Israel Strikes Iran

Jeffrey Lewis 0:07

You are listening to the Arms Control One podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:19

And I am Dr. Aaron Stein, president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute and fresh off a red-eye flight from Denver. Jeffrey, don't ever take a red-eye flight from Denver back to the East Coast of the United States.

Jeffrey 0:30

I just took a red-eye flight from Newark to D.C. and then up to Albany. And then, yeah. Yeah, it feels like garbage.

Aaron 0:40

Yeah, I don't feel good. But you know who feels worse? Whoa!

Jeffrey 0:43

I knew it was coming! You know who feels worse? Oh, they don't feel anything now. They're dead.

Aaron 0:49

They're dead. I think last night as I was returning my rental car at the Denver International Airport, Israel finally did what it said it's going to be doing for 20 years?

Jeffrey 1:02

Yeah, someone showed me, James Palmer at Foreign Policy, where I just finished a column, showed me a 1993 article or an article referring to a 1993 speech that Netanyahu gave in which BBV 1.0 was like, let's do it.

Aaron 1:23

So the dreams and hopes of many a conservative Israeli came true last night, but they started still unfolding. And I think we should be saying that. Airstrikes against... I think primarily leadership targets with some nuclear thrown in on the side.

Jeffrey 1:40

I think this is a really important thing to clarify for people as of this recording.

Aaron 1:44

Yeah. Friday, June 13th, 1 26 PM East coast time, which could change.

Jeffrey 1:50

Absolutely. Almost all of the strikes were against leadership targets. And missile production. And the only nuclear target that I could confirm has been struck is some of the facilities at Natanz, which is not to say that as I'm speaking, other things aren't getting hit or that between now and recording that other things won't get hit. But at the moment, unless Israel changes what they're doing, this is a decapitation and regime change strike.

And it is not yet. A strike that would meaningfully degrade their capacity to make nuclear weapons.

Aaron 2:32

I would agree with the caveat that as part of the opening leadership strikes, they seem to have... Proactively identified the scientists, perhaps at the top of the org chart? Two scientists that we knew, yes. At the very tippy-top of the org chart. And my guess is they aren't down there doing the sort of day-to-day management of the enrichment facility at Fordow.

Jeffrey 2:59

I know as the president of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, you feel like the loss of the leadership would be very detrimental to the health of the institution. But as a mere research scholar... At the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, I might have a different view on decapitation.

Aaron 3:16

Yeah. And look, I've seen reports that they've struck out by Parchin, which is where they allegedly did explosive testing back in 2003. But I think what we're talking about here, just so we're all on the same page, is the Fordow Deeply Buried Enrichment Facility and Natanz as being the sort of two main things that one would conceivably strike to set back production of centrifuges and also centrifuge production facilities.

Jeffrey 3:43

Right. And so for Natanz, the Iranians have moved centrifuge production underground. Yep. And that facility does not appear to have been struck again. As of this, as of this ring. What they did hit at Natanz, just looking at satellite imagery, is the pilot fuel enrichment plant, which was producing uranium to 60% enrichment. The PFAT, man. Boy, that got up.

That's one less. That's on the IAEA list of facilities under agency safeguards. Not no more, it's not. And then they hit the power buildings. And then there's one building that's adjacent to the big underground hall that might be related to HVAC or power. It's actually really unclear to me. And they hit that. So I don't know that they destroyed a lot of centrifuges.

I don't think they got any of the actual uranium. And I don't think they really got at the capacity to produce the centrifuges. So... You know...

Aaron 4:54

Yeah, again, we're doing this less than 24 hours after the strikes began, and the Israelis are signaling that this is going to keep going.

Jeffrey 5:01

I guess what surprised me is... Yeah, Netanyahu told them to stock up on patience.

Aaron 5:07

And what surprised me is Israel is now operating in daylight. I thought this would be basically every night, and so... While I am not surprised that the Israelis have been able to strike at leadership targets, they demonstrated that after October 7th with Hezbollah and basically anybody who they've sort of turned their sights on. Nor am I surprised that they were able to take out the PFEP at Natanz or any sort of surrounding infrastructure because it's mostly above ground.

Jeffrey 5:36

Any above ground thing is just dead.

Aaron 5:38

There you go. That's a really good way to put it. I am surprised it's not happening at night.

Jeffrey 5:43

Well, you know, Sam Lair and I were watching that video that the Iranians released where they showed the inside of a command facility during the drone attack. And we realized it was actually an air defense facility. And they add up on the screens the feeds from different aircraft. Air defense units, and we were able to geolocate it, even though they were inside the bunker.

One of the screens had a freaking map with a dot on it. And then we went and we were able to cross-check all those screens with the different air defenses, which were around Natanz, in fact, and nothing is networked.

Aaron 6:23

How could you tell that from the picture?

Jeffrey 6:25

Because they had different screens for every system. Right. So they didn't have one central picture. It's like every unit seems to be out there shooting for themselves, or as best they can tell at the moment, not shooting at all.

Aaron 6:39

Right.

Jeffrey 6:40

So actually, people got really angry at Sam and I and accused us of manufacturing consent for this strike, which for the record, I think is a bad idea.

Aaron 6:47

I think people just need to go familiarize themselves with your body of work on the topic.

Jeffrey 6:53

Yeah. But I mean, like I... Air defenses suck. What am I supposed to say?

Aaron 6:58

Yeah.

Jeffrey 7:01

We looked at the data and it's like, ooh.

Aaron 7:03

Yeah. You published that in the blog, didn't you?

Jeffrey 7:05

Yeah, we did.

Aaron 7:07

You published that in the blog. Yeah. So the question is, as of now, everybody's asking. Everybody's asking me. I'm sure people are asking you. What does this mean for the nuclear program? And the answer is, for now, again, less than 24 hours, not much.

Jeffrey 7:29

Yeah, I think, you know, obviously it depends on how long the Israelis can sustain this tempo of operations. You know, one friend said, well, you know, because I'm much more skeptical of this than he is. And he's like, well, we'll talk in two weeks. And I'm like, if the Iranians can't get their shit together in two weeks, that would be pretty funny.

Well, like if they're just going to sit here and like take it in the face for two weeks, like, well...

Aaron 7:56

I do expect them to start shooting back at Israel at some point.

Other voice 7:59

Right.

Aaron 8:00

They'll get it together. That's my basic assumption.

Jeffrey 8:05

You would think. Although, you know, I do. So let's just stipulate what we see now versus what it might look like in 48 hours. Yeah. I think the main idea was decapitate the leadership and And interfere with any ability to retaliate. Yes. And then they're going to take their sweet time and do as much damage as they can to the nuclear program.

Agreed. I don't think in the end that damage will be all that great because almost everything's underground. Everything's sort of put away. So it's going to delay the program. It's going to be inconvenient for the Iranians. But I feel like Netanyahu's put all his chips in on regime change because if the regime doesn't fall. Right. You know, they're going to have like a little meeting where they're like, well, do we finish the nuclear program now?

Right. And since 2003, every time they've had that little meeting, you know, the answer has been no. Right. Vibe check. The U.S. intelligence community as recently as May 11th said that they had not restarted the program. Right. You know, like going to be some different people in the meeting.

Aaron 9:22

Let's say the principals around the table will be probably a little younger because – Yeah, a little younger. A little younger.

Jeffrey 9:29

Because their bosses are now dead. I completely agree. And they're going to be thinking like, well, what happened to my boss? And like wouldn't – would Israel have done this if A, Iran had nuclear weapons or B, if Israel didn't?

Aaron 9:43

Yeah, I don't actually know the answer to that question. That was a really interesting question because I don't know the answer to that one because we've talked a lot about in this podcast about nuclear weapons just affect risk calculus. It doesn't stop outright conflict. Yeah, no, I completely agree. From what we can tell, the opening strikes were meant to disable or at least eliminate the IRGC aerospace leadership.

Basically, I think the dudes who would fire the ballistic missiles back at Israel to buy time so that they can continue to plink away at nuclear targets, which is why- I'd like to say I'm going to miss Haji Zayda, but no. I mean, these are people who have been with us in our lives for a long time.

I look at the names, it's like, God, I've been- Too long. Too long. It was time to move on. Yeah. These are people that report after report.

Jeffrey 10:35

By the way, this is actually one of these things that's really hard for me as an analyst. Because on the one hand, I don't want to run to have a nuclear weapon. I hope this works. But everything I know about the world tells me this is not going to work. So like... Is this what it's like if you're religious and you pray for miracles?

I don't believe in miracles. I think it's just not going to work. I will say this. I'd like it to. I mean, if the regime fell and the peaceful women could walk around with their hair uncovered and all the scientists just worked on particle accelerators, that'd be great.

Aaron 11:19

I will say this. When we were envisioning this operation in the beginning, I don't think any of us had this on our bingo card. Or if we did, we had little pieces of it. So my point here is to say, I'm just wary of the hot tank because some of the stuff that they did at the outset of the strikes I think wasn't what we were talking about in the analyst community.

The analyst community was always like, they don't have enough bunker-busting, penetrating bombs to really do damage, which may be true to this day, right? But I don't think that we were really envisioning Sort of smuggling in drones and going after tells in ways that they have. And so just sort of reserving judgment.

Jeffrey 12:00

This is now the second time a country has smuggled in drones. Right. I mean...

Aaron 12:10

It's a thing. Oh, I mean, look, I was the reason why I was on a red eye from Denver was because I was out in Colorado Springs talking about the the small US or small drone threat to the homeland. So definitely it's on people's minds. Let's just put it that way. And so this may play out in ways that we didn't anticipate or foresee moving forward.

But I tend to agree with you. And I think they're already foreshadowing it. They're already putting out at least the last thing I'm saying. And the media environment is going fast and furious. I think they're trying now to incentivize Donald Trump to be the hammer. In that make an agreement with us if we don't fall or basically the U.S. will get involved on their behalf.

And I think the Israelis are bluffing here, but I think that that's what they ultimately want.

Jeffrey 13:00

Yeah, I still think that misreads Trump. I mean, there are a lot of two I don't like about the man, but I mean, he seems absolutely allergic to actually starting wars. Oh, absolutely. Talking about starting wars.

Aaron 13:12

Yes. And so I think his first reaction – this is like when I was – because this morning people were like, well, he went back on a statement yesterday. Because this morning he basically said, I told these guys to cut a deal, them being the Iranians, and I told them how good Israel is, and then they didn't listen to me, and then Israel went and did the bad thing.

So they should have listened to me. And a lot of people were saying, well, that's an endorsement of the strike. I think that's an endorsement of the strike after he sort of tried to distance himself from the strike. Because all accidents that I have sort of heard about and I'm watching is that he wanted a deal to return the JCPOA thing.

Jeffrey 13:45

I mean, first of all, I mean, what he said is kind of true. It is. It is a way. I mean, if they had just bribed him. Given him the appearance of an agreement, which has taken the Witkopf agreement, which was terrible, but you know, like whatever, then I, I think he's right. I think he likes being that kind of, I think he likes having that attitude.

Yeah, you know, but yeah, I think fundamentally, you know, if they had invited him for a summit, yes, he probably would have tried to restrain this.

Aaron 14:25

And I do think, and I rarely put anything out on social media anymore, but I do think that that was one of the driving factors on the Israeli side, which is I think they thought correctly that he was going to cut a deal. And the deal was going to be bad for them in their own framing of this issue.

And so if they were going to go, they needed to go. And so these plans have probably been on the shelf in some iteration.

Jeffrey 14:52

They have said since Nasrallah's Assassination.

Aaron 14:56

Yeah, and what I mean by plans is like they have a basic plan and they've like tacked things onto and there's analysts sitting somewhere in some bunker in Tel Aviv whose job it is to update the plan every six months.

Jeffrey 15:07

My understanding is they said that they made a decision to put this all together as a package that day. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, this has been like in train and I think they saw the window to do it closing.

Aaron 15:18

Correct. So they tried to get him on board, right? By all indications, they tried to sign him up to be part of this. He said no. He tasked Witkoff to go do it. And then they're watching Witkoff with panic, right? And then they're saying, well, you just got to go do it. Go execute.

Jeffrey 15:34

Yeah, because Witkoff's like, well, what if we got the JCPOA out and you deleted all the stuff you don't like?

Aaron 15:40

Right.

Jeffrey 15:41

And still the Iranians are like, no.

Aaron 15:44

Yeah.

Jeffrey 15:44

It's humiliating. Okay, guys.

Aaron 15:47

I don't think that – because people are asking like the IAE board report and the referral. I don't – I think those are sort of just coincidental moments in this story.

Jeffrey 15:57

So I just wrote a column for foreign policy. You know like a superposition of waves where two waves coincide and then you get this like huge wave? Sure.

Aaron 16:08

Yeah.

Jeffrey 16:08

So it's the superposition of two different domestic phenomena, one in the US and one in Israel. So I think in the US, I think Trump absolutely wants to pander to his base by looking tough, but doesn't want to go to war. So he's trying to cut a deal which puts pressure on Israel, but he's not going to stop the Israelis if they want to do this.

Aaron 16:35

Yes.

Jeffrey 16:36

So he does the 60-day deadline, and the Israelis do this on day 61. Yeah. Good point. And then you've got Netanyahu, who I think has cynically calculated that he stays in power as long as Israel is in a state of permanent crisis.

Aaron 16:55

I think that's overt. I mean, it is cynical, but I think it's an act of self-survival.

Jeffrey 17:00

Right, because, you know, then otherwise he goes to trial in prison.

Aaron 17:03

That's right. And being in the prime minister's mansion is a lot better than being in an Israeli prison cell.

Jeffrey 17:09

So when he told Israelis to stock up on patients, you know, like, I think he doesn't want this to end.

Aaron 17:15

You don't think he's a Guns N' Roses fan?

Jeffrey 17:17

Yeah, well, see, I was thinking of Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now, you know?

Aaron 17:22

That's a good movie. I have a flight to Latvia on Friday. No, he kills people who can't surf.

Jeffrey 17:28

Yeah, I think that's right. I think that that unique situation of Trump won't stop them, provided that they do it right now after the time has elapsed. And they need to do it before Witkoff gets his arms back around the situation.

Aaron 17:50

The Witkoff window. Let's call that the WW. Yeah.

Jeffrey 17:53

Yeah. And then, you know, and it's it's a big W for Netanyahu. Also, I should point out, like, I've lived through this. I remember how all of us who said the Iraq war was a terrible idea had to spend the first, I don't know, you know, few weeks, you know, being laughed at because years, Jeffrey, years. And it was great.

And it was going great. And I don't know what you're talking about. It's fine. We've liberated the people of Iraq. And it's like, oh, you know, it's actually not going that great, but fine. So I, you know, I think. There is this short-term honeymoon effect. The Iranian military is performing terribly. The Israeli military is performing great. They killed a bunch of these guys who nobody except for their families are going to miss.

I don't think they're going to really make a huge dent in the nuclear program, but they are blowing stuff up.

Aaron 18:48

Lots of stuff, yeah.

Jeffrey 18:49

Crossing stuff off the safeguards list. And so... You know, all of that, I think, adds up to this being a pretty good couple of weeks for Netanyahu, even if I think that the long-term outcome is the regime doesn't fall. Yep. Eventually pick the pieces up. Yep. And, you know, and then they, you know, look at North Korea and Kim Jong-un's like, I told you so.

Aaron 19:10

So... So this is where I caveat in that the Israelis surprised me in how they conducted the opening air campaign. And so I'm willing to be surprised.

Jeffrey 19:20

Yeah.

Aaron 19:21

But my prior assumptions are exactly what you just said. There's going to be dudes sitting 12 meters underground, right, in heavily fortified bunkers around some table sipping tea. And then they're going to go, we're leaving the NPT. We're going to pick this thing back up and we're going to dig. We're going to dig and we're going to dig.

And then nobody's going to stop us. And we're getting rid of everybody. IAEA, Witkoff, everything. And then we're going to test. Oh, I think you keep talking to Witkoff. Oh, you think you talk to Stevie?

Jeffrey 19:57

I mean, I'm not sure they will. But, you know, yeah, I would I would see what help I can get with the Russians. They're going to have to rebuild their air defenses. Good God.

Aaron 20:08

Yeah. I mean, but the Russians aren't the best place to start. Maybe the Chinese. I mean, maybe maybe now's the time to start investing in some Chinese air defense stock.

Jeffrey 20:17

Oh, my God. Humiliating. So, yeah, they got they got to rebuild the air defenses. But you're right. You got to start digging. You got to reconstitute. And then, you know, I don't know. Well, they've tried to leave the – I mean, look, they – Probably do have to – I think you certainly throw the IAEA out. If you leave the NPT, that's fine.

But then what you do is you join the – you know what you do is you join the TPNW as a non-nuclear weapons state.

Aaron 20:48

Oh, yeah.

Jeffrey 20:48

That's the verification.

Aaron 20:51

Yeah. I mean, they should be paying us for this advice. But that would be good. That was a joke, everybody. That was a joke. That would be good. Do you think they would test or just do the South Africa model?

Jeffrey 21:06

Yeah, I don't know. Probably given how badly they've taken it in the face, they would probably test just to get a little pride back. It's not really like South Africa in the sense that they're not going to be that isolated. I mean, they're already isolated from the US and to some extent Europe, but this strike is going to be really unpopular in Europe.

Aaron 21:31

Yeah, no, I think so.

Jeffrey 21:32

The Russians and the Chinese aren't going to vote for any more sanctions. And honestly, they're not going to enforce any sanctions.

Aaron 21:38

No.

Jeffrey 21:39

You know, I don't, I'd be shocked if the Indians were on board about, you know, what Modi's up to this week. I don't know. I think if you're the Iranians, you know, you probably, you can make it through this. Although I got to tell you, God, hindsight is 20-20. If you were the Iranians, wouldn't you have, wouldn't you have done it?

Aaron 22:02

Oh, yeah. No, no. If I would have known everything that would have happened and you stuck me in that room in 2002, right, when they get exposed by either Israelis or U.S. intelligence through that front party, whatever they're calling themselves, you just make a dash. NCRI. The NCRI. God, the National Council for Resistance in Iran. Yeah. I don't know.

I mean – Fortune favors the fool, Darren. Yeah, no, you go for it, right? You go for it. You ride the whiff. You go for it. But, you know, that would have deprived us from the post that forever cemented our relationship, which was the Lavazan Shian post. I love that post. So it's got to be somewhere on your archives about how they turned it into a soccer field.

I know.

Jeffrey 22:49

I know.

Aaron 22:49

I know.

Jeffrey 22:50

They had to put down some coating to hide all the uranium.

Aaron 22:54

It was great. Big ups to them for moving quickly, at least on that one. Yeah, again, people are asking for estimates. It's too early to tell. But let's assume that they put a couple bombs... But how much damage do the Israelis are going to do? We just don't know. But the sort of estimates at the beginning of this were two to three years.

And did you believe those estimates? Then we can close out.

Jeffrey 23:15

I mean, I think... I don't believe. I don't believe any estimates because it's just based on too much. But that seems right, you know? I mean, I'm assuming that... They've got, they, you know, that they, there are enough people to reconstitute a program. And so it's going to be.

Aaron 23:37

I mean, the centrifuge program is 30 years old.

Jeffrey 23:39

Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's what I mean. Now, you know, one question is like, what's their plan for Fordo?

Aaron 23:48

You know, Israelis or the Iranians? The Israelis. If they're just planning on turning out the power. Right. That's not going to do anything.

Jeffrey 23:55

Then if the Iranians get the power back on, then they're just going to go ahead and reconfigure the Cascades and run it that way. So then it's a lot faster, right? So they're sitting on all that 60% HEU anyway. Right.

Aaron 24:12

I mean, that's the point. If the Fordow survives and the accumulated 60% HEU, this is where breakout time actually matters, right? We typically say, don't worry about breakout time.

Jeffrey 24:22

We're actually now making the case that- Now that people are breaking things, it's breakout time.

Aaron 24:26

Yeah, now it's breakout time. And so, yes. But again, that goes back to what I was saying about not having any assumptions. We dismissed the commando raid a couple episodes ago, and we sort of laughed about it. I'm not dismissing anything anymore. Like, maybe?

Jeffrey 24:43

Yeah, I mean, that's going to be one of those interesting questions, which is, you know, and we probably won't know for 20 or 30 years, like, how long can those guys stay out there? How are they supplying them? Like, is Iran's border so porous that those guys can just... Man, if so, that state is – that's a train wreck.

Aaron 25:09

My understanding of the alcohol smuggling from my trips to Iraqi Kurdistan is that if you need to get some stuff across, there are guys that can get stuff across. And then coming the other way, if you want to – not that I ever partook, but if one were to want to buy a Persian carpet made in Iran – There's a lot of ways to slip those across the Turkish border.

I didn't partake. I didn't bust any sanctions. But I do know how you can do it. And so I imagine you can slip guys across that border pretty easily.

Jeffrey 25:39

Man, the IRGC has spent all this time, like, fomenting, you know, violence across Iraq and Syria and everywhere else. And, like, they should literally have just been locking down their border.

Aaron 25:50

Oh, but they want to sip the booze, man. All those Kurdish guys who run those mules across the border, across the mountains there. Is this where we went off the rails?

Jeffrey 26:01

I mean, I think just the whole world's off the rails, Aaron. It...

Aaron 26:07

I don't know, man. Sitting in a symposium about homeland defense. I'd rather be talking about the Iranians. And with that, I think we'll probably come back and have to do another episode once we start to figure out where this is going.

Jeffrey 26:19

Yeah, once they use an atomic bomb on Fordow and then we're like, oh, well, I guess I'm recalculating.

Aaron 26:24

I don't know. That was a joke, people. That was a joke. All right. Patreon.com. I don't know, man. The Israelis just seem off their rockers, don't they? Yeah. I mean, ever since 10-7, it's wild behavior. Do you remember how nuts we went after 9-11? I do. It's grief and anger. You and I did a podcast that we chose not to air because we were just sort of riffing on where we think the war was going to go, and we thought we would be canceled.

That's another secret lost episode where we were pretty right about that. I'm going to leave it there because if you do any open source work and you're following what's happening in Gaza, It's, it's really, it's hard, you know, to look at but that's a different aspect of this work. But anyways patreon.com slash ACW podcast, $3 for your student, $5 if you're not the Slack channel is alive, it's kicking, it's humming, and it's, it's got more power than it tons does at the moment.

So join it and you'll stay off Israeli scopes down there. So with that thanks everybody for listening.