Tehran to Taipei: the Risks of Strategic Overreach | Dmitri Alperovitch
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What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world.

My guest on this episode of Hidden Forces is Dmitry Alperovitch, the co-founder and executive chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, the co-founder of leading cybersecurity company CrowdStrike, and the author of World on the Brink, How America Can Beat China in the Race for the 21st Century. Dmitry made his first appearance on the podcast in late 2021, when he argued that Russia was preparing an imminent invasion of Ukraine, a prediction that turned out to be devastatingly accurate.

In his subsequent appearances, he has made the argument that America is in a new Cold War with China and that Taiwan is the strategic flashpoint that risks triggering a devastating conflict between two nuclear powers before the end of this decade.

In the first hour of this conversation, Dmitry and I scrutinized Israel's decision to initiate a series of targeted strikes against Iran's nuclear program, including their decision to assassinate key nuclear scientists and senior members of the IRGC. We discuss America's decision to join in on this campaign, Iran's response, additional repercussions that may stem from these attacks,

as well as political conditions within the Islamic Republic and the potential that this latest round of violence could lead to a collapse of the Iranian government or invite a coup against the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.

In the second hour, I asked Dmitry whether he thinks Trump's decision to involve the American military directly in Israel's war with Iran was ultimately in America's interests. We discuss how this move is being perceived by other regional players like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, how it alters the security dynamics in the Middle East, and how it changes his own assessments of the risks that Washington faces in its larger Cold War with the People's Republic of China.

If you want access to all of this conversation, go to hiddenforces.io slash subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now.

If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q&A calls with guests, access to special research and analysis, in-person events and dinners, you can also do that on our subscriber page. And if you still have questions, feel free to send an email to info at hiddenforces.io and I or someone from our team will get right back to you.

And with that, please enjoy this incredibly thoughtful and timely conversation with my guest, Dmitri Alperovitch. Dmitri Alperovitch, welcome back to Hidden Forces. It's so good to be with you. It's great to see you. You look like you're in a hotel in Romania or somehow this fireplace you've got there, very European. So it's great having you back, man.

I don't remember the last time we spoke. I think it was to talk about your book, World on the Brink, which has relevance for today's conversation. Of course, listeners know you from your first appearance on the show when you came on in

December of 2021, where you made really a phenomenal call saying that the Russians were going to invade. I think your original estimate was as early as January. They ended up invading in February. No, I said before the end of the winter. Before the end of the winter. Just barely. I made it. No, it was quite a pressing call.

And then you came on after that to talk about the implications of what had transpired in the months since our previous conversation. And then you came on to talk about your book about a year ago or so called World on the Brink, which covers this new Cold War between the US and China. And I am very interested to talk about the implications of what's happening in the Middle East for the broader geostrategic competition between these two superpowers. But before we do that, let's just kind of recap. We're recording this on the afternoon of Monday,

June 23rd, the Iranians have already provided, it sounds like, their complete response to America's bombing that happened over the weekend. Bring us up to speed on what's transpired here first, maybe consolidate the significant actions that the Israelis took, why in your interpretation the US followed suit, what the Americans did. What do we know about what they did? Because I feel like

There's a lot of speculation about whether or not the bombing was actually effective or whether it was essentially just for show. So what do we know? When will we know what we need to know? And then what can we surmise about the Iranian response? And is this more of the same from the Iranians?

Yeah, all good questions. By the way, at the start of the year, I actually made another prediction in January. I said that there'll be a multi-day campaign by Israel against Iranian nuclear sites at a dinner with a friend of mine that recorded it on a public website, Oren Hoffman. And so I was pretty convinced going into the year that Bibi would take this action. I did not anticipate in all fairness that the U.S. would join in. But once it became pretty clear that

Fordow was just very, very risky for the Israelis to take, probably would have required a commander raid. You obviously saw the United States join in and use its massive ordnance penetrators, these 30,000 pound bombs, 14 of which were dropped on Iran, probably around 12 on Fordow itself and another couple on the Tans.

Important to start with, why did Israel do this? And why did it do this now, right? There's a lot of confusion out there in the media about the timeline to the bomb, right? There's a lot of talk. Are they weeks away? Are they months away? Are they years away? My view is that it's unknowable, fundamentally, and also irrelevant. It's unknowable because

At its most basic level, it depends on the pace with which they undertake the race of the bomb, right? And so far, this has been the longest nuclear program in history. It began under the Shah in the 1970s, was paused for a little while, and then resumed in the 1980s, and has been going on ever since. And Iran had made a strategic decision

for many decades now to basically be a threshold nuclear state, meaning that it would have all of the ingredients to produce a nuclear weapon, but they delayed the decision on the final assembly.

And this is where you hear U.S. intelligence community assessments going back to 2003 that the Iranians had decided to pause the weaponization of their nuclear program. And the assessment, at least as far as we know, has not changed.

What caused them to pause? Well, in 2003, you may remember a significant event happened. Sure, there was a significant event happened March of 2003. Was that the reason? The Iraq war? Everyone believes that was the reason that shook them up, our invasion of Iraq. They thought that they might be next. Remember the sensible reason for invading Iraq was

was to stop Saddam from developing its WMD program, which turned out not to be there. But the Iranians did have a WMD program, a particularly nuclear one, and they were very concerned that they would be next. So they decided to pause the weaponization. They did not pause

all the ingredients you need to build a nuclear weapon, particularly the enrichment, which is the hardest step really, enriching uranium. And it's a little bit like, you know, you can use a couple of analogies here. The analogies I've used in the last couple of days is that it's akin to buying the IKEA bed, but not assembling it and just leaving it in the storage room of your house.

The intent clearly is that one day you would build it, maybe when your guests come over and you would use it, right? You didn't just buy it for it to always sit in the bag disassembled. And that's exactly what they were trying to do with this program is to have all the ingredients. And then if and when the decision is made to assemble, they could do it very, very quickly. Can you walk me, just before you continue, I'll just pause for a second here. I don't want you to lose your train of thought, but just explain that to me because I don't quite get it. I suppose I get that it's worse...

for the international community if they have a nuclear weapon, but once they have it, they're done. So what would be the costs associated with completing the program is, I suppose, the appropriate way of asking this question. Why would they not have just completed it? It's an interesting decision that they've made. Obviously, when you look at other states like North Korea, they actually rushed to develop a nuclear bomb. And in retrospect, you might say that was a mistake by the Iranians to think that being a threshold nuclear power would give them enhanced deterrence, but would not essentially cause them to suffer the type of

bombing campaigns that they actually ended up suffering this month. So their thought process was, you know, as long as we stay below the threshold of assembling the bomb,

we would be fined. Was it also concerns about being sanctioned? Well, no, not necessarily because, of course, they've been under massive sanctions for many years now, and they were willing to endure that to have the uranium enrichment capability, right? They were never willing to give this up, even in the run-up to this bombing campaign when the United States was negotiating with them yet again, and Donald Trump

said, "We want to have no indigenous enrichment of uranium in Iran. We're willing to build basically a consortium of countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United States, maybe some others, to do joint enrichment for your civilian nuclear power plants." And they said, "No, we want to own enrichment." So they were never willing to give it up no matter what the threat was because they wanted to have that capability, right? They wanted to have the capability to have nuclear deterrence.

to eventually have the ability to have a bomb if they decide to run down that path. And the key thing about the enrichment is that you need enriched uranium for civilian nuclear power. There are a couple of different nuclear reactors, but the reactor that Iran has in Bashir that the Russians had built for them in the 1990s that supplies some of the electricity for Iran does require enriched uranium, only up to about 3%, 4% enrichment.

The Iranians have been enriching up to 60%.

And there is virtually no civilian purpose for 60% enriched uranium. There's a couple of tiny medical isotope type of needs for it, but this is not something that anyone takes seriously that Iran really requires 60% enrichment uranium. And the key about 60% enrichment enriched uranium is that once you have 60% enriched uranium, it's very, very easy to enrich it up to about 90%, which is what you need to actually put it

put it into a bomb, right? And they not only have been enriched in uranium, they've been stockpiling it. So they have over 400 kilograms, as the IAEA said in their report just a couple of weeks ago, of 60% enriched uranium, which is enough to produce about nine nuclear bombs, right? So they've been building all these different ingredients. And by the way, the other thing that we've seen is

in news reporting from the Wall Street Journal and some other outlets in the last six months or so, is that that weaponization program to actually assemble the nuclear weapon to test the initiator, to test the explosion, to simulate the explosions, that had been paused in 2003 as assessed by the US intelligence community. But now there is some reporting out of the media that recently Iran had resumed work

work on that theoretical development of actually assembling the bomb. Not going forward with the assembly itself, but to test various components of it. Who was reporting that and what were the sources that were cited? Do we know? I have to go back and look, but at least Wall Street Journal was one of the reporting outlets. And I think they were citing anonymous intelligence officials. So is that essentially the argument that the Israelis made?

both to each other and to the Americans for why they initiated their bombing roughly 10 days ago? No. So what was the argument that they made? And I didn't mean to cut you off either, so feel free to add to whatever you were already saying. Sure. We're a little bit long-winded here, so I'll try to shorten it up.

But basically, the Israelis made the decision. The program is advancing and is getting closer and closer to the ability of Iran to develop not just one nuclear weapon, but potentially as many as nine and potentially even more very, very quickly. The second thing that they were very concerned about is that Iran's ability to retaliate against a bombing campaign by the Israelis was at its lowest point that it's ever been, perhaps, in history. Because, of course, over the last...

20 months or so, you've had the decimation of many of the Iranian proxies, namely Hezbollah and Hamas. Since October 7th, that was a key part of the Iranian deterrence framework is to have these proxies launch attacks on Israel, shoot at Bahamiran. That piece was taken off the chessboard. And the second piece that was taken off the chessboard is Iranian air defenses had been neutralized in an Israeli strike in October of last year in retaliation for the ballistic missile attack that

that Iran had launched a month prior against Israel. And they had also targeted some of the ballistic missile fuel production facilities in Iran, which gave them assessment that Iran was not able to produce as many ballistic missiles

as they could in the past. So this was a perfect time to strike them and have relatively limited retaliation. So the case really was twofold. A, they're getting closer and closer to the point where they could get to the weapon much quicker if they choose to run to it. And two, this is the time to strike if you're ever going to strike it, right? And the third element, of course, of this was that they now had assessed correctly the president and the White House that would give them the green light

to both initiate the attack and most importantly, not stop them prematurely because they did assess that it would take them a week or two to inflict significant damage on Iran. So they needed a president that wouldn't tell them, guys, enough is enough. You got to stop this. And they got that with Donald Trump.

What gave them confidence that Trump would green light this, not just the bombing campaign, but that he would actually join in the conflict by striking Iran directly? Because presumably when they initiated this action, they already knew that they wouldn't have the munitions and ordinances to complete the job and to take out these other three facilities. If in fact the Americans have even been able to take them out again, we don't actually know. We're still waiting for that information. But what gave them confidence that they would actually be able to pull in the United States in this action?

I don't think they had that confidence. I didn't think that the United States would join him personally. And I think many people in Washington didn't either. You know, Donald Trump is the man that came into the White House famously opposed to military engagements, period, but certainly in the Middle East. So it was, I think, quite a surprise that he decided to undertake this action, not without some risk, as we saw tonight, as Iran retaliated against our military installation. How much of this was Netanyahu's

and his belief that he knows the president, he knows his personality, he knows how to push his buttons, and that he was able to offer him an opportunity to join on a victory parade, essentially, and claim credit for what was an Israeli operation. And that was how they got him to join in. I mean, how much of it was that personal relationship, do you think?

It's hard to tell, but I don't think the Israelis count on the United States joining in. I do think they had a plan for Fordow that did not include these mops, massive ordnance penetrators. That probably would have been a very risky commando operation on the ground to take out this facility that they wanted to leave to the very end. So they're, of course, deliriously happy that the United States did it for them without them having to do it themselves. But I don't think they counted on it.

So this is why this operation took place now. This is why I became confident back in January that Bibi would go for it.

It is not without risk, obviously. And you've seen ballistic missiles flying into Israel, dozens of deaths, hundreds of wounded as a result of it, significant destruction. So one estimate over a billion dollars of damage from those missiles. By the way, the Israelis believe that they got off very easy in this retaliation. They thought there would be many more casualties.

And they are amazed at how well it turned out and the fact that literally within 48 hours of the attack, they had complete dominance of the airspace in Tehran and were able to engage in this hunting campaign from missile launchers, ballistic missile launchers all across Iran. And they believe they've now taken out more than half of the missile launchers. That has resulted in significant diminishment of ballistic missiles flying into Israel on a daily basis, even though

there's tens of missiles still flying every single day, but not hundreds as you saw in the first two days of the campaign. So more questions and one point of clarification. You said that you became confident, this was January 2025. Just to be clear, you became confident not because of events taking place in Iran that increased the risk to Israel, but you became confident because

Israel had so decimated Iranian proxy networks that the opportunity to strike Iran with a minimal amount of blowback was now feasible.

Correct. And it would be fleeting because eventually those proxies would be rebuilt. The ballistic missile program would get back up and running in terms of at least fuel production. They would build more missiles and the air defenses would be rebuilt as well. So if you're going to strike Iran, as Bibi had wanted to do for decades, this was the time to do it. And I was fairly confident that Donald Trump would give them at least the green light. I didn't think he would join in, but at least give him the green light to do so.

Okay. Lots of questions. So one quick question. Besides the fact that the Israelis perceive to have the opportunity to do it, was there also a different willingness on the part of the Israeli public to take on the risk of a return strike from the Iranians this time around because of October 7th? In other words, even if the opportunity presented itself 10 years ago, would an Israeli government have been willing to go through with this? And in other words, would there have been the political will to be able to do it?

Absolutely. So October 7th changed everything for Israel and Israelis. In fact, they do not view this as a new conflict with Iran that they just launched a week and a half ago. They see this as a war that Iran and its proxies launched against them on October 7th.

And they have systematically been sort of destroying the ring of fire that the Iranians have helped to build up against Israel, first in Gaza and Hamas, Hezbollah in the north, some with Houthis in the south. And the head of the snake, as they call it, was in Iran.

And they see it as just a natural continuation of the October 7th war that you would finally go after the paymasters and the people that have built up these terrorist groups that have surrounded Israel.

So, I have a question. I've been following this conflict superficially by the standards of all those sorts of people that you hang around, but I've been following it for the last 20 years or so. And I've certainly been following Netanyahu's comments. Many of them delivered to the United Nations. Obviously not most of them, but the ones that are for international public consumption.

And regime change was always the most important thing to Bibi. Yes, the Iranian nuclear program was also a big one. So maybe that's actually not fair. The bomb was always sort of ever present in his comments, but regime change was right up there. And I'm confused, and I feel like many in the public are also confused about what both the Israeli objectives were in initiating these attacks, and then subsequently,

what the US objectives were, what their respective theories of victory are, and what would be necessary for them to be happy with these actions. So can you splice those out for us? What were those? Let's take the Israelis first. And where does regime change fit in? Yeah.

Well, Israel is not pursuing regime change. I don't think they think that they're capable of orchestrating regime change in Iran. They would certainly like to see it, but- Well, can I ask you something though to that effect? I saw that you also posted some audio. So this is the other thing that's fascinating with respect to how the Israeli security services, I don't know how you describe the total umbrella that encompasses the IDF, the Mossad and everything.

But the operation against Hezbollah was very sophisticated. There was also lots of psychological operations going on in order to create paranoia and confusion and mistrust among both Hezbollah and the IRGC. In this latest attack, it seems that they called what appear to be, if I'm not mistaken, members of the Iranian army, and that they sort of seem to make a distinction between IRGC

and the Iranian army in order to perhaps foment a kind of rebellion of sorts or to sort of marginalize the IRGC, which they perceive to be more radical and in some sense help create either a coup

of a more moderate government or moderate the existing government by again sidelining the IRGC. In other words, it seems like they actually went out of their way to in some sense focus on

what comes after for the regime. So am I right there? And can you actually fill those details out better than I can? Sure. So let's talk about the objectives. And by the way, I forgot to mention one other critical component of why now, and that was Syria. Because with the Assad regime falling in December of last year, this gave the Israeli airplanes a direct path into Tehran, flying over an airspace that no longer had air defense missiles. It's a much more direct flight than they would have had to take otherwise.

And that also contributed to their decision to go, I believe. But what are the objectives of this operation? So first and foremost, of course, it is the nuclear program and setting it back as much as possible. They know they can't destroy the program entirely. There is a lot of facilities.

Some of them are buried deep under the mountains. There's a lot of focus on Fordow, but there's another huge facility in Natanz buried under a mountain where they're believed to be producing centrifuges, not necessarily enriching, but producing, although they could start enriching in the future. Most people believe that that facility can't even be taken out.

out with this 30,000 massive ordnance penetrator that we just dropped on Fordow that you'd need to use a nuclear weapon to have any chance of destroying it. So there are a lot of capabilities that Iran is going to retain. One big question right now in terms of battle damage assessment is what happened to that

400 kilograms of 60% of rich uranium. Did it get buried under the tunnels of Fordow when we struck, or was it taken out? There were some trucks that popped up there a few days ago that could have easily taken that uranium out of the facility. So I'm not sure anyone knows what happened to it. So the Israelis know that they couldn't have destroyed the program entirely, but they believe that sending it back by taking out a lot of that infrastructure by killing

Some of the key nuclear scientists believe they've killed about 14 now, would go a long way to taking out that capability and delaying, ultimately, Iran's ability to rush to produce a nuclear. How long is debatable. Is it a year? Is it a couple of years? Who knows? But it's a significant timeframe that they've been pushed back from sort of probably weeks timeframe of being able to get to 90% of rich uranium enough for at least nine nuclear weapons.

That was objective one. Objective two, just as important, most people don't talk about it, but was the destruction of the Iranian ballistic missile program. They target the manufacturing sites, the fuel sites. They destroyed a lot of the launchers. So significantly reduced the threat to Israel in the conventional space of Iran being able to launch huge volleys of missiles at Israel.

Very, very important for them for two reasons. One, the obvious one of, you know, eliminating the potential threat to the country. But two, it now gives them an opportunity to continue mow the lawn, as they call it. Continue doing periodic strikes against Iran.

now with a largely damaged ballistic missile program, but also a destroyed air defense network, and continue to set the timeline further and further back and prevent reconstitution by the Iranians as they try to rebuild. And then the third objective was one that probably was the most nebulous one, and that is how much damage can we do the regime?

Can we take out significant numbers of IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard, sort of the Praetorian Guard of the Iranians? Mullahs, can we take out a lot of that leadership? Can we destabilize the regime by encouraging the military?

to oppose the Ayatollah. And Iran has basically two militaries. It has the IRGC, which is this religious armed forces, huge armed forces that are, there's loyalty to the Ayatollah. And then they have the regular military that is obviously still beholden to the state and to the head of the state, Ayatollah Khamenei, but is not as religiously committed as the IRGC. So

You know, the Israelis perhaps have some hopes that maybe there'll be a military coup and the Mullahs regime would be taken out. I don't think that there's a lot of people in Israel that have high hopes on that. But look, you know, if you increase the chances of that by 5% from their standpoint, that's probably a win, right? So that's basically what they've been trying to accomplish here.

So you took the words out of my mouth when you said mow the lawn, because I actually had a specific question about that. So that term mow the lawn was first used to describe Israel's strategy in Gaza, correct? I'm not sure when, but this is how Israel thinks about all the problems that they face, whether with terrorist groups or with Iraq back in the day under Saddam and with Syria under Assad. Unlike us,

They live in the region, right? And they know that a lot of these problems are unlikely to be solved, maybe ever, but certainly not for many, many decades. So they're not looking for permanent solutions. They're looking for solutions that give them another year, another five years, another 10 years, right? And then they know that as long as they have the capability to come back and delay it further by another five years, another 10 years, that's good enough.

So this has been their strategy all along, whether it's with terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah that they've been fighting for many, many years, of course, since the 1980s when both these groups were formed. But, you know, other insurgencies before that, the Fara'in in the 50s and 60s. And it's also been their strategy towards regional nuclear programs. Right. When they struck Afghanistan.

the first time against a nuclear program, the first time ever that a nuclear program has been attacked. That was against the reactor in Iraq, Osirak reactor in 1981. And that was the establishment of the so-called Begin doctrine. Menachem Begin was the prime minister of Israel at the time. And he basically said that we will not allow a regional Middle Eastern power to develop nuclear weapons. And they struck Iraq. That didn't end Saddam's ambitions

to develop nuclear weapons. It delayed him substantially. And then we know that when we did the Gulf War I in 1991, we found out that he was indeed very, very close to reconstitution of that program that we ultimately dismantled post-1991. Then with Syria, the Syrians were building a reactor covertly with the North Koreans. It was discovered in 2000s and then taken out by the Israelis in 2007.

They didn't think that that was going to be the end of Syria's nuclear program. They thought that one day they might have to come back and do it again. Now, of course, the Syrian regime had fallen and maybe now they're in a safer place, although they don't know what's ultimately going to happen with al-Jilani, who many of you very suspiciously in Israel

the new leader of Syria. And this is how they look at Iran, is that they're not going to solve the problem. If they do, it'll be a miracle and they'll be, of course, very happy. But more likely than not, this is a problem that they'll be dealing with for decades. So I feel like Israelis would probably view some of the questions that I'm about to ask as naive. And I kind of get that. I mean, I see the logic in some sense, especially if you come from the standpoint that you don't expect these problems to ever be solved.

and you're just basically buying time. You're buying time because the more time you buy, the more time you get. And because the more time you buy, the more possibilities there are that something will happen

that will work in your favor to solve the problem long term. Yeah. And something did happen, obviously, with Iraq, our invasion in 2003. Something did happen with Syria. You have peace agreements that were forged with first Egypt, then Jordan, then the UAE and Bahrain and others, the Abraham Accords in 2020. And so things do change. And Israelis' view on this is very long term.

Yeah. Let me ask you about that. So one of the questions I want to ask is about mowing the lawn and how appropriate that metaphor is for what they can do or what's achievable in Iran. But would you say that Israel's security picture is unequivocally improved with civil war in Syria and a Shia dominated Iraqi government with less control over foreign groups operating within its own borders?

Well, you have a very weak central government in Iraq that is very much under the influence of the Iranians, a Shia government. The Iranians have built up a proxy force in Iraq of various militias, Shia militias. Right. So was it so clear cut that toppling Saddam was actually to the benefit of the Israelis?

I think they would say so. Again, I think a war against Iraq was a mistake for the United States, but the Israelis are certainly happier that Saddam is gone and that the threat of Saddam developing weapons of mass destruction, even though we know that

He didn't try to reconstitute that program after 1991 in retrospect, but the Israelis could have never counted on that. I think they feel much safer as a result of Saddam being gone. Has it been to their benefit that Assad was deposed given what has come after him and now with this new Sunni fundamentalist at the helm of the country?

Again, we'll see what happens with the new government and how fundamentalist it really is. So far, he's been very, very pragmatic as a leader and has been able to work diplomacy marvelously in terms of getting the United States to drop sanctions, recognize the government.

and so forth, the Israelis took the opportunity when he was taking Damascus to, of course, destroy most of the conventional capabilities of the Syrian armed forces, their air defense, their armored vehicles, their naval resources, their air force. So now that conventional threat

to Israel is gone. They also, I think mistakenly, but grabbed a bunch of Syrian territory, basically the other side of the Golan Heights. They didn't annex it, but they are stationed there right now. Their troops are stationed there right now in what they call a buffer zone. I think it's a huge mistake for them to do that, but nevertheless, they did so. So they absolutely see this as being a good thing for now.

And their region, they think that that's all you can get, right? No one knows what the future holds and you take wins day by day. Okay. So here's where I want to bring us back to the metaphor of mowing the lawn. And I'm glad you brought up the examples of bombing the Iraqi nuclear facility in the 1980s and Syria as examples in your mind of mowing the lawn, because I actually didn't think of those as examples. So maybe that will account for the differences in our view on this. But

I was comparing it with what the Israelis do in Gaza, where they have full control of the territory. And the concept of mowing the lawn indefinitely in Iran seems like a very dangerous game to play. And furthermore, it seems...

that it would be destabilizing to the Iranian government potentially. Well, you could also argue that maybe it strengthens the hold of the existing government. It also perhaps makes the country more unstable and potentially throws it into civil war, which would be the last thing that we would want to see in the Middle East is another country that's broken and

Perhaps from our perspective, from the Israeli perspective, that would absolutely be something that they would welcome, I think, because they do view the current government, Iran, as a source of much of the threat to them in the region, not just direct threat, but the support of proxies, whether it's Hezbollah, Hamas, or the Houthis around the region or the Iraqi militia. So I think if you told Bibi that

There's a civil war in Iran, he would open up a bottle of champagne right now. So here's what I wanted to say though. So I understand from the Israeli perspective that they absolutely do not want a nuclear armed Iran. At the same time, as you've said, they've been a threshold nuclear power for roughly two decades. They haven't taken the next step of advancing from 60% enriched uranium to weapons grade material. Isn't there an argument to be made?

that by having already substantially weakened Iran's network of proxies and exposing Iran to be a paper tiger, incapable or unwilling to defend its allies in its fight against Western colonialism, that it was only a matter of time before a more moderate government emerges in Iran, where the average citizen, by the way,

was born after the Iran-Iraq war and more than a decade after the overthrow of the Shah, and has grown frustrated with the fundamentalist curbs on his or her personal freedoms and the incompetence with which the Islamic Republic manages what could otherwise be a wealthy developed economy. So I feel like the Israelis had set themselves up for a real win here

that wouldn't have required them to spend the next decade or two or three mowing the lawn and keeping an otherwise unpopular regime in power for fear of a collapse in the face of these sorts of foreign attacks. Is that a naive view in your opinion? I mean, does it resonate with you at all? How do you think about this dilemma?

Yeah, I think it is an naive opinion because, of course, the regime in Iran has not been popular with the population for many, many decades. You may remember back in the 90s, there was the first so-called reformist president that was elected where people had a lot of hopes that, you know, now finally the mullahs will lessen their hold on power and you will have

re-alexation on a lot of the restrictions on life within Iran. Didn't happen in large part because the Mullahs, of course, still control the government. And Ayatollah Khamenei was the ultimate leader and the president basically works at his beck and call. You have numerous protests that have taken place in Iran going back

what, 2009, huge protests back then. And then over the last seven years or so, number of rounds of protests, all of them suppressed by the regime, right? So the idea that suddenly this regime would collapse, I don't think anyone was taking seriously. And it may still not collapse even after the direct strikes that Israel has orchestrated over last week against key regime targets. Secondly, their view is that the proxies are weakened.

Yes, they've been decimated in some cases, particularly Hezbollah, but they're not out for the count. In fact, this very week, this past week, as Israel was bombing Iran,

They also managed to bomb several targets in Lebanon that they say were Hezbollah targets because Hezbollah is now trying to rebuild and reconstitute their rocket program and other assets to try to attack Israel. So they know that this is not a quote unquote solved problem. They've dealt a huge blow to Hezbollah, but they're not completely out. They still exist as an organization. With time, they'll rebuild, right? Even though it's harder to do now, the resupply route through Syria is largely closed, but there's still ways.

when there's a will, there is a way. So they did see this as a unique opportunity that probably would not exist again. All right. So as you already stated, the IRGC maintains influence in Iraq. It also maintains influence in Yemen. But after having been hit so hard in recent days and with this really pathetic retaliation on the part of Iran, how long can they continue the Islamic revolution

and maintain influence over these proxies if they can't even be seen as strong in their own borders? Well, their influence mostly comes from a few things. One is money.

right? They're the only ones by and large that are willing to give them funds, particularly when it comes to Hezbollah and the Houthis. It comes from weapons. They're willing to give them directly weapons and technologies to build weapons like ballistic missile programs for the Houthis. And no one else is willing to do that. So the influence will remain as long as they're offering that assistance because these guys have no other choice. So does that also mean that, I mean, maybe we already have the answer at this point,

there were concerns that the Iranians might try to blockade the Strait of Hormuz or to, I don't know what they would use, they would mine the Strait. I don't know how they would try to disrupt traffic. Is that just, in your view, never going to happen because of how important the Strait is? I guess for two reasons. One, they need it also for their exports, but also because of the expectation that if they were to do that, not only would the US respond

with immense amounts of force, but also it wouldn't necessarily be in the benefit of their patrons. Like the Chinese wouldn't want them to shut the streets.

Yeah, I always thought the possibility of them shutting down the Strait of Hormuz was very low. I never took it seriously. First of all, to do so in response to a few bombs being dropped on a few of the nuclear facilities, which as damages it is, is not something that destabilizes the regime or puts the regime's hold on power in Iran under threat. To take such a big action

I thought was suicidal. And I don't think this regime is suicidal. As you say, it would make China very unhappy. It would make every other regional power with whom Iran has tried to rebuild relations in recent years, like Saudi Arabia and UAE and others, extremely unhappy, as you might imagine. It would be self-defeating because, of course, it would impact their own ability to export oil that sustains the regime.

And lastly, it would not last because the United States Navy would be able to ultimately reopen the Strait of Hormuz. We do have minesweepers. We have ability to destroy their attack boats and escort the tankers out of the Persian Gulf through the strait. And we've done this before, by the way, in 1980s, late 1980s, there was a so-called tanker war between Iraq and Iran. And we basically undertook the escort duties for these tankers to protect them against attacks from both sides.

So we know how to do this. We can do this. And it would have been extremely counterproductive for them to undertake this step. So the Saudis publicly condemned the attacks by Israel. I don't know that they've said anything about the US attacks. In private- They did. They condemned those also. So how much of that was for Iranian consumption? And how much were the Saudis actually applauding it in the back rooms and in their private conversations? Yeah.

Look, I think not just the Saudis, but the others in the region, UAE, et cetera, have no love lost for this regime in Iran. They're quite scared of the Iranian nuclear program. But at the same time, they don't want to rock the boat and they don't want to...

change the status quo. They certainly don't want to see a collapse and a vacuum of power in Iran, right? You said the Israelis would prefer that, but certainly not the Gulf states. The Gulf states wouldn't want to see that. They also wouldn't want to see exactly what undertook place today, Iran lashing out at US bases in the region that are, of course, hosted by these countries.

What about loose fissile material? Remember, that was one of the things that you grew up in the Soviet Union. We heard a lot about loose nukes after the fall of the USSR. What about the risk that there's all this fissile material kind of in different places in Iran, and that there's a danger that that could get in the wrong hands, and you end up with, at the very least, dirty bombs in Jerusalem?

Yeah, look, I'm not too concerned about dirty bombs. Dirty bombs are not effective weapons. It's very, very difficult to spread radiation. And by the way, enriched uranium is not significantly radioactive. You can literally hold it in your hands without significant damage to yourself unless you ingest it. It's not going to do long-term damage to you.

So you would use other radioactive materials, which they have plenty of, radioactive medical isotopes, et cetera, to build a dirty bomb. You don't need enriched uranium. That's not what you use for a dirty bomb. But there is a concern that these 400 kilograms of enriched uranium, up to 60%, it's a problem. It's a problem if we don't know where in Iran that exists and what the regime is doing with it. And of course, if they give it to someone else,

who has enrichment capabilities that can enrich it to 90% level. That's also a problem. Less so because, you know, there's not enrichment, uranium enrichment infrastructure in the region. So again, you still need a lot of work to take that material and turn it into something useful. But, you know, anytime there is somewhat weaponized material that could be used in a nuclear bomb that's out there, of course, you're concerned about it.

So Trump is the self-proclaimed dealmaker in chief. Is there a deal to be made here? Is there a way that you could imagine the Iranians coming to the table and basically meeting the conditions of the United States? And if so, what would be required to make a deal like that happen? Or is it ridiculous to even contemplate? It's not ridiculous. I don't know how likely it is.

The first priority of the regime is self-preservation, right? So what you're seeing right now is actually the Israelis, after inflicting so much damage on Iran, wanting to end this. They don't want to be in a long, attritional war with Iran. This is a long way to fly for them in single-seater fighter planes like F-35s. Very, very difficult to do this day in and day out.

So eventually, there could be a problem, right? Could be a mechanical issue with a jet that has to land on Iran, and then you have to rescue it. Could be shot down, right, by a lucky shot from an air defense system that still exists. So there's risk here, and they don't want to keep doing this for long. And I think it would be difficult for them to sustain this campaign for a long time. So there are indications that they're trying to wrap it up.

And the way they're doing that is by ramping up the campaign against regime targets. So today they hit the Basij headquarters, which is this internal religious police that tries to disrupt protests in Iran. They've been hitting intelligence services. They've been hitting other kind of interior ministry type of forces to send a signal to the regime more than anything else that, hey, it's time to make a deal.

or this will get much worse for you in terms of your ability to keep your population under control.

So we will see where that ends up. The regime may calculate that they can withstand that campaign and that the Israelis can't do this for much longer. And if they hold out another week or two or three, it will necessarily come to an end and they'll be in a better shape. Or they may, as the prior Ayatollah, Ayatollah Khamenei said in 88, when he decided to do a deal with Saddam Hussein to end the eight-year Iraq-Iran war, to drink the poison

come to the table and make a deal because the threat at that time to Tehran from Iranian ballistic missiles had become so acute. And this time it's the Israelis that are bombing Tehran every single day and threatening to potentially even decapitate the Ayatollah himself. And they may come to the table. The likelihood of either of those scenarios is hard to predict because it's going to depend on one man, an 86-year-old sitting in a bunker somewhere in Tehran.

who is completely isolated. There's all kinds of stories coming out that he is not even reachable by many of the members of the government that are trying to get his opinion on various topics because he's stopped using electronic communications. He's only communicating with couriers, sort of like Osama bin Laden once did in his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan.

So what he's going to decide in this isolated state of mind, in probably absolute paranoia state of mind, because, of course, so many of the people that were in his leadership have been killed. So he knows that the Israelis are very, very good at penetrating his inner circle and collecting intelligence on what's going on within Iran. So he's got to be very worried.

So, Trump had actually tweeted, and I assume he's communicated the same thing in private. Not that just whatever Trump tweets is what he communicates in private, but I just had the sense that he did, that the Ayatollah was off limits. And I wonder if that's because Trump wants someone to negotiate with at the end of the day. He wants someone to unilaterally surrender or something approximately like that. Does that make sense? Or is there some other consideration for why the US would put the kibosh on Trump?

taking out the Iranian leader? Yeah, it's not clear what the US has actually told Israel. So it's very clear that the United States does not want to engage in a regime change operation against Iran itself.

Secretary Hegseth and Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Dan Kaine, General Kaine, made it very clear this is not a regime change operation. This was a target strike against the nuclear program. Vice President J.D. Vance even said we're not at war with Iran or the Iranian regime. We're just at war with their nuclear program. Of course, nuclear program doesn't fight back. So really interesting formulation. But

it's very clear that they wanted the one strike and be done with it and limit the damage and limit the retaliation from the Iranians, which I think we've accomplished now. But it's not clear that we've actually told the Israelis don't hit Khamenei. And there's been some reporting that maybe that's happened, but the Israelis have denied it. And it's not clear that they would even listen necessarily and not clear how strongly that was expressed. It could be

something that someone said that, hey, it wouldn't be great if that happened, but that's not necessarily a no, right? So there's degrees of how that could be communicated to the Israelis. Now, I do think the Israelis right now are probably concerned about taking out Hamenei because if you take him out, who would you make a deal with? Who would replace him? Could be someone better, but could be someone worse. So I don't think that they're necessarily too eager to undertake this step unless they feel like they have no other choice.

So this brings up something that I want to ask you about, and we'll move it to the second hour to have this conversation, because I think all the questions in the second hour will largely have to do with the Americans and what's in the American national interest, et cetera. Trump has some very important political considerations to take into account. His base is a coalition of

MAGA supporters, quote, so-called tech bros, certainly the pro-Israel factions, at least the more right-wing factions, seem to form part of Trump's coalition.

And the MAGA base is very upset about what's happening. And it's the first time that I've seen any MAGA Republicans, because we've seen people like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and people like that, old school Republicans deviate in the past, but certainly not members of the MAGA base. And we're seeing that. We're also seeing a split in the media. Folks like Tucker Carlson are treading ever so carefully, trying to find ways to criticize the president. So one of the things I want to talk about in the second hour is

the political landscape and how this is being informed by and informing the administration's actions and what is politically possible. Like I said, I want to talk about to what extent this is in the US national interests and what this means for the larger

strategic competition, Cold War. Cold War is a term you use, but whatever word you want to use to describe the relationship, the antagonistic relationship, the frenemy relationship between the US and China, how this impacts that, to what degree

This is in the America's interest, to what degree it's in China's interest, to what degree it's in no one's interest. These are some of the things that we're going to talk about in the second hour, Dimitri. For anyone new to the program, Hidden Forces is listener supported. We don't accept advertisers or commercial sponsors. The entire show is funded from top to bottom by listeners like you. If you want access to the second hour of today's conversation with Dimitri, head over to hiddenforces.io slash subscribe and sign up to one of our three content tiers.

All subscribers gain access to our premium feed, which you can use to listen to the rest of today's conversation on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now. Dimitri, stick around. We're going to move the rest of our conversation onto the premium feed. If you want to listen in on the rest of today's conversation, head over to hiddenforces.io slash subscribe and join our premium feed.

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