A post-Khamenei Iran | feat. Nadav Eyal

0:00All right. Good morning. It's Monday, March 2nd. The multi front war in the Middle East is now 877 days old. And once again, a war has broken out in the middle of a war in the Middle East. This one is three days in. So let's get down to business. I'm your host, Jonathan Schanzer. Welcome back yet again to the FTD morning brief. The war against the Islamic Republic of Iran is finally underway. I know some people were thinking that five weeks of waiting was eternity. That's not how I look at it. I mean, sure, watching the build up to this conflict was like watching curling at the Olympics was not exciting, but there was a lot happening. Anyway, here's where I encourage you to take a longer view of things. It took nearly five decades for the regime to finally trigger this war. Five decades of terrorism and mayhem sponsored

1:00by the Islamic Republic. And now the regime is buckling more than 40 top officials from the regime are no longer breathing. And that's on top of the officials that were taken off the board last year. The regime is thinning out. That's for sure. But it's also still fighting. We can see those direct strikes on Israel, Saudi Arabia, and beyond. At least for now, they're still landing those blows. But if you ask me, the most important thing about this war has been the incredible coordination between Israel and the United States. This is how alliances should look people, nations that align on interests and values working together against their continent and enemies and toward a common vision for a better future. These are historic times. I am hopeful if not downright optimistic that the right kind of history is about to be made. The Iranian regime attacks some of our Gulf Arab allies this weekend. I unequivocally condemn these acts of aggression, but something else needs to be said here. To the Emirate of Dubai,

2:00you've been the offshore bankers of the Islamic Republic for years. Your dirty money has enabled the regime's finances for far too long. So no, the regime shouldn't have attacked you, but here's a lesson for you. Doing the bidding of a terrorist state does not protect you from its violence. To the Qataris, you jerks have been sponsoring some of the same terrorist groups as the Iranian regime for decades, but your bankrolling of Hamas bought you no protection from the regime. You need a course correction ASAP. To the Kuwaitis, your anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric meant exactly zero to the regime when it attacked your airport. And let's not forget that you wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for Uncle Sam. By the way, you always big time for shooting down three American planes today. I think you're all getting the picture. Multiple regimes in the Middle East have been on the receiving end of Iranian aggression, even after aligning with the regime rhetorically, financially or otherwise. So here's a truth bomb. They're on the wrong side

3:01of history. The United States and Israel are fighting for a better Middle East. They are decidedly not. When the dust settles and the guns fall silent, I hope there is a reckoning because this region needs realignment. Here's hoping that's exactly what this war brings. All right, it was obviously an insane news weekend. And I obviously can't review all the new stories that broke over the past few days, but I can tell you what I'm watching in no particular order. Number one, I'm watching for the United States and Israel to declare the total air superiority in Iran. We've seen reports that that has already happened, but I have not seen anybody declare it outright. This would mean the regime has run out of air defenses. And that in turn means that the regime is helpless. As the U.S. and Israel fly sortie after sortie in this guy's over Iran, picking apart what is left of the leadership, offensive capabilities, defensive capabilities and more. I think we're there, but I want to hear people say it out loud. Number two, I want to see the Iranian people come out against their regime again. That'll be a

4:03sign that the regime is unable to keep a lid on the chaos unleashed by operations roaring lion and epic fury. And no, I'm not a fan of either name seriously, who comes up with this garbage. Number three, I'm watching the proxies. And I'm specifically watching Lebanon very closely today. Three rockets were reportedly fired in Israel out of Lebanon yesterday, and they were intercepted. But from all appearances, Israel is using that moment as a predicate for some serious house cleaning. They took out his ball as intelligence chief overnight. They've authorized the killing of nine costs in the head of his Bala. And it looks like there could be some wide strikes across Lebanon today against Al-Qad al-Hasan, which is his Bala shadow bank. If that were not enough, the Lebanese government is talking about disarming his Bala themselves. That means some serious battles are brewing inside Lebanon, folks. Seriously, a big, big day potentially in Lebanon. Number four, I'm watching for estimates about the total number of missile launchers the regime

5:03still has. It's not a question of the missiles themselves. They can have as many of those as they want, but without the launchers, they can't get them up in the air. So that's why this number may be more important than a lot of the other facts and figures you may be hearing about in the coming days. Number five, and you won't get actual numbers on this, but the question is huge. Do the Israelis have enough missile defense to get through this war? Arrow three interceptors are not cheap, and they appear to be in dwindling supply. The United States brought a bunch of missile defense platforms into the region to protect our bases, our embassies, our oil installations, and our allies. But how much do we have? And will we have enough while the American and Israeli Air Forces work together to take out the aerial Iranian threat? I don't know, but I will say we are watching those Iranian strikes get through in many places, which means our systems are not functioning at 100%. Absolutely, they're not. Number six, keep an eye peeled for any and I'll talk of diplomacy. I'm all for talking about solutions to this conflict. If they're serious people on

6:06the other side of the table, but I'm worried that remnants of this regime are going to try and dangle diplomacy as an off ramp from this war without making actual concessions. If there's talking, I want to see the regime capitulate. If it doesn't capitulate, I want to see this regime bleed out on the linoleum floor. And finally, I want to marginalize the role of American politics and all of this. The deep divide over the percentage of Donald Trump as people forgetting about what's important here. The Middle East could be on the precipice of great change. The internal battles between isolationists and interventionists within the Republican Party shouldn't undermine that. This zero-sum mentality is hurting our ability to project power abroad and our deep politicization here at home. The partisanship, man, is that not helping either. All right, ladies and germs, enough from me. I'm getting down off of the proverbial soapbox, and I'm yielding to the expertise of one of Israel's top journalists, Nadave Alasdala, Peter offender on this program, and he's incredibly plugged into what's been happening in Israel, traveling back and forth between

7:08Israel and the United States with his finger on the pulse. So it's fortuitous that we Adam walked in for today days ago, actually. So let's do this. Let's welcome Nadave Al onto the show. All right, welcome to the program. Welcome back to the program, Nadave Al. Hi, I'm glad to be here again. I'm sorry, I'm after another sleepless night, so forgive me for acting like coffee with me. Okay, good. I've got some too. I think we're all kind of there, although maybe you've been traveling more than I have. All right, let's just get right into it. If you would maybe just give us, you're just back from Israel. So maybe tell us what did you see happening? Obviously, a few harrowing direct strikes in places like Jerusalem and Bait Shemesh. How are the people of Israel holding up? How's the government? How's the system holding up? So first of all, in terms of political consensus, there is a political consensus as to this war, including the chairman of the opposition and the prime minister meeting together in Bait Shemesh, being photographed together. So it's a moment of general unity. Iran is a consensus

8:14in Israel that there's an opportunity to take down the regime or even to degrade substantially their military capabilities and do that with the leadership of President Trump of America. This is something Israeli still want to see. However, this is a very difficult war for Israel. I'm talking with my friends with with parents. Kids were already after this phase of running to the shelter and to the safe rooms and now they're back to that and shooting from Iran. The launches from Iran are constant. This is happening constantly. Sirens are sounding constantly. So you can't really plan the day. It's very different than the June war. In the June war, they used to shoot a barrage during the night. Now that was more effective for them in terms of actually penetrating the abilities of these Israeli air defenses. But right now they're just shooting when they can, sorry, which is a different story. So that's one level. The other level is of course what's

9:18happening with Hizbala that you mentioned Jonathan in your opening. That's incredibly important. Hizbala still maintains thousands of medium-range, short-range missiles and if they start shooting those, that's a that's a change. So let's talk about that because I got to say I'm a little concerned. I was actually I was texting with a friend in Israel who is monitoring this stuff pretty closely. Not maybe on the inside be close enough to it to be able to understand what's happening. It looks like based on the three missiles or rockets that were fired at Israel yesterday, Israel's neutralized those. They didn't hit anything. But that looks like the moment that Israel is looking to exploit for the purposes of launching a second front, opening up a second front. So overnight they killed the the head of intelligence for Hizbala. They declared that they want to kill nine Kossum, the Secretary General. And we're hearing right now that 53 villages were cleared out

10:22last night that they the IDF ordered 53 villages. That's what was being reported on Channel 11 or Channel 12 last night. And now they're talking about destroying all of Cardal Hassan, which is this vast network of informal banking nodes across Lebanon. The government of Lebanon is talking about disarming his Bala forcefully. So how do you break down what's happening here? Can Israel afford chaos on its northern border while another war is taking place with Iran with incoming missiles and direct strikes happening? This feels like a risk to me that maybe the Israeli shouldn't be taking. Do you agree? Well, first of all, I spoke last night with a senior military officer and he sort of told me off the record and by signaling that if Hizbala stops right now and sort of gets the message, they will reconsider if they are going to make this into a full-blown campaign. Israel responded, but it's also seen in its intelligence, the intentions of Hizbala to keep on

11:27shooting. This is where we are at. Now, Hizbala has said that if Hizbala hits the leadership of Iran, they'll respond. This is a militia that was both founded and funded throughout the years by the Islamic Republic. This is what they do. They are the number one proxy. So this was to be expected. Israel was preparing to that. Israel is not ruling out a military ground incursion into Lebanon and that's substantial. But to your question, Jonathan, I'm not sure that there is an ambition right now, also seeing the response from the Lebanese government to make this into a full-time war. Israel is very much concentrated on what's happening in Iran and on a regime change in Iran. The U.S. is not that committed formally to that goal, but Israel has committed itself to try to lead to a regime change in Iran. You hear that with the statements made by the Prime Minister. That's such a big endeavor as of itself, such a risky one and there are no guarantees.

12:32So I can't imagine Israel sort of churning this mainly in terms of the gravitas into a war against Hizbala Lebanon or considering that Hizbala is so much reduced and defeated after July of 24. Yeah, and I mean, I hope that Israel is moving slowly here judiciously, because I do think that there's significant risk. This is a war I'm sure that needs to happen, but the question I think for me anyway is timing. Is this the right time while everything else is happening? I have heard, by the way, that the Israelis think that they can do this, right? Because there are no ground forces right now committed anywhere, right? This is an air defense and air war, and so the idea that you could use some aircraft, maybe helicopters, maybe some of the F-35s or F-16s, but most of this would be tanks. It's the only way. Yes, a substantial ground force on the northern border, substantial. Right, and so that would allow for this, right? But it does feel like a lot

13:34happening at once. It really does. If any army can probably pull it off, I'm sure it's Israel, but wow, that's a lot to watch. Okay, you mentioned Israel's wider war aims, and I guess I want to try to unpack this. Is it simply to end the threat of the Islamic Republic about neutralizing it? Is it about bringing down the regime permanently? Are there ways that elements of the regime could survive that would allow Israel to feel satisfied? And then maybe a bigger question is, are there disagreements in Israel about these war aims? Because Israelis don't agree on much most of the time. Is everybody saying regime changes the final destination here? Well, first of all, if you talk with military experts and strategic analysts across Israel, and of course, the majority of the public has no trust in this government, according to basically every poll. That has not changed, but we haven't seen any substantial polling since this war began.

14:37And as I said at the beginning, I suspect that if we'll see that, we'll see a consensus in the Israeli public and sort of an upstick for Prime Minister Netanyahu at this point. If only for having this achievement of convincing the United States, this is how Israelis see it, of convincing the United States that this is a major threat. Now, as to the war goes here, it's not really up to the Israelis. It's the President that is going to decide. The President decided that this war would be launched, and the fact is that Israel was prepared. Israel wanted it. There is no denying to that, but it's the President that is going to set the conditions for an end to this war. And whatever the President decides, he can basically wake up tomorrow morning and say, that's it. There's enough change in Iran already, because the Supreme Leader is dead. Every person that was supposed to replace him is probably also dead. So change is upon us. And now let's see what's

15:38going to happen. If this is going to be the statement of the President, or you'll see from Jerusalem, Jordan is Prime Minister congratulating the President for his wise words, because Israel understands who's calling the shots here, and it's only Donald Trump. And this is really important to see. Now, what the Israelis want to see is not a change within the regime. They want to see a change of the regime. Can we get to that? I'll say something that is less speculative and more based on sources. I presume that this war has two phases. We are now seeing the first phase. I presume that the U.S. and Israel would have not engaged unless they have at least a planning as to the future of Iran in some sort of discourse with people within Iran. I'm not saying that there is an entire plan set there. I think it was President Eisenhower that once said that plans are nothing and

16:40planning is everything. I'm probably paraphrasing and learning that quote. And you probably have many, many people online right now that know the quote. So I apologize to you into the Eisenhower library, but it was something like that. And I think that there was a lot of planning going on. And we are going to see this kicks in as we have less and less sorties in Tehran. And I will point specifically for the idea of publishing now. I wrote about this yesterday, but it's going on the record now with its attack on the Ministry of Intelligence, which is basically the Gestapo of the Islamic Republic. And the fact that it was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force. It's also responsible for espionage. It's not only responsible for the secret police. So this is just a mere example of what the Israelis are trying to do. And AI speech in Farsi by the Prime Minister of Israel calling for Iranians to resist and to rise up against

17:43the regime. Whether or not that's going to happen, a lot is going to be determined by the people. But I suspect that not everything was left to sort of a popular uprising. Yeah, I think that's probably right. And I would just say that we've got, I think a couple of different factions of people that I'm watching anyway. There's the Pahelvi guys. There's the folks that the Mossad is cultivated. There's the folks that the CIA is cultivated. Eventually, we're going to see some of these people come out of the shadows and hopefully start working together or working with the US, Israel, or maybe other actors as well. I want to ask you about the, I mean, you made it clear that Donald Trump's calling the shots. And we've heard that it was the United States that actually provided the intel for where harmony was. And then the Israelis executed on the liquidation of harmony. And but what we're watching, I mean, just to be very

18:46clear, is some unbelievable collaboration between the United States and Israeli militaries, right? I mean, we've been watching them, you know, they've been drilling together for years. We've seen the military exercises, but no one ever really knew exactly what that was going to look like. This is historic. This is unbelievable. The amount of aircraft that the Israelis and the United States have in feet are at the same time, the intelligence sharing the political alignment. I mean, does this change right now how the Israelis are viewing their relationship with the United States? I've got to imagine it's stronger than it's ever been. But I'm also just noting that there's been this interesting debate in Israel about the MOU and the memorandum of understanding and whether the Israelis should be getting into another MOU with it with the United States. After something like this, I've got to imagine that there would be zero hesitation. Am I wrong? Well, I don't know. And you have better understanding of Washington, DC. And what's going to happen

19:49in the MOU in Washington, DC? As you know, the general direction of Israel strategically is to have less and less and to let go of any requests for a military assistance from the United. That's the direction. I don't know what it means for this specific MOU, but this is the direction said by the Prime Minister. And I think it was said by the Prime Minister because he sees what's happening within the American discourse as to be aid to Israel. Now, after saying that to your first remark, yes, this is unprecedented. We just heard the Secretary of the Foreign Speaking about this together with General Kane. It's happening as we are speaking right now, but people listening to us would be able to hear these remarks, including about Israel as an ally. Look at this even technically, Jonathan. How many of the United States allies can have 200 fighter jets and bombers in the air attacking simultaneously with the US anywhere in the world right now?

20:55Any country in the world besides Israel that can do that. No other country in the world, as far as I know, no other Air Force can do that unless they have like a year of preparation. I'm talking maybe the British, maybe the French together with the British, definitely not the Germans. Who is going to be there on the US side when it needs it across the, will the Japanese be able to do that when they need some security in South East Asia? So Israel is definitely, I think, basing itself and stretching itself as a most, I don't want to say the most, but a most substantial ally just militarily speaking of the United States. Now, in terms of intelligence, I want to say there are some credit wars going on. It's to who is supplying intelligence, who's going to supply intelligence. The Israelis are definitely not going to say anything like, oh no, it's us that supplied intelligence. They are absolutely crediting the US for this operation. They are fighting

21:57on American aircrafts using American ammunition, using mostly American technology. So we need to remember that this is for all intents and purposes as far as the Iranians are concerned and the rest of the world is concerned and American proxy. Now, the only thing about that is that Israelis are really proud to be an American proxy and Israeli political sphere from opposition to coalition is competing in trying to phrase themselves more and more as pro-Americans. And this is also something you don't see in most places in the world today, at least not in the West. So it'll be interesting to see how it changes the region to. One of the things that I think is completely under-reported is the possibility that this would lead to any sort of change, including a regime within the regime that will make this entire region from the Mediterranean all the way to Afghanistan, pro-America. Just something that we have not seen in history. If this actually happens, US has taken control,

23:01some sort of control. So this actually reminds me a little bit of Gulf War I. It was at that moment that the region, I think, aligned behind the United States. We had just won the Cold War, and then we win the Gulf War. And that's actually what leads to Oslo. It's what leads to peace with Jordan. I mean, you begin to see kind of the region begin to align with us. But so let's let's talk about this. Never Iran, Jonathan. I'm just barging in to say Iran wasn't there. And one of the things that people don't remember is that it was the intelligence of the US and Israel that concluded that the Iranians were assisting Hamas in order to blow up the Oslo courts. But that's very substantial. This is the long account that we have. For sure. For sure. But so, okay, let's talk about this for a minute, because, okay, we've got a number of Arab countries that have been attacked by the Islamic Republic, right? I mean, the Qataris, the Kuwaitis, the Emirates, the Saudis, the Omani's, the Iraqis. I mean,

24:07they're all getting hit by the Islamic Republic. They're all technically under the umbrella of Sencom Central Command right now, which means that we are directing the intelligence and the air defenses. So they're under the US umbrella. So the, I guess my question is, with some of these countries that have been anti-American, anti-Israel, are we starting to see more of a conciliatory posture? Do you see more normalization on the horizon? Do you see some sort of new, I don't know, we talked at one point about Middle East, NATO. I mean, is this what you're envisioning right now, based on recent events? So I had a nice exclusive yesterday about the chief of staff, the Israeli chief of staff, speaking with his counterparts, the chiefs of staff of Arab armies across the region. This Middle East NATO has coming to being even before April of 2024, when Israel was attacked by the largest projectile attack up until then by the Islamic Republic. People don't remember that.

25:08It was an architecture that was built by the Biden administration to the credit, and it worked very well with the Jordanian Air Force shooting down drones that were coming to attack not among, but Israel. And not only the Jordanian Air Force was operating there, there was an entire architecture together with the UAE. And now we are seeing this architecture being even more robust. Now, I'm speaking with my Arab sources and friends across the region, specifically from the gold, and they are incredibly angry, and they are angry at the Iranians. They feel that they try to play a moderating role trying to pressure the United States not to go into this war, and even not allowing the US to use some of their bases. And now they are so aggressively attacked. I don't think that people understand that about 60 percent of the projectiles short from Iran, according to some of the calculations, are pointed towards the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

26:11This is what Israel is getting about, a third of what is short from the Islamic Republic across the region. Now, you are actually asking about Qatar because you said, anti-Israeli, right? And Saudi Arabia is not, I don't define Saudi Arabia even with the change of tone right now. It's anti-Israeli, it's purely anti-Israeli, it's mostly Qatar. It's the Qatar, I'm not going to make any predictions. They might now be somewhat angry, and then after the war, rubbing shoulders again with the mullahs in terror run. If they need to be, I'm just not going to make any predictions as to Qatar. But as to the rest, today happened something strategic. The Islamic Republic attacked Aramco. It attacked Saudi Arabia's energy. This was a strategic strike by the Iranians, either symbolically strategic or meaningful. They wanted to say, we're going to go for your oil and gas infrastructure. Now, if this is the case,

27:13you're asking what we should be looking at. I think that the president, the Secretary of War, they will need to make a decision whether or not they're getting energy facilities within the Islamic Republic. That is a very meaningful decision. It doesn't mean that you need to ruin all their oil fields or doing something like that. But for the regime, that means end of story according to one Israeli senior source. Take them offline for a time. And all of a sudden, you've got meaningful financial leverage over the regime. Or even do something that isn't that substantial, but it shows them that if they do not capitulate, meaning of that is that their stream of cash is over. And then they don't have money to pay salaries. And then the state, the polity, it's called the Islamic Republic, is basically gone. And that's something I'm looking at to see what would be the American decision. And again, all of these decisions are made by the

28:16president. It all comes down to the big fella. We've been saying it all along, right? I people have lamented that gosh, how does this guy have all this power? Well, he's called the president of the United States. And that's how this works. All right, we're going to leave it there. You've been incredibly generous with your time. We're going to thank you. No doubt they all for joining us today on the FDB morning brief. Hope you'll come back. Yeah, thanks so much. All right, folks, stick a fork in this episode. We're done. But please don't stop tuning into FDD as this war drags on. Head on over to our website, FDD.org. Check out those those sit reps, those live panel discussions, breaking down the latest news as it unfolds. Watch our podcast. Check out our socials and all the other stuff where experts are weighing in because, man, there was a lot of it. Then just when you think you're going to do something else, you should remember to visit FDD.org slash and best to support our work. That's just a suggestion, of course. But it's a strong suggestion on my part. All right, it's going to be a hell of a week, folks. More episodes of the FDB morning brief are coming. More sit reps, more everything. So stay

29:19tuned. Until then, I'm Jonathan Schanzer signing off for FDB.