Trump’s Options on the Brink of War - with Mark Dubowitz and Nadav Eyal

You are listening to an ART Media Podcast. I think that the president should kill the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and his designated successor and son, Moshtaba, because I think that is the most powerful message to the regime and to the Iranian people. Then there's Ali Larajani, who is the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who is Khamenei's closest advisor. He's a former Revolutionary Guards commander. He's really running everything today inside Iran. And then there are a number of other former Revolutionary Guard commanders or current commanders, all of whom then would be getting the message that you could play this one of two ways, gentlemen. You can either go the way of Khamenei and Morstaba, and we will eliminate you, or you could seriously negotiate with us. And I think for the president, that's sort of the Venezuela option when he removed Maduro and then said to the remaining Venezuelan government, you play by my rules, Donald Trump's rules, or you're going the way of Maduro. I also think that if you're really serious about a major regime change operation, then you've got to go after the Guard Corps and the Basij and probably the 20 top cities in Iran and eliminate their capabilities. But between symbolism and a comprehensive campaign, I'm very confident General Cain has given the president multiple options. The Iranians are almost on the record now offering the United States some sort of deal with their oil industry. They are briefing in the last 24 hours that these offers have been made to the United States, that they are not renegading their control of their national interests with oil, but they are offering an entry to American companies to their oil industry. What they want and seek is a recognition of the right to enrich. It doesn't mean that they are talking about actual enrichment only held by them. For instance, they floated the idea of a regional consortium of enrichment. It's 7 a.m. on Sunday, February 22nd here in New York City, where Americans have barely started their day. It's 2 p.m. on Sunday, February 22nd in Israel as Israelis anticipate decision-making and other developments in Washington and in Tehran. We're going to skip our usual news intro in order to jump right into our conversation on what exactly we think is happening regarding decision-making in Tehran and Washington. And because news is moving rather fast, We will release this episode today on Sunday rather than on our usual Monday release schedule. Joining us to unpack all our various reporting and analysis is ARK Media contributor Nadav Ayal from Yediot Akronot and Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a regular guest on Call Me Back. Gentlemen, thanks for being here. Thank you, Dan. Thanks for having us. I want to jump into things. Let's start with a question for both of you. Just based on what you know, based on who you're talking to, based on your own sense of things, what is your assessment as to the direction President Trump is leaning towards an attack or not? Mark, I'll start with you. Dan, I think he's leaning towards an attack, but I think he's waiting for the Iranians to finally respond to U.S. demands. And in the next few days, we're expecting a written Iranian proposal. And the real question is, will Iran finally meet the president's minimum demands, which is zero enrichment of uranium, zero plutonium reprocessing and the full dismantlement of Iran's nuclear program? I hope that President Trump goes further and looks for severe restrictions on Iran's ballistic missile program and the end to financing of their terror proxies and also the release of political prisoners inside Iran. But I think the president more and more is narrowing this down to a nuclear discussion. And on the nuclear side, the Iranians have been recalcitrant over decades and certainly over the past number of years in insisting that they want to retain their nuclear infrastructure and their enrichment. If they continue to do that, I think the president's going to have no choice but to bomb them. But if they come back and decide to trap them in negotiations by offering just enough to prolong this crisis, then we're going to have another American president at the negotiating table with Iranians. And the only place Iranians ever win against America is at the negotiating table. And Mark, before we move to Nadav, is there a world in which the Iranians can seem to make, appear to make some kind of symbolic gesture on the issue of uranium enrichment, but not really do what the U.S. and certainly Israel is hoping is done at a practical level? I mean, I think there's a world where they can try to convince President Trump of that. They can talk about having some kind of token enrichment, you know, enriching to 1% or 3%, retaining some small infrastructure and then promising, absolutely, cross our fingers, we promise that we're not going to use that infrastructure to dial it up to weapons grade and use it for a nuclear bomb. Now, remember, Dan, last April or May, Steve Whitcoff, the lead negotiator for President Trump with Iran, had offered enrichment to the Iranian foreign minister negotiator, Araqji, on three occasions in talks in Oman. And it was only a letter that was sent by 52 Republican senators and 170 House GOP members calling on zero enrichment that convinced President Trump to abandon that negotiating stance and insist on zero enrichment. So I must say I'm a bit of a nervous Nelly on these things because I've been 22 years watching Americans negotiating with Iranians. I think there is a world where the Iranians offer a deal with some kind of token enrichment and the IAEA back in that potentially President Trump accepts and the negotiations move forward. Nadav, what's your sense of things? Sources across the Middle East still think that war is more probable than negotiations at this point. But if I need to give percentage to the way that they think about this, it's more like 60-40 than 80-20 for the possibility of an American strike. But also Gulf countries are waiting very anxiously to the decision by the White House. And when I speak with sources across the region, not only in Israel, it's very obvious that this is a touch and go situation, that this can very well develop to what Mark just mentioned, which is an extended period of negotiations in which the immense force that the U.S. concentrated in the Middle East will be presented as a credible military threat that has led to a breakthrough. I do not know of a breakthrough. As Mark said, we are waiting for some sort of an Iranian response. But in Israel, there's a heightened sense of a looming war. This is felt through the streets. It's felt even in traffic. It's felt through people who are quietly called to reserve service. The country is bracing for the possibility of a long American campaign, probably joined by the Israeli Air Force, in which Iran and Israel will be actually at war and Israel will be the main target for the Iranians. If this happens, it will be more of a legitimate target compared to other areas in the Middle East. But speaking with specifically now with Israeli sources, I need to recognize that there is an element of wishful thinking here. So when I speak with some of these sources, even in the Gulf, and they're saying, oh, it's going to happen. I also know that sometimes it's because they want it to happen. Nadav, just one question that I'm getting a lot is why is there so much focus on hitting Iran's nuclear infrastructure if the June 2025 operation was considered such a success and was considered to have successfully obliterated at least Fordow and other parts of the Iranian nuclear program. Why is there suddenly this panic about the nuclear issue? I'm not saying it's not warranted, but I'm just wondering, it's a very significant shift in tone from where we were last summer. So I want to be absolutely clear about this. I had zero sources that said that the nuclear program has been obliterated. They always said it was severely damaged. Politically, it was made into a partisan issue. How hard was the nuclear program hit? Well, the Israelis and not only the Israelis were saying it was hit very hard because of two reasons. One is the actual physical installations, but also because of the killing of the top nuclear scientists in such a way that definitely derailed the nuclear program for many years. Now, why is this an issue again? First of all, the enriched material is still in Iran, and this was by design. So Israel knew, and the United States knew where the enriched material is, and they knew that there is no point in trying to hit the enriched material itself. So that is secured and within the Islamic Republic. A second issue is that the Iranians have been rebuilding, and it's basically a matter of time and resources, Dan, until they reach this again, unless they themselves commit to something else, or there is a different regime, or they are hit so hard that they have nothing to rebuild from. We are not in any of those situations right now. Mark, your response to this? I agree with the Dove. I think that's exactly right. I mean, the program was not obliterated. I think it was set back probably about two, two and a half years. But I do think on the nuclear side, there's a site, Dan, that's gotten some attention, but not enough. And it's called Pickaxe Mountain, which is near Natanz, which was the enrichment facility that was destroyed by the United States and Israel during the 12-day war. Pickaxe Mountain is a facility that the Iranians are digging into right now, literally under a mountain. The goal is to go hundreds of feet deep, deeper than the Fordow facility. And for the Iranians to use that as an enrichment facility, the centrifuge manufacturing facility, as well as a place where they could do weaponization. Now, if they succeed in building Pickaxe Mountain to accomplish those objectives, that is a serious concern for the United States and Israel, because as I said, it goes much deeper than Fordow. And then there's an open question about even our massive ordnance penetrators that President Trump ordered dropped on the Fordow facility back in the 12-day war, be able to penetrate that deep into that facility. So you're not going to want to wait until that's done. You're going to want to actually try to destroy as much of it as possible today. So I think Pickaxe Mountain looms large as a nuclear issue. And then the ballistic missile program, without a doubt, is something that the Iranians have been reconstituting with Chinese help. They may be back to an inventory of about 2,000 missiles. It's not clear how many of those are intermediate ballistic missiles, long-range ballistic missiles that could strike Israel. But there's no doubt the Israelis want to go back in and destroy that, as well as the missile launchers that they didn't hit during the 12-day war. And then the real question is, does the United States do it? Does Israel do it? And certainly President Trump has said now on two occasions to Prime Minister Netanyahu, both in December and most recently when Bibi was in Washington, that the Israelis had the green light to go after the missile program, regardless of what the president decides to do. Mark I want to talk to you about the military assets that have been deployed to the region by the U in recent weeks As one person put it to me it represents 40 to 50 percent of the deployable U air power in the world not the region in the world, meaning close to half of the U.S.'s air power is now sitting there in the Middle East. And it's on the order of the air power that was deployed to the Middle East in the lead up to the 1991 war against Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and also the 2003 war against Iraq. It's that kind of air power. And I gut checked this with someone I trust, Aaron McLean, who you know, and I ran through some of the numbers I saw on what's been deployed and some of the categories of assets that have been deployed. And he said, I can't verify every detail here, but we are way past the force lay down of the Venezuela operation just a couple of months ago. And he said, we are in the vicinity of 2003, meaning the Iraq war. He was clarified in terms of not just air, but also naval assets, not ground forces, obviously, but in terms of air and naval assets, we now have in the region what we had in the lead up to the 2003 Iraq war. So first of all, does that sound right to you? Yeah, I think that sounds exactly right. And I think what Aaron's alluding to is you've got two U.S. carrier strike groups there, the USS Ford and the USS Lincoln. Each of those carrier strike groups that have dozens of destroyers as part of their the constellation of forces. The destroyers are capable of launching Tomahawk missiles. They also have very sophisticated air defenses. So when you look at just the naval power, it's extraordinary. And then you add in Dan, as you said, the air power, both the fighter jets that are deployed from these destroyers and carrier strike groups, as well as the land-based fighter jets that are flying out of Jordan and other places. it's incredibly potent. So I guess my question is, it's not so easy to deploy all of that to the region because you're pulling stuff from all over the world and just have them sit there indefinitely. I mean, that was the big tell of the lead up to the Venezuela operation is at some point, military analysts were saying, come on, the US is marshalling so many resources to be positioned right there. You can't just do all that and just have it sit there indefinitely. At some point, there's either going to have to be a decision to dramatically pull back, either gradually or abruptly, but in some reversal, that would be obvious to everyone observing, or you have to strike. But you just can't sit there forever with all of that. Is that the same case here? Yeah, I think so. And I mean, I think this is exactly why if I were the Iranians, that the way I'd play it is I'd come back with an offer that at least provides some opening for continued negotiations, because then now you're in a pro-tacted negotiation. Now the president's got to start withdrawing some of those military assets that you open up the possibility there's another military crisis where those assets need to be redeployed. And at some point, you've weakened American military leverage and American negotiating leverage, and now you're in a round of negotiation. So that's what I would do if I were Iranian. That's the rational thing to do. And that's why if they came back with an offer that at least begins to address the issue of enrichment and perhaps even the missile program, now you've kicked off a serious round of diplomatic talks. Now, if they don't do that, then I think the president acts. I mean, that's why I'm leaning towards military action, because I just think Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, is not going to do the rational thing. He's going to do the logical thing. And the logical thing for him, his logical set of assumptions are based on a resistance. He's 86 years old. He's been in power since 1989. He's the longest serving dictator in the world. Does his legacy want to be giving in to the orange man and agreeing to some comprehensive of nuclear deal that basically strips him of the nuclear capabilities that he has spent decades building and a half a trillion dollars in direct and indirect costs constructing. I find that hard to believe based on his logical set of assumptions. For him, it's resistance. And I think for him, he believes that U.S. strikes are going to be insufficient to bring down his regime. He thinks that he survived the 12-day war. He survived massive protests in January and, you know, kill thousands of Iranians to keep his regime in power. And for him, A struggling economy is a good thing. He doesn't really care about the livelihood of Iranians. So all of this is about a resistance mindset and a resistance legacy. And the logical thing for him to do is to continue to be stubborn at the negotiating table, not offer President Trump the ability to call for diplomacy and for a deal, and then to survive U.S. and Israeli strikes and emerge standing and say that he has defeated America and defeated Israel by merely surviving. And so we talked about what U.S. preparations are. Let's talk a little bit Israeli preparations. Some of what you alluded to mostly dealt with Israeli preparations to in some way participate in the operation. But just in terms of Israeli defense capabilities and preparedness for a possible response from Iran against Israel, given that, well, it got less attention, perhaps by design than it should have, that Israel did suffer some pretty serious blows back in June in terms of Iran's response. and maybe Israel wasn't as prepared to handle the barrage that Israel had to absorb inside Israel, particularly its civilian scientific academic research facilities, apartment buildings that they suffered through. How would you compare this level of preparedness in terms of Israel's defenses relative to June of last year? I don't think that there is much of a difference, and this is not to say that Israel wasn't prepared back in June or isn't prepared right now. Let me explain how this works. Israel has a multi-layered air defense interceptor system, one of which includes the Arrow that was developed by the US and Israel together. And this is the most sophisticated system in the world besides that of the United States. And it's definitely the most tested system in the world in the sense that Israel has been attacked by Iran more than two times, actually three times during this war. So the problem there is very plainly that these interceptor missiles, they cost a lot of money and they take a long time to produce. They cost much more money and take much more time than producing ballistic missiles in Iran. This is a problem and it will remain a problem. And this is one of the reasons that the ballistic missile of the Iranians is now striving to have the capacity of shooting thousands and thousands of missiles towards Israel. They saw the images coming from Israel the way that one ballistic missile or two ballistic missiles were so detrimental in the Weizmann Institute. Now, when you need to prioritize as a country and you're attacked by a barrage of ballistic missiles, think about, Dan, what you would have prioritized, let's put it this way, probably infrastructure, electricity, right? Your most important army bases, your ability to defend the country. And because of that, there's no going around this, that if there's going to be a campaign against the Iranians, one of the first elements is that you need to take out as much as you can from that ballistic missile capability of the Iranians, and you need to do this immediately. I remind us that when that strike happened, the Israeli strike that began the 12-day war, what Israel did was to decapitate some leadership of the Iranian army, mainly IRGC and also Air Force, in a way that derailed the plan that the Iranians already had to shoot automatically, immediately, hundreds of missiles towards Israel. And they didn't manage to get that order through because command and control was gone in the first 10 minutes, the first 10 minutes of that strike. So one way you can do that, deducted the Israelis before the 12-day war, was through hitting command and control. And that worked wonderfully. Thinking like the Israeli Air Force thinks, I would say they are trying to devise probably other plans too, in order to make sure that you can actually decapitate the ability of the Iranians to shoot as many ballistic missiles, knowing that they will be able to shoot something. So if you're asking me, what's the main goal right now, beyond hitting maybe Iranian military leadership, which Israel proved that it can do, and it has a very good intelligence as to doing that? And beyond having the operational way to hit the Islamic Republic military leadership, how do you actually manage to sabotage their intention to shoot as many missiles towards Israel? Look, one of the key questions, Dan, if this strike happens, will the Iranians go full blown scorched earth? We're going to attack everything across the Gulf, including oil installations, including the UAE, including Bahrain, are they going to do that? But there is no question that they're going to try to do that with Israel. So, yes, some preparations have been made to try in terms of defense, in trying to get that better this time, but it's not enough. The truth is that right now, it's mostly about how you manage to deny their deterrence. And you do that through attacking the military installations. And this takes a lot of coordination with the US. President Trump can make a decision that the Israelis would not participate. And we have seen that in the past in the region because of political reasons. It's not what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is that Israel is very much on board. If this is going to happen, the US would want it to participate. But if in the last moment, the president decides as the commander in chief that he doesn't want the Israelis, he wants them to sit this one out, this is what's going to happen. The Israelis that I'm speaking with are saying we're going to be part of it and we have a specific job to do. And this coordination with the U.S. is essential. As far as I know, and Dan and Mark, you're welcome to correct me if I'm wrong. If indeed Israel is going to, together with the U.S., play not a major part, by the way, because of the immense force that the U.S. has concentrated in the region, they're giving the orders to the Israelis. But if you look at this, if it's going to happen, it's going to be the first time I think that Israel and the United States have gone together to this kind of strike. Not a strike that has started by the Israelis, then the Americans decided we want to take out that nuclear installation. No, no. Something that is really a joint military operation. Do you remember anything like that? Because I don't. And that's another decision to be made by the president. But the Israelis are very ready. and not everything was reported as to the visits of Israeli officials to Washington, D.C. in the last two or three months. Okay, Mark, we tend to talk about a military operation as binary. So it's either, is Trump going to make the decision to strike and do it on the scale that Nadav is describing right now or not? It's like yes or no. And there's a world in which we've talked about on this podcast with others before. There's a world in which there's some kind of middle ground or incremental step, which is the negotiations aren't going anywhere. We're not saying the negotiations are dead, but we are saying that Iran needs to know we're serious. And the only way we would have thought they would conclude that we're serious based on the military assets, as we discussed a moment ago the scale of what the U has deployed to the region that would have signaled that we serious But maybe we actually need to take military action not full military action along the lines of what Nadav is alluding to but something that does serious damage to Iran. We can describe all the versions of what serious damage is, but is not the end of the story. It's a way of actually making sure these negotiations have teeth, meaning the Iranians understand that the U.S. is not just deploying forces to the region to send a message and the U.S. is not just sending forces to the region in the event that the negotiations fail, but in fact, use some kind of force as a pathway to more serious negotiations if the administration concludes that these negotiations aren't serious. So, Dan, I think it's a possibility, I mean, between a symbolic strike and a comprehensive multi-week campaign to really take down the regime. Obviously, there's a lot of options that General Cain, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is presenting to the president. And in my conversations with folks in the administration, I mean, they always sort of point out that General Cain, you know, is a former special forces commander, very creative. He's not sort of a typical army general. He's very trusted by the president. He's had a very successful track record, and he's coming up with a set of options that you would expect from a former special forces commander to overwhelm the enemy, to punch it at its weakest points, and to do things that are creative and unexpected. That's the message that I'm hearing from the administration. They're not saying that this is necessarily going to happen. They're saying that General Cain is that kind of person and that kind of commander. I think a symbolic strike would be the worst of all worlds. I mean, I think that would be the message to Ali Khamenei. The United States is not serious. amassed this giant armada that we talked about earlier, and all it did was hit us symbolically, that would make negotiations more difficult, not less difficult. But if it's not just symbolic, then we're talking about something that is important, destructive, but not necessarily a weeks-long campaign. I think that the president should kill the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and his designated successor and son, Moshtaba, because I think that is decisive, serious, and in terms of symbolic power, it's the most powerful message to the regime and to the Iranian people. Then there's a sense of, okay, Ali Larajani, who is the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who is Khamenei's closest advisor, is a former Revolutionary Guards commander. He's really running everything today inside Iran. The Iranian president, Pazeshgian, he has no power and really no influence. So then Larajani, this guy, Shamkani, who's the head of the Supreme Defense Council, also a major player who installed in that position after the 12-day war. And then there are a number of other former Revolutionary Guard commanders or current commanders, all of whom then would be getting the message that you could play this one of two ways, gentlemen. You can either go the way of Khamenei and Morstaba, and we will eliminate you, or you could seriously negotiate with us. And I think for the president, that's kind of what he did in Venezuela when he removed Maduro and then said to the remaining Venezuelan government, you play by my rules, Donald Trump's rules, or you're going the way of Maduro. I think that would be an Iranian version of that. You could go further. You could take out the command and control of the Revolutionary Guards that Nadav alluded to. Now, I think the regime has learned. They're not stupid. They also learned their lessons. They did a full assessment after the 12-day war about what went wrong. They've dispersed command and control. They've built four or five layers of redundancies at every level of the security apparatus. And they've made sure that there is a succession plan in place if Khamenei is killed or if the top IRGC commanders are eliminated. So this time around, you've got to go not one or two levels deep in the hierarchy. You've got to go four, five, six levels. I also think that if you're really serious about a major regime change operation, then you've got to go after the Guard Corps and the Basij and probably the 20 top cities in Iran and eliminate their capabilities. And then you start to think seriously about bringing down this regime. So symbolic strike, worst of all worlds, but between symbolism and a comprehensive campaign, I'm very confident General Qain has given the president multiple options. Nadav, broadening things out regionally, where's Hezbollah right now in all of this? Hezbollah is threatening to join. And Hezbollah was founded as an Iranian militia and has returned to be an Iranian militia very much. So Israel is preparing for the possibility of Hezbollah joining. And the question there is how final is the blow, as Mark mentioned. If they feel that the very survival of the Islamic Republic is at stake, Hezbollah will be employed. And that's a problem. That's a problem. The ability of Hezbollah even today to hit Israel is significant. Although in the last week, and this was very much underreported, Israel basically killed every single commander responsible for their missile program in one night. This is just one of the things that happens these days in the Middle East that nobody reports anymore because of the last three years or so. I want to say something in regards to the negotiations. The Iranians are almost on the record now offering the United States some sort of stake, some sort of deals with their oil industry, which I find very interesting. They are briefing in the last 24 hours that these offers have been made to the United States, that they are not renegading their control of their national interests with oil, but they are offering an entry to American companies to their oil industry. and a second element that iranians have been briefing about former iranians officials they've been briefing i think ap reuters and all the rest is that what they want and seek is a recognition of the right to enrich it doesn't mean that they are talking about actual enrichment only held by them for instance they floated the idea of a regional consortium or they're not ruling out regional consortium of enrichment, something that might be also in some sort of way calibrated with other actors in the region. So I just want to mention, because this is something that Mark said earlier, look, it's true, Dan, that the Iranians have always not taken what we see as the rational track. The rational track is if you have a superpower like the United States, with the biggest military force in the history of the world in absolute and relative terms, and it's threatening you, you really need to just surrender to what the US is asking you to do. And if you have built a polity based on the idea or the slogan of death to America, and of course, death to Israel, but this is meaningless compared to death to America, now maybe is a good time to pivot, as we say in the tech sector in Israel, and pivot very strongly. However, they've not taken that route almost ever, But there is one president that Mark knows about very well. And that's, of course, the decision by the Imam Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, to drink the chalice of poison, agreeing to the ceasefire with Iraq. We, of course, we cannot comprehend it. This is during the Iran-Iraq war. This is the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Yeah, yeah. After Iraq began that war, and for Khomeini to decide to, and this is his metaphor, to drink the chalice of poison and agree for a ceasefire, and he very literally explained that he did that for the survival of the regime. So if Khamenei wants to walk a path and do stuff that has never been done before, and he understands that it's the regime that is at stake, that road has been paved by the founder of the Islamic Republic. I mean, Nadav, actually, just one really interesting historical point. The reason he did that, actually, is because the United States Navy had accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger airline and obviously apologized that it was a terrible mistake. But Khomeini didn't believe that. I mean, obviously, he's caught up in many conspiratorial views of the United States. He believed that was intentional. And he thought, I don't know if I can take on the United States as well as Saddam's Iraq. And it was actually Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader, and then former President Rafsanjani, who went to Khomeini and said, boss, that's it. We've got to sue for peace. We can take on America. And as you said, he decided to drink the poison chalice and agree to a ceasefire. So but it's interesting that it was actually Khamenei who then went to Khomeini, who today is facing the same choice as the previous Supreme Leader. I want to ask you both a final question before we wrap. just staying with one of the different regional aspects of this and decision makers in the region who don't necessarily have a vote but have some influence in shaping events. Mark, I know you've been in touch with officials from Saudi Arabia, from the Emirates and others, but I think the Saudis and the Emiratis are probably the most important right here. What are you hearing now? I know you've been in touch with them quite a bit, but what are you hearing from them now in terms of what they're advocating? Obviously, the Saudi defense minister was in Washington a couple weeks ago where you met with him, and it seemed that he was making it clear to the president during that visit that if you don't take military action right now, the risks are actually greater at this point, given what had been deployed to the region. What is the thinking now, and again, not just with the Saudis, but with any other officials from various governments in the region that you've been in touch with? So, Dan, they're doing what they often do, which is there's a public messaging campaign, and then there's a private messaging campaign. The public messaging campaign is designed to persuade the Iranians not to attack them if the United States and Israel strike. And so they're being very clear that this is about diplomacy. There's a deal to be had. There shouldn't be strikes. The consequences of strikes could be really catastrophic. And they are also being very clear that the United States can't use their airspace and can't use bases in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates to attack Iran. All of that is designed to mitigate this risk of Iranian retaliation. But privately, they're saying things that you have underscored, which is that Iran will only emerge stronger from this if the United States does not enforce its red lines. And we really haven't spoken about this on this podcast. I know you have in previous episodes. I mean, President Trump promised that help was on its way while hundreds of thousands of Iranians were on the streets. 30,000 to 40,000 Iranians have been murdered by this regime. The president told Iranians to take over their institutions. And again, help is on its way. It's a red line that President Trump needs to enforce. I think the Saudis and Emiratis, they saw that movie before with President Obama and the Syria red line. They understand, again, how catastrophic the consequences are when the United States does not enforce red lines. And I think privately, they want to see America do it. Now, do they prefer a diplomatic deal? Sure. But they also want a deal that will strip Iran of its nuclear infrastructure. And Dan, if I could just make one finer technical point on this, because I think it may become big discussion in Washington if Iran comes forward with a proposal in the next few days, where, as Ayel said, they're willing to show some, quote, heroic flexibility, as Khamenei would call it, and offer some kind of token enrichment proposal where they retain the right but not the capability or they retain some capability but it not all the capability It really important to understand if Iran gets the ability to enrich uranium to 3 that is 80 of what you need to build weapons uranium If they get the right to enrich to 1%, the sort of token 1% enrichment, that's 50% to 60% of the capability they need to produce weapons-grade uranium. The point here is that if you have any enrichment capability, If you have one centrifuge on your soil and you have the ability to go to 1% enriched uranium, you now have the ability to build up a weapons-grade enrichment capability. It cannot be allowed. There should be nothing on Iranian soil. There should be nothing in an American proposal or American deal that allows Iran to retain that enrichment. And we better not be lulled into some kind of false sense of security that a small Iranian capability ends this for good. And I think from an Iranian perspective, they would be smart to agree to a three-year deal. President Trump is gone. There's a new president in office who's not willing to use military force or allow the Israelis to use military force. Pocket tens of billions of dollars in sanctions relief. And then it's game, set, match, Ali Khamenei. That would be the smart play. But the really dumb play for us is to agree to any kind of enrichment capability on Iranian soil in any form, because all they need then is President Trump to be out of the White House and they're on their way to a weapons-grade program and a nuclear weapon. Adav, any reaction to that? I'm Israeli. I need to recognize my biases, as they sometimes say. I, of course, as an Israeli, have a vested interest in Iran's capabilities not being what they are right now. I think every person I know in the region I speak with, I'm talking about many, many Arab friends and sources from across the region. And I also remember covering Obama redrawing from his red line. And that had, Mark just alluded to that, but we really need to remember what happened right after. It's not only that Obama didn't do what he promised to do, it's that he also signed an agreement with Vladimir Putin and with Assad that ensured Assad's regime for years. It also elevated Iran in the region and Russia and Iran were elevated as a result of the US back in the Obama days, not doing what it promised to do in a much smaller scale than what we see in Iran. was about one nerve agent attack in Syria. So the repercussions could be severe, as Mark says that. And after I said that, I can absolutely understand why this is a very complicated and to some extent risky decision to make by the president. There are many elements here, many factors here that are an unknown. We do not know. I do not have the information as to what's going to happen in Iran as a result of this strike. Maybe the Israelis and the Americans think that they are factions that can take power. But if they cannot, as Mark said right in the beginning of this episode, survival is victory for this regime. So that's one point. Another point is the way that this would influence energy markets, if at all. Now, we can presume that the Saudis and other allies of the United States will try to make sure that it doesn't influence energy markets too much, but this could have an influence on the US economy. Also, what's the exit strategy here? And what happens if indeed the Iranians manage to hit some American interests around the region? This is a very complicated decision to make. And speaking with Israeli policymakers and also some security officials, they understand that it's not an obvious choice for the US president to order a major operation against the Islamic Republic. What I'm saying here is that this is truly a dramatic moment. It can go either way. But those people that are making the argument that this is too risky, they have a lot to work with. We should recognize that. In that sense. Now, in terms of the other side of the coin in the region, the argument there is that this could change the region forever in a way that will open the door for the vision of the president of regional peace in a way that we have never seen before. And that this is paved by an Iran that is severely limited in its ability to do harm to other regional allies. Of course, on my opiate level, I support that. I also recognize that there are very good arguments that are being made in terms of just risk management in the US as to a possible stripe. Okay, Mark, last word I will give to you. You and Nadav and I and Elan before this episode were chatting about the impact on Trump's decision making. This is pure speculation, but I will let you just weigh in on the speculation on camera, not just off camera. One, what is the impact of the tariff Supreme Court, the Supreme Court decision on rejecting basically all of the entirety of Trump's tariff strategy during his first year in office? And two, the Tucker Carlson interview of Mike Huckabee that was released over the last couple of days. I will go first and say I think the Huckabee Carlson interview has zero impact on the president's thinking. I actually don't think he's much paying attention to it. And it's important to keep in mind that everything Tucker has advocated for as it relates to Trump foreign policy has gone in the opposite direction from what he has advocated for. He advocated distance and daylight between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government in the conduct of the war in Gaza. Trump rejected that. He advocated vociferously, Tucker did, against the U.S. military operation or U.S. participating in the U.S. military operation in June and warned, quote unquote, that 20,000 Americans would die. And obviously, Trump very publicly rejected Tucker's advocacy. And third, Tucker came out strongly against the U.S. taking military action against Maduro. And actually, Tucker went to great lengths to defend the reputation of Maduro and his governing in Venezuela. so i just think tucker's voice here on these particular matters don't matter much on the tariffs though i do think that you know if you think about what are the major pillars of trump's governing both domestically and foreign policy and globally the tariffs were big and he tried to act you know he tried to use presidential authority unilateral presidential authority to impose tariffs again the supreme court has rejected those the administration is now looking at other ways to do it. But taking military action against Iran is an area where the president does have a lot of latitude to use his authority as president. And it strikes me as pretty good timing for him to do so, given the setback he just experienced. What is your reaction to any or all of what I just said? Dan, I totally agree. I mean, on the politics of this, on the optics of this, on the drama of this, which is obviously President Trump, it's always about a certain level of managed drama. But I think at the end of the day, President Trump deeply cares about the Iran issue in a way that it's hard for people to fathom. And I think one of the reasons is that he is of the generation that remembers the Islamic revolution and the taking of U.S. hostages and the absolute humiliation that the United States suffered under Jimmy Carter. He remembers that. And it's one of the reasons that he has a particular distaste for the Islamic Republic that I think is very different from how he treats other American adversaries like Russia, like North Korea. I think he doesn't want to delay and defer. He understands that in three years' time, there'll be a new U.S. president. And maybe unless it's Marco Rubio in the White House, that's very unlikely to be a president there on either side of the aisle who reflects how President Trump thinks about the Islamic Republic. I think he understands that dismantlement is much more important than deferral. He is not a regular American president. American presidents tend to kick the can down the road, right? That is usually what they like to do and let their successor deal with the problem. I think President Trump understands with respect to Iran, its nuclear weapons program, its ballistic missile program, its terror proxies, that he doesn't want to just kick the can down the road and defer the problem to 2029 when someone else can handle it. I think his legacy depends on fundamentally addressing this problem and doing so in a way that is not only good for America and good for our allies, but is good for President Trump's legacy. And with that in mind, I think the answer is not some dumb deal that gives Iran enrichment and lets everybody say this is Obama 2.0, this is JCPOA 2.0. Mr. President, you didn't enforce your red line. You are Barack Obama. He doesn't want to be Barack Obama, and he certainly doesn't want to leave the same kind legacy of inaction and American weakness that President Obama unfortunately left in the Middle East. Yeah, I agree, Mark. And I would just say, and I know you did a lot of work in this area, but one of the consistencies, one of the through lines through both of his terms has been pressure on Iran. I mean, it's been quite consistent. Going back to how he responded to President Obama pushing for the JCPOA in 2015 and him making reversal of the Iran nuclear deal such a cornerstone and his foreign policy that he unveiled when he ran for president in 2016. And then obviously what he did once in office, the actions he took against Iran were unthinkable, actually, for a Democrat or even a Republican president. And then obviously that was just only built upon in his second term. So I just think there's, we can get into the psychology of why that is, but whatever it is, just the data is too consistent in terms of how he's operated or how he's prioritized dealing with Iran relative to other foreign policy considerations or priorities. Mark and Nadav, thank you for doing this at O'Crack of Dawn. And again, we will be releasing this episode not on our usual schedule. And we'll be turning to you guys, I think, rather regularly in the days and weeks ahead. So thanks for doing this. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Tim. that's our show for today if you value the call me back podcast and you want to support our mission please subscribe to our weekly members only show inside call me back inside call me back is where nadave al amit segal and i respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling. To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes, or you can go to arkmedia.org. That's A-R-K-Media.org. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alon Benatar. Ark Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin-Aretti. Our production manager is Brittany Cohn. Our community manager is Ava Wiener. Sound and video editing by Liquid Audio. Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.