The Israeli-Iranian War: How We Got Here & What It Means
27:53 Share

♪♪

You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name's Ryan Evans, founder of War on the Rocks. I'm sitting here with two phenomenal experts, and I'll let them introduce themselves. We're here to talk about the Israeli-Iranian confrontation and the still ongoing exchange of strikes. Hi, I'm Nicole Grajewski. I'm a fellow in the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment, and I work on Russia-Iran relations and also Iran's missile force and nuclear program.

My name is Rachel Brandenburg. I'm the Washington Managing Director and Senior Fellow at the Israel Policy Forum. I've been working on Middle East regional politics and geopolitics for most of the past couple decades. Real quick, before we jump into this conversation, I want to tell you about Cogs of War, our newest podcast in Vertical, which is focused on defense technology and industry. It's produced in partnership with our friends at Booz Allen Hamilton. Listen to this awesome trailer and subscribe to Cogs of War on your podcast app of choice.

I was told last year, previously, that we should not use return on investment because that is not a realistic concept within the government. There's no actual return on investment. And it hurt my soul.

We have very clear objectives in mind. We want to tie software to warfighter outcomes. These aren't science experiments. And it's on us to make it convincing in a way that's not sort of like condescending, but make the argument meet people where they are about what problems they're trying to solve.

We have made strategic pronouncements that we have been utterly unable to resource. So there's a massive divorce between the strategy and policy wings of, I would argue, both parties and the ability to effectively resource those strategies and policies. And now back to the conversation.

So we're recording this on Tuesday morning, and things will change by the time this comes out, probably sometime either Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. So keep that in mind, dear listener. But I'd like to start, everyone who's listening to this understands what happened, so we don't need to really recount the news as far as Israel's launch strikes. We'll get into some of the damage or what we know about it. But Nicole, pre-release, what do you think?

Pre-Israeli strikes, could you give us a laydown of the Iranian nuclear complex as it existed? Yeah, sure. So prior to the Israeli strikes, Iran's nuclear program was advancing quite rapidly. And this was a result of the Trump administration's withdrawal from the JCPOA in 2018. Iran was actually engaged in negotiations with the U.S. And the Sunday after the strikes, there was supposed to be a meeting between the U.S.,

and the Iranians on negotiating some kind of bilateral agreement on the Iran nuclear program. That obviously didn't occur. And so at this moment, Iran is on this kind of cusp of nuclear weapons. It's a threshold state, but it has not made that decision, nor has it weaponized. But still, it's kind of in a precarious situation at the moment. Iran was enriching uranium at primarily two sites, highly enriched uranium at two sites, which was Natanz. And

and also Fordow. Iran also had fuel production facilities in Esfahan, and that was previously targeted in Israeli strikes with the air defenses back in October. Iran also has a really non-functional heavy water reactor in Arak, though Israel doesn't seem like they've targeted that so far. Why do you think Israel chose this time to make a move? I think there are a number of factors. Israel has been trying to get the United States to strike Iran for many, many years, even many decades.

particularly since the beginning of the Trump administration. Israel has identified a window of opportunity to go after Iran's nuclear program, not only because it progressed as much as it has since Trump pulled out of the JCPOA, but because Israel has pretty much decimated Iranian proxies around them that were previously both a threat to Israel and a deterrent against striking Iran. The conventional wisdom was Hezbollah was there to deter Israel from striking Iran. Israel pretty much took out Hezbollah's military capabilities

in its operation against Hezbollah last year. I think Israel also was watching Trump's negotiation process and understanding that there was very, very low likelihood that the Trump administration was going to achieve a deal that was to be sufficient. Israel had been saying full dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program was all that it would accept, and that didn't seem to be the way that the negotiations were going. Israel also

was watching the timeline, I think, that Trump set out. He said 60 days for negotiations, and then we'll see what happens. So on day 61, Prime Minister Netanyahu launched the strikes that we saw take off last Thursday. The Iranians said that they were pretty close to a deal. And basically, one of the last final points of agreement that they were still trying to sort out was to what level enrichment they would be allowed. And they kept hearing from the Trump side,

No enrichment, maybe 3%, maybe 5%. What were you all hearing on this? I mean, there was quite a bit of debate about the extent of this kind of agreement with the United States. I think that the Iranians made it seem like the U.S. was on board with some of their proposals. There was some speculation that there might be a multinational kind of consortium which would allow Iranian enrichment to exist, but also as a cooperative scheme with the countries in the Persian Gulf, potentially Saudi Arabia. They didn't really detail that much on this.

I think the main issue with the negotiations was that the U.S. administration really didn't have a clear vision going into it. And so the Iranians at times felt kind of blindsided by statements coming out from the U.S. And it didn't seem like actually there was much progress going on, a real substantial deal, but it did seem like there was at least some momentum towards a kind of understanding. I think there was also concern that the U.S. wouldn't achieve what the Israelis—concern on the part of the Israelis—that the U.S. just wouldn't achieve what the Israelis felt was sufficient.

And because of all the sort of confusion over what was actually happening, statements that contradicted each other, nobody really had the confidence that this would get to where it had to. What the Israelis think is sufficient is basically a maximalist demand that Iran can't enrich anything or do anything. And they wanted it to go beyond just a nuclear deal and be missiles and everything. The U.S., at least, depending on who you ask and what day of the week you ask, President Trump and the people working for him had...

still aggressive but milder demands as to what that agreement would look like. How did you view those as shifting over time in response to what signals? At first, it wasn't clear that the U.S. administration really had an understanding about the kind of fuel cycle. There were statements about enrichment that seemed to contradict each other from Witkoff. I remember, you know, they kept on mentioning the 3.67% limit on enrichment, which was actually in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

for Iran and then they backtrack and say, you know, 20%. And so at times it looked like they were going to get a weaker agreement than the JCPOA or the Iran nuclear deal. It seems like the U.S. administration didn't have a clear vision, I guess, going into that. It also seems like, from what I've read and heard, Witkoff didn't bring anyone with nuclear expertise to these meetings except for once with the Iranians, which kind of limited what they could actually realistically talk about. Yeah, I mean, what was interesting is Iran has been involved in these negotiations for like 20 years and

And they have a very strong technical expertise and pretty good negotiators. So Witkoff would go to these meetings alone without anybody accompanying him. And the Iranians would pretty much run circles around Witkoff when it came to some of the technical issues. Maybe in Rome, they had the technical teams come. But that was pretty late into the negotiations already. When was that? Rome was three or four weeks ago, I think. One of the things that had concerned me about these negotiations from the start was exactly that. There was so little technical expertise involved.

And this issue of all the various deals that President Trump has set out to make requires technical expertise. The devil is in the details. And because it's such a complicated conversation, it's not really something that you can put a 60-day timeline on. It's not really something that you can sort of bully the Iranians into agreeing to, which seemed to be the approach the administration was taking.

And the same groups that push Trump, help architect out Trump pulling out of the JCPOA in his first term, most notably, I think the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and Mark Dubowitz, mobilize behind this idea that no amount of enrichment was possible, which I think also created some domestic pressure and was one of the reasons that Trump and people working for him were vacillating on exactly what they would accept.

Yeah, certainly. I think that there was quite a strong constituency within the United States. Not among the population, I would say, in Washington. Yeah, maybe in D.C. Ryan's opinion only. You don't have to agree. Among certain think tanks and... The JCPOA was very popular among the American population. It wasn't really in good faith either. I mean, zero enrichment was a Bush administration kind of position, and that didn't really take much. It really wasn't received well in Iran, and it also didn't really achieve anything

But you see these people kind of parroting the same narratives. And of course, these were the people who lobbied to withdraw from the JCPOA. So we wouldn't have really been here if it wasn't for them. A lot of the same people you're seeing now argue that the U.S. should get involved militarily. It was interesting to me how quickly both politicians and some advocacy groups fell in line behind Israeli strikes and argued that the U.S. needs to get involved or there's just no way to end it. Yeah, it's the same people. So the strikes happened.

Israel, as it often does, displayed amazing tactical acumen and the planning was impressive. What do we know about the damage that's been caused? I know it's still new and it's still hard to actually ascertain what damage has been caused, but what can we discern so far? So Israel really targeted Iran's command and control. You saw that at the really initial stages of the operation on Friday morning.

or Thursday night here in D.C. They targeted pretty much the entirety of the IRGC leadership, so the equivalent of what our Joint Chiefs of Staff would be. They targeted missile production facilities. They've also targeted the main kind of frontline missile bases that Iran uses to launch strikes on Israel. So that impacted Iranians' ability to retaliate or respond.

They targeted several oil production facilities. And of course, they targeted Natanz, which is an enrichment facility and the above ground enrichment facility. And they look like they also targeted the nuclear center at Esfahan as well. I think we've seen over the past couple of days a series of escalatory maneuvers also, where not only did they go from targeting military sites to the oil and gas facilities, but then yesterday, I believe, the Iranian broadcasting building in Tehran. And so Israel is increasingly saying,

if you're gonna target our infrastructure and our civilian sites, we're gonna come after your infrastructure and your political sites.

I think it also has to do with the ambition, the political ambition of the operation. Netanyahu's not been shy about tying this and also the way that he called it rising lion trying to appeal to Persian culture. He's been clear that he wants to see the Iranian people rise up against the pretty vicious regime and targeting the state media outlet is one way to deny the regime the ability to talk to its people, which I think the political logic, I see it for that, even though it's almost certainly against the laws of war, but that hasn't bothered Israel or Iran before. Right.

Iran is actually facing quite a bit of a crisis because of some of the targeting strategy, especially in Tehran. A lot of citizens can't escape Tehran despite Trump issuing a warning at 2 a.m. for a full evacuation of the city. Because of the hits on the oil production and the oil facilities, there's been shortages, there's been flooding in the country. So there's a huge impact on the population there. And so I don't understand the logic, essentially, what Netanyahu wants is kind of

galvanizing the Iranian population, it seems like it's actually bringing people together more so or against these kind of attacks than actually, you know, being a divisive factor. There has been a lot of schadenfreude from what we can see on social media among Iranians, seeing some of these people involved in the repression of protests being taken out by Israel. Oh, I'm sure. I mean, the majority of the Iranian population don't like the regime. This is a repressive regime. There's been multiple protests. But what is...

Kind of really central to the Iranian consciousness or I guess population is this sense of solidarity against this foreign power bombing civilians and leveling entire apartment complexes. I think also we've seen a lot of tactical prowess from the Israelis. The operation they pulled off against Hezbollah militarily was fairly exquisite. What we saw over the first few days in Iran was pretty impressive. It's the what comes next. It's the what's the strategy beyond that? How does this war end? And if the goal is regime change, then what?

You can't just destroy a bunch of infrastructure and leadership and expect a new leader to rise up. There's a lot that needs to happen between the destruction and the rebuilding. Yes, and we've seen this sort of pattern before. Israel can start out very precise, which it has in Iran. I mean, we haven't seen the leveling of apartment complexes in Iran yet. We've seen missiles hit, go through windows and things. But then, as we saw against Hezbollah in Lebanon, that can quickly turn into something much more imprecise where...

a lot of civilians become part of the collateral damage and I guess we'll see what happens next as Israel runs out of these sort of

high-value targets that they have exquisite intelligence on, that they had the benefit of, if we're to believe Israel, a year, year and a half of planning on taking out. I think some of where this goes will depend on whether the U.S. gets involved and how. The Israelis have clearly been calling for the U.S. involvement, everyone from officials to analysts. The only way to end this is for the U.S. to get involved. The only way for this to be a decisive victory is for the U.S. to get involved. I haven't seen any indication of a plan that the Israelis have other than for the U.S. to get involved.

although I don't put it past them, that there could be very creative ways to get at Fordow, given some of the creativity we've seen them operationalize thus far. Now, the Trump administration, and I think there may have been the little bit of the NSC convened overnight. I'm not sure if that's happened yet. Now, President Trump needs to decide, does he get involved? If so, in what way? Does he help Israel strike Fordow? We've

We've heard even just this morning concern over not wanting to cause a nuclear disaster in striking Fordow. So if they're going to do that, it needs to be done very carefully. But where this goes will depend on who else is willing to join Israel. And as we're recording this, according to reliable open source intelligence accounts on social media, there are American tankers flying towards the Middle East with F-35s in tow. So we'll see if they're just positioning or if

if this is about, you know, Trump has said this needs to end in a deal now, if this is pressure or if he intends on America getting involved. It seems like the Israeli targeting strategy hasn't really focused on nuclear facilities as much as missile bases and also missile production sites and kind of conventional military aspects, as well as some critical infrastructure. They could, in theory, target Fordow and target the entrances of Fordow and kind of block Iran from actually accessing that or getting material out. However, they haven't done that. And I think that's

That's really emblematic or reflective of their desire to bring the U.S. in to eventually target Fordow. The IAEA at least reported that there was damage to the enrichment halls at Natanz. Yes, they definitely damaged the power supply of Natanz, and that could affect the centrifuge halls below ground. They also targeted the BROV ground facility at Natanz, and so that's been confirmed. Just in terms of if you're looking at kind of the reported airstrikes,

They're not concentrated heavily on the nuclear sites. Thus far, there's no indication or there's not as much of a concern, I think, about the radiation impact of the strikes at Natanz, though that could change. Obviously, you know, this is fissile material. And so the IAEA is quite concerned about this, especially if it ends up targeting Fordow as well. That's a very interesting point. I think for Israel, and I'm speculating here, but they've been very thoughtful about the layers of operations that they've conducted over the past few days.

And to me, their incentive to take out the missile sites and some of the missile programs was defensive as much as offensive. That was going to be the first thing that Iranians used to attack Israel. And we've seen that, but we've seen waves of strikes in far fewer numbers than anyone predicted prior to the Israeli operations beginning last week. So we've seen them take out launchers. We've seen them taking out personnel. We've seen them take out missile arsenals and in doing so prevent their own population from being attacked.

attacked in as much volume as Iran might have been able to do otherwise. You've studied Iran's missile force very closely. Iran has been lobbying quite a lot of missiles over Israel. In fact, Nick Hansen, our COO, was in Israel while this happened, unfortunately, very bad timing and had to take shelter quite a few times. What have we learned about Iranian targeting? How much magazine depth they have left if they're being effective, if they're not being effective?

Well, in the initial stages of the operation, it was clear that the kind of decapitation of the leadership of the IRGC Aerospace Force impacted their targeting strategy and also their initial retaliation. So you saw much lower numbers of launches. This was primarily done from central parts of Iran, so Esfahan and Tehran, rather than Tabriz or

or Kermanshah, which was usually where they would target Israel in April and October. They tended to struggle with actually figuring out a strike package, I think, in Iran, or kind of to miss their targets. And eventually they regrouped, but you see Iran actually targeting a lot more civilian or kind of population centers than they did in April and October. And that's partly because Iran

Iran has issues with accuracy, but also they're struggling to target military targets. And so one way to be more effective is actually hitting some of these targets in civilian population centers. And so that's worrisome in terms of escalation. In general, Iran's missile force, at least for its MRBMs, Iran doesn't seem like they've exhausted their missiles, but their launchers have been, their mobile launchers especially, have been targeted by Israel. And are still being targeted. Yeah. And so that constrains them. And

And then, of course, they do have short-range ballistic missiles, which are not being used, but potentially could be used against the United States, either by Iran or Iraqi militias. One of the things I think that's impacting Israelis also, and we'll see over the next few days how much this impacts Israeli government decision-making, again, depending what the United States does, is the impact of the Israeli military on the United States.

is that Iran is not only targeting but hitting population centers. And Israelis, I think, have gotten very accustomed to the various layers of missile defense protecting them, which it still is, relatively speaking, because not very many of the missiles are actually striking and hitting, but some are, and these with far higher payloads than Hamas rockets have had or even Hezbollah rockets have had.

They're just causing far more damage and more casualties and far more injuries than Israelis have lived through in a very long time. So we'll see over time if that also impacts the Israeli government's willingness to continue this operation and for how long. One thing that's clear is Iran has been using heavier warheads in some of the strikes. I think it was maybe the fourth or fifth salvo.

Iran's been launching so many salvos and it's kind of hard to keep track of them. But it came after the really dismal performance in the initial retaliation, where Iran used actually some of its more advanced solid propellant missiles. Whereas in the earlier stages, it seemed like they were just lobbing whatever they had to kind of muster up some type of retaliation. Right.

An anonymous US official claimed that Trump vetoed Netanyahu's targeting of Khamenei. That's the Supreme Leader of Iran. What do you make of that? I mean, so he's actually been, to some extent, a restraint on Iran's development of a nuclear weapon. He has this so-called fatwa, this famous nuclear fatwa that prohibits the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. He's also kind of pushed back against the development or the political decision to weaponize. That being said, as he's aging, he's 85 years old,

There's going to be a real crisis on leadership succession. So I think Trump recognizes that the, I guess, assassination of the Supreme Leader would cause a crisis and maybe destabilize the situation more. The thinking on that, I think it's just like kind of unclear with the Supreme Leader stuff. I think President Trump also still really wants a deal. He prides himself on being able to achieve deals. He wants to be the winner in all the sort of scenarios that he sets out to succeed in. And this one, too,

We've seen from even the statements he was making as recently as yesterday that he still seems to think that he can bring the Iranians to the table and dismantle their nuclear program through negotiations and through diplomacy and somehow stop Israel from proceeding with its operations. So arguably, if you take out the supreme leader at this point, there really is no government to negotiate with because of the sort of reconstitution of governance and needing to find a new leader. So I could see

President Trump not wanting Israel to go after Khamenei, both because of negotiations and because he doesn't want to be dragged into war and he doesn't want the region to be in sort of all out war. I think he genuinely wanted to be the president that ended wars and achieve deals. So Israel is sort of preventing him from doing both of those things at the moment. Rachel,

Yeah.

Sure. Tremendous risks. I mean, one of the most indicative things to, I think, any of us watching that Israel might be preparing to strike or that the U.S. might be preparing to strike was about a week ago when the U.S. started drawing down the embassy in Baghdad and around the rest of the region and calling home military dependents from bases around the region. Embassies get drawn down, ordered departure, authorized departure. Those are all big deals. To me, an even bigger deal was bringing dependents home from military bases. In Iraq, our forces certainly are a target.

What's been interesting is we haven't seen them being targeted. I think partially because Iran is still trying to regroup and very focused on striking Israel. If I'm among those militia groups, I'm also wondering if they too have been infiltrated, given the level of infiltration that the Israelis achieved within Iran and what Israel had done to Hezbollah and what we've seen Israel do to the Houthis. Basically, Israel has gone after any of the

the Iranian proxies who have come after them. The Iranian-backed militia in Iraq have not so much been a target, but they haven't been targeting Israel, and they really haven't been targeting the U.S. recently. If Iran doesn't want the United States to get involved, they probably want to keep those groups sidelined for the time being. Yes, exactly. That was going to be my next comment, that we have seen that they are pretty responsive to Iranian direction.

And so at times when Iran has wanted to sort of punch the U.S. in the face, they can deploy their militia in Iraq against U.S. assets and personnel. And at times that they want them to stop, they can pull them back. I think one of the interesting things to watch, depending where this war goes, is how does this impact the balance of power in Iraq, where, as you said, Iran is their neighbor. They're very close relations on all levels. They've also, for the most part, always wanted the United States to remain a partner.

I think they, despite the political challenges over the past almost 10, I guess a little over 10 years now, the United States have been in Iraq at the invitation of the government of Iraq. And despite kind of a lot of political controversy and back and forth over, we want you here, we don't want you here, every time the U.S. has gone to leave, the Iraqi government has actually said, no, please stay, even if quietly.

So it has been in the interest of the Iraqi government to maintain a balance between Iran and the West and the United States, which we may see turned upside down if Iran is really weakened to the extent that Israel seems to be trying to weaken them. I mean, one thing that is interesting is prior to Israeli attacks on Iran, there was a lot of debate within Iran about the utility of their support for the so-called axis of resistance.

And there was even some rumors that they might even be willing to negotiate with the United States on decreasing their control for the Popular Mobilization Unit, which is a kind of Iraqi militia that they back. So Iran seemed to be kind of pulling back from this kind of forward defense strategy through the kind of non-state actors and proxies that they partner with. But I don't know if that calculus is changing. They obviously don't have Hezbollah. I mean,

Had Hezbollah still been around, I think Iran would have a very different, they'd be in a very different situation and probably be a lot more stronger when it comes to actually raising the kind of the stakes for Israel. What have we seen from Russia since this crisis started? Well, Putin and Trump had a phone call and Putin wished him happy birthday. And I guess it was an hour long phone call where they talked about de-escalation. And Trump said that Putin understands Iran very well. The Russians actually were quite interesting here. So

Right after the initial strikes, Putin made simultaneous calls to Netanyahu and Pesach Kiyan, who's the president of Iran. And this is actually different from October, where Putin just didn't call the Israelis. And the Israeli-Russia relationship was kind of waning and strained because of October 7th and the war in Ukraine. But now Putin's coming in and trying to kind of be this mediator in the situation.

Whether the Russians can do anything or not, I think that's, you know, up for debate. But it does seem like the Russians are quite concerned about the escalation between Iran and Israel.

and actually are trying to serve as somewhat of an intermediary. Given how close Russia and Iran have gotten over the last few years, and especially how important Iran has become as a defense supplier to Russia with these Shahid drones, do you think that any of the Israeli strikes, I mean, have we seen any evidence that the Israeli strikes have affected those facilities? I know not all the production takes place in Iran anymore, but... The Shahid drones...

It doesn't really impact that. I mean, right now, the kind of advances that the Russians have done with the Shah heads in their domestic production is it's a completely different system to some extent. And that's all done in Russia. So Iran's not really needed in that area. But potentially with short range ballistic missiles, there's been reports that Iran's delivering that to Russia. Some of the production facilities that were targeted did include those that produce the short range missiles.

ballistic missiles that Iran has allegedly provided to the Russians, though it's just unclear that that's really going to be a huge impact on this kind of defense relationship, partly because the

the main thrust of it is so much domesticated within Russia. Something I was thinking about as I also saw the readout of that happy birthday phone call was it brought me back to the initial years after Russia had intervened in Syria and the United States was trying to negotiate over various deconfliction mechanisms, ceasefire. There were so many ways in which the United States was trying to get Russia to cooperate in the ways that we wanted them to and to move in the directions that we wanted them to.

And time and time again, we basically saw them pull the wool over our eyes and continue doing whatever they wanted. So I question whether there's actually an ability for a constructive negotiation that involves Russia and Iran, but points for creativity. I mean, one thing, though, is when in Syria, the Russians were very cooperative with the Israelis. I mean, so the Israelis and Russians had this kind of deep confliction channel, this hotline. And

And Russia did try to at least restrain Iranian militias from operating in southern Syria. So they were successful around like 2018, 17 and kind of being this in-between between Iran and Israel. But that kind of their legitimacy as a mediator really collapsed with the war in Ukraine and then also more so with October 7th. Yeah, October 7th set in motion quite the chain of events.

Thank you for listening to the War on the Rocks podcast. Please don't forget to check out our membership program at warontherocks.com slash membership. Also, don't miss our new show, Cogs of War, produced in partnership with Booz Allen Hamilton. It's on defense technology and industrial issues. You'll love it. Subscribe on your podcast app of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy.