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On October 7, Hamas launched the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust, marking a profound shift not only for Israel but for the entire Middle East. At the time, Iran and its proxies viewed the attack as a strategic opportunity to increase pressure on Israel and other American allies.

How have things changed since then? How has the October 7 attack affected United States–Israel relations? And what strategies should the US adopt to counter Iran?

Join Zineb Riboua and Michael Doran of Hudson’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East for a discussion on these questions.

Event Transcript

This transcription is automatically generated and edited lightly for accuracy. Please excuse any errors.

Zineb Riboua:

Hello, thank you for joining us today. I’m Zineb Riboua, a research fellow and program manager of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the »ªÌå»á. And we meet today, Michael Duran, senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at Hudson, but also co-host of the Israel Updates Podcast. Thank you for joining us today. We would like to, me and also the audience, would like to have more of your insights about what is going on right now in the Middle East, how Israel changed, what it means for US-Israel relations. And so since October 7th, Hamas launched the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust, it seems that it completely changed Israelis. And how would you define that and portray that?

Michael Doran:

Well, thank you for having me, and thanks to everybody for joining. The thing that really, as we’re approaching the one-year anniversary here of the October 7th attack, the thing that I’m most struck by is the difficulty of predicting what’s going to happen in a war. Some German from World War I said, “War is rolling the iron dice.� And the situation just changes from week to week, month to month. And so when the attack first happened, the thing I think that struck all of us was how vulnerable Israel was. We really thought of Israel as having one of the five most powerful militaries in the world. We thought of Hamas as the weakest link in what Iran calls its resistance axis against the West and against Israel. But the October 7th attack revealed that Israel was completely unprepared for that war, the war with Hamas.

And as we watched Israel move into Gaza and have difficulty, really a lot of difficulty in taking total control of it, suppressing the fire from Hamas and so on, I think our sense of Israel’s power diminished significantly. At least, it certainly did for me. But then in the last couple of months since April, there’s been a dramatic reversal, and we see that while the IDF was totally unprepared for the war with Hamas, it was very well-prepared for the war with Hezbollah, and for good reason, for good strategic reason. Hezbollah is really the most potent enemy that Israel has from within Iran’s resistance axis, even more potent than Iran itself because of the numbers of rockets, drones, ballistic missiles, missiles, and because of the proximity of Lebanon to Israel, and also the experience that the Hezbollah fighters have had in the Syrian civil war.

And so in the last couple of months, with all of these targeted assassinations that Israel has conducted with the killing of Nasrallah, with the entry into Lebanon, we really see that it has turned the tables not just on Hezbollah, but on Iran more broadly. And that’s what really strikes me now, is that how Iran is rather naked before Israeli power in a way that I would not have predicted at all just a couple of months ago. So as we’re approaching the anniversary, I’m much more optimistic about Israel’s prospects than I was, say in November or December of last year.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah. And so just to say on this vision of Israel as a real regional power, and that proved itself, you co-authored a piece with Can Kasapoğlu about Israel adopting multiple strategies, the Mad Max one and the Star Wars one, and we saw that with the pagers and the sabotage operation against Hezbollah. So do you think that also Israel’s military strategy is also shifting?

Michael Doran:

I think their strategy that they’re deploying now against Hezbollah, and presumably, Iran, is the Star Wars strategy. So Star Wars and Mad Max, what Can Kasapoğlu and I said is that the Israeli military was built on the assumption that wars of the kind that it’s having in Gaza, or the kind that the Ukrainians are having with the Russians in Ukraine were really a thing of the past. That is wars with large armor, large armor formations with a very high tempo that use up a lot of ammunition quickly that are basically struggles for territory. These kinds of wars are really a thing of the past. And war, these days, is really against non-state actors and can be won by the combination of air power, special forces, and high-tech-enabled intelligence.

And that was the doctrine. That’s not just the doctrine of the Israeli military. I think the Israeli military went for it whole hog, but that was the doctrine of all Western armies, and that’s why they were unprepared for Gaza. But those doctrines, those capabilities, they’re proving highly effective against Hezbollah up until this point. We have to wait and see if this. . . They’ve gone into Lebanon. Hezbollah has always said to the Israelis, “We’re ready for the ground war. You’re not going to be able to take over Southern Lebanon.� We have to wait and see if there was any truth to that. I happen to believe Hezbollah on that because of the experience of the Israelis in the 2006 war and because of what we saw in Gaza, I started to believe that actually, there was probably a lot of truth to that. And Israel was going to have enormous amount of difficulty taking the territory that it needed to take in Southern Lebanon in order to ensure security for its northern border.

But I think what we’ve seen in the last couple of months against Hezbollah for sure, is something I never predicted, never saw coming. And that’s that Israel could basically decapitate the organization, and it has really done that. If you look at the org chart of Hezbollah, they’re gone. All those guys are gone. Hassan, gone. The only guy left is Naim Qassem, he’s the number two, but he’s a nobody. He’s a perpetual spokesman. He’s the perpetual number two, the poor guy. . . Safieddine who is now the heir apparent to Nasrallah, if the Israelis get him poor Naim Qassem, he’s going to worry that maybe they will actually make him number one and then he’ll be gone in a couple of weeks. So that, I never, ever saw coming. And so the question now, the open question is, can Hezbollah function as a really coherent and significant fighting force without the upper echelon?

I think we’re already seeing that the Israelis have neutralized one capability that I expected to be very formidable from Hezbollah, and that is the use of combined strike packages. That’s drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles launched together simultaneously to overwhelm the sensors of the Israelis. We haven’t seen it. We haven’t seen anything like that coming from. . . We saw the ballistic missile attack coming from Iran the other day, which was very significant. I’m sure we’ll talk about that. Very significant, and it did overwhelm Israeli defenses to a certain extent. I thought that that was what we were going to see from Lebanon with reaction time for Israel would be much shorter. I thought we were going to see that in an incredibly high tempo, and we haven’t seen it at all. So the Israelis took out the top leadership of Hezbollah, and they have neutralized that capability. So they have really set that organization back significantly. I’m not in a position to judge just how badly damaged it is, but it is clearly unbelievably badly damaged.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah. So Israel winning on multiple fronts here, even though they are overwhelmed by Iran’s proxies, Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and others. The decapitation strategy proved to be very absolutely masterful because even had Haniyeh in Tehran.

Michael Doran:

Right.

Zineb Riboua:

But, so the question here is why is it making the Biden administration so uncomfortable? You would think it would be such a great thing. Israel is doing something that-

Michael Doran:

Oh, they’re so uncomfortable. I wish I had thought of this before we sat down. There was a, yesterday, a Washington Post article, which I actually, I violated one of my rules on Twitter, and I highly recommended a Washington Post article to my followers on Twitter because it is such a perfect window onto the mindset of the Biden administration. The article was a kind of history of the war, and an explanation that it has proved uncontrollable for Biden to control the war. Why? Because Benjamin Netanyahu is a very bad man. Did you know that? He’s a very bad man and he will not listen to the dictates of the Biden administration. And the article is a great. . . It’s not great journalism in that it just takes dictation basically from the senior officials in the Biden administration and depicts their view of reality as reality, but it does us a great service in that it does that. As takers of dictation, they’ve done a really good job. And you get a little window onto how the senior Biden officials actually think about the world.

They have a uniform worldview. And that uniform worldview has a couple of principles to it. One is the way to stabilize the Middle East is by reaching some kind of diplomatic accommodation with Tehran. They have never ever ever given this up. And Zineb, you know me well, so you know that God put me on this earth to do one thing and one thing only. And that is to tell centrist Democrats that the Biden administration, the Obama administration, the whole Obama faction of the Democratic Party, which is now really the leadership of the Democratic Party, they are very proud of this idea. They don’t celebrate the pride they have in it because they know that people like you and me, and at least half of America think it’s crazy, but they are very proud of the idea that we can come to some kind of strategic accommodation with Iran. That’s why they keep putting red lines on the Israelis of, do not touch a hair on the chinny chin chin of any Iranian. Iran can attack anyone at once. Israel cannot attack Iran. That is the basic Biden doctrine, the Obama doctrine. They defined this conflict, from day one, as a Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It’s not. It’s objectively not. It is at least an Iranian-Israeli conflict. I actually believe it’s an Iranian-American conflict. But the Biden administration refuses to see that.

And so what they have done with this, by restricting the Israelis in this way, they have actually enhanced the advantages that Iran has in the conflict. And its advantages are these disruptive military capabilities that we’re talking about, the drones, ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. That is the big muscle that Iran has. It has enormous vulnerabilities. It has no air force to speak of. It’s Air Force is in 1960s Air Force. It’s land forces. Its tanks are 1970s tanks, maybe a few 1980 Soviet tanks. They can’t stand up to any kind of serious 21st century enemy. So it’s enormously vulnerable. It has a narrow base of support domestically in Iran. But it has this dome, this shield of immunity that the Biden policy has put over Iran proper. And the Biden administration has tried to restrict Israel at every step of the way because it’s negotiating over the heads of the Israelis with Tehran saying, “Okay. If you’ll moderate your proxies, we’ll hold back the Israelis and we’ll get a negotiated settlement. We’ll get a ceasefire.�

And so what has happened is that the Israelis, as a result of this, is that Israeli deterrence has been eroded and diminished by its great supporter, the United States, but the Biden administration can’t think itself out. It’s in a maze of all of these principles that it has. We can’t have policies that will strengthen the right wing in Israel. We can’t allow the Israelis to expand the conflict in Lebanon because that won’t let us get a ceasefire in Gaza and so on. And they’re in this maze. They can’t get out. They can’t think themselves out of it. They don’t realize that they have undermined the deterrence of their ally, and they don’t realize that the real problem in the Middle East is Iran and Iranian power. And the solution, the way to stabilize the Middle East, is to deter Iran.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah. And you can see that when they’ve promoted the Lebanon-Israel Maritime Agreement. They took to Houthis out of the terrorist list. There were all these concessions that were made so that they get Iran into the table for negotiations, especially for the nuclear deal. And I’d like to have your insights on this where now it seems that Israel is on an offensive mode when it comes to Iran’s proxies, but with the attack in April and the attack, the recent one, October 1st from Iran, it seems that Israel is still on a defensive mode when it comes to getting all the attacks from Tehran of ballistic missiles. And the Biden administration basically said recently that, “No, you cannot go and strike and attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.� How do you think Israel is going to navigate this?

Michael Doran:

Yeah, the Biden administration, like I was saying, is putting all these restrictions on Israel. And back in April, of course, as you mentioned, the Israelis saw the Iranians putting the missiles on their launchers and they wanted to preempt and the Biden administration said no. And then after Iran hit Israel, they said, “Take the win. Don’t counterattack.� I mean, in legal terms, the Biden administration’s policy, if we were to turn this into legalese, it’s as if they’re saying to the Israelis, “There’s no such thing as attempted murder. There’s no such thing as assault with a deadly weapon. The only time you’re allowed. . .� They have this mantra they say over and over, which is that Israel has a right to defend itself, but the only time they’re allowed to attack is if they’ve actually been mortally wounded. So it’s like in legal terms, they’re saying, “If you get murdered, then you can come to me and we’ll talk about doing something about the guy who’s trying to murder you, but attempted murder, that doesn’t count as a reason to do anything. Assault with a deadly weapon, that doesn’t count as anything that you can do.�

So the Israelis recognized as of April, 13-14, which is when that first barrage, they understood that. . . They really understood. . . That was a low point for them in the war, that their deterrence against Iran had been significantly eroded. At that time, it was the largest ballistic missile attack that one country had ever launched against another. So the Americans were saying, “This is something that is acceptable, to attack Israel like this.� The Israelis want to send this message to the entire world that, “No, this is not acceptable.� So what they have to do is they have to establish deterrence. They have to establish escalation dominance, and that’s what they’ve been doing over the last month. So when they’re looking now about how to respond to Iran, that’s the number one question they have in their mind is, “How do we establish escalation dominance?�

The capabilities that the Iranians showcased on October 1 were significant. They penetrated the Israeli defenses. They hit the Nevatim Airbase some 20 or 30 times. They didn’t do any significant damage, but they did hit it. And that Nevatim Airbase is where the F-35s are. So this is a significant capability they showed. If they were to send a hundred or 200 ballistic missiles at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor or at some significant critical national infrastructure, they could probably overwhelm the system and do real damage. They could, of course, kill lots of civilians with. . . These are ballistic missiles that carry very large warheads. There are also ballistic missiles that could carry nuclear warheads and Iran, if it went hell for leather, could develop a nuclear weapon, say 10 nuclear devices in a year. I think this is where the experts are now. . . Olli Heinonen, former deputy head of the IAEA, recently said they could have 10 weapons. . . 10 devices in a year’s time.

If they sent a barrage like this with a hundred, 200 ballistic missiles and five of them had nuclear-tipped warheads, nuclear-tipped missiles, the Israelis would not be able to identify which are nuclear, which are non-nuclear. They have exactly the same and appearance and trajectory and so on. And so Iran could deal a very devastating blow to Israel. Israel cannot allow this. It cannot allow this. So it has to take something from Iran that Iran holds dear now to reestablish deterrence, escalation dominance. The problem they have is the Americans are restricting. . . As you say, President Biden is saying, “Has to be proportional, don’t hit nuclear sites.� And they’re also saying, I think, “Don’t hit critical national infrastructure, especially the oil exporting capabilities or the refining capabilities.� Where does that leave the Israelis? They’ve got basically four choices. One is military sites, the other is nuclear sites.

The third is critical national infrastructure, the oil refining and export capabilities. And finally, the least likely, but the most interesting to speculate about is decapitation. I wouldn’t have thought about this. . . I wouldn’t have even put that on the list just a month or two ago. But after seeing what they’ve done to Hezbollah, you wonder maybe they’re as prepared for this conflict as they were for the Hezbollah conflict. Maybe they have some rabbits to pull out of their hat. I don’t know. But with the Americans barreling down on them the way they are and trying to restrict them, I suspect what we’re going to see is they’re going to go for military sites so as to not justify an Israeli counterattack against civilian targets or nuclear facilities in Israel. They’ll probably go for military targets, but they want something that’s going to be high impact in the sense that it’s going to really put the fear of God in the Iranians, the Iranian leadership, that they could actually lose their control of the country. High impact, but also high visibility because they want to embarrass the regime publicly, I think.

I don’t know exactly how they’ll negotiate that, but the other thing is that they have to be. . . The Israelis also have to show the Iranians and the world that they will not be restricted by America. So they have to thread a line between being a good ally to the United States and not completely flouting its will because they need the America for many things, but on the other hand, they have to show the Iran. . . The Iranian strategy is built on the idea that the United States will restrain Israel and hold Israel so that Iran can punch it at will. That’s totally intolerable, not just to Netanyahu, but to the whole Israeli leadership. So what they have to do is they have to be mindful of the American red lines, but actually step over them. Charlie Murphy, Eddie Murphy’s brother said Rick James was a habitual line stepper. The Israelis, when it comes to American restrictions, they have to be habitual line steppers.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah. And so just talking still about the restrictions and taking a step back on what it means for the region, now with the one-year anniversary, you can see the consequences and the cost for Israel. The restrictions were so dramatic that, for example, instead of normalizing relations with Sudan, it’s Iran that normalized relations with Sudan. The Biden administration was setting all these, as you said, the restrictions, the sanctions, and so on, so that Israel normalizes with Saudi Arabia, but it did not happen because of the framing as well. And so how do you see things from a US ally standpoint? How do you think they are reacting now that Israel is defying the United States?

Michael Doran:

In a second, I’m going to turn that question on you, but let me say that this question takes us again into the labyrinth of misconceptions that really defines the Biden understanding of the Middle East. If you go to that Washington Post article, which I highly recommend once again, and you read it, you see. . . They express in there their great frustration because they say, “We were on the verge of helping normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel when this war broke out. And instead, now we have this conflict with Iran.� And they’re blaming Netanyahu for this, which is. . . Really I won’t go into all of the convoluted thinking that gets them to say that this is Netanyahu’s fault for being attacked by Iran on seven fronts. But the strange thing is that they don’t recognize the huge contradiction at the heart of their strategy on October 6th, 2023.

There was this famous Foreign Affairs article that Jake Sullivan wrote saying that the Middle East had never been more. . . In the last few decades, it had never been calmer than it was at that time. And then of course, as that article was reaching the mailboxes of Foreign Affairs� subscribers, Hamas blew out of Gaza and started raping and murdering Israelis. So it was embarrassing to Sullivan, and he quickly edited the online version. Foreign Affairs let him. They shouldn’t have. But the hard copy has these ridiculous statements about how calm and wonderful the Middle East is. They believe that. They believe that. They believe that because they believe that their engagement of Iran had stabilized the region. They don’t think that their engagement of Iran destabilized the region. They believe that Hamas acted independent of Iran and that Hamas is a kind of rogue actor within the Iranian resistance axis.

And if they can just get the ceasefire in Gaza, then they can go back to the business of working with Iran to stabilize the region. I have to repeat this. God put me on this Earth, Zineb, in order to explain to people that this is what they really truly think. And if you read that Washington Post article clearly with that assumption in mind, you can see they really truly believe this. So they didn’t understand that as they were moving toward normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, that they were provoking Iran. They don’t understand that this was a threat to Iran. If the United States puts together an axis of Gulf Arab states and Israel under its umbrella, that’s a tremendous threat to Iran. Iran wants to dominate the entire Middle East, but first and foremost, it wants to dominate the Persian Gulf. And so if there’s a diplomatic initiative that could possibly lead to a military alliance or alignment between Saudi Arabia and Israel, that’s a threat to Iran.

And Iran is going to do everything it can to blow that up. They don’t understand that. I know you look at me and you think, “No, Mike, they run the most powerful country in the Earth. They are sitting atop the world’s greatest information gathering apparatus, the American intelligence system. Of course, they understand that, Mike.� No, they don’t. They don’t. Because the thing in life, Zineb, and I’ll give you life advice because I’m 62, and you’re not, right? The thing in life that is the least factual that cannot be refuted is intentions. You cannot read intentions with a satellite camera. I can put my hand in the cookie jar and you say, “I’m trying to grab the cookie,� and I say, “Oh no. I thought that’s where my car keys were.� So it’s very important for foreign policy analysis to understand the intentions of the adversary.

They have decided, the Obama-Biden team, that Iran does not have an intention to take over the Middle East. It does not have an intention to destroy the United States, to dominate the Persian Gulf. They have decided that the intention of the Iranians. . . Yes, they have fearsome rhetoric about all that stuff, but capabilities are intentions and their capabilities are limited, and they are very weak domestically. So really all they are is the status quo power, trying to hold onto power. And therefore, we can put together this system between the Saudis and the Israelis, and it will not cause any problem with Iran. That’s how they see the world. It’s a complete misreading of the Middle East. It’s a complete misreading of the unbelievable ambitions of the Iranians. The ambitions of the Iranians are all out of whack with their actual capabilities. It’s the job of the United States to do two things, to teach the Iranians that their ambitions and their capabilities are out of whack.

And you do that through acts of deterrent, military actions that teach them about their vulnerabilities and about our intention to exploit their vulnerabilities. That’s number one. The second thing we need to teach them is geography. And there’s this place called Iran, and there’s this place called not Iran. So we teach them Tabriz, Iran, Southern Lebanon, not Iran. And we tell them anywhere that is not Iran, they should get their weapons out of. Yemen, not Iran. Isfahan, Iran. That’s the job of the United States, and it’s very easy to do that. When you’re a superpower against a country like Iran, which has these enormous vulnerabilities, it’s very easy to teach them these lessons. Instead, we let them teach us lessons all the time about our supposed weakness, and we imbibe that. We tell ourselves, “Oh, we don’t have the capability to do that kind of thing anymore because it will lead to all these kinds of problems for us. No, it’s actually very easy for us to do that.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah. You said you had a question for me.

Michael Doran:

Oh, yes, I do. Yes. Yeah. So you said, how is this being received in the Middle East, so you understand the sensibilities of Arabs and Muslims much better than I do. So Arabs, Muslims, and Berbers.

Zineb Riboua:

Yes.

Michael Doran:

So why don’t you tell me how you would. . .

Zineb Riboua:

I think it’s clear that Iran won politically in a sense that it dominates now the Palestinian question. I think with the Abraham Accords and normalization with Israel, there was this huge opportunity to actually reshape the narrative around the Palestinian question in the sense that Israel is there to stay, it has a lot in common not just with Arab countries, but it has similar interests when it comes to countering Iran. I mean, the proxies are not just in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. They’re also trying to go to Kenya. They’re trying to help Algeria with the Polisario Front against Morocco. They’re trying to infiltrate Libya since there is a civil war.

Michael Doran:

Let’s not forget Armenia.

Zineb Riboua:

That’s true. So the proxies are trying to operate on in several domains and also fields. And so there was this opportunity to tackle the proxies and to talk about this so that Iran no longer has the monopoly over the question. But now it seems that the Biden administration took a different route, that it is the central issue, and that it’s only by solving this issue that stability will come to the region, which is not true. You need to prepare the environment for having Israeli opinions to be received and vice versa. And so I think it’s clear for me-

Michael Doran:

To be received by the?

Zineb Riboua:

By the Arab world, and so on. That’s the only way. You have to prepare the environment for it. But also-

Michael Doran:

Sorry, if I could interrupt you.

Zineb Riboua:

Yes.

Michael Doran:

But when you say prepare the environment, the United States should prepare the environment?

Zineb Riboua:

Yes.

Michael Doran:

By putting the proper strategic frame around this so that the world sees that we are reading this as the US and Israel against Iran and its allies, is that. . .

Zineb Riboua:

Yes, that’s what I think. The Abraham Accords were done through US leadership. So there’s I think a continuity that should have. . .

Michael Doran:

There’s another mistake that the Biden administration made because we say I give them a little bit of credit, or I seem to have given them a little bit of credit a minute ago when I said they were going for Saudi-Israeli normalization. But it’s not what they were actually doing. When the Trump administration was going for Saudi-Israeli normalization, they got the Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain and Israel, which they saw as the kind of diplomatic and economic superstructure that will facilitate the infrastructure of a military alliance.

The Obama-Biden team, it’s not in the business of deterring Iran. So the military dimension of that relationship of that conception is completely missing in the Biden framework. And so what they were doing with the normalization of Saudi Arabia pushing it, is they were using that to bring back the Palestine question.

Zineb Riboua:

Yes.

Michael Doran:

Put the Palestinians again at the center of the story. Because their argument to the Israelis was, we want to have you normalize with Saudi Arabia, but in order to do that, we have to have you make concessions to the Palestinians to build a two-state solution. And they were using that to pressure the Netanyahu government with the intention actually of cracking up the Netanyahu government. They want to crack it up. They want to bring back Bennett-Lapid, these guys that they were working with before on things like the maritime deal. Netanyahu is much more difficult for them in that regard.

So it was really the Saudi, the claim that they’re making now that we were working towards Saudi-Israeli normalization, but you didn’t grab this opportunity. It’s a little bit of gaslighting. It was really for them always about putting the Palestine question really back at the center of everything. Which as you say, has the effect of validating the Iranian propaganda.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah, exactly. And you can see how there were so many normalization agreements that were possible with Mauritania, with Chad, with Sudan. There were talks about other countries. But yes, I mean, once you dismantle the pillars of the Abraham Accords, which were sanctions against Iran, maximum pressure, the nuclear file, all these things were dismantled-

Michael Doran:

The nuclear file at the top of the agenda, of holding Iran accountable for its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah. So yeah, once they dismantled that, of course countries will see Iran rising. They had this immense partnership when it comes to drones. So what is the incentive then?

Michael Doran:

So is your feeling then that this shift that took place between April one and prior to October one, October one put a question mark over it, but it seemed like Israel. . . I think objectively Israel really shifted the balance against Iran as of October one. Now we’ll have to wait and see what happens in the next stage. How is that being received in the Middle East and North Africa?

Zineb Riboua:

So it’s funny, I was watching something on Al Arabiya, and now even the proxies are apparently afraid, this is what is said. That Iran is losing its appeal as the sponsor of all this jihadi groups. They’re now left alone.

Michael Doran:

Because they realize they’re alone on the. . . They realize that Iran was using them to protect Iran, not to help them.

Zineb Riboua:

Exactly. Yes. So I think it is damaging really their reputation, especially that now Al-Shabaab is looking into a greater partnership with Houthis because apparently they want to open a front in the Indian Ocean. So now I guess even Al-Shabaab are questioning-

Michael Doran:

Is this the winning team that I want to be on?

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah, exactly. So I think this is pretty much pretty important as an outcome of it.

Michael Doran:

It’s amazing. It really is amazing when you talk to Middle Easterners they can’t understand the stupidity of a fully modern and sophisticated American mind. The best educated, the brightest people in America have really silly ideas about the world, and they can’t understand that. So they start going to conspiracy theories and they think. . . But when you look at the tailwind that the Biden administration’s policy has given to Iran over the last four years, it’s really amazing. So all over the region, these guys looked like they were unstoppable. And now they come up against a real military power, Israel, which has decided that, okay, the United States is not going to do this. It’s not going define as its job to weaken the resistance axis. So we have to do it ourselves. That’s basically what’s happened. And they’re doing it. And lo and behold, they show the incredible vulnerabilities that Iran has.

I don’t want to minimize it because Iran has very serious capabilities. These rockets, drones, ballistic missiles, all of this. They’re a very serious weapon. They demonstrated on October 1st that it’s serious. But like I say, they have all of these enormous vulnerabilities. They made a decision after the Iraq War, the Iran-Iraq War I’m talking about in the 1980s, they made a decision not to try to build up their regular military but to use these proxies to play on the fissures and the weaknesses of their neighbors and destabilize all of their neighbors to create this kind of ring of instability all around Iran to protect Iran proper.

Like I said, the United States should have been teaching the world, and especially the leaders in Tehran, that that strategy will not work. We will not let that work, and they have to work with us to stabilize the region if they want to keep their position. But instead, under the Obama and Biden doctrines we treated them as if they’re a great power. As if they’re the equal of, say, the Soviet Union during the Cold War. That if we take offensive actions against them, the results for us could be catastrophic, which is not true. It’s simply not true. They don’t even have the power of a significant middle power in international relations, like Turkey. Turkey is a very serious power with serious capabilities. It’s capable of projecting power beyond its borders. It’s capable of destabilizing an area all around it.

The Iranian regime, it’s like a mafia. It has a mafia strategy. All it can do is say, well, nice little national project you’ve got going there Zineb, it would be a shame if something would happen to it. It’s a big protection racket. They can threaten to destroy things. They can’t build anything. They don’t have any capabilities to build. But we should be showing that to the world. Instead, we’re treating them like they are equals in international relations. It’s absolutely superpower malpractice.

Zineb Riboua:

And I want to ask you something about, it’s true Iran when it comes to the Middle East, number one priority. But it seems that the Biden administration kept on losing time in terms of Iran has now a massive deal producing drones with Russia. And Iran now, I think there was some report about IRGC officers and so on being found in Ukraine, and it seems that it’s going to be a European problem. It’s going to be one-

Michael Doran:

It is European problem already.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah, it’s going to be one.

Michael Doran:

Those weapons that the Iranians fired against the Israelis, they can reach Ukraine.

Zineb Riboua:

Yes. So do you think that also for NATO, but it’s an outcome of US policy then that Iran is not being countered properly?

Michael Doran:

Absolutely. No. 100 percent. Because the way the administration should see the world, they should see Russia, China, Iran, North Korea as an alignment against the United States. Don’t get lost in the question of how much are they actually coordinating together. They’re clearly coordinating enough that we should be concerned and we should punish them for the coordination. China is so big and powerful, it’s hard to punish China. Russia also, hard to punish it. But we are punishing it through support for Ukraine. The weak link in all of this is Tehran.

And so when Tehran plays a significant role in the European balance of power, which it is by supplying drones to Russia, it should pay a very big price for that. That should be a red line for us. When Iran transfers ballistic missiles to an organization like Hezbollah, it should pay a price for that. Instead, every time they have crossed a line when their proxies like the Houthis attack American ships, which they have been doing in the Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean, they should pay a price for that. The administration, like I said, has put a shield of immunity over them. They have not paid a price for anything. They’re talking now about economic sanctions against Iran. They are not enforcing the existing sanctions that Iranian sales to China are through the roof. So the lax enforcement of the existing sanctions is fueling the machine that is allowing Iran to play a role in Europe to disrupt global commercial shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. It can all very easily be reversed just by a stroke of the pen by Joe Biden.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah. So since it’s one year anniversary of October 7th, there is something that personally marked me, which was the rise of anti-Semitism in the West and in the United States. I’ve lived most of my life in a Muslim country. I’ve heard things I’ve never heard before from very well-educated people. So how do you explain this massive outburst?

Michael Doran:

This is a consequence of 20 or 30 years of progressive education and higher education. That’s the number one thing. God put me on this earth for another reason. There are two reasons. One is to tell everyone that a Biden administration really does have these stupid ideas about stabilizing the Middle East with Iran, and that they’re proud of it. The other one is, “Don’t accept the explanation that the cause of the anti-Semitism on our campuses is because of the Arab and Muslim students, the Islamists, the Qatari funding,� or so on and so forth, not to say that these things don’t have some kind of a role somewhere, but this is a number one, the number one problem.

This is a homegrown problem, American progressivism, which is taught and imbibed by people who are many generations in the United States and are not taking money from foreigners. It teaches that Israel is a colonial settler state, that it is supported by the worst elements in the United States, which are basically people who are the heirs to the colonial settler legacy of the West, and that if we want to overthrow this colonial settler, ruling elite in the United States, then we have to oppose Israel. This is how they see the world. The fight is really not simply a fight about Middle East policy, it’s a fight about the role of progressivism in our educational system and among our educated elite.

Zineb Riboua:

So you really see it also as a national security issue, given-

Michael Doran:

100 percent because it leads to this labyrinth. Again, I take you back to the Washington Post article, which-

Zineb Riboua:

Everyone should read it.

Michael Doran:

Everyone should read it, because it shows you the tremendous limitations of their ability to think themselves out of this problem because there’s a complete overlap between their domestic political agenda, which is to defeat evangelical Christians, security-minded Republicans, Zionist Jews. All these people, all the people in the United States who instinctively support Israel and see Israel as a close relative, as a daughter, as a cousin, as a sister. I don’t know which close relative, of the United States, all the people who see the Israel that way are, they are by nature enemies of progressivism in American, in the American domestic context. So they have created a vision of the Middle East that says the people that, oh, dear Progressives, the people that you hate in domestic American politics anyway, they are the cause of war in the Middle East.

Netanyahu and his American supporters, that’s the cause of war. The way to peace, it’s not that the Iranians are the party of peace. Netanyahu and his supporters, that’s the war party. The Iranians are not the peace party, but they are the objects of diplomacy, and diplomacy toward Iran is the way to stabilize the region. According to them, Israel, this is really a very old idea that has been repackaged in progressives. The old idea is that Israel is acting as a catapult that is throwing us into wars for it. We, here at Hudson, I think I speak for everybody at Hudson anyway. If I don’t, I should. Anyone who doesn’t agree with me shouldn’t be here. No, Hudson doesn’t have an institutional position. I was being ironic and humorous. The way I see it is that Israel is the answer to our problem in the Middle East, not the problem.

We are living through an era right now when the American public does not support a large scale military missions abroad, and especially in the Middle East. There’s a lot of skepticism about it, and there’s fear of greater, after the Iraq war, the hangover from the Iraq war, there’s a lot of wariness about it. And so, the anti-Semites and the anti-Zionists, who are not always the same thing, often they are, they are saying that Israel is dragging us into a needless war. That view misrepresents the real threat in the region, which is Iran, backed by Russia and China, they want to take over the whole Middle East and throw the United States out. The answer to that, if we want to block Iran without having to deploy large numbers of American troops, the answer is to support Israel.

Zineb Riboua:

There is another group that makes a similar argument about the Middle East, but also Israel and having this whole relationship, military-political relationship with Israel, is actually now a little bit more useless, because the real threat is really China, but for all the reasons you’ve listed and enumerated, the Middle East is especially important to master when it comes to challenging China, so is this something you also are worried about?

Michael Doran:

Yeah, completely. I mean, this is also a superpower malpractice. We’re a global power. We’re a global power. Saying that, “Oh. Our real concern is East Asia; therefore, we’re going to give up on the Middle East, that’s like me saying to you, “You have a heart problem; therefore, we’re going to get rid of your liver.� We are the masters of a global system. This is who we are. Some people may wish that we were not a global power, but this is what we are, and we’ve been this way for a very, very long time. The whole order that we built, we built this order, and it depends on us. The Middle East is the crossroads of the world. It’s the center of gravity of the global energy system.

If any power that wants to dominate Eurasia, as China does, and China thinks it could possibly dominate Eurasia together with Iran and Russia, wants to control the Middle East, because they then have a stranglehold on all of the supplies to Europe. So if we think that Europe is central, that a sound, European economy and strong political and economic ties with Europe is basic to our defense, and I think in any serious thinker about foreign policy would come to that conclusion, then you have to realize that we have to have a position in the Middle East too. We have to keep Russia, China, and Iran from dominating the Middle East, because they’ll have a stranglehold on the oil supplies to our allies in Europe, but also to our allies in East Asia.

All of the East Asian rivals of China: Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, they’re all dependent on oil and gas that either comes from the Middle East or transits through it, so there’s no way to hold on to our global status if we give up on the Middle East. If we want to reduce our military footprint in the region, then we have to do it by building up allies who have military capabilities. The number one ally that fits that bill is Israel. After October 7th, it looked like, for a moment, because of all the difficulties in Gaza, it looked like Israel couldn’t play that role. Now we see, I think in the last few weeks, it can play that role. It’ll play that role a lot better if we backstop it.

Instead of putting restrictions on Israel right now saying, “Don’t touch the Iranian nuclear facilities. Don’t touch the Iranian energy infrastructure,� and so on, and we tell the Iranians, “Don’t you dare threaten the Saudis. Don’t you dare threaten those to close the Straits of Hormuz,� and we set red lines to them and we say to them, “If you do those things, then you will be dealing with American power, and we will take action directly against you,� then we will get a very different response from Iran. They’re very vulnerable. They know they’re vulnerable, and right now we are acting as an action arm of them in restricting our ally, instead of doing what we should do, which is to restrict them in the face of our ally.

Zineb Riboua:

And so, since we have a few minutes left, what do you think? I mean, what should we track in the upcoming months? What do you think we should follow when it comes to the-

Michael Doran:

Well, the key question I have in my mind, I don’t know about months. I am talking about days right now, because the question is I got a little ahead of myself after the killing of Nasrallah, and the pagers and the walkie-talkies, and then taking out the Radwan forces, and then Nasrallah, all within a couple of weeks. I was amazed, and then also the Israelis entering South Lebanon, because these were all red lines. They were either red lines, American red lines or Iranian red lines, which I thought would result, like I said, in a massive bombardment of Israel from Iran and from Hezbollah. Then, that didn’t happen, and so I drew the conclusion, which I think was a sound one, that Iran is more deterred than I realized, that Hezbollah’s capabilities are much weaker than I thought, that Israel had set them back much further than I thought they ever could, and I realized that the balance had shifted, but of course, they recognized in Tehran as well that the balance had shifted.

They recognized what you pointed out a minute ago, that the proxies were starting to doubt their power, and they thought that they needed to show America and Israel that they had some significant capabilities and were willing to use them, and try to reestablish escalation dominance on their own, so they did on October 1. What I don’t know is how have the Israelis received that? The fact that 20 or 30 Iranian ballistic missiles hit the Nevatim Air Base, for example, is the Israeli elite sitting there and saying to themselves, the national security elite saying, “Oh. It’s unfortunate, but nothing was damaged, and actually, we knew. Our algorithm told us that nothing would be damaged,� or are they sitting there chastened, and they feel like, “Wow, we’re really vulnerable. How vulnerable are we?� We’re not going to know the answer to that, about whether they feel vulnerable or they feel emboldened, until we see the counterattack against them. The other thing I don’t know is, clearly, there’s this negotiation going on between Washington and Tehran.

Zineb Riboua:

Yeah.

Michael Doran:

This is the single most important thing about the Middle East, from October 7th until yesterday, that no one is talking about, which is the American negotiation with Iran about the war. There’s an Israeli-American negotiation going on about Israeli power and about what is permissible. The press is not interested in this. It’s the thing that is most tightly held by the senior members of the Biden administration, but the Iranians know what that negotiation is. The Israelis have an inkling of it. Who knows how, if they’re perfectly informed, but they’re going to be pretty well-informed about it, in one way or another, and that is informing the moves of both sides. So the questions I have in my mind in the next week are how deterred were the Israelis by the actual military capabilities of the Iranians, and how deterred are they by the pressure from the Americans, and what answers do they have, creative or not creative, in answering that twin challenge? We just have to wait and see.

Zineb Riboua:

Okay. Well, thank you for all your insights.

Michael Doran:

Thank you.

Zineb Riboua:

It was a pleasure having you. Thank you, all, for joining us today. Make sure you go to our page, thehudson.org, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East.

Michael Doran:

And the Israel Update Podcast.

Zineb Riboua:

Yes. I forgot about it, but yes, make sure you check it. Thank you.