Five Days Into War With Iran, Normalcy In Tel Aviv

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Welcome to the Bureau podcast and very happy and privileged to have back Adam Zivo,

who everyone that follows us knows he's done a lot of great reporting for the Bureau and elsewhere

on counter narcotics in Canada. And he's covering a lot of conflict zones around the world. We had him

about a year ago or so when when Israel really took care of their together with the United States,

did an incredible attack on Iran. And here we are again. So Adam, you're in Tel Aviv.

You know, I've been following and covering the war mainly from American political and military

sources. You're going to give a totally closer and different perspective from Israel. So tell us

when you got there and how it's looking. Okay, so I got here about a week before the war began

because it was quite clear at that time that conflict was imminent. And my political sources and

journalistic sources all warned that should a war start that the effects on Tel Aviv would be

substantial, that the damage would be brutal, that this would be a very difficult time and that

things would be much worse than the 12-day war last June. So I arrived and there was an odd

sense of normalcy in the city, which is actually just the way that Israel works. It's how things

normally are. They've been in war for many years and they've been in conflict with their

neighbors for decades. And so people were just living their lives going to the beach, going to the

cafes, working. And they all knew that war was looming in the near future. But at the same time,

they said, look, what can we do about it? We feel some anxiety. But there's nothing new to this.

So then on Shabbat, which is on a Saturday, when most things in Israel are closed,

we all received an emergency alert at 8 a.m. And just to give you some context, the way things work

here, at least this is how it worked when I was in Israel last summer, is that you get an emergency

alert, which sounds like an amber alert, an Ontario. It takes over your phone. It's not done through

an app. It's done through an emergency system. The blaring is the exact same thing that you would

know from an amber alert. It's not something you can ignore. And then that will direct you to a

bomb shelter. So you should say, you know, you have to, this says find a safe place. And then at

that point, if there is an attack, usually about five to ten minutes later, you'll get the actual

air sirens. So that'll blare in the air. You'll get, you know, your alert through an app.

And then you have 90 seconds to get inside if you're in Tel Aviv. If you're,

if you're in the North, you might have less time. If you're in the South, you might have less time,

depends where the misses are coming from. Right. So we saw this and we all knew that this means that

there's war with the run. And everyone went to their bomb shelters, whichever one was nearby.

And it was orderly. Everyone just walked there because they know the drill. This is nothing new to

them. And I went to a garage. And then after two or three minutes, people began to leave because

they realized that the alert indicated that Israel had attacked Iran. But not that there was a

counter attack. So they said, okay, we're just going to go home. We're going to rest. We're going

to prepare. And then if there is an attack, we'll go back to the shelter. And so I then went back

and the city was beginning to empty. There weren't that many people on the streets. Things were

deserted. And I saw some people, you know, with their luggage and they were traveling to the north

of Israel or to the south of Israel in rural areas that are less likely to be targeted by Iran.

Because Tehran likes to predominantly target Tel Aviv and Haifa. They don't target Jerusalem so

much because of all of the historical and religious sites. But of course, Tel Aviv is a new

or city in the same with Haifa. So they wanted to destroy those. Right. So people got out of there.

There were some moderate lines at the nearby grocery store, but it was nothing insane.

You know, maybe about five or six people deep. Everyone once again was very calm. And they were

getting some extra food. But for the most part, there was no hoarding. So then shortly afterwards,

maybe one or two hours, we got the another emergency alerts. And so we thought, okay, well,

this is going to be the retaliation. So you go to your bomb shelter, whichever one's nearby,

they're everywhere here. It's ubiquitous. And then we got the follow-up siren. And that was

anxiety-ducing the first one or two times. But by four or five p.m., we did this seven or eight times.

Right. And after a while, your anxiety dissipates and it's replaced with a sense of tedium.

Right. This becomes a chore. And the fact that it is allowed to become a chore that is perceived

as a chore is a testament to the strength of the idea. Because people didn't feel afraid. People

still don't feel afraid. They know that the infrastructure is there to protect them and that there's

an organized system in place that ensures that they have agency over their own safety and they have

time to get to a shelter should they need to. Now, one thing I do want to clarify is that if you are

in a shelter and you get a direct hit, so a missile lands directly on it, there's nothing you can do.

You're dead at that point. But statistically speaking, the chance of that happening is very

remote. It's on par with being hit by a car if not rare than that. So people understand that.

So after the first day, you know, we didn't sleep. There were lots of alerts just throughout the

nights. People were getting tired. But by Sunday, things were beginning to lighten up. By Monday,

things were starting to become feel more normal. And so today, you know, when we're recording this,

we've had some alerts over the course of the day, maybe five or six. But you just go to the shelter,

you wait 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then you go out. And last night was particularly tough,

because we had an alerts at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., and 4 a.m., so no one slept. But you don't have a

sense of terror. You just go to the shelter and you come back. It's just that you can't sleep because

you have to follow instructions. So the mood in the city is relaxed. There isn't really any panic

here. It's less severe than the 12-day war. And I hypothesize, and I think that many people

believe this. It seems to be the general consensus is that Iran, you know, decided to attack all of

the Arab Gulf states. Their gamble, essentially, was that these states are softer targets than anything

in Israel. They don't have the infrastructure. They don't have all the bomb shelters. They never

expected to be assaulted this way. And the idea is to pressure the Gulf states to run to

the United States in beg for negotiations. That hasn't worked out. But what that means is that

Iran's attacks are dispersed across a large number of countries. The UAE has absorbed the bulk

of the attacks, and Israel is being left relatively alone. We still have a few hits,

but they're really not that severe. And most of the city is totally normal.

OK, so since you covered, you were there for the 12-day war. Of course, you've been back and forth

to Canada. You've monitored the geopolitics. I'm sure you were plugged into the debates in Israel.

Can you give a sense of, you know, from the Israeli perspective, what has changed between the 12-day

war and this current dual-prond attack from the US and Israel? I mean, in terms of what does

the society believe about justification? And I will add that, you know, for the the worldwide

viewer, for anyone that missed that in the interim, there was a revolt in Iran and about 30,000 or more

Iranian citizens were killed. Surely that comes into the humanitarian understanding as well. But

let's focus on the Israeli perspective, you know, more justification.

Well, from my understanding, about 80% of Israelis support attacking Iran. They all love Iranian people.

I just want to clarify it. Israelis love Iranians and view them as sophisticated and educated.

And Iranians seem to really love Israelis. There's actually this big cultural romance.

But Israelis understand that the Islamic regime is apocalyptic and views itself as being

sees itself as being a crusader against the existence of Israel, right? So the Islamic regime

is not a rational geopolitical actor. It wants to eradicate Israel as a little Satan and then eradicate

the United States. And so for many Israelis, they view conflict with the Islamic regime as inevitable.

And they say, look, it's better to strike them now than later when they become invulnerable.

Now, there was, of course, the 12-day war. The Israelis attacked Iran and tried to destroy their

nuclear capabilities. The United States came in at the very end, did some help, provided some

help, and then kind of said, okay, mission over. And although Trump boasted that they done

significant damage to Iran's nuclear facilities in Israel, the perception was that the war was not

prosecuted as to its full extent and that most of Iran's nuclear capability survived and that

they could be rebuilt. So that was a concern. Now, the underlying issue here is that in addition to

building its nuclear capacities, Iran has invested a lot of money into building thousands of ballistic

missiles. And what that means is that Iran with those ballistic missiles can engage in hostage

diplomacy. If you try to attack Iran, Iran can say, well, we will destroy Tel Aviv using our

conventional weapons and we will, you know, destroy the Gulf States as well. And so it seems as if

the Islamic regime was gambling on this and they thought, okay, we will build a ballistic missile

shield. The cost of interfering with our foreign policy will be too high for anyone to bear.

And then we will use that to provide ourselves with enough cover to build a nuclear weapon when we

need to. And of course, neither Israel nor the United States was willing to let that happen. They

knew that there was a window of opportunity to topple the regime or cripple the regime before

it became too strong. Now, with the 12th, they were having somewhat failed. I think the question was,

when is the next war with Iran going to happen? That was seen as inevitable within Israel.

And then we saw an opportunity open because first of all, there was an economic crisis. So one of

Israel's, sorry, one of Iran's main banks collapsed in the autumn and the government's

responded to that by printing more money and then that instigated hyperinflation. And then

those economic problems tied with long-standing political discontent sparked the mass anti-government

protests that we saw beginning in December and crescendo in January. And then the Islamic regime

responded to that by murdering about 30,000 protesters, spilling rivers of blood.

And the Islamic regime already has very weak and fragile regime legitimacy that shattered it.

And of course, created a volcanic reservoir of discontent that I think any foreign actor would see

as an asset, right? If you want to topple a regime, you probably want to do it when most of the

population is pissed off because you've massacred 30,000 people. So all of these factors came into play

plus, of course, there's the water crisis in Tehran, Slash Iran, which makes things even more

vulnerable and fraught. And so it seemed obvious to do it now. And what's interesting is that there was

actually symbolic value to when the Americans and the Israelis launched this attack because they

launched it on the weekend of Purim. Purim is a Jewish holiday. And it commemorates this historical

event, ages and ages ago and antiquity where the Jews were living under the Persians. And there was

some Persian administrator, policymaker, high-powered guy. And he was offended by a Jew. There was

some kind of conflict. And so he decided that the solution to this was to murder all the Jews in

the Persian Empire at the time because I guess he was being melodramatic. And unbeknownst to him,

the queen of Persia at the time was secretly Jewish. She'd hid her Judaism previously. And so she

had to make a choice whether or not to reveal herself as a Jew to her husband and beg for the freedom

of her people, beg for them to be spared. And so she did the brave thing. She spoke to her husband

and he sided with her. And the high-leveled guy, Hamad, I believe is his name. So he was then,

you know, I think he was executed or something like that. So what you have here is a story where

the Jews faced annihilation from the bad Persians and then were saved by the good Persians. So you

can see some historical parallels. And I don't think the decision to launch the war on this weekend

was an accident. This is the biblical story of Esther, right? Yes.

So it's interesting that the geopolitics go back to the Bible age and that you say kinship

between the peoples. We even see it a little bit in modern, you know, spy dramas like Taran. But

I guess what I want to ask is you're located where you can get probably an even better sense of that

people to people understanding. It seems to me if you're telling me that it almost seems to feel like

the Israeli population, I'm sure they're not being overly optimistic or hopeful, but they feel

that this is in hand. And it seems that's what we're getting from the US military. Despite any

disinformation coming from the Iran regime, this appears to be a conflict that will be mass

destruction, you know, assets for the Iranian regime will be crushed. So what happens after that,

if that is true, do you think it could be a story where there could be democracy in Iran, you know,

are the constituents there? It's hard to tell. So yeah, right now in Israel, everyone feels very

confidence. And before I answer your question, I just want to make a point about online disinformation

because this is something that happened last summer too. Last summer during the 12th day were

the Israelis and the Americans eventually kicked the Islamic regime's ass. And rather than deal

with this reality, the Islamic regime's supporters began to spread disinformation claiming that

large parts of Tel Aviv had been destroyed. And a lot of this disinformation was AI generated.

I saw a lot of it. And it was really bizarre for me as someone who was in Tel Aviv to hear people say,

oh, Tel Aviv has been raised to the ground and I look around and I said, no, it's not. And then I

went to the beach and I made a video and I said, I'm on the beach of Tel Aviv, everything is fine.

And then they said, I was doing AI generated content. So the same thing happened this year.

Yeah, things are fine. We have a few strikes, right? We've had a few impacts and those impacts

are not pretty, but that is a very small portion of the city, right? And so now we have all this

AI generated content, including a video that came out two or three days ago that showed all of

these missiles landing in the city and that was all fake. And that's giving people the wrong

impression. And once again, I'm finding myself having to tell people, hey, I'm in Tel Aviv,

this is a lie. And they don't believe me. Now, there are two main factors here for this

disinformation. Then I'll go and answer your question. So factor one is, of course, there are state

based disinformation agents. The Islamic regime, of course, spends a lot of money in maintaining

bot farms. And they have their useful idiots as well. And then on top of that, you have this

monetization structure in social media that incentivizes bad actors. Yeah. Because, right,

if you get a lot of clicks and then you get paid based on your engagement, because you're getting

a portion of that ad revenue, then there's a business model here where you can just post a whole

bunch of outrageous AI-generated war propaganda that gives you a lot of attention and you make money

off of that. And you're spreading this information. I mean, this is nothing new. Back in 2016,

when we saw the first rise of politicized social media disinformation, you had a group of Macedonian

teenagers who created websites saying that Hillary Clinton drinks children's blood and runs

pedophile rings out of, you know, a pizza parlor. And they made a shit ton of money off of that.

So this is the same thing, but it's all on social media. So X is now trying to stop that by

demonetizing those accounts. Now, to go back to your earlier question about what is the prospect

of democracy in Iran, well, I think it's going to be tough. And much of the Iranian diaspora,

the overwhelming majority, has consolidated around exiled crown prince Reza Papavi.

Yeah. So, you know, he's the son of the Shah who is deposed. And for many decades, no one took

Papavi seriously at all. He was known as a clown prince. He was just kind of living a life of

dissipation in the United States. And he had some support from a hardcore group of monarchists,

but that was it. Then, starting a few years ago, he began to take his rule more seriously,

and he began to work with Iranian civil society actors. And they put together something known as

the Iranian prosperity project, which is a transition plan for what it would look like after

the Islamic regime falls. And Papavi began to present himself as a transitional figure. He says,

look, you know, I'm not here to be my father. I'm not here to install a new dictatorship. I am here

to stabilize the country for a period of one to three years and guide it towards a national

referendum that would be democratic in nature. We would decide what the essential essence of our new

state looks like. That transition plan won over a lot of skeptics. And then as people consolidated

around Papavi, the remaining people who didn't support him said, well, you know what? We've never

seen everyone so divided. I have my concerns, but I'm going to reluctantly support Papavi because

I know that he is the only one who can unite the Iranians. So that is true of the diaspora.

The question is, how true is this Iran itself? How many Iranians in Iran support Papavi?

It seems evidence that there is a big base of support. But is it enough for Papavi to dislodge

all of the entrenched systems of the Islamic regime? And of course, the Islamic regime,

it rules by brutality, but it does have some base of support that you don't see in the diaspora.

Because people were in the diaspora, the people who fled because they didn't like Islamic

fanaticism. So that is the question. Trump has suggested that he might not back Papavi because

there might be a lack of domestic support. And that he might, for example, elevate a pre-existing

regime figure in the same way that he worked with the, I think, Deputy Prime Minister or Vice

President of Venezuela. So in this way, he'd be prioritizing stability over rapid democratic

change, which has its pros and cons, but I think would be dissatisfied to most Iranians.

And that's an option, right? But then he's also said that it's hard for him to figure out who

could replace the current leaders because so many of his candidates have been killed

through American strikes. Yeah. A lot of military success. It's hard to deny. So one thing that I've

covered, and I see more and more coverage in, let's say, mainstream analysis is, I think people

in the United States are starting to realize that actually China is a part of the equation,

even if the White House or the, you know, the Joint Chief Chair can't say, this is about China.

From my perspective, it's at least part of the equation. And I can say that, you know, in a,

in a sort of Chatham House conversation quite recently, I heard in Israeli official

say quite openly. Yes, we in Israel know that Iran and China are joined at the hip and they're

part of a sort of alliance that is on the other side of the US, it is real. So is that coming up in

in the, let's just call it mainstream debate in Israel at this point? Yeah, I mean, it's all

pretty self-evidence. We know that there's this authoritarian block consisting of China,

Iran, North Korea, Russia, and they all don't like the West. They all don't like Israel.

And they're working to thwart the West. So of course, it makes sense to attack them as a unified

block rather than to see these conflicts as individual theaters that have nothing to do with each

other, right? So that is generally understood. And I think for many Israelis, at least the ones

who I talk to, you know, they say, of course, it makes sense for the United States to get involved

because some people say, well, why, why does it matter to the United States if Iran is a hostile

force? It's all the way in the Middle East. While the Israelis say we have to look at things

holistically, right? This is a new Cold War. This one, the main players in this new Cold War,

you've got to knock them out. Yeah. And on that point, I mean, how long do you think it goes?

Are you getting a sense? President Trump has said four to five weeks, something like that.

Do you get a sense from the Israeli media? How long it could go? And if the, if the people

are could be in for the longer haul? Or if they could see boots on the ground, you know,

what are those debates in Israeli culture? No one is quite sure of how long this will last.

There's a lot of uncertainty, but everyone is in this for the long haul. They view any harm that

they experience as a necessary sacrifice. I mean, Israelis were behind this war, even when it seemed

as if Tel Aviv was going to receive significant damage. So at this point, you know, with everything

mostly being fine outside, I think that they're okay to let this drag out a little bit, right?

And I don't think any is what many Israelis, I think, are uncomfortable with the idea of not

following through. They don't want to create a situation where the Islamic regime recuperates,

and then we have to go through this entire process again and again and again.

Yeah, and kind of related to the prior question, is there a resolution within Israeli culture that

it's part of that debate? Perhaps disinformation on even a lot of American people

they're saying Israeli is right. That's why it's why it's hard to find it.

Israelis are aware of the fact that there is an enormous amount of disinformation about

around them in the world. And there's frustration within Israel, but at the same time,

there's almost a sense of resignation because what can you do after a while? When you're facing off

against opponents, we're willing to lie so shamelessly and so frequently. Then after a certain point,

you just have to put your head down and continue doing your work and hope for the best.

And I know that maybe there are some people who are watching this, you might think that this

disinformation is correct. And I really got to emphasize, like if you talk to any Israelis,

you kind of realize how ridiculous it is. I'll give you an example of this. So there are some

people who are pushing this narrative, for example, that Israeli bomb shelters are not welcoming

of non-white people. And this is a propaganda point that is specifically designed to

activate far left anger towards Israel, basically by portraying Israel as a white supremacist state,

even though 50% of Israelis are Middle Eastern because they're Middle Eastern Jews.

And so I'm in this bizarre position where now when I go to the bomb shelters,

you often see people of color. It's a very multiracial society. So I'll be like, hey,

do you guys want to do an interview? And I'll photograph people, interview them, put them online.

But it's like taking a teaspoon of water and throwing it on a giant fire, right? And I think

many Israelis feel the same way. You just, there are so many different ways that this country is

lied about, that it's impossible to address. Yeah, and I would add that I think it's becoming

more clear that they call it the horseshoe phenomenon. So you could have an influencer on the far

right, on the far left, you know, both making the same points. They've got two million followers.

They're saying Iran is winning, or they're saying Israel is driving US into the war. And people should

recognize they're getting paid with clicks and like direct transfers from, or essentially, you know,

regimes, we don't need to name them. We'll be able to sort of make sure that funds

flow into whatever their, their account is on social media that's monetized when they say things

like that. And those people aren't dumb. So they see funds flowing in. I'm going to say the same

thing again. I mean, we can name the regime. The regime here is Qatar, right? So Qatar, despite

only having 300,000 people has an enormous amount of money and they've spent enormous sums on

disinformation and vilification campaigns in Israel. Sorry, attacking Israel. So we know they've

put a lot of money into North American academia. We know that they fund bought accounts.

And you know, we know that Qatar, for example, hosts the leaders of Hamas. And they're not a friend,

they're an enemy. Although they try to pretend to be friends, they've offered, for example,

to host and they do currently host an American base on their property because they see this as

protection against the Islamic regime. They're trying to play both sides. But there are threats

to our information environments. And this is actually where I think that the Islamic regime

really messed up because they attacked Qatar. They bombed Doha on top of bombing Dubai and all

these other places. And now I think the question is, will Qatar be as willing to give propaganda

support? And to attack Israel, when you have Israeli forces essentially protecting

Qataris from from Iranian bombs. So hopefully this will change their disposition. And this might

lead to a less messed up information environment. Right. Right. We've covered the

more information. I don't just tell it just how long it's going to be there. And

the next the next weeks for yourself yourself. Well, I was supposed to be here until March 13th. And

I had a sense that this wasn't going to actually happen. And so Air Canada did cancel my flights.

And they have tentatively rescheduled it for March 27th. So that's two weeks afterwards. So I guess

I might come back at the end of the month. If not, I might just stay longer. I do hope to be

back in Canada by early April because I have some other things to do here. But yeah, I mean,

you know, I might just stay here for a while. And in terms of what my next few weeks look like,

it's not as exciting as you would think because once again, the Iranians are so incompetent

and the United States has crippled them. So it's mostly me just going to bomb shelters

and talk into people and interviewing policy experts when we're not being interrupted by the

sirens and then sitting at cafes and writing. So I don't know, maybe I could go to Gaza and

have a contact who could maybe arrange that. But my life is basically just the life of any writer,

except I have to run to a basement maybe five times a day. All right. Well, Adam, I always

appreciate your time to the Bureau. Just let us know where you can find your coverage on this

campaign. Well, I mean, you can find me on social media on X on TikTok on Facebook,

on Instagram and on all of these platforms. It's Adam, Zivo, Zed, I, Viz and Victor, Oh,

and I'm there. Twitter's where I'm most active. I started doing a lot of short-term content

on Instagram, though. So yeah, if you want to learn more about me, you can go there or you can

read all of my stuff at the National Post. I'm one of their columnists and I'm kind of their

foreign affairs guy. So it's all there too. All right, Adam. Take care and we will be in touch again.