Transcript: Iran raises the stakes with attack on Israel

This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Iran raises the stakes with attack on Israel’

Gideon Rachman
Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about the conflict between Iran and Israel and the risk of another war in the Middle East. My guest is Emile Hokayem, senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. After Iran fired off an unprecedented barrage of missiles and drones at Israel, the Israeli government vowed to retaliate. So is there any way of stopping this escalating cycle of attack and counter-attack?

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Gideon Rachman
The hundreds of drones and rockets that Iran fired at Israel, was codenamed “Operation True Promise” by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards who oversaw the operation. They were themselves a response to Israel’s earlier strike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which had killed eight senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps officers. Almost all of the missiles and drones aimed at Israel were shot down by a coalition that included not just the Israelis, but also the Americans, British and French armed forces and others. President Joe Biden urged Israel to, as he put it, take the win and not to strike back at Iran. The Americans, like many others, fear a wider war in the Middle East. But Israel seems intent on staging a counterstrike nonetheless. So I began my conversation with Emile Hokayem by asking him if Israeli retaliation is indeed inevitable and what options Israel’s likely to be considering.

Emile Hokayem
I think it’s very, very probable that Israel will retaliate in a significant way against Iran. The Iranian attacks of Saturday evening were unprecedented in scope. Many will take solace of the fact that most missiles were shot down. The point is that it could have inflicted significant damage. And it’s a combination of factors that avoided that. But if you’re sitting in Israel, yes, you will think about the success of your missile defence system. You will think of the support you got from this international coalition, but you will be very worried that first, Iran has demonstrated the will to hit directly. Second, that Iran has set a new floor for escalation, because from now on, when we think about the possible Iran response to anything Israel does, the possibility of a direct strike now is among the probable options. And third, if you are in government in Israel right now, you worry that Iran may actually have more appetite for risk in the future. And this international coalition that was so crucial to defending Israel on Saturday night may not be able to sustain that deployment. So I think the Israelis are seriously considering that. I think the first 24 hours after the Iranian strike was the most dangerous moment, I think there were serious considerations of a large strike. The more time passes since the strike, I think the more discussions there will be between Israel and the US and others, and the more Israel will calibrate its retaliation.

Gideon Rachman
So what kind of options do you think they will be thinking about? I mean, do you think, for example, given that Iran has attacked Israeli territory directly from Iranian territory, that the Israelis will feel that their efforts to, as they see it, restore deterrence will mean that they will have to attack the country of Iran rather than Iranian proxies around the region.

Emile Hokayem
First, let’s look at history in a very candid way. Israel has mounted attacks on Iranian territory in the past. They’ve killed Iranian scientists, they sabotaged facilities, they seized the nuclear archives a few years ago. So there is already a precedent for Israel operating in Iran. Israel wouldn’t be setting a new way of doing things. It would have to target different facilities, possibly command and control facilities, military facilities, and if you go up that ladder, all the way to nuclear facilities. But before getting there, I think Israel has other options from this perspective. It can simply do more of what it’s been doing since October 7th and before Saturday. Israel can ramp up the tempo of its attacks on Iranian presence across the region. The key question is going to be, I think, the risk appetite in the security establishment that Israel, but more so in the population itself. Are Israelis calling for something significant? Is that something that Netanyahu, Gantz, you know, other senior Israeli officials want to respond to? Or is it going to be a pure strategic calculation that you have to show Iran that this act will not pass? I suspect that Israel has already a long list of possible targets to hit. It will likely decide on the timing and the tempo. I think one of the important elements here is that precisely because there were little damage and few casualties, very few, Israel has the luxury of time. It controls the clock on that. Had missiles breached Israeli air defences and landed in Israel and caused significant casualties and damage, I think Israel would have responded much faster and in a pretty consequential way.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. Before we turn to how the Iranians will be thinking about this, so a couple more questions on Israel. So the portrait you paint is in Israel that despite having suffered this very big attack, is relatively calm and relatively in control of the situation. But they must also be thinking if they escalate, of course, Iran will hit back. And can they be confident that they can say to their people, these missiles will never get through? Because to put another way, if they do attack back, aren’t they actually taking a big risk with the security of Israeli cities and Israeli citizens?

Emile Hokayem
Yeah. I mean, one should not be complacent or look at the relative military ineffectiveness of the strike on Saturday and deduct that Iran is defanged, in a way, that Iran can’t do it. I mean, this was a very particular incident. Despite the fact that it was a very large attack, there was ample warning. There was a coalition present on site. From now on, things are gonna be more complicated. By the way, there was also no second or third wave of attacks. It was, in a way, a one-off. It was large, but it wasn’t a series of strikes. From now on, Israel is gonna have to wonder what could Iran pull off next? And will we be able — “we” are Israelis — will we be able to defend ourselves? It’s unclear what exact capabilities Iran has used. It hasn’t asked all its partners in the region to fire at the same time. Most of the missiles came from one direction. The conditions were there for a relatively successful interception of these missiles. This cannot be assumed in the future. In the future, what will matter is seemingly boring things like the availability of interceptors. You know, who has more of the right stuff? We saw in Ukraine and Russia that it matters to have the right things at the right moment, and that’s going to be a big issue for Israel and its allies. Iran itself will have to think about how many of those missiles and UAVs it has in stock and how and when to deploy them. So we’ve entered a very dangerous phase, precisely because everything is more complex and because, at the moment, the downward spiral seems unstoppable. I suspect Washington is going to be key in shaping this new phase. 

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. So turning to the Iranians. You mentioned Washington. I was speaking a couple of days after the attacks to people at the American end of things, and one of them put it to me that this attack was much bigger than either the Israelis or the Americans themselves had expected. The Americans are still trying to persuade the Israelis not to overreact in response, but they did say this was unprecedented. It was bigger than they expected. So what was Iran thinking? Why did they go so big?

Emile Hokayem
I think it’s precisely because Iran feels that its adversaries are underestimating it, that it needed to go big. It needed to spook and impress in a way. I’m not sure that the Iranians were looking for necessarily mass casualties this time, despite the size of the attack. When you look at the targeting, it was relatively grouped. It seemed like they weren’t hitting large civilian population centres or critical infrastructure, etc. But they went after territory that was, from their perspective, military in character. But you know, the Iranians are basically telling people, don’t think that you have our risk profile nailed. Don’t think you know exactly how we’ll behave, because it’s precisely that assumption that leads you to think that you have escalation dominance, and we want to deny you this. In reality, I would still argue that Israel has escalation dominance in this case. But the Iranians have shown once again that Israeli and western intelligence assessments can be quite off. You know, they were off on October 7th when they thought that the question of Palestine had been sidelined and Hamas had been contained. And now I think they are at risk of misjudging Iran’s risk profile. Israeli decision makers saying that Iran is deterred and that calculation has shaped their behaviour in recent months. The problem is that that calculation will be right until it’s not right anymore, and then it risks being catastrophic. And there doesn’t seem to be a serious de-escalation process at the moment. In part because there is no desire to link the regional de-escalation with a Gaza ceasefire. And that actually is going to be the hard bit in the coming days and weeks. To what extent has this strike diverted attention from Gaza? And if so, does this increase the chances of a regional escalation?

Gideon Rachman
Yeah, let’s get Gaza in a second. But I was interested that you said that you think that the Israelis have assumed that Iran was deterred because you, like me, will also have heard the Israelis say, or some Israelis say, Iran is incredibly dangerous, they’re religiously driven, that they might one day be prepared to use a nuclear weapon against Israel. Was that all just rhetoric, or is that a train of thought also there in Israel?

Emile Hokayem
I think many people have both views at the same time that Iran is extremely dangerous, but Iran, in the short term, is deterred. I think Netanyahu in particular, for 20-plus years, has been painting Iran as this growing threat. I mean, he used very flowery language. It’s not entirely wrong about this, but he has tended to, you know, turn Iran into this gathering storm about to hit. The reality, what we saw since October 7th is that Iran is in a very difficult spot. The first thing is, it seems now quite certain that the Iranian leadership did not know about Hamas’s attack. So Iran, in a way, is cornered both by Israel, which has killed a number of very senior IRGC commanders and degraded Iranian military infrastructure in the region. But also by Hamas, which conducted an operation expecting Iran to join the fight. And Iran is resisting that. So this is a very uncomfortable moment for Iran. There are upsides for Iran. Iran has been quite happy to see Israel’s standing taking a real beating on the international scene. It can point to western hypocrisy. It can relish the fact that Arab countries have been keen to cultivate Iran to avoid an all-out war. But strategically, Iran is in a difficult position, and I think the Israelis just want to make the most out of that, in part because the Israeli leadership doesn’t ever want to be accused of having missed yet another gathering strength after the debacle of October 7th.

Gideon Rachman
You mentioned the possibility and the necessity that somehow, if we’re gonna get off this escalation ladder, that this should be linked to de-escalating in Gaza and finally getting a settlement there, or at least a ceasefire. Do you see any possibility of that? Or is Israel still determined to press ahead with the war against Hamas?

Emile Hokayem
I think the chances of a ceasefire have gone down, although at the same time, what you have is almost a de facto ceasefire because the level of fighting has gone down. There are fewer Israeli troops at the moment. It may be in preparation for something bigger, but the reality is that the fighting right now is not as intense as it was a few weeks or a few months ago. But a ceasefire is important because a formal ceasefire is the first step to discussing the future of Gaza. So letting the fighting just stop, and then expecting resumptions and cycles of calm and then fighting, that is not going to be conducive to anything sustainable. But at the same time, right now internationally, the countries that are most involved in this are focused essentially on Israel-Iran, that’s for many of the senior people, the more concerning dynamic. The second one is that Netanyahu can turn to his public and say, well, I’ve defended you well this time, the military as well. So we don’t have to rush into anything. We can still set the agenda on that. The negotiations over the hostages are not proceeding well. For a long time, Israel was the blocker. I think Hamas is more of the blocker these days because, you know, Hamas looks at the campaign in Gaza. It’s been certainly battered. Hamas is no longer a military organisation like it was on October 6th. But Hamas looks at Israel’s performance and thinks, well, that’s strategic failure for Israel six months plus. We don’t have to agree with Hamas’s assessment, but it’s certainly how the Hamas leadership looks at it at the moment, thinking that they don’t have their back against the wall as much as before. I think it’s obviously a mistaken assessment on the part of Hamas, but it does set their behaviour at the moment.

Gideon Rachman
And they wouldn’t be deterred — to use the word we keep using — by the fact that they’re in a territory that’s been reduced to ruins with massive civilian casualties.

Emile Hokayem
I think when Hamas looks at the devastation, physical and human, it looks at it as a necessary cost for a future victory. So that’s how it rationalises it. And I don’t think Hamas is nearly as mindful of the dire circumstance of its people. That said — and that actually is a very important point — two weeks ago, Hamas did issue for the first time, a kind of an apology to the people of Gaza. That was a long statement that basically referenced the suffering, the pain, saying that they’re not happy with it. You know, it was a relatively apologetic tone for this quite radical organisation and the domestic dynamics in Gaza, they’re far from settled. I mean, there’s no sense of widespread unconditional support for Hamas. If anything, we see quite a lot of criticism for how it has exposed the entire population. But that’s something that Hamas thinks it can control. And Hamas doesn’t see any domestic rival that could corner it at the moment. There were attempts to bring in Palestinian authority people. The Israelis have tried to work with local tribes and clans and it didn’t go well. I mean, Hamas remains the dominant Palestinian force in the strip.

Gideon Rachman
Yeah. And one of the things you mentioned that is pretty clearly a plus for Hamas is that relations between Israel and the Arab states, the Gulf states in particular, which had been warming up, have now taken a huge knock because of furore on what’s been going on inside Gaza. Yet on the other end, after this foiled Iranian missile strikes, the Israelis were quite keen, I think, to highlight the fact that they had some help from Arab neighbours, in particular Jordan, some suggesting there may be a Saudi role. What do you make of that? What do you think those countries are thinking of the totality of the things they’re looking at?

Emile Hokayem
So for the Arab states, avoiding a regional war is crucial. And from the perspective of Jordan and other states, intercepting the Iranian missiles was a good thing because it pushed back the prospect of a regional war. That’s quite important. Now, the problem has been that the way the Israelis and some Americans have interpreted Arab participation in this operation, it has been to celebrate the birth of some new strategic alliance. You know, the fact that Jordanian aircraft were up in the air shooting drones was somehow an indication that everything King Abdullah and Queen Rania had said the past seven months on Gaza was irrelevant, that that was a strategic decision. And that’s a major, major misinterpretation of what the Arab countries are looking for. They continue to be extremely worried about Israeli belligerence. They look at Israel as not necessarily wanting a regional war, but ready to risk a regional war while it degrades Iran and its partners in the region. They’re very concerned about that. They have domestic populations that are asking hard questions about why are we defending Israel while Israel is killing large numbers of Palestinians. I think, to be fair, those Arab states are relatively mature countries. They make that decision based on their own national security considerations. And importantly, they wanted to prove to the US, to the UK, to France that they were credible, reliable partners. All these countries either have some kind of defence and security relationship with the western countries. Saudi, whose role is still unclear in this operation, is trying to reach a very comprehensive agreement with the US. And Jordan itself is very dependent on western assistance and political cover. So in a way, the reaction is not surprising, but it is not some kind of signal that Jordan, Saudi, have pushed down the issue of Palestine and Gaza at the moment.

Gideon Rachman
OK. Then to conclude, I mean, you said earlier in our conversation that a huge amount is gonna depend on America going forward. But how much leverage do you think the Americans actually have? My sense is obviously they’re critical to Israeli security. But throughout really since the beginning of October 7th, maybe before then, they’ve been reluctant to use the leverage they have over Israel. So how in control of events are the Americans, and what do you think they’re gonna do now?

Emile Hokayem
I mean, one would think that after the very effective American defence of Israel on Saturday, it’s obvious that the US is a critical piece of Israel’s security. I think leverage is both a question of relationship and capabilities on the one hand, but also of will and mindset on the other. So there is leverage, but Washington is unwilling to use it. And I think, importantly, what happened on Saturday, although I just argued that it demonstrates America’s crucial role. Also, as soon as this conflict is framed as Israel versus Iran, it becomes quite clear that everyone is gonna side with Israel and unconditionally so. You saw how on Capitol Hill and elsewhere, there was an immediate rallying effect there and lots of pressure to put back on track those arms sales that had been slowed down days prior. So it will come down to Washington. I think the fundamental issue here is Washington does not want a regional war. American officials have spent a lot of time and capital avoiding that. And, you know, they deserve some credit. We were quite close to a major confrontation between Israel and Hizbollah a few months ago, and the Americans were quite crucial in avoiding it. But as long as the Americans don’t push hard for a Gaza ceasefire, that then allows the other theatres to cool down, I think it’s gonna be very difficult to get to a stabilisation of what is a high-intensity situation at the moment.

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Gideon Rachman
That was Emile Hokayem of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for listening. Please join me again next week.

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