Q&A | The Israel-Iran Showdown

This is truly a game-changing moment. With the strikes on Iran, is there any hope for ending the Israel-Hamas war and saving the remaining hostages? What is the role of the United States, and what is the future of U.S-Israel relations? In our latest MomentLive! program, Middle East analyst Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Moment special contributor Robert Siegel, former NPR senior host of All Things Considered, explore these questions, providing an in-depth look at the raging Israel-Iran conflict and its ramifications for the region. The following has been adapted from that conversation. 

Robert Siegel: An Israeli-Iranian war per se is not surprising—for decades we’ve heard people talking and arguing about whether Israel should attack. But the timing of Israel’s attack on Friday was surprising. So my first question to you is: Why now? And what does the timing tell us about what Israel—and Iran, for that matter—would consider a success in this conflict?

Aaron David Miller: Both questions are still highly speculative. Planning for this probably began several years ago, but in an active way, according to Israeli reports, in the fall of 2024, soon after the Israeli Intelligence and the Israeli Air Force managed to do what few people thought that they could do, which was to literally hollow out Iran’s $1-billion proxy. Hezbollah, by the way, issued a statement on June 13 or 14, indicating that they would not initiate any conflict with Israel.

They supported Iran for precisely this purpose—as a hedge and insurance policy should the Israelis ever strike Iran and its nuclear site. So, planning probably began there. I would argue that there are several factors. Number one, you have a prime minister, the longest governing prime minister in the history of the State of Israel, who has made it his life’s work and mission to free the Israeli public and the state of Israel from the shadow not only of Islamic extremism, but the shadow of an Iranian bomb. This has been his fixation, part of his mission in life. That’s the “who.” The “what” has a lot to do with what the Israelis have managed to achieve over the course of the last 18 months.

“As a retired Israeli general said to me, ‘The Iranians and the Israelis are playing soccer. The only issue is, the Iranians don’t have a goalie.’ That mental image explains so much of what we’ve watched.”

I’ll use a term of art, and I’ll explain it, which is “escalation dominance.” The reality is that the State of Israel can control the pace, the focus and the intensity of its military activities with Hamas, with Hezbollah and with Iran without fear of any of those adversaries escalating in a way that the Israelis cannot deter, and the Israelis decide when, where, and how to escalate. That does not mean Israel is a regional hegemony the way the Soviet Union was in Eastern Europe, or the way the United States has been, in many respects, in the Western Hemisphere, but it has that escalation dominance. So, you have Netanyahu committed, you have escalation dominance, and you have the perceived threat of an advancing Iranian nuclear program. 

And, fourth, you have the advent of the Trump administration and a Republican party whose view, with the exception of the MAGA minority and a few libertarians on the Republican side, is “Israel, right or wrong,” or “Israel can do no wrong.” (Incidentally, in 2018 President Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Iranian nuclear agreement— the so-called joint comprehensive plan of action—largely at the behest of the Israelis, which is an intriguing irony here.)

A week ago Monday, Trump and Netanyahu had a phone call. According to the reports, Trump warned Netanyahu not to attack Iran until it was absolutely clear that there was no chance for negotiation. They talked again on Thursday, and at that point, whether Trump greenlit this operation, whether it was a flashing yellow, a blinking green, or a faded red, he did not say no, and not only did he not say no, he actively participated in the critical ruse that the Israelis had constructed to lull the Iranians to sleep, convincing them that there would be no Israeli strike until, at a minimum, the planned June 15 meeting in Oman between Stephen Witkoff and the Iranian foreign minister was concluded. That deception was critically important to the decapitation strategy which the Israelis pursued on Friday.

So I think those four factors basically explain why the Israelis struck when they did.

And, yes, the Iranians were stunned. Unprepared. As a retired Israeli general said to me, “The Iranians and the Israelis are playing soccer. The only issue is, the Iranians don’t have a goalie.” That mental image explains so much of what we’ve watched.

Robert Siegel: Would it be a sufficiently successful outcome to Prime Minister Netanyahu, or other Israelis, to damage and greatly set back the Iranian nuclear program? To “cut the grass,” using the metaphor that’s invoked elsewhere in the region, that is, cutting back the nuclear program assuming that it would eventually grow back again. At which point there would have to be another war with Iran. Would that qualify as a successful mission?

Aaron David Miller: Defining success for the Israelis is not such an easy thing to do. Robert, had you told me on October 8, 2023, that today the Israel-Hamas war would have been in its 18th month, despite the objectives that the Security Cabinet laid out, I would have said to you, that’s impossible.

Netanyahu has defined victory in Gaza as total victory. That means not just the hollowing out of Hamas as an organized military force but its eradication as a political influence in Gaza. The de-radicalization of the population, and who knows what else?

Here, I think the Israelis may well have to make a virtue out of necessity. We don’t know what the battle damage assessments will be, we may never know, because there are undeclared nuclear sites.

The Israelis seem to have damaged and undermined several features and aspects of the nuclear program, but they have by no means destroyed it or created a situation where it cannot, under better circumstances, be reconstituted. But that’s not all they’re doing. They’re decapitating the general command of the Iranian military. They’re going after IRGC leaders. They’re killing nuclear scientists and engineers. They are going after gas depots, and the main gas installation facility in Tehran. They bombed Iranian state television. So they are taking advantage to disrupt, to undermine and to create, I think, a situation where Iranians are going to ask themselves,what is this all about? Five trillion dollars for a nuclear program—and what have we gotten from this?

Robert Siegel: Ever since the end of World War II, when the United States conducted a strategic bombing survey to figure out what the effect had been of heavy bombing of Nazi Germany, they came to the conclusion that, in fact, bombing tended to stiffen the resolve of the public that was on the receiving end rather than breaking their will. And after Vietnam, people found similar things in studying the air war. Do Israelis seriously think that questioning will lead to regime change?

Aaron David Miller: In the Arab world, in the Middle East, when we talk about regime change, so far, we’ve seen two models in the modern period. You’ve seen mass demonstrations in the streets of Cairo and Tunis, fruit sellers self-immolating and the military refusing to fire on the people. That’s how Hosni Mubarak left office. The Muslim Brotherhood eventually took over, and then El Sisi replaced them. That’s one model.

Alternatively, you’ve got Syria, where a former Al Qaeda affiliate, Hayat Tafer sham (HTS), that had support from the Turks but also a cohesive military political organization and experience governing in the Idlib Province, took advantage of the weakness and hollowness of the Assad regime, and within two weeks they were in control in Damascus.

When I hear Israelis talk about regime change, I ask them: Are you suggesting that what you are doing is going to create a massive uprising that will overcome the forces of counterrevolution the Iranian regime is capable of? Who or what is going to assume responsibility? Do you have contacts with a military cadre, security elites you’re paying, or who are fundamentally opposed to the Islamic Republic and are going to act as your proxies? This doesn’t compute. That’s not to say, Robert, that things can’t change quickly, as we saw in Egypt, but the conditions for that don’t seem to be set. 

So within the next two weeks, assuming the current fighting between Israel and Iran doesn’t escalate and the United States does not get involved (and we can talk about why that would happen), I’m thinking this is going to find a way to enter a different phase with the Iranian government still in place, and with much of the nuclear program still intact.

Robert Siegel: Having launched its attacks against Iran without U.S. participation, the Israelis left open questions surrounding the Iranians’ underground nuclear site at Fordow. It’s said to be so deep that the Israelis’ weaponry can’t penetrate the earth in order to get at it, but the United States could. Has Israel, in effect, started a war understanding that it can’t finish without the United States? Or have they given President Trump the leverage, since the United States presumably has a weapon that could end Iran’s nuclear program, to force Israel to accept some kind of new Iran nuclear deal? 

Aaron David Miller: It’s a hard question to answer, even with Bunker Busters, the massive Ordnance penetrators, and the B-2 spirit bombers which are deployed at Diego Garcia [the joint UK-US military base in the Indian Ocean]. And by the way, there are reports of long range aerial refueling tankers that are being shipped to the Middle East. Now, that’s an intriguing sort of contingency. What are they going to be used for?

But I don’t think Donald Trump wants to get into this. And I think the only way to solve the Iranian nuclear problem is with a new government. You need a regime that doesn’t want or need to be a screwdriver’s turn away from a nuclear weapon. 

But once scientific knowledge enters the collective head of a community, how do you extract it? Could these activities actually incentivize Iran to try to break out for a weapon? It’s certainly a possibility. So, I think that as long as the Iranians do not strike U.S. assets or forces on Iraqi bases, in Syria or the Gulf, and as long as these ballistic missiles that are being launched at Israel do not create a mass casualty event, I think the calculation on the part of the Israeli government was probably correct. 

But in terms of how this ends, and what an Israeli definition of victory is, frankly it’s too fluid right now to make a judgment. As the Brits say, Robert, we’re in early days.

Watch the entire program here.

Top image: Flags of Iran and Israel.