Lawfare Daily: The Israel/Iran Conflict: What Do We Know So Far?

[Intro]

Suzanne Maloney: And they also were watching the prospect of, of these negotiations and, and the outcome that might have left some portion of Iran's nuclear program intact. So I think it was both the weakness but also the potential re-arming and restrengthening of Iran that created this moment for the Israeli leadership. This was a, a window of opportunity that they could not let lapse.

Natalie Orpett: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Natalie Orpett, executive editor of Lawfare with Suzanne Maloney of the Brookings Institution and Joel Braunold of the Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.

Joel Braunold: I think everyone in the world took Iran as a fact, and if the Israelis managed to change that fact, it scrambles, I think everyone's all the different regional and superpower dynamics in the region. I think it changes everything.

Natalie Orpett: Today we're talking about the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Iran that began on June 13th. It's only been a few days, but it's already clear that the conflict has the potential to dramatically change the regional and international dynamics of the Middle East. We talk about development so far, the nature of U.S. involvement and why after so many years of tensions Israel chose this moment to attack.

[Main Podcast]

I wanna start with some background because although I'm sure most of our listeners have been following this and watching the news closely, events are just unfolding so rapidly that I think a, a quick recap is in order.

And I should also note we are recording on Tuesday, June 17th at 11:00 AM because I'm sure by the time this airs, tomorrow, on Wednesday morning, a lot more will have happened. Fortunately, in that sense, I do want to focus more on what got us here and how we should understand what's happening based on that, based on the context, based on recent history. And I suspect that much is not likely to change, although perhaps more events will lead to new insights about it.

But to do a quick factual recap, and then I'm gonna ask you both to comment on what I've missed that's important from your vantage point. This all began on Friday, June 13th, when Iran conducted airstrikes against Iranian targets including nuclear facilities using warplanes and also drones. We'll get back to the drones a little later.

Reportedly, many Iran's top military leadership, including the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed. Iran responded hours later with a series of ballistic missiles. The strikes on both sides continued into Saturday using both missiles and drones, and Israel began targeting Iran's energy industry.

Sunday, airstrikes continued. U.S. negotiations that had been scheduled with Iran about Iran's nuclear program which were going to pick up from previous rounds of negotiations were canceled. And then yesterday, Monday the 16th, the attacks continued on both sides and Israel hit Iranian state media facilities saying that it was being used for military communications.

So that's a rapid-fire summary, but Suzanne, from your perspective, what did I miss there? What has stood out to you as particularly important for the, from the last couple of days?

Suzanne Maloney: Well, obviously there's a very long history to this crisis. It has been brewing since at least 2002 or one could even date it back to the 1979 revolution.

I think that what is striking about this particular moment is that it is the first direct assault in a public attributable way by the Israeli government on Iran's nuclear program. Despite a long history of sabotage and covert operations and threats to attack the program, I think that, you know, there has always been a sense of uncertainty about when push came to shove, would Israel take this step?

And Prime Minister Netanyahu has been very public on, in his views on this, and so even the question of would he take this step. And, and obviously not only have they taken this step historic moment. But it has been at least to date, a spectacularly effective and impressive operation in terms of its scope and scale, in terms of the damage that we know has been attributed to the strikes on particular nuclear facilities within Iran, as well as the leadership decapitation of the chain of command at the various branches of the military.

So it is really a, a, a stunning moment, I think. And I would say the, the prevailing mood for those of us who think about Iran and, and have worked on this issue for decades is we, we simply don't know where this is going to end.

Natalie Orpett: Okay. And Joel, what has stood out to you in the past couple of days?

Joel Braunold: I mean, I think that, you know, the opening script, the opening move, much like the same situation that happened in the north with, with Hezbollah last year was incredibly impressive. The sort of first 15 moves that the Israelis have made have really sort of changed the trajectory of where I think a lot of analysts thought such a situation would head.

I think where this ends is really the question, and I think that what stands out to me is this has been a tremendous gamble. And the gamble is because at least no one's sure where the U.S. sits on this. I think every analyst has said that if you don't take out the nuclear facilities under the mountain in Fordo, then you haven't accomplished taking out the Iranian nuclear program.

And this has been quite remarked upon over the past few days. The Israelis do not have the military means, at least conventionally through, you know, the mother of all bombs and the B-2 bombers to actually do it without U.S. assistance. And the reporting's been somewhat all over the place, but it seems like the U.S. did not commit to do this, at least at the beginning of the operation.

And so the prime minister is gambling that either they have the means which no one knows about to deal with it themselves, or that they will be able to bring the U.S. in. And it's a big gamble because if the gamble doesn't pay off, then what does this all mean? And if it does pay off, what was the moral risk or you know, sort of the moral hazard in philosophy we talk about of if it hadn't, like going forward on this.

This is the biggest gamble I would argue, since 1967 as a military operation. And at the moment, at least given the opening script, it seems that President Trump wants to be on the side of winners. And at the moment it seems that Israel is winning. So it's easy to say, well, I'll join in, I'll play behind you like a blackjack player.

But if the tide turns, would he change his mind? If he has to negotiate an end of this war, will he negotiate it like he has been trying to with Russia and Ukraine, even though one is traditionally a more U.S. ally than the other? And what would that look like in an Iran-Israel construct? And Israel's big success is leading to some ministers and even the prime minister himself speaking about regime change, which wasn't originally apparently on the cards at the beginning, but given the success now seems to be a play with even direct threats against the supreme leader being made by the prime minister on American newscasts.

And what comes next, how does that come next? There's, there's a lot of confusion and I think like many things that the Israelis do very phenomenally tactically brilliant opening, but where does it all end? And I think that that's the concerning, surprising thing that stands out that you would have such a gamble when you don't know where the U.S. and this particular U.S. administration's gonna sit at the end is remarkable.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah, I, I've been really struck by that as well. The, the question of, what does this mean in terms of understanding the particular moment that Israel is choosing here for its initial attack? It does suggest just the nature of the attack, particularly the smuggling of drones into Iran and the amount of intelligence that Israel seemed to have gathered on the, the location of leadership and other targets that this had been in the works for many, many years. But that of course begs the question of why now.

I suppose a a, an initial question though on the, on the Iran side, is it does seem also that Iran's response was representative of having planned in advance as well. So I'm curious, Suzanne, what do we know about how Iran had been preparing? It does seem from reporting that Iran was caught off guard by this attack coming at this moment, but it does also look like it had been ready with a response in the event something happened.

Suzanne Maloney: Well, I think it, you know, it was hardly unknown to Iranian leaders that there were many in Israel who felt that there was a military solution to the long standoff over Iran's nuclear program. And so they would, of course, have been prepared for many years to consider how to retaliate if in fact they were struck either by the United States or by Israel.

I think that the events of 2024 gave them a, a bit of a practice run in the sense that, and it may help explain why they were so quick to fire in, in April of 2024 in response to Israel's killing of an Iranian general in Damascus. At the time, the precipitant for that did not seem to me to be so dramatic that it, that it would have precipitated what we saw, which was the first ever Iranian attack on Israeli soil from the Iranian homeland.

Iran had always chosen to use proxies, to fund militia groups and terrorist groups to try to harass Israel. But Iranian leaders have always well understood that Israel has overwhelming military superiority, and that if they were in a fight with Israel, they were in a fight with the United States. It's why they have always tried to maintain some degree of plausible deniability about the source of any attacks on Israel.

So, you know, Iran in April and then again in October launched ballistic missiles and drones, fairly sophisticated operations. But the United States, Israel and allies and neighbors in the region managed to be very effective in ensuring that there was minimal damage and, and very few casualties as a re-, as a result of those strikes. I think that, you know, that would've been a practice run for both sides.

And it may have been part of the thinking on the part of Israeli leaders about whether and when the time might come for a direct attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure given that they saw how effective it was, the defense of Israel during those two incidents.

Joel Braunold: Natalie, when it comes to the Israelis I think you need to look at why this moment through, I think you could look at it through three different lenses.

I think the first lens is they were watching and were very worried about the Trump administration's negotiations that were going on with Tehran. I think that the agreement, I think they felt that. They could have felt, I should say, that Steve Witkoff and his team was there an agreement bias there. Was there, were they racing towards an agreement that would be like the JCPOA or something else that even if it wasn't identical, was the best that could have been done to avoid military conflict and would that then take the pressure off Iran?

While they were at the same time watching what was going on with the IAEA and that, you know, they were saying that the Iranians were breaching and so you had a snapback moment and could that create a moment of international legitimacy to show that the Iranians were misbehaving. And so both the context of a potential agreement that could have put them on the back foot plus Iranian mal-, misbehavior sort of created a political toxic moment where it was now or never. I think that's one way of looking at it.

The second lens I'd look at is a post-October 7th lens, both from a political perspective and a resiliency perspective. So from a political perspective, the population in Israel is, has a different level of risk tolerance, both in terms of what they're willing to tolerate, but also the resiliency of the population.

So they are less willing to tolerate what they would see as existential threats that they can just sort of sit out. They're like, we're not doing that. And if that requires us to be slightly more of a regional hegemon and use our military assets, especially after we've taken out Hezbollah in the north and it was so successful. And, you know, buildings didn't collapse in Tel-Aviv and Haifa as we did it, you know, we are gonna have to do this, even if this is forced projection, you are 1500 kilometers away.

The other part of that is also that because the Houthis have been firing ballistic missiles at the Israeli homeland for the past seven months, the Israelis have developed a very as a population, a very resiliency of getting into bomb shelters When major population centers are under rocket attack and they know how to listen to home front command, there's not like panic in the streets.

It might be of a higher variance in terms of what it looks like given the lethality of some of these ballistic missiles, but the actual construct of getting into a, a shelter in the middle of the night whether you're in Tel Aviv or whether you're in Haifa, is, is something that they've got used to. And so if your population is already girded for war and you've already knocked out Hezbollah, now could be the opportune moment to actually do this.

The third, of course, and the the cynics will say, look, the prime minister was politically weak. He was losing his coalition, his legal problems were gathering. Just as the prime minister himself said of Ehud Olmert back in 2008, you won't be able to trust a prime minister if they're under investigation about what they're doing is for good reason.

So two cynics would say or could say, you know, the Prime Minister took this opportunity not only for reasons one and two, but also reason number three, it helps him out politically and personally. Now, the opposition has really joined hand in hand with the prime minister on these strikes on Iran, both Yair Lapid, Benny Gantz, Naftali Bennett. So I, I don't think that in the Israeli polity that at least at this moment, there's a feeling like, oh, he did it for that reason. But I'd say outside observers, that's one thing.

I just feel, and I'll, I'll finish off with this topper and something that Susan just mentioned in her own, in her previous answer. The Iranian preparatory work of this was always the assumption that this would be a U.S.-Israel response, and therefore, as they war game this out, they could do things that would put pressure on the Americans, close the Strait of Hormuz, attack military bases.

Because the Americans are publicly declared, they're not involved, it's actually put the Iranians on a back foot with far less options. You know, they are currently striking the Israelis as much as they can, or there might be more steps up the escalatory ladder they want to go. But they're limited in their regional responses because they know that if they do attack American assets, that will give the Americans the necessary pretext to then go in and finish the job.

And so they're kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. So the Israelis actually, again, tactically extremely smart, have flipped the script on the Iranians and used the lack of U.S. support as an advantage. And in many ways one analyst said, I think it was Amid Segal who's a prominent commentator in Israel that, you know, the U.S. is using Israel as, as its proxy, just like the Iranians have used proxies around the region and saying, look, we're not involved. It's just a proxy. It's just a Houthis. We're not doing anything.

 And the Americans can say the same thing about the Israelis. The Israelis are doing this. It's not nothing to do with us, but if you attack us then we'll end you. And so it's put the Iranians on a real back foot. And the Israelis in this opportunistic mood, though again where this leads is anyone's guess.

Natalie Orpett: Suzanne, what are your views on the sort of uncertain status of U.S. support here? Because we've seen sort of mixed comments from President Trump saying, on the one hand the U.S. is not involved and would not be involved. But then later making comments to the effect of, you know, they, this may be a good thing to do, I don't know.

Reporting indicating that the U.S. did assist on defensive operations, but not on offensive and, and just this general sentiment that it's not clear exactly where the U.S. has stood. You know, some I was reading that there are some concerns or theories that perhaps the U.S. engagement in nuclear talks was actually a sort of means of keeping Iran off guard with respect to Israel, and there may be a lot more coordination behind the scenes than is being reported or suggested.

And of course I didn't see any evidence for that, but it, it does seem overall that there's just a tremendous amount of uncertainty, even as to what is happening right now, let alone what may happen in the future in terms of U.S. involvement. What impact do you think all of that has been having here?

Suzanne Maloney: Look it, this has been an incredible couple of days of events that I think many of us never fully anticipated we would see play out in real time. And so, uncertainty is the least of it. We're just, you know, learning about decision making as it's happening sometimes in real time as the president is Tweeting or Truth Social-ing, however the verb goes in that domain.

You know, I think the, the administration has tried to paint a picture of, you know, a more strategic approach that the negotiations, at least the last scheduled session, which did not happen, of course, were intended as a ruse to try to knock the Iranians off guard and to try to ensure that they weren't as prepared as they might have been. That may or may not be true.

My guess is that that is not entirely accurate. And that, as Joel said, the president likes winners. This appears to be so far a very successful operation. And he's, you know, seems to be sort of increasing his own support and engagement and commitment to it as the days go by. And as Israel racks up more notches on its missile belts.

I, I think realistically, Trump had always strongly preferred some kind of a negotiated solution. It's an irony of course, because, you know, there was a negotiated, at least deal, on the table that he walked away from in 2018. But even when he did that, he always talked about wanting, wanting a new deal, a Trump deal.

And I think as Joel said, there were a lot of concerns about, you know, the, the competence of the negotiating team that he put together. Steve Witkoff, who's been managing a number of other world crises for the president doesn't have the level of depth and detail that the teams of negotiators brought to the table in the prior period of negotiations between the United States, Iran, and, and other world powers.

I mean, the 2015 nuclear deal was 157 pages of densely negotiated text. Witkoff is a real estate developer who is a good friend of the president, obviously has a trust of the administration, but really wasn't in a position to, to marshal that level of detail.

You know, there is, I think, also a theory of the case that part of what has driven this action at this time is the concern, as Joel said that, that there might be a bad deal, that the president was prepared to negotiate something that would be overly generous to the Iranians. A dime store version of the JCPOA was one of the criticisms on, on social media. And so, you know, where this goes from here, I think remains very uncertain.

Will the president take the action that appears to be in the offering? If you're watching social media and seeing the, the level of material and assets that are being moved to the region right now, there seems to be a signaling that we are, the United States is either prepared to, or at least is prepared to threaten, to intervene directly. That may be part of a negotiating tactic as well. But we, we won't know really until this is over.

Joel Braunold: I also, you know, the president's comments last night that, you know, someone asked, well, your national intelligence director said that Iran is not trying to get a nuclear bomb as of, I think two weeks ago. And then he's just like, well, I just disagree with her, which is completely his prerogative. He's the elected head of our government. But we have a multi-billion intelligence agencies for a reason. And he's just like, no.

And it could be either. It's just his gut, which is his prerogative. I mean, he doesn't need to, it's his right. It's, the Constitution empowers him as the individual, not the intelligence agencies. Or it could be that he's like, the Israelis are winning. You know, I, I, I would like to celebrate this victory.

And I'd also say, if you look at it, the traditional way that people appeal for U.S. aid, and look at how the Ukraines did as like, look how much we're being attacked. This is terrible. Help us, you know, save us. That does not appeal to this president. And so if you've noticed the Israelis are not appealing by showing destruction in Bat Yam or Haifa or Tel Aviv. They're like, we're great man. We're winning. We are kicking the living hell out of them.

If the president wants to join, we'd love him. Thank you for all the support you've given us. It, it's a be on the side of the winners. This will be quick and painless, is what the promise is. Just, you know, lend us a B-2 for 10 days. We'll bring it back unscathed and then we can all finish this up.

And, you know, what's next? Like, what happens if Pakistan sells Iran a nuclear weapon because of it? I don't know. Can anyone guarantee that's not gonna happen? I don't know. I, when countries are faced with existential crises, they act in unpredictable ways. And when you add the nuclear component on this, you know, I defer of course to Susan and her expertise, but generally the, you know, since the Cold War, we've all been, you know, going off MAD, of mutually assured destruction and it stopped nukes being moved.

But you know, the Israelis felt there was a golden moment to prevent the Iranians nuclearizing. And it's like a parlay bet, right? So they've won the first few legs of the parlay, but if you don't win every leg of the parlay that the bet still fails. And I think that the nervousness isn't a critique of the tactical brilliance that the Israelis have shown.

It's if you don't get all the legs of the parlay then you've created a new situation that could be far more dangerous. You just don't know. You can't, no one can guarantee that. And I think that's where a lot of the hesitation from the administration, I would argue, is probably coming on the other side of the president. You know, better the Ayatollah, you know, than the one you don't, or whatever other aphorisms they're utilizing up in, in the EOB right now, or in the situation room.

But I think there's a nervousness that, you know, who could have foreseen when you took out Iraq, what would happen with Iran? And it's a chaos, you know, and why do you wanna get involved? And so I think that's at least on the immediate. And then later on in the conversation, Natalie, if you want, we can talk about the overarching politics of what this means in our bipartisan system, which is interesting as well.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah, absolutely. I, I do want to come back to that, but I'm curious to hear what you both think of the following. It's clear that obviously concerns about Iran's possible nuclear capacities and development is central here and maybe is sort of the start and the end of Israel's concern, but it does seem, we're thinking about as well, other motivations for why this moment or why Iran?

Israel, as we know, is involved still in operations in Gaza, has had some significant operations earlier this year, end of last year in Lebanon, and, you know, doesn't have endless amounts of military supplies and personnel. But it's also a moment right now when Iran seems particularly weak, including because it has lost so much capacity among its key proxies in the region and in Hezbollah and Hamas and, and the Houthis to some extent.

So to what extent do you think of why now and what the calculus is on Israel's part that is in addition to, or sort of derivative of the immediate nuclear concerns? Suzanne, I'll start with you.

Suzanne Maloney: Sure. I, I mean, I think, you know, now that we are in this moment, it almost seems telegraphed in advance because there are so many factors that made this, as Joel said, the kind of golden moment to take this step. One, I think, which is paramount is the kind of post-October 7th mindset, completely reasonable and understandable of ensuring that Israel could not be attacked again in such a horrific way ever again. And you know, being prepared to accept even higher levels of risk to ensure that outcome is my, my estimation is that that will be the approach of not just this Israeli government, but future Israeli governments as well.

You know, then there was the very successful operations against Hezbollah over the course of the second half of 2024 that Israel took, despite at least some outside advice from Washington and elsewhere that this might be disruptive or destabilizing or unsuccessful. And I think the, the success of the beeper operations, of the decapitation strikes that took out Hassan Nasrallah and all of the rest of the senior leadership of, of that organization, which had been Iran's primary deterrent force to try to prevent some kind of a preemptive attack by Israel on its nuclear program, that really paved the way for a new reality.

And then finally you had the, the, the completely dramatic, and I think to some extent unanticipated change in Syria. The collapse of the Bashar Assad regime meant that Iran no longer had direct access to Lebanon through a land route. And it also put Iran very much on its back foot in terms of managing its wider proxy network, which had really in, in many respects, been, you know, perfected during the Syrian Civil War and the role that the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force force played in, in that war. That left open, I think, for Israeli leaders, a, a very clear opportunity to take much more aggressive action against Iran without the immediate prospect of some kind of retaliation from around their perimeter.

But at the same time, I, you know, as, as, as I think you said, Iran was much weaker, but I think there was also an eye toward watching Iran begin to re-arm begin to you know, ramp up production of ballistic missiles to compensate for some of the ones that they utilized over the course of 2024. And to just ensure that they had a really large stockpile.

I think Israeli leaders had to know that Iran had experienced very severe setbacks in its history before, and that they would find alternative routes to create some kind of deterrent force and, and to find new ways to attack Israel. And they also were watching the prospect of, of these negotiations and, and the outcome that might have left some portion of Iran's nuclear program intact.

So I think it was both the weakness, but also the potential re-arming and restrengthening of Iran that created this moment for the Israeli leadership. This was a window of opportunity that they could not let elapse.

Joel Braunold: I think that what are the aims of this Israeli operation is always a great question to ask because when it seems, especially, you know, when we sit in Gaza, like there was a whole debate and I've had these conversations with Scott Anderson on Law-, on Lawfare Daily before, like what are the actual objectives of that operation and the confusion of what an end step, you know, leads to, to never ending war and other parts.

So what are actually the aims of this operation? So, at least at the beginning, it seems very clear that the aim is to ensure that there is at, at least at the beginning, it was to end the Iranian nuclear program, okay. Then it was in addition to make sure that they also ended the threat of Iranian ballistic missile production.

And then the prime minister, you know, it seems to have slipped into some regime change, though. It's not clear if that was approved by the cabinet, that the aim of this is regime change and how even that would go into it.

And then there were, you know, why now? The Israelis, you know, in their messaging have said, you know, the Iranians we saw, we saw intelligence that they're about to flood Israel, like October 7th again. And they could even give a tactical nuke to one of their proxy groups and that they would use it. And that they were, you know, breaking out to a bomb. I think that the last one, breaking out to the bomb. I, I'm, I don't, I, I'm not an Israeli intel person, but I would assume that that has been the Israeli intelligence assessment for quite a while, and that drives a lot of their decision making.

The basic premise from the Israeli, at least since Prime Minister Netanyahu has been on the scene, is that the concept of mutual assured destruction is not enough to deter the Iranians from destroying Israel. And they point to the Iranian fixation on Israel despite the fact that they feel like they don't really have anything to do with the Iranians, at least as the Iranians constantly say death to Israel. And that that's proof that if they get a nuclear weapon, they'll use it.

And that is driving all deci-, decision making, not just of the prime minister, but I would say the opposition as well. The Iranian obsession with the destruction of Israel, it's cancer in the region. All this stuff has led them to, to believe them at face value. That this isn't just political messaging and especially post-October 7th, we have to take this very seriously.

And so the, the mechanisms that the world has created post-nuclearization of basically MAD is not good enough. If you could have stopped Kim Jong Un getting a nuclear weapon, you would've done so. And so we're now doing that for Tehran. And if they got nuclear weapons, they first, you know, they'd blow us up and or they'd give it to a proxy to do it and then claim deniability and like we're just not allowing that to happen.

And that is the Israeli, that is the Israeli strategic compact. So at the end of this, to be successful, they need to feel that the Iranians, either through forced diplomacy, have truly dismantled not just their nukes, but their ballistic missiles. The easiest way I think the Israelis think that that could happen is by new governing authority in Iran that the Iranian people rise up.

And there's a real feeling I think in as Israel, that you know, the people are really against the Ayatollahs and that they're just waiting for the moment to do so. So either forced diplomacy that really stops this or that there's regime change that makes this not a problem.

Those are two very–or that they managed to just completely destroy all of their productions and that, I don't know, they, they do this moving forward if they see them moving forward on this again, or that's some sort of regional alliance that prevents them from moving forward.

Those are very ambitious aims and how you get there, I think, again, like I think the hope is that they drag the U.S. in. And that the U.S. can help them achieve that. Or that the humiliation of the Iranians is so complete that there's a coercive diplomatic moment where the Iranians just beg them to stop for their own survival.

And in doing so, they've basically completely demonstrated that Iran are a paper tiger. And that leads to sort of an Israeli hegemonic moment in the region that redefines all of their problem sets. You know, the rumors are, you know, the, the prime minister is elated, you know, he feels that this could be the war to end all wars. I, I find that, okay. I hope he's right.

And, you know, everything will look different. This will give political space to finish off Gaza, get, get to a, you know, he'll have enough political space to end a war on Gaza without losing its coalition. He can move forward with Saudi normalization now that they've taken out the Iranian threat and no one needs to worry about the Palestinians and we all could just move forward and not to worry about it.

That's sort of like the, the pathway I think that a lot of people wanna convince themselves is, is what the end goal could look like if they just had another push to get them there.

Natalie Orpett: Okay. I wanna step over back to Iran because I think we've talked quite a bit and with good reason about the success of Israel's various operations, not just in Iran over the last couple of days, but in Lebanon and Gaza as well with respect to Hezbollah and Hamas.

But it's also the case that Iran has been a, a very formidable power in the region for a very, very long time, and those are meaningful setbacks. But I'm curious, Suzanne, from your vantage point, how should we understand the current status of Iran and, and how it is thinking about its capabilities and what its opportunities and realistic prospects are in a conflict that may be protracted with Israel right now?

Suzanne Maloney: Well, you know, look, this is a, a moment that is really unprecedented for the Iranian regime. They have experienced a, a lot of conflict over the course of their history, including the invasion of the country in 1980 by Saddam Hussein. And, you know, that was a, a, a, also a transformative moment.

But it was one that actually enabled the Iranian regime to entrench itself to build institutions, to rally the population behind them. It was still you know, a very early period of the, of the post-revolutionary system. And in many ways, that conflict helped to create the conditions that enabled the system to survive for the, for the ensuing four decades.

I don't think that that is a viable option for them this time around. The Iranian people have experienced this regime in their daily lives and for the most part are, are quite sick and tired of the ideology, are quite frustrated with the way that the Islamic Republic has governed and what it has meant for their opportunities or lack thereof.

Iranians are nationalistic. They will not welcome foreign in-, military, in, in intervention. And so there could be some backlash, but I don't think that there's going to be this sort of dramatic rally around the flag that really did occur in the aftermath of, of the 1980 invasion.

But, you know, for Iran, this is I, I think this is a, a make or break moment. I don't see how the leadership survives. I, but I also don't have any confidence that there is a regime change at the barrel of a gun story that ends with a happy ending. Iranians, as I said are looking for change, but they're looking to, to, they've always wanted to advance that change themselves.

And given the history of foreign intervention in Iran, given the fact that the idea of independence was central to the revolution itself, I worry tremendously about the possibility of, of lack of governance entirely in the aftermath of these strikes. You know, we are just in entirely new territory for the Islamic Republic, for the Iranian people.

And as I've had conversations including just today with Israelis, one of the things that worries me is a, a a, a sense of irrational exuberance about the success of this early operation and the prospect that it's going to change everything for the region and for the world, and, and especially for Israelis.

I understand where that's coming from. But I will say, you know, for Americans who have watched that, that sense of easy victory in the Middle East be quickly supplanted by violence and insurgency and, you know, a sense of being bogged down in unsuccessful wars that were very costly in terms of both human lives, in terms of American influence, and in terms of where we direct our, our, our fiscal priorities.

And I would imagine that Israel watched those experiences very carefully and is aware of the lessons learned from both Afghanistan and Iraq. But I don't hear a lot of that in, in the discourse right now about what's happening in Iran, and I have no sense of confidence that this is going to end well.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah, I think that's such an important point. I, I think you sort of implicitly answered this, but I'll ask it directly. Do you think this creates any opening for opponents to the regime? I mean, I know it's, it's very hard to track the, the possible strength of opponents to the regime because it's a, a difficult place to have outward political dissenters.

But is it possible that there, there could be an opening, not withstanding the sort of sense as you described it, of, you know, being at the barrel of a gun for changing the regime. Might there be a possibility for change based on pressures from the Iranian people, given the changes of circumstance, both immediately with Israel, but also more broadly in the region with, with respect to Iran's position?

Suzanne Maloney: Well look, I think we're already in a position of regime change. Even if the war stops at this moment which we know it is not. Even if Khamenei remains in place, the level of destruction of the infrastructure and of key elements of the leadership is significant enough that I think you'd see a very different Islamic Republic.

It might be worse in many respects. It might be an Islamic Republic that is. You know, racing toward a bomb because they understand now that that's the only thing that can protect the country's sovereignty. But you know, whatever happens, we are in a new phase for Iranian leadership.

I do not believe that war is going to provide a conducive opportunity for the many critics of this regime to seize power. Most of them are outside of the government itself by definition, because the, the, the system doesn't really tolerate critics who are, who are trying to mobilize a political base for a different kind of a future, that that wasn't, you know, even, even the short-lived experiment with trying to promote reform within the system within Iran was beat back through both prosecution and through violence.

And so anyone who, who would like to see a different structure of power, who would like to liberalize Iran, would like to reopen Iran to the wider world, has been forced into a position of either exile or in some cases internal imprisonment and certainly not in a position of power.

So, you know, the, the transition from a country that is being bombarded where significant violence is taking place across the country, as of yesterday morning, I think 19 provinces out of 31 had been struck, and I'm sure the number is higher today. So, you know, Iranians are experiencing this in their daily lives. They were, you know, no doubt aware that President Trump on social media encouraged all of Tehran to evacuate last night at three in the morning. 10 million people on streets that were already completely packed with individuals fleeing the country.

These are not conditions in which you see the, the birth of a liberal democracy. And, you know, it's tragic because this is a, Iranians are, I think prepared for some kind of a transition in the sense that they have experienced you know, the authoritarian outcome of a popular revolution. They have at least some sense of what political competition looks like because they've gone to the polls almost on an annual basis since 1979, heavily controlled elections, but still some degree of competition.

It's you know, created a, a, a culture of, of voting, of campaigning, of contesting the issues. They have a, a vibrant press. They have a widely educated population. And so, you know, there is the, I believe that Iran could transition to a, a better system, but I don't believe that it's going to happen under the conditions of war.

Natalie Orpett: So I'm curious, Joel, given all of that, you know, as, as you've both said, there's a tremendous amount of exuberance at how well the operations have been going so far, but particularly because there have been some comments sort of dipping toes into the water of possible regime change in Iran.

How much do you think Israelis are, are thinking about these factors that Suzanne is mentioning? Because it is of course, you know, a truism of history that just because you can be victorious in an armed conflict doesn't mean that the resulting regime after the fact is any better.

Joel Braunold: I think that there's a lot of people to people, positive feelings, at least on the Israeli side, towards Iranians as people.

I mean, there's a huge Persian Jewish community in L.A. and there's a lot of positive feelings about people's feelings towards Iranian culture. You know, both not being Arabs in the region, fondness of the previous flights that existed between Israel and Iran before the revolution. And that basically the, the Islamic Revolution got on the way of what could have been a different region. And so there's no hostility, anger, frustration, malintent towards Iranians.

To the extent that when Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz yesterday said, bizarrely on Twitter, you know that the people of Tehran will suffer. There was an outcry in Israel from all sides saying, what are you doing? This isn't about the Iranian people, this is about the regime. And they, there's a real feeling about that, which you don't see in, really, in other countries.

So I think there is this feeling like, if they could only throw off their yoke of this, of this totalitarian regime, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said yesterday it would end the war. Like it's, it wouldn't delay. That's, that's the problem. It's with the Ayatollah. But I think as Suzanne said, like the Iranians are very proud people.

It's very rare that a foreign country can come and basically decimate your country's infrastructure and then you feel positive about rallying behind them when you, when a foreign government calls for you to rise up. It doesn't really ingratiate you to the streets. And so I think that the Israelis are aware of that, but there's a public messaging.

There's a private messaging and, and others, and I, I think that the easiest way to understand this, Natalie, is the easiest outcome for the Israelis regime change, not that they would install someone, but that the Iranian people would replace their leaders with people who didn't believe that death to Israel was a rallying call. And from the Israeli's perspective, as I said, it's about nukes, it's about ballistic missiles, and it's about proxies. Those three issues off the table, there's no problem.

And their real problem is with the, the world view and the foreign policy of the regime, not offend proud Iranian people or a strong Iran in the region. They just don't want them to have a nuclear program. They don't want ballistic missiles that can threaten them, and they don't want a foreign policy that is around a ring of fire around them.

Now you could also read that as that Israel wants to have hegemonic power and they don't want anyone else to have hegemonic power, which is a power reading of this situation. And I'm sure that, you know, the whole axis of resistance has already collapsed 'cause Hezbollah has already said they're not getting involved. And so the Iranians are actually, their entire strategy is kind of in tatters at this point. And the Israelis are pushing the issue to try and, and shift it.

But does this push Pakistan and Iran closer? What does that do with Pakistan already being a nuclear power? I, again, like I have no idea. And I think the honest people would tell you, you know, weird things can happen out of the chaos.

But I think that the Israelis saw this as too good of an opportunity to take away what has been a feature of the region and change it to change their own regional dynamics of Iranian malfeasance that is purposeful to try and collapse Israel as a country. Whether it's the work with Islamic jihad, with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with the Houthis, with Syria, you know, backed militias, the whole thing, the whole nine yards.

And I think that also in the region, there's a feeling like if the Israelis can do this without shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, and it doesn't explode, I don't think anyone's gonna be crying if the Iranian regime disappears. But I think everyone's worried if this gets out of control and what does that mean for everyone? And that's why this is such a tense moment.

Natalie Orpett: I want to come to one issue before we switch over to the U.S. side of things and what is happening here in terms of response. But in terms of things we don't know about in terms of possible following effects, it also occurs to me, we are aware that Iran has been providing weapons to Russia in its conflict against Ukraine, and I believe there are reports as well that Russia is providing some military aid to Iran, or at least has at certain times in the past. Do either of you think that there's any follow on effect there for what's going on now between Israel and Iran?

Suzanne Maloney: I'll say I, you know, I think that we've seen the true limitations of the Russian-Iranian partnership in the reaction to the Israeli attack. The, you know, there's always been a sense of distrust that dates back centuries between Moscow and Tehran. But they had developed a, a fairly workable and effective strategic partnership first in Syria and now more recently around the Russian War in Ukraine.

I don't think that the Russians are, are inclined to do anything to help the Iranians out in this particular moment. And in fact, it is the failure of, of Russia to provide the, the most advanced air defense system that made Iran as vulnerable as it has been to Israeli attacks. And I don't think that, you know, they've delivered on most of the aid that they've promised, particularly fighter aircraft to Tehran. Aid that was promised in in return for Iran's support of their war in Ukraine and provision of drones and drone technology, which has been a game changer for the Russians there.

The Russians were smart enough to ensure that most of that production is now on Russian soil with some Iranian technical support and collaboration. But I, I, I don't see a significant you know, sort of positive after effect for Ukraine as a result of this particular action, other than, you know, I think it is, you, you saw Prime Minister Zelensky you know, sort of sympathizing and noting the, you know, very negative role that Iran has played with respect to the war on his country.

And so I think that, you know, there, there, there may be a, a, a positive vibe from this, but I don't think that there's a real change to the, to the war in Ukraine as a result of what's happening in Iran.

Joel Braunold: I think everyone in the world took Iran as a fact, and if the Israelis managed to change that fact, it scrambles I think everyone's, all the different regional and superpower dynamics in the region. I think it changes everything. And I think that from the Israeli perspective doing that when President Trump's in office where his own relationship with Moscow is probably closer to like Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has a working relationship with President Putin.

There isn't an animosity in the same way as with previous administrations that maybe it can, the Israelis and the Russians can work out a different compact, especially with the new Syria. If it's a different Iranian regime and you know, maybe it's just forces a anti-China moment. I, I, I think it opens up a lot of possibilities, not all of which could be negative.

And again, but I do think a lot of people are watching this and we've already seen from Ankara, sort of Erdogan looking at this saying we need to change what our missile shields and our offensive capabilities look like. I think China's looking at this and saying, if this can happen to them, what, what's our looking like when we look at our air defenses?

I think it's gonna change a lot of people's concepts of what does home front defense look like in terms of defensive air superiority and how serious you need to take that. Because I think everyone has been surprised about how quickly this has gone very badly for Tehran and for the Iranians. And, and what messages and lessons in a world that people will could start using military means to achieve regional objectives, what does that actually mean and what, what defenses do you now need?

And so I think this is a big lesson for everyone moving forward. And I think the world will be changed after this one way or the other regardless now of how, how it finishes.

Suzanne Maloney: I would, I would actually agree with everything that Joel just said, except for the, regardless of how it finishes, I think how this ends will influence the extent to which it's seen as a model or a game changer. And how it ends remains very much uncertain.

Joel Braunold: I, I agree in terms of whether this is a productive action. Totally agree. I'm saying how people wanna defend their own countries, like in terms of, even if this ends and it's protracted and it's horrible and everything else, how quickly Israel established air superiority and how many anti-aircraft, anti-missile protections you need I think is going to radically shift. I think no one could probably be comfortable with what they've got. And I assume that President Trump will talk about his Golden Dome a lot after this.

Natalie Orpett: Yeah. So let's switch over to that with the last few minutes we have, obviously, as we've talked about, the, the U.S. response has been quite uncertain thus far, and it is very much yet to be seen what policy decisions the U.S. will make here. But I wanna hear from both of you what you're seeing in terms of conversation quiet, though it may be so far within the U.S. domestic sphere about how to engage and what strategies to implement here.

Suzanne Maloney: Look, I think that there's a lot of trepidation across the political spectrum about the prospect of the U.S. intervening directly in, despite the success that Israel has had to date.

There's still, I think, muscle memory around both Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course, much of that muscle merit, memory informs the president's own coalition. He has, I, I think many in the MAGA movement are very skeptical of, of intervention and especially of intervention in the Middle East. The president himself campaigned on this very successfully. I think it is a genuine point of pride for him that he has, that he was an early critic of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But you also see, as Joel said, this desire to be part of the winning team and excitement about what the Israelis have accomplished despite a lot of skepticism that might have preceded it. And there is, I think now, you know, enough movement of U.S. assets to the region that we have to take very seriously the possibility that by the time this podcast airs that you know, that the, the question of U.S. intervention will be, will have been answered with you know, direct action.

I, I will note that while we've been on this conversation, the vice president has tweeted and he has I think, you know, sort of both endorsed the Israeli action, but has also I think sought to quiet some of the criticism that's coming from the MAGA movement about the extent to which the president is contemplating U.S. action. He says that the only, he, he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals, whatever he does, that is his focus. But he also asserts the right to the, for the president to take further action to end Iranian enrichment.

So I think it, you know, creates the case. It will not silence all the critics. And in addition to those who are just critical of American intervention in the Middle East, there is a camp that is, I think, quite influential within the broader American political spectrum at this time that is very much focused on, on the need to prioritize China.

And, and there are a number of people in the administration as well as on Capitol Hill who will be critical of a decision for the U.S. to get involved in this particular case because it is shifting assets away from what they consider to be the, the highest priority for U.S. security policy. And, and one that has been the case for many years and that is China.

So, you know, it will be you know, interesting to see how this plays out. And I think much will depend on to what extent there, there may be other alternatives that Israel could deploy to try to get to Fordo because if Fordo is left intact, there is still a pathway to a nuclear weapons capability for Iran.

Joel Braunold: I wanna attack this from two different angles. I think angle number one, just on sort of the current elected leadership in the U.S., I would argue that if President Trump wants to get involved, he's got enough political weight in Congress that, that he should do an AUMF. And by the way, from a negotiating perspective, I think that would also be healthy, show how serious we are. We have authorization to use military force against Iran.

I, I personally think that's the way you should do it and you prevent this mission creep and you, and you basically say, trust me that I'll only use this and then it will end in when you do it to the end of my term. So you don't have to worry about other presidents doing this, but I've got an AUMF until the end of my term to prevent them getting a nuclear weapon. And that's how our constitutional system should work.

Like that, that's how you gain American support. This hope that it's not a hope, this worry that if the Iranians attack Americans, then there's a right to self-defense that can be utilized in this way. A makes people think that everything's a false flag and that the Israelis are incentivized to create one, which is not healthy for anyone.

And I, I think that there's an opportunity that will also help for the coercive diplomacy if that's what's needed. So my own preference, and I think the healthiest thing is that Congress should debate an AUMF specifically on the prevention of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. And it should be time bound and limited. And I think that's constitutionally correct.

But I think there's a bigger issue going on that when I look at long-term trajectories about us as our relations really worries me in a very substantial way. The Israeli-U.S. relation, when you look at Democrats, is in the toilet, okay. I think there was a quinine pack poll that put Democrats of supportive or sympathetic with the Israelis now down to 12%, which are historic lows, which of course post Gaza it, it's not surprising, but it just demonstrates to you, to you what a difficult position the Israelis are on the democratic side.

You know, the Trump factor, polarization. It's a lot playing into that. But regardless, that's the number it should the Americans participate in this and let's assume it doesn't go well after that. It's more than just one bombing run, right? Something really bad or it's protracted or whatever. But they broke it, they bought it. The base won't blame President Trump. They'll blame the state of Israel and they'll go back and they'll watch Prime Minister Netanyahu's testimony in the run up to the war in Iraq. And they'll say he was wrong then and he is wrong now.

Now the irony is he was not the prime minister in 2002, 2003. He was not even the leader of the opposition. He was just a former prime minister. And actually Israel's prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, was incredibly against the war Iraq, thinking it would strengthen Iran. But in people's heads, they don't make a differentiation between Netanyahu and Israel. And they'll just say, look, the Israelis pushed us to war then, and they're pushing us to war now.

And I think it will tank in the MAGA world, U.S.-Israel relations as well. Now will it be to the same extent as Democrats? I don't know. But if you are Israel and so far the war in Iran's cost $300 million a day. That doesn't include the damage to the multiple buildings that have been destroyed, the oil facilities and all of these other things, right? And you know, you look at how much all the other wars have been costing.

I know that there's this desire to come off the U.S. teat when it comes to military support. If you do all of that at the same time and you want to maintain your capacity to be able to force project, I just dunno how you do it with the economy as it is without there being sort of a growth through relations with the Saudis and others to substantially grow the economy and do all the other things you need to do to keep the raw number up what you need on defense without just robbing your economy.

And again, you could take the Saudis at their word, you could say that they're lying to you. They seem to want there to be a pathway for a Palestinian state at one point for them to move forward on that. And this current government, I would say, after this operation, will they be more likely or less likely to, you know, think about that, I'm not sure.

But I would, I, I would be, and I am very worried about the long-term trajectory of U.S.-Israel, bipartisan support on both sides of the aisle. I think it, it is diminishing and I think that should the U.S. get involved in Iran, if there is any negative outcome from that involvement, it isn't just like we sided with the winner and it was easy. I worry that Israel will be blamed by MAGA and I think that the situation you've seen with Israel and the Democrats will be reflected there.

And it goes back, Natalie, to my original point about the gamble. I can't understate what a gamble this is. Now people in general like gamblers, when they win, we have movies about it and it's like, it's so amazing. He risked everything and it went really well, but it might not and I think that that's the nervousness of everyone.

What if, you know, this could be the one time it works, but is this just like the underwear memes, which is like attacker on question mark, question mark, question mark. Then like the regime falls or there's no nuclear program, the inability to follow that question mark and the not sure where the Americans would be when you started in the middle or at the end, and what damage would be done throughout that on what is the cornerstone of your security doctrine?

I mean, you've thrown all of your chips into the middle of the table, and apparently, according to Israeli military planners, the acceptable tolerable risk for civilian death in Israel for this operation was upwards of 4,000 civilians. So far, thank God, it's been a lot less, but it means that the Israeli Cabinet went into this with the full knowledge that this could be very bad for their population, and so it does really feel like they've thrown their chips in because for them, when they said that this was existential, they really meant it.

Natalie Orpett: Well, there's quite a lot to watch and we'll continue to do that as events are unfolding so quickly. I suspect we will have reason to come back to you to try to make sense of it all again sometime soon. But in the meantime Suzanne Maloney, Joel Braunold, thank you so much for joining us.

Joel Braunold: Thanks so much.

Suzanne Maloney: Thank you.

Natalie Orpett: The Lawfare Podcast is produced in cooperation with the Brookings Institution. You can get ad-free versions of this and other Lawfare podcasts by becoming a Lawfare material supporter at our website, lawfaremedia.org/support. You'll also get access to special events and other content available only to our supporters.

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