Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. For the first time since 1979, Israel and Iran are engaged in direct military attacks on the other’s soil. On April 13th, Iran launched more than 300 missiles and drones into Israel. This action was in retaliation for an air strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria two weeks prior on April 1st.

That strike killed seven people, including three senior members of Iran’s powerful paramilitary organization, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, which supports militant groups throughout the region. Israel is believed to have been behind the strike, but has not claimed responsibility. Then on Friday, Israel responded attacking a military base in Central Iran.

Here with me to discuss what this all means for the future of the region is Iran expert Ray Takeyh. He’s a senior fellow from Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He’s also the author of many books on Iran and served as senior advisor on Iran at the State Department. Ray, welcome to the show.

Ray Takeyh:

Thank you for having me.

Preet Bharara:

So, obviously my main question is and will be what does all this mean for the possibility of a wider war in the region? But let’s sort of begin at the top. Can you explain what happened on April 1st in Damascus?

Ray Takeyh:

April 1st, Israelis did what they had done before, targeting Iranian military personnel in Syria, and in this particular case, they killed, particularly their target was General Zahedi, who was an important figure in the Iran’s paramilitary force and sort of a conduit between the Islamic Republic and various proxies, particularly Hezbollah, but that was not all he did.

There is some dispute about whether that was an attack on a diplomatic compound, which would obviously cause international legal problems, because it’s a sovereign immunity issue. The Israelis claim that the building they attacked was not registered with the Syrian government, but these are diplomatic niceties. This had happened before. The Israelis have been target killing Iranian military officials inside Iran and outside Iran, as well as nuclear scientists, so in of itself this was not a departure from the usual pattern of shadow war between these two countries.

Preet Bharara:

Why didn’t Israel take responsibility for the Damascus attack?

Ray Takeyh:

They almost never do take direct responsibility for such actions, it’s part of the way they conduct their campaigns on that front. They always let you know that they did it and they leak and they inform their press, but they don’t issue an official proclamation suggesting they were responsible for this. This is part of their practice and behavior for a long time, not just in this case.

Preet Bharara:

But am I right that they did take responsibility directly for the Friday retaliation?

Ray Takeyh:

That’s right.

Preet Bharara:

So, why deviate from the playbook for this one and not the earlier one?

Ray Takeyh:

I think it’s part of the larger thing that is taking place in the Middle East and they wanted to reestablish the deterrence line, which was obviously transgressed on October 7th. For the Israelis, the Hamas attack and Iran are indivisible, they don’t see them as separate, so they wanted to indicate to the Iranians that despite their preoccupation in the Gaza Strip, they are not taking their eye off the ball on other frontiers.

That was essentially I think the message they were trying to send. The Israelis at this point are very preoccupied. We’re rehabilitating their deterrence lines as they see it, and that was part of the ongoing campaigns that they have. These are all from their perspective connected what’s happening in the northern frontier with Hezbollah, what is happening in Gaza and the Islamic Republic as well, so they don’t see these as separate entities, but rather connected.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, so you have the Damascus strike on April one, then Iran, as everyone knows, sent at least 300 missiles and drones into Israel first time launching an attack on the soil of Israel since 1979. It was an utter and spectacular failure. Why would Iran undertake to do that, presumably knowing that the likelihood of any kind of success was low, or did they not know that?

Ray Takeyh:

Well, this is something that everybody’s speculating on, and my speculation is just that, because as you suggested, it is the first time in 45 years of enmity where these two powers move beyond the limits of their conflict. Iran and Israel have been at odds since the inception of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, but they have waged their conflict with each other by use of proxies.

The Iranians obviously use proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas and the Israelis rely on marshalling international community against Iran in terms of economic penalties, and lately cyber wars and targeted assassinations. It was a conflict that was waged within limits with understood parameters, but the Iranians just blew those parameters into smithereens, or tried to. Launching 300 missile projectiles against Israel can only be considered a mass casualty event. The question is what did they think would happen if they had hit an apartment building and so forth?

As you mentioned, this was a spectacular failure and it was spectacular success for Israeli Air Defense Network and the coalition partners that it has assembled, but had it succeeded, we would’ve been in a very different place today. Why did they do it? One can only speculate and there are a number of things that we can say. They may have felt that the Israelis were too preoccupied in Gaza to be able to respond in a measurable way. They may have perceived that they have to show some kind of a gesture of valor to their proxies as they were getting pummeled by the Israelis, particularly Hamas and to a lesser extent Hezbollah, that they had to essentially demonstrate their credibility to their proxies, which are engaging in a high stake conflict with Israel.

There’s also, what we have seen in Iran over the past couple of years is a transformation of the political and security elite. The all actors that we are familiar with are leaving the scene, the new people are coming in, there’s a generational shift. We don’t know much about the new generation of Iranian security leaders, revolutionary guard commanders and so forth, and they seem to be bolder, brazen, and certainly risk-prone, so all these factors in some way could have led them to engage in the activity that they did. There may be other factors that we just don’t know or are just not apparent to us.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I just wonder if the Iranians thought this was a symbolic gesture with the foreknowledge that it would fail and there would be all these interceptions, or if they were really hoping for multiple mass casualty direct strikes, and as you point out, we would’ve been in a very different world. I’m trying to understand what the intention of Iran was and if they had thought through the consequences of success?

Ray Takeyh:

Well, I would say that you don’t launch 300 projectiles, including ballistic missiles, hoping not to kill anybody.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, yeah.

Ray Takeyh:

You kind of understand that this could lead to casualties and therefore an altercation. You may have discounted the possibility of that altercation or its duration or its intensity. Second of all, I don’t think the Iranians who rely on missiles and drones as an important pillar of their defense structure would want the attack to fail and therefore emasculate themselves. They didn’t get around the table say, “Let’s launch a attack hoping it fails, and then we’ll stand emasculated in front of domestic audiences and international one. I think that’s a really good plan.”

Preet Bharara:

But it still seems to me to be a stupid plan-

Ray Takeyh:

It certainly is.

Preet Bharara:

… if they had been successful. So I guess I keep going back to the question, what on earth were the Iranians thinking?

Ray Takeyh:

Yeah, the history of international relations is the history of miscalculations based upon stupid plans, and the hubris and confidence and arrogance that often leads countries to engage in activity that are self-destructive, this clearly is one of them. They seem to have survived this because of their lack of success.

I can only say that in the turbulent Middle East today with so much happening and Israel under so much scrutiny and under kind of pressure from the United States and international community, as there are divisions between Israel and the United States on some issues today, they may have perceived all these things would read down to their advantage and the conflict would be limited.

If that’s the case, then we have to reassess this elite not just as reckless, but as parochial in its outlook. In a sense they don’t seem to fully appreciate that traumatized countries like Israel will respond differently to such acts of aggression. So it was certainly miscalculation, but also based upon evaluations that they have made, which from our perspective are, shall we say, unintelligent, if not arcane.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, I mean, you said in The New York Times piece recently, and I think you alluded to it earlier in this conversation, “To be sure, Israel and America may both be at fault for giving Ayatollah Khamenei the impression that they had no appetite for escalation.” Do you still think that’s true?

Ray Takeyh:

I think as we sit here today, given the fact that this event did not lead to a measurable Israeli retaliation as far as we know today, I think the statement is largely correct as it stands. The Iranians tend to at this point discount not the reality of American power, but the possibility of its use against them. I mean, they can see the hardware, they understand the latent American power is quite considerable, and they do not wish to be entangled in a conflict with the United States.

Preet Bharara:

So now the 300 missiles and drones are launched, they’re effectively intercepted. What do you expect Bibi Netanyahu’s initial impulse for a response was?

Ray Takeyh:

I tend to be somewhat of a revisionist on Prime Minister Netanyahu, in a sense that I believe his bellicosity is often exaggerated and his bark is always worse than his bite. Throughout his tenure, he has actually been averse to confrontation. Now, if this strike by the Iranians has succeeded, then I think the Israeli war cabinet, and these are collective decisions in a war cabinet today, would feel compelled to respond in a drastic and measurable way. Whether that impulse could have been mitigated by the international community of course remains to be seen, because it didn’t happen.

My guess would be, and this is just a guess, that the Israelis are inclined to declare victory and move on. Of course, that could prove famous last words. What we don’t know at this stage is what this strike that the Israelis did against the military installation in Isfahan, was this a first salvo of a campaign that could unfold over weeks or was this a one-off?

Essentially what they signaled is that they succeeded in their defensive measures in preventing Iran from penetrating their airspace, and they succeeded symbolically in penetrating the Iranian airspace, and that might be enough for them. That is certainly what they’re hearing from the international community, from the United States, from the European leaders and others. Second of all, actually the Israeli restraint on Iran at this point may be a prelude to an Israeli aggressive move in Rafah in Gaza, so-

Preet Bharara:

You think those are interconnected in that way?

Ray Takeyh:

Well, I think it’s possible that Israelis are now feeling themselves, okay, we demonstrated to the international community and to our American critics that we’re willing to be restrained in terms of a regional war, but this gives us some credit and a license to move and cleanse the Gaza Strip of remnants of the Hamas military contingence.

So in the next couple of weeks we’ll find out what the Israeli intentions are, whether they’re Gaza first people or they want to expand this conflict to particularly an escalatory dynamic with Iranians, which will be very difficult to unpack.

Preet Bharara:

I should note for folks that as we record this, it is Friday, April 19th at around the 10:00 AM hour Eastern time, and the reports I’ve seen so far this morning are that the Iranian reaction to this retaliation have been muted. Are you surprised at all by how quiet and restrained the Iranian reaction is to-

Ray Takeyh:

Well, the Iranian reaction is consistent with the Israeli one. The Israelis officially are not announcing this, and actually in some of the early reporting that I saw and the reporting on this will be more comprehensive as the day goes on, the Israelis were miffed at the Americans for announcing this. So, to some extent that may be the case.

On the other side, the Iranians will have essentially suggested that there was some unidentified object over their airspace and they have dealt with it, so they’re also not acknowledging the Israeli penetration of the airspace. You can understand that for their own domestic audiences and so forth, but we live in an information age, so that information is likely to penetrate Iran in variety of formats. But I think if the Israelis had done measurable damage, then it would be hard to conceal. I think it’s hard to conceal now.

Preet Bharara:

Can I ask you, but maybe a naive question, as a non-foreign policy expert, why is it the case, if it is true as you have said, that the history of warfare is example after example, after example of miscalculation and mistake and overreaction and bad strategy? Also, Iran and Israel both keep saying, we don’t want a war, we don’t want a war, we don’t want a war. Given those two things, why are they even engaging in a long time long-standing game of proxy war and clandestine conflict? Why do that?

Ray Takeyh:

Some of that has to be understood in the context of Iran’s revolutionary ideology and Islamist ideology. The clerical elite and the political elite, not all of them are clerics, have long suggested Israel is an inauthentic state, is an illegitimate state, that it has usurped Palestinian rights and it is an instrument of American imperialism in the Middle East, and the job of resisting it is not just a strategic duty, but it’s indication of spiritual commitment.

That’s a deeply and ideological perspective, but it has certainly animated the clerical elite for 45 years. I will say, the opposition to state of Israel predated the Iranian Revolution, in a sense that the members of the clerical community long rejected Israel as a nation state in the Middle East because of the perception that they’re displacing the legitimate Palestinian rights.

Israelis have responded to that of course in their own way, and this enmity has continued all along. In some way, Iran’s opposition to Israel is even more pronounced than its opposition to the United States, because in terms of its official rhetoric, it calls for extinction of Israel, it actually doesn’t call for extinction of America. They’re both preposterous propositions, I understand that.

Preet Bharara:

Small favors.

Ray Takeyh:

If you’re an American who’s not that versed in Islamist politics of Iran, this may seem like outrageous propositions, but leaders have done destructive things in the name of ideology such as communism. So this is a deeply and ideological antagonism on behalf of Iran, and it’s been self-defeating for Iran. Its enmity with Israel has not served as interests, but a lot of regimes at time put ideology ahead of pragmatic national interest.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, so I want to go back to my first main question. Given where we sit and contemplate things today at this moment, what is your view of the prospects of a wider war in the region, and then obviously very relevantly, the prospect of American entanglement?

Ray Takeyh:

Well, the latter is easier to decipher. The United States officials, the Biden administration officials have stressed and they insisted that they don’t intend to be involved in a larger Middle Eastern war, and their efforts at this point is to prevent such war from happening. So that means they are going to pressure the Israelis to declare victory and move on, and the Iranians seem to be playing along with it. So if this is all that’s going to happen, this stage of this conflict may actually be behind us, although it certainly can pop up at any time.

If there is an Israeli strike to follow, then I think the Iranians will be compelled to respond, then we’re in this escalatory dynamic that you spoke about that nobody wants to be on. It’s like the proverbial tiger’s back, once you get on it, it’s hard to pick the place to dismount, and that sort of escalatory dynamic could get out of hand.

At this point if I had to guess, and this guess could be pronounced wrong as soon as we finish, is all three powers involved, the United States, Israel and Iran would like to calm things down, and if they can all respectably declare victory, then that may happen. Israelis can declare victory about their symbolic success in penetrating Iranian air spaces and preventing Iran from penetrating theirs, the Iranians can pretend they were not struck by Israel, and the Americans can suggest that the diplomatic offices function in aborting a conflict that could get out of hand.

Preet Bharara:

Just move on. Final question, do you have an assessment of how President Biden is handling the situation in the Middle East with respect to this and other things?

Ray Takeyh:

Well, it’s an impossible situation to be in, because you’re essentially try to control actors that are not always receptive to your advice. I think the administration will like Israel to finish with the Gaza war and have some kind of a ceasefire. That is a dispute between Israel and the United States and like to calm things down.

I would say in general, the Biden administration has not been that good about anticipating conflict, but once conflict comes, they’ve been reasonably good at tactically managing it and preventing its escalation. So they’ve been good at crisis management, but not always good at crisis anticipation.

By the way, this is not a criticism, in a sense that nobody foresaw what Hamas did in October 7th or what Iran did on April 1st. We are in a position where our adversaries, including President Putin, are behaving in a manner that they had not behaved before, so to be surprised at this stage about our adversaries’ irrational conduct is not a criticism, but it’s just a reality. But they’ve been very good generally in crisis management.

Preet Bharara:

Ray Takeyh, thank you so much for your insight and your expertise. Really appreciate it.

Ray Takeyh:

Thank you very much for having me.

Preet Bharara:

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Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper, the technical director is David Tatasciore, the deputy editor is Celine Rohr, the editorial producer is Noa Azulai, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.