamas is so deeply embedded in the civilian society, and Hamas uses all the humanitarian facilities, built hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques, cemeteries and residential houses. You know, we are talking about, an infrastructure of more than 700km of tunnels. It is something that, I mean, that we have never knew in the, in the, in the history of, of wars or even if, in history, of other things which are not wars.

And, the problem becomes to be even more complicated because all the, the, the axis, the entrances to these tunnels are hides, or hidden in, these civilian facilities and in residential houses. We have so many evidence that, I mean, there are so many occasions where, we found, the the holes. Okay, that, that were used as entrances or, exits of these tunnels in, in children rooms, in bedrooms of private houses.

Not talking about, hospitals, clinics, schools, and the some other things. It means that all the Gaza Strip and then I, I would like to emphasize that all the Gaza Strip is infected by Hamas, all the Gaza Strip is Hamas. And in order to destroy this infrastructure of tunnels, in order to dismantle Hamas as an organized, effective military and governmental entity, you have to destroy the infrastructure of the tunnels because this is the center of gravity.

This is the most effective or the most crucial center of gravity that Hamas holds. And, and, and in order to do that, we have to reach through the tunnels, mainly through the strategic tunnels, though the tunnels, which are used as, as big compounds, that, are used for, storage, you go for of rockets, that are used as operational rooms.

We, and these are strategic tunnels feed the, the tactical tunnels. Okay. Therefore, if we will destroy the strategic tunnels, we don’t have to destroy necessarily the tactical tunnels, because the tactical tunnels will become useless without the strategic tunnels that feed them. But we have to reach to the strategic tunnels. And even when when we are talking about the strategic tunnels, the last one was uncovered.

It was two weeks ago when we bombarded the the tunnel that was used by Hamas in water. And, Shabani, the, the commander of the Rafah brigade, in the in the middle, in the middle, between between the the the two, two departments, the emergency room and the Department of the European Hospital in Communist, which is one of the biggest hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

And and this tower was just beneath the, the the emergency room of the hospital. Okay. And we bombarded, by the way, without harming the hospital itself, which is, I would say, something which is, not less than magnificent. But, we killed how much? And, he’s going in the tunnel. Then he goes, we go and, and, therefore we have, we have, to, to work very hard in order to reach to all of these places, and, to, to destroy all of these, all of these tunnels.

And the idea that Hamas uses these places, and uses the civilians as human shield, and the they don’t care to sacrifice their people. And by the way, they say that loud and loud and clear publicly. Yes. I want to say that. And his brother, how much generosity and how you say the and the and I need to say that that they are willing to sacrifice more 100,000 people.

Okay. For the for the sake of the of the victory. And, therefore and they are I mean, the, the international media and some, some politicians in the, in the West and all the humanitarian in aid organizations and of course, the UN, they, they play to the hands of Hamas when they, when they echo the narrative of Hamas and when they, use the figures, the fabricated figures, which are provided by, by Hamas with regard to the number of the fatalities and the casualties, and and that they, they, they buy the narrative of Hamas and use that in order to pressure Israel and in order to demand from Israel to stop the war. And they present, a sort of a picture or an image that, that all the casualties there, and the Palestinian casualties are, an immediate result, of the Israeli brutality. Okay. Without mentioning the responsibility of Hamas and the main responsibility and the first responsibility is the responsibility of Hamas, in this regard.

So, now, we are, in a situation where I think it’s pretty understood that, nothing, probably will come out from the negotiation with Hamas. And this is the reason that Israel increases the military pressure on Hamas. And I think that the it is not enough yet. And, one of the problems that, that we had, at least according to my understanding, is that we didn’t pressured enough from the first beginning of the war.

And I think that we, we were supposed to do that from the first beginning. And this war should have lasted not more than one month, two months. And from the first beginning, Israel should have declared loud and clear to Hamas and to the entire world. You have three days, one week to bring back all the hostages, to dismantle yourself.

Because of our Jewish mercy, we will enable you to live peacefully. The Gaza Strip and the war would have been ended after two weeks. If you are not going to do that, we are going to open the gates of hell on your hands. We are going to eradicate you. We are going to occupy the entire Gaza Strip, and the Gaza Strip will never, ever will be under Palestinians sovereignty.

This should have been the Israeli ultimatum to Hamas and to the entire world and the United States of America should have pressure. Qatar, the main sponsor of Hamas, from the first beginning until today, the United States of America doesn’t pressure enough Qatar a bigger pressure today, harder pressure today in comparison to almost two years ago. But it is not enough yet.

It is not enough yet. And Qatar has an interest that Hamas will remain in power, not only in the Gaza Strip, by the way, but in the entire Palestinian arena. And not only Hamas is, is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, but not only in the case of Palestine, but in, in the global overview that Qatar has with regard to the political Islam, with regard to the Muslim Brotherhood and Qatar, does utmost efforts in order to enable the political Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood, to penetrate and to establish themselves and to conquer the entire free world.

They do it in the UK, they do it in France, in Belgium, in Germany, in Sweden, in Italy, and, and the and the free world, the Western Wall, led by the United States of America, continues appeasing the Qataris, continue appeasing the materials. Who is Qatar? Such a funny country of less than 400,000 citizens and more than 1.5 million modern slaves, Qatar cannot survive two hours without the IT.

Without the United States. An American ultimatum to Qatar. You have two hours to, to freeze all the bank accounts of Hamas in Qatar, to, to, to take out all, Hamas leaders from the Qatari soil and to shut down Al-Jazeera with regard to the incitement from the Gaza Strip that impacts the entire Arab world.

And if you are not going to do this in two hours, you are going to remain alone, and we will see how long Qatar can remain alone. I can promise you, not more than two days. But instead of doing that, the, the American, the, the American, administration with the under Biden or even today under Trump continue glorifying Hamas air Qatar is our best ally.

Very important contribution to the, to the mediation and and the very, very crucial contribution to the to the national interests of the United States and so on and so forth. So, I think that now we are in a situation where Hamas is in the worst strategic position since the opening of the war, since October 7th, because Hamas, was I would say, or Hamas suffers from, from very, very, crucial, I would say losses of capacities beat with regard to, to, their leaders and their combatants or with regard to their capacities of, self manufacturing of weapon, with regard to the weapon that they used to have, mainly the strategic weapon and the long range rockets and some other strategic capacities that they used to have. All of that or most of that was, destroyed by. Yeah, by the IDF. They, they lost their, command and control capacities, actually, after, the targeting of them.

How much in Warren Shabana? We used to be the commander of Rafah Brigade. Hamas has been left only with one senior experienced commander who is, as a dinner Haggadah, the commander of the ill for Gaza brigade. And, I really doubt, that, as Hadad is able to control the the rest of Hamas in the center of the Gaza Strip, I mean, the south of the Gaza Strip, if Hamas is still there in the south, because we control very, I would say, efficiently the, the South, the, the, the rough area and the there is almost no Hamas there at all.

So they lost their command and control capacities and capabilities. And, it is true that they, have succeeded to recruit, youngsters in the ages of 16 to 18 because they have a lot of money. Part of the money is money that was produced by, the looting, of the Humanitarian Aid convoys and trucks and then the selling the monetary and aid, in, in very high prices to the civilians of Gaza.

And they use this money in addition to the a lot of money that they used to have before, in order to, recruit the youngsters, that have nothing to do, but these youngsters and although we are talking about thousands of them, there are not experienced, they are not trained. And actually they became to be a sort of a sort of a, you know, for cannon flesh.

Okay. Which are used for guerrilla general purposes, almost, committing suicide. Okay. Against, against the IDF. But, one of the most significant losses of Hamas is, the, the law, the idea that they lost their, I would say almost absolute control that they use, the they used to have, with regard to the Humanitarian Aid because, once the, the centers of, of, Humanitarian Aid that were established that were built, in the, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip and, are operated by the, the American company and are secure the envelope of these, center distribution centers, the envelope of these centers is, is secured by the IDF. And now we have, the militia of, Yasir AbuShaban in Rafa area. These, these developments, are very concerned develop developments for Hamas because, Hamas loses control over the territory, over the population, over the humanitarian aid supply and the the I would say that, the the fear, barrier that was there, that prevented the, the, the Gazans, the citizens to act against Hamas, to protest, to organize themselves, to try to build an alternative.

Okay. This, fear, became to be more and more fragile. I mean, people are doing much, much more these days. And, if they experiment with, and Yasser, Yoshinobu Shabab, group will, will be a successful one, then it’ll be duplicated to other parts of the Gaza Strip. Now, we have to understand that this experiment is, at least to my understanding, a sort of an outcome of a trilateral, cooperation.

An Israeli, Egyptian, Palestinian, I mean, the person in authority, cooperation. And, this is something that enable Israel, to continue saying that, the alternative to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in the so-called the day after, will not be Hamas leader Abbas, and it will enable the Palestinian Authority to say that nothing can be done in the Gaza Strip without out the deep involvement of the Palestinian Authority, and both sides will be happy with that.

Okay. But then I think that, there is an understanding in Israel that, in order to, to enable, to build, a reliable, valid, functioning alternative governance to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, we have to do it, first, on a very gradual basis. Secondly, very carefully. And thirdly, we have to, to, to to take into consideration the idea of legitimacy.

And the Palestinian Authority in this regard is a sort of a legitimacy generator. Okay. First of all, in the Palestinian need. So secondly, vis a vis the region, and if Israel wants that, the, the pragmatic Arab camp, which is led by the Saudis, their gypsies, and includes the, the Gulf countries, Morocco, Jordan will be part of the, so-called day after and will enter the Gaza Strip in order to support, to train, to educate the the new governance, the alternative governance to Hamas and to enable the beginning of the reconstruction process, Israel has to assure that any alternative that will be built there will be perceived as legitimate in the eyes of the Palestinian Authority. And the Palestinian Authority will invite these Arab countries to enter the Gaza Strip as a mission force in order to support, and to train to educate this, the alternative governance. So I believe that we have here a trilateral cooperation, and we know that, yes, our Shabab, used to have and still has very good and close, connection, with, the Palestinian Authority, mainly with, Majid Faraj, the head of the, the general intelligence, but not only with him.

And we know that, he’s family is clan is tribe. Used to be a part of, the preventive, preventive, security or preventive intelligence led by Muhammad last, in the days of the Palestinian Authority. Sorry, in the Gaza Strip. So the heavy story, between of them, and, we see that Hamas is very, very concerned about this.

And, we see that Hamas, and it tries to do all the possible efforts in other, first of all, to, to dismantle this group or at least to, sabotage. It’s, it’s, work there. And to sabotage, the work of the of the, distribution centers. Do you want it to be on the aid, supply centers?

Because, if people and more people, more citizens will, use the services of these centers, it means that they will not need to use the services or so-called services of Hamas. Now, I think that, if we will, do simultaneously three things, we will get much closer to the end of the war, and we will increase dramatically the probability of releasing more hostages in brackets.

I would say, before telling you what I think we have to do simultaneously, what are the three things that we have to do in brackets? I would like to emphasize and to say that I never believe that we will be able to get all the hostages back, because I never believe that Hamas will be willing to release all the hostages, that Hamas is capable to release all the hostages.

Why? Because, we have experience with Hamas. We have to remember that until October 7th, Hamas held, in its captivity, two, corpse of Israeli soldiers and two, Israeli citizens, that were mentally ill. Okay. And they kept them for ten years and they didn’t make any, compensations. And, with regard to their demands, and they refused to release the two, the two corpse and the two EU citizens.

Ten years they kept in captivity Gilad Shalit for almost six years, five years in the House, because they know that all they did of of hostages is, one of the most sensitive issues, for the Israeli society. And they know that as long as they keep and hold Israeli hostages being alive or dead, okay, they are able to continue manipulating the Israeli society.

They continue. They are able to continue pressuring the Israeli society. They can continue deepening the gaps. And the crisis between, the the Israeli society, the IDF and the government. And this is something which they perceive and consider as very crucial in their war against Israel. Okay. All the idea of cognitive war, all the idea of consciousness, and this is, eventually, in their eyes, in their perception, the ultimate insurance policy that they have for their survival.

So, like to release all the hostages, they will continue only preventing us. And we will say that, the they are trying to find them, that, they have difficulties because of all the, the destruction in the Gaza Strip and so on and so forth. And they will not release all of them, and they will prevent Israel from attacking them because we are under agreement.

And they know that the United States and the entire international community, including the Arab countries, will pressure Israel not to attack, not to retaliate, even if they will, breach the agreement. And even if everybody understands that they are playing with us and they are manipulating us. So first of all, Hamas is not willing to release. Secondly, Hamas is not capable to release all of them because Hamas has never hold all of them since October 7th.

And, you know, just last week, or in the last ten days, we, we have, succeeded to bring home, six groups of, of, six bodies of Israeli hostages that were kidnaped and were murdered, by the way, in Gaza after October 7th by, double mujahideen. Capable mujahideen is an organization of fiction that was part of Fatah.

They left Fatah. They became to be, an independent terror organization, by the way, very extreme and even extremism, Hamas. And they are not under the control of Hamas. And they, they kept, the, the Israeli hostages and Hamas, even if Hamas, negotiates with, the mediators and with, and says that, it is willing to release the hostages and that, it, refers to the hostages as if all the hostages are in its hands.

This is not the situation. This is not the situation. Now, we have now we are with 53 hostages. 20 of them are alive, 33 are dead, or 31 are certainly dead, and two are probably dead. Okay, now, all of the the hostages that are dead, they are already buried in the Gaza Strip, the Gaza Strip of today, or the Gaza or let’s say, the Gaza Strip that we used to know when when Hamas or the other factions buried them is not the Gaza Strip that we know today, and they really don’t.

The option that Hamas will be able, first of all, to find the hostages that Hamas buried because the people of Hamas that buried the hostages are probably not with us, with us anymore. And secondly, they will have some huge difficulties to reach to the places of the other dead, buried hostages that were, kidnaped and were, a murder that they were buried by, by the other factions or the other two organizations that they, that they that have no obligations, towards Hamas and Hamas has no information about the, the places that the these hostages are buried. I say that in order to to to reach to the end of the war and in order to increase the probability to release more hostage also, just alive or dead, we have to do three things simultaneously.

The first one is to increase the military pressure to increase the military pressure. The second one is to continue, building them and operating the, the, the centers of, humanitarian supply to operate them and to convince the people of Gaza to use them because, as much as these centers will be more effective, as much as, the the scale of, of the activities in these centers will be will be higher and more intensive, Hamas will be weaker, and Hamas will continue losing assets.

And the third thing that we have to do is, to, to think and, to continue cooperating, with our partners here in the region, including the Palestinian Authority, with the backing of the United States, about, the, the alternative governance for the day after, if we will not do these three things. So will Timeously we will not be able to end the war soon, and we will decrease. We will decrease the probability for the releasing of more hostages.

Richard Pater:

Thank you. Daniel, do you have something else?

Daniel J. Levy:

Professor, thank you for the briefing. We’ve been seeing sporadic rocket fire coming out of the Gaza Strip, mostly unsuccessful. Could you possibly comment on that? Sorry to the maybe. Who’s firing, why they’re firing. What solutions could be?

Professor Kobi Michael:

What we see is, I would say, and, reflection expression of, the marginal capacities that Hamas is left with. We are talking about very, short range, rockets, not all of them, by the way, are, Hamas rockets.

Both of them are the rockets of the Palestinian state media and even of some other very marginal factions. But we are talking about, very few of them. They are not the effective, or not effective as we used, to know before. The Israeli, these Israeli, the IDF is very well prepared and, this is the reason that all of them were intercepted.

All of them. I mean, the, in the last two months or three months or so, and all of them are in the, in the envelope of the Gaza Strip. I mean, maximum Ashkelon city, which is, 12km from the northern part of the Gaza Strip. They don’t and if they do have some, long range, rockets that can reach Tel Aviv beyond or Beersheba and beyond, they are not able to use them.

First of all, because, they’re not accessible to them. Secondly, because I think that, they prefer to keep them for the day in their eyes because once they, we use such a, such a rocket, which is, which is different from the, the short range rockets, then they will expose themselves and they will expose the place that they use the launcher that they use for this, a long range rocket and they will, they will lost it.

And they think that they want to keep, such a capacity. But, generally speaking, they are not capable as they used to be. And they think that, they, have a very significant shortage of weapon. And now they turned to guerrilla and tour warfare and mainly with explosives and anti-tank missiles.

Richard Pater:

One issue you haven’t you haven’t touched on was the, the anti Hamas protests that we saw within the Gaza population. Do you think that, has any sustainability, any ability to affect, real change? By the way, it was never very significant.

Professor Kobi Michael:

Okay. It was significant in the sense that it happened. But it was not significant with regard to the scale. But, I think that, we will see more and more of that because, as I explained before, when you have a militia of Yasir AbuShaban Rafah area that runs, Rafah area, vis a vis the local population.

And you have, the, the supply centers and, and the you, you face the, the people, see the the increase in military pressure, Hamas and the people understand that Hamas is losing everyday capacities. I think that, the, they are more capable and more willing to protest against Hamas. But the problem is that as long as they don’t see an alternative and unfortunately, there is still no alternative to Hamas, it is very difficult because it is also meaningless.

I mean, this is something that helps them to express their frustration, their anger, but it is not something that they can do with, okay, this is not a protest which is aimed to, to produce an alternative or to do something else because they see no alternative and they are not well organized. It’s very sporadic here and there.

And they need to to be convinced that the, the protest can be used to promote an existing alternative. They have to see the generative. They have to see at least the, the, I would say the, the probability of such an alternative. And then they will be more motivated to, to, to increase the protest, to intensify the protest because they, they, they believe that this will take them closer to the, to the implementation, the, the fulfillment of, of the alternative to Hamas, but now lose the vacuum.

Richard Pater:

If I can just one more follow up. We discussed, very interesting. The the Shabab, clan in the Raffia area. And are there other can you give other examples of other clans in other areas that could potentially be kind of that local, that local leadership that you, that you described kind of within a, the trilateral arrangements?

Professor Kobi Michael:

Yes, of course. The Palestinian society, generally speaking, in, in the Gaza Strip in particular, is very tribal society. Okay. Yasir AbuShaban because a Bedouin from the Terrapin, clan, which is the biggest clan in the you know, I would say in the in the Near Middle East, Egypt, the Israeli, Negev desert, the Gaza Strip and South Jordan.

Okay. And they have connect channels between the different, rulers and sections of this tribe, the clans of these, tribes of this tribe, now, Israel has tried to do that even more than a year ago in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. But, unfortunately, we haven’t succeeded in doing that because had, those who, were willing to do that in the northern part of the Gaza Strip where mothers were butchered by Hamas, it was, in the days that Hamas was much stronger.

By the way, it is a lesson. Why? Why, yes. Or or should Yasir AbuShaban with succeeding in the area? Because Hamas is not there. Okay, we emptied the entire, the entire region from Morocco corridor to Philadelphia corridor. Hamas is not there. There are no citizens there. Okay. And we selected the the entire area. We build from from scratch.

We build, the, the supply, the distribution centers there. Okay. And then we brought in Yasir AbuShaban, who is originally from this area. And, we we gave him weapons and some other capacities and capabilities, and we asked him to take responsibility for a BNC. We are securing the envelope. They are building their capacities. They have their legitimacy among the the the local population because they come from there, from this population, okay?

They use their tribal connections in the area and they building capacities. And we are helping them to build these capacities. A year ago or more than a year ago, we tried to do the same. We’re in areas that Hamas still existed, and the IDF was not there in order to protect the locals. So they were butchered. But I’m us.

But if you ask me if there is a probability to, to, enlarge the model to to do it, to duplicate it in other places. Yes. If we will do in other places what we did in Rafah. Okay.

But on the other hand, and this is something that is really important to understand such a gang, okay? Such a group of people of Yasir AbuShaban. They cannot be the real replacement rate of Hamas in the entire Gaza Strip. This is a we have to be realistic, okay? They can control a very limited area for a very limited, function.

Okay. And, where they are secured and supported by the idea of in order to build a real alternative governmental alternative, a new governance to the entire Gaza Strip, it should be something else. It cannot be. It cannot be based on Yasir, AbuShaban, and people like Yasir. AbuShaban. Okay. We have to remember that. But if we will have on a very gradual manner, we will be able to build enclaves like the enclave that we built in Rafah area.

And we will use locals in order to run these enclaves with our support. Okay. In the or in the envelopes of these, enclaves. Then, the accumulation of such enclaves with the preparations, and the recruitment of, very, skillful people, that have the legitimacy and will be trained and educated by an Arab mission force supported by the Palestinian Authority, that Israel will do what it has to do in order to help them.

Then we are able, to begin talking about, the day after a new era in the Gaza Strip and all of these, groups like Yasir AbuShaban will be incorporated. That will be, absorbed. Okay, to the new to the new, governance of the Gaza Strip. They can be later on parts of their security apparatuses.

Okay. This is something that reminds me the principle of DDR. If you are familiar with the idea of DDR, which is the idea of, disarmament, Devonport ization and, reintegration, something which is, used in the, in, in countries that, went through a very, severe civil war or something like that, where, where ethnic and religious, armed groups fought each other.

Okay. And they are, this arming the, the, the, the groups and they build the, the, I would say the security apparatus, the security purposes, which are control by, by the state, and they create and they try to recreate the monopoly over the organized violence. So this is something that can be done in the Gaza Strip in the day after were such groups as the group of Gaza, will be embedded okay, in the security apparatuses of the next the governance.

Richard Pater:

Professor, thank you so much for, for today’s, thorough briefing. Really appreciate you. Thank you all for joining us. And, stay tuned for more briefings. And, Kobi, we look forward to coming back to you again in the future as well. Really great.

Professor Kobi Michael:

Thank you very much. Take care. Bye.

In this episode, Richard Pater speaks with Professor Amichai Cohen about the IDF’s conduct in the war against Hamas. They explore Israel’s approach to the rules of engagement, the delivery of Humanitarian Aid, and how Israel’s accountability mechanisms compare internationally.

Professor Amichai Cohen is Professor of Law at Ono Academic College and head of the Amnon Lipkin-Shahak Program on National Security and the Law at The Israel Democracy Institute. Cohen was also a visiting professor and scholar at Columbia Law School and Cambridge University. He is the author of several books on international humanitarian law and has advised both Israeli and international bodies on matters of war crimes and proportionality in armed conflict.

Transcript

(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)

Richard Pater:

Hello and welcome to the BICOM’s Podcast. I’m Richard Pater, the Director of BICOM. Today is Tuesday, the 10th of June. This episode we will focus on the IDF’s legal conduct in the war against Hamas, both in terms of the rules of engagement and the provision for Humanitarian Aid. To discuss this, I’m delighted to welcome back to the podcast, Professor Amichai Cohen.

Professor, thank you very much indeed for joining me. Thanks for having me. So, for background, Professor Amichai is a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and the head of the Amnon Lipkin Program on National Security and the law. He is also Professor of Law and a former dean of the Law Faculty at the Ono Academic College, and has also been a visiting professor at various prestigious international institutions, including Columbia Law School and Cambridge University.

He’s also the author of several books, including Israel’s National Security Law and Proportionality in International Humanitarian Law. His work has served as a guide on alleged war crimes, and it’s been used extensively in the Turkel Commission report and the report by the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry into the 2014 Gaza conflict.

Professor Amichai, if we can focus first of all on the on the recent return of the outbreak of war following the collapse of the hostage deal, how would you assess in broad terms the IDF conduct in Gaza over the last month?

Professor Amichai Cohen:

So, the two, I think, issues to discuss. The first is the actual advance of the IDF forces into the Gaza Strip in an attempt to overcome Hamas and other, terrorist activities within the Gaza Strip.

What’s being done, I think is, is, a slow advancement with an attempt to protect the forces. We can see that the losses of lives of soldiers, there and, the, the problems that, Israel faced in the initial stages of the war that the Hamas is embedded within the civilian population, etc. So, me of them have been, I wouldn’t say solved, but eased, perhaps, just because there is now a lot the larger the detachment perhaps between the population and the and the military forces.

And the second point, I think, which has taken centre stage in, in recent reports is the issue of, humanitarian assistance to, to the civilians. Now, this has been a major problem, a major ongoing problem. And the problem here we must understand is that I think in contrast to almost any other conflict that we know, of similar magnitude in the recent years of, of, urban, fighting, the civilians have nowhere to go.

So, it’s nothing compared to Lebanon, right? So, over a million civilians fled north, and then almost all of them, 90, 95% of them came back. Okay. And the number of civilian losses and the issue of humanitarian assistance was not a major problem because of the specific geography of the Gaza Strip and the fact that Egypt was completely unwilling to accept any civil and, population from Gaza.

I wouldn’t say completely unwilling, because as you might know, there is a segment of the government population who has fled to Egypt. But anyway, almost all Gazans remained in the Gaza Strip. So, this is a constant issue in this, conflict is how to provide for the civilians who remained in the, in the Gaza Strip.

The, the providing for civilians without assisting Hamas in the provision of goods, actually is the main challenge here. We still need to wait and see whether the current attempts of Israel are working. There are certainly there are issues there with the way it’s built with the fact the Hamas opposes these the fact that it’s not very organized right now.

This still has to be solved. So, I want to come back in a moment about the kind of the, the supply and distribution of Humanitarian Aid. But if I can first just follow up and ask you about the IDF conduct in terms of the, the, the, the military campaign. There is a there’s a narrative outside of Israel, even amongst some of the Israeli allies that accused Israel of breaches of international law or even worse of of war crimes.

What’s your assessment of those allegations? And perhaps you could expand kind of on from you, from your understanding what the stepped the IDF take to, to limit civilian casualties during warfare. So, so we have to differentiate whenever we speak about war crimes, we have to differentiate between low level deviations from orders and high policy. Now, low level deviations from orders happen in every armed conflict.

I know of no armed conflict in history in which there were no viable options of of international humanitarian, no by soldiers. And, I, and another thing we know is that, the more the conflict is prolonged, the more deviations and the more violations we have, because soldiers become tired of the conflict, because their friends were killed during conflict, because the train thing they underwent.

You know, we already, a something of, of them memory in them. And this, level of violations, I don’t know, but I assume just looking at history, perhaps there were violations of this kind in the in the current war, and these have to be dealt with. I’ll speak about it later. The real issue, and this is, I think, what the narrative in the international media is that there is a policy here, right, that Israel has a policy of violating international law.

This is the genocide claim, right? This is the war crimes claim. This is the starvation claim that there is a high policy here of violating, international law. Now, I have seen no evidence for this kind of policy. In fact, we have seen, large amounts of evidence to the contrary in which, commanders have certainly said that the, chief of staff has said we will not violate international law recently.

Even the previous chief of staff is serving several times. The current chief of staff of all is has also said it and, it’s clearly within the Israeli command. There is a problem there. And the problem there is that there are politicians in Israel. We have to be frank about it.

There are politicians in Israel who, for domestic political reasons, I think either they don’t understand, or they don’t care about the effect of the words, even if it’s not policy, the way it’s translated, not only translated internationally, but also translated to the troops. I mean, the air that’s translated here is very problematic. Now, once again, I see it’s not evidence on the ground, but there are statements by irresponsible politicians who, you know, if taken literally, then they certainly strengthened.

And I’m here, I’m not speaking about the politicians who are critical of it. I wouldn’t say, you know, it’s going unsaid then it would that I’m speaking about politicians in power who are in current in the cabinet ministers who are speaking irresponsibly. But this I don’t think has a real direct effect on, on the policies that Israel is, is, undertaking perhaps and this cannot be denied.

And this is, you know, apart from the problem of how it’s translated into English, it’s also a problem, certainly, of the way troops understand if a politician says, and this is a this, I, I’m, I’m extremely, worried about now regarding the investigations. There is a strong internal mechanism that’s been developed for a decade and a half within the Israeli IDF that favourably compares to any international mechanism of, investigation of alleged violations of international law.

Granted, this system is effective to the low level violation we spoke about, right. It’s not that the internal military system can deal with politicians who are, uttering irresponsible statements. This is a political issue in terms of internal violations at all levels. It’s not only, you know, a private or a sergeant within a specific units. No, it can go to, even higher.

Officers, there are investigations, going on. There were a few, The crime of this, most of them are not immediate criminal investigations. So, the way it works is that you start by a fact finding mechanism. There is, built in fact finding mechanism which is independent of the unit. It’s, operated by the chief military advocate general.

She, orders it to investigate. And after she has a record, the factual record, then, then she decides on criminal investigations, indictment, etc. So, we already know of several cases where the criminal investigation levelled some of them, even at the indictment level. Most of them dealing with treatment of detainees. So, in the area of treatment of detainees, which the worst several issues that, several cases, especially 1 or 2 that have garnered, some media attention.

So, there are, criminal indictments of IDF soldiers there. The importance of the mechanism is not only in the number of cases that has been, you know, indicted. It’s in its, deterrence effect. So, every soldier knows that the reason mechanism that looks that might look into, its operation and this strengthens the chains, the chain of command, immediately.

Now that the issue we are facing here, of course, is the immense asymmetry of of the violations, perhaps, as I said, there were violations of specific international humanitarian. You are we are facing, cruel terrorist organization. And I’m not speaking about the October 7th attack. You this, even putting it aside, it’s, terrorist organization which daily shoots at its own people.

Right. So, if you look at violations where the emanate from, they emanate from the fact that Israel is trying to, detach the civilian population from the military activity of Hamas once again, perhaps there are violations there, but the source of violation, you know, we shouldn’t be, we shouldn’t miss the focal point here, the source. If there are violation, the source is the attempt to fight a terrorist organization which intentionally puts itself within the civilian population.

Richard Pater:

Thank you. Just if I can ask, I mean, about the kind of the process of Israel when they carry out air strikes against terror targets and the calculation of where if there are civilians at risk in terms of those strikes, can you just kind of describe what that, process looks like in terms of, the steps taken to, to limit any, casualties and maybe how that has evolved and changed within the last 17 months of warfare?

Professor Amichai Cohen:

Yeah. So, you know, I, I must stress here, I’m not sitting in any, command structure. So, my knowledge here is, taken from, the media and things, people say, openly. So, I’ll say two things or three comments on, on your question. First, as in any of the modern, Army, there are, levels of decision making regarding civilian collateral damage.

So, the three basic principles of targeting in international humanitarian law is distinction. Right? You aim only military targets, precautions. You do everything you can to minimize, the civilian collateral damage and proportionality. If the civilian, collateral damage is, excessive with regards to the direct military advantage, then, you don’t operate in. So, my first comment is that the, the, targeting law is followed in creating the target, banks in using the attacks.

The problem is that, Hamas is so embedded within the civilian population. So, I’ve heard stories of, towns or even cities in the Gaza Strip in which every other house is a legitimate military target. So, now, here’s a problem. If every other house is a legitimate military target, then you have a lot of military targets because Hamas operates from within the military targets, within hospitals, within schools, etcetera.

So, that’s the first point. The second point is that I think the major issue now is not with Air Force bombing. And it’s it’s never actually, when you look at, violations, alleged violations or problems with air chill, it’s not Air Force targeting because the Air Force pilot can always say, if not today, then I’ll bomb it tomorrow.

And you know, so he there is discretion there. The problem is always with force protection. Right. What do you do with the specific unit that goes into an area, a specific area in which there are civilians and there are some that fight there and it’s now under fire. Right. That’s the major dilemma. I think always, in fighting in urban areas of all modern forces, most, many collateral civilians, civilian damage happens in, in these cases of force protection cases, right.

Where you try to think about the soldiers who are now under attack and have no choice. It’s not like the pilot. The pilot has a choice, right? If they won’t bomb you, come back. They many times they don’t have the choice. And the third point I think that has to be taken into account, is that there is actually some kind of, I would say, and an internal conflict here, perhaps even a paradox.

And it’s with the use of the, sophisticated systems, the, the gospel, the lavender, the system. So,me sometimes they call they’re called AI systems, but it’s, incorrect. I think the term it’s more data mining systems. Right? The systems that can identify the, the targets, assist the IDF in identifying targets. Now, these systems were created in order to create a more accurate assessment of, what is a legitimate military target?

And who is, the person who is, combatant. Right. Who are the people who are legitimate military targets? But because there are so many legitimate military targets, what’s created by these systems is not a violation of, of the target, the law in the traditional sense now. So, if you look at the issue of distinction, so identification and precautions and proportionality, these systems do not violate any of these.

In fact the opposite is true. They are much more accurate than any human person could achieve. So, perhaps mistakes, but any mistakes they have are much less than the mistakes humans make. The problem is that the identifies so many targets because there are so many people who are connected to Hamas, and because Hamas is used so much of the civilian infrastructure as a base for military activity, this creates and immense, destruction.

And it in a sense, it’s it’s it’s not illegal, but it it creates the perception, right, that a lot has been damaged simply because, most of the Hamas activity has been identified by these systems. And if I can turn back our attention to the issue of delivery of aid, Israel has expressed, concern that traditional mechanism has enabled Hamas to retain control of the supplies going in, and therefore it sought to circumvent the traditional UN route with this new US Israeli organization, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

First off, in your assessment, is that legal?

As long. So, first of all, clearly, force and I think the correct legal assessment of Israel right now is, I think siege warfare. Right. That’s the area of law in which we need to look. Right. There is a siege over Gaza, certainly the attacking part, the putting the siege can take, certain steps. I would even say extreme steps to try and verify that the, provisions coming in, the essential provisions coming in, food, and medicine, etc., do not actually support the, the enemy.

And what was happening before was that Hamas was taking a large amount of these provisions and taking control of them and using them, you know, so a solution has to be found to this. Now, whether the current solution is the correct one, of course, is a question that would have to be decided according to the results. So, if you monitoring and assistance can effectively be brought to all uninvolved civilians by this system, then it’s, good system.

If this system cannot effectively provide humanitarian assistance, then it’s an insufficient one. I would even say more to. And I try to connect to my, Earlier statement regarding irresponsible statements by politicians. Of course, if the humanitarian assistance is used in order to achieve a completely different political goal, right, of trying to move the population, to a different country, then this this becomes the problem.

And I think a lot of the criticism has to do not with the actual provisions of provision of assistance, which is even rumored to be financed indirectly by Israel. It’s the question of whether Israel is trying to use this, basic duty of allowing provisions to get into the civilian population in order to achieve different goals. And here politicians, who are trying to perhaps domestically, gain points within, the current coalition have stated several, put up several problematic statements, which I think it’s more a question of than how it’s perceived.

And the actual question, I think, once again, the actual test is whether it’s effective, whether it can get to the, if I could use the term the end user. Right. If you can effectively get humanitarian provisions to the, civilians on the ground. And what do you make? You mean we’ve seen that this new mechanism operating for just over a week or so.

00:25:42:02 – 00:26:12:02

Unknown

Do you can you make an assessment? So, a week or so with this is not enough, right. But, you know, there is I think some of the assessment is that there is a trickle down, dynamic here. So, if you put enough food into the Gaza Strip and it doesn’t exactly matter how, then the crisis will drop and provisions will get to everyone in the end.

Right? Because you have a lot of, supply. And if the supply meets the demand, then so the way I, I wouldn’t place all the, you know, all the focus on the question of whether the weights actually provided is according to, you know, but there are problems there. The problem of shooting in the vicinity of these centres, whether there are enough centres.

Certainly this the jury’s still out here on this question. Once again, on the effectiveness of these, of this, of this system and its ability both to cooperate with other organizations and to get to the people who need it most. The, assistant. In terms of kind of, Israel’s relations with, with allies in the international community talking government to government.

I mean, is there more that Israel could be doing to convince kind of skeptical or concerned allies over the idea of contact, kind of, sharing with them some of the, their inside, mechanisms. The, the intelligence to be able to reassure the allies of, of the idea of conduct or is that, would that be unprecedented and unnecessary?

There is possibility. I mean, there is always a possibility. And I actually don’t know. I’m told that Israel is, sharing quite a lot of information, with its, allies. I think the main problem is that it’s not completely clear. What is the endgame in terms of the Israeli policy? So, if Israel would have to take out, realist, the political goal for this conflict to end, I think it would have been easier for its allies to understand what’s the, you know, where is this going?

And so here, but I’m not sure. It’s, a question of more cooperation with the, with its allies. It’s a question of decision making within Israel. Right. There is a substantive question here. What is the Israeli strategy here? And as as much as you hear the Prime minister, speak about the goals of the war or it doesn’t completely clarify, and I’m not sure it’s, clarified even within the perhaps the Prime Minister, himself knows that it’s I’m not sure it’s completely clarified even within the higher political spectrum in, in in Israel.

What exactly the, the strategy here, and therefore it’s very hard to explain to, to to allies here. And once again, and this might sound and it is perhaps, only a secondary issue, but still, I think it’s, it’s important, empathy right now is, is, is underrated in Israel, but we have to, think within us and also, speak outside that it’s we we don’t want the suffering of the civilian population.

It’s not a goal of, of, of Israel. I think it will be once again, it might seem to be a secondary issue, but I think it’s important in, even in international relations, you know, the question of we understand that there is a we are not taking responsibility. We are not to blame regarding the suffering of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

But we understand the suffering. We need to, project, this understanding. And I wonder if you could just briefly assess where we currently stand with regard to the, the cases at both the ICC and the ICJ. So, the ICJ, there are several cases with the ICJ. Right. So, one is an ongoing South African, case against Israel, right, in which there were some interim measures and now it’s awaiting, a decision.

Actually, the parties have to submit the, their cases. And, South Africa requested submitting something ex parte, but the court refused them then. So, there’s more time for Israel to submit. This is an ongoing case. Also, I forgot this is the genocide case. There was, an iconic that case advisory opinion that came out, less than a year ago regarding Israel’s control of the territory in general, and which also there were statements regarding the Gaza Strip.

But not directly connected to the war. And there is an ongoing advisory opinion, proceeding regarding the provision of humanitarian assistance. Once again, going on, although this is an advisory opinion case. So, Israel did not appear before the court. Still, it’s, it’s a very, problematic case for Israel. The whole issue of the humanitarian assistance, as they said before, is a major issue in this war.

And once again, it’s A11 reason it’s immensely problematic is that we actually lack, historical, historical, perhaps. There we are, but recent historical examples, because the situation in which 2 million people are moving around in the war zone is, to some extent, unprecedented, in, in, in modern armed conflicts, the, and this connects, of course, to the, issues that the International Criminal Court.

Now, there is that this whole discussion on, regarding the conduct of the, prosecutor, which, I don’t think we should go into because actually, I don’t think that it will have, a lot of effect on the actual case because the case is now already before the court. And, so the, arrest warrants have been approved.

Israel appealed. So, me in some extent, the appeals, where, were accepted in the sense that several issues were returned to the court, the first instance to, re discuss them, the cases of the, that there is another appeal that the Israelis submitted regarding the question of complementarity. This is this is a case, and I think, correctly, that Israel is treating not as a political case.

But if I may, as, the, a lawyer would treat a criminal case in a domestic court. I mean, using every tactic that you can use in order to delay the case, you know, a challenge, every decision do everything you can. And I think it’s the correct way to go about this case.

There is, of course, the outside pressure on the court. The US pressure that’s been applied to the court. I don’t know how many hours do we have for this podcast, but it’s a it’s a discussion that has to be, undertaken, you know, the future of the International Criminal Court within this, international environment.

Richard Pater:

And I will invite you back to discuss that.

Professor Amichai Cohen:

So, it requires, really looking into the history of the court, the way it’s gone. Its case is what happened. Is there a future here? I see the problem is, elsewhere or from the point of view of the court, that it actually doesn’t affect, the behavior of Israel. It has only marginally effect on the behavior of, of Israel, where it has the effect both the International Court of Justice cases is on third states.

Right. So, third states tend to take it more seriously. And the question is, you know, what are you actually expecting them to do apart from, you know, maybe, arresting Netanyahu if he ever comes to France so he won’t come. But what is the expectation of third parties? It was evident in the advisory opinion regarding the control of the territories and in the provisional measures.

And now it’s, I think, the part of the discussion, the advisory opinion regarding the, a provision of humanitarian assistance that’s currently being discussed, the main focus is not necessarily on Israel, it’s on third states. And here I think, from the point of view of all of Israel, one has to be worried about it because what you see now is a deterioration, I think, in the stance of and perhaps you have views about it from where you stand.

I think, better than I that there is, deterioration. Now, mind you, what this war proved is that actually Israel’s ability to garner support internationally was much stronger then, we thought those previous to October 7th, 2023. So, if you would have asked me on October 8th, how long does Israel have for for this conflict to go?

I would have said three months, perhaps six month. Right. That’s the extent of the rope that Israel will get from its allies. Israel actually received the, you know, its allies were very supportive. Supportive. Mostly now it seems that Israel, But the support and, for reasons you asked about earlier, for the reasons we discussed regarding the fact that there is no clear plan, you know, where do you go in the day after because of the pressure of the court, there is mounting support.

Then the Israelis losing. That’s not the United States. Okay. So, perhaps the United States is, now, a world of its own. Right. In terms of international relations, but other democracies, other Western democracies, that there is a clear, I think, losing of support can no, no doubt. Let me just take you back on one point.

Richard Pater:

You mentioned, I mean, the complementary nature of the court is kind of one of the, one of the principles that Israel has long, clung to in the international, arenas because Israel investigates. So, do you think that’s been, has Israel done enough on that front to, to live up to those, those standards? And I think just as a as a closing question as well, are you are you satisfied as within your expertise that Israel has honoured its obligations towards international law in, in a general sense, in this war?

Professor Amichai Cohen:

So, the problem with the question of, complementarity from the point of view of Israel is that you actually have to investigate. So, if you want to claim complementarity, you have to say, okay, I see this and I’ve investigated here, this and for two reasons. This has not been done by Israel. And I’ve written about it with, Professor Shani and, both in Israel and internationally.

But for two reasons. Israel has not undertaken this, obligation or mechanism to investigate the claims that are, being made. The first is that actually, most Israelis don’t think that there is a problem. So, you know, you need some understanding of the problematic nature of the decisions, right? It’s about the decision that the early days immediately following October 7th.

So, politically and I think, public opinion doesn’t actually think there is a problem. So, there’s no internal pressure to investigate. And the second point is that for domestic political reasons, the current government, isn’t willing to investigate almost anything. So, also the failure of the intelligence and of the government in its conception of its relations with Hamas prior to October 7th, 2023, is not investigated.

So, you know, there is, a pushback against any independent investigation right now for domestic political reasons. You know, we all understand, I think, that the politicians, do not have an interest in opening up these issues. And this issue, which is it’s a different issue, right? You could say, okay, don’t investigate whatever happened before October 7th, but I still want to investigate what happened immediately after October 7th, whether it was legal or international.

But it’s all, you know, put in this large bowl of we are not investigating right now. Anything and then, everything is delayed. And in this sense, Israel has not done what it could have done to, and what proved in previous cases to be actually quite effective in, blocking these international pressure. And of course, the result is that there is mounting international pressure in this regard.

The only thing that has been done regarding the actual humanitarian assistance is, very important, case, decision judgment of the Israeli Supreme Court regarding humanitarian assistance, in which the court, I looked into the, previous policy, not the current policy, the previous policy, the humanitarian assistance, and explained, I think two quite convincingly that this policy was, in accordance with, international law.

Richard Pater:

Professor Amichai I had lots of other questions on mine, but I think we’ve run out of time, so, we’ll have to leave it there. But thank you very much indeed for your insights. And perhaps we can invite you on again to, to continue the conversation.

Professor Amichai Cohen:

Thanks for having me. Thank you very much.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is senior director of the Iran Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he oversees the organisation’s work on Iranian political and security affairs. He specialises in nuclear non-proliferation, ballistic missiles, the IRGC and its proxies, and internal Iranian dynamics. He has testified before the US Congress, the Canadian Parliament, and the UK House of Commons.

Transcript

(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)

1

00:00:02.690 –> 00:00:17.990

Richard Pater: Hello, welcome to the BICOM Briefing. And Podcast I’m Richard Pater, the director of BICOM today is Thursday, the 26th of June. I’m delighted to welcome back Behman Ben Taleblu. Thank you very much indeed for joining me.

2

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Great to be with you again. Thanks, Richard.

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Richard Pater: So to remind our audience. Becham is a senior director of the Iran programme at the prestigious DC. Think Tank the foundation for defense of democracies. He’s both a native Persian language speaker and has years of experience

4

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Richard Pater: following Iranian security and political issues. So I think Bethlehem is ideally placed to comment on a range of issues following the 12 Day war, both on the nuclear issues, ballistic missiles and drones, the role of the Irgc as well as Iran’s foreign and security politics, and maybe if we have time, some of the domestic politics as well.

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Richard Pater: But if we can start kind of with the with the Bda. The battle damage assessment. I’d love to take your view of what you think. The damage that Israel and the Us. Were able to inflict on the Iranian military capacity and as well as the ballistic missiles program, as well.

6

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Absolutely, and it’s great to be with you. Greetings all, as you know, here in Washington. There’s an evolving debate about the Bda. About the battle damage, assessment. Never has some satellite imagery and signals intelligence put together caused so much rancor.

7

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Behman Ben Taleblu: It turns out you can literally now pick your favorite intelligence Agency and pick a drastically different battle damage, assessment, be it American or something from the interagency process. Just so, you know. Initially

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Behman Ben Taleblu: there was comments by President Trump, and later on comments by Secretary of Defense Exeth and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.

9

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Behman Ben Taleblu: The 1st 2 comments were somewhat more political, with less technically descriptive commentary. There was some slightly more technically descriptive commentary from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but there was a few days after that

10

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Behman Ben Taleblu: a leaked story initially to Cnn that made its way around, basically drawing on a low confidence assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency that had about 4 individuals who leaked the findings that actually the program, especially here, the nuclear program had been set back only a few months, and then, after a few months, the regime could probably find a way to reconstitute.

11

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Behman Ben Taleblu: It turns out that much of that assessment was based on signals, intelligence, and the reason I’m stressing this is because this is not a seminar on various forms of intelligence, because we all know in Washington ruminant or rumor-based intelligence is the most prevalent form.

12

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but because there is a high likelihood that if you’re intercepting communications in an authoritarian country that has a history of couproofing which there’s a good amount of academic literature on how Middle Eastern dictatorships, and particularly Middle Eastern militaries, have been subject to couproofing.

13

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Behman Ben Taleblu: You’ll know that the higher piece of information gets up the food chain, the less likely that piece of information may have to do with reality, and that correlates with the poor military performance of

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Behman Ben Taleblu: that entity. And the reason I’m stressing that is because the Israelis have had a drastically different battle damage assessment one that says basically about 2 years minimum. The nuclear program has been set back based on both. The Israeli strikes across the whole supply chain for Iranian fissile material, the whole architecture of atomic infrastructure, plus, most importantly what the Us. Struck at the Fordo, which is an underground fuel enrichment plant

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Behman Ben Taleblu: about 300 feet underground. And the reason this signal Intelligence interception that is informing this low confidence, partial American assessment matters is because in a world where you may have Iranian military officials trying to filter up information

16

00:04:05.760 –> 00:04:26.410

Behman Ben Taleblu: to their bosses to explain the world of the military defeats and the military losses that they have been have been subject to, they may actually be trying to filter up false information or unnecessarily overconfident information about. Oh, no, we can ride this out, or oh, no! This program has not been set back anywhere as much as

17

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Behman Ben Taleblu: the press or others are saying, and in a world where the Us. May have intercepted one of those phone calls or one of those communications, a piece of disinformation that was designed to trick a higher up Iranian military official, actually in reverse, ended up flowing backwards, and may have, in my view, impacting a Western intelligence military assessment. I think.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: even just looking at the physics of it allegedly. If you believe that the massive ordnance penetrators, the 30,000 pound Bunker Buster Bombs, the Gpu 57 if they were. If those 6 holes, those 6 openings, if you believe that they were dropped at the weakest part of the mountain, if you believe that

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Behman Ben Taleblu: you know, in terms of the physics of the situation that creates a crumbling effect. And even if you believe that not every centrifuge in Fordeaux, and not every, you know, gram of uranium

20

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Behman Ben Taleblu: basically has been destroyed. There is a high, high, high likelihood, I think, that a lot of it is entombed or ensconced into the collapsed rubble, basically using the weight and the distance of the ford. O fuel enrichment plant from the surface of the earth itself to bring it down on itself, and then, given that, following the American strike, the Israelis had struck the area with the 2 roads leading

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Behman Ben Taleblu: this way into the facility you can. Actually, they call this in international relations shaping, you can shape the risk, tolerance, and the behavior of the adversary to a not go towards the facility, and try to take out something that is entombed, or try to prevent them from actually going down the 2 sets of roads that actually lead to this facility.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: So at least, when it comes to Fordo, I think there’s some reason to be much more skeptical of the earlier leaked assessment, and, like all things in life. It’s probably neither 3 months. It’s probably neither 2 years. It’s probably at a minimum somewhere in the middle. But with the rest

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Behman Ben Taleblu: of the military action taken against Iran’s nuclear program. Given the fact that 5 Us. Presidents in the Post Cold War period had been saying, you know a nuclear Iran is unacceptable, but only one of them was willing to pull the trigger. You may have qualitative reasons for a greater period of delay in the Iranian program than quantitative. You know much of the nuclear program took at least 20 years

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Behman Ben Taleblu: to build on and obfuscate a lot of the stuff that was done on the digging side of the other sites like Natanz and Isfahan, for example. They’re even a little bit older than 20 years, and on that case that was built at a drastically different time, when Iranian society was drastically more permissible, when the economy was drastically more different, when even some Western countries had less means

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Behman Ben Taleblu: to penetrate from an intelligence perspective and monitor this program. So I don’t think it’s a 1 to one that the Iranian nuclear program can snap back just based on the end of a 2 year technical assessment. Even

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Behman Ben Taleblu: so.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: I do think the program has been set back. I think there has been a significant blow dealt psychologically to the folks who run this program. And then, when you look at the rest of the targeting, which is the conversion, facility, field fabrication.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: all the enrichment plans, centrifuge assembly. If you believe that the known elements of Iran’s nuclear program are the beating hearts of it. And if you believe, as I do that Fordo? Was the crown jewel of it that just leaves only one or 2 questions, you know about a deeper facility, such as Pickaxe Mountain. Did the Us. Or Israel strike that?

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Behman Ben Taleblu: And then one or 2 questions about the tunneling near Natanz and near asphan, because there is some unconfirmed open source material about the tunneling, there being used to store enriched uranium, and given that there was one time

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Behman Ben Taleblu: that the Us. Used these tomahawk cruise missiles at that facility as well. It raises questions as to how much of the tunneling infrastructure around

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Behman Ben Taleblu: these 2 other nuclear sites were struck, but put together long story short, I do believe the nuclear program has been set back considerably and more importantly, I think the behavior, the behavior, meaning the willingness and risk tolerance to pull the trigger will have played a major shaping role in Iran’s nuclear thinking in the future.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Now, when it comes to military very quickly, you saw the simultaneous action taken against the commanding heights of the Islamic Republic’s military apparatus in particular. There’s 2 individuals I want to stress the commander of the Armed Forces, General staff, and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Aerospace force.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Again, in these kind of more authoritarian military dictatorships you tend not to have the best generals at the commanding military or political heights. But in this case these 2 individuals, from everything you hear internally, and everything you know about their biographies, have been fairly competent men, and you know competence married with zeal, can be a very dangerous combination.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: For example, Haji Sadeh was literally the man with his finger on the trigger of the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. He had that position since 2,009, and he was the one that was tasked with the precision project, turning Iran’s

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Behman Ben Taleblu: less battlefield relevant systems and much more battlefield relevant systems, helping with just conventional deterrent capabilities with missiles not just nuclear and it was under his tenure that Iran, starting in 2017, began to more overtly fire ballistic missiles from Iranian territory at foreign targets.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: He played a role in operation. True promise one and 2, which were the historic Iranian direct missile barrages against Israel as well as against the Americans. In January 2020, when the Iranians fired on us bases in Iraq.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: So while traditionally, you can have a game of musical chairs, take over the commanding heights, and if you don’t necessarily believe in the competence of one individual. It doesn’t matter if someone else comes in to replace him who doesn’t have a personal rapport with Khamenei, or if they aren’t, from the same class of veterans of the Iran Iraq War. But these 2 really did have the regime off balance, and given that they were all taken out together

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Behman Ben Taleblu: or taken out essentially simultaneously. That also deals a major psychological blow to the regime. I would just stress a parallel here that much like we didn’t know or didn’t see, the tactical impact of the killing of Soleimani in 2020 until we got to the post October 7th Middle East, where the Iranian proxy strategy was

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Behman Ben Taleblu: still off balance, and the multiple fronts that Israel faced were not as well connected and layered and didn’t have a clear kind of firing authority and chain of command back to their patron in the Islamic Republic. We may not yet know if the Islamic Republic survives, and what’s left of its missile program again serves as the seedling for further expansion. We may not yet know the

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Behman Ben Taleblu: how major or how significant the loss of someone like Haji Zadeh would be for this regime up until we get to another crisis that may involve ballistic missiles as well. And let me now end with missiles itself, and I know that was

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Behman Ben Taleblu: 3 separate sets of very long answers. Even before this conflict began the Islamic Republic was home to the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East. Back of the envelope, assessment based on 2, 1 in 2021, and one in 2023 assessments from

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Behman Ben Taleblu: essentially former American military officials that the regime had at least 3,000. I think 3,000 was a baseline. Then you could scale up a little bit from there, because I’m sure, both in 2021, and 2023, there was production going on as well, that led to almost like a baseline assessment of 2,000 to 2,500

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Behman Ben Taleblu: medium range, ballistic missiles, or ballistic missiles that could reach Israel from Iranian territory being a part of this arsenal, and then you could begin to do the math. How many Iran fired in 2024. How many Iran fired in 2025, particularly based on Israeli sources in 2025, given the direct exchange as well as what has been struck, and you see, really a military strategy by Israel 1st to

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Behman Ben Taleblu: target the ring of bases in Western Iran that had still medium range, but not necessarily as long range in the medium range category and more precision strike systems more solid propellant systems really preventing them from being able to use the architecture of bases in the country’s West

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and then moving the Iranian firing, scheduling more central and east, inside the country, basically pushing Iran back in its own territory. You begin to have firing from there as well, but at the same time you have

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Behman Ben Taleblu: military strikes on bases and airfields even further east of the country, allegedly 2,300 kilometers away from Israeli territory, going after a military site that houses Iran’s heaviest, ever or heaviest, declared

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Warhead, which is a two-ton warhead on a copy of a North Korean missile that the Iranians have dubbed the Khoramshar. That was late in the conflict, and was at a strike at a military facility in Yazd.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but given that the regime was forced further inward. That meant the use of the higher, tier, longer range, but still within the medium range, ballistic missile, category, liquid propellant systems that were less accurate, but really became part of a larger counter value strategy. We saw from the regime targeting basically, major population centers. Haifa greater Tel Aviv. Later on, Beershiba

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Behman Ben Taleblu: designed to really erode the will of the Israeli population to stay in the fight, and also, I think, born of a cognizance, especially as you see later in the tail end of the conflict, when there are more missiles penetrating, even though a smaller number are being fired because the Israelis, significantly, either through left of launch operations, which is everything you do, including firing on the projectile and the transporter electro launcher

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Behman Ben Taleblu: before they actually fire at you, as well as intercepting everything that they do fire at you before all of that, I think the Iranians may have understood that there has been a layering effect to Israeli air and missile defense, and given that

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Behman Ben Taleblu: in the end this is a limited game or a numbers game for the number of Iranian missiles and the number of Israeli interceptors, and given that Israeli interceptors, like in any battlefield situation, have to protect battlefield relevant targets and military targets, and quote unquote more high value and critical infrastructure targets. The regime may have intentionally been going towards population centers to fake out or to make the Israelis

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Behman Ben Taleblu: have to conserve and not be able to fire, or be more willing to let a missile penetrate through for fear of having not enough interceptors. If the regime switches and goes from the counter valley. We need to go after some of those much more sensitive military sites. For example, in October there was at least 30, I think, 33 ballistic missiles all directed, and landing at Nebatim Air Base.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: The regime didn’t necessarily concentrate the firepower this way. I think it’s born of both not trying to provoke the Israelis even further, but also at the same time trying to land blows through their more layered air and missile defense. Architecture

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Behman Ben Taleblu: that led to especially the boom and bust cycle of hits.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: even as we saw in the tail end of the conflict. Now, the final thing about

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Behman Ben Taleblu: these really targeting is the the launchers itself. I think

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Behman Ben Taleblu: there’s public open source information that the Israelis are saying a little between 40 and 50%, I think perhaps slightly more.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but just giving the safest back of the envelope assessment you can have, you know, a million missiles, but if you don’t have a single launcher, then you are forever stuck with a capability that you cannot use, and that if you display, you may end up losing altogether. And so the strategy of the Israelis of going after the archer is going after the launcher here rather than trying to merely just kind of play defense and intercept the missiles.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: And you saw, basically, with the exception of a few underground instances where a missile was fired largely, these things are believed to have been fired from above ground trucks. These transporter rector launchers, sometimes larger than a school bus that had these missiles on it. And precision strikes against those capabilities

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Behman Ben Taleblu: basically led to a decline in the firepower rate. So when you put all of this together, these are not capabilities that the Islamic Republic can easily reconstitute can easily bounce back from.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: But nonetheless, on the military side. The Islamic Republic, if you have to describe it as like a wounded animal, like a wounded lion, or, if you may remember, from several years back a comment from a former Iranian Intelligence Minister is like a cornered cat. Here the regime has significantly lost capability.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: But, as you may remember, back in the 1991 Saddam era conflict, the Persian Gulf War. It is totally possible to still have a major threat, even if you have a major military victory against that threat, and my fear here moving forward is that the regime may not have enough capability tomorrow to pick up the conflict given. The lack of the proxies given the decline in the firepower given the status blow.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but it has more than enough repressive apparatus to take out and try to project strength at home by cracking skulls, whereas it could not do this immediately tomorrow abroad. And that’s what you’ve seen, with at least 3 to 5 executions, at least 700 plus arrests all within the period of these 1213 days. So when you put it all together, they’re down. But they’re not anywhere at all out.

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Richard Pater: Beckham. Thank you very much indeed for that, just for those that joined us late to confirm. This is an on-record briefing which we’re recording for the vicom. Podcast. But if any of you want to ask questions and I encourage you to do so, please raise your hand, either physical or virtual, and when we release the recording we’ll edit out to keep your identity anonymous. But for this call, Peel.

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Richard Pater: please feel free to ask. I’ve got some follow up questions myself, which I’ll go through. But if anyone wants to come in, then please please do raise a hand, and I’ll come to you. So if I can start, just come back to you on the issue of the highly enriched uranium stockpiles. Just kind of your assessment of the speculation of whether they were buried underneath the sites targeted, or whether they were able to be moved out, and kind of

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Richard Pater: what? What remains of of us, particularly the, as I said, the highly litch beyond 60%.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: This is a major problem, because you have stories that confirm diversion one day before the strike at Fordeaux, and you have stories that confirm an addition or doubling down, or actually movement of some uranium into Fordow as well, because they had believed it was so impenetrable.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: That’s

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Behman Ben Taleblu: not going to lie. That is a major, both intelligence and a policy challenge for the United States and for Israel at this moment, having 2 conflicting sources of information that necessarily mean that there could be loose fissile material out there.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: And I want to stress why, I think some, not all. Some material is out there, and the reason is not because the strike was ineffective, and people came in and figured it out.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but because in any war game I’ve been in where you are trying to role play what the Iranian intentions are whenever the backdrop for a conflict is the desire to prevent a nuclear armed Islamic Republic of Iran, and given that for better or worse. We’ve been talking about this issue for about 2 decades, and the military option has quote unquote, been on the table in a very public way for Israel and America. And there’s been a pretty rancorous debate

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Behman Ben Taleblu: politically as well as from a policy perspective about preemption against Iran’s nuclear program. Then, the moment the bombs start falling the moment targets start getting hit, it would behoove the Iranians to try to find a way to squirrel things around and not. And I want to stress, not for the immediate purposes of weaponization, but for the immediate

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Behman Ben Taleblu: purposes of regime survival in a world in which the adversary may not be able to detect the difference due to ideological hostility with these 2 countries, or just for paranoia, from the security services at home, and not being able to trust that what started as a counter proliferation operation does not go all the way and end with being a counter regime operation.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Loose, fissile material or unaccounted fissile material basically is bargaining power for the regime’s survival. It’s basically a way that you can threaten destruction or significantly, more damage to the interests of the attacking adversary.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Even in a world where you have the supply chain and the interconnected atomic infrastructure of the Islamic Republic essentially taken out by Israeli military strikes. And the reason I’m saying that is because they may not be able to go to a lab that was in the atomic, archive tomorrow for weaponization. They may not be able to find a scientist

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Behman Ben Taleblu: who may have been involved in this issue in yesteryear. They may not be able to go to an enrichment, facility, or to a conversion facility. To make sure this life cycle of fissile material can go from raw uranium to hexafluoride back into and then into uranium metal, and then to be married with an explosive charge shaped into a ball for the warhead.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: They may not have the physical facilities for all of this at the moment.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: But they can basically threaten that if you go for a decapitation, strike in a period of escalating hostilities, and the Iranians are returning fire. If you go for the death blow, you would essentially be collapsing central authority, and thereby not being able to account for what may become an a Hukan network of sorts on steroids, and by using the responsibility and the restraint of the adversary against them. This is very much kind of human shields logic. Now.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: you can actually deter wider sets of targets against the political leadership because they can dangle the Fissan material that they probably either have in deep, deep storage in one of those tunneling facilities in the towns in Isfahan that may have been missed, or may not have been completely destroyed.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: or maybe on trucks just being moved around the country. Much like is assumed about elements of the Pakistani atomic program. The weaponization there, you know, basically diverting, dispersing, normalizing, that if you do a decapitation strike, you would not deal with the nuclear issue or the nuclear deterrent, and thereby you may not have dealt the death flow that you think you did so in this world.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: The regime doesn’t necessarily see the sharp distinction between counter proliferation and counter regime.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: even though their behavior they’re very kind of playing to the edge behavior in this 12 day war against Israel, and late in that conflict America tells you that they do obviously have an intention to want to rebuild. This is a regime with a high level of ideology, a high level of resolve, even a attempted, assassinated former Supreme National Security official, Mr. Shah Mohani, he came out. He said, there is material.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: there is capability. And he said, there’s domestic knowledge. And he said, with these 3 things, if I’m not mistaken, we can reconstitute. Given the high degree of capability, the very limited material, and then the lack of really clear facilities.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: It may be a significant period of time until the Iranians can actually act on what Sham Ghani said, but nonetheless, the reason I worry about this Fissan material, when even some folks, even some friends and colleagues and allies and

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Behman Ben Taleblu: people, may say, Look, if you don’t have this supply chain, you are okay, for now, as long as you have an intent to keep shaping and deterring future Iranian behavior when it comes to trying to move this around my fear there has been. I’m not worried about weaponization tomorrow. With respect to this, I’m worried about this being used for regime survival.

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Richard Pater: Thank you. I just want to pick you up on a couple of things you mentioned there related to capacity and knowledge. And you mentioned earlier about kind of a couple of the significant commanders, quite unusual in kind of in a Western sense, for a military commander to remain in post for a decade and a half kind of we’re used to Israeli, European Us. Militaries of kind of senior people

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Richard Pater: moving on after 3 or 4 years. So it’s interesting that that was so kind of so held, held together for so long that, coupled with the Israeli targeting of the of the scientists and the and the aim to kind of to to kill off the knowledge.

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Richard Pater: the knowledge bases that was held by the senior commanders and scientists. How successful do you think that is and kind of. Where does that knowledge currently lie?

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Well, if if one is talking about, you know nuclear science or weaponization, there may be a whole host of individuals

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Behman Ben Taleblu: that could still contribute to that effort, but I think the Israeli actions were showing that this would not be a fruitful contribution. So again, this is very much a shaping effect they may have gone after. I don’t want to use the word commanding heights on the atomic side again, but they may have gone after people with direct ties to weaponization, or who have done things in the past, or who have contributed meaningfully, politically, to the direction of the nuclear program in the past. You know, I’m thinking right now.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: the former chief of the Atomic Energy organization, who, I think, way back in 2010, if I’m not mistaken, survived an assassination attempt involving him and his wife, Mr. Faridun Abbasidapany. That person also had that kind of combination of capacity and zeal. When you look at his bio, and when you look at his statements, and when you look at

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Behman Ben Taleblu: how he’s reared his head, shall we say, or how he had reared his head, shall we say at several kind of critical junctures in the history of the Iranian Atomic Program, as well as in the history of the public debate

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Behman Ben Taleblu: over Iran’s atomic program, including most recently with, you know, some veiled comments about why the regime is basically a threshold nuclear state already.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: So with that aside, I think it is safe to say that you’re never going to get every single individual who’s had every single role, who’s had even the most marginal role in the nuclear program.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: But that’s okay, because you need not do that to prevent or shape or deter or foster more hedging in the behavior of these individuals. So long as the 1st use here of military force is not the last use of military force, so long as the adversary believes that you have the intention to continue.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and I think both the Israelis and the Americans have signaled that to a certain degree, that if you strike a certain core you strike a certain brain trust. It’s not that the regime can’t play musical chairs. It’s that the quality of the persons in those chairs may not necessarily be 100% the same. And then, of course, there’s all these things in these sorts of governments, particularly on the military side you mentioned.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: It’s a lot that for almost 2 decades someone would be sitting in the same seat. Well, that’s also a measure of trust in these systems, because they do again play musical chairs. But when they have you in the same seat for that long, they like what you’re doing, and it’s a symbol of trust.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: And

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Behman Ben Taleblu: someone else taking that position means that they have to work doubly overtime to rebuild that trust. So again, the entire logic of those strikes that we saw in the wee hours of the morning Eastern time, or in the

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Behman Ben Taleblu: wee hours of the morning, wee hours of the evening, Eastern time, or wee hours of the Morning British Standard. Time was designed to together really collapse the commanding heights of the nuclear weaponization side and the military commanding heights, and then from there impose a shock on the rest of the body politik of both bureaucracies or both systems.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and then from there move towards the actual material targeting rather than just the personnel targeting. And then, I mean, there’s a whole host of things the Israelis did on the kind of political symbolism side as well when it came to targeting that we can get into. But in terms of these 2 brain trusts, it’s really going after a core and having both a capabilities based message be sent that it will take you time to achieve again the knowledge, base capabilities, the knowledge base gains.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but also psychologically, and trust and bureaucratically, even when you do do the musical chairs, you may simply not be at that same level of access and comfortability which, again, these are things in wartime that put the adversary off balance that can lead to miscalculation, that can lead to disruptions or changes in the chain of command or known decision making that all were down to the benefit of the attacker.

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Richard Pater: Thank you. Just kind of based on your experience in DC. And kind of asking a diplomatic question of kind of where to now, what the Iranians are likely to do with regard to the npt

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Richard Pater: and kind of the what we see is the kind of the negotiating stance I think, from, at least from. I’ve heard from Israeli officials, perhaps from Americans as well, about insisting on no enrichment inside kind, of no more developments of centrifuges. Kind of removal of the stockpile of the enriched uranium kind of unlimited and very severe transparent monitoring and supervision

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Richard Pater: kind of is is that realistic? Where do you think the Iran’s will position themselves. What do they have to gain from this? Presumably sanction? Relief is still high up on their minds.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Sanctions. Relief is but survival is as well, and particularly in a world where they may not have trusted that as coming on the front end pre-strike. They will have even less trust for that to be coming on the back end post strike. But their escalatory game has changed traditionally. They had this capacity based on the program to engage in horizontal escalation or vertical escalation. They could.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: for example, add more capacity. That’s vertical escalation, you know, grow the stockpile

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Behman Ben Taleblu: of something or grow the number of centrifuges, or they can engage in horizontal escalation where they would move into new areas. You know the production of 60%, the development of uranium metal using highly enriched uranium phasing in new types of new centrifuges. For example, you make qualitative changes or quantitative changes to the Iranian nuclear program in a world where that is not on the table. Given the success of the Israeli.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: the American strike, you go back to the bottom half of this equation, which is, if you know Group One is growing. The program group 2 is diminishing the monitoring. And as you grow the program and diminish the monitoring. You basically raise the threat profile and the lack of certainty over the direction of this program and the insight that you can have by the Iaea in this program.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: The reason I’m saying that is because the Parliament has certainly been flirting with Npt withdrawal. But, more importantly, the Parliament recently was talking about circumscribing Iea access and suspending.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: you know, basically work with the Iaea. And here that means that any kind of

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Behman Ben Taleblu: battle damage assessment driven by the Iea’s reporting itself, which is still on the ground in Iran and director. General Grocery, during this entire conflict, has been talking about wanting to return and restore access, and continue to investigate these facilities.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: to talk about everything, from radiation, to talk about everything, from what was destroyed, to talk about everything from Iran’s stockpile to make sure that every piece of declared inventory remains declared, and there is no diversion, for example, to be able to do all of that. They have to be able to again go, and the regime can now prohibit or delay the going which means the Monitoring and Verification Mission is going to be taking a huge, huge hit.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and this is going to be a powerful tool in the hand of the Islamic Republic. Admittedly not as powerful as the military leverage created by the Americans and the Israelis. But nonetheless, it is going to be a tool that they have and given. That President Trump has recently said that there will be negotiations as early as next week over the Iranian nuclear issue, and he later on circumscribed that by saying, I’m not sure what they need to negotiate over basically hinting at the success of the military mission to defang

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Behman Ben Taleblu: elements of the regime’s nuclear program. You will have

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Behman Ben Taleblu: the question of what do you intend to negotiate? And I think the most important thing to negotiate is the restoration and the managing of this access of the Iea to Iran’s nuclear program. That is going to be something, Major. Do I think that is something that is warranting sanctions relief?

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Behman Ben Taleblu: No, not at this point. I think that’s something that the Iranians should be living up to, but politically, strategically. I see them being able to extract a heck of a lot for this. Given the blows that they suffered, and given some of the questions that we still have about

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Behman Ben Taleblu: the rest of the uranium stockpile. So you know this is, it might just be one or 2 cards in the regime’s hands, but they’re powerful cards, and it certainly is true that you do have the

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Behman Ben Taleblu: quote unquote shadow of power to borrow from former Secretary of State. George Schultz cast across the negotiating table now. But the problem is, the adversary has always understood. There was a shadow of power cast, and instead try to play to the will, to stay in the fight for the regime rather than to have to generate capability, to offset all of a much more conventionally advanced army’s capability, be it the Israelis or the Americans. So this is the Iranian Mo. I think we’re going to see this mo on steroids.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: And you know, these guys have a diplomatic ground game. So just because there is a military success doesn’t mean that there is going to be a political success. In fact, the Middle East is littered with examples of military successes that have not yielded better political outcomes or order, so we will certainly have to watch and wait to see what happens in a potentially future. Witkopf Arakshi meeting.

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Richard Pater: And in terms of kind of the domestic Iran and the stability of the regime. It was interesting in hindsight that the kind of the last full day of the war, Israel seemed to pivot to targets, which did have more of a resonance for the regime, for Irgc bases the entrance of the prison you mentioned kind of the symbolic clock in

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Richard Pater: in Palestine Square, and kind of but the feeling, at least here in Israel was. It wasn’t Israel’s gift or their role to try and bring down the regime. This is really something that is up to the Iranian people. Where do you think that stands. Now, what do you anticipate.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: You know, my personal view is that this go around, Iran. You obviously have the most pro-american and the pro-israeli population in the Muslim Middle East. And I always stress that in conversations where we’re talking like now about things that go boom, that human security element, because I don’t think you could have had a population as Nationalist as the Iranian people be supporting foreign pressure, like.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: you know, the massive, the maximum pressure sanctions back in trump term one without some kind of a rally, but in Iran that was possible because of the level of enmity between the State and the street and the real movement away from reform and towards the desire for a wholesale revolution, and straight up regime change from the street against the State.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and you saw that correlate with declining numbers of electoral turnout and rising numbers and declining periods of calm between every round of anti-regime protests from 2017, 1819, 2022, twice, once in the spring, second time into 2023 with women like freedom. You even saw before this military conflict began, a trucker strike in Iran, for example.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: there is an undercurrent that is consistently brewing where the regime knows how drastically unpopular it is, and all it really has now to deal with. This is a monopoly on the use of force.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and the Israeli and American military strikes really showed that that altar, that the Islamic Republic had sacrificed everything on which was, quote, unquote national security regime security

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Behman Ben Taleblu: wasn’t really much of an alter after all, because, while it absconded with everything from the health, wealth, and reputation, public good, and national interest of the Iranian people, and to move it all into the nuclear missile. Military drone basket. That basket could be severely shocked, beaten, squashed setback.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: given the tier one capabilities of a state like Israel, or a state like the United States of America, and in that world you see this massive expectation gap.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and when the dust settles that can have a significant effect in stiffening the spine of a whole host of anti-regime Iranians, whose priority rightly while the shooting was going on, was not protesting, but was survival, as in any conflict zone where there are civilians, and to that end I’m mentioning this, because I think there was a desire, at least in terms of some Israeli rhetoric, to try to push for protest. But I think they may have

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Behman Ben Taleblu: missed that this is the 1st conflict on Iranian territory since the end of the Iran-iraq war. This is not Gaza or Syria where folks may be used to a boom and bust cycle of violence from an outside country. You know there were people fleeing Tehran abandoning cars on the streets, people going to the north, particularly near the Caspian sea area, to try to escape the shooting war altogether.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: while tons of people just stayed in and hunkered down at home, and I was using the word hunkered down because they had no shelter. They had no bunker, and they essentially awaited their fate, which is a horrible thing. But that’s the split screen imagery you get from a regime like the government of the Islamic Republic and a government like Israel, where, if one cherishes and

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Behman Ben Taleblu: is investing in the health and welfare of their citizenry and population. And one is not

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but moving forward those symbolic targets that the Israelis had struck, I think, were designed to be married with some of that kind of over promised rhetoric moving towards regime change

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Behman Ben Taleblu: to try to spark something within Iranian society, whereas I think that the spark was never going to come during a shooting war, but potentially could come on the back end. But that’s where the Israelis and the Americans need a ground game, I mean, politically, diplomatically, strategically. How do you devalue? How do you keep going after the regime? And here there were some things that were not just symbolic.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but that were signs that the Israelis were willing to go after the repressive apparatus of the government of the Islamic Republic. The limited strikes in Tehran, on law, enforcement, on Basij, on the Ministry of Justice, on the Ministry of the Intelligence, on blowing the doors of Evin Prison, for example, the strike on the Irib, the hacking of the Irib channel, the going after Irgc intelligence.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: You know these are all things that in the aggregate, if you’re making a cocktail of it, signal that the Israelis are trying to

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Behman Ben Taleblu: both signal their, you know, positivity, and to say to the Iranians that those entities that engage in foreign aggression against us are essentially the same that engage in domestic suppression of view, to try to marry the rhetoric and the reality, but also at the same time to shape and create the conditions on the political side. For when the dust settles for the population to be able to do something. But the problem here is again, I stress that many Iranians, you know.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: have been for many years because they’re nationalist and patriotic, very, very anti-war, but on the condition that they have moved from trying reform to seeking wholesale revolution to some of them, even starting in 2024, you know, literally calling for more direct military intervention, because there was literally nothing else that unarmed protesters could be doing on the streets

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Behman Ben Taleblu: in a world where direct military intervention really only neuters the nuclear program, or really only sets back the missile and military program. The population necessarily is not going to tolerate that cost, particularly if this means a cycle of violence

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Behman Ben Taleblu: comes back again and back again and back again, and risks expanding. This kind of mowing of the grass approach to Iran proper, and that will necessarily mean more civilian casualties. You may begin to actually erode

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Behman Ben Taleblu: that very important support base. And that’s why I’m saying now, in a period of time where there is no shooting. That’s when actually, this signaling about potential for regime change can happen. Now, I will say both America and Israel, due to their own domestic politics as well as I think, to Brightly getting this, understand that you know the final blow always has to come from within. This has to be an Iranian story for a drastically different Iranian political order.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and the good news is, the Iranian people have been more than playing their part have been more than trying to affect change on the ground with every vector you know, pre deal during deal post deal pre conflict. Now, post conflict.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: they have shown that they are willing to be. They have shown that they’re willing to risk their lives. The problem is that the calculation the regime is making is to say, no one has your back as you risk your lives, and that can erode that stiffened spine that may have been created through those targets of the apparatus of repression. So I am drastically worried about what will happen internally in Iran, even though everyone’s saying, Well, it’s up to the Iranians

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Behman Ben Taleblu: the Iranians have been trying for over a century for representative government. The Iranians have been trying for multiple rounds at least 4 or 5 rounds since 2017, and keep getting set back.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: So the question is to the degree to which other States are now trying to do things against the regime there. To what degree can they pave a better pathway for Iranian protesters, activists, and dissidents rather than just kind of imposing costs, and stepping back and imposing costs and stepping back

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Behman Ben Taleblu: again. There needs to be political connectivity. There needs to be a translation of the dialogue of the targets. You know what was hit. Why was it hit. This has to be a consistent strand of Israeli and American public diplomacy. And, to be frank, I don’t necessarily see that yet.

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Richard Pater: And what about Iran’s international allies, whether it’s the role that China, Russia, North Korea, Pakistan, that they can play in kind of in supporting, supporting the regime, going forward.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Well, I don’t necessarily see Pakistan in that role, even though there’s quite a bit of concern over the regional role Pakistan plays in the past. Afghanistan kind of consistently vis-a-vis. India, moving into the 21st century, issues the close ties with China, for example.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: But this constellation of actors known as Crink. You know, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, or the Bad Guys Club, or the Good Guys Club, the Bad Guys Club, or the new 2.0 axis of Evil Club. Whatever language you use for it. The axis of authoritarians here at Fd. We call it the axis of aggressors, you know.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: when the bad guys. If you will create a constellation of partners and allies, the glue between them is not anywhere at all like the glue between the 5 eyes Alliance or NATO, for example, it’s not that a rising tide lifts all boats. This is a mercantilist, predatory group of regimes. They’re anti-american. They’re authoritarian. There is a political overlap between them that is, moving 2 separate circles into much more of a Venn diagram.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: and from the Iranian side, which is the only non-nuclear element of this nuclear armed revisionist, anti-american axis, which includes, again, North Korea, Russia, and China. They have always been auditioning for this great power, support, particularly from the nineties from Russia and China. They’ve gotten it much more recently in the 2,010 s. And in the Post Jcpoa period and the Post-syrian Civil war period

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Behman Ben Taleblu: from the Russians, but it almost always was a guessing game where the Russians would sell them out at the right price. And now that the Russians have been stuck in Ukraine, and the Iranians have all of these Ious. I don’t think there’s any real material coming tomorrow from the Russians. I think the Russians

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Behman Ben Taleblu: have, and will continue to be Iran’s lawyer in International Fora. I think the Chinese have, and will continue to be, the most important purchaser of Iranian crude oil and energy products. And you know, just those 2 things alone are critical to the regime on the back end of a strike, because essentially on the back end of a strike is when you need maximum pressure and significant containment to amplify politically and economically the military effects of your military strike.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: But in a world where

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Behman Ben Taleblu: those actors may not have the capability due to their own internal reasons, or they may feel somewhat more deterred now because of the successes of the Israelis or the successes of the Americans, that they may not want to rush to bail out the regime.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: They have absolutely no problem with a weak Islamic republic that is made to be even more politically and militarily and economically dependent on them. And then from there everything else will flow, because again, they can use Iran as a pawn in their game of strategic competition with the West and to me, and to large swaths of the Iranian people. This is proof that the Go East strategy may keep the regime afloat.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but will increasingly not do much for the nation, and

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Behman Ben Taleblu: you can really see, with the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, which was the only State ally that the Islamic Republic had, but it was a state ally that the regime had to prop up rather than really extract or get material things from how isolated

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Behman Ben Taleblu: the Islamic Republic really is. That point is not really or meaningfully dealt with here in Washington, where I live and work. But the Islamic Republic is an isolated actor. Yes, we’re continually talking about showing up at international arms markets. Yes, we’re talking about them having a global apparatus for sanctions. Busting. Yes, we’re always talking about them being in a whole host of UN Fora that they should not be in, for example.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: but

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Behman Ben Taleblu: make no mistake when push comes to shove. There are very few that would risk anything for this sort of regime.

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Richard Pater: So if I can, a double-edged question just to finish with, do you think the doctrine of the ring of fire surrounding Israel with proxies. Has that now been defeated? Or do you see, Iran are likely to try and rebuild that? I mean? Really, I suppose only the Houthis have been left with any substantial capacity for now, and we wait to be seen how they haven’t struck

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Richard Pater: since the ceasefire was declared. We don’t know if they consider themselves bound by it or not, but as a concept, how much of the does the proxy still ring true, and a second follow-up of kind, of how the rest of the region. The rest of the Sunni states in the Gulf now perceive Iran following this conflict.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Yeah, let’s begin with the ring of fire which has really shown itself to be costly. Post October 7, th meaning the Islamic Republic’s goal was to increasingly turn on these fronts, try to find a way to connect it. We know militarily, logistically, the connection. The logistics between every front was nowhere as integrated as we may have feared, or we may have thought, and that significantly redounded to the military advantage of the Israelis, but that also each front.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: while firing, fired in a very incremental graduated way, which kind of shook the Israelis 1st given the direct attacks, particularly following October 7th on Israeli territory, as well as for the

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Behman Ben Taleblu: for the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, the targeting of Us. Positions and Us. Bases, and then the historic entry of the Houthis, both against Israel as well as against international commerce and

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Behman Ben Taleblu: freedom of travel. In a place like the Red Sea, for example.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: it really shook the Israelis, but it also shook

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Behman Ben Taleblu: them into the position of seeing that there is no way out but through, and really with following the Iranian direct entry into this back in April you see this series of Israeli successes

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Behman Ben Taleblu: against Haniyah, then moving into the late summer, early fall with the pager and the beeper issue. You see the Israeli see that there’s no way out but through, and the ability to

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Behman Ben Taleblu: overmatch the incremental escalation and the layering on of the ring of fire around the Israelis with the way the Israelis have won so historically in the elements of fighting the Arab Cold War, when it was short and sharp military action, those rounds of short and sharp military action, particularly against Hamas to the south and Hezbollah to the north.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: basically put the regime in the position of having some of its most important proxies neutered, and then, in 2025, with deeper American entry post ceasefire in the spring, directly targeting the Houthis. That also come in with great cost to the element of the axis, to this element of the acts of resistance, which, again looking at things both through the American perspective as through the Israeli perspective. Why this action? Why this military

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Behman Ben Taleblu: action by Israel first, st and America much later.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: took place now is because they had a clear shot. They had a clear shot brought to you 1st and foremost by the proxies being down, but not out by the long range air defense being down by the missile, the offensive, retaliatory, missile strategy of the Islamic Republic being.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: dare I say, manageable, and all of these point you to well, if you’re worried about the status and security dividends of the nuclear program. Well, you have just kind of lived through an experimentation phase of how to regulate and deal with the other threats that the regime would have or the threats that the regime would activate.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Once you do go after their nuclear program. So this is essentially why, 2025 was a year of decision for such a military strike, and I think the Israelis took it, and the Americans did what they can to, I think pale green light facilitate it. And then on the back end came in the way they did, with kind of like a cleanup operation against those 3 nuclear sites.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: How these major military victories against the axis and against the Islamic Republic itself play in the Arab world is mixed. For example, you’ve had, I think, like 20

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Behman Ben Taleblu: organization of Islamic country. Foreign ministries, early in the conflict, call for a ceasefire, stressed the fact that attacks on nuclear facilities are not consistent with international law push for de-escalation. I think that there is a genuine appetite for that. I mean one drastically different thing about the Gcc. States in 2025

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Behman Ben Taleblu: is that they are the front lines of diplomacy with the Islamic Republic, whereas President Trump’s historic trip to the same part of the world on his 1st trip in 2017.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: That was a drastically different constellation of forces in the Gcc. Where they were. The front lines of maximum pressure against the Gcc. And this has more to do with America, staying or going, military and political posture in the Middle East Post Bush Administration and the signals. Everyone has been sending about pivot to Asia and great power competition.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: These military successes may have changed that may have permitted some of these States again to have a slightly more stiffer spine towards the one major state threat that has been afflicting both the Israelis and the Americans and the Arabs themselves. It’s too soon to tell again, if this bolsters Abraham Accord’s 2.0 extension, or creates political space for it, you know, with the rumors now of potentially Syria or Lebanon.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: or this may be creating political space for such an extension in Saudi Arabia, for example, I think that’s too soon to tell. But there is a world in which you can use the military successes as more attraction and more glue for this expanding series of

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Behman Ben Taleblu: diplomatic engagement with the pro-american status quo order in the Middle East, such that if the trend continues of Americans looking further eastward, given the challenges of countering a rising china, well, then, you have as much of the pro-american order as together as possible, and united against an adversary that they clearly have seen

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Behman Ben Taleblu: can absorb blows, and will have its military threat against these folks significantly degraded if decisive action is taken.

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Richard Pater: Well, thank you so much. Some of those issues. We will have to call on you again, because obviously this is an issue that will keep our attention for the foreseeable, but for today that was brilliant. Thank you very much indeed.

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Behman Ben Taleblu: Always a pleasure great to join you.

Helit served as a Director at the Israel National Security Council, heading the U.S.-Israeli bilateral desk and is a former Managing Director of the Council for Peace and Security. She also worked at the Congressional Research Service in Washington DC authoring several reports for Congress on issues related to weapons of mass destruction.

Transcript

(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)

Richard Pater:

Okay. Hello, everybody. My name is Richard Pater. I’m the Director of BICOM. And welcome to the latest bike home briefing. First of all, thank you very much indeed to Helit Barel who’s going to be our speaker for today. Thank you very much indeed for joining us.

By way of background, it is a former senior staff at Israel’s National Security Council, specifically heading the Israel, US bilateral desk.

She’s also a former managing director of the Council for Peace and Security and a member of the Devorah Forum. She’s considered an expert in non-proliferation, nuclear weapons, and also Israel, US relations so expertly ideally placed to offer some commentary analysis on what’s been happening over the last few days. Headed, perhaps. Perhaps you can start and give us your overall assessment specifically on what you think the role at the moment between Israel and the US and that the role that they may be playing behind the scenes.

Helit Barel:

Well, I think it’s obvious, considering how this attack started to be played out, that there had been much closer coordination between Israel and the United States, than was seen or considered to be publicly. And the allowance or the availability of this space to conduct military operation against Iranian nuclear facilities, and other military installations.

Surprised I think a lot of people. So one thing that we can certainly tell is that, there was close coordination on this, and so we can assume that it is continuously. So, now, I have to address what we just had popped up, which is, report from the nuclear from the Wall Street Journal claiming that Iran has urgently requested from the United States to conduct talks with the United States and Israel to end, the war fighting at this stage with no idea if this is true or not.

But once again, we can see, where the coordination here comes in. We also know that, we in Israel could not have, this level of success in defending, against Iranian, ballistic missiles, constant attacks, for several days now without, the coordination with the United States and the active help of the U.S, systems that systems in the region.

And we also know other things, such as while the United States has stated more than once that this is an Israeli operation and they have nothing to do with it, that they have at the same time also, definitely increased their presence in the region. We know that bombers, the heavy bombers, the B-2 bombers have reappeared in Diego Garcia and so on and so forth.

So, certainly what we see is while the United States, at this stage has not joined in operationally, that there is, there are very, very, close quarter, consultations and, and work on this operation.

Richard Pater:

And if I can turn to kind of the obviously the, the, the concept behind this, this, operation by Israel was to downgrade, destroy the Iranian nuclear project. I wonder if you could just talk to that and kind of where they were at and technically, what it looks like to, to to take on a mission to destroy that.

Helit Barel:

Right. So, the first caveat, I want to put it out there. The dust hasn’t said lately, and there’s a lot that we don’t know about how much, the how much. You know what exactly the result of these strikes are? There was such a wide array of facilities that had absorbed these strikes. They include, Natanz and Isfahan and Parchin, which are various facets of the Iranian nuclear program.

So, in Natanz, its enrichment and centrifuges, in is behind it was conversion and Parchin. We know it was work on the weapons group. So all of these various components of the Iranian program have been attacked. We keep getting, various reports, for example, use Natanz as a good example. Some reports were saying initially, oh, it’s been put out of commission.

Then we heard, well, the outer part of it has been, affected and all electricity has been cut off, which certainly would harm the centrifuges inside and the enrichment efforts. But the actual inner part of it that’s underground hasn’t been heard. Then we heard that it did kind of implode and, and, and, physically, took a lot of harm.

So again, fog of war, we’re not sure about exactly what those things are. And also because even some of the things that the IAEA, the EIA is putting out there are still not based on, visiting on the ground because it’s just not possible at the site. So we know that the operationally, those targets were achieved in in the sense that they were hit, in the sense that they were affected, were they hit in a way that would put them out of commission?

To create the kind of delay that we were hoping for? I think it’s, early to say, but we also have to remember that Israel really struck more than just the nuclear facilities is one of the most important things that was undertaking, in this in this, operation was the striking of means of delivery.

A lot of things to do with the Iranian ballistic missile industry, which is very advanced. So, not only trying to get at the launchers and at the actually stockpiles of missiles, but also at the reproduction capability, because one of the main concerns is not just where Iran is now. It was estimated before this operation started, at around 2000, ballistic missiles.

That where is it going? Because production was moving very quickly and, would make it hard for Israel to absorb increasing numbers of ballistic missiles. Which we see, you know, we see the implication of today in the attacks that Israel was absorbing. So we had that component. And then, and then another component to consider is, of course, taking out those military personnel and those personnel involved in the Iranian nuclear program, in the military nuclear program, in an attempt to try and, let’s say, decrease the reconstruction capability because, no, there’s nobody obviously on Earth it can’t be replaced.

But key figures, especially, I believe, in the weapon group effort, are going to be hard to replace. But again, we do know that Iran is a nation of, of many, many people, a very educated putting a lot of effort into these particular field. So we’ll have to see, how effective it was. So, on the, on the and the question of results, too early to tell.

Certainly a success operationally an amazing success from an intelligence standpoint. More, I would say even more than operationally knowing exactly where these people are at, what times, even though they’re sheltering in their hiding, to be able to get it. And we also well, I don’t know if you saw, but we saw in Israel the footage of, the work that Mossad did on the ground using many various, means of warfare, and intelligence to have very, very precise strikes on those targets that I enumerated before.

So, I’ve got a couple of technical questions just on what you said. First of all, for the for the layperson, when you remove electricity, what happens to the centrifuges? So the centrifuges are spinning at a very, very high speed. And centrifuges are basically, very large cylinders. Right. And they’re, once you mess with they’re, continuous, spinning.

So, you cut off the electricity and you make them stop. And even even if they do start again, they actually can get completely destroyed or, severely harmed by the lack of, speed and and the the, the the quick arrest of, electricity supply. So no doubt in terms of, the centrifuges that if the power was cut, some harm, probably significant harm, was done to them.

If you remember the Stuxnet operation back in 2010, which was, a cyber, kinetic combined operation. It’s exactly what it was trying to do was to mess with the the supply of power and change the speed of the centrifuges as to get them, to malfunction and get them out of commission. And it worked to an extent.

It was kind of cut short. So, it’s, it’s a similar it’s a similar kind of, consequence. I mean, it’s another technical question that you may be able to enlighten us. What happens to if, if, if kind of these some of these airstrikes hit some of the, storage of enriched uranium a it does it destroy it or is there, is there risk of leaks, radiation?

So, it’s very first of all, I just it’s very hard to tell. If the enriched uranium stockpile was, really addressed in these attacks, if it was because it’s very hard, to know where it was. I mean, there’s no particular reason you would hold it in the facilities themselves, which are known targets when, the enriched uranium takes a form that is very easy to move around and hide and separate.

So most likely that’s what you would do. But still, we’re talking about enrichment of fissile material in these, in these, facilities. And what we heard from, the ground and from IAEA, that was that there was, certain level, very low level of contamination, but, nothing, terribly significant. And no, just bombing the, the, the fissile material itself.

If it was easy as that, the Iranians would certainly already have those, devices ready. What you have to do is, create a very particular kind of explosion around, around the uranium core, to start the chain reaction, which we all know as a, as a nuclear, detonation. So, it’s nothing like that.

And it’s similar more to concerns that we had about dirty bombs in the past and things like that. But those are also intentional to increase the contamination. And this is not what’s going on. So what will from the reports that we currently have and again, this is very early, the contamination is not, very significant.

Richard Pater:

Thank you. And just going back to what you said before about kind of the, the illusion of to Mossad operations just for our, for our audience. But here online and listening, listening to this afterwards. Can you just, elaborate on what, the understanding is of Mossad’s, presence on the ground?

Helit Barel:

Well, from what we saw and again, this is, my completely external analysis to the whole situation. It was it was very, very significant involvement. The intelligence is, you know, a large part of this operation, the operational execution, you know, you have to have a target for. And the targeting was, pretty incredible. I mean, we’ve seen, the footage of, these missiles going through a particular, room in a particular building and taking out that alone with great, great precision.

Do you have to know who’s in that room and when they are? There was apparently some sort of meeting, of, very high ranking military on the first night of the strikes, which I think took out, if I believe I’m correct, about 20, very senior people in the Iranian, in the IRGC, in the nuclear establishment.

So, that requires extreme precision. But also we saw basically, these, I wouldn’t call them floating bases, but mobile bases of, of these and other, means of delivery that were being, delivered on the ground in Iran and used from within. So not just from the air. That requires a physical ground presence, guided by Mossad agents.

So, yeah, pretty incredible, intelligence achievement, which we probably, you know, we got the first cursor of that when we saw, Ismail Haniya months before that, been taken out in a very precise way, again in one room in the centre of Tehran, in the IRGC complex. So I think it was already obvious that that, that that capability existed. But that it existed on the scale that we now saw, was pretty impressive.

Richard Pater:

And just going back to the, to the US role, as I said, we’ve got we saw as we came, as we start the conversation, this initial report of a suggestion of, of mediation, I wonder if you could just outline what those what the talks have looked like between us and Iran over the last few weeks and, and where they and where they and where they reached.

And then kind of as a, as a follow up kind of if that was if there was a return to diplomacy, whether that has any bearing kind of, you know, in a post or in a post, clash, return to diplomacy.

Helit Barel:

Right. So, what we were supposed to see yesterday, was, I believe, the sixth round of talks between the United States, and, and Iran, regarding, trying to find a new nuclear agreement.

I’m staying away from using the JCPoA because it was clear, that President Trump had no interest in reconstructing that. And also, the starting point was so different with where Iran had gotten to that. That was not really a possibility. But, you know, what we saw really is on one hand was all over the place, statements that were very constructive in the beginning.

And we’re getting along and and those kind of things. But they were really mood statements. We never heard anything about the technical issues. And the technical issues on the on the table were very, very significant. We’re talking about not only in uranium enrichment, but also what happens with the advanced centrifuges. So research and development, what happens with the enriched uranium that already exists in Iran, where is it going?

And so on and so forth. So there wasn’t really a lot of detail about that. It was more sort of like, things are good, we’re getting along, we’re going to make these and then they were very, you know, kind of manic moving from one side to the other. So in the beginning it’s a good move. Then it’s like we’re not getting along and we’re not optimistic.

We saw that right before the strike. So, on the technical issues, very little is known as far what as far as what was being discussed, we did hear and again, these are reports that are not corroborated. You know, obviously the nothing came out officially from the US side or the Iranian side, but talk about, finding some solution for enrichment that would include, regional consortium in the Middle East, seeing as the Emirates have their own program, which operates according to the U.S gold standard.

Saudi very much wants its own enrichment program. Iran obviously feels like it has the right to enrich. So I think the idea that was floated around was how do you maintain this notion of Iran having the right to enrich without allowing really, vast enrichment, on Iranian soil. So that was the most creative kind of thing that we heard.

And then that there were arguments about where would it be housed? Would it be housed at the Emirates? Will we be housed in Iran and Saudi? What would it be acceptable to the international community? What would be acceptable to the United States? What would be acceptable to Iran? That really they never really came close on those issues. And that still leaves open, the question of weaponization and inspections regarding weaponization.

So ,I think President Trump identified correctly that Iran is has a very strong core weakness at the moment. So it didn’t come to the table in the same state that came when the JCPoA was negotiated. Right. First of all, financially, it was in dire straits for a while, for a long time, fearing the sanctions that that awaited.

And they await sanctions not just from the United States, but sanctions that are talked about, that have to do with the noncompliance with the NPT and being referred by the IAEA board of directors to, the UN, security Council, sanctions having to do with the snapback, which are still possibly in force and could be triggered, would have to be triggered in a very short period of time.

So, within weeks, that’s one thing. But also, having been in, over a year and a half of war, really, with Israel having lost Hezbollah basically as a proxy, having lost Hamas as a proxy, and then launching this, I think is very important to very large attacks on Israel in April of 2023 and in October of 2023 that were very unsuccessful, really, and that were a display of deterrence by denial.

So they didn’t really achieve, any kind of goal. They did not deter Israel or the United States from continuing to pursue their goals and did not deter Israel from its goals, and Gaza and so on. So, came in with a very strong, it’s funny, with a great weakness regionally, but also internally. So I think that’s what President Trump really identified and thought that considering that and the NPT, the state of the NPT and the state of snapback sanctions, that he could affect real change in the Iranian position by pressuring them at the time.

And then that didn’t really work out in the first meetings. The first five meetings, and the sense was or from what we understand, the impression that the Israeli government conveyed at least, was like, they’re just buying time to maybe rush across the nuclear threshold to make sure that, snapback sanctions aren’t in place. And so, that’s where we’re at with those negotiations, and we’ll see if it picks up there would certainly from it compromises that need to be made.

Richard Pater:

I was wondering, who do you think is driving this policy within the within the Trump administration? There were plenty of kind of known I would say, hawks on the Iranian issue, kind of within the kind of the traditional wing of the Republican Party. But they seem to have been sidelined more to kind of figures who are, kind of associated with more with, with Trumpism, let’s say, which is, I would argue, distinct.

Where do you think the kind of the power of gravity is within the US? Who’s leading that? And what would what are the main kind of policy drivers there?

Helit Barel:

So, I think you described that very well. There really is some sort of, power power struggle there within where, first of all, President Trump wants to deal.

He wants to be he wants to be able to show a good deal. He wants to bring it to conclusion. He sees this as a key part of a greater deal that he will bring to the Middle East, which would, you know, if you believe his vision or follow his vision would benefit, you know, would have a regional, a wide marginal effect, and would bring rest and stability on, on a wide range of issues.

So that’s, you know, that his, his, his driver. Now, the what we’re seeing is that the neo cons of the Republican Party that had such strong effect within the party and for a long time have really lost a lot of their influence on this. So yes, they would be, possibly supportive of, you know, striking Iran, taking military action, driving it, not just by means of diplomacy, sanctions and so on.

But then you have the other side of it, which is MAGA, and they have a lot of political clout, and they have been very, very outspoken over the last, especially over the last few days since, the start of this operation. And they’re basically saying we are about to make America great again, not about make Israel or the Middle East great again.

So don’t get us involved in the mud over there and stay out of the war. Like we’ll support Israel, but we won’t, you know, take this upon themselves. And that’s where the struggle is. And the interesting thing is that it all ultimately lies in the hands of the president. This is one of those presidents who was, really, in the end, going to do what he himself decides to do.

And I am under the impression that he simply hasn’t decided. Now, if, things have really come to, fruition this quickly, where the Iranians are willing to sit down and talk, I believe that he will. I believe that he will prefer to see if they are coming with a new willingness to compromise. But again, I think as of, you know, 20 minutes ago before we heard this and we don’t know if this is true, the only one who’s going to decide is Donald Trump, and I don’t I truly don’t think he has made up his mind.

We hear contradicting things from him. Every day, which is, actually, in terms of, deterrence and influence and others, this ambiguity could be quite fruitful for him. But, we’re not clear on where he really stands on this.

Richard Pater:

And, and just back to the kind of the nuclear project of Iran, one of the signs we didn’t mention, that is in the kind of Israeli media discourse is, is Fordow, which kind of hasn’t been struck yet, which is heavily underground under a under a mountain is you can Israel can Israel do anything to, to penetrate, Fordow? Can they do it alone, or is it kind of solely reliant on if America decides to, to involve itself?

Helit Barel:

So, we’re talking about America, the need for American, air power and striking power in for do. Because, we’re talking about a very well fortified underground facility, and we’re talking suspicious specifically about, the Moab bombs, which are, you know, the heaviest and strongest bombs, which are only, in the hands of the United States.

They don’t export them. They don’t sell them. And also, they have the, the capability to carry them. So let’s say they gave Israel this bomb. You need the actual power to you need the bombers to, to actually carry them, which is something the United States, holds exclusively. And and yes, the United States could, administer quite a bit of damage to subdue and deal effectively with that side.

But the other side of it is not just the bombs themselves, but also the ability to repeat. So the repetition of the strikes, in other words, what we call operational tempo, up tempo, and we saw what the United States did in Yemen, in terms of its ability to strike, you know, thousands of strikes in a very short period of time, which is something that, the Israeli Air Force doesn’t have the scope for.

Not that we can’t do it. You’ve seen how, strongly we’ve been, attacking within Iran over the next, over the past few days. But it’s obviously no comparison with the Operation tempo that the United States of America can keep up. So and this is something I think is key and is very important. It’s true not just of force.

Do is true of any concept of a military attack on nuclear facilities, because it’s a type of gardening, if you will. So the problem is not just what damage you do when you first attack or while you are operating, but also can you keep it up because of the Iranian? Have the Iranians have the ability to reconstruct.

Then you have to keep it up in the the attack and make sure, that in a sort of attrition, you keep your achievements going. That’s where the United States contribution is, is so critical on those things. To your question about whether Israel can achieve that and for do unfortunately, I believe not in that particular the clear side doesn’t mean we can’t do damage, doesn’t mean that we can’t delay.

But, to achieve the kind of, of results that the United States could, I think is out of our grasp.

Richard Pater:

Would you think Israel has a, has a contingency plan to, to at least try and they can’t base a strategy on. Well, let’s hope the Americans joined. There must be they must. Having launched this there.

Maybe there must be a plan.

Helit Barel:

Yeah. And I don’t think. I don’t think, I don’t think we have. I don’t think that’s, that’s any kind of plan. And I don’t think it’s correct for Israel to ask the United States. This is something that the United States has to arrive at from its own point of view, from its own interest.

I strongly believe that, maintaining Iran is a non-nuclear weapon, state is important to the United States and Europe. It a very, very high level. Sometimes we’re not sure if that’s internalized that those ballistic missiles that we’re fighting can also reach the European continent. But, that is the case. And, it’s still something that the United States needs to arrive to that.

So this should not be the situation where, oh, we got involved in this war because of Israel. And so I don’t think that was ever the expectation. I think, there was an operational opportunity and a political opportunity because of the result of the war that started with the vicious attacks of October 7th and what had transpired and how, Iran’s position came to be and all of that, the weakness, and the strong successes that Israel has had in Lebanon in, in Syria, I think led to to the, this idea that, and and in addition, of course, for the Iranian advances, towards the nuclear threshold that it would be, the

time to strike they wouldn’t have done that without, the, compliance the, the, the, the, you know, the agreement with the United States would not have done that without that, but weren’t relying on us. AirPower would have been going too far. That’s not how you plan an operation.

Richard Pater:

Absolutely. So presuming that it this remains kind of a blue and white operation solely without the Americans, what does what does kind of the operation of success look like? And what’s the what’s the exit strategy to, to end it?

Helit Barel:

So, I think, you know, we’ve seen our, national Security advisor be go on a lot of, TV shows in Israel over the last few days and talk about how, what is required now is the diplomatic, leg to finish this. In other words, the framework, that this is basically meant to really create a situation where, we can see Iran coming to the table with more, ability to compromise.

And we have the United States political and diplomatic clout behind us, rather than necessarily the military to finish this up, to create an exit strategy that allows us to maintain a situation in the Middle East where Iran does not cross the nuclear threshold, not just does not cross it today, but that it is a long term agreement. And that could only be done by the United States and not even the United States alone.

It’ll have definitely the support of Europe is necessary there. But, the the long term component of it is very, very important. And I think that’s, that’s the the idea was to push it, you know, towards that area. And I believe and maybe it’s wishful thinking, I hope that if we see and I really, you know, cannot tell if that’s really where it’s going.

But if we see some sort of conclusion in, you know, within, I don’t know, a week or ten days or whatnot, of the operations and this, movement towards a political, diplomatic solution, that it would include more than just Israel and Iran, that it would include the beginning of regional components, and, the wrapping up of what’s been going on in the Middle East since October 7th.

Richard Pater:

Thank you. Is there is there anything else you’d like to share that I haven’t asked?

Helit Barel:

Just that, you know, I think it’s a very important to note that, Israel has been generally getting, a lot of criticism for its level of war fighting and, and specifically this operation as well.

And I think it’s also very important to remember, what we think is the alternative, the fact that Iran has had was allowed to get so advanced in its nuclear, advances towards a military capability is it’s very important to keep reminding everybody this is not a threat just to Israel. It’s a threat to the Middle East, the oil supplies of the world, and into this threat to Europe and Eurasia.

So it’s just something that needs to be taken on by the international community. And, stop. Let Israel shouldering the burden by itself.

Richard Pater:

Thank you so much for your analysis and insights for today. Thank you all for joining us. Stay tuned for future briefings. And, thank you all for joining us. Helit, stay safe and wishing you well.

Helit Barel:

Thank you.

Edmund Fitton-Brown is a veteran British diplomat who served as the UK’s Ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017 and later coordinated UN expert panels on ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. He holds advisory or fellowship positions with the Counter Extremism Project, the Middle East Institute, The Soufan Center and New America.

Transcript

(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)

Daniel J. Leavy:

Hello and welcome to the BICOM’s Podcast. I’m Daniel J. Leavy, programs manager at the think tank. And today is 4th of June, 2025. My guest is Edmund Fitton-Brown, formerly the UK’s Ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017. He is a career civil servant and Foreign Office official who subsequently served as coordinator of United Nations Sanctions and Threat Assessment regarding ISIL, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban before joining the kind of extremist project where he now works as a senior advisor.

And today, we’ll be discussing the escalating tensions between Israel and the Houthis. So, Edmund, thank you for joining me. Thanks, Daniel. It’s great to be here. So probably just a good to sort of set up a base before we jump into the conversation here, the Houthis, and how do they get to where they were on sixth October 23rd?

Edmund Fitton-Brown:

Who? The Houthis. It sounds. It sounds almost like a private eye headline, doesn’t it? Yeah. I think it’s important to go into this because Yemen is that little bit further away from, the West than some other countries that people are more familiar with. They’ll be more familiar with Iraq or Syria. And, people don’t know so much about the, the, the history of Yemen, even the recent history.

Some people don’t even know that Yemen used to be, two countries, and not not that long ago, up until up until just over 30 years ago. The Houthis are a Zaydi revivalist cult. And if I can quickly unpack that, Yemen, in terms of its population, is divided between Sunnis, the majority, and it’s a particular branch of, Sunni Islam that they are known as Qataris.

And they, they, they make up about 70% of the population, approximately. And then there is, a much smaller section of the population, which is not exactly Shia, but sometimes described as Shia adjacent. And those are the Zaydis. And the Saudis were the historic, leaders in Yemen. The Saudis tend to be in the north of the country, and the Qataris in the south.

And, so the further north, you know, the further north, you go up to Sana’a and the north of Sana’a. It’s going to be more Zaydi and Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was the president of Yemen for a very long time, he was a Zaydi himself. And yet the Houthis, when they, emerged in the 1990s as this sort of Zaydi revivalist cult, they were not particularly keen on Ali Abdullah Saleh.

I think they saw him as somebody who made compromises with the West, compromises, to remain in power in Yemen and after the after 911, after the Cole incident and when we were into the, into the aughts and the era of, intense counterterrorism that followed 911. The Houthis particularly disliked the fact that Ali Abdullah Saleh, was, a counterterrorism partner for the Americans.

Not a very reliable one. But still, you know, he was working with the Americans and his security services working with the Americans and the Houthis, who were very much influenced by Lebanese Hezbollah. They, regarded that as a betrayal, and they became very anti Saleh. And during that decade and into the beginning of the next decade, a series of what were called the Houthi wars were fought where Saleh tried to send Yemeni troops to put down what he perceived as a sort of a, Houthi subversion or a who’s the uprising in the far north of the country.

But, they were unable to do that. The houses were very resilient. They were good fighters. And the, they were able to hold out against, these successive, attempts to crush them. Then, in about, 2011, 2012, the era of the Arab Spring, Yemen was one of the, Arab countries that was affected. And, Ali Abdullah Saleh fell from power and he was replaced as president of Yemen by his deputy, who was a southern Shafi’i, the first time that a Southerner had ruled over the united Yemen.

And that obviously created a certain amount of discontentment amongst the Saudis. And the Houthis didn’t like it at all. And, Ali Abdullah Saleh, once he had decided that he actually wasn’t happy with being deposed and he would like to try and make another bid for power. He, he patched over his dispute with the Houthis, and they formed a sort of an alliance of convenience to move against President Hadi.

It was rather tragic because at that time, Yemen was the poster child of the Arab Spring. They had, convened something called the National Dialog Conference, and the Yemeni National Dialog was quite sophisticated. It involved all sections of the Yemeni population, including the Houthis. It it involved a lot of women. It was it was very progressive and very forward looking in that respect.

And it was, making a serious study of what kind of political disposition would best serve Yemen for the future and would actually, you know, would would represent all of Yemen’s diverse stakeholders. And then unfortunate Atlee, with, Saleh’s encouragement and his facilitation, because he was still very influential in the Yemeni army, the Houthis swept south and in 2014, they occupied Sanaa and they arrested President Hadi.

And he was then able to flee to Aden in the far south. And then the Houthis followed him south, and they got to Aden. They didn’t ever occupy Aden. That was in early 2015, because at that point, first of all, Hadi himself fled. He left Aden and ended up in Saudi Arabia. But he remained the legitimate president of Yemen.

And at his request, Saudi Arabia got involved in, fighting on the side of the internationally recognized government against the Houthis. And that is the Yemeni civil war, as we’ve come to understand it, in the West, which is the Houthis on one side, fighting against the government backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE and some other, Arab allies.

And of course, that was when I came in as ambassador. I just managed to present my credentials to President Hadi in Aden just before he fled from Aden and moved to Saudi Arabia. We of course, had to evacuate our own embassy, as did the Americans. And we ended up opening our embassies in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

And so, for my period as ambassador, I would often see President Hadi, in Riyadh or sometimes in Jeddah. And the civil war was sort of balanced at that point because with the Saudis assistance, the internationally recognized government was able to push the Houthis back. And the battle lines sort of stabilized across the middle of Yemen, around just south of the port of Hodeidah, around the city of Taiz, around the city of Marib.

And really those battle lines have not moved a great deal in the following decade. But the last thing I’ll say on this point is that after I finished as ambassador, we had been through various rounds of peace talks, and the peace talks had been unsuccessful and the Civil War continued. And, one of the key moments in the Civil War happened in at the end of 2018.

And this was when the Saudi backed government forces were on the, they were absolutely on the, suburbs in the suburbs of Hodeidah port. And they were about to take Hodeidah. And you will remember that at that time, Jamal Khashoggi, a US based, Saudi journalist, was, assassinated by the Saudi government, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

And the reason I mentioned that, dreadful incident is that it had an effect on the Yemeni civil War because the Saudi backing for the, internationally recognized government of Yemen was internationally controversial. It wasn’t very popular. It was particularly unpopular with a lot of the sort of, what we might now see is what we now talk about as the sort of progressive community, human rights lobby, humanitarian lobby in the West, who were just not very keen on Saudi Arabia in general, in the same way that they’re not very keen on Israel.

And they, suddenly, of course, they had this moment with the killing of Khashoggi, where this generated international outrage against Saudi Arabia. And Saudi was very dependent at the time for on the support of Donald Trump’s administration, his first administration in the United States. But the Khashoggi killing really pulled the rug out from under American support for the Saudis.

It sort of it really sort of was a gut punch, effectively, to the pro Saudi lobby in the United States. And all of a sudden the Saudis felt very internationally exposed. So when they came under pressure from the United Nations and from the wider international community to sign the Stockholm Agreement at the end of 2018, by which they agreed not to take Hodeidah.

They felt that they had no choice but to sign up to that. And of course, the big question that we ask ourselves from the perspective of 2025 and 2024 is if the Saudis and the government of Yemen had been allowed to take Hodeidah and then to, push the the Houthis away from the Red Sea coast, would we even be in the situation that we are in now, where the Houthis are able to hold international shipping hostage?

Daniel J. Leavy:

Pretty interesting to get that context. But one of the things we hear a lot of nowadays is that these are an Iranian proxy or the Iranian client. Could you maybe elaborate on that? And, what’s the timeline for involvement with the Houthis?

Edmund Fitton-Brown:

Definitely, yes. Well, I already mentioned that they were very much influenced by Lebanese Hezbollah. And as you know, Lebanese Hezbollah has always been, a proxy of Iran, a really very close ally of Iran.

Both Fadel Allah and Nasrallah, great figures in Lebanese Hezbollah were both directly involved in, mentoring the Houthis. And the Houthis are more, formally known as Ansar Allah, which means Partizans of God. And of course, this is a kind of a, you know, more or less, synonym for Hezbollah, which means party of God.

So first of all, this sort of, Iranian orientation is baked into the Houthis. Then a lot of the Houthis studied in Iran. And, of course, that’s one of the ways in which the Iranians have, increased their influence over a lot of the Shia proxy groups that they have, spread around the Middle East. And then, the more pressure that the Houthis came under, the more they relied on foreign support.

And when I say foreign support, I mean primarily Iranian support and to some degree, Lebanese Hezbollah support. And also a certain amount of support from people like, Iran, Iran’s allies in Syria and Iraq. And so during the Houthi wars with, President Saleh, there was a very clear sort of, orientation here. Saleh was sort of on the American side in the in the Great War on terror, or the global war on terror.

And, the Houthis weren’t placing themselves very much on the Iranian side, which was a much more sceptical, and anti-American position, even when they were, also opposed to people like ISIS. And then, of course, during the real sort of, if you like, the most intensive period of the Yemeni civil War, from 2015 onwards, the Houthis were more and more dependent on Iranian resupply.

Iranian, weaponry, Iranian technical support, Iranian training, and it of course, Iranian political support. And other support that the Iranians were able to provide. And the Lebanese Hezbollah, again, was involved in this. But Iran is always the linchpin of these things. Iran is the, is the leader of the so-called axis of resistance.

Now, I would say that there was a time when the Houthis were the most independent minded of all of the, Shia or Shia adjacent militias that supported Iran. There was a time where if the Iranians, really pushed their luck with the Houthis, if they sort of were, let’s say overbearing or discourteous in demanding things from the Houthis, the Houthis would push back in quite aggressive terms.

But of course, as time passed and the Houthis became more and more dependent on the Iranian lifeline, that independence then faded away. And, when the Houthis launched their campaign in the Red Sea against shipping in the Red Sea at the end of 2023, beginning of 2024, it was a Houthi initiative. They didn’t do it on Iranian instructions, but they were doing something that they considered would be good for them, good for their reputation.

It was a very sort of showy statement of solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinians, but it was also seen as something that was, providing, a capability for the Iranians to, twist the arm of the international community. This whole idea of asymmetric warfare, which the West finds so hard to deal with. And it was, the Iranians looked at it and they liked it and started to support it, including with, intelligence to help the, Houthis with their targeting that still not to say that the Houthis take instructions from Tehran.

I think that would be pushing the, the axis of resistance, level of command and control too far. But the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is, of course, Iranian, essentially, is the most influential, foreign body, in Yemen.

Daniel J. Leavy:

And if we circle back to seventh October 23rd, on that morning, Hamas invades southern Israel, killing close to, 1200 people up, taking 250 odd hostages.

The following day, Hezbollah begins shooting from the north. And then what is happening in Yemen? What’s the process for the Houthis to begin their attacks on international shipping in and around the Red Sea, and the subsequent drone and missile attacks on Israel itself?

Edmund Fitton-Brown:

Well, as you know, there was a short delay. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t a sort of an overnight reaction.

You had, reactions from Lebanese Hezbollah. More quickly. In terms of I mean, Hamas, I think was always disappointed, probably remains disappointed that Lebanese Hezbollah did not, enter the war against Israel more wholeheartedly and instantaneously. And indeed, it’s interesting to speculate either how things might have developed differently if, Lebanese Hezbollah had been less cautious than they were because, of course, Israel was able effectively to defeat Hamas, before they turned their attention to the instability on their northern border.

And then they were able to defeat Lebanese Hezbollah. It might have been harder for them if they’d been facing a simultaneous barrage from both sides. But, all that said, Lebanese Hezbollah were always, actively, attacking Israel and supporting, Hamas. Pretty much from the outset. The Houthis took a couple of months to react, but when they did react, they hit on this tactic, which was that they would, attack Israeli associated shipping in the Red Sea.

Now, as you will know, that was always a rather approximate, sort of calculation by the Houthis. They didn’t really manage to discriminate much between what kind of shipping they were attacking. And of course, the Israelis didn’t really suffer much by what, in terms of, their, difficulty in using the Red Sea waterway because although they have a lot on the Red Sea, they also have more important ports on the Mediterranean Sea.

And so, as it turned out, the Houthi disruption of shipping was much more generalized. It was a much more generalized disruption of international shipping in the Red Sea. And really, this is the thing to remember with the Houthis is that they have disrupted shipping in the Red Sea before. To some degree, this is them flexing their muscles and showing that they can blackmail the international community by using this, access that they have to the Red Sea.

And that predated the, the Hamas attack on, Israel. And therefore, cannot really be said to be directly related to Houthi solidarity with the Palestinians. Anyway, as time passed and the Biden administration, supported by, the British government, deployed, a naval task force to the Red Sea, the Houthis took a certain amount of casualties, not very many, but a lot of, destruction of their, military installations.

And although people criticized the initial U.S response as having been overcautious, and I think it was overcautious, nevertheless, it did have some effect, and it was a very strong statement of intent. And I think the Houthis then, understood that in order to be credible in saying that they were really, you know, the champions of the Palestinian cause against Israel.

They needed to do more about, attacking Israel directly. And so increasingly over time, they, started to, use drones and missiles to try to penetrate Israeli defenses and to land a hit on the Israeli homeland. Now, they’ve done that already in the past. They had experience of doing this against Saudi Arabia during the civil war, and they had experience of doing it against the United Arab Emirates.

And so, this was not that big a stretch to say, well, let’s see if we can hit Israel. Obviously, Israel is very well defended. And very few of these attacks have got through. But when they do, they’re obviously very disruptive. And the Israelis, when they take any kind of casualty or serious disruption, they then feel the need to retaliate.

And we’ve seen several rounds of, Israeli retaliation against the Houthis after, Houthi attacks have got through against Israel. So where we are now, of course, is that this sort of to back and forth, if you like, between the international community and the Houthis, between the Israelis and the Houthis, was suddenly overshadowed by the seven week US campaign against the Houthis earlier this year, which lasted from March into May.

And that was Donald Trump coming in and saying that the previous rules of engagement had been inadequate and that the United States was not to be trifled with, and that, the Houthis would be destroyed if they didn’t, stop doing what they were doing to, threaten international shipping in international waters. And also, he said explicitly that he would hold Iran responsible for everything that the Houthis did, so that the Iranians also, could expect to be, militarily attacked if they continued to, facilitate and support Houthi attacks on the international community.

And that was a different order of magnitude. That seven week campaign was intensive and brought to bear a lot of American firepower. It was expensive, too, and some people in the United States were concerned about the amount of, ammunition and military supplies that were being expended on the campaign. But it was quite effective. They also, definitely changed the rules of engagement.

They were not any longer at all concerned to avoid Houthi casualties, which had been a feature of the, 2024 campaign, where both Britain and America had occasionally, made a point of saying that they had been able to take out installations, but without, human casualties. The Trump campaign was much more aggressive. It was also deliberately aimed at decapitation.

One of the senior Houthis who was killed in that campaign was actually the head of personal security for Abdulmalik al-Houthi, who is the leader of the Houthi movement. And so, one can assume, I think, that that was a strike that, was designed, albeit unsuccessfully, to kill the leader of the Houthis, which is obviously a very big escalation from what the US was doing in 2024.

And then I think the most important thing that the US campaign achieved, which people have not spoken about very much, but it was the fact that it prevented the Houthis from massing troops to make progress in the civil war, because of course, the civil war continues in Yemen and the current Houthi, top priority target is to take the city of Marib and the city of Marib is strategically very important.

It’s a very large city, and it will also open the gateway for the Houthis to advance, eastwards, to the oil fields of Yemen and southwards to the Gulf of Aden or Indian Ocean coast of Yemen. And so it’s really important for the sake of, preventing the Houthis from winning the civil war. It’s really important that they don’t succeed in taking Marib.

And, of course, when the Americans adopted this very extensive and very aggressive air campaign, the Houthis realized that their troops that were massing to take Marib were extremely vulnerable. They could be absolutely shredded from the sky. And so they had to abandon the siege of Marib and abandon the engineering works that they were undertaking, in support of that siege.

And so that was quite an important, impact that the Americans had. But then they stopped and this was this very interesting announcement that we had from the Omani foreign minister. The Omanis mediated, between the American and the Houthis and then announced in early May that, a truce was now in place and that the Americans and the Houthis would no longer be attacking each other.

Now, the Omani foreign minister went further than that and said that that meant that shipping in the Red Sea was now safe. And again. And I don’t think the media made enough of this at the time. But that’s obviously not true, because, the threat to shipping in the Red Sea predated the involvement of the Americans. And the Houthis have explicitly said that they will continue to attack any ship that they regard, that they regard as in any way Israeli associated in the Red Sea.

 And the effect of that continuing uncertainty is that neither shipping companies nor insurance companies will entertain resuming full use of the Red Sea until there is a far more stable ceasefire.

Daniel J. Leavy:

So, given that America has made its decision to cease attacking the Houthis, where does that leave Israel, given that the attacks on Israel itself, both with missiles and drones, have escalated since, and Israel has responded with more of its own counter strikes against the Houthis and Yemen?

Edmund Fitton-Brown:

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And, to some degree, we will be speculating here. I think, of course, it’s important to say that originally the Israeli attacks on the Houthis last year were entirely independent of the Americans. They you know, it was the Israelis, responding to Houthi attacks for their own reasons and on their own initiative and their own authority.

And, then in March, when the Americans launched this very intense campaign against the Houthis, the Israelis backed off. They stood away from it. You know, they could have continued to be involved or to try to coordinate and involvement with the Americans. But it was quite clear that the Americans had stepped in and they were going to take this issue on, and therefore the Israelis didn’t need to.

And as you say, this rather sudden, slightly unexpected ceasefire that the Omanis brokered has left the Israelis in a, you know, slightly exposed position. It’s similar to the position they were in last year. If the Houthis attack them, they will attack back. They’re seeking to inflict sufficient pain on the Houthis to deter the who sees from continuing to attack Israel.

But I can see no great likelihood that that will be enough to stop the Houthis, given that the Houthis have staked their prestige, their whole international reputation on continuing this campaign for as long as the Israelis are still at war with Hamas. So I think we’re in a way, we’re back to the position that we were in in 2024.

But there are other implications that we need to factor in here. And the most important one is to what extent, is Iran conjoined with the Houthis as a belligerent in this, in this conflict? Because whilst the Americans were waging their campaign against the Who says they were not attacking Iran, even though Donald Trump had explicitly said that he would hold Iran responsible for whatever the whatever the Houthis did, the Americans did not attack the Iranians, and the Iranians did not get involved on the side of the Houthis, particularly the Iranians, were you know, they’ve they’re worried about Donald Trump.

They’re worried about the possibility that he will at some point launch an attack on Iran. And, so they’re being very cautious. So as not to provoke that. But of course, the Israelis will not feel any such constraint. And indeed, they have already, gone to the brink of war with Iran, on two occasions last year and the most recent Israeli hostilities against Iran limited, though they were, were extremely effective and have left the Iranians in a very much weakened state.

And the Iranians, of course, can no longer rely on either Lebanese Hezbollah or, the former Assad regime in Syria to, support them against Israel. So the Israelis are conscious that they have a moment of opportunity where they could do what Donald Trump threatened to do. They could hold Iran responsible for what those who these are doing, and they could escalate their response, not just against the Houthis and Yemeni targets, but also against Iran.

And, this is a matter of great concern to the Gulf states, because the Gulf states are worried about escalation. They don’t want to see generalized escalation occur because that escalation could affect their interests. And the Iranians have often threatened in the past that they would, include the Gulf states, in, in an escalation, if they considered the Gulf states to be in any way complicit, sit in aggression against Iran.

And so that, I think, is the great uncertainty that exists, that the Houthis will do something that will not just invite an Israeli attack, resumed Israeli attacks on, Yemeni targets, on Houthi targets. But that at some point the Israelis will finish the job that they started last year and make a serious attack on mainland Iran.

And that could be an attack on the Iranian nuclear program, or it could be an attack on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And one of the most interesting questions is the extent to which the Americans are restraining the Israelis from doing that, or whether they are doing so. And of course, if they are doing so, then, well, what are the Israelis saying in return of the Israelis then saying to the Americans, well, that’s fine for you to say that, but the Houthis are attacking us and you’re not doing anything about it.

So, I don’t think that this ceasefire or truce is stable, and I’m expecting that we will see some form of escalation again this year.

Daniel J. Leavy:

And why do you think these ratings have been so restrained from their first attack on Yemen in July last year, through to their recent, attacks in the past few weeks?

Edmund Fitton-Brown:

I think it’s partly and there are a number of things in play with Israel. First of all, you know, if ever there was an example of the crocodile nearest the canoe, Israel is the perfect example of that canoe, isn’t it? It has a lot of crocodiles to worry about. And, really right up until the first half of last year, the Houthi crocodile was the least of their concerns.

And so that has a number of implications. It has implications in terms of intelligence gathering, and it has implications in terms of military planning. And the Israelis simply haven’t gathered the intelligence or done the military planning that would have enabled them to, land really painful blows on the Houthis a year ago from now. And, since then, of course, they’ve had a year in which to up their game, and they’re very good at that sort of thing, as you know.

I mean, the if you think about the contrast between the sort of the ghastly intelligence failure that was the 7th of October 2023 and then the spectacular defeat of Hezbollah of Lebanese Hezbollah one year later. You can see that the Israeli, intelligence and defense establishment is, incredibly agile and responsive and very, very good once it focuses on a challenge.

So I think we can assume that the Israelis are in a better position now than they were a year ago. And, certainly if I were Abdulmalik al-Houthi or any other senior who’s senior Houthi leader, I would be concerned about the, likelihood of that Israeli decapitation policy against the group. Also, you’ll have seen that they have put some airport completely out of action now, destroyed the runways and, also destroyed the last remaining Yemeni, airplane.

They’re more than willing to, destroy, Houthi infrastructure, even though doing so is not something that the UK would ever have been willing to do. Or the Biden administration, because of the potential impact on the Yemeni economy and on trade and on humanitarian delivery. So I think that the Israelis are, probably ready to up their game, but they will also recognize that the Houthis are.

And I’m going to use that word again, that I used earlier on. The Houthis are resilient. They can take a lot of pain. And so deterring a group like that from continuing to, attack you is not easy. And so the Israelis will have to give strategic thought to what would actually make for a more stable, ceasefire with the Houthis.

And obviously, one potential option is to, put Iran at so much threat that Iran would say to the Houthis, you have to stop this because you are exposing us to existential risk.

And so I think the Israelis will have that in mind, and they’ll be having that conversation with the Americans all the time. And as I said, I guess the I’ll just reiterate that point and then I’ll stop.

The Israeli US relationship is unbelievably close, both at the diplomatic level, at the, lobbying level, at the party to party level, and, at the military and intelligence levels. And so it would be it’s important to remember that that continues. And the Israelis have to recognize that the Americans have other equities and they have equities with Saudi Arabia, they have equities with Oman, they have equities with Qatar and equities with the United Arab Emirates.

And so the Israelis have to be respectful of those equities. And of course, if they want the Abraham Accords to succeed and if they want to, eventually include Saudi Arabia in the Abraham Accords, they also need to be respectful of those, American equities and of Saudi equities and others. And that will mean that the Israelis can’t get everything that they want, but they will nevertheless, as long as the Houthis keep attacking them, they will feel that they have to respond.

Daniel J. Leavy:

Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed that. This interview, and this edition, I think that’s probably a good point to wrap up. But before we do, do you have anything else to add?

Edmund Fitton-Brown:

No, I think we’ve covered that really well. I mean, I, I guess I would, I would say that, you know, I live in the United States and, I spend a certain amount of my time giving advice to, American policymakers and I think one of the things that the Americans are going to need to figure out quite quickly is what is the bottom line of their Iranian policy, because the Americans implemented a housing policy at a time when their Iran policy was still in flux.

And in a way that that that is a fundamentally flawed approach, because you can’t really you run the risk of the tail wagging the dog if you like, because, how you deal with Iran is the fundamental issue here. Are you looking for some kind of diplomatic agreement? Are you looking for something like the old, JCPOA understanding with the Iranians, but maybe, a sort of a Trump version of that and enhanced version of it, where you effectively delay the Iranian nuclear program and, satisfy yourself with that and you avoid military conflict, or are you making demands of the Iranians that they will refuse to meet and are you willing to back those demands then, with military force? And the reason I stake out those positions so starkly is that your attitude to the who sees needs then to be harmonized with that fundamental Iran policy and the six week military campaign against the Houthis. As I say, it delivered some results. It certainly showed the Houthis that there was a new level of pain they could be exposed to, that neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel was capable of inflicting on them.

But in a way, that sort of very aggressive approach to the Houthis and the threat to hold the Iranians responsible for whatever the Houthis did, that needs to have happened after the United States was absolutely clear on what its bottom line was with Iran, and that we are still waiting to find out.

Daniel J. Leavy:

Edmund, thank you so much.

Edmund Fitton-Brown:

Most welcome.