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cover of episode Trump enters the fray, but don’t underestimate Iran

Trump enters the fray, but don’t underestimate Iran

2025/6/23
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World in 10

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Farzan Sarbut
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Farzan Sarbut: 作为一名分析师,我认为伊朗最有可能采取一种经过校准的回应,以避免美国更大规模的报复,从而进一步将特朗普卷入战争。伊朗可能会采取类似于卡西姆·苏莱曼尼遇刺后的策略,即精确打击美国在伊拉克的主要基地,同时避免造成人员伤亡。2020年,美国和伊朗都可以声称自己取得了胜利,避免了局势进一步升级。这种模式对伊朗来说可能很有吸引力。当然,如果伊朗不造成美国人员伤亡,这种经过校准的回应可能为双方提供一个缓和局势的出口。但是,伊朗空军领导层在袭击的第一天就被摧毁,即使他们已经更换了领导人,但新领导人是否能像老领导那样精确地进行袭击仍是问题。此外,伊朗还可以利用伊拉克境内的组织对美国人员和基地发动低级别袭击,或者利用胡塞武装骚扰航运或美国海军资产。伊朗希望这些策略能够奏效。然而,美国,特别是特朗普总统,希望伊朗屈服并迅速达成协议,而伊朗的策略是至少在过渡时期需要抵抗。即使这种策略可能为双方提供暂时的缓和,但美国可能不会迅速跟进,因为局势升级的压力仍然存在,美国仍有进一步卷入的风险。我认为,以色列和特朗普可能低估了伊朗抵抗的意愿。我倾向于高估伊朗的能力和行动效率,但这并不意味着我们应该自满。伊朗将能够抵抗并继续战斗,但这种抵抗不一定能重新建立对美国的威慑,并且除了试图关闭霍尔木兹海峡之外,无法造成高度破坏。即使伊朗成功关闭霍尔木兹海峡,预计它也会相对较快地重新开放,价格也会稳定下来。也许我们低估了伊朗测试核武器的能力,袭击前位于某个设施中的400公斤60%高浓缩铀现在下落不明。伊朗保留了足够的核基础设施,包括加固设施、离心机和其他硬件,并且可能还拥有400公斤高浓缩铀,因此可能在几周或几个月内(可能需要六个月或更长时间)组装核弹的核心部件并进行测试。袭击无疑削弱了伊朗的核能力,并推迟了核试验的前景,但问题是我们现在失去了对局势的控制。

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For the ones who get it done.

Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Alex Dibble and Stuart Willey. Donald Trump has boasted about monumental damage to Iran's nuclear sites after he jumped into the Israel-Iran conflict, ordering US strikes at the weekend. It's prompted Iranian generals to threaten a decisive response. They say Iran will never back down and missiles continue to fly.

With us to talk through what may happen next is the analyst Dr Farzan Sarbut, a managing researcher for the Global Governance Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute. He's long focused on Middle East security.

Farzan, Iran's strikes back at Israel are continuing, but they haven't hit U.S. interests so far. How do you think this is all going to play out? I think the most likely thing is that they'll attempt to give some kind of response, but they're going to try to calibrate that response so as not to elicit an even larger scale, more damaging response from the United States that further draws in President Trump into the war.

Now, that could take a number of forms. The assassination of Qasem Soleimani kind of presents a possible scenario. After his death in January 2020, Iran targeted a major U.S. base located in Iraq with its short-range ballistic missiles.

This was targeted so precisely that it was able to sustain damage to the actual base without necessarily killing U.S. personnel who were given forewarning and took protective cover. In that particular case, President Trump in 2020 and the U.S. was able to kind of

not further escalate because they could say Iran struck, but it was ineffective. And the Islamic Republic or the Iranians, for their part, could say that, listen, this was an unprecedented attack on the United States, which was true, and that we did, in fact, do damage. Both sides could kind of have their narrative without the need to further escalate. So that presents a model and a model that might be very attractive for the Iranians right now. Would a calibrated response like that, would it give an off-ramp for Tehran or even for Donald Trump?

It's potentially an off ramp for the Iranians in the sense that they, they elicit again, a far, a kind of large scale attack and it works only if they don't kill us personnel. So we have to keep in mind that the leadership of Iran's aerospace force was, was destroyed base effective destroyed on the opening day of the strike. They've, they've replaced those losses as far as I'm aware, appointing new kind of senior leaders within that organization and,

although not all their names have been announced. The problem is, will they be able to kind of calibrate an attack as precisely as that old leadership? Another option is to use these groups in Iraq, for example, to conduct lower-level attacks against personnel bases. And, of course, there's always the option for the Houthis to harass either shipping or U.S. naval assets. The Iranians will hope this will thrive for the operand. Really, the problem is that I think the U.S., the United States, and President Trump in particular,

wants the Iranians to capitulate and to quickly reach a deal. And the Iranian calculus is that at least in the interim, they need to resist. So while it might kind of provide an immediate off ramp for both sides, not for the US to quickly follow up. I think the problem is that those escalatory pressures remain in place. And so there's a risk that the US will be drawn in further down the road. That

There doesn't seem to be capitulation yet. Can Iran, do you think, keep striking targets in Israel at this tempo? Yeah, it can. You know, there's different estimates of its medium range ballistic missile stocks. You know, that stockpile, depending on how much is continues to kind of be destroyed, you

And Iran's kind of launcher capacity, they could continue to do regular launches of anywhere from a handful to one or two dozen, up to 30, I think we've seen since the initial days of the strike for the foreseeable future, whether that's a few weeks or even a few months.

After that, Iran will still retain a stockpile of both cruise missiles as well as drones that could continue to strike Israel, albeit those are going to, especially the drones, are going to be much less effective than the medium-range ballistic missiles that they're using right now, both in terms of penetrating Israeli airspace and hitting their target and then destroying the target. What do you make of Israel's strikes today on the Ivin prison we've all heard of?

And it seems the besieged military headquarters, these don't seem to be part of the nuclear program that Israel says is the reason behind this conflict. That's right. So in the opening days of the attack, Israel really targeted Iran's military hierarchy to slow its reaction function. It also went after Iran's air defenses and offensive military capacity, mainly in the form of its missile defense.

missiles in order to prevent Iran from retaliating. And then, as you noted, it went against nuclear targets. Now, the Israeli government, specifically Israel Katz, the minister of defense last Friday, announced that the Israeli government will be shifting further towards striking both strategic targets, and that could include energy or infrastructure that's needed to keep the country running on a day-to-day basis, as well as governmental targets.

targets. This also kind of shows that we could have a creeping logic where the campaign starts as being much more narrowly focused on military and nuclear targets. But over time, there's a drift towards the goal of regime change. Farzan, financial markets are skittish about the risks of Iran's threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz, potentially spiking up oil prices. Who would take that decision?

Ultimately, that's going to come down to Iran's leader, who's believed to be in hiding and at least somewhat incommunicado when it comes to using electronic devices, at least. And of course, Iran's Supreme National Security Council, which is kind of an interagency body that coordinates and builds consensus across

around national security decision, decision making. So those are really the two kind of entities or persons to look to for a decision to straight of Hormuz. And we still haven't seen anything. And I don't think that would come except in what the Islamic Republic would consider an apocalyptic scenario, right? Either the killing of the Supreme Leader, or a large scale, massive entry of the US into the war, short of the type of one off strike that we saw over the course of the weekend.

Donald Trump does seem to be mulling over that sort of apocalyptic situation, killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. Is this why we're not hearing anything from him? That's right. At a time of profound crisis in the country where the security of the system has been shattered, there's very little to be found of him, right? Of course, this is the security precautions they're taking. The concern is that as soon as he would be found, the Israelis would attempt to assassinate him.

And so he's made himself scarce. What we've also heard is certain key officials are no longer communicating with electronic devices, but finding other means to make the kind of communicate their decisions outward. But of course, that then kind of gives the appearance of a weakness of the system, right? Because it's foremost figures in hiding and unable to kind of appear before the public in a demonstration of strength.

Farzan, there's lots of analysis that the US and Israel together far outweigh Iran's military forces. Is there a risk the world is underestimating, though, Tehran's capability and their will to keep fighting? I think certainly Israel and President Trump probably underestimated the Islamic Republic's will to resist.

As to its actual capability to keep fighting in terms of inflicting real damage, what I found since the 7th of October is that and even before is that I tend to consistently overestimate the Islamic Republic's capabilities and their ability to be operationally effective. That's not to say we should be complacent.

Right. But but so they'll be able to resist and continue to fight. But that resistance won't necessarily translate into reestablishing deterrence with the U.S. and being able to cause a high level damage, except in the case of an attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz. Although even there, I would expect that if they did achieve a closure, it would be reopened relatively quickly.

and prices would stabilize. I'll also kind of add that maybe a risk that we are underestimating is the ability of Iran to actually test a nuclear weapon. The 400 kilograms of high and rich uranium at 60%, which was located in one of the facilities prior to the strike, is now at large. No one knows where it is. And Iran retains sufficient infrastructure, whether it's kind of hardened facilities, it retains enough supply

centrifuges and other hardware of that type, and it retains obviously potentially the 400 kilograms of high-enriched uranium, over the course of a few weeks, a few months, likely we're talking about a period of six months or longer, it could bring together the core elements of a nuclear bomb and actually conduct a test. The attacks have certainly degraded its nuclear capacity and pushed that prospect further out, but the problem is now we've lost track of things and they could

Dr. Farzan Sabat, from the Geneva Graduate Institute, thank you very much. Dr. Farzan Sabat, from the Geneva Graduate Institute, thank you very much.

as US and Israeli leaders talk up the chances of regime change. For more on the risks and the appetite for changing the leadership in Iran, listen back to our episode on Friday, where The Times' Richard Spencer joined us to unpack toppling Iran's regime, a gamble for Trump. That's it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. We'll see you tomorrow.

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