Deterring Iran’s Dash to the Bomb Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here. 

Lauri: Welcome to EMET’s weekly webinar. Today’s webinar features the brilliant Behnam Ben Taleblu. Behnam will discuss his recent report on deterring Iran’s dash to the bomb. For those interested in reading the report, I have provided a link to it in the chat.

Iran’s nuclear weapons program is a focus of our work here at EMET. We could not continue what we do without your continued support. We want to thank you all for joining us and for supporting us. Please save the date for our annual Rays of Light in the Darkness dinner. This dinner will be held on November 19th in D. C.  Today’s webinar is being recorded. We hope that you share the webinar link widely as today’s discussion is critically important. If you have any questions, you can place them in the Q& A at the bottom of your screen. Please limit your submissions to questions only.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) where he focuses on Iranian security and political issues. Benham previously served as a research fellow and senior analyst at FDD. Prior to his time at FDD, he worked on non-proliferation issues at an arms control think tank in Washington. There he leveraged his subject matter expertise in native forestry skills. Benham tracks a wide range of Iran related topics. These include nuclear nonproliferation, ballistic missiles, sanctions, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the foreign and security policy of the Islamic Republic, and internal Iranian politics. He is called upon frequently to brief journalists, congressional staff, and other Washington audiences. Benham has also testified before the U.S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament. I urge you all to follow his work, which is published extensively. You can also follow him on Twitter or X.  Welcome, Benham, and thanks so much for joining us this afternoon.

Behnam: Lauri, it is always a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me. It is great to be with EMET. I want to provide kudos to the good work you, Sarah and everyone else at EMET performs.  It is great to be in the trenches with you.

Lauri: Thank you. I know how busy you are. Before we dive into the report, I think everybody wants to hear what you have to say about the events of the past two days. We know many pagers, and other means of communication, blew up across Lebanon yesterday and today. I believe this illustrates the amazing ingenuity of Israeli military and technological industries. Can you share your thoughts on what transpired over the past couple of days? Can you provide your answer in the context of how these recent events impact Iran’s dash to a nuclear weapon?

Behnam: Absolutely. Make no mistake, we should not follow in the footsteps of the Biden administration. This administration has made philosophical and analytical mistakes when it comes to this region. They have disconnected the dots between patron and proxy.

It appears the Israelis are changing their approach to Iran. This is evident from the events of the past two days. It is also apparent from the host of other recent operations conducted by the Israelis. They are trying to break out of the tit for tat dynamic. This April, the Islamic Republic burst out of the shadows to fight Israel overtly.  For the first time in 45 years, they attacked from their own territory and fired over 300 projectiles at Israel. These projectiles included ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. The Israelis are also being surrounded by their enemies on an increasing number of fronts. A combination of recent events sharpened the imperative for the Israelis to take the fight to the adversary in ways they had not done before. This, in my view, explains the recent string of covert and overt military Israeli successes that have occurred in rapid succession. They are designed to put the adversary on the back foot and create a conundrum for them.

Israel has not created a conundrum only for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has also created a problem for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in places like Iraq and Syria. It has created an issue for the clerical leadership in Tehran and for the Houthis in Yemen. They can choose to absorb the cost of this new operation against them or they can respond to save face. If they do respond, they need to meet a new and much more significant military operation threshold. In a bid to try and save face, they risk losing their heads.

Recent Israeli operations are a way to restore deterrence. They are also designed to humiliate their adversaries. The Israelis are using psychological elements to get the adversary to step into an area in which they are not comfortable fighting. The Israelis are quite comfortable fighting in this arena. They are attempting to get their adversaries to act quickly based on emotion rather than strategy. They want to force their enemies to make mistakes. If Israeli’s adversaries do not react emotionally in the short term and if they remain sober, patient and strategic, then Israel should continue to inflict a death by a thousand cuts approach on them. This is what the Islamic Republic has been trying to inflict on Israel.

You might ask whether this change in approach was brought about by the attempted Iranian attack on April 13^th and 14^th, or whether it is a feature of the post October 7^th Middle East.  It actually has everything to do with stopping Iran’s dash to the bomb. This is the one big picture Middle East security issue that orients and animates us all. Unlike other regimes, the Iranian regime is not going for the nuclear weapon as quickly as possible. Rather, it is trying to get there as safely as possible.

That is where Hezbollah enters the picture. Through Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic established conventional deterrence. Hezbollah has managed to create a North Korea-South Korea-like situation for the Islamic Republic. Just like North Korea can use conventional weapons to destroy Seoul, Hezbollah can potentially use conventional weapons to destroy Israel. For many years, John Hannah, Mark Dubowitz, and others in Washington have been contending this is Iran’s plan. Even people in Israel have asserted this is the case.

Since 2006, Hezbollah has posed a conventional and asymmetric military threat to Israel. The Iranian resupply and indigenization effort has been almost entirely responsible for creating this threat. The Islamic Regime has supplied Hezbollah with rockets and drones. They have supplied Hezbollah with ballistic missiles and the means to convert rockets into missiles through the precision guided munitions process. All this puts a knife to the neck of the Jewish state and sharpens it over time. With this conventional deterrent in place, Iran is free to seek to achieve nuclear deterrence.  If the Israelis or the Americans try to take nuclear deterrence off the table, the regime can activate conventional deterrence. This is the lens through which we need to view Israel’s recent pager operation.

Israel’s recent operations are about weakening Hezbollah. They are about making sure that Hezbollah knows they cannot compete against the Israelis. Indeed, if they do begin to compete, they will lose their head. Hezbollah must be defanged to signal credibility and a resolve to stop the world’s most dangerous regime. This regime is the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism and it is striving to obtain the world’s most dangerous weapon.

Israel’s recent actions are also about restoring Zionism. Lest we forget, this is the first time that the Israeli population has actually had to leave its own territory for an extended period of time. Members of the Axis are taking a victory lap here. They are saying that the Israelis are not even operating on all of the territory that they claim is “occupied”. They are taking credit for Israel having to vacate towns and villages in the north and for the 60,000 to 80, 000 internally displaced people. These are not brief blips like those of 1967 or 1973. This is a withdrawal from what you could call, green line Israel. This is a major political accomplishment in the eyes of the Axis, particularly Lebanese Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Lauri: Israel presumably assassinated Haniyeh in Tehran. Now, Hezbollah operatives have been targeted directly. What are your thoughts on Iran’s takeaway from Israeli actions over the past two days? I have been looking at the official statements coming from Tehran. The Iranians have not even promised revenge for what happened to their ambassador.

Behnam: The press is reporting the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon has lost vision in one eye at the very least, yet they have not yet promised retaliation for this. Iran’s ambassador in Lebanon operates through the Quds Force rather than through the foreign ministry. By the way, this is essentially true for all of Iran’s regional ambassadors. They have a clear security prerogative and not just a diplomatic prerogative. They are not just in the consular or visa business. Their objective is to cement political and military ties and to export the Islamic Revolution.

Let me introduce some irony or poetic justice here. Iranians have been celebrating the Israeli attack, both in the diaspora and on social media. The Women, Life Freedom protests were touched off by the killing of Mahsa Amini two years ago this September. In the brutal crackdown that followed these protests, regime security forces have intentionally targeted people’s private parts and eyes with their bullets. Tons of activists have been blinded. They include members of the best and the brightest of the next generation and dissidents both in and out of jail. Once these people saw that Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon lost his vision, they celebrated on social media. He is the bridge between the IRGC and Hezbollah. It is ironic that the people living under the most anti-Israeli regime in the Middle East celebrated Israel’s attack.

Of course, a whole host of other people in Iran claimed these were indiscriminate attacks. The disparity in these reactions illustrates the massive gap between state and society in Iran. There is also a massive gap between the Arab street and the Iranian street on the Israel issue.

To respond to your question, you are correct in saying that the Iranians have not responded to Israel’s attack on Hezbollah operatives. They are also not likely to respond. However, the absence of an Iranian response is not reason for a victory lap. The guys in Tehran know they are outgunned by the Israelis and the Americans. That said, I think they are looking at the chessboard and they believe that things continue to go their way. They are aware they should not act to mess it up. Unfortunately, this has been the case since October 7^th, almost a year ago now.

They will go back to their old model of taking the hit and continuing to work toward death by a thousand cuts for Israel. Death by a thousand cuts takes time and they believe time is on their side. Iranians are counting on everything from nuclear capabilities to changes in American domestic politics to arrest the success of Israel’s military operations.

Lauri: Let’s then turn to your report now. In July, Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced that Iran’s time to breakout was just one or two weeks. In late July, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) issued a classified report on the advancement of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Senator Lindsey Graham said the report made him very worried that Iran could use the time before our election, to sprint to a nuclear weapon. He warned that we have to put them on notice to ensure it does not happen. In a July 31^st press conference, Graham added that he believes with certainty Iran will possess a nuclear weapon in the coming weeks or months if we do not change course. His opinion was based on his review of the DNI report.

Can you share what we know about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons development? How do we know what is going on given that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is not permitted inside the relevant Iranian facilities and is no longer conducting inspections? Why is the intelligence community coming to the conclusion that Iran will have a nuclear weapon by inauguration day on January 20^th or even prior to the November 5^th election?

Behnam: Before answering your question, allow me to give a brief but important shout out to my two distinguished coauthors, Mr. Brad Bowman and Mr. Ord Kitchari. Brad and Ord are also friends of EMET. Brad leads our Center on Military and Political Power. He is a scholar of all things military and a practitioner from the Army. He used to teach at West Point. Ord knows all things related to nonproliferation. He was a State Department lawyer for many years. There he focused tangentially on these issues. Ord wrote a book on lawfare. The book was published by Oxford University Press and I highly recommend you read it. With the perspective of time, distance and history, his writings have proved to be extremely prescient. It was an honor to pair up with these two. I introduced some additional subject matter expertise on Iran and together, we put together a 50 to 60-page report. We hope people in Washington will read and digest the report and think it through. We hope you guys will read it as well and that it will be very impactful.

Now back to your question. We can gain an understanding of what the regime is doing with respect to nuclear technology, by reviewing their history in this arena. This regime developed a nuclear weapons program by resurrecting the program it had inherited. Before that, they rejected nuclear technology as Western mumbo jumbo. They believed they did not need nuclear technology because they were oil rich. They believed the late Shah’s nuclear program was a waste of time. They thought it was not worth resurrecting a science fair program while engaged in a full-scale war with their neighbor. They devoted time, men, assets and resources building up their domestic capacity.

Once the nuclear program was resurrected, the regime intentionally chose gaseous enrichment for fissile materials. They basically chose centrifuges that could spin the uranium fast enough to purify it and to separate the isotopes. In the 1990s, they proceeded with more illicit procurement and more support from Russia and China. Their approach allowed them to move towards something of a cover for a nuclear weapon. A fait accompli is what the program was essentially all about. They built covert facilities all across Iran. I think these facilities were designed to create multiple bombs. In 2018 or 2019, the Israelis revealed this information to the world. The Israelis removed a terror trove of material from Iran’s atomic archive. The Islamic Republic still had these materials on hand.

Iran wanted to have at least five bombs by the time it went public with its program. Reporting from the IAEA, the press and from the Iranian themselves, indicates their willingness to dangle the threat of turning the final screw in front of the world. Due to our missteps, Iran has made irreversible nuclear gains over the past few years. We have to admit that as we try to counter and roll back their program.

At certain times, this regime talks about basically having a nuclear bomb already. They did this on April 13^th and 14^th and afterwards. They make these references in tough times and when they feel the need to brag. They talk about it as if they have a disassembled bomb in the basement and full assembly is just a screwdriver turn away. They intimate that assembly is all they need for a nuclear weapon. This enables them to threaten the world. Whenever the world tries to stop them from acting, they threaten to finish assembling their nuclear weapons. This approach is still in line with the fait accompli that they want to create.

To counter this, we can do things like bringing more assets into the region to signal a greater U. S. commitment. This is something the U. S. did after the August 1^st killing of Haniyeh to try to deter a military response by Iran. Although this signals resolve, capability and credibility, there is a question about how long we can sustain such an approach. I do not want to get too political, but there is a concern Iran may actually double down if it becomes apparent that Trump will win the election. In that case, they may build more capacity and get even closer to the threshold. This is because they may be afraid the Trump administration will return to the maximum pressure policy. More capacity will provide them more leverage in that situation.

I do not believe they will cross the threshold in rapid time. I do think they will have the capability to do it and they will increasingly threaten to do it. We have fallen short in the face of Putin’s nuclear threats and we will fall short in the face of Iran’s threats as well.

We have to ensure U. S. policymakers have all the information they need, such that when Tehran continues to creep, we call it out. We must detect it, deter it, and punish it.

Lauri: Various intelligence assessments have concluded that Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost benefit approach, rather than a rush to weaponry. This is irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.

I am going to be a bit cynical here. Deterring Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is different from deterring an attack on our forces. Your report provides examples of times when we did respond forcefully to attacks on our forces in Iraq and Syria. With respect to a nuclear breakout however, have we not passed the point of being able to deter Iran? Isn’t this dire predicament the result of three and a half years of the Biden-Harris policy of appeasement, coupled with eight years of the Obama-Biden policy of empowerment?

Your report states, “The Islamic Republic is apparently not currently persuaded that the United States has the will to launch the magnitude of attacks necessary to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program or to engage in other significant military action directly against Iran.”

Behnam: Our deterrence failures become apparent when you study the facts on the ground with respect to Iran’s changing nuclear program, their evolving military program and the evolution in their long-range strike capabilities in the region. We are also witnessing an increasing risk tolerance, a growing axis, and growing proxy capabilities. We are watching the footsie the regime is playing at the 500,000-foot level with America’s great power competitors like Russia and China. This is unlike anything we have seen in the entire history of Iran.  These are all game changers. Unfortunately, all of this happened under the permissive watch of the current and past administrations you mentioned. Since 2021, the regime has been able to make revolutions in the knowledge-based capabilities.

I still believe the regime has not gone all the way for the bomb because we have guided them away from it. When it comes to a cost-benefit or risk-reward analysis, they still believe they may have more to lose than to gain. On the other hand, we failed in the region because we fumbled on a whole host of issues. We put more distance between us and Israel, our most important strategic ally and partner in the region. This created space which the Islamic Republic has been able to exploit.

This issue is not like a light switch which we can switch on and off. It is all like a measure of volume. That is why the report focuses so heavily on the policy options we can use to force the regime to decrease the volume, when they try to turn it up. We have to be intellectually honest. This is a regime that lies, cheats, steals and represses its own population. This regime also engages in foreign aggression abroad.

As discussed in the report, the regime has not really changed its foreign and security policy over time. It has been relatively consistent in this regard. There have been successes for deterrence on the military, political front and economic fronts in the past. We flesh out those lessons in case studies in the report. We draw some real core philosophies from the case studies and then apply them towards the future. Because the regime has been so consistent, we know that a nuclear weapon still suits this regime’s strategic interests. Because of that, the report is about a magic word and that word is shaping. We are hoping a new administration will take this word to heart.

We have to shape the regime’s choices. The Israelis have actually been quite good at shaping some of the choices of the Islamic Republic. There are lots of instances where we should take a page from the Israelis playbook. We should apply what they have accomplished to the bigger picture and to bigger ticket items. In this way, we can shape the choices of the Islamic Republic.

We need to make sure they are faced with clear risk-reward or cost-benefit choices and we must ensure they have much more to fear than to gain. I will provide a small example of when we failed to shape the regime’s actions. In 2022, the Islamic Republic gave drones to Russia. In the same reporting period, the U.S. warned that the regime could give ballistic missiles to Russia. Now, the U.S. said the Iranians have actually transferred ballistic missiles to Russia. Clearly, there was a deterrence deficit in these two years. What we did to punish the drone proliferation was insufficient to deter the regime’s missile proliferation. This should be a case study in what did not work.

Lauri: Russia is the other party that apparently has not been deterred. My understanding is that Russia may be providing Iran with nuclear technology and may be assisting Iran in reaching the finish line. What are your thoughts on the exchange of technological and military advancements between Iran and Russia?

Behnam: We are very spoiled in the West by being able to pick and choose allies based on our own definition of the word. Particularly post-World War II, everyone seems to talk about a liberal international order although no one can actually define it.  We think that an ally has to look, think, talk and feel like us. We want all the NATO countries to be democracies. Our allies are the Five Eyes countries which are all Commonwealth countries and all speak English. However, from Thucydides in the Peloponnesian War, up until the end of World War II, an ally simply meant a person or entity shooting in the same direction as you are for a sustained period of time. That’s it.

That is the way the Russia-Iran and Russia-China relationship has been blossoming. They are shooting in the same direction. They are shooting at America and the American-aligned order. They believe this order has created an artificial balance of power in the region which does not favor them. Because they are revisionist states, they are keen to change this regional balance of power. Iran is striving to achieve this through unconventional military force while Russia is attempting to change the balance through conventional military force. They also have revisionism and anti-Americanism in common and this is a very toxic brew. This is bolstering the changes and risk taking we see from the Russians and Iranians in their respective regions. They are building on the successes they have had in places like Syria.

The past 500 years of Iranian and Russian history has been turbulent. More recently, they moved into a transactional period and now they are striving to move into a third, transformational era. The transformational era will be accomplished with major Iranian assistance to the Russian effort in Ukraine. Reaching the transformational era also includes Russia providing Iran with the nuclear technology you mentioned. All of this could be a game changer because as Russia’s geopolitics change, its nonproliferation strategy will also change. There were actually some nonproliferation successes during the Clinton administration. They managed to clip Russia’s wings and to limit the nature of its support to Iran’s nuclear program.

Russia has helped Iran with its light water reactor in Bushehr, in the southwest of the country. They provide the fuel and they take away the spent fuel. Now they are creating more reactors and that is a problem. They were part of the negotiations that led to the JCPOA. Technically, they were part of the redesign of the Fordo facility, which failed by 2019 when the Iranians began to violate their nuclear commitments under the JCPOA. The Russians voted for five major UN Security Council resolutions that sanctioned the Islamic Republic. Their old model was to sell Iran out but to do it at the right price.

Now, they are not so keen on selling Iran out. In fact, they are acting as Iran’s lawyers on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors. They are acting as Iran’s lawyers on the Security Council. That is the imperative of snapback. After 2025, we will not even have a diplomatic option against the Iranians because the Russians are using their veto more and more often. So, firstly, the Russians will essentially serve as a legal human shield against diplomatic pressure on Iran. Secondly, on the nuclear front, we can guess that the Russian support will be centered on weaponization.

This summer Axios reported the Islamic Republic has slowly started to engage in computer modeling and metallurgy. We do not know what exactly they are modeling or what metallurgy they are engaged in. However, it may have something to do with bomb design or warhead miniaturization. This is a major red flag. These are things that the Russians have done successfully in the past and they could help the Iranians with connecting the final dots for weaponization.

I focus on missiles. The Russians could help the Iranians on the reentry vehicle technology and reentry vehicle design. They are used for the warhead of missiles that reenter the atmosphere at superfast speeds and have to survive the heat and the rigors of reentry. Once again, the Russians could help the Iranian regime with a nuclear warhead. Reentry survivability and potential ablative material and technologies to make sure these reentry vehicles work and can deliver the payload at these distances.

Last year, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said that the Russians might provide the Iranians with assistance on their space program. Current CIA director Burns has also hinted that this might be a possibility. Their space program is a military space program. It is a cover for a longer-range strike that is designed to be able to threaten a nuclear attack against the European continent or, God forbid, the American homeland. The Iranians have a robust space program run by the IRGC. They also have a civilian Iranian Space Agency, managed by the Iranian Ministry of Defense. The Iranian Space Agency is not so civilian. It focuses on larger liquid propellant systems. The IRGC focuses on medium to large ballistic solid propellant systems. They just launched a three stage all solid propellant space launch vehicle. This can be reconfigured and developed into an intermediate range ballistic missile and then into an intercontinental ballistic missile. Oh, and by the way, all they would need for that reconfiguration is to be able to have reentry, vehicle design and survivability. Again, the Russians could help with something like this.

Lauri: I am going to get into some of the recommendations you make to achieve military deterrence. One of the recommendations you made in your report was that President Biden should make an unambiguous statement, such as the following, “If Iran takes additional decisive steps towards producing a nuclear bomb, I will use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear program and impose crippling costs on the regime, including destroying other targets important to it.” The report also recommends that other top officials and candidates should also be issuing strong statements, particularly during this election season and the transition period.

With respect to deterrence, this administration has spent more time deterring Israel from defending itself than deterring Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Post 10/7, the administration stopped Israel from conducting a preemptive attack against Hezbollah. It has continually called for ceasefires and worked to deter Israel from entering Khan Yunis. Then, of course, Harris said that there would be consequences if Israel entered Rafah. So, would Iran be deterred by anything Biden or Harris was to say at this point? Even if they issued the statements you recommended, do they still have the ability to deter Iran?

Behnam: There is nothing monocausal here. Changing Iran’s calculus is not dependent on one specific U.S. action. It really relies on a cocktail approach. Sinking considerable and credible political cost into changing Iran’s calculus is one key step.

In 2013, Obama opened his mouth and uttered his well-known statement about Syria and crossing a red line. Obama sunk some pretty critical and incredible costs into that statement. You may recall that John Kerry was out to the right on this, while Obama was out to the left. Our partners, our allies, and our adversaries did not know what the official US position was. This was a deterrent disaster that should be studied in textbooks. It basically demonstrates what not to do for political messaging. For many years, former president Obama, said Assad must go. Fast forward 10 or 15 years. The Iranians and the Russians have won in Syria and Assad is still in power. This is a major problem. Someone could refer to the situation in Syria and ask me why our adversaries would believe us now when our words were meaningless then.

I get around that by saying that there have been multiple American presidents who have been very clear about their intent to stop an Iranian nuclear weapon. These presidents include Bush. Obama, Trump, and even Biden with the 2022 Jerusalem Declaration. This clarifies that generations of different American leaders from different parties have shared this vision. It sinks further costs into America’s determination to stop Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

It is important for Biden to be able to plant the flag for the next president. Biden should set the foundation so that either President Kamala Harris or President Donald Trump can build on it. Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is based on a strong foundation and not just something conjured from thin air. It is not something said by Obama to be contradicted by Kerry, or something said by Kerry to be contradicted by Obama. It is not like Syria which still remains quarantined and untouched by generations of Americans since the Obama administration’s debacle. Preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is something that generations of American presidents have focused on and tried to prevent at all costs. The next generation of American presidents will have to focus on it as well. So, this is about handing off the baton and ensuring it has been received.

If we do this, we will begin to communicate to the Iranians that this is a baseline American national security interest. This is a baseline policy that persists regardless of different people, different ascendant ideologies and different parties. We can assume that the definition of an interest is something that we are willing to fight, kill and die for. If this is the case, it is something that the US is going to try to stop using all its tools of national power. It does not mean that we have to call for militarism overnight. I am not calling for an overt, unprecedented, preemptive or preventive strike on Iran’s nuclear program. However, we have to understand this regime has backed down only a handful of times. When it did, credible threats of force were a critical ingredient. This is evidenced in the case studies in our report.

If the regime does not believe our threat of force is credible, we are going to have a major problem and it will not be limited to the Iranians. We will have an issue with bigger, more important and more dangerous actors on the international stage. These actors include the Russians and Chinese.

Lauri: What message does it send to Iran when the Biden Harris administration withholds critically important military equipment and munitions from Israel? What message is being sent when they withhold the 2000-pound bombs Israel desperately needs to execute a war with Hezbollah and which would be essential if it had to go after Iran on its own? Your report recommends providing Israel with the military equipment it needs, but isn’t the U. S. sending a different message?

Does Israel have the ability to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon on its own? The Biden- Harris administration’s policy has been to try and limit a more aggressive Israeli military action needed to secure its own national security.  How does that deter Iran?

Behnam: Unfortunately, it does not deter Iran. As you mentioned in the previous question, I think this U.S. policy is designed to deter Israel rather than Iran. What we need to do is rectify that. So that which was withheld, now has to be provided. That which is supposed to be provided, should be expedited. We should come up with ideas to loan or rotate certain weapons. That which needs to be produced needs to be started to be produced immediately. For example, Israel must have enough Tamir interceptors to deal with the short-range threat that exists on its borders. These threats are heightened, given the increasing fronts that Israel is being forced to fight on to defend itself. Projectiles from Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and others, are Iran backed attacks. It is essential to provide Israel with weapons to counter these attacks on a logistical level.

Now, let’s move from logistics to politics and strategy. When push comes to shove, if you signal that you will restrain your friend rather than your adversary, then your adversary will continue the fight. They know that they can escalate and drag out the fight while counting on your restraint. They know you have no resolve to enter the fight. There is a clear nuclear lesson to be learned here as well. The Islamic Republic has the ability to threaten a wider war. Once they threaten that, the Biden administration kicks into high gear. This is what we witnessed in August, for example. In August, the administration attempted to prevent some of the Israeli military successes. At the time the hostage bodies were recovered, the administration blamed the Israelis for the lack of movement on a potentially newer hostage deal. These all teach very bad lessons to an adversary that is increasingly willing to escalate. It signals that the Americans will always prioritize de-escalation. No matter how many times the Israelis prioritize deterrence, the Americans will prioritize de-escalation. That means they will handcuff their friend rather than handcuffing their adversary. That is a lesson that is going to take a lot of time to get the Iranians to unlearn.

Lauri: Since you issued your report, the Biden-Harris administration has announced its intent to pull U. S. forces out of Iraq. Obama tried that. It was disastrous and we went back into Iraq. From what I understand, the administration is developing a strategy to get all U. S. forces out of Iraq by 2027. I believe they are making it almost impossible for Trump to reverse this decision.  Once they withdraw, they will basically hand Iraq over to Iran. A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, also helps Iran build a land bridge to the Mediterranean. What are the implications of this?

Behnam: The implications are gross and significant and you use the L word there, land bridge. In 2019, David Edesnik and I published a big report. David is another colleague at FDD. We called the report, Burning Bridge – an architecture for a permissive environment through a whole series of failed states in the region to bring men, money, and munitions closer to Israel’s doorstep. The report explains the logistics and the geopolitics of how Iran has been able to orchestrate a multi-front war. The failure of cracking down on it then, got us into the position we are in today.  So, we now have to stop the bleeding. We have to reverse the losses. Continuing along the path we were on by withdrawing from Iraq, would only be expediting the gains for the other side.

You may have seen a recent story about the Houthis and some of the other Iranian proxies allegedly trying to open up shop in Baghdad. Iran has what the French and the U. N. call laissez passer. They can travel internationally.  Iraq is a permissive environment for them. They have punctured the state, civil society, the economy and religious institutions. More recently, they have even punctured Kurdish autonomy in the north.

Eliminating or diminishing the US footprint in Iraq is going to have some drastic implications for the region. The lack of an Iraq policy under the Biden Harris administration, has helped get Iran into this place. I think that leaving Iraq would be my own goal.

Six days the Iranian government killed 1, 500 people. I think the Washington Post has the phrase “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. It is not just democracy that is dying in the darkness. It is the Iranian people who are dying in the darkness. So, we need to get serious about making sure there is critical telecommunications support for them from the best, the bravest and the brightest out there.  We need a policy that fleshes out the persistent and consistent shortcomings of this regime. Through opposition media and other means, we need to spotlight these failures. We must ensure the Iranian people in the streets know about the failures of their government and that they know the West and others will have their backs.

Unfortunately, I do not see that architecture in place today. More recently, there have been some good moves in Congress about internet freedom, VPN and things like that with respect to Iran. However, that is just the price floor. We need to really increase what we are doing in this arena. We are facing a terrorism and nuclear threat from the region. We are facing cyber threats, threats of illicit shipping and of illicit procurement. These trace back to the Islamic Republic. Failure to deal with the Islamic Republic is just a time buying mechanism or a containment policy. It is not a rollback policy. We have to be intellectually honest and recognize that the heart of the problem is the regime.

It is time to focus on a more comprehensive strategy that can actually tackle the regime. First, we need to handicap the regime. Next, we need to find a way to create an evolution there. This evolution would allow Iran’s best and the brightest to get a government reflecting their views, values and interests.

Since 2009, Iranians have been chanting, not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life only for Iran. Since then, you could not have a sharper contrast between what the Iranian people have been saying and doing versus what the Iranian government has been saying and doing.

Lauri: We have only a few minutes left so I will take a few questions from the audience. Some people asked why the IDF has not initiated a significant attack on Hezbollah on the heels of the spectacular attack with the pagers and the walkie talkies. We know it is imperative for Israelis to return to their homes in the North. Isn’t this the perfect window to initiate a full-scale attack on Hezbollah? Also, what message do you believe that the success of the pager attacks sends to Israel’s Arab allies? Do they view this as a renewal of Israeli deterrence in the region?

Behnam: One the latter point, I certainly think the success of the recent pager attacks demonstrates the sophistication of the Israeli intelligence apparatus. They also show the willingness of the Israelis to try and break out of the tit for tat game Hezbollah has been trying to lure them into. Lee Smith coined the term “strong horse” in his book with the same name. I think Israel has now signaled to many Arab states it has the capability to be the strong horse and so they should throw in their lot with them.

To address the front end of your question, I am not sure why we have not yet seen significant follow up attacks on Hezbollah. I would have expected to see them as well. I would have thought the pager and walkie talkie attacks would have signaled the commencement of wider or deeper military operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The initial targeted pager attacks would have helped neutralize Hezbollah’s forces and operatives in Lebanon and erode them of their ground game. Significant follow up attacks would have built on the shock factor. These have not yet materialized. We do not know if the Israelis will still pair these targeted, surprise attacks with a more overt and direct military activity. There is always the theory that the Israelis were trying to get Hezbollah to break out of the tit for tat with Israel by trying to save face. In doing so, it would lose its own head.

Thus far, Reuters has reported that Hezbollah has fired at artillery positions of the IDF in the north, so perhaps we are not witnessing such a big breakout from Hezbollah. However, we will have to continue watching this northern front for a long time. This is particularly true since the cabinet has declared it is now part of Israel’s national security aims. Returning the displaced people of the North to their homes is now one of Israel’s key goals in this regional war.

Lauri: Someone asked if, in hindsight, it was a mistake for the U. S. to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)?

Behnam: No, because everything that we fear now and everything that the regime is doing now is rendered legal by the JCPOA.  That said, I was not a fan of the manner in which the U.S. left the deal. Many people still think the Trump administration left the deal because of Iranian violations. That is not the case at all. The Trump administration left the deal because it assessed the risks and rewards of remaining in the deal. They determined that the benefits of kicking the can down the road via sanctions waivers, was not worth the cost. The juice was not worth the squeeze. They realized that time being bought by the deal was not necessarily yielding peace dividends.  Worst of all, it was allowing Khamenei to build a legal and political argument for a much larger expanded nuclear program over time.

So, if you have a problem with increasing Iranian enrichment activity, you should have a problem with the JCPOA. If you have a problem with increased centrifuges being tested and then being brought online, you should have a problem with the JCPOA.  If you have an issue with Iranian arms transfers and the fact there are Iranian drones on four different continents today, you should have a problem with the JCPOA. If you have a problem with Iranian ballistic missile testing and use and transfers, you should have a problem with the JCPOA. All of those things are rendered legal by the JCPOA and UN Security Council Resolution 2231. So, staying in it wouldn’t have prevented those things.

Leaving the JCPOA admittedly brought some of the aforementioned activities forward. The regime began to violate the JCPOA and began to do things on an earlier clock. However, leaving the JCPOA at least allowed more diplomatic room for maneuver as well as more time for our sanctions to bite.

Lauri: What are the real chances of Iran breaking out and obtaining a nuclear weapon between election day on November 5^th, and inauguration day on January 20^th. I know you do not have a looking glass through which you can see the answer to this, but please give us your best guess. Is it based on who wins the election?

Behnam: There is a chance of a breakout between election and inauguration day, but we don’t know what we don’t know. I have not been privy to the classified version of the report that Lindsey Graham saw. I have also not seen the classified version of the special national intelligence estimate that came out recently. We don’t know what we don’t know about the final steps of Iranian weaponization. We also do not know if the regime would be comfortable announcing what they could produce in that limited period of time.

With that being said my biggest fear is that the regime will engage in more of these low level weaponization activities, with the net effect that they create a bomb in the basement. That is what I think we need to offset from now till the November election and from November until January.

There is a real threat that they could sprint to a bomb between November and January. I would put that number at a single rather than a double-digit number. Nonetheless, a single digit number is still quite significant when you look at threshold status or the near threshold status that the regime has already been able to achieve.

The regime is already getting the strategic dividends of nuclear deterrence without already having a nuclear weapon. If they fear things are not going their way and they ultimately do go for the bomb, then heaven help us when we try to constrain, roll back and deter them.

That is why it is so important to take stock of how the regime has slowly crept forward on weaponization this year. This is more than just rhetoric from the regime. While the world was focused on October 7^th and the region, they have made significant and irreversible gains. The regime was hoping to be able to deny the gains they had made. Their denial was made plausible by Axios reports from June and July. These reports made it appear like it was simply lower-level scientists who were engaging in these weaponization activities and they had not received orders from the top in this regard.

Let’s hope that day for the formal go order from the top never comes, but hope is not a strategy. What we have to do is to shape the risk-reward ratio. We have to ensure this regime knows that it will lose everything it holds dear, including itself, should that risk reward-ratio change. That is what the outgoing Biden administration has to do. It needs to do a much better job than it has done so far. That is what the candidate who wins the election has to do as well. All three of them. can begin by digging deeply into the policy section of this report to begin to understand how to change the psychology of the regime and then alter the risk-reward ratio.

Lauri: Those in the queue with questions that we have not yet addressed should email them to us. We will be happy to forward them to Ben. Ben, I cannot thank you enough as always for your brilliant insights and taking the time to be with us here at EMET. We greatly appreciate it. The link to the report is in the chat. I hope you all read it and also pass this webinar reporting along to friends, family, colleagues. It is a critically important time right now. Thank you all for joining us. Much appreciated. And we will see you all ne