Israel Strikes Iran, With Steven Cook

LINDSAY:
Welcome to The President's Inbox. I'm Jim Lindsay, the Mary and David Boies distinguished senior fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. This week's topic is: Israel strikes Iran.
With me to discuss Operation Rising Lion, Israel's attacks on Iran's senior military leadership and on its nuclear infrastructure, is Steven Cook. Steven is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council. He's also a columnist for Foreign Policy. Steven has written four books on Middle East politics, the latest being The End of Ambition: America's Past, Present, and Future in the Middle East. His two most recent pieces for Foreign Policy are titled "Israel Is Going for the Death Blow on Iran" and "The World's Criticism Doesn't Bother Israel." Steven, thank you for joining me on The President's Inbox.

COOK:
Thanks for having me back, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Steven, we're now in the fourth day of Israeli attacks on targets in Iran. Let's begin with the big question: What is Israel trying to accomplish?

COOK:
Well, they've got two goals, which I think are interrelated. One is to do as much damage to Iran's nuclear program as they possibly can, and second to weaken the regime and provide an environment, create an environment where Iranians may feel that they have an opportunity to finally bring the Islamic Republic down. I think they're interconnected though. The nuclear program is so closely associated symbolically with the regime. The regime's power is based on, in part, the nuclear program that weakening or destroying the nuclear program also weakens and undermines the regime.

LINDSAY:
So goal two is regime change.

COOK:
I think that's the overarching goal. I think the immediate goal would be to do as much damage to their nuclear program as they possibly can.

LINDSAY:
Okay. We're just four days into this attack. My understanding is the Israelis intend to carry on their strikes against Iran for more days, potentially weeks.

COOK:
Yeah. At the beginning of the Operation Rising Lion, the Israelis said that this would be days, perhaps a couple of weeks. I believe in a Fox News interview, Prime Minister Netanyahu mentioned that this could take as long as a month or so. The Israelis have established air superiority over Iran. And assuming that they maintain air superiority over Iran, they have all the freedom to maneuver to pick out the targets they want to hit and can hit them over and over and over again. They are, it was described to me as, essentially a superhighway from Israel through Syria and Iraq to targets in Iran.

LINDSAY:
I like to look at maps. Steven, when I look at a map, I know that Israel and Iran aren't adjoining. Obviously, the Israeli Air Force is going over the territory of other countries, namely Arab countries. Are they giving a green light to the Israelis?

COOK:
Well, first, the Syrians don't have any air defense systems or an Air Force to speak of. Whatever was left when Bashar al-Assad fell in December 2024, the Israelis went about destroying, constant attacks on outside regime's military assets after Bashar left for Moscow. And then of course, Iraq, which does have some air defense systems, including pilots who can fly F-16s, are not willing to challenge the Israelis. So the Israelis, as I said, have basically a superhighway in the air to make their way to Iran, and so 1,500 miles from Israel to Iran. They've been refueling over Syria and they've been able to maintain time over Iran rather than having to fire munitions from Syria or Iraq, and so this makes their air attacks that much more effective.

LINDSAY:
Not going over or through Jordanian or Saudi airspace?

COOK:
That we know of, that we know. We know that the Jordanians have closed their airspace and said that it is closed to any hostile acts. They did that before during previous episodes of Israeli-Iranian hostility in April 2024 and again in October 2024 when these two countries exchanged one-off blows. There are reports that the Jordanians shot down some Iranian drones and then there's also, because Israel is part of CENTCOM, its partners in CENTCOM have likely provided radar tracking and that kind of data to the United States, which then passes it on to Israel.

LINDSAY:
I want to get back to the U.S. role in a moment, but first I want to just drill on what the Israelis have accomplished. Obviously, the objective of regime change may be there. It hasn't happened yet. Let's focus on the first part, doing as much damage as possible to the Iranian nuclear program. Again, we're just four days in. Breaking news. Even as we were sitting down, I was getting news alerts of a new wave of Israeli attacks. Indeed, I believe Iranian national television was broadcasting when the attacks happened and it disrupted their news coverage. But given what we know, at least what's out in the public realm, what did Israel precisely target and how much success has it had in those targets that it has attacked?

COOK:
In the earliest days, a couple of days ago because we're only four days into it, the Israelis focused a lot of their firepower on the Natanz enrichment facility.

LINDSAY:
That's where you make the fuel or the ingredients, the fissional material for nuclear weapons.

COOK:
For nuclear weapons. And based on reports, Israel's done a lot of damage to the Natanz facility, that they hit it, whether it was intended or by coincidence, at a moment when these centrifuges were spinning. And when you hit them when they're spinning, they tend to shatter rather than—

LINDSAY:
They're very sensitive pieces pieces of equipment.

COOK:
Very sensitive. So they shattered, which makes it much, much harder for them to rebuild them. And so what we understand is that the Israelis have taken the main enrichment facility at Natanz offline. They also hit an area near Isfahan, which has a lot of stockpiled material, which is important, but they've been careful around Isfahan because they don't want to release a lot of radioactivity into the area. And then of course, there's the big issue of this Fordow nuclear facility where you cannot take the Iranian program offline or dismantle it or make a dent in it unless you go after the facility in Fordow.

LINDSAY:
Okay. What is the facility at Fordow? And I keep hearing it is underground.

COOK:
Right.

LINDSAY:
Why is that?

COOK:
It has some enrichment facilities, but it is also involved in other pieces, in critical pieces of the nuclear program. I'm not a nuclear engineer so I don't want to get into the actual details because I might make a mistake here, but it has been represented to every analyst who's ever looked at this as the critical piece of it and it is three stories and buried into a mountain. What people have been told for a long time is that only the United States has the kind of munitions that can get at the facility because it's buried so deeply. We have these massive ordnance bombs that can be dropped from B-2 bombers that could get at the Fordow facility, but the Israelis don't have that kind of ordnance.

LINDSAY:
Let me just ask you about that, Steven. Are you persuaded that the Israelis don't have that kind of equipment? What has surprised me over the course of the last several years is that the Israelis have done things that people whose judgment I take very seriously have told me they could not do. Among other things, Iran possessed this impenetrable air defense and it appears that the Israelis have totally dismantled it.

COOK:
Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question because I've been thinking about the same thing. And if you think about what the Israelis have done since October 7th, 2023, there's lots of things that people said, "The Israelis can't do that," "The Israelis are unable to do that," and they went ahead and did it. And clearly, the Israelis have been planning for this conflict with the Iran for 20, 25, 30 years. So one, I agree with you. I'm not entirely convinced that the Israelis don't have ordnance that they can drop. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. When they attacked Iran in October of 2024, they unveiled munitions that people didn't know that they had. The other thing is that they clearly, because of American resistance and opposition to going after Fordow and the Israeli belief that the Iran nuclear program is an existential problem for them, you have to believe that—

LINDSAY:
What do you mean by existential problem? I know we love to use that.

COOK:
Yes. Existential had become one of these over—

LINDSAY:
That graduate school word. But what does that mean for Israelis?

COOK:
Well, that the Iranian nuclear program is allowed to proceed and they can weaponize the program that it would be used against Israel to destroy Israel. And so one has to believe that the Israelis have Plan B or C. We know there are Israelis on the ground in Iran, maybe they're trying to pick the lock to Fordow. There were explosions in and around the area of Fordow just the other day. And so it's not at all, given their track record and given what the kind of received wisdom has been here in Washington about what these Israelis could and could not do, it's not at all clear to me that they don't have an option against Fordow.

LINDSAY:
Steven, is it fair of me to infer from all of the reporting I have seen that the Israelis have a large number of, let's call them, spies, saboteurs, collaborating Iranians on the ground in Iran?

COOK:
Yeah. I think it's clear that the Israelis have done this with the help of Iranians. They were able to infiltrate Mossad agents, special forces operators, and so on and so forth, but they could not operate alone unless it was a permissive atmosphere. And we know over what's happened in recent years, the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, in an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps guest house in the middle of Tehran, could not have been done without the Israeli penetration of Iran's security services. So there are clearly lots of people who are willing to help the Israelis here and that's why when I say something like, "Maybe the Israelis don't need to drop a bomb on Fordow. Maybe they can go in the back door and do a lot of damage." I think that this has been a much overlooked part of Israeli tactics and what they might do. In fact, there was a leaked plan a month or so ago in which it had the Israelis landing a brigade of soldiers in Iran. That may have been a ruse, maybe not, but I think clearly the Israelis have been very good at this. I wouldn't necessarily embrace the mythology on social media about what the Mossad has been able to do or not, but clearly this has been a creative operation for them.

LINDSAY:
Have the Israelis, Steven, gone after any non-military economic targets? Obviously, Iran is a major producer of oil and, to a lesser extent, gas. Presumably, the Israeli military could take all those facilities offline and really squeeze the regime because oil and gas are the sources of their revenue.

COOK:
Based on what I have seen, the only fuel energy facilities they've gone after are related to the military and the IRGC. They have not sought to take Iran's oil industry and gas industry offline. I suspect that's because they don't want to arouse the ire of either the Chinese government, which is the biggest importer of Iranian oil in the world, or the American President who wants there to be cheap gas prices for Americans as they go on their vacations throughout the country this coming summer.

LINDSAY:
I would imagine it would also persuade the Iranians that there's no reason not to block oil going out of the Persian Gulf because they won't be able to ship any. Why should anybody else?

COOK:
Well, that's true and that may yet still happen, but I think that the Israelis have calculated that they want to target those parts of the regime that are engaged in controlling the population. So they've hit police facilities, they've hit riot control, they've hit the intelligence services, domestic intelligence services, all of this to sort of separate the people from the regime and give the people the idea—

LINDSAY:
That gets back to the regime change argument for the operation.

COOK:
Exactly. Those are the non-nuclear related targets and non-military related targets that the Israelis have hit.

LINDSAY:
Talk to me about the leadership targets the Israelis have gone after. A number of leading generals have been killed. It's not clear they maintain good, operational security by gathering in one place when it was widely rumored that the Israelis were going to attack. But I've also seen news reporting that Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to go after and had operational intelligence on the Supreme Leader, but didn't because of Washington's opposition.

COOK:
Yeah. Certainly, the Israelis have taken out the entire IRGC leadership, the Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces. They tricked the IRGC staff to meet in one place and once they were meeting, they hit them. A rather extraordinary and successful operation and this has isolated the Supreme Leader. He's worked with these generals and advisors that the Israelis have picked off for years and years and years, and now he's suddenly confronted to having to work with a whole new group of people who he doesn't necessarily know, so it's really isolated the Supreme Leader. Yes, I have seen those reports. The Israelis did threaten that if large numbers of Israeli civilians were killed in Iranian retaliation, that the Israelis would kill the Supreme Leader. Apparently, the United States called that off and said, "No, we don't approve of that." Who knows, one, the veracity of that report or, two, whether the Israelis are really listening? As I said before, they've done a lot of things over the course of the last twenty months that people didn't think they were doing and things that the United States advised them against doing, and they went ahead and did it anyway.

LINDSAY:
We'll get to the U.S. role in a moment, Steven, but one last question about the Israeli attack. Why now?

COOK:
So I read a deep dive on this coming from Israel, and basically what they said was that they had developed quote unquote "golden intelligence" that suggested that the Iranians were moving quickly and more than anybody had suspected towards weaponization of their program. And the Israelis have always said that once the Iranians crossed a certain threshold, that they would act against Iran. And that is the intelligence that they had, that they had crossed the threshold and as a result, the Israelis put this plan into action. That's the most straightforward example of it. There's been a lot out there saying that the Israelis intended to undermine the nuclear negotiations that President Trump was conducting with Iran. That is also, I think, a strong possibility and perhaps a happy accident for the Israelis, but they maintain that there was a threshold that the Iranians had crossed towards weaponization that they could not tolerate.

LINDSAY:
So Steven, let's talk about what degree of cooperation existed between the Israelis and the United States on this attack. And I guess it ranges from the Israelis did it all on their own and didn't tell us at all, to the United States, gave a nod and a wink to an Israeli attack with or without U.S. support. Where do you think it nets out, understanding it's a fluid situation and the first draft of history is often incorrect?

COOK:
Right. And I think there's another piece of it, which is that President Trump and his administration were engaged with the Israelis in this extraordinary ruse to confuse the Iranians into believing that the United States opposed an attack and that the Israelis would not.

LINDSAY:
Okay, so another explanation is that negotiations weren't real. It was a Potemkin effort to get to lull the Iranians into letting down their defense.

COOK:
And that President Trump had given the Iranians sixty days and the Israelis struck on sixty-one days. I think that it's more likely the case, that middle case where Trump was engaged in negotiations. He very much wanted a deal, the Israelis got this intelligence, brought it to the United States, and the President said, "You're on your own. Nod, nod, wink, wink. We're not giving you a red light. We're not giving you a green light. You got to do what you got to do," which is something that American presidents have said to Israeli leaders before and the Israelis went ahead and did it. Now that the Israeli operations seem to be successful, the President is sort of leaning into the idea that he was in on this and he's supportive of it.

LINDSAY:
Well, I think it's clear he knew the attack was coming...

COOK:
Right.

LINDSAY:
Because he had indicated the attack was coming. The United States redeployed or withdrew some forces from the Middle East because they were worried about Iranian retaliation.

COOK:
Right.

LINDSAY:
So certainly from the vantage point of Tehran, there were signals...

COOK:
Right.

LINDSAY:
Flashing red that sort of—

COOK:
At the same time though, the President and his people were talking about negotiations reconvening in...

LINDSAY:
This past weekend.

COOK:
This past weekend. So maybe it was a ruse. Maybe it wasn't. But it seems clear that there was more the, "Nod, nod, wink, wink. We understand that you're going to go ahead and do it and you're on your own." And on your own doesn't mean... Of course then the United States was going to pull people out of the region, especially dependents, because who knew how this was going to go? And now that the Israelis have had success, at least in the early going, the President seems to be more public about what he knew and his support for the operation. Of course, the United States has not participated necessarily in Israel's offensive operations, though given the kind of institutional connections between the United States and Israel, one can imagine that there is a robust sharing of intelligence as the Israelis are undertaking their operations. And according to the Israeli national security advisor, a guy named Tzachi Hanegbi, who is someone that people don't really know who's been kind of level-headed throughout, he has said, "We've only asked the United States for help in defense," and the United States has participated in shooting down Iranian ballistic missiles. But beyond that, this has been an Israeli operation.

LINDSAY:
But certainly, U.S. support for what Israel's doing can go beyond or isn't limited to active participation in firing weapons. There's intelligence surveillance information, a whole sort of sophisticated U.S. electronic network. Do we know if that sort of softer support is happening?

COOK:
We don't know for sure, but we do know, as I mentioned, that there are deep connections between Israel and the U.S. military and Israel and U.S. intelligence services, and Israel gets data from radar sites and so on and so forth. So one can infer from all of that, by agreement, that the Israelis would be getting something from the United States as they conduct their operations.

LINDSAY:
So where do you see the Trump administration or, perhaps more accurately, the President going from here, Steven? Because the President has taken great pride in his commitment to keeping the United States out of war. He spoke at great length in his inaugural address about how he was going to bring peace back. We've discussed many times his efforts to end the war in Ukraine, which have yet to bear any fruit. I will note that one of the reasons that Mike Waltz was removed as National Security Advisor, one of the reasons offered in journalist reports, was that he was behind the scenes coordinating U.S. policy with Israel for an attack on Iran. So what comes next?

COOK:
Yeah. I think there's going to be a point where there's going to be tension between the United States and Israel and there always is in these situations, the President has made clear, unless he was engaged in some elaborate ruse. But even since then, he's suggested that he remains interested in a negotiated agreement with the Iranians. So he may very well be looking at the effectiveness of Israel's military operations as a way to leverage the American position and get a better deal with the Iranians in negotiations. That's not something that's going to sit well with the Israelis. I think they have very clear goals about what they want to do, which is undermine the Iranian nuclear program. Israelis have said they'll stop bombing if the Iranians voluntarily dismantle their nuclear program. That seems very, very unlikely. Trump could go back to them and say, "That's my goal," in the negotiations, but it would put them back in a situation where they would have to potentially go back and undertake military strikes once again. I think that as long as the Israelis remain focused on their goals and this doesn't drag on for months and months and months like the Gaza conflict, which has gone on now for a couple of years, that it will keep President Trump on side. But as the President says himself all the time, "We'll have to see. What happens in Iran? What happens? Do people start taking matters into their own hands and try to bring the regime down? What do the Israelis do at Fordow? Do the Iranians try to close the Strait of Hormuz? Do they take a shot at American forces around the region, which would bring the United States into the conflict?" Are all things that we just don't know whether they'll happen. So far, the Iranians have threatened those things, but they haven't actually carried out any of those threats.

LINDSAY:
What do you think the likelihood is that Iran would actually make good on any of those threats?

COOK:
I'm somewhat suspect of the regional conflict the United States gets dragged into and I think the Iranians are running out of options. They're running out of missiles to fire at Israel. I think the estimate is they have opportunity for two or three more big salvos and that's it, and they don't have a lot of ability to project their power and do a lot of damage to the United States and its interests around the region. And if the reports are correct, they're looking for a way out of this. They're looking for a mediator. They've approached a number of Arab governments. They've approached the Cypriot government looking for an off ramp here. I'm not seeing the possibility of a regional conflict or bringing the United States in is zero, but I think it's probably less than people imagined ahead of this conflict.

LINDSAY:
So you think it's realistic that the Iranians might, at this moment, be crying uncle. And if so, should the United States take that offer?

COOK:
I think President Trump will likely take that offer if they believe that the Iranians are serious. But so far, the President seems to be, despite the offer from the Iranians, seems to be willing to allow the Israelis to press their advantage and do as much damage as they possibly can. Has he given them a timeline? Remains entirely unclear. But once he does take the Iranians up on it, if he does take the Iranians up on it and it's before the Israelis achieve more of what they want to do both to the regime and to the nuclear program, it's going to cause tension between Washington and Jerusalem.

LINDSAY:
My sense is that the Israelis don't want him to step in and their argument to the White House will be, "We're winning. Why negotiate?"

COOK:
Right.

LINDSAY:
And the regime may actually break.

COOK:
That's exactly what they're going to say. And they're going to say an Iran without the Islamic Republic, without the regime, could potentially be more benign and not a problem and you wouldn't be so stuck in the Middle East. You would be able to actually implement your "America First" agenda. Don't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. That's exactly what the Israelis are going to say.

LINDSAY:
And what do you think the arguments are going to be inside the White House and inside the MAGA movement over this? There's already been a backlash among some members of the Make America Great movement. Steve Bannon leading the way, arguing that this is really breaking with the promise that Donald Trump made to his followers on the campaign trail.

COOK:
Yeah, and Tucker Carlson has argued that as a result, the United States should drop Israel and there's been all kinds of arguments about the Israelis trying to drag the United States into yet another war in the Middle East. Of course, the President shot back at Tucker Carlson and says, "I decide what MAGA and America First really means here. Not you."

LINDSAY:
Well, he said because he coined the term. I have to point out—

COOK:
He did not coin the term.

LINDSAY:
The term long predates Donald Trump. I have to put on my unprofessional historians hat here.

COOK:
But I think it goes to show that the President does what his gut tells him to. He's actually honest when he says, "I'm going to go with my gut here," and I think he thinks that the Israelis are doing well and he'll stick with them for as long as they will regardless of what Tucker Carlson or even his sitting Vice President, who is, if you break down the administration and the Republican Party, he would be closer to Tucker Carlson's position than, for example, Lindsey Graham, who has articulated it would be crazy to let the Iranians off the hook.

LINDSAY:
I should note that there've been reports of divisions within the Department of Defense and the U.S. military over whether and to what extent the United States should provide Israel with additional aid. I want to come back to Israel, Steven. Give me your assessment of how Israelis are responding to the Iranian counterattack or retaliatory attacks. It's clear that Iran does not have the ballistic missile inventory it might once have had. How have the diminished, but still real Iranian attacks functioned and what have the consequences been?

COOK:
Before I answer that, I just want to go back to these divisions within the Pentagon. I think the argument that's being made is that the United States needs to be careful about how much it expends in terms of helping with the defense of Israel because the United States is going to run out of its own interceptors.

LINDSAY:
The "Asia First" crowd in the Defense Department says, "This is distracting us from our main priority."

COOK:
Right. And we won't have those interceptors should we get involved in a conflict in Asia. I think that that's a real concern based on what I know about the defense industrial base. I also think it's an ideological position as well. Now as far as Israelis go, it's interesting you asked that question because I've been on and off WhatsApp and video with Israeli contacts and friends there and it is been described to me as extraordinarily frightening. Extraordinarily frightening. The rockets from Hamas or the rockets from the north when Hezbollah was active against Israel are one thing, but ballistic missiles traveling at this extraordinary speed with a 1,000-pound warhead or more on the tip of them creates these concussions that are deeply unnerving and very, very scary and do damage themselves. Israelis, the death count is up to 34, about 800 injured. The Israelis are not used to it. The damage, one of my contacts told me the damage is generally limited, but when there's a direct hit, people are injured and they're injured from the direct hit, they're killed from the direct hit, and there's also these shock waves. So Israelis have been woken up multiple times in the middle of the night. They are quite scared, but they're hanging tough. Israel is this fractious society. They're deeply polarized over domestic politics. The war in Gaza is now manifestly unpopular, but people are supportive of what Prime Minister Netanyahu did when he ordered Operation Rising Lion, I think is what they're calling it or something like that.

LINDSAY:
So I have to ask you, Steven, given your deep experience in the Arab world. How are Arab capitals reacting to what is happening?

COOK:
Publicly, they are very critical of the Israelis. Privately, and I'm not conjecturing here, I've been in touch with them. Privately, the basic attitude is the Iranian regime has sowed terrorism and instability throughout the region. This was inevitable. And privately, they're admiring the Israelis' willingness to take this step and, thus far, the effectiveness of their operations.

LINDSAY:
Does that attitude vary across the Arab world? I could imagine the Saudis and Emiratis may be more interested or more willing to see the Israelis go after their longtime rival and adversary, whereas perhaps in Cairo it's a lot further away and not of as much interest.

COOK:
Yeah, it's not as much interest in Cairo. I think the Omanis are probably quite concerned about this. There's been...

LINDSAY:
But the Omanis want to get along with everybody.

COOK:
They want to get along with everybody, but there's been a kind of subtle turn since the Gaza War in which the Omanis have leaned a little bit more towards the Iranians. Imperceptibly, but nevertheless, when it comes to Israel, have been very, very tough on the Israelis. I think the Qataris mostly look at this in opportunistic ways. So if the Iranians are deeply damaged, they'll kind of switch tracks. Clearly, the Turks have been impressed by the Israeli military operations because President Erdoğan today called for redoubling efforts on air defense system and missiles. They seem to be quite concerned. There's this narrative in Turkey that Israel and Turkey are going to come to blows over Syria, even though the Israelis clearly do not. They don't want the Turks there, but they don't want a conflict with the Turks. So there's varying degrees of this. But in terms of the Arab heavyweights, there doesn't seem to be a lot of tears that are being cried for the IRGC and the proxies in this regime that has, as I said, sowed a lot of chaos around the Middle East for decades now.

LINDSAY:
What does this mean, Steven, for the war against Hamas? What does it mean for Gaza in the occupied territories? You noted earlier that Israelis are standing by their government in this, even though they're finding it quite frightening. But the war in Gaza is not popular. I don't get the impression that Prime Minister Netanyahu is any more popular. If he is, it's only marginally more popular than he was a week ago.

COOK:
Right. And that, of course, there may be a burst of popularity for Netanyahu, and then as time goes on it may dissipate. We've seen that throughout Gaza. Yet I think some Israeli commentators have had to remind Israelis that there is still a war going on in Gaza and there's still hostages that are being held in Gaza. I think one of the things that people are hoping is that as the Israelis kill, for lack of a better term, the head of the snake as they refer to Iran, it will pave the way for an end to the Gaza conflict. That Hamas essentially ... Which the Israelis have killed all of its leadership except a few minor folks in Gaza. Leaders outside the country want a deal that this will pave the way to the end of it and the return of hostages that essentially Hamas would be forced to give it up. I don't really see that happening. As we've discussed many times before, hostages are the only leverage, the only thing of value that is in Hamas's possession right now. And so I think the conflict in Gaza is going to lead to what we've seen, Israeli reoccupation of the Gaza Strip.

LINDSAY:
Any surprise that Hezbollah has not come to the aid of its patron in Tehran?

COOK:
No, given the amount of damage that the Israelis did to Hezbollah and how unexpectedly effective the Lebanese government has been in at least the beginning part of destroying the state within the state that the Iranians and Hezbollah created. What I am surprised about is one, the Houthis haven't been more active. They shot one missile since this began. Israelis went after the Houthi leadership and there was no confirmation whether they killed them or didn't, and we've heard nothing from the pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, other than them marching into the Green Zone to protest in front of the American Embassy. The Iranians, we know, were transferring heavy weapons to these militias, but they seem to be either they're lying in wait, going to try to shoot down on Israeli planes after Israelis have been lulled into a sense of security, or they've been intimidated by the Israeli demonstration and firepower.

LINDSAY:
Steven, I want to put on your forecasting hat. And I know you're not a big fan of forecasting because your hero was Yogi Berra, the Istanbul philosopher for New York Yankees who said, "It's hard to make predictions especially about the future." But are we on the cusp of a very different Middle East than the one we have lived with for the last four or five decades?

COOK:
I think, potentially, we are if the Israelis are successful or if the United States resists the temptation to essentially pull the Iranian chips out of the fire here in the service of a new agreement. I know that members of the Iranian opposition, albeit an Iranian opposition that is deeply divided, are always frustrated by the fact that when they think that they're getting somewhere in terms of weakening the regime and bringing the regime down, some western country, the United States, comes in to save the regime in some way. But the Israelis, Prime Minister Netanyahu himself said on October 9th, 2023 that the Israeli goal was to change the Middle East. They've certainly changed Gaza. How that will work out? No one knows. They've changed Lebanon, they've helped change Syria, and now they are clearly seeking to help change Iran. If they are successful, we may be looking at a new Middle East if things work out well, but we know they never really do.

LINDSAY:
Change can break in a positive direction. Change can break in a very negative direction.

COOK:
Exactly. They should ask their Egyptian friends about that.

LINDSAY:
On that note, I'll close up this episode of The President's Inbox. My guest has been Steven Cook, the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies here at the Council. Steven, as always, a pleasure chatting.

COOK:
Thanks again, Jim.

LINDSAY:
Please subscribe to The President's Inbox on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you listen and leave us a review. We love the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode and a transcript of our conversation are available on the podcast page for The President's Inbox on CFR.org. As always, opinions expressed on The President's Inbox are solely those of the host or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. Today's episode was produced by Molly McAnany, with recording engineer Bryan Mendives and director of podcasting Gabrielle Sierra. This is Jim Lindsay. Thanks for listening.